Author: davehamby

A modern Merlin, hell bent for glory, he shot the works and nothing worked.

We’re finally there!

Post author By davehamby
Post date October 19, 2015

Are we there yet?

Yes, at last. It was an 8 week project, just like my contractor promised. What he didn’t tell me was that it would be 8 weeks every other week. As usual, weather, other projects, and waits for the cabinet shop to fabricate the cabinets got in the way. One thing neither of us expected was the up turn in the Norfolk Building Department’s permits business. The review we expected to take a week took three and they wanted some changes requiring another trip through the review process.

The Project

The project intent was to make a laundry and utility space in conditioned space, a new family entry that served both the carport and the back garden, and a modern kitchen that was easy to work in and allowed the cook to interact with the rest of a family while cooking and cleaning up.

The project borrowed 4 feet of carport and the existing utility closet at the back of the carport to make a new utility alcove, new family entry, and pantry storage. This space also housed the refrigerator and oven opposite each other. A new peninsula housed the cooktop and provided proper workspace for cooking and cleanup. Prep can be divided between the sink countertops and the peninsula. The skink and cooking areas are arranged galley style with a good 5 feet of space between the two counters. It is possible to work at both counters without blocking access to the pantry and garden. And the hounds can move around without being under foot.

My Contractor

My contractor R. L. Blount Custom Homes did a first rate job . The things that stand out are the design. I had a small potatoes architect do the initial conceptual design. I played with that some on tracing paper and concluded that I wanted to move the door and change the porch design to a Charleston style porch with steps parallel to the wall.

The project was design-build. Given a statement of my goals and sketches, my contractor’s designer did a detailed design and prepared permitting and construction drawings. During this phase, my contractor did the structural design required to remove bearing walls, the structural design for two new walls, and the calculations for a beam that would carry the structure formerly resting on the 1955 kitchen’s interior partitions.

I did two things to help this phase of the project. First, I engaged a local architect to develop a conceptual design and some plan views that could be used as a starting point for proposals. The second thing I did was to write up a list of goals and preferences that each bidder could use during the proposal and estimating process.

Estimating is a bit tricky as the job must be estimated from scope of work sketches and task lists developed during the proposal phase. A detailed design comes after award but flat rate estimating guides are well refined and it is pretty easy to work up costs from the rough materials and task lists and to make an allowance for uncertainty in market conditions and approximate amounts of materials and trade time. And key suppliers like ProBuild assist with the estimates as part of their builder services.

My contractor’s designer Matt did the detailed design and construction drawings we needed for permitting starting with my sketches. Evan, my project manager, did the kitchen conceptual design that Matt started from, and tweaked the laundry closet and cabinet layouts a little bit to give us more room for the fridge.

Matt deserves a shout out for getting the new hip roof and nice porch design right. I was biting my nails as it was all going up but it has worked out brilliantly.

Matt did forget to remove some new construction boiler plate from his drawings such as floor insulation instructions. In a small addition like my 9×9 utility space and the renovated kitchen, it is accepted practice to follow the existing crawl space insulating and venting practices. Fortunately, the building department did not insist on compliance with the drawings here. We did insulate all of the new side walls and seal all plate and subfloor penetrations. All the better to keep crawly things out.

My contractor does project management and subs all of the work out: design, demolition, masonry, framing, roofing, siding, exterior finish, electrical, plumbing, drywall and plaster, tile, cabinets, granite, interior finish and painging. Every time we changed trades, there was a wait for interviews, proposals, and start of the next project phase.

Normally, this works quite well. Where it gets complicated is when a small task needs just a bit of work from 2 or 3 trades. Installing the downdraft blower went like that. The HVAC duct technician could cut the cabinet, sub-floor, and foundation and run the duct work but was not an electrician. I ended up wiring the blower because my contractor would have to call back an electrician do make up a cable connector. And Bosch had an error in the wiring instructions. More about this below.

Appliance Supplier

Ferguson Inc supplied appliances and was first rate. Bosch forgot to pack fasteners, etc in the microwave oven trim kit shown in the featured image. Ferguson came through with a parts diagram having part numbers and found everything that should have been in the box that wasn’t. And they expressed it to me over night! Great service. They also restocked an unwise choice of light fixture (looked way different than its catalog photo colors). And they swapped downdraft blower units from wall mount to under house mount for a modest restocking fee.

Masons

The Mexican masons did the masonry demolition, cut the carport slab to receive the new footings, dug the footings and made forms, poured the footings using site ready-mix, and laid the foundation and brick veneer. All of this is tricky. It has to be right or the rest of the job is off. They did an excellent job with the layout and the finished brick work is plumb and flat. They don’t work retail.

Plumbers

My steampunk plumbers Chris and Jamie managed to run new plumbing for the water heater, laundry, and kitchen without interrupting services for more than an hour or two. They specialize in new construction and renovations and don’t do repairs but they did a great job on both the bath project and the kitchen project.

The Plastering Crew

The plastering crew, also Mexican, did a great job with the drywall and plaster. We ended up doing new skim coat over the existing lounge area ceiling because it would have been difficult to match the 1950’s scratch coat finish. Another trade that doesn’t do much retail work.

The Electricians

Anchor Electrical did a wizard job with the wiring. They had a bit of a surprise when they found ungrounded circuits for the old oven, and dryer. The cooktop circuit was new (2006) and could be extended to its new location. The other 240V circuits, lacking grounds, had to be replaced, something Evan missed when he was pricing the job My contractor picked up the cost of the 240V circuits that had to be replaced.

The thing I really like is that the crew thought about where the recessed lights should go and supplied Lutron dimmers for the recessed lighting. With Cree LED trims, the place is sunglasses bright when the lights are full up. I normally run the lighting half-bright, even for dinner prep and cooking.

