Our Carriage House Adventures
Some Background...
Our latest rennovations have been to our new old house - The Nest - a two bedroom, one bath bungalow in Mount Dora. It was built circa 1925, at least, we're pretty sure it was. The records say it was built in 1925, but there was this fire, a fire that destroyed all of the records previous to 1925. But I digress...
(October 2014)
When we first moved in, the garage was a bit of a disaster... Who am I trying to kid? It was a total disaster! It was dark, with no
lighting or electricity, and had a dirt floor. With the exception of the two strips of concrete that were the driveway, extended inside, there
was nothing but a hodgepodge of junk left from the previous owner. Like one of those put together yourself computer desks, some makeshift shelves,
and random nails pounded into the studs with random shit hanging on them. Old cans of paint, some of which matched walls inside the house, some
that made you wonder who would have painted that color anywhere.
It had windows, but one was covered with what looked like a vinyl shower curtain with a frogs print, old and dry rotted and meant to keep the bugs out since the glass had long since been broken out. The other window had long since been boarded up with shiplap to try to match the back side of the garage. It's actually a carriage house, but the carriage doors are rotted and falling apart. The only thing keeping them from falling off the hinges is the strong wire, doubled and twisted, as a sort of tension rod. It's just sad. I had to add new tension rods to the outside to stop the existing wire ones from twisting the door as they hung open.
My "workshop" was a set of sawhorses and a chunk of plywood, at the mercy of the elements and subject to the whims of the Florida weather. This was an immediate concern. While fate may have forced us to move before we were ready, there was still work to be done, and not having a workshop is unacceptable. Nick and I have to rewire the house, but the attic is nothing but ceiling joists and rafters. We're going to need some plywood put down before we get up there and start "walking" around. To further exacerbate the problem, the access hatch to the attic will allow not much more than something two feet wide, maybe less. So that plywood will have to be cut down to something smaller than a 4x8 sheet. Much smaller.
Armed with nothing more than a circular saw, a pair of sawhorses, and an extension cord, we manage to populate the ceiling joists with 16"x48" chunks of plywood - the distance between the joist centers and the natural width of the sheet. That gives us six pieces per sheet. Three or four sheets give us enough of a staging area to get up there and start exploring. The space between the ceiling joists is filled with bats of fiberglass insulation. Why not just set up inside the garage you may ask? Every time you walk in the garage, your ankles are immediately covered with dirt. Once stirred up, it creates a cloud of dust the permeates the air until it slowly settles out. It's obvious we're going to need more plywood for the attic and running wire, but for now, it's even more obvious we need to get the garage converted into a workshop. I sketch out a plan for a framework of 2x4 joists to support a plywood floor to cover the dirt.
Something has to be done and just covering it with a raised wood floor is quicker and cheaper than concrete or anything else I can think of. The plan is to "stitch" together the 2x4s, laying them across the two strips of concrete and the concrete block "foundation" around the walls, in order to minimize the length of the span they must support. Nothing is flat, nor level, but it's close enough to start cutting 2x4s and putting down plywood. The garage is about twelve feet across, so three sheets of plywood should cover the width, and eight feet of the length. It's about eighteen feet long, so six sheets will cover all but the last two feet or so across the back of the garage. That first bit goes down fairly quickly, but the last bit at the back of the garage takes quite a while longer before it gets the attention it needs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let There Be Light!
(January 2015)
Since we're still in the midst of rewiring the house, and the garage is much more functional than it was, it takes the back seat to all else
that needs done. But it isn't long before we realize we need to get electricity out there too. With just the window and open carriage doors
to allow light in, it's still dark and just a place to store things. It's not like there's a convenient plug to run an extension cord out
there either. Luckily, we're rewiring the house and can solve these issues while we're at it. Nick is more motivated to get the electric
run out there than I am I guess, since he dug the trench from the breaker panel on the side porch all the way out to the garage, about a
foot deep anyway.
