Spring 2022 (Part 1) - Back to Getting Stuff Done

With John and Carol back in Rhode Island, my focus turned towards getting those annoying little lingering tasks done.  For us, that included finalizing our estate planning and bringing Muffin to the vet to look at the scabby things on her back.  So now we finally have a trust, a will and those other documents they ask you about when you go to the hospital.  And it turned out that Muffin’s problem was an allergic reaction that was resolved by a shot (and still hasn’t returned).

Back to the Projects - Screen Door Repair

When our pool was installed in 2003, overall, the installer—Paradise Pools—did a good job.  Putting it in really transformed out back yard and we’ve certainly enjoyed it—even more so for me since I retired and can swim just about every day.

However, the installers definitely did some damage.  Immediately after the pool was done, I realized they had obliterated our irrigation system instead of carefully capping it off as they had promised to do. 

A couple years later my fear that a giant oak in our backyard had been damaged by the gravel they had dumped its roots turned out to be true.  The weakened and, apparently, dying oak toppled over after we got hit by a few hurricanes.  Luckily, it fell away from the house and only destroyed part of our fence—but that’s another story.

Other little pool imperfections emerged right away, like the little indentation in the pool deck that always puddles and accumulates dirt.

Some problems, however, took years, or even decades, for me to notice.  One of these was the screen door on one side of the porch that never really closed correctly.  At some point years ago, one of our friends saw the screen door was taking a long time to self-close and decided to “help” it by forcing it shut and, in the process, broke the self-closer completely.  The door stayed that way for many years since you could still close it manually.  In other words, it worked “good enough for government work.”

With time to finally fix the door correctly, I found the correct self-closer repair kit (on Amazon, of course) and set out to fix this thing for good.  That’s when I realized what appeared to be the real problem with the door.  The beam to which the door closer is attached apparently needs to be wider than the other beams so that it has room to swing open and closed (at least that’s what the other door that works fine looks like).  Maybe the pool folks (or their sub-contractors) ran out of the wider beams, or maybe they just messed up, but the door closer is actually attached to two thin beams that are screwed together—apparently to mimic the wider beam that was supposed to be there.  Probably not the way Bob Villa from “This Old House” would have done it but they probably figured it was “close enough for government work.”

Over the years, the repeated opening and closing of the screen door caused the aluminum beam that was attached to the door closer to pull away from the porch frame, thus causing the door to close slowly and awkwardly—the extra piece and the door would kind of wobble back and forth for a while, then the door would pause for a few seconds and slam shut.  Or at least it did until the unfortunate incident of the forced closure (which, in a way, kind of solved the problem).

Nearly two decades after the door’s sloppy installation, I realized I wasn’t up to re-structuring the screen porch to get the door to close correctly.  So, I did the next best thing: drove as big a screw as I could find into that “bonus” piece of aluminum to try to hold it in place, then replaced the closer on the door.  Then, when the big screw came loose, I drilled another hole and tried an even bigger screw.  Today, the door will close by itself and the many-times-bolted extra aluminum beam is in place.  Not a demonstration of top-notch carpentry by any means but, most definitely, “close enough for government work.”

Much-repaired screen door

Fixing The Fence

I might have already mentioned somewhere earlier about what a crappy job East Coast Fence—or, should I say, the day laborers hired by East Coast--had done installing our fence.  One of the many problems with the fence was that the east side of it had started to sag after one or more of the hurricanes a few years back.  When I got around to diagnosing the problem, I realized at least one fence post had snapped right about where it went into the ground.

As is the case with most of my handyman-type problems, my first step was to ask my brother Walt what to do (alternatively, I’d consult my handy friend Jim for advice).  Walt was a great one to ask about this because, in addition to his handiness, he pointed out that he also has a PHD—a Post Hole Digger.  For the first broken post, Walt did most of the work which involved simply leaving the broken post in place, installing a new post next to it and nailing the new post to the fence (probably not in that order).

In February, I noticed that the fence was still leaning some.  I then realized that two or three more posts were either broken or about to break.  Confident in the fix blueprint that Walt had laid out—and realizing Walt was not going to solve ALL my carpentry problems—I borrowed the PHD, bought some posts and cement and set out to complete the repairs myself.  Not a lot of drama to the conclusion of this effort as, even thought my work was sloppier than Walt’s, my repairs are still in place and the fence is upright (and relatively straight).  Another job completed and “good enough for government work.”