Given a description of how I intended to place the dining room table, the lead electrician properly located the fixtures for the pendant lamps. These kept getting in the way during the tail end of the project but once the table was placed, they were exactly where they needed to be and at the proper height.

They also did a nice job with the yard light replacement. They supplied nice flood lamp fixtures that you won’t find on the shelf at Home Depot. These completely shield the lights from water and have a nice finish that will stay bright and looks good against the white trim.

The dryer circuit was repurposed to serve the Rinnai tankless water heater which is on its own circuit. The red (properly marked) became the ground. The lighting circuits in the old house had to be reworked. None were to code. Power went to the fixture with a switch in the return. We don’t do that any more. I ended up picking up those costs as repairs. Similarly, the outdoor lights which had been on the fritz since my return. The switch was in the work area but there were problems in old work outside the work boundary.

These guys are highly recommended for lighting updates and repair work. Good old work skills and diagnostic skills. They also relocated data, RF, and phone circuits that needed to be moved.

Flooring

Adrian Hardwood Floors and Tile laid the ceramic tile floor and backsplash, the new wood flooring, and refinished the existing floors. The tile flooring took a week: 2 days of layout and cutting, a day to lay, a day to grout, and clean up. The floor refinishing took 2 days with 2 more that I had to be off the floor while it cured. Nick, Missy, and I spent 3 nights in the Norfolk Residence Inn enjoying downtown Norfolk. Adrian receives my recommendations for floor refinishing and floor replacement. The young crew was patient and meticulous in the layout of the floor and backsplash.

Local Cabinet Shop

Chuck’s Custom Cabinets and Construction deserves a shout out for the design of the cabinets. Evan and Chuck refined the kitchen layout, especially the stepping down of the cabinet depth in the pantry, the drawers in the peninsula, and the overhanging buffet or dining counter area. Chuck designed and built the cabinets working from Matt’s plan view and a walk down of the site to confirm measurements.

Chuck set the job up to use standard cabinet sizes with a bit of cleverness at the refrigerator where he took up the slack in the as-built ground truth. Chuck’s guys also installed the cabinets doing a wonderful job of coping with the departures from true in the old structure.

The galley kitchen design added 3 feet to the dining area depth that were formerly part of the 1955 kitchen allowing me to put the dining table parallel to the end wall where it had been parallel to the front wall while still having room to use the table ends or the counter.

Granite Fabricators

Panda Kitchen fabricated the granite and installed it. Everything fit. They cut the cooktop and downdraft opening in the field and dealt with the departure from square with a combination of planned off-square cuts and field trimming.

The granite finish turned out nicely and they cut the notch for the column in a most clever way. Using a water jet stone saw, they cut the two sides 2 degrees off vertical so that the plate cross section was keystone shaped. This made the piece self-supporting while the epoxy cured. The piece fits so well that you have to look closely to find the filled joint. This was another place I was biting my nails as the stone changes color during final polishing.

For those doing kitchen renovation as opposed to remodeling projects needing architectural and structural work, I’d recommend Panda in a heartbeat. They have built two kitchens for a friend, the first a planned remodel, the second, reconstruction following a fire.

More about delays

The project delays resulted from the weather delaying start of earlier jobs, a demanding client that caused lots of rework on a large job that was concurrent with mine, and the inevitable friction of as-you-go contracting of trades. We did have to back up and do a bit of rework on the roof to fix a goof that the gutter contractor caught, and several finish items that required multiple trades like the downdraft blower required trades to come back,

Missing parts and other chaos

My goof

Although everyone was careful to keep the jobsite neat, we did lose some of the bits for one of the deadbolts which were in my scope of supply. Kwikset retail packing is impossible to repack so stuff rattled around and eventually the screws went missing.

Kwikset supplied the parts we misplaced on the job at no cost. That delayed us a bit. I ended up finding my chisels and doing the mortise changes needed for the door plate and strike plate. We found that the parts had gone missing when the interior finish folks were doing their bit of the job. I had supplied the lock sets so the parts were my problem. They’re probably with the eyeglasses that went missing this summer. I suspect the red chaos unit named Missy.

Bosch Goofs

There were two. The downdraft installation instructions for the in-line blower managed to have you wire the cable from the cabinet mounted snorkel assembly to the crawl space mounted blower incorrectly. The contract tech writer who did the manuals looked at the instructions for wiring the blower end connector and had you do the same for the plug from the snorkel that was to mate with it. The end result was that the field wired connector was backward. This connected medium speed to ground popping the breaker.

Fortunately, both cables used the same color code so it was easy to take the hood off the factory wired connector and wire the field wired connector to match.

Bosch also forgot to pack the loose parts for the microwave trim kit. A call to Ferguson had the needed parts ordered and on their way in a day. Everything was stocked in the US so UPS was able to make the missing bits appear the day after they had been identified and itemized.

Bosch designed the trim kit mounting clips for frameless European cabinets. Evan, my project manager, came out and spent an hour fiddling with saws and screws to make temporary blocking only to determine that we could get the cabinet mounted bits mounted directly to the face frame. This is where experience comes in. Evan picked some screws that wouldn’t split the face frame, something I’d get wrong.

But We’re not 100 Percent!

Evan bought matching paint to paint the endgrain of the Trex steps. He forgot to turn that task over to the painters. It will take longer to clean the brush than to do the work so I’ve picked up that task. Probably Wednesday once it is warm again.

Home Remodeling

90 Percent and Holding

Post author By davehamby
Post date September 22, 2015

The kitchen project is nearly complete but we are at the 90 percent and stalled point. One big task and several small ones remain.