He's not real happy with me when I tell him it has to be two feet deep to meet code, instead of thanking him for all his effort. So I go back over all that he's already dug out and take it the extra foot deeper it needs to go. It takes me quite a while even though I'm rushing, and I'm nearly exhausted by the time I done, but at least now we're ready to run the 6# Underground Feed (UF) cable. And run the cable we do. All four hundred and some dollars worth! Nick found a great deal on a 50A service panel bundle for the garage end, even comes complete with a circuit breaker assortment. We feed the cable from the panel, out the trench to the garage, and "finagle" it under the front corner up through a chunk of conduit into the service panel.
Over the next few days, I land the feed cable and install a number of outlets along both sides of the garage. I also installed a couple of switched outlets along the top for flourescent light fixtures, and the switches just inside the carriage doors. I turn on the twin pole breaker at the panel on the porch then flip on all the breakers in the service panel in the garage. Let there be light! The flourescent light fixtures start then glow. Nice. Next thing to go in is a window unit air conditioner! Now we're talking. Over the next few months, I slowly repair the rotted wall studs with new ones daughtered in. I bought a spray painter and painted the dark wood walls white, which is a huge improvement.
More Improvements...
(March 2015)
We're in the midst of replacing the fence in the backyard between us and our neighbor. It's a lot of work and we had to cut out a bunch of bamboo
first. The invasive species, not the good kind. Then the old fence had to come down and any rotted posts replaced. Finally the new panels go up.
It kind of sucks that the whole time I can't get into the garage, short of walking through the gate in the fence on the other side of the yard
and opening the carriage doors. And now I have a large stack of old fence panels, in varying stages of decay, to dispose of. I save
the better pieces of the old fence to use as raw material for making trestles and bridges for the garden scale railroad. But if this experience
teaches me anything, it's that we need a door from the garage to the backyard. And that the carriage doors need replaced. And soon. Very soon.
I've long since gotten rid of all the junk that was just sitting in there. I broke down that old desk and put it out for the trash. The only thing left from it are the cable organizers that were screwed into the back of it. The rickety shelves the cans of paint were sitting on went to the curb, along with any of the paint cans that had already dried out. The random nails came in handy for hanging some things, but this is the only place to store things like the lawn mower, gasoline, etc., and it's starting to fill up with things that have no other place to go. I try to resist this, at least until we can make more progress...
We've made great progress. A sturdy wooden platform floor. Electricity. Lights. Air conditioning. Paint. I've added a couple of 30" x 60" work benches, but it needs more. Lots more work benches. The only thing stopping me is the still missing floor by the back wall. That and repairing the rotted wall studs and shiplap along the bottom and most of the sill plate as well. It was a process. I actually used Excel to create a "map" of the bad wall studs and other areas that needed work, and slowly worked my way around the garage. I'd already painted most of the walls. I even started to paint the underside of the roof planking and rafters, but that proved too messy to spray. I started to put up some cupboards, but needed to finish repairing the rest of the walls before I hung any more. Anything to help get more up off the floor!
Party Central...
(April 2015)
Nick's already made
a "convertible" picnic table that articulates into a bench, so the garage is officially open in a workshop capacity. I think now that the
new fence is up and the backyard is now a backyard again, he's ready to start treating it that way. I concentrate of getting the rest of the
repairs done and the last part of the floor installed so I can move forward with the rest of the things I want to get done in here. It's already
become a dumping ground where everythng lands that doesn't have a place to go. Now it's time to add more places for things to go. A lot
more places for things to go. It pretty much takes me the entire weekend to
finish the stud and sill plate repairs and finish painting the walls.
I try to keep the carriage doors closed while I'm out here working, to keep the cool air in and the hot, humid air out. But that only works so well with no means of latching the doors from the inside. I bought a "chopsaw" to help me cut the new studs to size and eventully build a new set of carriage doors. It does well for the 2x4s, but refuses to cut that latch little bit of a 4x4 to where I need to roll it over and finish the cut. No matter, 2x4s is all I'm asking of it for now. Ann decides to join me with beer in hand while here in what appears to be "Party Central". And why not? It has electricity. It has air conditioning. Ann sits on the stool while I go about my work and we talk a bit about the yard and future plans. We talk more about putting in a side door. All in good time. Let's get the garage structure squared away first, then we can alter it.
