Greg In The Desert

I was surpised to see LED lighting at Lowes, a brand called PerformanceLED.

I’ve been watching LED lighting become more popular over the years but haven’t been impressed with the light output. The PAR30 PerformanceLEDs from Lowes claimed a 75 watt incandescent equivalent light at 16 watts. Since they were nearly $70 and were not dimmable, I didn’t buy any. However sitting next to them were florescent PAR30 lamps.

The florescent lights claimed 75 watt incandescent equivalent light at 18 watts for $12. Other than claimed longer life, I can’t see what the advantage of LED lights over florescent. Also, the LED lights had giant aluminum heat sinks on them. I would have expected LEDs to covert even more energy to light than florescent instead of outputting heat. Isnt’ that the reason incandescents are so inefficient?

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Here’s some video I shot of President Obama’s drive to Rio Rancho High School on Thursday. It was recorded and uploaded in HD to YouTube.

The first part of the video is the drive down Loma Colorado. I couldn’t drive and film at the same time so set the camera on the dashboard. You can see the camera crews and protesters on the left. The New Mexico Independent says there were about 100 protestors.

The second part of the video shows the presidents cadillac one and the following motorcade driving up Northern Blvd. The Lowes parking lot gave a great vantage point. In retrospect I should have walked down and filmed from the corner of Northern Blvd and Loma Colorado.

For some reason strangers always come up and talk to me and a several people asked me why we were all watching. Many were pissed that they couldn’t drive down Northern Blvd.

baltolover272 has posted a video of Presidnet Obama leaving the high school.

KRQE has Obama’s address on YouTube as well.

A CatGenie is a automatic cat litter box: it removes large items from the litter, washes the plastic litter and dries it. It’s like a toilet and litter box combined in one device and if it works like its supposed to it should eliminate a lot of hassle for the cat owner.

A friend of mine recently bought one and I installed the connections for the device. The CatGenie requies an elecrical connection, a water connection and a drain connection. It connects just like a washing machine with a hose fitting for the water supply and washing machine style drain hose.

The CatGenie comes with adapters for connecting to an existing washing machine connections so the washing machine and CatGenie can be connected at the same time. I also comes with adapters to connect to a toilet. (Note: Don’t loose these connectors, even if you don’t use them. Replacements can be extremely difficult to find.) My friend has a small room underneath the stairs and near a bathroom that the litter boxes are kept in but no connections already in place. Since the studs were exposed I could tap into connections from other rooms. I tried my best to make the connections in such a way that pictures of the installation doesn’t end up on the internet as the way not to do home improvement.

There are exposed electrical boxes under the stairs and I was able to run a wiring into one of the boxes and connect a new box in the room. The existing box was in the kitchen so it was on a GFCI otherwise I would have installed one in this new installation since there’s water involved.

There is a drain and a water connection in the area under the stairs that are for an adjacent bathroom and I modified them to connect to the CatGenie. I wanted to make sure they would be easy to close off and disconnect if the CatGenie wasn’t used in the future.

The water supply to the toilet is PEX tubing and I cut the PEX and added a GatorBite T-fitting in between the two cut parts of PEX. There’s probably a few ways to make that connection but the GatorBite T-fitting (called GatorBite at Lowes and SharkBite and Home Depot) was the easiest for me to work with. The GatorBite pipe fittings are a push on style fitting that work with PEX, PVC or Copper pipe and seem to be a type compression fitting. They are extremely easy to push on and can be removed. They are expensive compared to other types of fitting, the T-fitting normally costs about $21. Some plumbers would probably disagree with the idea of using these types of fittings but I am not a plumber. I wanted to go from PEX to a solid copper connection for the hose and I was in a confined space. The GatorBite was the easiest and quickest to install and has not leaked.

There is a 2 inch drain-waste-vent pipe from the toilet. I cut a section out of the vent portion of the pipe then installed a 2 inch pipe with a 1 1/2 inch Y-shaped extension. The drain from the CatGenie goes in this extension. Since the pipe is a vent pipe I don’t want sewer gasses going into this room through the extension so I installed a rubber gasket that is designed to go over vent pipes with a hole in it that washing machine drains are installed into. The drain pipe seals up into the gasket and should prevent any sewer gaskets from leaking.

So far the CatGenie has operated using these connections without any problems. The cats operating with the CatGenie is a different problem.

This was a long work week. 4 x 12 hour shifts and workouts afterwards meant I had little energy left at the end of the day to work on the master bathroom. With the weekend here I finally was able to complete the installation of the heating elements.

