Homeowner Bliss......

We've been pretty lucky so far. Anything really expensive, say....a new roof....we knew about coming in. Likewise the tree and the fence.

And the new washer and dryer are working fine after leveling both of them (NOTE TO INSTALLERS: Just because it doesn't rock doesn't mean it's level!), removing about 75% of the length of exhaust ducting because the "Installers" used it ALL to save the 10 minutes it would take to trim it, and cleaning several handfuls of wet lint from the "anti-critter screen" a previous owner installed.

So I was a bit distressed that our brand-new, top of the (Home Depot) line GE dishwasher wasn't working very well. The dishes weren't clean, the soap dispenser would sometimes ope, sometimes not, and the soap would never fully dissolve when it did open. It also didn't sound right. Instead of the nice, quiet "swoosh-swoosh" of a normal dishwasher, it made some rather "unusual" sounds. Since it was still under warranty, and we have the receipts, GE was most happy to send a Service Tech out to investigate.

Took him all of five minutes to diagnose, troubleshoot, and correct the fact that the water valve feeding the unit was barely cracked open! He said it looked like it had been opened enough to leak-check it, but they never opened it all the way. Since his service report doesn't have a category for "Botched Installation" he said he'd scratch his head and write something creative on the report.

It still takes two hours to run a full cycle, but the first load of dishes came out spotless!

And the Service Tech from the small, locally owned and operated appliance place was first class all the way.


Or the bathroom fan/light in the basement that I had to get real creative with. But first I had to learn there are several popular electrical "Box Sizes", and I had to get a replacement of the same size to ensure a drop-in replacement, right?

Well......kinda. The replacement fan/light is made by the same company, fits the same 8"x8-1/4" box, and has a model number close to the 1980's model. The problem is that the instructions only cover new installations, where the ceiling isn't there yet, and you can happily pound nails into exposed joists all day long. We have a fully finished basement. With a ceiling. The ceiling was installed after the original fan/light was installed.

IOW......there aint no stinking room up there to pry out the old nails, and drive in new ones.

And I'm NOT ripping up perfectly good, well-painted drywall, overhead, no less, to replace some bathroom fan/light. Nope, aint gonna happen.

I wound up getting the motor mounting plate out of the old fixture, and compared the two motors. Yep....same little shaded-pole motor with a slightly different fan impeller on it.

So, I'm in the process of putting the 2017 motor in the 198x box. When it's done I'll put the old motor plate with the new motor on it back in the old housing, and then finish it off with the new plastic louvers and lamp assembly with a new LED bulb. My wife wanted to know why it was taking several days to swap the fan out, so I had her go up on the ladder to show me how to get the old box out.

She deferred to my experience and left the area.......

And I put up two new solar powered, motion activated, LED security lights. I put one in between the two garage doors to light up the driveway and path to the house, where the front porch light takes over, and the other one over the side door to the garage.

The side door will be replaced Real Soon Now! It's the original from 1977 and is a huge heat loss area even though it's on the South side of the house, and there's an additional outside "Storm Door" to replace the usual, cheesy, falling apart aluminum screen door. There's also an identical storm door for the garage-to-house door where the entrance to the den is. They're both identical to the one I installed on the back door of the Long Beach house, so I know what they cost, and they're top of the (Home Depot) line products.

And I bought and assembled a "temporary" weather station to put in service until spring when the tower goes up, and my Davis weather station will go back into service. For under $120 delivered to my door, I'm astounded by what you get. I'll do a separate post on that later, after I knock a few off the Honeydew list.

So life continues after our escape, and my wife still has some culture shock, but I think she's recovering nicely.......

Heat Working Again In Radio Room

And I did almost nothing. I blew the dust out of the thermostat with canned air, and cycled the control through its entire range several times, INCLUDING past the clicky "ON-OFF" detent several times.

Then I set it at 72*, and a few minutes later I heard the popping of expanding metal, and the smell of a long-dormant heater coming back on duty. I'd vacuumed out the baseboard unit just in case it had any stinky stuff in it, but it looked pretty clean.

It took about half an hour, but the wall thermometer stabilized at 73*~74* for the next several hours, so it looks like the heater is functional again.