(May 2015)
A few weeks later I'm able to finish the framing for
the floor and finally install it. Now we're ready for the transformation. First I have to move the air conditioner to the back window
before I put a bench in the way. And that means I have to remove the shiplap over the window first. Next I make a ledge of sorts by
screwing a chunk of plywood over the studs surrounding the window frame. With that in place I'm able to set the air conditioner on it and
mark where I need to put a 2x4 at the top to keep it from falling out of the window frame. It seals the top, but the bottom is still wide
open to the outside between the plywood and the shiplap beneath it. I notch a piece fit around the sides of the window frame and close off
that gap.
With the framing repairs complete and the air conditioning moved to the back window, I can now look at roughing in the side door and adding more benches, now that they won't be in the way. I even installed a dedicated outlet just for that unit. I was having issues with the breaking tripping when it and the compressor were both running at the same time. Now I need to figure out where I'm roughing in the side door before I can tell where the ends of the bench and cabinets will fall on that wall. I also have to take the position of the existing studs into account, but it looks like I'll be able to nearly center it. The cabinet widths a pretty much fixed at 30" or 36", and the corner cabinets are pretty much meant for the corners, so that much is easy to figure out.
I decided to make the benches and cabinets "wrap around" and line the "walls". Over the next few weeks made it happen. I've sorted out the cabinets as well. I now have a set dedicated to screws, bolts, fasteners, and the like. Another set is dedicated to just electrical, boxes, wire, fixtures, tools, etc. One corner cabinet is for paints and such. The other is for abrasives and caulking and other related tools, tape, and whatever else. I even saved a set for Nick and his car polishes and such. The remaining cabinets are for power tools and other miscellany, like clamps, saw blades, router bits, and so on. I plan on adding shelves beneath the benches for storage as well, but those will have to wait another weekend or two, I still need to cut the bench tops to size!
The next weekend the bench tops get cut to size and I install the rest of the framing for the shelves under the benches. The following weekend I cut the shelves to size and install them. The storage under the benches provides a space for my tool boxes, all the boxes of plumbing parts, all the boxes of garden scale railroad cars and track and whatnot. I'm surprised at how quickly it went from cluttered to clean and with working bench top space to spare. That dedicated outlet is now shared with the stereo. The garage has tunes! And quadraphonic sound. Four speakers, including my old Cerwin Vegas with subwoofer replacement drivers. It thumps pretty good now...
Easy Access Through New Doors
(June 2015)
We found a lumber yard close by here and got a couple bundles of 16' long car siding, or beadboard, to build the doors from. My plan is to
use the outside cedar framing along the front side as a target for screwing the tongue and groove beadboard pieces into once they are seated
into the previous ones. I'm still playing around with ideas though. I have some leftover pieces of 1x4 cedar for the outside "trim" and I'm
using them to
mockup the final look of the door. First things first though. Linseed oil! You'll hear me talk about linseed oil a lot around here.
From what i've read, the way to preserve any exposed wood is with linseed oil. I'm using it for my garden railroad trestles and bridges and such.
Anything that will see weather gets a coat of it. Period.
I'm expanding the shop with a side door where the side window used to be. Our neighbors tell us about a place up in Eustis like a habitat for humanity center, where we can probably find a door that will work. It's like all the leftovers from building a house end up here and the proceeds go back into habitat for humanity. I'm glad we went to have a look because we find a nice prehung door that will work for $50. That's what I'll be doing this weekend. First I have to remove the old window frame, and that takes some doing. These 2x4s are the old growth kind that smell like turpentine when you drill into them. The kind that are 1¾"x3¾", not 1½"x3½" like the modern ones. Old school. Vintage 1925. I think they used 16p nails to put this garage together! I need the long crowbar to get this thing apart. With the old window frame and rough in lumber out of the way, the door rough can begin.
