When does his personal nuclear reactor get installed?

 

I will leave those at work

 

 

Need a new stud finder, what do you have or recommend?

I found these on amazon.

or

 

Nothing fancy, but mine is a Zircon HD55. Stud and Deep scan. Rarely misses, though I don't have to use it much.

 

You could have just wired in a NEMA 14-50 outlet+cover to pass inspection rather than buying the whole charger?

 

I have a zircon too, have used it for years

 

I hate the look of plugged in EV charger. I wanted it hardwired with no plug wire or future exposed conduit to the charger. The amount of wire I needed inside of the charger would not have fit in an electrical box which means I would have had to have a junction box and thus something exposed. Plus a buddy of mine will appreciate it when he visits in his MachE that we don't have to do find him charging.

 

Nothing new to report as far as the garage project goes.

I did spend Thursday and Friday prepping for the supposed storm that I was hoping we would get but instead we got what we usually get and that is much of nothing. I really wanted the early predictions of significant snowfall to happen ,but I know better than to actually believe that.

In prep for the potential ice storm that was being predicted towards the end, I broke my original plan of not driving on the driveway till it was sealed. With all the cars being street parked I didn't want the chance for ice covered trees or branches falling on a car even if the chance was small.

In doing this, I got my first test on seeing how tight the extra spot in the work bay was. It isn't too bad. I do wish I had put the lift about 4-6in further to the left so that this area had a little more space. This space is likely where I will store a long term project someday when I need it out of the lift to do maintenance.




There is exactly 2ft here.


I can get 4-5in closer to the lift power eventually as I was trying to limit my tire turns on the driveway since I will have to clean them all off before being able to seal.


Put her car in the other bay as well which was the first car in there. Funny having 3 cars in the garage this weekend.


Of course, I had to grab an above shot of getting two cars in the garage finally.


After all that planning, we didn't get much of anything. Maybe an inch of sleet/snow on the hard surfaces but the lawn wasn't even covered.



I did do one major project for the house garage this weekend. I have been really unhappy with the performance of my ZWave network running on SmartThings as of late. I think the main problem here is the fact that I have over the last 2 months installed 7 battery powered temp sensors in the garage and then I did a network repair without making sure all of those battery devices were awake. I am also still using a Gen2 SmartThings hub which lacks the much newer Zwave features that help battery powered devices a lot.

Home Assistant has been a planned migration for a long time. In fact, I have been using it for all my new automations for about 2-3 years now. Some quick research showed that the best adapter might be their new adapter, just released last fall.

With that, I ordered a Home Assistant ZWA-2. Turns out this thing is much larger than I expected. It is almost 13in tall.




I had not accounted for this on top of my network/server cabinet placement since it didn't exist back then. Well, it just fits with the top touching the ceiling. I will actually have to remove it each time when I need to swing open the back side of the cabinet for any real work on equipment but that should be few and far between. Looking to get a shelf on the wall for it.


I then spent the entire weekend excluding 40 devices from SmartThings and then adding them to ZWave JS UI. For right now I have left my 17 total battery powered devices on my SmartThings controller. Voice control through my Google Home devices is near instant. I am waiting on two new exterior plugs I want to add before I start adding my battery adapters. All of my temp sensors and Zooz scene controller remotes are 800LR which means they will get home shots to the controller and skip the mesh. My 4 door sensors, though, are older and will still have to use the mesh so I want to make sure they don't end up as mesh devices.

I love that ZWave JS UI allows you to see a diagram of how your mesh actually functions.

 

No, I totally get it and agree with not wanting a plug. What I had done was to get the electrician to wire in a NEMA 14-50 box until my wall charger arrived. Then I removed/unwired the plug and used that same wiring to wire into the charger. When the electrician ran the cable for the outlet, he left extra wire coiled up inside the wall so I had some slack to play with.

It's definitely too late for you to do anything with this information but thought I'd toss it out there anyway lol.

 

Tear it all down, and start over

 

I made sure to still push all the extra wire into the wall. I could likely have done what you mentioned here, I guess. I guess I just went for the more finished look from the start, since who knows, might be years till I need an EV charger. The only EV still of interest to me is the R3x and I am expecting it to unfortuantely end up higher priced than I want to spend for a car I would only consider an around town commuter car. It honestly would make more sense for the other half to get an EV over me.

 

Replace the Suburban with an R1T or R1S. Would be awesome to daily drive and be beyond functional at the same time. If you get a new one, it would have the NACS port for your brand new charger too.

