[CAT] Scratching Post

Chodaboy wrote:So today we took a little walk in the woods by the house. Saw the president of the HOA busy cutting down a tree in the trail's path. Told me I could have the wood if I wanted. Hell yeah! I loaded the trunk of the Saab twice and managed to get it all back in the garage in less than an hour.

I bet the guy is dining out on this story already. The effeminate pink Lacoste tshirt wearing frenchman loading up these logs into his girly red Saab. I bet you wore work gloves while doing it didn't you? Perhaps the Missus' floral gardening gloves?

Nope, but I am getting some to split the logs. Which will be made easier by printing several of your pictures and taping them on top of each log.

She doesn't do gardening by the way...

I love picking up wood though. It's good exercise (although not the best for my back I suppose, even though I try to be careful, I swear some of those fuckers are like 80 lbs or more...), and it saves money. And since I'm a cheap bastard...

Gardening... ...in the Bayou. The only flowers they grow in Loozieanna are crawfish.

Spandex wrote:I bet you wore work gloves while doing it didn't you?

I got some nice ones today! Now a good splitter next week-end and voilà, lumberjackchodaboy.

I'm not too familiar with heat pumps but from what I see 1) they're not great for colder climates and 2) programmable thermostats don't work well with them, is that true?

You're right about colder climates, but it depends on what you mean by cold. Where I live "cold", then no, they're not very effective. But in Southern Ontario and the NE US, they're quite common. I don't see why you couldn't use a programmable t-stat with them. It just needs to be heat pump compatible.

I see. I guess it doesn't get crazy cold down here, we've had a few days when the temps went below 0°F this year I think but it didn't last very long. Still, it seems like we've had a few nights when the old thermostat was set at 70°F and the temp wouldn't go above 65°F. I figured it might have been too cold outside for the heat pump to achieve 70°F but maybe the thermostat was messed up. Or maybe the vents are too dirty. Seems like I almost always feel lukewarm air at best coming out of the vents... but when the home inspector came he measured temps in and out and they were OK. Plus usually the heater seems to work... bah...

Picked this one up today and installed it. It was really easy. Until I noticed that the wire which connected to the "E" on the old thermostat had nowhere to go on the new one. Called the customer support at Lux, but it was 5 pm and they close at 4:30. Fail... did a bit of research and it seems like it's for the emergency heat. There's truly no connector for it on the new one, it's bizarre, I checked the wiring for my heat pump, and for all the other styles for that matter, there's no "emergency heat" anywhere. I have everything connected where it should be except that one. I'm a bit dumbfounded since I don't know much about those things. There is an "auxiliary heat" on the wiring that was already connected in the old one ("W2"), and apparently that's what's used for emergency heat according to the manual:

Emergency Heat mode will prevent the first stage of your heat pump system from turning on, and use only the “W2” second stage heat terminal (Auxiliary Heat) as the primary heating source. It may become too cold in some climates for a heat pump alone to provide adequate heating without a secondary heating device. As every heat pump has different operating characteristics, you should refer to your heat pump manufacturer's recommendations for when to disable the heat pump and run in Emergency Heat mode.

Anyway... I emailed them and we'll see what they say. Everything seems to be running great without this wire (I just taped the end). It's pretty neat, and it's really dirt cheap, I'm glad I finally got one. I also got a mean splitter while I was at it, and a few CFL bulbs. The kitchen bulbs especially were pretty high wattage...

Now my next goal is to add some insulation to the garage door. Since the garage is below our living room I feel that we probably lose quite a bit of energy that way. And next might be adding insulation to the roof.

Wouldn't it be better to leave the garage cold and just insulate your living room. To be honest a nice thick carpet and a good underlay should do that. Not that you're gonna lose much heat through your floor anyway - Heat rises ya see.

Hot air rises by convection, it's not quite the same. It helps heating the upper floor(s) if there is an energy source in a lower level and warmer air can circulate and make its way upstairs. It's not the case between the garage and the living room since air can't readily flow from one to the other. If the garage is colder than the living room, the heat is going to tend to flow from the living room to the garage by conduction through the floor, and hence it'll be lost. So the warmer the garage stays, the less heat is lost through the floor. I'm not sure it's a huge amount of course but... am I making sense? Maybe I forgot my physics classes...

Umph... I have a network cable that runs from the kitchen to somewhere, but I don't know where it ends. It goes from a wall ethernet plug down into the laundry room in the basement. I can see it come out of the ceiling down there, then back up into a beam, and I don't know where it goes. I've been looking for it for weeks and it's pissing me off!!!! What the fuck?? Who the hell wired this place???

The house was built in 1989 so somehow I doubt the wiring was installed then...

Here is where it starts, upstairs, kitchen.


This is right underneath it (blue cable):


64 inches on the right, it goes up like this:


After that, I just don't know... Where the fuck are you cable end??

I think it was RIP who was asking about the joists above the stairs where I'd like to put a wall to replace the ugly ass banister and isolate basement room from garage:

Joists above:

The plates right above the banister are underneath a board I think, it looks like this right above them:

Guess it would be easy to fix something to that once those ugly plates are removed...

Proof to the superior wiring of this house... apparently it's fitted with speaker wires (home theater?):


Except I can't (same thing) find where those fucking cables go!!!

Ooooh, I just thought about this, I need to look into the ceiling, maybe it's going straight up there and back down somewhere else. If it was installed after the house was built it might be easier that way, non? Instead of ripping walls and wood floors apart...

I'm going to buy a stud finder with a live wire detector. I guess I could always (carefully) run current through the wires, one by one, and follow them that way? Like I said, carefully (when the kids are out of the house...).

Gonna have to do some wiring once my interwebs arrive.

Still, shouldn't be as bad as my epic network journey in my old house - Across 3 rooms, 3 hallways, 2 landings and one set of stairs. Not to mention through/round 5 doors. Took me a day to do it and I was exceedingly bloody, dirty, sweaty and angry when done.