I double two modern pressure treated 2x4s for the hinge side and back the jamb side existing old school 2x4 with a new pressure treated one as well. Next is the header over the door. With the rough in done, I'm able to cut out the rest of the shiplap still covering the new opening. All I have left to do is install the prehung frame. I say that as if it takes a few seconds. Nope. A few hours later and the side door is finally hung and swings open rather nicely. Too bad it won't stay closed. I had to match the "lean" of the nearly century old walls, and even though I tried to make it as plumb as I could without leaving too much work for the trim to cover, unfortunately it's still leaning enough that it always wants to swing open. WIth the new door knob installed the problem is solved. We bought one of those "rekey" door knobs and "program" it to use the same key as the house, the same key as the other house in Wekiva. That is so much nicer!
I'm not real happy with the threshold, but until I can custom cut some wood to span the opening nicely, it will have to do. Because of the way the sill plate and raised flooring interact, there's really no other way of fitting the pieces together. I place a couple of patio blocks in front of the door to give us a landing zone to stand on when going in and out the new side door. The next thing I think of is a screen door. I have the old wooden one from the side porch, but it's a custom 30" wide, not 32" like the new door. It's getting too hot and humid out now to leave the door open, but when it gets cooler, it will be nice to leave the door open and not have to worry about bugs. Not sure how to screen off the huge opening for the carriage doors though...
With the side door finished, my attention turns to finishing the new carriage doors. I have all the beadboard cut and oiled, and most of the trim, all but the "crossbucks" that is. I just need to get them assembled. After cutting one of those cedar crossbuck pieces too short, it's time to change my strategy and cut scrap pieces to get the angles right. With that all figured out, I'm able to better layout, mark, then cut the pieces to fit. With the carriage doors assembled, I'm so enamored with the beauty of the "bare" wood, I'm tempted to just leave them this way. Ann doesn't agree, and I have to convince her that they need to "weather" before I can paint them. I can't stop admiring their natural beauty. I had a few things to work out, like how to attach a 1x4 to essentially another 1x4 and have it support the entire weight of the rest of the door. Turns out once I take into account the doors overlapping one another where they close, the natural half width members are apparent.
I finish them the next weekend and get them hung and trimmed. Okay. Trimmed crudely. I'll need to take the router and route out the backside of the vertical trim to better fit over the hinges, but it looks much better than it did! And they are solid, not in need of any "anti droop" mechanism whatsoever. The best part is I can latch them from the inside of the garage. I was back and forth with whether to add a "through the door" latch and decided against it since I would have to lock it most of the time anyway. I'd still have to walk around to the side door to get in and either unlock the latch, or just unbolt the door. Why bother at that point? Plus the only time those doors are open is when things too big to go in and out the side door need to go in or out of the garage.
All that's left is to finish organizing everything, making a place for everything and everything in its place. I just about have all the space used up, including over the cupboards. The trim for the side door has been somewhat troubling though. Because the wall leans out of plumb, the trim either covers the shiplap and not the door frame, or vice versa. I need to do something different with it as well as the threshold, but with just a chopsaw and a circular saw, my options are fairly limited. None to be exact. I'll need to rip some pieces to fit. Pieces too narrow to rip safely using the circular saw. We've talked about bringing the radial arm saw out from the other house, but it's buried by a bunch of stuff that needs moved out of the way first, plus the hold downs need work too.
More Workshop, Less Garage
(July 2015)
So the next big thing is the table saw. It's gotten way too hot and humid to do much outside during the day, so unless it really
needs done now, it can wait until later in the evening or earlier the next morning. Doesn't seem to matter though, I'm still drenched
in sweat in no time at all. Also doing so while taking out more bamboo in the other corner of the back fence. So much bamboo, it falls
across the yard from one side to the other in a huge pile. I don't even want to think about cutting that down to 4' and bundling. Not
until it's had some time to dry out. Plus new boat.
