Better Cleaning Through Robotics

I just got a used Roborock S7 robot vacuum cleaner and mop. 

For $100 used, how could I refuse?

Overall the setup took a bit of time.  I downloaded the app, managed to have it find the wifi, and get configured. No manual came with it, so I had to puzzle through a few things.

Once I got it through its initial setup, it then went off and immediately commenced mapping the floor and then returned to its dock all by itself.

It did ok with the initial mapping, identifying tables, couches, etc., and it also avoided falling down the stairs, which was good. 

But, I then needed to go into the app and figure out how to edit the map it made as it thought the kitchen, hallway, and living room were all one room. 

Once I edited it to make it understand these were separate rooms it worked much better.

After starting it after it had completed mapping, it immediately fired off a bunch of errors, namely due to the prior owner not changing the vacuum rollers and filter. 

So, I ordered a maintenance kit from Amazon and replaced the parts and it was quite clear the prior filter had not been replaced in quite some time, if at all. 

It now really hums along. Replacing the wearable parts that had clearly worn out fixed all the issues and error messages, and replacing the parts was very easy.  

The vacuuming it does is impressive and pretty thorough.  It even cleverly figures out how to avoid chairs to be able to vacuum under tables even when the chairs are moved about.

It happily goes around vacuuming and it is doing quite a decent job of it saving me from having to do it.

 

So far I haven't tried the mop function, but will soon. 

It is quite an enjoyable and happy-making watching this little robot going through the house steadfastly doing its cleaning thing, and it now deserves a name.

So Dear Readers, what shall I name my new robot?

Choices so far include:

1.  Vaccy Yoda

2.  Obi Wan Cleanobi

3. The Vaculorian

4. VAFO (Vac Around and Find Out) 

Let me know your thoughts on what you think it should be named.

Back Home

Back Home after two back-to-back trips.

Details to follow after I fight off jet lag from the first trip and recover from the ugly return  time of the second trip.

Power Still Out

Power is still out, and DTE changed their restoration estimate they had made all day yesterday that it would be restored  yesterday is as of now changed to  today -- this morning.  How comforting. 

Anyone wanting to place their bets on this latest estimate being correct?

Yesterday we dug out the Driveway of Doom™, moving about 6 inches of very heavy wet snow, which took longer than you might think, dug out Leah's car at the parking pad at the bottom, and had delivery pizza for lunch. We then had a nice salad for dinner as no power required to make it.  Eating healthy-ish for the win. 

Spent time hanging out doing some reading and non-electronic stuff, rather relaxing. Bundle under extra blankets and no major issues.

House is down to about 57 degrees and still dropping, but no worries about pipes freezing yet, even though outside temps want to dip to 30-32 at times during the night.  Kinda cold inside but the hot water is working. Now it's nice and sunny outside and 40 degrees.

One tree in the front yard looks to be down for the count, with half the limbs down touching the ground at this point while still attached to the trunk and not springing back. Likely will be an expensive removal operation.

As the backup batteries are out of juice we went to the office today and are recharging all the things and everyone is getting stuff done. Also brought with us most of the perishables form the fridge/freezers as ice cream is melting in one.

Had looked into a whole house generator about a year ago, but neither of the two major sellers of such ever returned my calls so it waited undone.  Now it will likely still wait as we plan to move within a certain timeline that makes the generator install rather uneconomic.

So far this is still just at an annoyance stage (I'd really like to get some laundry done, get the dishwasher done, etc) rather than a real problem.

Update:  Power was indeed restored Saturday late afternoon, which was a good thing.

Blarg, Argh, Seriously?

Ok, So why is it that fire alarms always fail and start chirping loudly at 4am and not during the day?

Great fun was had tracking down which fire alarm decided to go faulty in a house full of them, especially as it gives only a loud chirp, and then no other sign of trouble for a minute and its loud enough to sound like its coming form the entire floor.