The only thing I can think of was that cycling through the power ON-OFF detent several times cleaned the contacts enough to wake up whatever dimbulb controller is in use. Most late 1970's home thermostats were quite crude, so it has a very simple mechanism.

I'll have to try and find a model number on the Chromalox thermostat so I can learn more about them.

Anyway, we now have heat in every room, and we'll avoid the dreaded "one cold room" issue that I've read can cause problems with condensation.

Headed up to see the kids on Sunday, and drag back another load of stuff. If the relatives are around, I'd suspect we could get all of it out of there. The last time we pulled more than half out, so this time should be a bit easier.

Here, Duckie, Duckie, Duckie.....

Found my Drake R-4B this afternoon. I was in the bottom box of a three-box stack (very close to what Old_NFO predicted), and was labeled (by me, no less!) "SB-303", and "SB-310". I looked at the box and thought....hey, the SB-310 is already on the shelf....OPEN IT!

Yup, the R-4B was in there, snuggled up against the Heathkit SB-303. It's now resting next to the T-4XB, awaiting it's place in the Station Console.

Also emptied and consolidated 4 more boxes of stuff, and moved an additional several boxes out of the area. Once I get everything clear in that half of the room (or more) then my carpenter buddy and I can get together and do the final layout of the workbench and he can start buying the materials and planning his schedule. Once I go through the "Bedroom" and "Study Area" spaces and sort them out and move some things around, I'll easily be able to clean out the radio room. This will be the FINAL decision point on which room the Radio Room will be made from. I'd prefer the rear room for technical reasons (saves 35'~50' of feedline!), but the front room with the bookcases and wood paneling just looks soooooo inviting! Anyway....once the room choice is made,  Mr. Wood can get cracking on the workbench. When the workbench is finished we can get started on the Station Console.

Going to go pick up three of the 18" deep, 48" wide wire rack units on Monday for the garage. I'd go tomorrow, but I'd rather avoid the weekend crowds that pool up at Home Depot! These are identical to the one rack in the basement, except they're "chrome plated" instead of being black powder coated. Seems the only places that stock the black ones are in Kalifornia! The one that arrived here the other day came from the HD warehouse in Irvine, CA.

And still no sign of any of the THREE gardeners we called for an estimate on doing the front and rear yard clean-ups. Oh, well.......

Pix, As Promised

Thought I'd just start a new post instead of adding to the previous one.

Believe it or not, this is about half the stuff that was in there. A lot of it was moved downstairs and unpacked before this was taken. It looked like a warehouse before!

The other side is much better. The semi-portable 9' tower is on its side here, under a large piece of left over carpet, and behind the Samsung box. I have the wood for the new feet, so as soon as I get this outside I'll screw the new wood feet on, and lug it into the backyard through our nice, new gate. The spoiler/sunshade for the Supra is off to the left behind a bunch of cardboard waiting to go to the recycling center.

Don't get me started on Fort Collins' "Recycling Program"........nice little racket you guys have going there......





And moving down to the subterranean levels........

We have a bookcase full of (mostly) BOOKS!

This is the wall the workbench/storage shelves will be going into after I repair the non-functional baseboard heater. I wasn't able to even get to the heater before, as the moving guys had stacked boxes three high and two deep right up to it. The thermostat for the heater is to the extreme left in the picture above, a box with a knob slightly out of focus.

The new rack I received and assembled the other day is all the way in the corner, and the less deep rack is the one I brought from Kalifornia. I still have to get some 1/16" plywood to make "shelves for the shelves", like in the 18" deep rack next to it. Otherwise, all the feet on the equipment gets hung up on the wires the shelves are made of, and nothing sits level, or is easy to slide in and out of the rack.

There *should* be another shelf at the top of the leftmost rack, BUT...as careful as we were taking the rack apart, and bagging all the little split-lock plastic shells that the shelves pilot down onto, we somehow lost exactly eight pieces, enough for one shelf. The new rack came with contact information to get replacement parts, so I'm probably going to buy a few extra of these!

Some of this equipment will be installed in the station console (the Hallicrafters and Drake gear) to be my two "Boat Anchor" stations.

And I somehow managed to spill over into the "Study Area" of the basement suite.

And then on into the "Downstairs Bedroom" area.

