Day 87...Baby it's cold outside!

The forecast for this week:


Dinner in the crock pot :)

Got to the office, I crack myself up. If you look closely on the sunglasses, this is a selfie :D

When I got home the basement is 37 (was 36 when I left), the main house was 58. Cranked up both heads of the heating system and it was 65 in 90 minutes, with it being 15 degrees outside so I can't complain.

Day 86 -- Weather tightening the basement, dishes, and dishes...

Christmas afternoon when I went to turn off the water to do the sink I noticed the big window -- which I had a piece of board insulation over -- was clearly now the biggest source of air leaks with the casement windows now sealed up.

Since it is slow at work, I planned to take a long lunch Tuesday since it would be almost freezing...with the rest of the week struggling to reach 20. Great Stuff is supposed to be 40+, but gotta work with what we have.

Tuesday morning I thought up (why didn't I think of this before?) getting a cheap $10 indoor/outdoor digital thermometer to put the "outside" down by the well pump...and then to get a $10 Christmas light remote control (capable of 1800 watts) for a milk house heater. Setting the heater at 750W would give me plenty of margin of safety. So I picked those up with a can of regular Great Stuff at Lowe's on the way home.



Those all went in the basement at lunch time.

Thought it was interesting how some Rhodondendrons go more limp than others in response to the cold.

Since I can start doing dishes and have more than will fit in a dish drain, and I haven't oiled the butcher block yet, I put down a garbage bag to go under a towel to protect the surface.

First time in like forever I'm cooking at home again...this goes in the fridge for the night, I'll cook it tomorrow while I'm at work.



Thinking maybe I put the thermometer & remote in the bathroom, so when I pee in the middle of the night and see it's below freezing I can kick on the heater...

Electric Usage Update...

And by no means the final baseline, as I still have to put the outer insulation blanket on the water heater (though the metal outside of it does not feel warm at all) and I have five 100W incandescent bulbs in the kitchen/living room I use when working in that area to replace with LEDs, which lately is all day every weekend day and a lot of evenings.

Meter was a 643 when I ran home at lunch time today.

So let's call 20 days usage 630kWh, since it was at 14kWh the evening of 12/6.

31.5kWh per day.

That compares to 41.5kWh from 10/16-11/16 when there was a lot of construction going on plus using the milk house heaters.

For comparison:
December 2016: 15.19kWh/Day
December 2015: 11.10 (Very dry year; sump did not run a lot)
December 2014: 16.48
December 2013: 16.47
December 2012: 13.25
December 2011: 24.88 (I wonder if this was the year I had the 3/4HP sump pump? Usage was high all winter.)
December 2010: 13.17

Let's call it a savings of 6kWh/day no longer running the sump pump and let's call it a wash with the hot water (though I probably use one or two kWh more keeping it warm in the tank...I'll have a better idea once I'm heating with wood again). I have more insulation to roll out in the attic, too.

That gives me an estimate that keeping my house comfortable -- and by comfortable I mean 72 degrees in the evening and otherwise when I'm home, and 61 overnight and workdays -- with the Mitsubishi system is 20kWh/day in a pretty typical December.

And at that I haven't even touched the bedroom unit since buying another quilt for the bed, so there is plenty more capacity in the system.

This works out to $105/month for the electricity to heat the house, guessing maybe 20% more as we get into more consistently cold weather.

Still, not bad.

Days 80 thru 85...Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, I have a Kitchen Sink!

Thursday I finished the little pan storage area in the blind corner -- I went with a width of 14". The opening is 6", I wanted to use some of the blind corner but have it still small enough to clean and not lose pans "in the way back".

And some more dry fitting of the counter tops. Give me a break, there is a little 1/16" lip along the back edge. Can't anything be frickin' square?

Friday --
Protecting the butcher block with some Reynolds Wrap...so I can glue and clamp the counter top.

Saturday --
Position the drawer base.

Yep, lost the template for the sink...marking it the old fashion way. (Found the template on Monday sandwiched between the two doors for the base cabinet under the sink that I had put aside :/)

Corner holes drilled...clearly I bought a sink pushing the very boundaries of size for the cabinets and counter top I have.

Cuts from the front to back completed, I put a piece of scrap wood across it and screwed it down. Bunch of references say to support the counter as you cut (duh), but I didn't see any that suggested this. I wonder if I picked it up from TV or some place years ago? Just seemed intuitive and easy to me.


So the back of the sink is so close to the back of the counter, I don't have clearance for my jig saw. I made a rough cut further out, then used the cut off tool to make a series of cuts to take it out to where it needed to be:


And this finishes up Saturday. I'm also fighting a chest cold that I could see becoming walking pneumonia...I can do stuff, but I get tired. And grumpy.

Sunday

Assembling all the components for the sink before I set it in place for the final time:


You can see two notches I had to cut at the front for the clips to fit by. I'm too close both front and rear to actually use the clips to hold the sink in place, but I think with weight + silicone it'll be fine. I didn't want to cut too much meat, thus just the notches.


Assembling the plumbing fixtures...

Where did the foam on my hand come from? Oh...so even though I sprayed it a few days ago when I trimmed it uncured foam started oozing up like lava o_O

More dry fitting. An observant observer would observe a change in the PVC once I found out you're supposed to use a mechanical coupling rather than glue PVC to ABS. That coupling was my third and final Christmas Eve trip to Lowe's :D



Christmas Day -- put up the Pendant light. Tried to put up the LED fixtures I got for the cans, but I need another "c clip" part to install in the cans in order for them to hold the lights. I'll order those this week.

One day a real plumber will look at this and offer to fix my work. He'll start by asking for my tools, which he will then take to a crusher and destroy :D. But hey, it works and no leaks so far.


Merry Christmas! 3pm and I have running water in my sink! I haven't had a working sink since the first week of November.

Time to defrost the dish basket that's been outside all that time...

Mini-Fred is up!