Turns out it is a Kidde, one produced in 2021 with a 10 year battery life and warranty. 

10 years seems a trifle optimistic, as this alarm didn't even clear two.

Well, the sleep cycle is now messed up nicely for everyone for the day. 

On the upside, yes the fire alarm will indeed wake you up bolt upright no matter where you are in the house if there's an actual incident as it sure as heck does it when there is no incident.

Some Outside Home Wiring Repair

We had an "invisible" fence installed last winter for the dogs. Partially due to my surgery talking me off the dog walking roster. It works pretty well at keeping the dogs in the yard.

Unfortunately it was installed by an idiot.

The wires were buried after it thawed this year, but the burying was pretty crappy. The wires coming out of the garage where they were plugged in had been cut and connected with the standard orange non-waterproof connectors and not buried too deep with two of them not buried at all.  On top of that one of the wires had uninsulated wire poking out of the cap.

Either the dogs or other creatures dug near the wires, and the wires would then short out basically whenever it rained or snowed, which was not good. It would then set off a loud alarm in the garage that the loop was broken. Once it dried outside the alarm stopped and it worked again.

So, I decided to take a shot at fixing it.  I used waterproof connectors, covered then in electrical tape and then put silicon tape for more waterproofing on top of the electrical tape and wrapped it around tightly.

Two of the connectors live in a hole in the ground under a rock that keeps them sheltered from dogs or other predators that might like to rip them up.  The other two don't have a rock above them and are just standing up not buried in the dirt, so I need to figure out how best to rebury them.

So far all four repairs are holding up well, without shorting out even through a snowfall here and a major rainstorm since the repair was done.  I will  need to rebury them soon, unlike how the fellow left them, once I'm sure the fix is still holding up.

When Good GFCIs Go Bad

A couple weeks ago after a big storm came through, I found a circuit breaker had popped on the panel.  Reset it and it did not fix the problem - the lights in the guest bathroom, laundry room, hallway, and garage were all non-functional, as were al the plugs on the other side of that wall including the printer, and cable modem. Much fun.

Happily, the fridge, washer, and dryer in the laundry room still worked as did the garage door itself.

Clearly beyond my limited capabilities, I moved the modem via an extension cord to a working plug, and I sought an electrician to further diagnose and fix the issue.

Sadly, finding an electrician willing to work was hard. 

Finally found one and had an appointment set for last Thursday at 9:15 am, about a week after the outage, but it was the earliest I could get someone there.

So last Thursday 9:15 rolled around; then 10:15; then 11:15, and  no call -- no show.  I then called and got voicemail followed by a text message that he would call me right back.

As you might guess, no, no, he did not bother calling back at all.

Nor was there any response to my follow-up text asking if maybe he was too busy to come that day and if we could reschedule.

Then, since he clearly didn't want the work, I started looking for an alternate electrician.  Hard to get people to want to work today I suppose. Got a name from another friend yesterday, called him today, and he came over this afternoon right after finishing another job.

He then started diagnosing it and traced the cause to the GFCI outlet in the garage.  

There were three hot wires connected to the GFCI. One had gotten just loose enough to knock out that part of the circuit while leaving the rest of the circuit on the same breaker, including the Garage door working.  Rather tricky.

So wires got stripped, re-connected, and re-wired, and as a precaution we installed a nice fresh GFCI there as the old one was looking kinda dodgy, and it all works now.

Leaves Of Three, Let it Be - Or Don't Let It Be

Walking along the side of my house and saw this:

Yep, poison ivy is back, and quite a bit of it in fact.  Seems to have come in from the neighbor's patch.

Application of appropriate chemical warfare materials for Round 2 of the Battle of the Poison Ivy Patch will commence shortly.

Cleaning Around The House Under Pressure

So This Weekend we did some exterior clean-up, weeding and replanting.

I had purchased a pressure washer at Aldi, a Ferrex Compact electrically powered pressure washer.  For $100 it was practically a no-brainer purchase.

