Irma

Well, we had only minor experience with Hurricanes in the past.  While Irma was expected to go to the east cost of Florida we were not really too concerned but once it decided to go across us we became a little more concerned.  Not frightened but concerned - mainly about the 3 largest trees around the yard which shed limbs without a breeze.

Initially we did do any drastic planning - just made sure we had extra food on hand and a plan to fill spare containers with some water.  Up north we didn't have city water so no power = no water, at least on the city water now it seems more likely to maintain some sort of water supply without power.  By time we were pretty sure Irma was going to go across us - stores were pretty much sold out.  Plywood was gone, bottled water gone, fuel was already in short supply, generators were way gone.  At this point we were a little more concerned - somewhat because my parents live in a manufactured home about an hour south of us - closer to the storm.  I also use a CPAP and the idea of being without power for maybe a couple weeks was not pleasant.  Up north we ended up without power one year for a week or so but before my sleep apnea was bothering me - since then we had been very fortunate.  It also turned out that 2 of my neighbors use CPAPs as well.

My parents decided to come up to our place well before we knew the storm was heading closer to us.  I was very very happy they made that call. As Irma was getting closer, we briefly thought about trying to leave the area but the traffic jams shown on the news pretty much made it clear that wasn't a great option at that point.  We even considered going to our local high school which was a shelter but we had some concerns about that along with my CPAP need, etc. We decided to stick it out and batten down the hatches.  We got to Lowes the morning before the storm and were able to about about 60ft of 1"x10" pine boards and combined that with "junk" laying around the house/yard we were able to board up the windows pretty well.  We stripped the pressure treated sides of our utility trailer, took the "ugly" paneling out of the sort-of office (wife prompted this one a bit just to get rid of the paneling I think..), found spare chunks of stuff I moved down from Virginia, etc and cut it to size and screwed it mostly into the frames of our original 1985 vintage single pane windows.  We took a few passes and packed all the stuff outdoors into either the garage or onto the lanai.  Garage was packed..

My wife was a little unhappy when I told her that putting the cars in the garage was probably only temporary for now..  still need a workshop.. until then.

We started thinking about where to stay in the house if things got bad  and finally decided that the half done office was the best bet.  More concrete around it and it is sort of between the garage and master bedroom area.  We move a bunch of stuff from there and started to make what reminded me of 1950's bomb shelters I had read about.

I was still concerned about my CPAP need but then I remembered that we had a small "inverter" - a small electronic device that can hook up to a DC power supply and produce AC.  I went over to the autostore and picked up a couple decent size deep cycle marine batteries. A quick calculation indicated that those should keep my CPAP running for maybe 2 weeks.  I figured we might even be able to charge phones off them if needed.  After this, I was feeling a bit more relaxed.

I did feel really bad for my parents - I know my dad was pretty convinced that their place wouldn't make it.  Sits within a stones throw of both a pond and river and it was looking like the storm would roll right over it.  My mom saved a few small items - pictures and such just in case.  I think some of our faith in Jesus did leave us feeling less stressed over the whole deal.  It was still really hectic though since I had hope that there would be little damage especially since we still are not fully "unpacked" after moving in.  It wouldn't have been the end of the world but I know I was already very tired before all this.

To make a long story shorter, we did lose power but only for about 2 days.  The only real storm damage was a section of fence blowing down.  It was probably 25 years old and way past prime.  My parents didn't have any real damage although some homes in their area did lose their roofs or had other severe damage.  We ended up sleeping in the house instead of the office (but not in the bedrooms near the big trees).

We have some really awesome neighbors and a number of them all came out and helped cleanup the large mess of debris (mostly from our trees..).  I still have to take apart the broken fence but other than that and the pile of brush by the road still - you wouldn't know the storm came through.

When we moved down here, I told our kids "it will be an adventure".  I think we do hope for a bit less excitement for just a little while now. But if that isn't how things turn out then..

Nahum 1:7New International Version (NIV)

7 The Lord is good,
    a refuge in times of trouble.
He cares for those who trust in him,

I do pray for those that lost lots more - both around us, in Texas, Puerto Rico, etc and then the earthquake in Mexico.  It is a reminder that this life and associated belongings are not permanent.  We should remember that life is precious and can't be restored by us though - the place that we lay our head can be.

Goodbye Herbie Jr, Long live Herbie Jr.