Install gutters
This requires fixing a goof in the roof deck
Install back door dead bolt
Install microwave trim kit
Install closet rod in laundry area
Stain the column
Locate or install a shut off valve for the water heater water supply

The featured image is a view down the greyhound gallop. The pantry area includes two granite counters cut from the counter top remnant. One (shown at the above) is set at 18 inches and the second at 36 inches. The first is the dogs’ dinner table. The second is for stashing keys, purse, phones, etc needed on the way out the door. The granite is Saint Cecilia Light.

To the left facing the door is a laundry and utility alcove that houses the Rinnai tankless water heater and the laundry. The laundry equipment are Whirlpool high efficiency washer and dryer. The dryer is ventless with a heat pump heat source. Surprisingly, it works quite well in “Eco Mode” in which the heat pump supplies all of the drying heat. The dryer has a resistance heater that can be used to supplement the heat pump or by itself. When using the heat pump source, the drying times are longer but energy usage is 1/4 that when just the resistance heater is used. The heat pump cools the air leaving the drum and preheats the air entering the drum. The water condensed out of the air accumulates in a sump and is pumped down to the drain.

Compared to a conventional dryer, the air temperature rises more slowly so the drying times are longer. Because the cycle is closed, no air is taken from the home or discharged to it. The pump heat drives the cycle and the drying air gets normally toasty by cycle’s end.

I have only two gripes.

Button labels are low contrast white on gray and are hard to read above head level.
The drum rotates only one way so it tends to tangle sheets.

This image below shows the new peninsula and the wet wall cabinets that house the sink and dishwasher.

This image shows the new split bowl sink. This design is wizard simple. I’m surprised that it is a recent innovation. Only one manufacturer offers it so it must be under patent. This idea is so obvious, I’m surprised that it is new. One trick I just discovered is that a normal basket strainer allows the sink to drain into the disposer while keeping objects out.

This is the new dining area showing a temporary 4 foot folding table. The new space is about 3 to 4 feet larger than the original allowing a six foot table to be placed parallel to the back wall in the area under the pendant lights. There is still room to use the peninsula as a buffet, snack bar, or kids study area.

Tags remodeling

Home automation

At last, a door bell

Post author By davehamby
Post date September 3, 2015

I’ve not had a door bell for years. With the old arrangement of entrances, there was only one and folks could knock with the knocker. With the new door, the knocker is gone and there are now two doors, one on the Fletcher side and one on the Townley side with the back garden gate to the right and garden monsters luring in the shadows. So, what to do for a door bell?

An advert for the Ring Door Chime showed up in my Facebook feed. Finally, a useful Facebook advert! The Ring Chime is an inexpensive combination wireless door chime and perimeter camera with off-site recording and it actually works.

The Ring Door Bell

http://ring.com — is the new kids in town with a wireless video door bell. This is a two piece or three piece system consisting of the following kit.

The Ring door bell assembly mounted near the door.
An optional Ring chime plugged into an out of the way outlet
An IOS or Android app on your favorite device

The door-side assembly mounts to a mounting plate secured to the siding. Two Torx screws lock the outside kit to the mounting plate. More about mounting in a bit.

When a visitor approaches the door, a motion sensor detects the approach and wakes the unit from standby. The Ring bell reports motion sensed events to the paired IOS/Android device. When the visitor presses the bell button, the Ring bell sends a ring event to the paired devices. The chime and IOS/Android devices will play a chime tone. The camera initiates a video chat session with the app to allow you to see who is at the door and chat with the visitor.

This happens via the local WiFi network but the notification will be routed to the device via the Internet. You can see visitors from anywhere that there is Internet service.

The outside assembly signals all events, both motion and chime presses. The paired application can be configured to announce chime rings and motion events independently. The settings are local to each phone or tablet. Multiple phones and tablets may be paired and each can have its own notification policy.

Added Value, a Video Record of Each Visitor

So, big deal! So far, I’ve described an expensive wireless chime. But the Ring bell does more. It records each encouter to off-site storage. Anybody coming to your door is on candid camera. You have a video record of break-in attempts to show to the police and your insurance carrier. A practiced thief can be in and out before the police respond to a monitored alarm. And without leads, the police can’t pursue a simple smash and grab. We see this repeatedly in the local newspaper. A citizen reports a break-in. The police come and take a report. But there are no leads to follow. If the citizen was home, the description of the perpetrator lacks detail.

The Ring camera is designed for low light and makes passable images. When paired with an inside Nest or Canary camera, you have a video record of the intrusion that the police can act on. Canary has collected several stories of successful apprehensions of burglars when the video captured an intruder known to the police.

Each motion event is saved off-site. It is not necessary to ring the bell to start a recording. The motion detection can be adjusted in azimuth and distance to reduce spurious activations. In reviewing the captured events for this article, I found that it was capturing my returns home from dog walks and from trips. Exiting home does not trigger recording.

I found that passing traffic was triggering recordings several times a day but these are easily identified as nothing is visible in the foreground.

Subscription to off-site recording is optional. Ring charges $3/month for the service or $30 for the year prepaid. The first month is free.

Installation

The Ring outside assembly is designed for both wireless and wired applications. When wired, it steals power from the bell circuit and pushing the button completes the circuit to sound your existing chime in addition to playing a chime sound on your mobile or tablet. To use this feature requires connecting the bell circuit to the base plate and adding a diode as shown in the installation instructions. Hopefully, Ring will revise the baseplate to include the diode in the printed circuit. For wireless use, the diode is not required.

Ring includes a level, screws, screw anchors, screw driver, and masonry bit in the kit. The included masonry bit was not robust enough to drill through brick. If mounting to brick, you’ll need to buy a proper 1/4 inch rotary/hammer masonry bit to drill the mounting holes.

Ring’s installation video glibly shows a millennial marking the four mounting holes with a pencil, drilling them, inserting anchors, and mounting the base plate. This procedure may be troublesome on masonry. In my installation I either miss-marked the holes or the drill walked on the brick. I recommend the following procedure. For this procedure you will need a proper masonry center punch and 1/4 inch rotary/hammer masonry bit and a 1/4 or 3/8 inch variable speed drill, preferably corded as drilling each hole takes several minutes.

