Doggone it

Sometimes you want to hold small items in your metal lathe, for example, to turn a regular screw into a dog-point screw. (A dog-point screw has a little unthreaded nub at the tip, to guide it into the hole you're going to screw it in to.) Unfortunately, gripping tiny items with only the tips of your chuck jaws will damage the chuck. The chuck also can't hold on very well, so your tiny item tends to get ripped out of the chuck -- doing more damage to the chuck (and to itself).

The solution? Make a work holding device. This one started out as 1/2" 12L14 (free-machining steel) round stock, about 1" in length. In the back end, a large hole big enough to pass the entire screw (in this case an Allen head, properly called a Socket-Head Cap-Screw, or SHCS) was drilled most -- but not all -- of the way though, to make sort of a cup with the front end still closed.


Then in the front end, I drilled a much smaller hole  -- and this is the clever bit -- tapped threads to match the threads of the screw. The length of the front hole is calculated to allow 5 full threads of engagement (4 threads would be sufficient, but I like to over-engineer). This produces a hollow tube. The screw is slipped into the back and threaded in so it sticks out the front, thus:

 

In essence, I gave my screw a really big head (hey, it happens to all of us now and again). Now I have a nice, big, 1/2" diameter 1" long item I can safely and securely chuck, and then machine whatever I want to on the end of the screw. (In the picture above, the dog point has already been completed.) Luckily, the lathe's normal direction of rotation tends to seat the screw threads more securely into the holder under tool pressure, so things don't go haywire when you start cutting. (Speaking of haywire, my first attempt at this sort of holder ended in an ugly mess because I made it out of aluminum. So, steel is definitely the material of choice for this job.)

When I'm done machining, I just stick the Allen key in the open back end to unscrew my screw from my holder.

In other news, I bought some 1144 steel (A.K.A. "Stressproof"). Not for any particular purpose -- just to have some on hand for as-yet unimagined future projects... and because I wanted to try it. 1144 is about 3 times stronger than mild steel, yet paradoxically, it machines wonderfully. Plus, it's a little cheaper than 12L14, so 1144 is now my second-favorite steel alloy. Still nothing compared to the sheer joy of machining brass, of course, with it's golden fountains of tiny chips; but sadly, brass is over 4x the cost of steel -- making it uneconomical for many applications. :(

Lights, workbench, action!

I had actually built a workbench in early January, but the shop was too dark and cold to use it. So, today's little project was leveling the workbench, securing it to the wall (it's a little top-heavy and tippy), and hanging lights.

The bench is made from I think 3 2x4s and 1 sheet of OSB, cut in half and layered 2 deep. It's just temporary, though -- just to get things rolling until I get the nerve up to gut and rennovate the whole shop. The walls of the shop are dirty and full of holes, and because of the holes, we can see there are large sections with no insulation. Also, the old inefficient T12 lights all need to be replaced with modern T8 fixtures, and the existing lights are all in the wrong places anyway (and of course there aren't enough of them).

All this adds up to stripping everything down to the studs, insulating, putting up new walls and ceiling, and running new electric. You'll notice I put electric after walls -- I think I want the electric all surface mount, so it can be extended or reconfigured without tearing into walls.

Until then, I also put up temporary lighting for the temporary workbench. Conveniently, an outlet was right where I needed it to plug the lights into the ceiling. About time something happened in my favor...

Yeah, snail's pace is right

I spent most of January and the beginning of February sick, so progress has been frustratingly slow. The house is livable for now, so I've been trying to get my workshop in some semblance of order. In the beginning of January, I ordered a window-mount heat pump. I'm sure you're all familiar with window mount air conditioners, but here in Idaho, we usually need a lot more heat than cool. A heat pump will cool in the summer, but more importantly, it will heat inexpensively in the winter.

Ordinarily, an electric heater is expensive to run. All electric heaters are nearly 100% efficient, but even though they don't waste power, they sure guzzle a lot of it! A heat pump does run on electricity, but uses about 1/3 the juice as a pure "space heater". So while not as a cheap as natural gas, it's still not too shabby.

Few window A/C units work as a heat pump. Most A/C units with "heat" are merely space heaters. Fine, perhaps, for climates like California, Texas, or Florida where heating is seldom needed, but not so much for Idaho. No, a window A/C with heat pump is pretty rare. In fact, I think Amana is the only company that makes them (and, surprisingly, they're actually still made in the US!).