Assembly was pretty easy, I got it plugged in, added the water hose, and got pressure spraying.

Much fun was had, and that thing seriously blasted off dirt and grime with ease.

I cleaned off the outdoor patio set and it gleams like new.  The washer blasted off the caked-on dirt and green algae that was on the chairs and table and they now look almost like new.

I was pretty impressed with how well it cleaned them.

The pressure washed the deck and the only problem was that along with the green algae it would tend to pull off the paint but I figured out some adjustments and it all looks much more presentable now.  (yes we need to repaint the deck at some point and needed to even before I started pressure washing. For whatever reason, paint doesn't last very long on the deck).

Do need to buy some pressure washer soap and really go to town on the windows etc, without soap the washer blasted off all the Piper dirt, but I expect with some soap/window cleaner it will work a lot better.

Got a lot done and the outside of the house most especially the front porch looks a heckuva lot better.  Still more to do but it was a good start.

Piper And The China Olympic Games

Piper, in addition to being 75% Airedale and 25% Poodle, seems to have some mountain goat in her.  She does like to take the high ground.

 

Well, she decided to switch things up a bit and go low for a change 

Possibly one day she was contemplating the nature of things on her perch and decided that she wanted to view the Olympic games - live. Or, perhaps, she wanted to go try and free Uygurs from concentration camps, one or the other.

Either way, she launched her cunning plan in-house and started digging her way to China.

Shoe and chew toy for scale on the two main attempted Michigan-China tunnel connections.

Both holes, sadly for her but good for us, stopped far short of her intended destination. But, she did make it right through the carpet and under pad to the base netting of the under pad itself.

Ah well, the carpet had lasted 12 years, and other (smaller) holes from Jett's own carpet digging stage have been cunningly hidden by furniture.  No way to hide these though, she had to put them in very prominent spots.

It's now time to think about replacing the carpet with some wood or laminate flooring and spruce the place up a bit and make tunneling through just a bit tougher.

Bail! Bail! Man The Pumps!

But sadly there were no pumps to be manned so we had to get the water out manually.

We happened to get a rain storm in earlier this week that took out power in ours and a lot of other neighborhoods.

The storm was intense and as you may have guessed, that meant water rushing into the sump pump pit. With the power out the sump pump decided to take the night off.

That left Leah and I bailing it out for more than three hours until it finally stopped coming in.

That was not pleasant, especially when it looked like it might overflow as were were not keeping up with it.  We filled two different 5 gallon buckets and I would carry the full one to the drain and then come back for the other once Leah had filled it up.  Over 60 buckets - 300 gallons - was dumped out of that pit which is a helluva lot.  I really got a workout in as a result. My aching everything.

I've now ordered a Raybend Primary Sump Pump Backup Power System and while waiting for it to arrive, I've purchased the appropriate Deep-Cycle battery so it will be ready when it gets here.  This should hopefully stop future bailouts from needing to occur.

Of Smokers And Smoke Alarms

It's a do-stuff-around-the-house-day today.

First, I'm smoking a brisket for a party with friends tomorrow.

Its going to be a 12-hour cook, using pecan and hickory wood.

Tomorrow morning, I'm getting up early to smoke ribs to add to the party as well.

As for smoke alarms, did you now they don't last forever?  A couple of ours, both in the kids' bedrooms, died just about simultaneously, both with a weak electronic shriek and then nothing, and no change of batteries did a thing.

Turns out they were manufactured in 2007, and the average detector is good for 10 years, so we're a bit over life expectancy, and definitely got some decent use out of them. 

I switched them out today for combo carbon monoxide/smoke detectors with sealed 10-year batteries.  I then replaced the remaining battery change ones with a couple more sealed detectors.  No more biannual fire alarm battery changes now.

 

Of course, they had different mounting systems because no fire alarm manufacturer can coordinate on a standard mount. This gets annoying. 