Center punch and drill the first hole, either upper hole using a masonry punch and masonry bit.
Insert the anchor and loosely mount the plate so it can be rotated to plumb.
Using the center punch, mark the hole diagonally opposite the first hole.
Remove the mounting plate and drill this hole.
Insert the second anchor and loosely mount the plate.
Confirm that it is plumb
Center punch the two remaining holes
Dismount the plate
Drill the remaining holes and insert their anchors.
Mount the plate

Home Remodeling

Kitchen is coming together

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 26, 2015

One box of Chemex filters later, the kitchen is almost finished. This is my contribution to the design, moving the carport door from the carport to the end wall and adding this Charleston style porch and step. My builder’s designer got the masses and sizes right.

My project manager Evan found a use for some of the granite remanent. The dogs have a dinner table and I have a similar shelf at 36 inches to stage groceries for storage, etc. Below is room for boots, etc. At top is a shelf for cook books, etc.

In the original kitchen, this counter was in a corner formed by the window wall and carport wall. The hob was to the right making dish washing and cooking miserable experiences. The sink was a 2 bowl sink, the same size as this one but with full depth bowls. Washing baking pans was a miserable chore.

By taking out that wall from the back to the right side of the carport door and building a new L-shaped wall, Evan created the laundry alcove, family entry, and pantry in the background. A new peninsula holds the hob, downdraft vent, storage, and a counter height breakfast bar and buffet.

The photo above shows the hob (British for cook top) cooking its first meal. Nothing ambitious, just spaghetti and sauce to learn how the beast works and get a feel for the new induction heating. A bit slow with 10 liters of water to boil but about similar control to the old radiant hob for most tasks.

And cleaning up is much easier with the new sink. It now has proper workspace around it and the half-depth half-bowls make dish washing easy while we await the dish washer. Later today. Plumbers are wrapping that task up as I write this post. This idea is so obvious but this design is new to the market and only a couple of sink makers offer it (suggesting that it is still under patent).

And no kitchen is complete without a greyhound gallop. The photo below is a dog’s eye view of the project taken about a week ago before appliance installation began.

Tags appliances, kitchen

Home automation

Smoke Detectors

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 11, 2015

I just recently replaced four Kidde line powered smoke detectors with Nest Protect detectors. The new Nest Protects are expensive ($99) but they are worth it. The new detectors have dual wavelength optical detectors. Each of the two optical sensors is optimized for a different range of particle sizes to cover both fast burning fires and smoldering fires.

The detectors also include a carbon monoxide sensor. Carbon monoxide sensing is important if you have a natural draft gas burning appliance in conditioned space. Operation of vent fans, whole house fans, or a blocked flue can reverse the vent flow of these appliance to allow exhaust gas into the living space. Carbon monoxide is dangerous because it is an odorless poisonous gas and natural gas combustion products are low odor. Most carbon monoxide deaths occur at night because there are no cues to wake a sleeper.

The Nest dual optical detectors use LED light obscuration to sense smoke. Most detectors on the market are ionization detectors that use a radioisotope to ionizing the air in a cell that is open to the space being monitored. The presence of smoke increases the ionization. The current in the cell increases causing an alarm

Why I Retired the Kidde Detectors

The Kidde detectors started chirping one evening. I replaced the batteries and they continued to chirp. And they couldn’t tell me why. The Nest Detectors both Gen 1 (the flat top detectors) and Gen 2 detectors (convex top) talk to you in natural language using a recorded voice. In the US, English or Spanish language is selectable at installation. The Kidde detectors gave no indication why they were chirping after the batteries had been replaced. The Kidde manual was no help. After 20 years of this, the Kidde detectors had to go.

The Great Chili Cook

When I first installed the Nest Protects, I kept the Kidde detectors in service for a while. One evening (before the kitchen remodel) I made some chili and browned meat for it. As usual, I left the heat too high for too long, the Lodge cast iron pan overheated, and the contents began to smoke. I reduced the heat but not enough.

The smoke in the house slowly crept up. Eventually, the Nest Protects gave a heads up alert through the house announcing “Heads up, smoke in the hallway”, the near detector. Lodge pans hold a lot of heat which makes them great for searing a steak or scrambling eggs but once they are too hot, they’re going to stay too hot and smoke for a good bit.

The smoke level continued to increase to alarm level with the Nest Protects going into alarm first, then the Kidde detectors. Being traditional detectors, the Kidde detectors could do no more.

The Nest Protects had already alerted me to the increasing smoke with the heads up report and I could look for the cause. When the alarm went off, I knew which detector was in alarm and had already been notified of a potential problem by heads up message. By giving the heads up alert first, you can look for ad deal with the smoldering ash tray scenario. Knowing which detector is in alarm may influence your choice of evacuation routes.

Only One Cry Wolf Alert

One evening at 4 in the morning, one of the Nest Protects gave a smoke cry wolf heads up. I went to check the location, found conditions normal. After a bit, the detector returned to normal and there have been no further cry wolfs from it.

Why Nest Protects?

Nest Protects don’t chirp at you. Instead, they tell you in plain language why they are unhappy or confused. When an heads up or an alarm occurs, they announce the location and alarm condition in plain language. Carbon monoxide and smoke alarms have different tones.

During the installation process you connect each Nest product to your WiFi network and add it to your Nest account. Periodically, the detectors communicate with Nest. When an abnormal condition is detected anywhere in the house, all of the detectors report the condition. If you are in the den and the garage detector goes into pre-alarm, the den detector will announce the problem. If the condition worsens, the den detector will announce the alarm. A problem in one part of the house will be announced at each detector location.