The R3X looks sweet but it seems too good to be true. Until they actually roll it out and we can see what it is, I'm not holding my breath. Besides, that's like 5 years out at this point since the factory isn't even built yet.

 

The Suburban will never get replaced. It's a 2500 not a standard 1500. It is a GM 6.0 before the cylinder deactivation stuff. It will be around till it dies. We road trip it as well and I even what to do an overland build with it and go remote camping with it. With taking it to travel you can pretty much get parts for it in the middle of no where even with since it is essentially a Silverado 1500 in a suburban. The R1S would give up 35 cu/ft of cargo volume. I have no interest in being tied to an EV charger for travel. It is fine for some people I am not interested. Don't get me wrong, I really do like the R1S/R1T but they are just not for me. A small EV hatch back for driving around town is really all that interests me. As I mentioned though, likely more practical for her since the only driving she really does is to work and back and 1-2 times a month to hang out with a friend.

 

ditto on my 2004 Yukon XL SLT with the unplugged DVD player, torsion front end and 5.3 that just wants to be abused.

 

Well, I finally got to put this beast to work with some real snow.


We received a good bit of wind along with the storm this past weekend so figuring out the total snowfall on the property a bit hard. The street in front of the house was most consistent and I took a measurement there at it 5.5in. My truck, sitting about 75ft from where I measured the road though, had 8in on the hood. I cleared my neighbors driveway across the street from me and a got bit of that had 10-12in on it as it was over half the height of the plow blade which is 18.5in tall.

Honestly, I was a bit bummed about the totals we got. Many friends within 30min around my location had 10-14in.

I am a sucker for the beauty that winter brings. For as much as I love snow, it is a bit odd that I moved south of where I originally grew up so far.




The following morning in the sun.


Deepest point in the street


But I did at least get to play in the snow


This thing didn't blink one bit no matter what I tossed at it. With AWD and 380lbs of ballast, it just pushed. Even on my neighbor's driveway with the plow straight and not angled, I made it the full 70ft to the back of the driveway, almost a 1ft deep with not even the slightest hesitation.




Once I was done I took the dogs out for some fun in the snow. They absolutely love the stuff. The funniest dog is the white one in this picture. She hates rain, she hates wet dew covered grass, she hates the grass when I let it grow longer than 4in tall. However, snow, she is the first one at the door to go outside.

 

My wife grew up in the mountains in CA, she's been here in Houston long enough that she's miserable right now. She'd rather 105* summer to winter in the 20-40s.

 

Damn, crazy you guys got 6"

We got 18" where I live and it still hasn't melted

 

We got a little rain yesterday & are already looking at the 70s during the day.

 

It's too cold to snow here though starting to warm up now. Whatever snow we have has turned into a block of ice after the level of cold we had the past two weeks.

Now it's apparently warming up to above freezing any day now!

 

This past weekend I worked on trying to find a semi-transparent stain color selected before I started making the new cedar shutters for the house and the garage. The goal was to get something to match really close to the garage doors. I was happy to not to head down the path of custom mixing anything.





Also picked up a fresh supply of cedar 1x6 to build these out of


This week started on the fence post for the breezeway fence and gate.

Cut some stainless threaded rod for the outer posts that had to be bolted on cause of the footers were in the way for concrete set where I wanted them.






All of this will be buried underground below the pavers. I went double nuts since I couldn't course stainless 1/2in lock nuts locally.


Three outer posts installed. Inner posts will be set in concrete this week.

 

Nice work man

 

Nice! What did you use to anchor the threaded rod into the ground?

 

On Friday, completed the rest of the holes and got the concrete poured for the posts.



Ran into my shed's power, but thankfully didn't damage it





All locked in place





Hopefully, these never move. 30in deep by 8in holes for concrete for 2.5in square steel posts for a 46in high 3ft side gate.





I also got up on the garage roof for the first time to clean pine needles off. It is up there a bit.













Just a few pine needles gather in that valley





Saturday, I went and picked up some more pine needle bales. I decided to forgo stone around the inner side of the retaining wall for the first year at least.





The inspector also came by on Friday and wouldn't pass us for the safety chains that came with my attic lift kit. They wanted a more solid barrier. He was suggesting some sort of doors but we came to a compromise that this would be sufficient.





I also found another marketplace steal on a piece of furniture to continue finishing out the loft.