Herbie Jr is the affectionate name we gave to our 2015 F250 4x4 with 8ft bed, full size topper and commercial roof rack. If you are familiar with Herbie, "The Love Bug", you will likely understand the humor in the name.  We bought Herbie after we towed home a good size travel trailer a few years ago with a 2002 F150 4.6l V8 and thought we were going to get stranded as it struggled down flat sections of road.

Well, we ended up selling the travel trailer here in Florida for a few good reasons and since then I had been commuting to work with Herbie. Unfortunately, Herbie does not make for a happy drive during rush hour around Tampa (or any place else likely).  The wife and I had discussed getting rid of it but is just seemed like there was always something going on.. work, family, etc.

Anyways, just about the time that the Irma hurricane was announced my wife prodded me one day to go for some test drives while we were going out for other stuff.  I purposely left the truck at home.. I wasn't feeling all that well that morning anyways due to back pain and planned on just getting our errands done and trying to come home.  Well, we ended up at the both the Ford dealer and Toyota dealer and started asking about trade-ins (again).  The Ford dealer made a pretty insulting low offer for which I responded - "Toyota here we come" and off we went.  I really just needed a small fuel efficient commuter car to deal with the Tampa area traffic to/from work.  We ended up test driving a Corolla and a Yaris; sat in a Prius but we didn't really like the odd feeling dash/cockpit layout.  Toyota made a reasonable offer on the truck and the wife prodded again so guess what.  We made the drive back home, cleared out the truck, went back and came home with a Yaris.

We named the new addition "Gigantor" - can you feel the humor in that.  I will say that we agree that Gigantor has a more manly horn than the Rav4.  Other than that, there isn't much to write home about other than pretty good fuel economy (about 32mpg at the moment - compared to ~12mpg from the gas hungy F250).

When Irma hit, I did have some reservations about not having Herbie Jr.  In the past, I have always used our "big" 4wd vehicle to get around after bad weather - whether it was snow, ice or the tropical storm remnants from a hurricane.  We were fortunate we didn't need it after Irma.  We can always borrow my parents pickup in a pinch now if needed - at least until we get one more vehicle.  Thinking of a used Toyota Highlander - big enough to tow our utility trailer and enough seats to take one car when all of us and my parents, etc are together.

There are aspects of Herbie Jr I will miss but I must admit that it really wasn't a good family fit anymore. Hoping for many years with Gigantor now.

Hoping you know and love Jesus!
Scott

p.s. The out takes.

I have to say that I really felt it in the pocket when buying a car this time.

Yes Honey - I should replace clothes before I get to the point where the jeans split getting out of a car during a test drive and have to wonder around the parking lot and offices with my shirt undone to cover (most of) it while taking care to not lean over. On the other hand, it was a memorable sale for the sales guy and him and all the other workers had a nice laugh.  ha ha ha ha...  I will say that "Honey" did return home with a pile of new jeans not long after this.  Good thing because I lost another pair while laying more tile in the bathroom.  sigh.

Taming the dryer

Ok, so we have the new house and get a somewhat nice (meaning expensive/over featured) clothes dryer.  Of course, what we soon found is that the dryer would shutoff after running a while and it would post a code indicating that the dryer duct is blocked or restricted in some way.

The house was built in the mid 80's and the couple we bought it from were older and dealing with some health issues so a blocked vent seemed pretty likely.  When we bought the house I had not really taken notice of the dryer vent location.  It turned out that is was in is pretty far from the outside wall and makes about 4 90 degree turns as it goes under the house slab and comes out outside the house where the tube rises out of the ground about 2 1/2 feet. The run is about 18 feet or so.

I bought 3 of the standard vent cleaners you attach to a drill and hooked them together.  I ran that through the vent but got nothing out except maybe a piece of fuzz.  I was baffled a bit and did some more research to find out that the drier is tuned to a max "effective" run of 25 feet.  The "effective" part relates to adding additional feet on for each turn in the run.  Each turn results in reducing flow so the formula attempts to tell you what an equivalent straight run would be.

Our effective run is somewhat over that 25 feet so at this point I made the guess that this was the problem.  I was a bit upset that the dryer people would tune things so close to this but I know it is a safety item since dryer fires have causes plenty of damage and deaths.  So I just accepted this and started looking for solutions.