Now, there are plenty of PTACs (like what you find in many hotel rooms) out there by GE and others that are heat pumps, but they're all 4 feet wide so it's unlikely you'd put one in a window. PTACs are good choices for heating/cooling a shop or garage, but do require a big ol' hole in a wall.

As it happened, my shop came with a hole in the wall above the window -- a small hole though, so rather than reframe, I just got a window unit that fit the existing opening. The good news is, it has plenty of capacity to heat and cool the space, being 11.5k BTU/h. A 19k BTU/h Amana is even available in window-size, but would have been overkill for us -- oversizing a heat pump is almost as bad as under sizing it, as it leads to moisture problems (not good in a machine shop filled with steel that can rust!)

As it happens, my heat pump requires a 240V outlet. No problem, Lemontree and I are already honorary plumbers, so I can be an electrician too, and install one! Actually it's not that simple, I did spend a week or so researching the NEC electrical codes. There are lots of rules to follow, but that's okay as those rules are what keep us from getting electrocuted or having our houses burn down.

After careful study, I applied for a permit, purchased about $40 worth of materials (copper wire ain't cheap!), and pretty much finished in two evenings. I was just about ready to have it inspected, when I got sick again and again. Just as soon as I felt halfway human, I'd get hit with something else. So went about 5 weeks. Finally though, today I passed the inspection and with Lemontree's help, hoisted the heat pump into position. And it even works!

Now that the shop can be a warm and pleasant place to work, hopefully I can get more things done. As long as I don't catch yet another bug...

At a Snail's Pace

I just wanted to post a quick update to our various projects. Maybe Corwin will find some pictures and post them later, but in the meantime, I'll just tell you what we've been up to.

First off, it was great to get the chicken coop to a stage of completion that we could put the chickens in there for a whole day with extra food and water so we could visit family for Christmas without having to bother neighbors to care for our hens. We just screwed the egg doors on for the time being and hung the man door. Finishing the coop and building a fence is now going to have to wait for warmer weather AKA ground thaw. We still need to attach the egg doors properly and side and paint the whole thing. We'll need to put up a fence, and I'm considering options to keep the hens from flying over and perhaps keep some predators out. A few days ago, a red tail hawk bumped into the house on it's way down, quail hunting. I'm glad it wasn't a chicken tha got caught!

Corwin has started putting his shop together. He's had to add a new receptical for a heat pump he ordered. I'm sure he will soon have a post about his exciting adventures as they develop.

Inside, we have been working on our "bonus room". We had to tear out part of the subfloor and drywall, as there had been moisture damage. We patched the doggy door hole the previous owners had put in the wall, a doorway that led to the master bedroom, and various other holes in the wall and ceiling, including the hole for the water heater vent that we removed. We tore out wiring as well, deleting two wall switches and a ceiling outlet. After all that, My brother and my dad came over to help me tape and mud the bonus room and the master bedroom for good measure (remember the doorway we walled up?). My brother then textured both rooms for me. I'm so appreciative of his help. He came back three days in a row, using his time off to help me. My dad brought me his paint spraying machine, and after a few hiccups getting it to work right for me (it needed a new filter installed), I primed both rooms, and painted the bonus room a nice pastel yellow. I'm waiting on Corwin to decide on a paint color before painting our room, but he still has workshop on the mind, so I'm waiting (im)patiently. We still need to put in the new subfloor (there was a moisture barrier that protected the bottom layer of floorboards, so we were able to work around it), paint and replace the baseboards, then have new carpet installed.

Nothing comes together as quickly as I imagine, but we are moving along slow and steady. What with keeping up with a household, and flu and cold season taking it's toll, the fact we can get up and get back to work is a great blessing.

Budget ridge

The roof is done! After I did about 2/3rds of the shingling, Lemontree tried her hand and then ended up finishing. I was much happier fetching shingles and flinging them onto the roof for her than I was nailing them down myself.

Here I am, putting the ridge on. As you can see, we used "architectural" shingles, to match our house. However, the ridge shingles for architectural roofs come in a box for like $60 and one box contains enough ridge shingles for three chicken coops. Too rich for our blood! Instead, we just got a pack of cheap 3-tabs from the same manufacturer* as our architectural shingles, and in the same color. Then we cut the 3-tabs into thirds, making them 1-tabs, and used those to lay down the ridge. (I dunno if that's kosher for a human dwelling, but the chickens don't seem to mind.)

