Rescued another Pixel OG

Jen dropped hey phone and the screen started going out.  Luckily I had my old phone that she was able to use.  But I had repaired my phone so I thought I would give it another yet.

The last time I attempted to just replace the glass, but had ordered another digitizer in case, good thing I had.  This time I just opened on replacing both (again good thing I had).

The screen was pretty cracked and cracked a lot more coming off.  The hardest part is getting the screen off and enough of the adhesive off for the new screen to fit.

Second hardest part is getting the new adhesive on the phone.

   

Turned out pretty well in the end.

Free Birds

A Thanksgiving movie.

Pretty good, could laugh out loud parts.

Comcast is offering a week of free access to a bunch of services, so we have been trying a bunch out.

They actually sent me a free Flex thing, which is like a roku I guess.  Pretty decent of them.

Home Alone 4

Not the best of the home alones.

Still pretty entertaining.  Kids enjoy it.

Alexander and the no good, horrible, very bad day

This was a very entertaining movie.

Still love Steve Carol.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Pretty entertaining.

Good action, kid friendly I would say.

Jen doesn't care for Jim Carey so that made it not a favorite of hers.  There are definitely some times when there are bullying parts as well.

Christmas Break-In

Pretty good movie.

Netflix's attempt at Home Alone.

But fewer traps, which disappointed the kids.

Kid friendly.

Nick wanted to watch a movie for his half birthday and eat Culver's.

Defrosting the Freezer

 

It is that time of the year again.  We had a coldish day we were able to put out freezer items out on the porch.  The freezer really needed it too!

Furnace Install

 My installation date is Friday the 13th :)  Good thing I am not superstitious.

2 man crew arrived at 8am, and finished about 11am.  They said they would be done by lunch and they were done by lunch.  The new unit slipped right in place of the old unit.  It is a little smaller actually so they had to add an air flow box underneath.  Which I guess helps with the air flow anyway, because they are building furnaces so small now that there isn't enough space for the return air to enter anyways.

They pulled my A-coil out and I was a bit concerned to see all the rust on there.  I guess that is pretty typical though.  Something about how they don't build them like they used to.

Here is the new one, you can see the airflow box underneath.  I need to clean up the humidifier tubing and wiring.  We hooked up the 2nd stage of heat to the nest, though I can't really tell much of a difference in the fan speed between stage 1 and 2, apparently you can tinker with the CFM setting for the fan, but I haven't gotten there yet.

When I just run the fan it is very quite though.  I think it runs at about 30% of full, which is very quite and uses about 200 watts instead of 600 to 800.  So I might consider leaving it running, but I have never really needed it.

New Furnace Time

 My furnace has been leaking water out the bottom for awhile.  I looked at it and it appeared to be coming from the heat exchanger, so eventually I thought I would have someone come look at it.  I chose to go with the company that installed it, since I didn't want to get a fly by night low cost to inspect an arm and a leg to fix.

It was a Trane XR90, 92% efficient furnace.  It went in with the house in 2009.  Chuck came and assessed the situation and determined it was in fact the heat exchanger was no longer sealed.  The furnace has a 20 year warranty on the heat exchanger, so I was able to get the part for free, but the labor to replace it was going to be about $1000 he thought...

So I inquired about a new furnace, he recommended a Trane S9V2 which is 96% efficient with 2 stages of heat for $5500.  There are some rebates involved and my Trane discount which knock it down another $825.  So I went with that option just so I don't have to worry about it or deal with more parts failing.

I also asked for the Heat Exchanger as that is an expensive part, and I figured they owed me that and I might be able to sell it.  I also called around and received a lower bid, which they agreed to match ($5080).

Sense Energy Monitor

 I have been wanting a Sense energy monitor for a couple of years.  Facebook keeps shoving it in my face.  Plus I think it is an awesome idea.  So I finally broke down and bought myself an early Christmas present when they were having a good sale on them.

Here is the panel before.

The hardest part of installing it was getting the metal cover off for the wifi antenna to go through.

The second hardest part was getting it all to fit in there and get the cover back on :)

Overall though a very easy installation.

