YAY! Plumbing All Squared Away

 Well, the plumber was back today to reseal the two downstairs toilets. The one off the laundry room wasn't screwed down to the floor securely, which means it will rock back-and-forth, and eventually break the wax seal. It showed no sign of leakage....yet.

The basement toilet was just sitting on the floor...NO bolts, with the decorative caps just sitting where they're supposed to be covering a bolt. It didn't show any signs of leakage, either, but he said it was an accident waiting to happen. I made a crack about it "Not Even Being A Home-Owner Grade Repair", and agreed with me, saying even a home owner knows enough to go get the missing parts.

The drywall guy came and inspected the garage ceiling, complemented me on ripping the soggy stuff out, and said it would be about $175 to replace the drywall and fiberglass insulation, tape it, and paint it.

I estimate the plumber's bill will be about $600, labor and materials.

Oh, well...save $1k on the flooring install, and give $800 to other contractors to fix the mistakes the "flooring guy" made.

And the Ham Radio bands have been very good this week. While Mike The Plumber was here, I talked to several Japanese stations, some South/Central American stations,  heard some Europeans, and several stations from "Down Under", all on 12 Meters/24MHz, which hasn't had any activity since the peak of the last Solar Cycle.

Nice to see Cycle 25 off to a roaring start.

66 Awesome Dance Moves

 From a friend of mine. Quite fun to watch and pick out which movies they took the clips from.

This Is NOT How You Seal A Toilet To The Floor!

 GROOOOAN.....

We had a local plumbing firm come out to repair the leaks caused by the :handyman" guy who put in the flooring and new steps. That fiasco could be a post all it's own. Suffice to say I would have given him a "C-" for the work he did, until the leak started.

This is what the plumber found under the toilet in SLW's bathroom:

I don't know what the heck he used in place of a proper wax ring, but it looks like it was squeezed out of a tube. The plumber said he'd never seen anything like this, as even "Home Owner Level" repairs he'd seen at least had the correct sealing rings used. She was gone for the week after the work was "finished", so her toilet wasn't used, but mine was in daily use.

The one in my bathroom was worse, as the floor flange was loose, caused by using too small hardware to hold it down. The heads of the flat-head bolts holding the flange to the floor were small enough to pull through the dimple in the flange, causing the flange to loosen up, and combined with the wrong size wax sealing ring, allowed water to leak down the outside of the drain pipe, and run along to the lowest spot, where it dripped off and soaked the drywall.

I ripped all the soggy drywall and insulation out of the garage ceiling, and put a fan on it do dry it out, which is easy to do this time of year as it's so dry here.

The aftermath in the garage:

Aggie Plumbing, who I can't say enough good things about, will be back on Monday at noon to pull and reseal the two downstairs toilets. Considering the "quality" of the work the handyman did on the upstairs toilets, we think it's a wise decision to pay the man, and have the other two toilets checked, and most likely resealed.

And they gave use a referral to a guy who does drywall repair, so he'll be out here on Tuesday to repair my  Damage Control activities from when the leak started.

ANNNND SLW had a "talk" with the handyman, who politely told us to cancel the balance owed on the contract, keep the remaining materials, and it was nice meeting us. He's a good guy, but his skills are lacking in a lot of areas.....

30 Years Ago Today....

The USS Missouri was decommissioned for the last time.

So "Happy Retirement" to the ship and her caretakers. We spent some time on the Mighty Mo when we went to Hawaii a few years ago. Being part of the USS Iowa family, we were treated like royalty, and got to see some Behind The Scenes things that aren't normally open to the public.

And of course, we went to the USS Arizona Memorial, where I was doing OK until I saw the oil bubbling up...

Oh, Joy....A New Plumbing Issue....

 Well, they guy we hired to do the flooring and stairs finished up last week, just in time for SLW to head to LAX for a week to celebrate her oldest son's birthday. I picked her up at the airport this afternoon, and we got back here around 1730. A little before 1800 I went out to the garage and noticed water on the floor. And it was coming from a drywall seam in the dropped ceiling....never a good sign, as the ceiling is dropped here for pipe access to the upstairs bathrooms. I ran out and grabbed a bucket, shut the water off to the two upstairs toilets, and knocked a hole in the drywall to let it drain.

I noticed the drywall was soggy for quite a few inches along the seam, so, since it all has to come out, I opened it up some more to see what's up there.