 

I used this epoxy. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Sika-Anchor...l-oz/999977064

 

Yesterday, I was able to get all the fence posts cut down to the same height so the ground could be filled back in on the bolt-on posts. The paver guy was supposed to come today, but I guess he's coming tomorrow now to finish off that work.

A little spark protection for the paint


This M12 cutoff wheel continues to impress me


The laser level came in handy to get everything lined up regardless of the slope of the breezeway




The stone mason stopped by yesterday and took a count of what was needed to finish off that work. It should take place next week or the week after.

Inspections were all completed over the last week as well, and they have all passed. Still waiting for one to update online. The end is near.

 

Yesterday was new tool day. I have wanted to pick one of these up for a while but always put it off with no place to use it for the time being. They rarely go on sale but this past weekend were for I think only the 3rd time in the last 24 months. With finally having a driveway and able to get back to some car care I grabbed one. It will be so nice not to manage a cord but I think the biggest improve over my 15+ year old Griots garage unit is the severally reduce vibration it puts through your arms. With having 2x 6.0 batteries and 1x 5.0 battery there shouldn't be a time when I run out of battery in the middle of polishing before another has fully charged back up I think.





The paver crew was back yesterday to wrap up that work. Breezeway work around the posts finished. I would really like to get started on the gate and fence panels but I think I will wait till the stone work is finished.




One of the things I have been waiting to see if the dimaond finished in the center of the driveway. It accomplished what I wanted really well and breaks up the large mount of concrete with a nice accent. With that wrapped up I will be able to easily get in and out of the garage.






With the stone work not being wrapped up for another week or two I think I have finally made my decision that I will have to forgo putting hardner and sealer down on the driveway this spring and if I want to do it I will have to wait till the fall and just clean the driveway really well then. I expect with the warm weather we are already starting to receive here in NC pollen will be here shortly and don't want to seal the yellow into the driveway.

 

Home stretch

 

Can you not seal most of it and leave the areas by the stonework to complete later? Would make cleaning much easier in the long run.

The whole project looks awesome and it's great to see you on the home stretch!

 

Reminds me of a saying from the Locost group [and probably others]
90% of the work takes 10% of the time, the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time.

 

That Diamond Pattern around the drain really adds a nice custom touch, love it!

 

Worth every headache right here! Enjoy it man, I am quite jealous but happy for you. Maybe one day for me!

 

The problem is I need zero traffic on the concrete for 10 days to seal it properly. I can't take that gap in the remaining construction and once that is finished we will already be in the full swing of pine pollen season.

To do the sealing properly, I need to wash the driveway and also scrub off the several tires marks that have already been caused on the driveway. Once that is done, I need to let it dry for 48hrs. The defnsifier then would go down, and then you must wait a minimum of 5, but a suggested 7 days for that. After that, you can put down the penetrating sealer. Driveway is good for foot traffic 12hrs after that, and 48hrs after that for cars. Even if I were to do it piecemeal, trying to tell contractors where and where not they can walk is like trying to tell a toddler where and where not they can go.

 

Oh man that sucks. I hope you're able to clean it enough in the fall after all the traffic on it...

 

Worst case, I pay someone to professionally clean it for me I think. I can't imagine that it will get ruined by the fall. It does mean I should be able to wash my first car in the driveway this weekend though so that will be nice.

 

Crisin it with 2 black strips, the whole length, in the Vagon!

 

Rubber is the worst thing almost to have to clean off before sealing it.

 

Diamond really finishes things off well, super clean, classy look.

 

 

The builder was to make me 2 sets of shutters for the outside of the garage to match the house originally as part of the contract. Since I ended up changing the colors of everything on the house, and I am staining the shutters, I can't reuse the ones from the house. I need to get those built soon so this weekend spent some time getting the shop area a little more functional.



Starting state. This area has become a staging room for everything during this project as it was the first area to have concrete. Most of all the wood that is left is just leftovers. I reorganized the wood rack and was able to get a lot more on it. One short-sighted issue I created myself in the design was that the area my wood rack is in, is only 11 ft 6in. Guess any lumber I store will need to be 10ft lengths.







I had been using the large pallet from the attic lift as a work table for a long time but I had to sit on the floor to use it. This will likely be throw-away work, but the supplies for it were free other than the casters, and I don't know how long it will be till I get the final design created for the shop area and then get it built so this will give me an area for the time being.









With the work table built and the smaller pieces of lumber off the ground, I was able to gain another 5x18ft area back of the shop floor. It will give me some good working space to work on building the 3 sets of shutters I need in the coming week.