Here are the clamps on the 2 lines coming into the house.

Furough Projects

My company instituted company wide furloughs for all salaried employees starting last week.  This is my furlough week and I am putting it to good use getting a few projects finished.

Our patio in the back has not been looking too good for awhile.  The ground has been sinking and as a result it kind of waves a bit.  Plus the wood edging needs stain.  So we decided to take it out and replace it with a deck.  Plus we have plan for the old stones.

So the first task is to get the stones out, the kids and I accomplished that yesterday.  Quite a bit of work, but it is done.

The other thing I was able to do yesterday was put up some more shelves in our attic.  We have quite a collection of ski's that a friend of Jen's didn't want anymore...  It was cool enough yesterday that the warm attic felt pretty good.

Now the plan is to put up more shelving...  If shelving on one side is good, both sides must be better right!

Brome Bird Care Bird Feeder

We have a bird feeder that Jen's aunt and uncle gave to us for Christmas probably 10 years ago.  It finally started to deteriorate and the squirrel protection mechanism went bad so the poor birds couldn't get to the seed anymore.

I contacted the company and requested the replacement part I thought I needed, the spring mechanism.  They sent the part, but when I received it I realized that it was actually a different part that was broken.

So I contacted them again and they emailed me a parts list and asked that I carefully figure out all the parts that needed replacing.  I figured out that I needed 2 parts, one was a pretty substantial one.  They sent them right out and I was able to get the bird feeder back in action!

Here is a link to their online store.

I was super impressed with the lifetime care warranty, they really stood behind their product for me!

Hard drive died!

So the hard drive in our family computer stopped working, bios screen stuck.  :(

I ordered a replacement SSD from best buy and picked it up on my way home.  It is twice the size of the old one.

I wanted to try a cloning tool I got, so I put in the HD from our other computer and cloned it to the new drive.  It was done in about 15 minutes.

Once I installed the new SSD, the computer came right up.  Awesome.

I was able to go into drive manager and extend the drive so it used the full size.  Looks like I could provide another service to my neighbors :)

Leaking Humidifier

My wife asked me to turn on the humidifier a couple weeks ago because it was getting dry in the house.  When I turned it on though, I noticed it was leaking water.  So I turned it back off and just got around to it yesterday.

After checking that the drain line and the pad looked fine, I noticed that the rubber tube that carries the water from the solenoid to the top of the filter pad wasn't quite seated to the bottom of the nipple.

I turned it back on and noticed that when it first starts, the rubber tube slips up a bit.  I figure that the calcium in our water is probably building up in the tube causing a little more pressure when it starts up.  So I just put a zip tie on it and will monitor it going forward.  At some point I will need to soak it in CLR :)

VHS to Digital

I posted in Next Door that I was willing to convert VHS tapes into digital.  It kind of blew up and now I am in contact with quite a few people who might be willing to hire me for that :)

I am just using a $10 usb adapter to do the conversion, which is pretty simple.  But people are busy I suppose.  Also the library will help people out with doing it as well.

CLR to the rescue

The faucets in the kids bathroom were/are looking pretty dingy.  We have hard water and the calcium builds up on things.  We try to clean then off, but over time it takes it toll.

We bought some new faucets today, to motivate me to see if I could clean the old ones off by removing them and soaking them in CLR.  The results are pretty good.  I think we can get another 10 years out of them :)

They are leaking a little they are turned on, so I contacted Delta to see if they will send me some springs and seats to redo them.  Otherwise I will order some.

Before, this is the other sink which wasn't quite as bad.  I will get to this one sometime in the future.  We could probably do the faucets in our bathroom as well, so I will get a bigger bucket.

Here is the faucet after soaking and some elbow grease.  It isn't perfect, but like I said it passed the bosses test.

Reload the garage

We have been burning quite a bit this winter so far, and our wood pile in the garage was depleted.  We had bad weather today so I worked from home and I was able to reload.

There is nothing quite like a wood fire.  It is a lot of work to cut and split the wood, then move it around.  But it has definitely resulted in smaller heating bills and the ambiance can't be beaten.