Then, finding out the prior owners of the house, who installed the battery ones just before they sold the house to us did not use drywall anchors, but just screws added to the fun.   Well its done now, and these are now properly installed and anchored.

So that's done,  and its time to check on the smoker again and then to do a little work and some IFR studying for the written test as there's an absolute to understand, know how to apply, and retain.

In And Around The House

Yesterday, some repairs were made in the house.

The drawers in the kitchen and bathrooms have a very strange  bracket system.  The metal rail goes to a plastic bracket that is screwed into the wood.  Unsurprisingly, the plastic bracket  over time splits and the drawer then tends to droop with the back of the drawer dropping and the front getting caught on the top of the cabinet.

I've looked for years for replacement brackets  but could not find them anywhere, nor could I find the manufacturer for the cabinets. I finally figured out the secret.

On the door under the sink in the kitchen only, there is a sticker.

 

Looking up the I code at the KCMA website got me the manufacturer information.

Contacting the manufacturer, Kitchen Kompact, they were super helpful and sent me a batch of the brackets to replace the broken ones quickly and at no charge.

I then replaced all the broken ones including the ones I had done ersatz repairs to with tape and pieces of plastic cards to strengthen them.

Good to fix them all before Mother's Day.

Then I cleared the shower of an accumulation of the children's hair that was clogging the drain trap.  Disgusting, necessary, and about 5 pounds of hair in a huge hairball was removed and the drain now flows freely.

Meanwhile, outside the house we had visitors.

 

Deer came through the backyard, getting some snacking in as they wandered by.

Kinda neat to see, and they came right up to the deck which was nice.

Weekend Home Repair - Dishwasher Edition

So the upper rack of the dishwasher decided to have a pronounced downward sag to it.  Rather bent out of shape it was, dipping downwards from the front and completely off the rails with the wheels on the sides that keep it on the rails having broken off the rack and sticking uselessly into the rails.  

Not a good situation as the cups and such placed there were threatening to fall out and break.

Turns out this is not uncommon and there is an upper rack adjuster repair kit from Whirlpool that completely replaces the plastic adjusters on both sides with nice metal ones and a completely new positioning system.

No instructions come with the kit however, so you need to search YouTube for decent instructions.  This takes awhile to find good instructions as quite a few miss a few steps so you view a couple and put it together to find out how to get this done.

Removing the old stuff took a bit of work.  Putting the new stuff on took a bit longer as its completely different from the old units and is mounted in a different spot - count four tines in and place it there.Also it uses Torx T15 screws, luckily I had a T15 screwdriver bit, but they do supply a T15 driver that fits in front of a Phillips head screwdriver with the kit, which is kinda nifty.

Then after completing the install and snapping it all in place you realize that in the video they meant count 4 tines in from the back, not from the front, as they flipped the rack in the video without telling you, and some parts do not unsnap.  Then figure out on how to release it without breaking it, and then redoing it all took a bit longer as well.  

Some expansion of vocabulary occurred in each of these steps.

On the plus side, I now have a fully functional dishwasher again, after 49 bucks for the parts and shipping.

It's Not Winter Until I Go Sliding Down The Driveway of Doom™

So yes, as you might expect from the title, it is now officially winter. 

Got back from jitsu last night to a very light snowfall.

Didn't look too bad, so I headed up the driveway.

Almost made it.

Turns out that snow was hiding a slick layer of pure ice beneath it, covering the entire driveway

Momentum ran out about 4/5ths of the way up.

Then I started sliding backwards.

No control.

The brakes, they did nothing. I mean nothing.   Acceleration was unchanged.

Turning the steering wheel, it did nothing.   Velocity unchanged.

This was not good.  

This was the most complete out of control slide I've ever done down the driveway.  Normally there's at least some friction from the brakes and turning the tires gives some control.

All the way down I went, rather impressive it was.