Abnormal conditions include system problems and heads up alerts. Low batteries, power out, etc are announced with the heads-up message. Any smoke or carbon monoxide heads up would also be announced. A proximity detector lets the Nest Protect know that the room is occupied. This process only happens at detectors in occupied rooms.

During the installation process, you give each detector a location name from those in a list. That’s how the detector knows where it is. During the chili making incident mentioned above, the hall detector when into alarm followed by the detectors in my study and my bedroom. The third bedroom door was closed so it just followed along. as each detector went into alarm, all detectors announced the alarm and the announcements could be heard through the alarm din.

Nest Promise Feature

When you turn in at night, a light level sensor in the Nest protect senses the drop in light level. If all is well, the Nest Protect will show a green light to report that all is well. If there is a problem with any detector in the network, the detector will, instead, show a yellow ring. You can determine the issue by tapping the Nest button (big target inside the ring. The detector will announce the problem, as in “Heads up, hallway is off line”. Alternately, you can check the system status using the Nest App.

The proximity sensor will light the indicator ring with a red light during an alarm or a white light when it senses movement and the lights are out. This is a useful aid in finding the door if you have to bug out. It is also a useful indication of the greyhounds moving about to change beds. If you think a dog has come or gone, you can look for the white ring before looking for the dog who just may want to go out.

More About Installation

As a network device, Nest Protect is designed to be managed by an Android or iPhone phone and that it will be installed in a home having a working 2.4 GHz WiFi network and Internet service.

Prerequisites

Before installing Nest Protects, you will need the following.

Home 2.4 GHz WiFi network operating.
Network name and password
Electrical box installed by you electrician for each wired Nest Protect
Electrical safety tester, preferably electronic non-contact type.
Wired detector power turned off.
Nest IOS or Android App downloaded and installed on a mobile

Installing Nest App

Install the Nest App from the Apple iPhone App Store or from Google Play. Once installed, start the Nest app and create a Nest account. You can also view this account using a web browser at http://home.nest.com.

After account creation, add a “home” giving a name, zip code, etc.

Installing a Nest Protect

Nest Protects work their magic using the house WiFi network to communicate with each other and with Nest. This means that you need a reliable 2.4 GHz WiFi network operating as a prerequisite for the installation process. With the 2nd generation detectors, installation is simple.

Mount the installation ring on the wall or in-wall electrical box if the detector is line powered.
With the power off, install the line powered unit’s electrical plug pig tail. White to white, black to black. Red is not used as Nest Protects use radio communications for house wide alarms.
Install the Nest application on an IOS or Android device (the other prerequisite)
Pull the battery tab on the detector.
On the app home screen, pick the gear icon
On the settings screen, tap the Add product icon
On the choose product screen, tape the Nest Protect item
Using the phone camera in portrait orientation, scan the QR code on the Nest Protect label.
Complete the remaining screens to enter the WiFi password, choose language, and name the device.
Add any additional devices to the Nest App at this time. Additional devices pick up the settings from the first added.
Once network setup is complete, mount each device on its mounting ring. Interrupted screw tabs engage and hold the device to the ring. if the unit is line powered, plug in the connector before mounting it and tuck the excess cable into the box.

Nest and Legacy Detectors

The industry made a deliberate choice for detectors not to communicate from brand to brand. In fact, industry standards forbid the practice as protocol compatibility cannot be assured. So if you have a mix of Kidde detectors and Nest Protects, the two will ignore each other. The Kidde wired detectors use a third red wire to exchange alarm state. The Nest Protects use an application specific application protocol for this purpose.

Software Updates

From time to time, Nest updates the Nest App as products and product features are added and updates the device firmware to correct issues or add features. App updating is manual. Product updating is automatic. Nest will push software to all on-line devices. The Nest App device screen will show the firmware revision that the device is running.

Nest Synergy

Nest Protects come in two versions: battery powered and line powered. Both talk to you. Both talk to the Internet. An iPhone app allows you to configure and monitor the detectors. When there is a carbon monoxide alarm, your Nest thermostat receives the notification and will secure the heat. This feature has saved several lives in those homes having both devices.

The other bit of synergy is that Nest Protects contribute to the Nest Thermostat’s away or home logic. Before I installed the protects, the thermostat would go into auto away mode if I were in one room for two hours. With protects on the account, this no longer happens. The down side is that the Protects will detect the canines moving about (greyhounds) and the system will stay in home mode which they appreciate when they are home and I am out.

Home Remodeling

Remodeling Known Unknowns

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 4, 2015

Remodeling projects are always an adventure. In planning a project you and your contractor make assumptions about the existing condition of the building that may or may not be true. Missing an educated guess can have a big effect on a project’s profitability or throw some change orders. The classic example is the finding of hidden water damage in a bathroom remodel. The one we met this time around was in the condition of my home’s electrical wiring.

1955 Practice

My home was built for speculation by a Norfolk subdivision developer in 1955. Before me it had one owner who kept it up reasonably well and didn’t mess things up too badly. Back in the day when my home was built, 100 amp 10 circuit panels were the norm. Wiring was ROMEX 14 gage for 15 amp circuits. Center tapped 220V service to the home was common with the branch circuits divided between red and black buses with the white neutral grounded at the pole and again at the panel.

At that time it was not common to provide a ground, ground the boxes, or carry the ground to the sockets. Fortunately, the wiring has modern insulation which remains in good shape. It is possible to replace switches and sockets without cracking or loosing insulation, a common problem with rubber insulation found in the early days of home wiring.

At that time, it was not uncommon for an electrician to bring power to the fixture box, run a cable to the switch and then to the load. This results in a working switch but power remains in the box when the switch was open, and the black supply, white neutral, and the switch cable must be identified. It makes the fixture less safe and complicates the repair as the various black and white wires must be identified and reconnected correctly.