(Sunday, 1 September 2019)
As Nick and I are outside admiring our handiwork of having finally installed the drier vent five years after moving in, our neighbor is moving vehicles around in the drive so we chat a bit. She's asking if we're boarding up for hurricane Dorian, and I tell her I hadn't planned on it, but we'll still be keeping an eye on it to see whether that changes or not. She says she was freaking out at first, but agrees about all we can do is watch and wait. Back inside, Nick is off to his house and Ann is having her hair cut. I finagle the washing machine back in place and reconnect everything, but now I'll need to test it too. At first I figure I'll just do a rinse and spin, but it won't let me select anything other than tap cold water. That's not going to work to make sure the hot water connection works, so I figure I may as well wash my work clothes since I'm down to one pair of work shorts and only black work shirts.
I get the load started, then throw in my drenched with sweat clothes that I'm still wearing and the towel I've been using to dry off with all week. I use a fresh towel to dry off with and don some fresh work clothes... After all, we're not done yet. We still have the generator feed to install! Nick comes back with the shears and other items we'll need to install the feed in the garage and the new generator disconnect box. We sit it out since Ann's on her way home with lunch. Another exceptional McDonald's meal... Yeah. Right. But it's food and it hits the spot. Nick asks what the next step is and I tell him we need to figure out how much of the 6/3 NM cable we have and decide where we're going to put the new box.
Out by the garage, Nick ask how far from the back porch to the garage. I tell him twenty four feet IIRC, but grab a tape measure just to make sure. Turns out it's a little over that, but we soon have a thirty foot mark, which is about how much cable I figure we'll need to go from the other side of the patio door of the garage to the electrical panel. Once inside the garage, I start by moving things out of the way to get the short step ladder in place. I thought I had more of the ¾" gray plastic conduit clamps, but the seven I have should be just enough. There will be enough to have three on the carriage door wall and three on the patio wall, with one to spare to wrangle the cable into the panel. With the plan in place, I head inside to grab the step ladder.
Now we're trying to figure out where to put the box on the wall along the patio. i was thinking we wanted to keep it in the first stud space past the door and above the benchtops and the scrap wood I have sitting on the inside of the wall. Nick figures maybe we can go to the next stud space and go lower on the wall, more or less to "hide" it when not in use. I tell him I wanted to stay above the benchtops to avoid having to drill through the 1x4 ledge I had all the way around the walls to keep things from falling down behind the bench, never to be seen again. He says it's a quick job using a spade bit and it keeps it out of the way of the wood behind the door. I concede and we're on our way. While he's locating and drilling the holes, I'm busy moving stuff out of my way, locating and strategically attaching the clamps, with the idea that it should be easy enough to pull the cable through them and over to the panel... At least, easier than having to hammer in a staple every so often and hold the stiff cable in place with my third hand as I pound away on a staple with the other two.
So once we're set to start pulling the cabling, we decide to run it through the wall, and the hole in the ledge, and then up the wall and through all those clamps... And we don't even get as far as the first clamp before we realize it's just making it way too difficult and we should just wait until the cable is pulled and then land the section that goes through the hole in the ledge and then through the wall. It doesn't take us long before the cable is all the way around to the panel. We have to make a few adjustments to get the cable to the right length to land it in the panel, then Nick is cutting the other end to length with the shears and landing it in the new box. While he's busy with that, I remove the knockout in the bottom of the panel box and install the cable clamp. Next I route the cable through the clamp and tighten it down. I strip the outer jacket and make sure there's enough wire to land the connections to neutral and ground.
It takes Nick a bit, but he's finally done with the outside connector box. Meanwhile I grab the cord reel, plug it in, and unwind it out and in to the garage. Now I need that step ladder to get to the cords on the bank of lights nearest the panel. I unwrap the twist ties on the flourescent light cords and plug them in to the extension cord reel. Now I can kill the power to the garage from the house panel and Nick can land that end of the cable. He had a couple of extra 20A breakers from his panel that we're using to land the hots to the busses in the panel. He starts with landing the ground andthen the neutral, finishing with the hots. After some heavy duty bending on that 6# copper, he's able to snap the breakers in place, and we're ready to test... If we had the cable from the generator to the connector box that is. It will have to wait until tomorrow.