But not to worry....the door on the left in the picture of the "Study Area" leads to a very large storage area.


Looking left into to it:

Looking straight into it:

And looking into it to the right:

I haven't measured this little "bonus space" yet to see how big it is, but it sure is handy!

We didn't get out to get the tree today because she had conflicting errands and appointments, so sorry, no pretty tree pix today.

Still Here, Still Busy!

Just doing all the normal home-owner stuff that comes with moving into a new place.

We are now "100% LED Lighting", with the last of the offending bulbs being sought out and eliminated. All the hallway lights have "65 Watt Equivalent" soft-white lamps as well as all the basement lights and exterior lights.

So far, no increase in my noise level, and I'll be setting up again on Thursday, 7 Dec, to see if I can contact the Iowa again. The fiberglass case for the SGC tuner should be here tomorrow, and "all" I have to do is drill a couple of holes, and redrill the plastic cutting board I was using for a backpanel, mount the tuner, and reassemble the 33' vertical, making sure it's well staked down, and with as many of the longest radials I can squeeze into the backyard.

And after installing the new disposer in the kitchen sink, the wife decreed the old drain in the other sink looked "all funky", so another trip to Home Depot for a nice, new shiny-pretty drain and stopper.

The wire rack I ordered arrive and I assembled it and loaded the other rack back up with gear I'd moved into the "study" area of the basement. I've got 90% of my books unpacked, sorted, and loaded into the bookcases built in to one of the walls in the Radio Room, and it's empty enough now to easily get at, troubleshoot, and repair the baseboard heater. As soon as that task is finished, I'll get my carpenter buddy in there to build a nice workbench, and add a shelf above the work surface so I can keep some test gear and small parts cabinets there.

And even the garage is showing signs of improvement. I've gone through ALL of the boxes in the garage, inventoried them, and moved a good size pile of stuff downstairs where it belongs. I hung both of my fiberglass cross-booms for my satellite antennas from the bike hooks in the ceiling, and have just about finished "weatherizing" the 9' semi-portable tower. That will get "stored" out on the patio in it almost final resting place until spring, when the satellite station will go back on the air.

Wednesday we're going out to get our Christmas tree, the first real tree we've ever bought. The guys who whacked the big dead cottonwood tree in the backyard also run a Christmas tree lot in Laporte, so we're going to go check them out. And since it's so close to where we were staying, we'll swing by there and pick up a load of these funny green rectangular steel boxes I have that seem to weigh "too much" for their size, and bring them back here, too. I also have to make an effort to make sure I brought home all of the radio gear I had there. As of right now, I can't find find my Drake R4-B receiver, and it's got me a bit stressed over where it is.

I'll come back Wednesday night and add some pix to here......

Daily Life Continues......

Had a wonderful Thanksgiving with all the in-laws and babies up at 7200'.

The homestead is "only" 9 miles away, but it takes about 40~45 minutes to get there, and if you don't know where "there" is, you probably won't get "there".

Very cool place, all hand-built, and a spectacular view at night.

Met my new Doctor today, and she seems pretty cool. I'm down to 225 Lbs, and all my "punch edema" is gone. BP was 124/65, pulse was sixty-something, and O2 uptake was 94%.

Be real interesting to see what my lab results are after 4 months of pretty constant physical activity.

Yes, I get tired easily, and probably will continue to do so for another 4 months, give or take a month.

Then I wrestled with replacing the garbage disposal by myself, always a fun thing. I took my time, and made sure all the plumbing was aligned before things got the final torque down. I wound up using my bottle jack and a piece of 4x4 from the fence project to jack the new disposer unit in place. The old one came out easily, and was pretty light duty, while this new one is a 10 year newer model in the same series, and the next size motor up. Just a wee bit too much for me to hold 12" off the ground while I try and align all the bits-and-pieces and get the locking ring started. So, I cheated and used the little bottle jack I have, and slowly raised the disposer into place while guiding in all the alignment stuff on the drain and rubber collar and the locking ring so they went together smoothly.

Took me three hours, but it was a quiet day, I was in no hurry, and did other things in between doing all the steps to install the thing.

And it works, as expected. The other one was locked solid and had a tripped breaker, so it was toast. The home inspector guy who was sooooo picky on some things never even flipped the switch to try the disposer, or he would have spotted it. Oh, well......