The first step was cleaning the living piss out of the floor. I’m installing an insulating layer, which the manufacture of the heating system says will improve heat transfer. It’s not required but I would like to try to use this as the primary heating system for the house. (One Project Closer did this same project and there’s some debate in the comments on whether or not insulation is needed. They went without the insulation.)

The insulating materials is a dense closed cell foam that’s about 1/8″ think. It has a black plastic mat on the under side and attaches to the floor like contact paper. I have to first put a tacky glue on the floor and let it set for about 20 minutes.

If I was experienced at this, I could have cut the mat in one or two sections and applied it all at once. But I’m not so I cut it into small pieces and applied it to the floor a little at a time. It was much easier that way.

Installing the heating elements was a little more involved. Not only did I need to cut it, I had to do some manual wire layout where the floor was not square in front of the shower.

Since I will be embedding the elements in self leveling concrete, it’s important that they are anchored onto the floor so they don’t float up in the SLC.

The heating element is sewn onto the green mat but the round edges are not. They can easily stick out and have to be glued down. The manufacturer recommends using hot glue, a procedure I tried. After about a half hour and when I ran out of glue I thought there had to be a better way. There’s no way I can do this when I do the much larger master bedroom.

I found double-sided carpet tape at Lowes. I taped the green mat to the floor then taped the rounded edges to the mat. Not only does the double sided tape do a better job of holding down the mat it’s a lot faster and easier to put down.

Next up is to lay the self-leveling concrete. Concrete is still kind of magic to me and SLC is just that much more of magic. I will definitely need help with this part.

It’s been hot here. Unusually hot. This last week has been in the mid to high 90’s which seems about 10 degrees more than usual. This poses a problem for me. Last fall I removed the swamp cooler due to the duct work rusting out and making a mess and I haven’t yet resolved it. I realize it’s June and I should be prepared for the heat already, but I wasn’t expecting this much heat at once.

I managed to get the old rusted duct work removed but I’m not yet done getting the cement casing cleaned up. I did get a MasterCool for free but needed to get it blowing cold air into the house. Getting this small amount of duct work made was going to be extremely expensive, one company quoted me $600 – $800.

The Lowes and Home Depot don’t carry duct work larger than 8”. Luckily I was able to find a local hardware store called Samons that carries pre-made duct work. Not being ready to permanently install the duct work… let me just say that if your a fan of duck tape, you will be a fan of my work.

I have a managed to duct tape the whole mess together and sit it on the cement hole. If there’s a strong wind it will probably blow the duct work away, If it rains It will probably fill the hole with water. For now I’m cool.

The two recessed lighting fixtures are installed. The fixture over the toilet is a Broan 744 Recessed fixture with exhaust Fan. It’s supposed to have a noise rating of 1.5 sones, which isn’t the quietest but not the loudest. It’s the quietest recessed fixture I could find. I’m done with all the attic work in this location so I put the ceiling back up hopefully I won’t change my mind about something and have to take it out again.

I still want to put in two electrical outlets, one for a heated towel rack and one to put in a cabinet (so I can put all my rechargeable stuff and hide it). I have to decide where I want to tie into the existing GFCI protected circuit.

I special ordered some bathroom fixtures from Lowes on Wednesday. I can’t believe how much I spent on them, but I just didn’t like the cheap in-stock stuff. Bathroom fixtures just simply are not cheap. They were supposed to call me on Thursday and let me know how long before they arrive and it’s Saturday and I haven’t heard anything back.

I’ve put together the base cabinets I bought from IKEA to figure out how to lay them out. I’ve drawn out several ideas but it’s hard to tell without actually seeing it.

I’ve been looking for a way to organize all the receipts I get, espcially the ones from Home Depot and Lowes. There’s a few programs out there for the Mac but they require you scan them in with another program. They seemed more work than they are worth.

Neat Receipts attempts to solve this problem. They have a program for managing recipts that works directly with a scanner.

Just scan your receipts into the NeatReceipts software. The program will automatically crop, rotate and resize the receipt image, then apply patented Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and character analysis technology to read and understand the text on the receipt.

The killer feature here is that it uses OCR to extract the information from the recipt, eliminating the need to manually enter the information. It also has some sort of IRS certification so that you can keep the scanned doucments for tax purposes, so you can throw out the paper version.

Currently, Neat Receipts on works on Windows XP (a Vista beta is available). They are working on a Mac version for release in 2008, in which I’ve signed up to be notified. The Neat Receipts scanner and softare are $229.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, a 350,000 sq/ft shopping center, called Loma Colorado Crossing, is coming to Rio Rancho this Fall. It will be at northwest corner of 40th street and Northern.

The article also indicates that a Lowes might be built there. Whether or not it is, a large shopping center is needed around that area. Hopefully with a grocery store and a gas station.