Nick's off to make up the generator cable while I'm sitting here letting him. He asks if I have a good screwdriver since my old old old Craftsman one has a rounded tip that's not really good for anything but prying and chiselling with. I grab the new one he bought me as a Christmas gift and he's back at it. I decide to rid up more in the garage while he's at it. He asks if I have any electrical tape and I grab him a roll from the electrical cabinet. I see he's struggling with routing the bare ground around the hefty connections for the hot and neutral. I see him wrapping the tape around the bare copper and tightening down all the now loose connections, and as I'm about to say something about just running the ground between the two up the middle, I decide to leave him to his work. I come back out with a full trash can and see that he's already decided to run that ground up the middle like I thought earlier.
For once, I'm glad I held my tongue and let him figure it out for himself. I make another trip with the trash can and he's about finished. I ask him if it's ready to go and he says as ready as it's going to get. I ask him if he wants to test it and he says not really, so again, it will wait until tomorrow...
(Monday, 2 September 2019 - "Happy" Labor Day!)
I sit here waiting for the 11:00 AM hurricane update, wondering just what else we'll get done today. Nick and I still need to make sure the generator cable works and figure out how we're mounting the window unit A/C in the dining room window.
I still need to get the garage rid up and make room for the generator and the 2x4s and that foam board. Guess I'd better get busy... Yeah. Maybe in a bit. I relax as long as I can, then decide to get out there and get rid of more crap that I'll never use and make more room in my already too small garage. I start by breaking up all the scraps from ripping the stringers and make enough room to be able to start vacuuming up all the sawdust... Yeah. Why isn't the vacuum sucking very well? I open it up to discover it looks like the new bag I put in for ripping those last few 2x4s for the new lower loop stringers is totally full again, and soaking @$$ wet to boot! Wet like someone vacuumed up gallons of water into the bag full of sawdust. So wet that the pleated paper filter is soaked and ruined! So wet that even the foam filter is soaked? Wow. So much for that. Looks like a trip to Lowe's in my very near future. If they're open today that is...
I grab the last bag out of the plastic wrapper and bring the wrapper in the house with me and set it on the counter, thinking I need to write the information on the board then throw it away. Instead, I mop myself off, click the fan up on high, and sit down to evaporate and totally forget about it.When Nick gets here I tell him about the vacuum and how I need to go to Lowe's and how I left the bag on the counter and he says they already wrote down type "J" and threw it away. Guess I deserve the judgement right back for the judgement I'm always giving. I finally pick up my laptop and look to see if Lowe's is open today... Until 9:00 PM it says, but the Labor Day holiday may affect those hours? Way to wishy washy the answer! Yeah, they're open... Unless they're not. Thanks. Already figured that much out. So I ask Nick if he wants to go to Lowe's, saying I can go myself if he'd rather not.
He reluctantly agrees to go with me and we head out. I don't really have to get this stuff right now, let alone today, but if I don't it will just sit until I do. The last thing I want is a non functional shop vac, taken apart, and taking up room in a garage, already too full of all my other unfinished projects. As we're walking in, it's looking dark and I tell Nick we probably don't have long before it opens up. I no sooner make it to the shop vac aisle when I hear the rain just beating down on the roof. Nick joins me without anything from the electrical aisle. I have a few more items to grab, a couple 4" putty knives and such, and a good caulking gun which we totally walked past in the paint department on the way in. Then we're in line to check out. It's still raining pretty good when we walk out, but not enough to stop us from walking the rest of the way out to the flexinator. By the time we're home, it's sunny again.
I sort the goods and walk the bag out to the garage and soon have the shop vac operational again. I proceed to vacuum up the sawdust and soon I'm able to see the floor again. I'm consolidating the paint cans and five gallon buckets of paint in front of and beneath the bench as best it will fit to make room for the chopsaw on the bench. I sort through more boxes that I've been moving back and forth out the way and decide I've had enough of boxes of wood and such always being in the way. This one box has the rest of the bead board leftovers from the redoing side porch, nearly five years ago! I'm able to make just one stack of them beneath the left bank of desk drawers, including the pieces of trim and mouldings, space that would otherwise be wasted under the desk. I'm finally able to get rid of that box that didn't fit the longest of the the pieces. No more moving it around when it's in the way all the time!