I had pondered rerouting straight up through the roof but after days of thought I decided that putting a hole in the roof was not what I wanted to do.  It would be one more item which could leak and cause headaches down the road and with the high winds and rain we will experience here it just seemed like the wrong choice.

I considered rerouting through the attic and out but still end up with a long run which might not work. I like this idea a little though since I get rid of a vertical pipe popping out of the ground around 12" from the foundation.  I still think that pipe is going to get damaged at some point.

I started to look for a way to route through the walls and out the side but it would not be easy.  It may be possible but I think that this solution will end up need to protrude into a room.  I may look into this or the prior idea at some point but but I found a different solution (or I thought I did).

In my research I ran across dryer vent boosters.  These are fans built to hook into your dryer vent and boost the velocity of the air resulting in being able to have longer vent runs.  I researched this for a while and decided on an Acme Miami 9460 .  This choice was primarily based upon my desire to keep the vent booster inside and I didn't want to put another lint trap in before the booster.  I wanted to plumb the booster in at the laundry room since it either needed to be there or outside since the vent goes under the slab.  The benefits of this particular brand of vent booster include the motor being out of the airflow (so as to not get clogged) and the manufacturer allowing installs at the dryer and not requiring an upstream lint trap.

I went ahead and ordered it and had been trying to figure out how I wanted to install it.  The way it ships is that is that it sits on feet on the floor and plugs in to a standard wall outlet.  The outlet wasn't a problem (ok, until I realized that there was only a single plug in the outlet in the laundry room which was taken by the washing machine).    The problem was that this would result in needing to bump the appliances out from the wall more and space was limited.  I finally decided upon a short/mid-term solution that was acceptable to my wife.  I mounted it on a board above the dryer and relocated the air pressure switch onto the board in a horizontal position as instructions indicated.  This mounting position did result in a couple extra feet of vent to rise from the dryer to the booster and back down but the booster should handle the the effective increase.  I did make one enhancement to reduce the run and extra space behind the dryer by using a MagVent attachement. This meant I didn't have any substantial extra soft vent line laying behind things. It seems to work pretty nice as long as you get it tightened really well on the dryer side.

So after about 3 days of toying with everything needed, I had it in place one night and we just tested  it quick by turning the dryer on and off.  It seemed ok.

The next day I got a text from my wife saying after 40 minutes it did the same thing as before.  Put out a code indicating a blockage.  ARGGG.

So that put me into "what went wrong" and "what do I do next" mode because continuing to vent into a water trap filter in the house was not a long term solution.

I pondered all kinds of potential issues and solutions and none of them really seemed right.  I finally had an "aha" moment and told the wife that I would be right back.  I went out to the garage and got the electric leaf blower I borrowed from my parents.  My wife gave me the "ah, are you sure look" and I said yes. I asked her is she wanted to run the blower or go outside and monitor the vent. She decided to run the blower.  We called each other on the phone and I told her to let it rip.  For a couple seconds nothing happened but then I saw some lint coming out and the sound from the vent got odd.  I grabbed the vent cover and yanked it off.  As the vent cover was coming off a large wad of lint came out. I guess it would fill a gallon bag or maybe even another half gallon.

In retrospect, I think the vent cleaner brush may have loosened stuff but it wasn't able to move the lint up the vertical rise from under the house.

The next dryer uses work fine with the booster in place.  It may "work" without the booster but the dry times we have right now are really good - about 30-45 minutes.  I think those would increase without the booster.  We may still want to run the brush back through again and blow it out since I don't know how much might remain.  I will say I won't put my face in front of the vent during that process. Also, I would NEVER use the blower from the outside in unless you want to make someone mad..  I'm glad I didn't make that mistake this time!

Here is the Acme Miami 9460 mounted on the wall.  We still need to paint that room so I will clean up the look a bit at that point.  The surge suppressor is the solution to only have 1 outlet and anyways I like to put things with electronics on a surge suppressor anyways.  Not the prettiest of work but we are happy to be venting outside again.

Here is a behind the dryer view of the MagVent connection.  Simply pulling the dryer out with a nice tug cause the coupling to disengage.  I really like this so far.  I was concerned about adequate sealing but so far it is ok.  the pipe in this picture is the diagonal pipe in the picture above.

Hope Jesus blesses you today!
Scott

Jame 1 2-3
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.