Both top rows of architectural shingles bend over the peak, and so do both top rows of tar paper underlayment, so even with a "cheap" 3-tab ridge it's gonna be real hard for water to find it's way in through 6 layers.

Even though we only bought 1 pack, we still have a ton of leftover 3-tabs, so there's plenty to re-ridge after 20 years when this ridge fails.

We also got the rest of the sheathing on. Lemontree will cut in a window on this side later.

* The shingle manufacturer, if you're curious, is Owens Corning. We got that kind because that's the kind Lowes carries, and Lowes is the closest place to our house. (We selected Certainteed shingles for our real house, because they seem to be the best and that's what the roofer with the cool German accent uses.) If the Owens Corning turns out to be trash, oh well, it's just a chicken coop. And since the coop was roofed by amateurs anyway, any failures are more likely to be due to the installers rather than the product used.

Structural rigidity

We took a little break from roofing, because it was becoming obvious the whole thing was a little wobbly. The sheathing -- OSB in this case, but you could use plywood, particle board, whatever -- is what keeps those stud walls from racking or becoming a rhombus. Stud walls are good for holding the roof up, but can't resist sideways forces... such as the ones I set up when I crawl around on the roof. Good thing I don't get seasick.

The coop is now solid as a rock, as any building should be. Above, you can see a cutout for the egg door. Below, you can see the opening for the people door and inside past it, the two tiers of nesting boxes.

 

Without a ceiling, nasty chicken-eating animals like racoons could climb right up through the attic and down into a smorgasbord of fine dining options. It was all hands on deck to get that installed, the kids helped hold it in place while I zipped screws through it into the truss chords. Good thing we ponied up the extra $2 for 1/4" plywood vs the 3/8" OSB -- the plywood is feather-light in comparison.

We have shingles

No, not that kind of shingles! This kind:

You can also see the cedar fascia. And if you think the fascia looks suspiciously like 3/4" thick fence pickets that have been ripped down to 5" and the dog ears cut off... you'd be right.

Corwin, the roofer

Got the chicken house decked, tar papered, and edge-metal'd today. That sounds simple to say, but it took us all day to do that.

First, we used nails to space the sheets of OSB. Should they expand with moisture or temperature (for example, they were installed at 34°F but will see 120°F in in the summer sun), we don't want them to lift or buckle at the edges like the Rocky Mountain range. The OSB was attached with screws around the perimeter (to resist wind uplift) and nails in the field (cheaper, faster, and more fun to drive with a palm nailer. B-b-b-b-blat!)

Next we cut lengths of 15lb tar paper (sometimes called felt paper, for reasons unknown to me) on the ground and tried to get them on the roof without tears (either kind). A random website said to use the fewest fasteners possible, so I just used roofing nails on the corners of each sheet. This critical error revealed itself to us right after we finished the last sheet, when a gust of wind ripped it right back off, leaving little holes in the paper the exact size of the roofing nail heads. Apparently, using the fancy nails with 1" plastic caps isn't just something roofers do for fun. Stupid website. So, off to the store for cap nails, back to replace the torn tar paper, then go crazy sinking plenty of cap nails everywhere. Ugh.

Then it was time for fascia. Actually, we should have done the fascia before trimming the tar paper flush with the decking, because ideally the tar paper should protect the top of the fascia too. Too bad, we're newbies and messed it up. Fortunately, the edge metal will still cover the fascia top so no biggie. No picture of the fascia, we had to rush to beat the clock. Lemontree did a good job figuring out the compound angles to cut all the miters (where the gable fascia meets the eave fascia for example is complicated). Thinking about doing all those angles the right way makes my head hurt.

By this time the sky was getting dark and little snowflakes started to drift by lazily. I wished I could also drift by lazily, but we needed to get the edge metal up before the wind blew more of the tar paper off, cap nails or no cap nails. So we tried to shake feeling back into our frozen fingers and got out the tinsnips. In our house, tinsnips are normally never actually used to cut tin, but instead are used to open items in those stupid bubble packs. Today, though, we cut T-shape drip edge metal for the eaves and L-shape drip edge metal for the rakes (rakes are the edge of the roof over a gable wall). The T-shape eave metal goes under the tar paper, so that any water that gets under the shingles, goes over the tar paper and eave metal to keep it off the fascia. The L-shape rake metal goes over the tar paper, so that wind-driven rain cannot get between the tar paper and the top of the fascia.


So, our roof didn't turn out quite as pretty as Tom Silva does it on This Old House. Despite lots of care measuring and cutting our trusses, the rafter tails somehow still ended up at various heights so the decking looked a little drunk when you looked down the length. We also kinda sorta made the whole coop a bit of a trapezoid rather than a square (my fault) so the north wall is some 7" longer than the south wall... this required the installation of oversize decking, which was then trimmed with a circular saw. Ok so I can't cut straight with a circ saw, they didn't teach that skill in school. So now we have wavy decking edges up and down and side to side. Sigh. They say, though, that the difference between the master and the apprentice, is the master knows how to hide his mistakes. Well, I would never claim to be a master but we pushed and pried things a little straighter when we screwed the fascia on, then covered the remaining uglies with the edge metal. Once the shingles are on, I don't think you'll be able to see any flaws (fingers crossed).

At the end it was totally dark, sorry for no pic. But the roof is "dried in" with tar paper protecting the OSB so the OSB doesn't melt should it rain. Sadly though, we only get maybe 1 hour of light after I get home from work each day, so shingling is likely to take all next week.

I must say I have a newfound respect for homebuilders, and now I understand why houses are so expensive. Doesn't make me feel any better about making mortgage payments though.

Chicken house

Chicken house is starting to look like a house. I don't think we can really call it a coop, since it's big enough for me to walk around in. At least, if I don't mind whacking my head on the truss chords. Every. Single. Time. Ow.

Here I am trimming the rafter tails with a circ saw in between rain showers. I bought the lumber for the rafters a little long, as we had not yet decided on an overhang size. Lemontree settled on 2', or thereabouts.

Note: Do not attempt to build a house based on what you see here. We've used 2x4s 24" on center, with wooden gusset plates to make longer lengths out of our reclaimed lumber. Of course that is not strong enough for human habitation, but I'm pretty sure it won't blow down in a strong wind, or collapse under a winter snow load. On the other hand, if there's an earthquake, I hope it happens while the chickens are outside.

Here's a little bit of fun. The ladder to the nesting boxes takes up a lot of room, which makes it hard for humans to get in periodically to muck out the... er, muck. So,

it hinges up. (The hinges are also reclaimed from the former hot tub.) Additionally, there is a carefully engineered, cantilevered 2x4 cut at an angle under the landing. It provides solid support for the dead load of the ladder as well as the live load of 7.3 average chickens... just don't let the kids sit on it.

Plumbing inspection: PASSED!

Well I can finally let out that breath I've been holding in for the last... month. The Boise City Plumbing Code inspector signed off on our total-gut-and-replumb of our supply pipes this afternoon, after a surprisingly brief inspection. My custom recirculating hot water pump configuration didn't even phase him.

So, now I can finally sleep at night without the nightmares of the inspector shaking his head sadly and telling us it all has to come out again. Phew! Good job Certified Amateur Plumber Lemontree!!

Installing a swamp cooler in the snow

Yep it snowed yesterday and there I was, up on the roof installing a swamp cooler in the middle of November. I was lucky to even get the swamp cooler, actually. Home Depot and Lowes stopped carrying them in their summer seasonal section long before our roof was put on, so I had to order it online and have it drop shipped. And the roof jack (the duct for the air) and leg kits were available from one, just one website on the whole internet after summer was over. Lucky they still had some in stock!

I also had a hard time finding 1/2" pipe jacks. (Those are the things that let pipes stick up through the roof without letting water leak in around the pipe.) Most jacks are designed for plumbing vents and are thus way too huge for a little electrical conduit and an even smaller water pipe. Finally I found "solar" jacks (for installing photovoltaic solar cells, presumably) that were the right size, and they were actually local.

Last night I got the roof jack leveled and the base pan attached, then ran out of daylight (shakes fist at the US Congress for their Daylight "Savings" shenanigans). Then this morning Tiffany and I braved the frosty roof and she helped me assemble the corners and top.