I make short work of unloading another box of scraps, but this time I just set them on the bench beneath the router table until I need them to brace up the roof castings. The rest of the remnants get thrown in the trash. I bring the now worn out boxes to put in the recycle can along with the now full garbage can and the water curled cardboard left out in the weather from when Nick was last under the house. It pretty much tops off the recycle bin, and the trash bin is not far behind it, now full of the waterlogged sawdust bag. Interestingly enough, whatever the chemicals are in the pressure treated wood, they seem to have totally controlled the maggots that infested the bin a short time before. With that done, I'm once again drenched with sweat and head inside to cool off. As I'm sitting down, Nick asks if I'm ready to test the generator.
We head out on the patio and he starts the generator. It still sounds like a lawn boy mower, but it's much more quiet than a comparable sized 4 stroke lawn mower or generator. The fact that we can stand over it and carry on a conversation without having to raise our voices says it all, pun intended. He suggests turning off all the breakers, then turning them on slowly, one at a time once the generator is running and connected. Next he connects the homebrew cord he put together yesterday and twist locks both ends in place. He struggles with bending the cable just the right way to get it to stay in place and not keep twisting and "unlocking" one of the connectors. Now the big test! Finger crossed. No fireworks display, but also no lights? Wow. Nick says the outside station rave lighting seems to come on, and my laptop screen comes on like something affected its power, but the flourescent lights aren't coming on and neither is the air conditioner. The battery backups are still alarming, annoyingly, and I ask Nick if we shouldn't just turn off the generator and fall back.
Instead, he asks if I have a meter handy, while the generator is still running, to buzz out the feed and the cable. I grab one of the many I have strategically stashed everywhere and hand it to him. I head back in to turn off the breakers, and when I come back out, he's struggling with needing three hands to hold the cable and the meter and the probes. I hold the twistlock connector while he reads both hots at 120V. Now we're scratching our heads. I head inside to turn the power to the garage back on while Nick continues to check things out. I sit down for a few minutes to cool off and hydrate, then head back out to make sure everything came back up. Nick says everything checks out, from the generator all the way to the panel, unless you can't backfeed through the breakers. I tell him we should go sit down and cool off and do some research and he agrees, turning off the generator.
As we're sitting in the living room, Nick is looking up what he can online while I check in on the latest hurricane conditions. Yeah. Still over the Bahamas. Still category 5. Yep. Then Nick has the epiphany... What if the way the busses in the panel work makes is such that both breakers are connected to the same bus? I kill the power and we head out to check it out. Sure enough, that's what's going on. So this time we turn off all the breakers and start the generator. I kick in the two feed breakers. No fireworks. I kick on the rest of the breakers, one by one. The first one lights the Christmas lights I have around the perimeter inside the garage as a sort of night light. Then the outside rave lights, then the flourescent lights, and the laptop and the air conditioner. Yay! Nick's looking at the stats on the front panel of the generator. Only 5A? Wow. Not bad! I tell him we should wait for the compressor to kick on and see what we're drawing then. Just 9A to run the entire garage with the air conditioning running! Nice.
We turn it all back off and shutdown the generator and head back inside with the good news. Ann is pleased to hear it does work and we discuss our options as I once again restore the power to the garage. I start talking about how to rearrange the breakers to fit the knockouts I've already removed but Nick says he doesn't think that's a good idea, reasoning that last thing we want to do is confuse things and somehow blow something up, saying we should just go buy a two pole breaker and label it generator. While we're out, we can stop by Horrible Freight and see if we can pick up the right cable for the generator too. At first I'm my typical don't want to go anywhere self, but change my mind after thinking about it a few minutes more. We might as well get what we need while we can still get what we need.