Modern Practice

Modern practice is to include a ground wire in the bundle, ground the box, and ground the chassis or body of electrical appliances using a third (or fourth) green wire connected through the plug or appliance pig tail (oven, cook top, etc). This has been code since shortly after my home was built.

The second modern practice that is significant to my project is to wire power to the switch and wire the fixture circuit from the switch. When the switch is off, the fixture box is deenergized. One or more fixture circuits violated this requirement.

Electrical Rough

The electrical contractor showed up to estimate the job, took one look at the old ungrounded wiring, and quickly realized that none of the existing circuits could be reused. This meant that the existing oven, cook top, and dryer circuits could not be reused because modern code requires four conductors: white neutral, red hot, black hot, and green ground. The cables had only three. This is a foreseeable contingency but one that could not be confirmed without some inspection.

The electrical contractor sorted everything out and realized that he could reuse one cable run by repurposing the red wire as a ground in a 120 V run for the Rennai tankless water heater. The other 220 volt circuits could not be extended to the new locations of the oven and original cooktop and the dryer would require a new circuit that included a ground. Code permits this practice provided that the wire is marked with tape or heat shrink of the proper color (green).

Electrical Safety Digression

When power is brought directly to the fixture and a switch circuit is run from the fixture to the switch location, power will be present in the fixture whether the switch is off or on. This means that the breaker must be opened to deenergize the fixture for maintenance.

Before disassembling any circuit, check the circuit with an electronic tester such as those made by Fluke. These non-contact sensors detect the electric field around the wire and will alert you to an energized circuit. The drill is

Confirm that the tester works by checking a known energized cable.
Test the cable to be worked on and the others in the box.
Confirm that the tester still works by checking a known energized cable.

Modern testers are pretty reliable but they do have batteries that can run down mid-job. Always confirm that your tester is working reliably before and after making life safety tests of the circuits to be worked on and around.

If there is more than one circuit in a box, confirm that the others are also deenergized. It is possible for a box or device to have more than one source of power.

Mixing Legacy Work with New Work

Any new work must conform to the national electrical code in effect at the time the work is done. In a kitchen remodeling project, it is likely that old work switches will be present in the work area and may need to be moved. If the move is of some distance, for example, the wall containing the switch is removed, then a new switch will be required. Your electrician will wire this switch to current code (power to the switch then to the appliance) whether the original circuit was that way or not.

This means that the legacy fixture may need to be rewired. This is the other known unknown that is typically encountered. A properly wired legacy fixture circuit can be extended to the new switch location. An improperly wired fixture circuit must be replaced. This is the source of several change orders in my project. The other source was to add car port lights and a 220V circuit for the irrigation pump.

How things worked out

My contractor assumed the costs of replacing the unusable legacy circuits that lacked grounds.

I assumed the costs of correcting the substandard fixture circuits that were outside the work area.

I assumed the cost of moving the TV, voice, and data circuit in the wall that was removed.

I assumed the cost of adding the fixture circuits powered from the work area that were outside the work area (new carport lights).

Personal Computing

Colicky iPad

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 1, 2015

I dropped it once too often. Black tape holds the glass bits in at the border. And it is getting colicky, generally by becoming unresponsive at odd times. I’m trying to hold out until the Fall to replace the critter because Apple will freshen the product line some time in October. This offers a couple of advantages: I can get the newest product or I can pick up the 2014 iPad at a discount. Either is attractive as the current one is an iPad 2 32 bit only machine. Eventually, Apple will loose interest in making IOS updates for this older 32 bit hardware.

What I’ve tried

Back up to iTunes
Weed media (magazines and book)
Multiple restarts along the way until the storage summary looked good in iTunes
Yet another backup
IOS restore

Hyptheses

I working on two.

It just needs a good weeding and software restore.
One too many encounters with the hard has addled its brains (cracked trace or surface mount bond)

Maybe I can send it off to Cousin Kory for baking. I hope it just needs an IOS restore and app reload to make it good. We’ll see.

Personal Computing

Windows 10 in Parallels 10

Post author By davehamby
Post date August 1, 2015

Boy, the Windows World is different than the Mac OS X world. When Apple rolls out an OS X major update, it just works. The image downloads, the installer runs, and it works as advertised. And the OS X reviewers say useful things about it. The Windows universe is not quite as polished but Microsoft has made steady improvement with Windows 7, 8, and now 10. The technical toy press treats the Windows 10 roll out as “ho hum, yet another WIndows” kind of like “yet another Republican presidential candidate.” And the technical toy press is looking for clicks so most of the articles have scary leads for things that are not that bad. Is Windows 10 good enough to ditch my Mac? No. Is it good enough that I won’t mind cranking up Windows to run ESplanner? Yes. And I may even turn off convergence mode.

Convergence mode is a Parallels trick that lets Parallels make Windows files and Windows program shortcuts available on the desktop, in the dock, and in the Finder. Turn on convergence, click an icon, and the Windows application window appears in the OS X universe. Except to log in and log out, there is no need ever to look at Windows desktop. A nice feature but one that is nowhere near as necessary as it was a few releases ago when Windows was ugly. Windows 10 is well thought out, not a muddle of mouse and touch, and the new colors, dialogs, and features are easy on the eye and recognize that Windows is part of a larger universe of computing rather than the walled garden from MSDOS to Windows 7.

This article started out as a quick note but given the poor quality description of the installation experience out there, I decided to write a long form post for my peeps. Most of you change Windows versions when you decide to change computers. Most do this when the disk becomes colicky or one too many dodgy websites was visited and the machine became infested with adware or other user experience enhancements.

Why Upgrade?