RATS! It's packed full of (now very soggy) fiberglass batts for insulation, since the garage isn't heated, and would be a huge heat loss through the floor.

Since it was now open and drained, I then turned on the water to one toilet, flushed it twice, shut the water back off, and went down to look. The wife's toilet didn't cause any new water to appear, so I went back upstairs, turned the water back on for the toilet in the master bedroom, flushed it twice, turned the water off, and went back down.

Yep, water was now running out, confirming it's that one particular toilet. 

SLW called #1 Sone who's a cracker-jack Home Improvement guy (way better than Tim, and equal to Al), and the first thing he asked was whether the flooring guy had "doubled up" on the wax sealing rings for the toilets. I know he put new ones in, but only used a single sealing ring.

Since the new flooring is 7.6mm thick, and the underlayment is 1.4mm thick, it means the toilets are now 9mm (.35") higher than they were before. #1 Son says that's more than the rings can accommodate, so now I have to get a plumber out here tomorrow to redo the rings, and make sure everything else is up-to-snuff.

Yeah, I know, it's a First World Problem, and when I think of all the people that don't have indoor plumbing, I'm grateful (in a way...) to have these "problems".

Gorgeous Day Here

 75 degrees, sunny, mild breeze, bright blue skies, and puffy white clouds. Supposed to get some rain mid-week, which will be nice to clean things up, and I expect we'll get another snowstorm in April.

Still a bit crummy feeling, but took the dog for a walk anyway. Always good to get out of the house on a day like today. Things are greening up some, the tulips have popped up through the soil, and the iris' are sprouting up. Be time to spray the emerging weeds soon, and in another few weeks it'll be time to feed the trees, shrubs and lawn.

And The Cycle of Life continues on.......

Back to the basement shop, where I have a ton of stuff to photograph and list on eBay. Hope y'all have have a great weekend.

Ugh....Had A Case of Crud....

 Wasn't feeling 100% on Saturday, progressing to sore throat and generally feeling crummy on Sunday with a mild case of the trots.

Slept most of today and now feeling better, but still a bit fuzzy. Should be back to full power tomorrow....

Diesel Is How Much?

 Was just listening to a Ham in Australia talking about fuel prices. Last year diesel fuel was $1 per liter.

This year it's $2.50 per liter. A two-hundred and fifty per cent increase, all due to "policies", and not the true cost.

Astounding.....

Minor Audio Project

 Now that I've got my test equipment stuff all sorted out, there's one thing I need to build before I can test audio amplifiers, and that's an Audio Dummy Load. Similar to the Dummy Loads, or Dummy Antennas, that I use when testing transmitters, but specialized for audio use.

It's basically a Load Bank of non-inductive resistors with some "5-Way" binding posts, and it will allow me to run just about any amplifier I'll ever have to test.

The green things are 8 Ohm, 100 Watt resistors, and are connected in series/parallel to give me 8 Ohms at 400 Watts.

The brown board is a cut-off piece of the flooring we just had installed that I kept a few pieces of. It's non-conductive, easy to drill, and best of all, FREE! The two red and one black items are the binding posts, and I'll drill the piece of aluminum angle to use as a bracket. One will be the common, one will be for 8 Ohms, and the third will be for 4 Ohms. By tapping the junction of the four resistors, I'll have a 4 Ohm load rated at 200 Watts, and that should be plenty.

Why a dummy load? Well for one, I don't have any speakers that can take that power level, and two, it would deafen you in the shop.

Russian Comms In The Ukraine: A World of Hertz

 Excellent article here from the Royal United Services Institute, whose catchy headline I shamelessly swiped.

In case of TL;DR, the gist is that their digital tactical radios don't work very well, and are NOT widely deployed.

One thing caught my eye, and I have to pass it along: It is possible that the delivery of the Azart radios has been troubled by corruption.

The Azart is their 6th generation, walkie-talkie-type secure radio.

I'm shocked, I tell you.....Shocked!

Breaking Bad

 Started watching Breaking Bad last night with SLW. My son is a huge fan, but I never watched it because I was traveling a lot when it was on, and didn't want to get hooked (a la Sopranos and X-Files) and miss a bunch of episodes. He started watching it here, and it looked interesting, so I bought the boxed set.

It's good. Very good. I'd only seen Byan Cranston in Malcom in the Middle, and the "Drive" episode of the X-Files.

If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching.