Super stretch puppy

Is that puppy under the couch really that long??  Wow..

Ok, maybe not THAT long.. caught both of the pups napping in just the right spots for a funny pic.

James 3:7

7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind,

When puppies get bored.. sigh.

 So I left them alone for 30 minutes while I worked in my office.. They knocked over a chair and also chewed up a new TV remote.

Will probably buy a couple extra remotes now..

The good news is they didn't swallow the batteries.. just chewed a bit.

Thanks for reading.. come back again for the an episode of "dogs gone wild".  

Genesis 1:21

21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

The bad water heater that wasn't: A Disconnect

 We were out of town for a few days when my parents, who were puppy sitting, let us know that our water heater stopped producing hot water.  "Great.." is what went through my mind.  When we got back, I did some checks on the water heater.  The smart controls were blank. My non-contact voltage tested (which is all I could find that second) indicated that power was getting to it at the wires entering the water heater. I even verified that power was getting to the elements - but no hot water output.  So I assumed that lighting or a surge fried the electronics. 

I would try to fix myself but no replacement parts at the local store. I didn't want to call a plumber - the cost at that point would be close to replacement cost of the water heater.  So I did the next best thing. I bought a new non-smart water heater. I turned off the breaker and installed over a couple hours.  Hours later, as I went to test and enjoy the fresh hot water - I was disappointed.  There still wasn't any hot water.  What?

I searched around and finally found my multi-meter and checked  the electrical.  I was only getting a few volts instead of the 240v I expected.  So it did have power but just barely.  So I checked the breaker and it had 240v as expected.  I also had a disconnect switch for the water heater that I had installed next to it.  I went to pull the disconnect out and wasn't able to. At that point, I figured that was a bad sign and related to the issue. I ended up breaking most of the surrounding plastic face for the disconnect. I finally was able to get to the internals and found that they were melted and the metal switch pieces were not touching correctly. 

Once I finally extracted the rest of the parts, I could tell that one of the screw terminals must have loosened and then heated excessively - melting the supports and causing the remaining metal to lose further contact.

A trip to Lowe's got me a new disconnect box. After installation and a "good tightening", we finally had hot water.

Here is a picture of the melted disconnect switch parts.

This was an inconvenient problem but we were blessed by the fact we didn't have a house fire which this could easily could have produced.

Hope your day is blessed. Thanks for reading!

Scott

Jokes for my kids

My kids like to grown at my "bad dad" jokes. I come up with quite a few but I tend to quickly forget them before sharing.  I hope to capture many of the jokes here so they can be shared later.

• What did the sheep say when a pig told them that all the cows got stuck in the mud by the pond?
• The sheep said that is a "Cow-tastrophe".
• What did the carrot say to the mature green onion when it saw containers of new onions?
• You should be proud of your bunches of "bunches of [baby] onions"!

Here are my Chick-fil-a jokes from some time ago.

Random ideas and questions

1.  Since the gravity from a black hole pulls in both light and matter, how might someone determine the effect on matter as it is drawn into a black hole?
1. Could quantum entanglement be used? If two atoms were quantum entangled and one was released into the gravity of a black hole could you monitor the remaining atom for changes in spin patterns as the other atom is drawn into the black hole? What about trying to change the spin of the local atom and determine if there is any type of resistance to change in the spin? Would we even know if/when the quantum entanglement was broken or disrupted?
2. Every CNC type machine I am aware of uses electric motors (servo or stepper) to drive a screw rod which then moves a platform or device. As the desired max distance increases, it becomes more difficult (or expensive) to handle larger speeds due to rod "flapping" (over a distance without any intermediate supports). Thicker/stiffer rods or reduced speeds often help. Is there a potentially better method available?  Maybe an electric motor with a hollow threaded shaft mounted to the platform instead? So instead of the long threaded shaft spinning, the electric motors threaded shaft spins and moves the platform along the threaded rod?  Downside is extra weight of electric motor on top of the normal platform/device weight. 
3. Homes have all types of appliance that either generate, consume and/or move heat from one place to another; Clothes dryers create heat, hot water generation creates and/or consumes heat, refrigerators and HVAC move heat between locations. Would it be useful/possible to design homes with a "central heat exchanger" where waste heat could be transferred to devices needing heat? i.e. Heat produced by a clothes dryer might get transferred to a water heater instead of directly vented to outside a house. This might need intentional design support for appliances and there are likely issues with "dirty sources" like lint in dryer exhaust. Probably many other issues I'm not thinking of this second.
4. Hot water is useful and needed for many things - showers, baths, washing dishes/clothes, pool heating, etc. In warm climates, using some form of solar heating of water usually involves use of some type of plastic piping, etc which is directly exposed to sunlight - where the heat transfers through the pipe into the water/liquid which then is moved somewhere else for use.  The piping outside is usually on a roof or possibly even taking up space in a yard.  Instead of having external piping, would it be efficient enough to use attic space?  The roof area is typically pretty significant so a huge amount of piping could be run in between rafters/trusses. Lack of direct sun reduces efficiency but the larger area and tendency to retain heat may make up for it - although cost may be a limiting factor. I also wonder if using the "waste heat" from an attic may provide a benefit of lowering cooling needs for a home? There would be obvious concerns about leaks in an attic but I wonder if techniques used for joining pipes for underground geothermal lines might work well. There is also the "my roofer used too long of a nail" type problems to avoid.
5. If small drones were combined with helium "balloons" for lack of a better description and light weight, flexible solar panels with power storage - could it maintain flight for weeks or more? Could modular, self-assembling floating platforms be created from groups of drones? It would likely need some sort of method to prevent "flapping" of the joined drones - maybe some sort of torsion bar joined across the drones.  I visualize this like torsion bars in cars and trucks. I don't consider this "floating" drone as a close cousin to blimps, etc - it would be more aerodynamic and suited to maintaining its location with relatively low power consumption.  Applications of this might include long term monitoring of beaches and shallows (for sharks, etc), wildlife movements (pythons in Florida, turtle nests in remote areas), security, ground monitoring (sinkholes?), disaster relief deliveries, search/rescue, etc. Some domains are likely better handled by simpler technology so this would be more specialized. Domains of use should require fast setup, easy to relocate/remove/replace, reduce danger to human life for placing/operating/monitoring.

What is difficult?

 It is days like today where the meaning of difficult changes.  Before today, difficult meant dealing with things like a couple of spots of skin cancer on a nose and recovery after surgery.  It also meant dealing with the frustration of finding a good job in the IT field again. And then there are other aches and pains to deal with.

Today it changed a bit. 

Our daughter decided she wanted to join the Marines just before last Christmas (2022).  We sent her off on Dec. 19th, 2022 and in about 2 weeks she ended up with injuries of unknown severity.  Initially she was told it was just a stress fracture in one foot.  Over the weeks, she was in more pain and swelling so finally they did an MRI. It now appears that it is more severe than a stress fracture and both tibia's might also be affected. She went from simply being on crutches to a boot and a wheelchair.  With only 5 minutes a week of phone time, it is difficult to get the full picture of what is going on.

So 'difficult' is having your child in pain, away from home and no one knowing what her medical outcome is going to be. 

The best we can do is pray and ask for prayers from others.

God is always in control..  need to remember this more than daily.

I wish everyone a blessed day.

Scott

Daughter - killer of trees (and tires too)

 So my daughter was known as "killer of trees" when she ran into a recently planted peach tree with her dirtbike and knocked it flat over.  Now she is also "killer of tires" after a blowout on I4 between Lakeland and Plant city.  

We were blessed that it wasn't raining and we were not up north in the snow.  The worrisome aspect was that she was on I4 (which is notoriously busy) around 7pm (dark at that point) and in a section with concrete barriers and very little room.  We were very impressed she got the car over safely and didn't bump the barrier.  She was only a few inches from the barrier on the right side though.  Before my dad and I got there to help her - I asked her to get out the right-hand side and see if the tire could be patched, etc - it took her a few minutes to get out but she came back with a "I don't think so Dad.." which is pretty self-evident now. I had thrown in a small "pancake" air compressor which I had pre-filled just in case.  Didn't need to bother. 

She only had few feet on the drivers side front (which is where the tire blew).  My dad parked behind and hugged the side of the road a bit to "convince" drivers to stay to the left a bit.  That helped a bunch.  I had not had the spare tire and jack out of this car before - was wishing I had brought a speed jack.  I just slowly worked the jack up - taking a bit of a rest here and there for my knees and to enjoy the very cool breeze from the tractor trailers speeding by a few feet away.

As I was sitting there getting the car jacked up, I started to wonder how she got out of the car from the passenger side - it seemed like there was no room.  All I could visualize was her climbing out the window onto the concrete barrier (with a drop-off on the other side) - sort of "The Dukes of Hazzard" style. She told me later she had just enough room to squeeze the door open and get out - only because she was at slight angle was that possible.  

It is kind of funny the way some obvious things escape a person at certain moments. When I was getting the jack, etc out of the back of the car, I found a short bright rod/stake which I thought was in with the jack, etc.  It was just cheap plastic and my mind just jumped to guess it was one of the "emergency items" which you could use to either wave cars around you or put out behind a car to make it more "visible".  I wasn't impressed by the cheap plastic though.  The next day though - I went back out and found it again..  As I looked at it in the daylight I was thinking "something is odd"..

I rotated it a bit and when I saw our last name "Case" written on it, I suddenly knew what was odd.  It wasn't an emergency item - it was out of an old kids horse shoe game and this stake simply ended up in with the spare tire, etc.   I got to laughing with my mom and I told her about it and said I was glad I didn't have my daughter out behind the car waving it at traffic.  We got a big laugh out of that thought.

Trying to find replacement tires now - it is an odd size of course.  Seems like only one or maybe two (less common) brands even make tires in the required size.  I had planned on putting run flat tires on as replacements but there are none in that size.  It is hard enough to find someone with a set of those tires from the 2 tire types.  

1 Thessalonians 5:18
King James Version

18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Working and living around Tampa - the challenges

It has been over six years since we moved from up north down to the Tampa area.  We lived in an apartment for a while when we first moved down here - the biggest reason for that was the time it afforded us to research and find the best place to buy a home.  

I did a lot of research before picking the Tampa area as the place we should move to.  In many ways that research was correct.  There are many nice things to do around Tampa, there are many IT jobs, etc.  When we were choosing a house though, I wanted to keep options open a bit though.  I didn't know people who worked at any of the local IT employers so I wanted to be located somewhere central in case a future employment change was needed.  This was very sound reasoning and in the end was useful to a degree.

The first place I worked at down here was located in Temple Terrace.  From our house, it was typically a 35-50 minute drive which wasn't too bad.  There were occasional days where it was over 1.5 hours when accidents occurred at the wrong place/time.  Overall this was fine - until that employer announced pending layoffs and everyone had 3 basic choices - quit on your own terms, stay and see if you ended up laid off, select to take a termination package which required you to stay for some amount of time before you could get their "layoff benefits" package.  Since I had only been there for a couple years, the "layoff benefits" package wasn't very enticing. If you ended up having to stay until one of a set of predetermined dates - you end up looking for work with a flood of other people at the same time. In the end, it seemed like the best move was to quit on my own terms and find a new job before a large mass of other people were also looking for work.

I didn't have a lot of time to find something else but I did my best.  I found a place which was starting some similar cloud work and had some other interesting aspects.  When I interviewed there (about 10am), the drive was only about 1 hour which wasn't bad.  I was a bit nervous because the distance was quite a bit farther and required taking the interstate which had traffic issues on the news almost daily.  I decided to take this job and nearly immediately found that it was typically 75-90 minutes driving there and usually at least 90 minutes coming home.  My GPS would try to route me around traffic but that was usually pointless - I often ended up on streets with stop signs every few feet or the route was just erratic.   I continued with this for around 8 months and was very tired of the drive.  It was hard to be home at a reasonable time to have a family dinner together.  It would have been better if they allowed some remote work but that was never an option.

I was contacted by someone from another company at around the 7 month mark and we started talking.  They were looking for someone which had  had prior development lead experience and lots of general development experience, etc overall. I would have some architecture, dev lead, mentoring, etc work which was pretty much the description of a "dream job" for me.  The routes to this company followed the same initial path as my current company at that time but the new company was closer - not far from the airport. I figured this would reduce drive time by 15-30 minutes one way.  So given the "dream job" option and less driving - it seemed like a good choice to make.

So I made that change.  It was a little less driving but it was still daily stop and go traffic with motorcycles driving between lanes and other just bizarre behavior.  It was usually between 50 and 75 minutes to work and 60-75 minutes home. Nearing the 2 year mark here and then COVID hit.  We had just moved many people, including myself, into a new building next door - all setup with the open floor plan and everyone sits together at groups of long desks.  A bunch of different things just made it feel like it was time to leave there.  The original "dream job" description didn't include all the red tape that affected everyone living in my household due to the nature of the business.  At this point, I really am worn out from the daily drives and traffic, etc.  I realize at this point that it is hard to find something "close" to where I live which is under an hour drive. 

I reach out to agencies and look for remote work.  Jobs which require coming into the office on a limited basis would be great.  I do enjoy the direct contact with others.  I also decide to go with contract or contract to hire positions for the first time ever.  If something changes for the worst, it seemed like it would simplify changing jobs.  

I find a job with a large well known company and it is contract to hire.  It is fully remote at that point but it was indicated that it could change a little.  If I had to go into the office it would be 1.5 to 2.5 hours one way but if that was only once a month or so then that is doable.  There were no real decisions on the details or plans at that point.  I decided to give that a go.  It was going ok but I wasn't doing any real design/architecture work and was pretty bored.  Then one day, it was announced that there would be a 3 day in-office requirement starting in 2 weeks.  That was obviously not going to work well for me and the 2 week notice for it was beyond strange.  Fortunately, my local manager had already requested an exception for a month for that in-office requirement for me.  That ended up extended for another month since they really liked what I was doing.  I knew that at some point that would have to end - if for nothing else, it isn't fair to other employees who have to go in.  At some point, it would cause some friction with other employees if I was left exempted from that requirement.  

Anyways, I finally reached an end-date there and now it is time to find something again which I would love to be a long term employer which doesn't require large numbers of hours on the road each month.

So my recommendation to anyone thinking about moving to a new area like Tampa - think carefully about where the jobs are versus where you want to live.  Don't underestimate the effects of drive time and traffic.  Also remember to account for other things though like floods, hurricanes, sink holes , etc too though..  In the end, it may cause you to rethink how you define "best location" to live.

Wishing everyone in similar circumstances the best!

Scott

Hurricane Ian and my parents home

 My parents have been in a nice retirement community for a few years now and this isn't the first hurricane but it is the only one that did significant damage to their home.  Total loss..  

Both my parents and my family are blessed though - no one was hurt and God takes care of the needs. 

I'm very happy we have enough space for them to move in and store many of their belongings while they work through the insurance and wait for a new home.  It is estimated as a good number of months before it will be ready.  It is hard to say if there will be other delays - there are so many people needing replacements now.

It was much different seeing their pictures compared to us being their when I took these. These are after a couple weeks so the roads were clear of debris and the water had receded from the roads we use to get there.

These are from a golf cart on our way to their house in the community.

The devastation was hard to comprehend at this scale.  Tornadoes tear up homes but that is usually in a path you can follow and it may skip areas a bit.  This was just destruction everywhere.  Not every home was a total loss but many were and most others had damage to some extent. 

This is what we found when we got to my parents home.

These next 2 pictures are of what used to be part of the lanai. Roof and most walls gone.  A refrigerator was tossed out in the yard. 

Something like 2/3 of the roof was gone - it was now "brighter inside" but mosquitoes were starting to multiply and lack of electric or any chance of usable air conditioning makes cleanup even harder. I can't say that the smell of wet insulation improves with time. There was some humor though as a few containers in awkward places were full of water - my wife can attest to that!  I was fortunate to not drop the container of fishing weights and water - but I did tell my parents that it made up for them helping me move many heavy books between homes over the years! I probably am off a bit on that - I'm sure they still moved more books than I moved wet fishing stuff.

It is in God's hands and nothing else matters.

Romans 15:13

13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  Jeremiah 10:12-13

12 But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

13 When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.

Psalms 71:18

18 Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come.

Tampa lightning storms and resulting chaos

 We had a very "impressive" storm the other day.  The lightning was incredible - never had that much up north and this was the first time in about 6 years since we've been in this area that it was actually a little frightening at times.

The wife and I were out to try and get some dinner and go by Lowes again (they might wonder if I sleep in the store somewhere at times).  We waited for some time before finally going into my Wifes favorite "fast food" place - still got wet but lightening had slowed at that point.

When we got home, our daughter said it had been really bad there as well - shook the house a couple times. 

We had noticed that the garage door opener didn't work when we got home but figured it was just the batteries in the remote.  It wasn't the batteries in the remote. The internet wasn't reachable either.

The electrical circuit that the garage door opener is on also has the Internet provider Fios equipment plugged into it.  One of those impressive lightning strikes ended up coming into the house through the electric panel. I do have a whole house surge suppressor installed but it isn't the closest set of breakers to the wires coming in from outside. This apparently enabled the surge to enter the circuit with the garage door opener and Fios equipment - that would be the shortest electrical path other than the whole house surge suppressor.  

There was an outlet extender on the outlet that the Fios was plugged into - that outlet was fried and the garage door opener was fried.

The surge then went from the Fios box over the coax that leads to our WiFi / router.  That was permanently stuck with a "red glowing eye" instead of the normal indicator light.  No hard reset, etc was changing that.  

At this point, I didn't really know whether the Fios equipment in the garage was fried.  I was assuming so but without a new WiFi / router that I could use I couldn't really tell.

I contacted the internet provider to try and confirm what was burned up and they couldn't see our WiFi / router and eventually assumed it was dead.  It wasn't clear to them whether the other equipment would function correctly yet.  They indicated that I should be able to hoop up any similar WiFi / router to get by with while waiting for a replacement - expected in a few days.This was a moment of "arghhh.." because I've been working from home and my job is pretty much only doable with an internet connection. 

I went out the next morning quick and picked up a low/mid-range similar router and got it home. Hooked up and then waited for the "green light"... which didn't happen.  I really thought the Fios equipment was toasted at this point.  I contacted the provider again to see if I could confirm that since I didn't want to be offline for even more days due to waiting on a service appointment.  This is where things seemed to get worse - the provider could not confirm that their equipment was blown and because I wasn't using their provider router they couldn't do anything to help diagnose further.  

My next day of work was interesting and I was tethered to my phone - using it for internet connectivity.  That was unexpectedly OK other than the point where my entire family received emails that my phone # has preparing to go over limits.  My kids found some glee in pointing that out over dinner.

Saturday morning, my wife and I ran over to the wireless store and I ended up upgrading my phone and upping my wireless plan a bit.  The funny thing at this point is that the wireless store didn't thing we should be getting any message regarding exceeding data limits based on our plan.  Anyways, not knowing how long things would be down I would rather be safe than sorry.

The new router showed up that weekend and it turned out that the Fios equipment was not burned out.  After quite a bit of thinking and researching, I think the problem I had with the 3rd party WiFi / router was simply that I didn't have ports forwarded, etc like the router from the provider has when you receive it.  I've not tested that theory yet but will attempt to set it up and get it working as a backup if I get zapped again.

I also invested in some additional surge suppression equipment.

• Another UPS with coax support
• An inline coax surge suppressor
• Some inline Ethernet surge suppressors

Did I mention that after the surge took out our WiFi / router, it also took out 2 network switches - one at each end of the house.   Apparently, it followed the coax and continued on over the Ethernet cable.  Most of the family is using WiFi which may have saved some equipment.  I tend to prefer a wired connection for reliability and consistent speed so I guess some things were self-inflicted on my part.

Here is burned out garage door opener.  We had a new garage door installed just a few weeks before this - glad we didn't get a new garage door opener at the same time. I added a socket extender with some surge support after this was already burned out - just so I wouldn't forget it later.

Below, I am unboxing the new garage door opener once it arrived.  I ordered a couple extra remotes as well since it doesn't seem compatible with our old system.  This system is produced in Germany - just like our Bosch dishwasher.. hm, we waited nearly a year for that and got this in about a week - so glad we didn't end up in the same mess!!

Oh, did I mention that I was waiting to get this up and running before ordering a couple more wireless remotes and a keypad?  Guess what - the wireless remotes are now on back-order... from Germany..  Sigh..  

Here is the new garage door opener in use.  I like this one - it is very quiet.

Here is the network surge suppression equipment I picked up.

Below is the inline coax surge suppressor I wired up. It isn't wired very nicely yet but I didn't want to have it happen again before I had some protection in place.  I have the ground wire hooked to one of the screws for the electrical panel cover for now.

Here is the new UPS with coax support all hooked up.  Yes, it may be overkill having an inline coax suppressor and coax support in the UPS but as long as it doesn't degrade the connection speed, I'll hope it makes an additional positive difference.

I do want to note that there is a differences between "surge suppressor" and "lightning protection" but I'm not going to split hairs on the subject here.  In the end, I wanted a variety of protection which I hope will cover the most common situations that result in damage to electrical devices in the home.

Hope your day is blessed and free of lightning damage, etc.

Scott

The Bosch 800 dishwasher - better late than never

 Our old dishwasher was failing so I took it out and ordered a new one from a particular appliance store chain.  We knew there was some delay early on when the store let us know they were back ordered  which wasn't apparent from their website.  That was ok - it seemed like it would be 4-6 weeks.  We waited and waited.. will little news from the store regarding when the new dishwasher. I called them and they said they still didn't know when exactly they would get it in but thought it might be in another month. 

In the mean time, I pretended to be a sort of Edward Scissor Hands and took my recipracating saw and cut about the old dishwasher so I could stick the pieces in the normal trash.  It was taking up too much space in the garage and I didn't want to try and get it the dump.  There wasn't much metal in the old one so not much incentive for the local scrap people that hunt the local neighborhoods.  Anyways got it cut apart and in a few weeks had it all gone.

Still waited for the new one and waited and waited. I finally did some research and found out that the Bosch dishwasher model we ordered is manufactured in Germany and shipped here.  And to top it off, there were notices on the internet that they were about 9 months to a year behind due to COVID.  

My wife finally convinced me to cancel that order.  I was left with a feeling that the dishwasher would probably arrive the day after that..  That didn't exactly happen.

As we left the original store, I decided to look online at Lowes for one again.  Originally their website said they were back ordered and could not be ordered online.  This time they showed they had 4 of them - just like we wanted! I couldn't believe it. 

I excitedly hauled us over to Lowes because I wanted an actual person to confirm it and I wanted to get an order in right then if they did exist.  The appliance lady told us if they got the order in and it didn't immediately get kicked out - then we would be confirmed for one.  The downside was that the units were not around Tampa but in a warehouse up near Washington DC.  Ugh.. Ok, but they had them and we got a confirmed order in!!   Talk about excited.  At this point it had been nearly a year!!  The temp dishwashers (aka, Wife, kids and self) were all tired and unreliable at keeping up the dishes - paper plates became a common Sams Club order.

So in a about a week and a day I got a call saying that we could set up delivery.  We aimed for that Friday and waited anxiously.  The delivery/installer guy got there and got it into the house and then noticed that we only had bare wires - not an outlet.  The store asked if we had electrical which we do - but apparently they mean "do you have an electric outlet?'.  So the installer said it couldn't do anything right then - we needed and outlet and then needed to reschedule the install.  He left the new dishwasher in the front room where I got to enjoy staring at it each time I left the house. 

I had a spare plastic electrical box, AFCI outlet and box cover.  I ended up installing that during the week and spraying the area under the cabine,t where the dishwasher would go, with white FlexSeal to provide a small barrier in case the dishwasher ever leaked.  It is a minor bit of insurance we hopefully will never need to worry about but just in case..

Finally, another week goes by and on a Friday I come out of the office for a minute and notice the dishwasher is installed!  Yeah!  They did it while my wife was off for during her final week of four 10h days before they went back to 8 hrs in the schools.

We got the black stainless steel version of the dishwasher and it is a bit more matte looking than our Frigidaire microwave and stove but it still looks very nice and is SOOOO quiet.

Below is FlexSeal I used to seal around the bottom of the area for the dishwasher.

Here is the new electric outlet I installed under the sink cabinet.

Here is the new dishwasher patiently waiting for installation.

And the final outcome!  Yeah!!

I'm glad it is finally here and done but do have to remember this bible verse below.

Hoping everyone's day is blessed!

Scott

Luke 12:15 ESV 

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Office HVAC mini-split in progress

I've had the new Pioneer mini-split HVAC sitting around the office for some time.  I finally got started on the install a few weekends ago.  I won't claim to be fast but progress is slowly made each weekend - a bit like watching a 3-toed sloth run.

[2022/06/17 update] Been done for a while but just posting more pictures now.

Below is how final inside install looks:

Here is the wireless remote which works fine.

The mostly completed outside install looks like this. I still have to put the cover on at the point where everything comes out of the wall (note that condensate drain will exit a hole I added to the cover here as well - can't really have the drain going uphill).  I also have some more painting needed for the trim but functionally everything is complete.

The outside unit is extremely quiet. I've got the lines wrapped in the teflon tape here.

For the install process - first I installed the interior bracket and started the hole through the drywall for the refrigerant lines, power and control lines going to the outdoor unit. Note that I'm not using a cordless drill and it is actually a decently powerful corded drill with a masonry bit.  Don't use cheap bits or common cordless drills with masonry bits unless you want to finish the work with much more gray hair than you started with. Some will likely note that I haven't finished the trim around the ceiling yet either - I'd hate to run out of projects to work on..

For the stucco, I had to go through 2 different pieces representing the interior and and exterior of the stucco and concrete block.  I ended up with 2 concrete "plugs" like this. It took a good 10-15 minutes drill out each plug.  I also had to drill at a slight downward angle (from inside to outside) because the drain line empties via gravity.  I will credit a Lowes employee for reminding me to also drill from the outside to prevent any chipping/blowout around the exterior hole.

The HVAC unit comes with a sleeve to put in the hole in the wall to protect the lines and electrical but it is sized more for standard 2x4 wood construction than stucco so I had to figure out something else.  Some pipe and caps from Lowes cut down to a size that doesn't protrude worked out ok.

Below is the result with the PVC pipe in the wall with a cap on and spray foam to keep any wildlife outside.  And I'll admit that I wasn't paying attention and should have put the cap on opposite to what I did - it would have allowed me to simply use my channel lock pliers to take the cap off later rather than try to find some oddball item around the house that was roughly 1" x 3/4" and stout enough to be twisted to break the cap loose from some of the spray foam..  

Now I was able to hook the provided power/control cable to the interior unit in preparation for mounting it on the wall.

Below you can see the refrigerant lines, power/control and condensate drain line exiting the exterior wall.  I wasn't excited about the proximity to the exterior light but I'll deal with that a different day - I don't like the existing light fixture anyways which has been broken since we bought the place.   It is also a bit difficult due to the window but I'm making the best of it.  We'll see how it works out in the end.

Below shows the brackets mounted to wall which will hold the mini-split unit.  I didn't want to mount it on a pad - mostly because of dealing with lawnmower debris and other hazards at that height.

I have the unit mounted to the brackets here and you can see I have the 240v wiring ( 12ga solid strand THHN/THWN rated wire ) in Southwire 1/2-in x 25-ft Ultratite Non-Metal liquid-tite conduit coming down out of the soffit. 

Here is the disconnect box with conduit.

Somehow I ended up with a fused disconnect box instead of non-fused but after a bit of thought, I decided it is more help than harm other than needing fuses. 

The disconnect box itself had no information on it and I had thrown away the box it came in so it wasn't clear what fuses were needed.  After trying some class G fuses which were just a bit too small in diameter (but Lowes had in stock), I did some more research and determined that the fuse holders were for class H fuses.  This is a pretty good site to research fuses dimensions and such - and their glossary has info about the different fuse classes.  I also found that several other fuses are usable in the old style class H fuse holders.  The class H fuses are not generally recommended now from information I found so I decided that since this unit has some potentially sensitive electronics, I might as well go with the newer class RK1 fuses appear to provide better protection.  Fuse prices are all over the place so it took some research to find some online through Amazon that were not twice as expensive as the same items elsewhere.  I even found some with free shipping - we'll see how good the idea was when they arrive. The fuses I chose are: LTTELFUSE LLNRK-15 TIME DELAY 15 AMP RK-1 DUAL LIMITING [2022/4/1] Fuses arrived and inserted into holder - more work needed before testing though.

Below, The item on the left is a class G fuse and is 1-5/16" x 7/16". The middle item is called a midget fuse (or class 5AG) and is 1-1/2” x 13/32”. The item on the right is a class RK1 fuse and is 2" x 9/16".  Don't get con-fused and try to use the physically smaller fuses in place of those that are of the class H/RK1 size - the smaller fuses will basically fall down if fully inserted into an H/R class fuse holder.

I must admit that I am glad the wiring is at least run in the attic now.  I can't say that I enjoy hanging out in the attic - by time I was done I had bruises and scrapes everywhere.  I'm thinking that the one major benefit for older electricians would be having an apprentice. I just don't know why my kids won't be "unpaid apprentices" for me. Hard to imagine.

I still need to go back into the attic and add some conduit straps but I don't think I will have to be as far into the eve as when pulling the conduit up. [2022/4/3 Conduit straps done in attic!!]

Next, I need to run the refrigerant lines and such from the exterior hole in the wall over a window and then down to the exterior unit. I did buy a trim kit from Pioneer which I hope will make it look a bit nicer.  It is white plastic which I might end up painting to match a bit better.  I had a bit of dilemma with the condensate drain line though - it needs to maintain a downward slope to let gravity drain it and I would need to go up over the window though.  After discussing with my wife, I'm going to try and exit the PVC cover over the exterior hole in a direction away from the light fixture below and just end the drain line at the "relatively" small hole. I'll foam around it a bit I think.  All other solutions seemed worse - taking all the lines/electrical down past the light fixture and under the window would work but seemed like it would be even less visually appealing.  Taking the drain line straight down after exiting the wall would mean I either leave an ugly drain line exposed or need to hack together some type of cover which splits into the horizontal and vertical runs. The run going over the window still won't be "pretty" but is probably the best of the more feasible ideas.

[2022/06/17 update] This has been done for a little while now but here are additional pictures showing the more important and/or specialty tools/equipment/etc I used.

Corded drill with decent power - handle for added support / leverage is helpful. I have this for a number of years.

Open-ended torque wrench for the fittings. This was something I bought for this project and maybe another mini-split install for my workshop and maybe for my parents place. This was the most flexible solution at what I'll call a "reasonable cost"

 This was a DIY install mainly due to the availability / use of this product for evacuating the air / contaminants from the lines and enabling leak testing.  I recommend getting 2 bottles of the Kwik-E-VAC just to be safe.  I didn't use the entire thing but that was somewhat because I didn't want to run out at a critical moment so may have underused it it a bit.  If you have 2 of them at ~$34 each, it is pretty cheap insurance compared to having to call someone to help or try and find equipment to buy/rent to form a vacuum due to any issues.  

The Nylog blue is used on the face of the flared fittings to reduce the chance of scoring the copper when flaring and to lubricate the face when you tighten the fittings. Both of these are specialized for use with HVAC or refrigeration systems.

I bought the below tool just for working with mini-split flares.  The eccentric motion is less likely to score / damage the copper - especially if you apply  a bit of Nylog Blue to the tool face which works the copper into the correct shape / angle.  I didn't want to use my normal plumbing tool which is pretty old and seemed like a potential source for problems.

A different view of the flaring tool box.

For cutting the hole through the interior and exterior walls I used this bit with the drill above.  This can be used dry and it took me about 10-15 minutes per side to cut through the stucco / concrete. 

Below is the cover set I used - ended up basically getting 2 of them for the odd layout I had. Comes in white but I got some exterior paint to match the existing stucco.

Joshua 1:9 Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

This is true even when you cut a hole in the soffit in the wrong location initially or cut your conduit with the wires inside it when you didn't plan to.