Windows 7, 8, and 10 are the best Windows yet. As David Pogue explained in his reviews and in WIndows 8, the Missing Manual, Windows 8 is the two greatest versions of Windows yet. Windows 8 was an attempt to support both a mouse UI and a touch UI in a single operating system. Apple chose not to do this and carefully keeps OS X and IOS separate. In reality, they share a kernel and many enabling technology libraries but each has its own unique user interface library. Apple did this to ensure that applications would not have a mixed metaphor user interface. OS X applications are mouse only. IOS applications are touch only.

Because Microsoft tried to make one OS to rule them all, it got into trouble by mixing its metaphors. Some actions are mouse only, some are touch only, but many have both touch gestures and mouse gesture access. The catch is that it is difficult for the user to recognize which are which. Win 8 takes the OS X task bar and turns it into a task screen of Tiles. Tiles allow you to launch applications. Once an app is launched, the app can change the tile to show what the app is currently doing.

A charm bar on the right allows access to many Win 8 functions. To summon the charms, move the mouse to the upper right corner of the display and it will appear. Alternately, touching the upper right corner will summon the charms bar.

Windows 10 fixes the touch interface and mouse interface gaps. It also brings back the start menu to the bottom toolbar of each screen. Those folks I’ve spoken with also report that startup is faster, login is faster, and use is crisper and more intuitive than in Win 8.

The Buzz

I can’t find any. When OS X ships, Ars Technica has a major review of a hundred paragraphs or so. No interest anywhere to be found about Windows 10.

The Updater

Burried in the tool tray is an icon to download Windows 10. Click it. A process opens, thinks a bit, and reports that the VM’s display does not support Windows 10. This blows chunks in Parallels. The updater does not approve of the Parallels 10 virtual video device and exits without further comment

Updating from an ISO Image

The recommended work around is to install Windows 10 from an ISO image. You can obtain these at

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

This page describes the basic process and gives links for obtaining the proper 32 bit or 64 bit version. Having an Intel Core2 machine, I opted for the 64 bit version.

The scheme of things is as follows.

Start the Windows virtual machine and sign in to the admin account (the first one added, not you working account)
Download the ISO
Copy or save it to a 8 GB or larger FAT32 thumb drive
Open the iso
Start setup.exe
Review the license terms

The Win 10 License

The Windows 10 license has been a source of some controversy in the enthusiast press so I thought it would be a good Idea to review it. Highlights follow.

You must have a Windows license to run Win 10 on the hardware. You obtain a license by purchasing one with the hardware. If you home brewed, you need to have a license for Windows XP or newer and may be asked for the license key. If you purchased a built system from Dell, HP, Acer, etc the OEM will have included a license and license key with the machine. The key is usually on a sticker affixed to the case.
The license entitles you to install Windows on 1 computer or in one virtual machine.
The license allows you to make one backup copy whatever that is. Copy of the ISO image? It is silent on VM clones, etc. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
It recommends that you read the privacy policy which is separate.
It describes your rights to revert to an earlier version of Windows should you need to do so. This is largely left over from the bad taste of Vista days.
It describes the remote access policy (1 session every 90 days)
It describes the screen sharing policy (1 session at a time)

These terms are appropriate for a personal use machine that will be browsing, emailing, photo editing, etc. The privacy policies that have stirred some hate and discontent are separate from the license policy. I’ll cover those after installation when they can be examined and adjusted.

Continuing with the installation

After reviewing the license, I elected to continue with the installation. The installer proceeded as follows.

Check for updates. It may take a few minutes and they are not kidding. Too bad you can’t review the license while the updater performs the check.
Once the update check is complete, you are presented with a list of editions that you can install (Win 10 home for me) and the option to retain your user files. I selected both of these and let ‘er rip.
Once all the installation media is updated, the installer replaces the kernel and core libraries and restarts.
Next, it updates the applications libraries that come with the OS and will restart.
This process takes a couple of hours (similar to an OS X update)
To this point, I’ve not been asked to make choices or enter local data.

Once step 2 (installation launch) is complete, the installation appears to run unattended until the final reboot. I expect that the privacy policy and related options are on a per user basis so I’ll cover these when I talk about first user login.

My First Login

I have two accounts on the machine, the administrator account, cleverly called something else, and a user account which is also my Microsoft Id which look suspiciously like my Google ID. I logged into the administrator account first. This first login gave me the opportunity to personalize my settings for the new Edge browser, auto correct, WiFi auto-login, etc. I disabled a good bit of this stuff because it was not appropriate to a Mac Mini sitting at home running Win 10 in a Parallels virtual machine.

When I logged into the user account with my Microsoft ID I was not given the opportunity to make these settings. Apparently, they are supposed to be remembered across devices and are properties of my Microsoft ID.

Microsoft ID

A Microsoft ID is a single Email address associated with all of the Microsoft web services that you use much as Google ID and Apple ID are for those two companies. The following Microsoft knowledge base article is the root of the Windows 10 introduction tutorial. It’s actually pretty good at covering the basics and includes short videos that illustrate the use of the touch features.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/microsoft-account-tutorial

Performing Admin Tasks

Microsoft has moved all of the system administration stuff to new locations. In my limited experience, it is best to log out of the user account and into the admin account to perform administration tasks rather than switching from the user user to the admin user. When switching, all of the user environment processes remain active but their windows are not shown. These active processes can interfere with the management tasks.

Those Pesky Preferences

Lifehacker describes those pesky privacy settings on this page.

http://lifehacker.com/what-windows-10s-privacy-nightmare-settings-actually-1722267229

Basically, Microsoft has chosen to do some things like URL auto-completion and URL suggestion centrally in your Microsoft ID support back at the mother ship. Some of these things are also integrated with Cortana. When you make a request to Cortana, she uses context kept at the mother ship to assist you with your inquiry. Using these features sends some information to Microsoft which it accumulates. The troublesome bit is that Microsoft “shares context with trusted partners” without telling you who those partners are or what the relationship is. Could the NSA ba a Microsoft partner? The FBI? Amazon? Your imagination is as good as mine.