Then I unloaded the one rack I've been filling up with stuff so I could move it 3' to the left in preparation of the delivery of another rack. Since I will no longer have equipment "stored" in the garage, I need to maximize the storage space in the Radio Room so I can have all that "stored" equipment either on display, in use, or both. The new rack is only 36" wide, but it's 24" deep. My existing rack is 48" wide, but only 18" deep, so some of my test equipment hung over the front edge by 2"~4", very unsightly and unprofessional! I like racking my equipment in these "pie rack" or "cake rack" wire racks.

I get some cheep 3/16" plywood and trim it to fit on top of the rack, giving me a smooth surface to slide gear into and out of, making it easier to repair, replace, or upgrade.

I'll post some more pix when the new rack gets here and I install it. These will be used in addition to the work bench on that side, and the operating desk on the opposite wall. My carpenter buddy who did the fence has quoted me a fair price on a killer work bench for the garage, and we've been discussing options for the Radio Room. He'll build it once we figure out what I want and what the dimensions are. Not looking for anything fancy, but it has to be serviceable for what I want, and that part of it is still gelling.

In the meantime I now have a serious excuse to hammer away on the garage and get it cleaned up and organized enough to get the wife's little car in on "her side", and the Supra on "my side", and the new workbench up at the front!

Happy Thanksgiving To All

We'll be off going "over the river and through the woods" on Thanksgiving Day to be with our extended family, so I'll post this Wednesday night.

This is a "special" Thanksgiving for us, as it marks our first one in the new house, the first one with our grandson and his two cousins, and numerous other "firsts".

And we're thankful for all of them, even the painful steps it took to get here. They didn't kill us, so I guess we're stronger now.

Don't eat too much, and watch out for the crazies on the road!

Super Busy Weekend, Son's Surprise Visit....

My son texted me Thursday night that he was thinking of coming out here, and sure enough, I'm headed down to Denver to pick him up at the airport. Since this was the first time I picked up an arrival at DIA, I checked the "flyden" website and had maps of the terminals and parking structure with me.

The drive was not a good one, as I hit all the traffic leaving Fort Collins and headed South for the weekend, there was a huge accident on the I-25 Northbound causing a lot of slowing Southbound by the lookie-loos, and it started raining about 20 miles from the airport, and continued to rain the rest of the time until I met him at the baggage claim.

I picked "Level 1" parking not knowing the baggage claim area and the arriving passenger pick-up zone and all the ground transportation was on "Level 5". Not a big deal, but I prefer parking on the same level as where I'll be meeting the person, if possible.

I'm sure I'll be going into and out of DIA a lot in the next few years, so it's nice to know how to navigate the airport. I can (or could) get in and out of LAX, LGB, ORD, and possibly John Wayne Airport, but DIA is new to me.

UPDATE

Just got back from dropping him off at the airport. There was a massive accident of some sort on I-25 North at Harmony Road, my "new" exit, and I had to get off the Interstate several miles South of there on CO-392 and head West until I hit a street I could take to get me home.

So, I spent the weekend doing "family" stuff instead of "house" stuff, and we had The Kids and the baby over for dinner Saturday night. It was our first time entertaining here, and my wife made a big batch of her most excellent lasagna, and we had fresh bread, salad, veggies, and pie for desert.

The wife has gotten used to cooking on the electric stove, and this latest generation of electric stoves is absolutely NOTHING like the electric stoves we both remembered from our youth, where your chances of under and/or over cooking the food was a given if you were used to gas.

This thing uses some kind of high-tech heating element, possibly inverter-driven, and you get max heat in just a few seconds, and it cools off almost as fast! No more chasing the correct heat all over the dial because of the large thermal inertia of the old type "Big Flat Coil". Nope, crank the knob, and you get heat.....NOW. Need to throttle it back a bit? No problem. The heating element responds almost as fast, and the heat decreases right with it.

Pretty nifty!

The dog goes to see her new Vet tomorrow, and will get a "mountain" shot, which covers several diseases that you don't find in SoCal.