The cooler is currently empty inside. The blower assembly that normally goes in the middle will be stored in the garage this winter -- it's too cold to rig up ropes and things to haul it up onto the roof right now. We'll finish in the spring.

And there it is, up there on the back of the house. Yeah, not the most attractive thing but I think it's better to be up there than stuck on the side of the house where it's right in your face. Traditional A/C condensers are just as ugly, and are also louder than a swamp cooler, so this is actually better in my opinion.

Oh and below is a slightly better shot of the roof now that it's daytime. We finally finished patching siding and painting everything (just one coat in many places, so we'll need a second coat in the spring) too, so the house looks pretty darn presentable now if I do say so myself! I included a "before" shot for comparison:

Before:

After:

By the way, on the 19th and 20th of November we get new windows. The window installers are adding green trim (to match the fascia) around the windows, so the appearance will change yet again, shortly.

Also, here's the finished water heater install. Plumbing may not be sexy but I think it turned out pretty well, for a rank newbie.

The roof is done!

Madison Roofing did a good job on our roof. (Of course they had better, considering what we paid.) We also liked talking with Madison's project manager Hans Weikl, with his cool German accent -- we joke that we chose Madison's bid more for the accent than for the quality of roofing. (We certainly didn't go by price alone, as Madison was not the lowest bidder: a roof is not a place to cheap out.)

There was some debate on shingle color selection, I don't think either Lemontree or I got the color we really wanted but it looks ok. It's actually somewhat close to the old faded cedar shake roof in color. And let me say, I love the high-profile ridgeline. See, most roofs around here have a plain ridge and "mushroom" or "turtle" vents spaced every 3-4 feet near the ridge. Those are stone-age technology, as far as I'm concerned. I did my homework and found that a continuous ridge vent offers superior ventilation with only a slight increase in cost -- and now that we have one on our roof, I have to admit it looks sharp too. Makes for a really nice architectural detail.  Ok, it may not work for all styles of homes but for a ranch with a low-pitch hip roof and Dutch gables like ours... oh, yes.

The only downside now is I have to buy a leaf blower to clean the leaves off the roof so they don't collect and rot (can't sweep asphalt with a broom like you would shakes). Wait, what downside? I love buying new power tools! :)

Sorry, all I have right now is this crummy picture taken in the fast-fading daylight. It doesn't even show the awesome ridgeline very well. :( Click the pic to make it bigger:

And the Golden Crimpers Award goes to...

And the Golden Crimpers Award goes to... Lemontree!! (The Golden Pipe Wrench just isn't appropriate in this day and age of modern plumbing materials, as the Pex crimpers are now a plumber's primary weapon.)

So, Monday we started cutting out our old plumbing and hooking up the new. By Monday night we were tired and dirty and had no water for showers, because we had a nagging leak at the well pressure tank. It started out as a small leak in one location, so I tightened the threaded pipe a little, which started a new leak somewhere else. Tightened that, and the leak got worse. That's odd, I thought, and tightened it a bit more... leaks even faster. Uh-oh. Yep, I cracked the complicated cast iron manifold that has a bunch of ports in it for the well pressure switch and pressure gauge and relief valve and things. No showers for us!

Concurrent with all this, we had also decommissioned the old water heater and had a licensed plumber move the exhaust flue/chimney to the garage for the new water heater. Scheduling was almost a disaster, because the plumber showed up late just as the roofers were leaving for the day. Fortunately, the roofing foreman and the plumber were able to put their heads together and come up with a plan for moving the water heater chimney that both parties agreed with. Poor plumbers were there until like 9pm... but they got the job done. They also tore out the old gas piping that ran along the back patio. It was ugly, rusty, and in violation of code (it had too little clearance from grade, and it had NO hangers for support -- it was just resting on a couple of wood blocks. Worse, it went across the threshold for the back door, so you'd step on the unsupported pipe if you weren't careful). (The new gas pipe runs in the garage attic, protected from weather and neatly out of sight.)

So -- next day, Lemontree buys a new manifold to replace one I cracked. I tried to transfer the old relief valve to the new, but it snapped off because the threads were welded into the old fitting. Hil-freakin-arious. So off Lemontree goes to get a new relief valve too.