Fixing the Fence

The 45s Project

Sometime around the spring of 2022 I started work on my program to play 45s, the quintessential Merrimack Valley card game.  The idea came from how much I was missing playing the game I loved, plus my wanting to keep using my programming skills and stimulate my brain a bit.

You can read about my 45s game efforts and even download the current version of my game here.

Replacing Rocks

We have white crushed stones around the perimeter of our screened porch as well as along the side of the house where the pool equipment and utility connections are located.  There are over 100 linear feet of it all together.  Although the rocks are supposed to be there for aesthetic reasons, I mainly put them there as a buffer to prevent my poking holes in the screens and damaging wires when I weed wacked.  The problem was that, over the years, dirt and grass clippings made their way into the rocks, making them look really crappy.  Also, since I pound-foolishly bought cheap weed block, grass and weeds were poking up from below the rocks.

Crushed Stones Before Refurbishment

For a long time, I’ve wanted to do something about the ugliness of these rocks but it was never a priority.  Now, being retired, I had time to work on improving their appearance.

Fixing up the rocks was much harder than you might think (much harder than I would have thought, for sure).  The plan was to pick up the rocks, fix or replace the landscape borders as needed, replace the weed block and put the rocks back (maybe after cleaning them up a bit). 

The first phase, picking up the rocks, wound up being a real pain, mainly because the cheap weed block underneath them had disintegrated such that the rocks below the top were, for the most part, buried.  At one point I thought I might just buy new rocks and dump them on top of the buried ones, but I figured that would leave the weeds and grass to grow mercilessly without new weed block to stop them.  Plus, there would be the expense and aggravation of buying, unloading and moving all those rocks.  So, I just bit the bullet and dug up all the old rocks.

The next problems to solve were figuring out where to temporarily put the rocks and how to clean them before the area was ready for them to go back.  Like with most of these projects, I asked my brother Walt about it.  He said he put his rocks in kitty litter boxes and pressure washed them.  This method had a side benefit of cleaning the litter boxes. 

I decided to use old plastic garbage can lids that I had lying around instead of kitty litter boxes for my temporary rock storage vessels.  I figured, since they had holes in them, it would be easier to drain the water out of them—plus I wouldn’t have to temporarily compromise the cats’ bathroom.

So I repeated the process of picking up the rocks, throwing them in a garbage can lid, washing them, fixing up the rock placement areas, and returning the rocks to their original positions over the next couple months or so.  I worked on it a little bit here and there when I got enough ambition.  In the end, with the somewhat cleaner rocks and landscape-grade weed block underneath, the rock areas were looking pretty good.

Crushed Stones After Refurbishment

After all that work refurbishing the rock borders, I tried to come up with a way to not let them get filled up with grass clippings, leaves and dirt again like they had before.  What I did was buy a relatively cheap, crappy Chinese-made leaf blower on Amazon for about $70.  If you bought this thing to actually blow leaves, you’d likely be returning.  The battery only lasts about 15 minutes and it doesn’t have much power.  But it was perfect for blowing grass and stuff out of the rocks while leaving the actual rocks in place.  Turns out, some rare jobs require a cheap, poorly made tool.  In the end I was pretty pleased with the how the rocks look and my plan for maintaining them.

Cheap Chinese Teccpo Blower	Rocks Still Looking	Decent After a Year and a Half

A Note On Cheap, Crappy Tools

By the way, not all cheap, crappy tools work out that well.  I’ve always used a weed wacker to edge my driveway, mainly because I’m too cheap to buy a separate edger.  I also feared those powerful edgers could do damage by launching unearthed rocks here and there and, in general, would be overkill for our short driveway.  Years ago, I had found these cheap Worx weed wackers at Sears (for around $50) that had little plastic wheels that rotated 90-degrees to allow you to do edging really easily.  The problem was the weed wackers would just die after a while—usually a couple years. 

For a while, after one would break, I would just get another one because they were cheap and I liked the way they worked.  After the latest one broke in March 2022, I decided I had had enough of the Worx brand.  I did find an article online that identified the design flaw that caused them to break and how to fix them.  Someday I might try to repair the 3 or 4 of them that are stashed in a deep corner of the garage.

In any case, I was able to find a different $50 weed wacker with the little edging wheels I was looking for on Amazon.  I was concerned that it was made in China but, with a one-year warranty, I figured I couldn’t go wrong.  When the thing stopped working after a little over a month, I contacted the company about a refund and they said they couldn’t do that, but they would be happy to sell me a replacement part that should fix it.