This weeks major project for me, will be to get the Jeep smogged, get the VIN verified, and go to the office that handles this stuff to get a Colorado Title for it, and get it registered here. I'll probably get a paper plate as the callsign plate I want to get is a vanity plate and has to be made. Kommiefonia gave you a Ham Radio callsign plate for free, but in Colorado it's a $20 vanity plate.

Then I can get my Colorado driver's license and be a local.

My son and I crawled around the backyard with a 100' tape measure making drawings, and the yard is actually wider than my crude measurements on Google maps indicated. After scratching my head, I found a spot in the yard that can legally support a 38' tower/antenna, and clear all the trees, and stay entirely on our property if it falls. This will let me plant a 30' tower with the HF antenna at around 33', and a 2 Meter Yagi up at the top. 33' is a "good" height for a tower because it's a half-wavelength on 20 Meters, the most important "DX" band, and most Amateur Radio "Yagi" antennas work very well when mounted a half-wavelength (or more) above ground. 

Now I have to guesstimate the feedline length, and decide what type of feedline I'm going to buy. I'll almost certainly use hardline for the 2 Meter run, and for a portion of the HF run since I have about 150' of  1" Heliax and the connectors for it.

Pebbles enjoying the new fence:

And the custom hand-built, triple-hinged, double-wide gate that drove up the fence cost significantly:

 As he was working on ours, the neighbor who owns the house in the above picture, came over and asked him how much to do the two panels that went between her house, and our "new pretty fence", so she paid for two panels and installation, and now all the fence on that side of our house has been replaced.
 
Needs a bit of grading, but that will be up to the "landscape guy" who we haven't met yet. I'm bracing myself for a $1500 cost for "Phase 1" (clean up and weed removal) of the yard work to get the front and backyards all nice and spiffy.

We'll handle "Phase 2", the grading and reconstruction, in the spring after the tower gets planted. The "reconstruction" part might include a gravel "road" inside the yard so that any future trucks have a sacrificial path they can use to get to the trees and tower.

I'm figuring probably $5k for that job......

So, I'm pretty trashed from two trips to Denver and back, but in a way it was a nice break from all the nuttiness going on in the process of turning a house into a home, and I could ignore the huge pile of STUFF in the garage that desperately needs attention, along with a huge pile of STUFF and the dead heater in the Radio Room that needs attention just as desperately.........and my wife makes me help her hang pictures. Different priorities, but at least I got to pick out half the artwork..........

Fence Almost Finished, Roof Replacement Underway, Film At 11.....

Well, not film, but a bunch of pix.

We have an "Energy Audit" crew coming at 1300 to survey the house and give us recommendations. I think it's a waste of $65, but the wife heard the word "REBATES!!!!" and her ears went up.

The baseboard heater in the future Radio Room doesn't work, so it looks like I'll be learning more about baseboard heaters, and how to troubleshoot and repair them. Could be anything from a loose/broken wire on the thermostat to a failed piece of the system. I reset the breakers on GP, but very little heat from that particular unit. We've had all the "basement" heaters off since we moved in because I wanted to see how cold/how fast the downstairs would get. With the moderate temps we've been having, and with all the air leaks from around the sliding windows in the two rooms that have them, the basement got down to 55* before I called off the "experiment". It's NOT good to have unused rooms get too cold because it can cause condensation/moisture problems, so I turned the heaters on and set them to 64* on the dial. The two rooms where the heaters are functional are holding 65*, and Radio is warming up a bit, but I have to get that heater fixed.

The upstairs rooms where the heaters were"off" didn't get any where near that cold, but then heat rises, those windows seal very well, and they're all on the South side of the house, so the get some solar input.

The dog doesn't know what to make of all the banging and noise going on, so she's wandering around the house and looking up a lot!

More to come.....

Quiet Day....

Unloaded the Jeep from a run to the little place we were staying at, and then went back for another load.

I was up there Sunday afternoon helping the in-law guys move a bunch of stuff around in the shop. We pulled out the big-block Chevy (454, sixty over, I asked) jet boat that the tree guy owns, and I loaded up the Jeep to the max. Our contractor in-law and I loaded up his F150 with the lift-gate, and we brought those two loads here and unloaded them, along with "Uncle Bob", who hadn't seen the house yet.

After today's run, I now have all but one of the shelves empty from the two shelf units I had filled up when we emptied out the U-Haul I towed out here behind the Jeep.