Well, we get to Horrible Freight only to find the entire shelf space where any extension cords would be is empty, save two ten foot long regular old extension cords. The guy says I got ten footers, and I tell him not many of those left either, but yeah. We chat a bit and we're off to have a look at the belt and disk sander to see if it's worth the price. Yeah. No. Even at roughly half price at around $80, it's nice and all, with a cast base and adjustable belt sander arm, but... It's all the buts that make us decide against it. Who knows what those castings are? Cast iron or pig iron? The adjustment on the arm is wrench tighten, not hand tighten. The tool "shelf" for the disk portion is rickety and would need totally reworked, and who knows if increasing the strength wouldn't just break the casting where it fits? Nope. Maybe the next better model, which there doesn't appear to be one of... Fail.
So off to Lowe's. We quickly find the 30A two pole breaker we need, and too quickly are on our way to the checkout. Halfway down the isle, I remember I wanted to get some of the "caps" to cover the open knockout where I won't have a breaker. We head back down the isle, grab the covers, then head back toward the checkout. Once home, I just set the breaker and the covers on the coke machine together with the the cover plate and retaining screw for the panel. It's working for now, so I figure why mess with it? I'll need to document what breakers feed what and print out a legend by position. Not now and not today. Nick and Ann are walking Brigel over to Nick's to pick up Klaus and maybe head back here for a bit of play. Meanwhile, I'm catching up on the hurricane and wondering where they are... Turns out they went to the dog park over by Nick's place, and the two "brothers" just trotted around, having fun off leash.
Nick packs up and heads home to spend more time with his boy and Ann and I settle in for the evening. I had thrown my sheets in the laundry and now they're done. I figure it's probably a good time to get myself clean as well, then throw the towels in the laundry when I'm done. I guess I soaked in the tub longer than I thought because now it's too late to think about starting a load of laundry until the morning. I sit and relax in my recliner, watching the hurricane update and letting my hair and the rest of me dry. I finally head in to bed and watch the hurricane update until I finally mute it and roll over to fall asleep. Tonight I took some ibuprofen and had a couple beers to help ease the aftermath of all the work we've been doing the last couple of days. I definitely felt it last night every time I moved trying to get comfortable in bed. Tonight it's not bad at all.
(Tuesday, 3 September 2019)
What should have been the day of the storm is still waiting on the storm day. Dorian sat over the Bahamas for the last two days, weakening to a category 3 from a category 5 storm. At least five people known dead on Abacos, and the eye is still just thirty miles from Freeport! It may start to move north, skirting the coast of Florida, but we're still waiting... And now it's down to a category 2 and finally starting to move to the northwest as of the 11:00 AM update.
Finally come supper time I notice the wind is gusting pretty good every now and again. Time to get things squared away for the evening. I begin by moving the cable and then the generator into the garage. Then I take out the rainaway arches, one at a time, and retract the awning. I place the arches in the garage and that pretty much takes care of it. I had already cut the high density foam into pieces earlier when I was outside with the dog, while Ann was on her work call, and stashed it in the garage. Ann and Nick took Brigel with them to Nick's to take him and Klaus to the dog park while I stayed home and got the dishes going and the coffee put on for the morning. Tonight should prove interesting as the wind field from Dorian slowly moves over us. I figure maybe 40 MPH gusts. We shall see come morning. Thankfully the office is still closed tomorrow.
(Wednesday, 4 September 2019)
So this is not even the storm I expected. While we may have had stronger gusts through the night, and definitely a LOT of rain, it's relatively calm so far this morning. A light drizzle almost, driven by what little wind there is. It's overcast, but that will help keep temperatures down. Looks like we'll have some feeder band activity for most of the day. On again and off again, with sunshine in between. I set the thermostat down a notch yesterday to save up the cool just in case we loose power, but so far, so good. I have to think that had we not bought a generator nor installed the generator feed we would have needed it. I was worried we hadn't moved the air conditioner from Nick's garage window to our dining room window, but again, we haven't needed it.
A Bit Of History...
March 2015
April 2015
May 2015
June 2015