Thankfully, I narrowly missed Abby's car on the parking pad at the bottom of the driveway by pure luck.

After a bit of choice language, I parked the car on the parking pad and then made my way up the hill, careful to stay off the iced over driveway.  The ice was not going anywhere with the freezing temperatures, and not until later this morning did it finally melt off in the sunlight and use of ice melter.

So yes, it is now officially Winter.

Follow Up To First World Problems: That Don't Look Good

When I unplugged the dryer there was a dried green substance around the plug and the wall. 

I don't think that's supposed to be there.

I've plugged the dryer back in and out a few times but still no activity at all.  Door switch seems to move freely.  I vacuumed out the lint from the dryer exhaust tube and it wasn't blocked anywhere I could see, but there was a fair bit of lint build up in there.

I fear this may get a tad expensive. 

Update Dec 14:  Turns out the green is some old paint, not corrosion.  But the problem was the wall receptacle had burned out.  My friend the electrician replaced both the receptacle and the dryer plug, and the dryer now works.    Yay.  Much rejoicing from the ladies of the house.

Tired But Lots More Organized

Well today was a clean-up and reorganizing day.  Since there was scattered thunderstorms and rain coming through we stayed home and got to cleaning.

I moved my office to the basement so the kids will have the family room turned into a 1-room schoolhouse for school.  It's already been announced, mainly due to the hysteric parents loosing their you know what at the thought that schools might reopen, that the first two weeks of school will be virtual. 

That's just a great way for Leah to start high school.

So we did that and I've been moving stuff accordingly.  We also cleaned pout the basement storage area and went over things that have been on boxes for about 10 years now. 

The rule adopted in going through the boxes was that unless it was some important docuemnt or memorabilia, if you haven't looked at it or needed it in 10 years, it went.  This led to multiple trips with garbage bags down the Driveway of Doom™.  I got in over 11,000 steps going up and down the stairs and up and down the driveway today, along with a decent bicep workout from hauling the junk to and fro.

In short we really don't need the maintenance and insurance records for a car we haven't owned for five years, among many other things, and if I haven't read those gun magazines from 2000 recently I'm not likely going to peruse them anytime soon - although looking at one with a Glock 30  being newly introduced, and another proclaiming the Ruger Mini-14 was just the thing for the police rifle was kinda interesting - we've certainly come a long way.

The garbagemen due to pickup the trash tomorrow are really going to hate us.

On the upside, it looks pretty good.  I've got a nice office spot in the basement and the kids have two desks all set to go until they finally get back to school.  Need to by a platform to raise my computer up as I figure its going to be mainly a standing desk setup for when I'm home.

Still a lot to rearrange and reorganize but much less junk and clutter.

Overall a good and productive day.

The House: All Your Weekend Belong To Us

So yesterday I had more of a workout with the crushed granite.

Lining the side of the house:

This took quite a lot to get it done, but it now looks rather nice.

Then I lined the area off the porch where the hose and gas meter is with the crushed granite. It doesn't look like much but now the ground is level at the base, sloping away form the house and a lot safer to stand in when turnign the valve to use the garden hose as before that are was a complete mess.

Then the mulch arrived, all 5 cubic yards of it.

That's a lot of mulch and that's what we've been doing today - weeding the yard and mulching the flowerbeds. Quite the workout these past two days.

Much time spent loading the mulch into the wheelbarrow and taking it to where it is needed, and repeating ad infinitum.

Of course its beginning to look like we have too much mulch now as just about everything covered but a small mountain of about half a cubic yard remains. Ugh.

Sometime this summer I need to repaint the deck and replace a few deck pieces off wood that have warped. That should be fun.

Maybe First Alert Meant It In Dog Years

So at 4am one of the fire alarms began to chirp, randomly, and loudly.

This led to a game of which *%^! one is it? As there's one in every bedroom, every floor, and the kitchen, so it's quite a game to figure it out.