Realizing from the cryptic, broken English replies I was getting to my emails that the warranty was actually a fiction and there was nothing I could really do about it, I contacted Amazon directly.  I explained that we had spent a bazillion dollars with them over the years and they should honor the warranty that they, themselves, had published.  In the end, they said I could return it, but there would be a 20% restocking fee.  At that point I gave up, figuring I just paid $10 for a lesson about buying cheap, crappy Chinese tools.

In the end, I went down to the local Home Depot to get a weed wacker I could actually look at, pick up and inspect before buying it.  In the end I spent quite a bit more than $50 for a Ryobi that has worked just fine.  And to edge the driveway I just turn the trimmer sideways.  Maybe I never really needed those little plastic wheels after all.

Worx Weed Wacker	Ukoke Weed Wacker	Ryobi Weed Wacker

Solving the Case of the Mysterious Noise

Sometime around January or so, I started hearing this beeping or chirping noise in the house every now and then—seemingly always in the middle of the night.  I first thought the noise must be coming from one of the smoke alarms. 

Then, one night, I was awake when the sound went off and was able to walk around the house enough to determine that it was coming from the utility room or the garage and there are no smoke detectors there.  I then came to believe that the noise had to be coming from either the hot water heater or the air conditioning system.  Research told me that the air conditioner doesn’t sound any alarms, but some models of water heaters do.  Ah ha, I thought I was on the trail.  That was, until I called the people who had installed the hot water heater and they told me my model didn’t have the alarm feature.

Turning my focus back to the alarm system, I realized the alarm control box was near where the sound was coming from—I actually had no idea what that box was for prior to this situation.  Further, in reading the alarm manual, I realized I could hit a couple buttons of the alarm control panel and it would tell me if there were any recent alarms in the system (in retrospect, I probably should have started by checking this).

Now I realized the alarm system was reporting a low battery alert—so I was right all along, I thought.  It must be that when the detector has a low battery, the alert sounds at the control box.  I didn’t remember it ever working that way but I figured this had to be it. 

We actually have 3 smoke detectors.  After the fact, and after a call to the alarm company, I found that one of the detectors was installed with the house and is hard-wired into the electric system while the two that were installed with the alarm system use a battery.  In any case, I figured all I needed to do was pop in some new AA or AAA batteries into the offending detector (or both, since I didn’t know which one had the problem) and the problem would be solved.

As has happened so many times before, I was mistaken on several counts.

 First, upon opening the detectors and finding strange, short, stubby batteries in them, I realized they require special batteries.  Still, no problem.  Luckily, we have a special battery store not far from the house.  I even figured out how to silence the system so it wouldn’t keep going off while I took one of the batteries to the special battery store.  Luckier still, they had just what I needed and I happily sped home, ready to close the case of the strange noises once and for all.

I was still mistaken.

After replacing the batteries in both detectors, the control panel still was showing a low battery error.  Still, I convinced myself that this was probably just showing the last alarm that had sounded.  After all, since replacing the batteries, I hadn’t heard the noise at all.  That was, until later that night when the chirping returned.  I was starting to feel like I was in an Edgar Allen Poe story (literature fans know what I mean, I’m sure).

So now I had no options other than to call the alarm company.  The first thing they clarified was that the third, non-batteried alarm was not theirs and had likely come with the house.  The fact that I didn’t know that likely did not inspire confidence in the support person that I knew at all what I was doing.  They then explained that the alarm control box itself contains kind of a mini-lawnmower battery designed to keep the system working when the power goes out.  THAT was the battery that needed replacing.  Everything really made sense now. 

Likely sensing my incompetence and helplessness, the alarm person offered to send someone out to replace the battery.  I politely declined, not falling for the trick of paying for a service call, plus a battery with a likely massive markup.  I went where I usually go, to Amazon, and found the battery I needed.  

I went where I usually go, to Amazon, and found the battery I needed.  I even found one not made in China (it came from Thailand, so hopefully that’s better).

After replacing the battery all was well and the case of the mystery noise was truly solved, after a month or two, several phone calls and many wild goose chases.  Plus, the smoke detectors now had new batteries (which they never apparently needed), plus I’ve got spares in the drawer in case they ever actually go bad.

Two Types of Smoke Detectors	Smoke Detector Batteries	Alarm Box (so that's what that is)	Alarm Battery (The Solution)