Greg In The Desert

On Thursday a week ago I went into work and had an large ice tea. I went to Dion’s for lunch (I am not blaming Dion’s for the following, it is very unlikely it had anything to do with them) and had a sandwich. I went home for the rest of the day and had water and some homemade soup while I worked on my house.

Friday morning I woke up about 7 am to go to the bathroom. No problems during the transaction and I went back to bed. At 8:21 am I woke up and looked at the clock and thought it was strange I was dizzy. Then I could feel I going to throw up.

I ran to the bathroom and spent about two hours at the toilet. I had no food in my stomach yet I experienced uncontrollable vomiting. I was extremely dizzy. I was sweating more liquids than I was vomiting and was freezing cold. I became disoriented.

The disorientation is hard to explain but my brains ability to tell which way is up or down was gone. It’s kind of like when a picture is turned on it’s side and it’s difficult to make out until the picture is rotated correctly.

Sometime during my marathon vomiting session I had to go to the bathroom. I managed to get myself up on the toilet and continue to vomit nothing into the tub. Crapping my pants wouldn’t have helped the situation. I am very thankful that didn’t happen.

After about two hours of what felt like a month I managed to stagger my way back to the bedroom. I was still vomiting but I had nothing to vomit so I wasn’t making a mess. It took a lot of concentration and stillness to get my vomiting to stop. Meanwhile I was still dizzy and cold. It was at this point that I considered calling an ambulance but I finally stopped vomiting and I didn’t want to start again by moving.

I managed to text a friend after a while, something about “HELP”. They brought me some crackers and electrolyte liquid. The throwing up stopped about noon on Friday and I spend the next two days eating crackers and mostly drinking water and electrolyte liquids. And sleeping.

Over the next week I had little appetite and it even seems like I forgot what hungry was. I had to force myself to eat real food. I also had body aches and headaches to suffer with.

I’m sure I had salmonella poisoning. I couldn’t be the flu since I didn’t experience a sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fever and other flu like symptoms. I could be pregnant but that seems unlikely.

I was already on the weight loss path due to lifestyle changes (as in I’m not dieting) and I can attribute at least 5 lbs of weight loss to the food poising. Although it was nice to get a boost in weight loss I absolutely cannot recommend this method.

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.

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.

Last fall, I threatened that I would have the master bathroom completed by the end of the winter. Here it is spring and I did almost nothing to the bathroom. I have a variety of excuses that I wont go into now, however I did finally make some actual progress on it this weekend.

Before I can do anything I need to install the pocket door. Before I install the pocket door I need to relocate the wiring that exists on the wall where the door goes.

The wiring consists of power in, a wire to the lights controlled by a switch and a power out to a outlet. The good news is the wiring was easy to move to the next wall, it was loose in the attic and there was plenty of room to move it. I thought I would leave the outlet unpowered for now, until I figured out how I was going to rewire everything, apparently the wire to the outlet is also hooked up to the living room.

Now I have a problem that I need to wire that outlet back up, so i have Romex running along the other side of the bathroom along up to the switch. It looks pretty messy and dangerous in the pictures, I know. Trust me it’s safe and temporary.

I need to decide how to wire up a exhaust fan, will it go near the light switch or near the toilet? I also need to figure out if I’m going to use a fancy digital shower control. If so It will use the power from the outlet then I can wire it up properly.

Finally I can install the pocket door. I have the studs marked to cut down, but I’m waiting for some friends to come by and verify my measurements before I screw it all up. I will save the pocket door install for another post.

An attempt this weekend to repair my leaking bathroom resulted in new stuff. First we tried to fix the leaking sink, only to find it so old and corroded that it was better to replace it. I had planned to replace it at some point and I really didn’t like the double-ugly cabinet. That’s how I got the pedestal sink along with the new faucet.

Time to tackle the toilet, but pretty much the same thing. Old, corroded and ugly. Initally I was worried the new 1.6 gallon toilet would not flush as well as the old 5 gallon, but I’m happy to report that it is doing a fine job. I also upgraded to a nice padded seat.

I also removed the old, ugly, cheap-ass cabinet that was hanging above the toilet. I replaced the square mirror with this combo round mirror and medicine cabinet. I don’t care for the way it sticks out of the wall but i am happy with the look. Total trips to Home Depot for the project: 4.