Fortunately, most of them can be tuned down. The Lifehacker article tells you where these settings are and gives some guidelines for adjusting them.

Getting Started

Windows 10 has moved most of the process navigation into the Windows Pane, the Tiles Pane, and the Apps Pane which is below the Tiles Pane. They’ve kept the best of the old and borrowed from Apple’s Launch Pad. These new metaphors are an improvement over the old menu of menus of programs.

It all starts at the Windows icon

The home screen has a Windows icon in the lower left corner. Clicking this icon raises a the primary dialog. The lower left has an abbreviated traditional menu that opens the file manager, and a few other key items. Above that is a list of frequently used items. To the right an array of application tiles appears. The lower menu bar functions similar to the Mac OS X dock. Icons representing each active user process open here.

Get Started and Settings

Settings in the menu and Get Started in the most used list are the places to go to customize the user’s Windows 10 experience. The Get Started pane brings up an extensive table of tutorials including video that introduce you to Windows 10. These are very well organized and helpful. This replaces the butt ugly help and Clippy.

Privacy

Microsoft’s privacy statement is now in plain language. Settings -> Privacy has a number of pages that control each feature. Most feature clusters have a master switch plus application switches much like in IOS settings. The master switch enables the service for all. The app switches enable access to the service for individual programs that have registered for access to the service. It’s really clear. There’s just a lot of it so you can enable information sharing for selected preferred services and turn it off for the majority of applications on the machine.

Home Remodeling

The grand design emerges

Post author By davehamby
Post date July 30, 2015

Kitchen floor in orange — The shape of the new space emerges

The flooring crew is working Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Monday. They set the Schluter DITRA decoupling membrane and new wood flooring on Wednesday. On Thursday the tile crew is planning the layout and cutting tile as needed. On Friday, they’ll mix thin set mortar and actually lay the tile. On Monday, they’ll return to grout the tile.

The orange area is the DITRA membrane. The label at the utility closet corner and the label at the right door jamb fall pretty close to the cabinet lines allowing visualization of the kitchen work area.

Adrian Tile and Wood Flooring

http://www.adriantilehardwood.com/home.html

Adrian Tile is doing the flooring work for this project. They have a good reputation in the community and are able to work in both wood and tile which made the planning of the wood to tile interface easy. The wood crew and the tile crew are young but know their craft. My project manager, Evan Kittrel, and the craftsmen reviewed the drawings and planned all of the boarders at the start of work. The crew fit the Schluter DITRA membrane, and worked the new wood in with the old in a very professional manner.

No job is simple!

Although it appears easy, this job threw a curve or two at the installers. The plan is to put T-molding at the joints between tile and wood and this required some thought. Where should the visible tile-wood joints be? The idea is to have a butt joint between the T-moding and cabinet trim. This means wood under the cabinets just a bit at the lounge end of the kitchen.

The second tricky bit was to locate the peninsula wood to tile joint under the cabinet but at a point where the down draft hood vent could be cut through the wood.This worked out to the location you see in the photol

And no old house is ever on the level. There is a bit of a low spot at the outside corner to the right. The plan is to use a bit extra thin set there to level the floor but it is something we can’t calculate so Evan scored an additional bag of thin set mix to allow for the unpredictable extra.

Tile laid without mortar — Trial Dry Lay

Extending the wood into the kitchen requires following the original staggering of planks.

20150730-DSC01411-6 — Weaving the new wood into the old. This technique makes the floor strong and attractive by staggering the plank to plank end joints in a stepped fashion.

Life during the job

The crew has also been a hit with the dogs and have been good at briefing me on the things I needed to know to keep their work pristine while the job is in progress. We’ll be without the tile area Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. On Thursday, the tile will be dry placed on the slightly warped floor. In this condition, it is not completely supported and subject to bending loads from walking. The dogs and I have to stay off during this period of storage in place. On Friday, the tile will be set but the mortar remains squishy for 12 hours of so. The crew recommends that we stay off until Sunday morning to ensure that the mortar has cured without shifting a tile out of plane or disturbing the grout joints by catching a nail and dragging a tile. On Monday, we’ll need to stay off again to allow the grout to cure without nail marks.

Tags flooring, Tile

Home Remodeling

Upstaged by a Houndy

Post author By davehamby
Post date July 25, 2015

Sam’s BellaBob has been putting me to shame with her regular posts. I’ve been slacking off but not for want of things to write about. In early July I took a road trip to visit the Watson Cousins Reunion and the remodel project has been gathering momentum. Since I last wrote, plaster has happened, painting has begun with the new plaster, walls, and ceiling painted, there is a stack of flooring out of the frame and tile in the garage.

Picking Materials

One of the challenges of remodeling is all of the decorating choices you must make without much in the way of a frame of reference. These choices, once made, can last the life of the structure and changing one’s mind is costly. This includes granite and tile for my project. I’ve written about visiting the stone yard and visiting the tile shops. Well, I finally made up my mind.

Granite

The winner is Saint Cecilia Light. Specifically, the stone below and the one behind it from Marva which has the best display of sensibly priced granite in Tidewater.

Tile

The winning floor tile is Roca Versailles Noce 12×24 (actually modular metric equivalent). This tile harmonizes with the cabinets and countertop. The base color is beige with brown, green, grey, and other colors in a faux travertine pattern. This is a HD printed pattern so it is likely that there won’t be two tiles alike in the floor. I’ve told the dogs that this tile is pre-tracked so they won’t be able to mess it up.

The winning backsplash tile is Crossfield White Plains 3×6 loose tile shown on the left. The granite below is an example of St Cecelia Light that is much lighter than my material. Same tones, just more white feldspar in the stone. This tile is porcelain HD printed with a light pattern that should echo the colors in the granite.

Tags Tile