The in-laws keep telling us we got a "screaming deal" on the place for $375k, and that when were done with the current punch-list of about $20k worth of stuff, the house would be "worth" the $420k it was originally listed at, and could probably fetch $450k at the peak of next year's buying frenzy.

We sure aren't selling and moving again, but it's a nice thought that we wound up with some "move-in equity" even though we've never used a house for an ATM machine, and have no intention of ever doing that.

Then I took the dog for a walk, broke down some more boxes to drag to the recycling center, and rearranged/found stuff out in the garage. Time to wash up and head out for dinner. Tonight we're going to the little Mongolian BBQ place in Old Town Fort Collins. We haven't been there in maybe a year, but it was "5 stars" for that kind of food here, maybe "3.6 stars" compared to the Golden Camel back in Torrance, but plenty "good enough".

I'm working on some posts about being a newcomer to the area, and my observations on being back in Free America again after spending 35 years "behind-the-lines" in Kalifornia.

As some of you have noticed and commented on, the move has definitely agreed with me, and I truly feel at home here.

My wife, having lived in Long Beach since she was six years old, is definitely suffering from some major-league "Culture Shock", and I'll relate a few instances of those.

So I guess my focus for the blog (as if I ever had any) will be changing  a bit from what it was "in the before" when we were still in Kalifornia.

Welcome to Colorado. We made it........

Fence Progress and First Radio Operation From New Place

Beautiful day today, high 50's/low 60's, and blue sky with some clouds.

I got up, got dressed, and headed out the door to go up to the Kid's Place.

Got there, packed up my tools AND the power supply with the adapter cable on it, and spent some time talking to our "general contractor" about various and sundry things in progress, things on the schedule, things on the calendar and things "next year".

All the fence posts were set today, and our carpenter buddy (the "fence guy") and I finalized the gate design. The total usable width of the opening will be 14' 1-1/2", and he built it that way because that's the width of one lane of "highway" according to him, and he knows the tree guys can get their truck through that sized opening with ZERO trouble.


Nicely set posts:

Getting most of them out was pretty easy, as a lot of them were "half-bag posts":

While others were a "full bag post":

And this particular post refused to surrender!

This is the one that the chain snapped on. After getting a bigger chain, it died rather than surrender!

SO...we finally have all the new fence posts properly set and aligned. The pole closest to the truck in this shot will be one side of the gate:

SO after getting back from the Kid's Place, and yakking with the carpenter for some time, I finished the radio setup I started last night. Rather than make up a new adapter cable for the power supply, I just plunked down the complete supply and cable I brought back. I can make a few up on one of those afternoons the wife goes "shopping", and I have a couple of hours to myself.

The power supply I brought back is under the laptop, and the chair is my radio room/office chair we got on our furniture shopping spree last week. For now, and with the approval of SWMBO, this will be the Radio Room.

Today I setup the BuddiStick antenna. I adjusted the length to 17' 4" with a tape measure, strung out well over that amount of wire for a "counterpoise", and ran the coax back to the autocoupler for the K2.

Yes, I guyed it. I have some 3/8" dacron line that I use, and ran three lengths from the top of the tripod (about 5' off the ground)to some of those super duper military "tent stakes" I have.

I started out with one guy, but then the wind shifted 180*, and it fell over...DUH! So that's when I went to the garage, got three stakes and my BFH (nice having my tools readily at hand), and redid the guying on the little guy. They're pretty rugged, but still, your portable antenna shouldn't blow over!

Got on-the-air about 1300 local and tuned around 20 Meters where the ship always operates, and one email later found NI6BB at 14.290MHz, and had a nice chat with two of my friends there.

And even the wife commented that it was nice to hear "radio chatter" again.

Once things settle down here, I'll get the big vertical set up, but I need to get a nice weatherproof enclosure for it. It was in a Tupperware tub, upside down under the porch for seven years, and that plastic tub now has all the structural integrity of a fresh potato chip. I know the size I need, and nice fiberglass weather-resistant enclosures for Industrial use are pretty common. I'll have to ask our "general contractor" who his heavy duty electrician is, and/or can he suggest a good industrial supply house to be. We went by a Grainger the other day, so I'll look online and see what they have.