This ius especially fun as it doesn't keep chirping consistently as that would be far to easy to find. It's a random annoying chirp that's hard to track down as it goes off unpredictably and on a weird delay that's designed to have you walk to every alarm, listen, hear nothing, then try and chase it down again. A damn low battery indicator light or flashing or soemtghing would be nice, ya know?

Well after much trial, error and vocabulary expended, it was the one in the basement, that was near a vent of course so it threw its chirp all around the place. I should have know - after all it was the replacement for the First ALert alarm that died in December 2018.

A First Alert smoke alarm installed and turned on in December 2018, dated manufactured in September 2014 and now deader than a door-nail, even with a promised 10-year lifespan.

Of course, they also had to change the mount for its replacement model of the same type, because, why not annoy homeowners?

So, I had to unscrew the mount and replace that as well. At least the drywall screw holes lined up on the new mount, so there's that.

Considering this one replaced the one that died in December 2018 I am less than impressed with First Alert 's touted 10-year lifespan.

Home & Personal Improvement: I'll Feel That In The Morning

Today provided plenty of exercise.

A friend has a landscape supply company and we've want to do some landscape improvements, and it's always good to buy from your friends, especially when they're pros.

He even came out to our house to check my estimates of material needed and gave some great advice. Since the grass area is marshy as heck it would take more crushed granite as its going to sink a lot.

Project #1 - extend the parking pad so it actually touches the driveway instead of a 11x9 feet of wasted space, turning it into a 2 car pad at the base of the Driveway of Doom™. This makes it easier for Abby to park. Also then to spread a layer of the crushed granite and cover up the crappy crushed concrete the driveway company used to make it the pad last year.

Project #2 - a lining of rocks along the side of the house to make it look better.

So I got a call today that the crushed granite would be arriving this afternoon, all 4.5 cubic yards of it.

Good thing I was working from home. I hurriedly laid down the weed should over the marshy grass between the existing parking pad and the driveway, and prepared for the arrival of the truck bearing the crushed gravel.

4.5 cubic yards turns out to be a lot of rocks. A lot of rocks. Did I mention a lot of rocks?

Just finished hauling a ton of rocks to the side of the house and spreading the rocks over the existing parking pad and creating the parking pad extension, and now I'm beat. Complete with a wicked blister on the palm of my hand, which is just great.

On the upside,the parking pad looks darn good if I say so myself.

The parking pad used to only extend to the large rock to the left level with the driver's side door in the picture, with a large strip of always wet grass before the driveway edge. Now it meets and looks good. I expect it to still settle some.

The remaining part of the pad is now covered in the crushed granite over the half-assed crushed concrete that had been put there before and looks much more appealing.

Between that and hauling rocks to the side of the house, I'm beat. Unfortunately, I still have a pile of crushed gravel left over and someone has a cunning plan to do something with it starting tomorrow.

Oh yeah, a truckload of mulch arrives this weekend.

On the upside, I've been making a habit of doing dry-fire practice drawing from concealment each night for at least 20 minutes a night. I can feel the improvement already and assuming I keep this up as a regular habit I should see better times at the range. Yes, after walking the dog tonight its down to downstairs to do some dry fire and then pass out.

The Warranty Covers Everything But The Part That Breaks

I have a Kwikset electronic lock installed between the garage and house. Having a locked entrance form the garage to the house itself makes sense, especially as not very long ago there was a rash of break-ins by thieves who had a garage door opener reader that mad it easy for them to open a garage door, drive their car in, close the garage door, open the unlocked door into the house, load up and go. So a locked door there was a good idea, and a keypad makes it convenient to get back and forth.

It's lasted for almost twelve years now and just began acting up now. In short it won't open via the keypad anymore and can't be fixed. While the finish and mechanics have a lifetime warranty, the electronics of it only have a one year. Sigh.

Off to amazon to buy a replacement. The joy of shopping from home and home delivery in an ice storm.