That finally installed, the original leak at the well tank came back. Being careful not to crack any more fittings this time, I tighten... and tighten... and tighten it until I run out of strength on my biggest pipe wrench. Still leaks. We think rust flakes and sand (which the old well tank was apparently half full of) contaminated the threaded connection, so no amount of cleaning with a toothbrush could ever remove all the grit from the joint. So, off to Lowe's for a new pressure tank. $250 later we had a leak-free connection and could finally wash our dirty hands and hair and flush the toilets. You know, I used to hate showering in that nasty 70's puke-green bathtub with 41 years of hard water stains... but last night it seemed like the lap of luxury

So, the long and short of it was, Lemontree's dozens of crimped Pex connections has shown no leaks so far, while it was my ham-fisted recklessness that caused all our headaches. So Lemontree deserves the award.

I also discovered that copper compression fittings have to be ridiculously tight. At each of our stub-outs for the two bathroom sinks, kitchen sink, and toilets, we used shutoff valves ("stops") that use a compression connection to the copper stub. (Should a stop malfunction, this will make them easier to replace than if they were soldered on.) I thought I had installed them all pretty tight, but 6 out of the 9* seeped water out the joints. It took several rounds of tightening with my biggest crescent wrench until they made groaning noises and finally stopped leaking. So, too tight and you crack cast iron fittings, too loose and copper fittings leak. Sheesh, I can't win.

As an aside, it seems we needed a new well pressure tank anyway. The well pump used to short-cycle twice for a single toilet flush, probably because the old tank was clogged with sand at the bottom -- becoming effectively a 0-gallon tank instead of a 30-gallon. This is our first house with a well, so we had assumed such behavior was normal. Apparently, it's not! Now, we can get several flushes without the pump cycling, so pump should last longer now. I also upgraded the system with an added tank-shutoff-valve (so we can service the plumbing in the future without draining the tank and wasting 30 gallons of water) and an added union on the pump pressure switch so it can be removed without disconnecting the 240-volt wiring. I don't know why it was installed in the first place without a shutoff and a union, but then, there are a lot of things about this house like that.

By the way, I'm pretty sure the old water heater is also full of sand, because it too used to short cycle. And the day we moved in, we tried to flush it, but never got more than a trickle out of the bottom. So that's gonna be fun to drain and get it out of the house. Rest assured we will be regularly flushing the new water heater to prevent a recurrence, although I'm hoping the sand issue only occurred because previous owners ran the well dry by watering the lawn with well water (at least, that's what our neighbors tell us). Since we won't be doing that, I'm hoping the sand will not be as bad from now on.

In other news, our old roof has been torn off and new decking and tar paper laid down as of Tuesday evening. Our attic smells nice now -- all that new OSB smells like perfume. Today the roofers start shingling.

* 9 stops: 2 toilets, two each for 2 bathroom sinks, and 3 for under the kitchen sink -- code requires the dishwasher have a dedicated stop.

Corwin, the plumber

To be fair, Lemontree spent a lot more hours (worming around in the nasty dirt in the crawlspace, no less), but I'm the one writing this so I get to choose the title.

After finding that plumbers want money in the amount rivaling a college education before they will replumb a house, we decided to treat ourselves with the pleasure of doing it ourselves. Lemontree used PEX in the crawlspace and I did copper anywhere the piping is exposed to the living space. I achieved a 90% success rate soldering, which means I ended up trashing a few fittings but even with re-buying a few mutilated fittings we still came out way ahead.

The experience did reaffirm to me that I MUCH prefer machining metal over joining it though. Soldering (and brazing, and welding) seems to be more of an art than a science... and I guess I'm not an artist.

Anyhoo, the complex arrangement you see in the pic is for the recirculating hot water pump. There is a check valve to ensure hot water drawn at taps comes only from the water heater hot line, and not from the recirc return line (which would result in lukewarm instead of hot water). And there is a faucet to bleed air from the line (since the pump would burn out if it tried pump air).

The pump itself will not be at the water heater; by placing it in the laundry room -- closer to the furthest fixture from the water heater -- our thermostatic pump will be more energy efficient. If it were at the water heater, it would have to pull hot water all the way through 70' of return line before sensing the hot water and turning off. By putting it as far away from the water heater as possible, it only has to pull hot water through about 12' of return before it shuts down. It's not so much the electricity we're saving (the pump only uses 11W, less than a compact fluorescent light bulb), it's the 58' of water we want to avoid heating and re-heating all day long.