Water consumption in the presence of leaks

water consumption

The whole house was replumbed Oct 28-30 due to numerous obvious leaks that I found and plugged.  From the data I conclude that there must have been 12 hundred cubic feet (hcf) of water lost over the previous 3 months due to leaks, since my baseline usage is about 7 hcf.

All of that went into the soil under the house which happens to be be quite porous, fortunately.  Too bad the leaks didn't occur during winter when they would count towards my baseline consumption for water allocation purposes, a touchy subject with me since my normal 6-7 hcf/month is already at the low end of local usage.

Spa equipment enclosure

Southern California Edison was doing work overhead and knocked down the side of the spa equipment enclosure.

It was just termites holding hands inside, and I didn't have the heart to take them up on their offer to pay for repairs. Original design was poor, but like a lot of things on my house I guess it got the job done for the prior owner.

Energy Upgrade California

I attended a an informational meeting called "Greening Your Home With Energy Upgrade California and Water Reliability 2020" last night.  It was put on by the South Bay Environmental Services Center (SBESC). I previously attended a couple Ocean Friendly Gardening workshops co-sponsored by the SBESC and the Surfrider Foundation which I blogged about here, which is how I heard about last night's program.

The SBESC are sponsored by the South Bay Cities Council of Governments and chartered with "serving as the region's central clearinghouse for energy efficiency and water conservation information and resources,

Before and After

It's for sale now and I doubt it will ever look better.  Let's see how I started and how I ended up.

Before

In between

After

Before

After (same area shown at right with French door)

Juli made me do it

As of last weekend, I have a little brick and concrete paver patio in the back.







- Posted at great expense from my iPhone

The all new house

Freshly painted trim (Evan's Painting in San Pedro) and new green stucco (Jeff Graham Plastering in Torrance). Red door using Benjamin Moore Country Red was either my mother's or Juli's insistence, though I had done the work of picking the exact color in an earlier iteration of this color scheme. This proves that I do take advice, despite claims to the contrary.









The meadow and most of the native plants are highly unkempt, which explains why I haven't posted about them in a long while. I may have a longer native plant mea culpa later. For the moment the Aristida purpurea in the second photo is about as kempt as the natives get.

- Posted at great expense from my iPhone

To Do List VI

The To Do List is dead! Long live the To Do List!

Like royalty, or Bermuda grass, the To Do list keeps coming back with another version that looks similar to the old one.  But this is a good news story.

Way back in May, To Do List V looked pretty ambitious.  Taking stock of all the things I've struck from the list for one reason of another (accomplished myself this summer, hired someone to complete, or on which I've changed my thinking) To Do List V is looking like it was a pretty successful go forward plan.

Looking forward again from where I stand right now, I need a new plan.  The new plan needs to take me to an end point where I can say, "I'm done" and mean it.  Those of you reading for my gardening comments - there's some planning in here for you at the bottom of this post.

When this is done I may have to start a new blog - "The Second One For A Friend" from the adage that I seem to have absorbed in the last couple years of home repair and garden building:

Build the first one for an enemy,
the second one for a friend,
and the third one for yourself.



Exterior House

• Patch holes in stucco
• Paint French doors
• Stucco over where old kitchen door used to be
• Paint stucco, trim
• Borrow airless sprayer to paint eaves
• Fix computer room window

Interior House

• Replace screen over gable vent at front of house
• Fix doorbell23 Nov 09
• Install bathroom tub spigot
• Have tub refinished
• Remove baseboard trim
• Paint walls
  
• Replace floor - living room and hall in wood?  Rest carpet?
• Install new baseboard trim
• Install drop leaf countertop extension ($30 Ikea)
• Reconfigure living / dining area - narrow drop leaf table would be good have
• Fix trim in my bedroom
• Fix wall behind hall cabinets
• Ground outlet in my room
• Paint hall light fixtures
• Fix garage wall near sink
• Fix common wall between garage and house for fire safety
• Fix garage gable end framing
  

Garden

• Add a sprinkler head to front garden area to improve coverage - The sprinklers aren't used often, but when they are they ought to cover the whole area.
  
• Extend Aristida purpurea plantings to provide better unifying theme
• Rejuvenate front garden meadow  - This might mean just keeping the yarrow mowed and adding supplemental water (see sprinklers above) as needed
  
• Plant parking strip area with natives - This needs brief consideration for suitable plants.  Maybe more Aristida and a low sage (Salvia sonomensis? aka creeping sage or Sonoma sage) or some sedges that will take summer water since part of the parking strip will remain turf grass and need summer supplemental water.
  
• Re-mulch native areas - Just maintenance and to keep it a bit more attractive
  
• Do something in N side yard to make it better - brick pathway?
  
• Pour custom pavers for bedroom French door exit to replace wood lain on ground
• Overseed remaining grassy areas with a winter rye at the first signs of a real rain
• Figure out what I did wrong with the driveway edge plantings (Lessingia filaginifolia 'Silver Carpet' (Silver Carpet aster) and Lotus grandiflorus (Large-Flowered Lotus) and not make that mistake again. 
• Add to my potted plants - both interior and exterior

Update: I thought I had a sufficiently good idea to make a placeholder.

Weekend plans

I have Saturday plans to take Juli and my son to see Warren and his wife in the AM. They have a baby that I've neglected visiting for so long that even I'm feeling guilty about it, not a usual state of affairs for me when it comes to social obligations. I'll then attempt to get my H1N1 vaccination and in the evening we'll visit the Haunted Hayride.

I need to work out on Sunday AM and then take action at home and in the garden. Home improvement tasks include fixing the shower valve, putting the wood trim on my kitchen counter, fixing the phone line so it's no longer running on the floor through the house, and repairing the doorbell.

The tasks that I'm really relishing are the garden tasks. I think I'll put those into the next Blog post, since the list is long, ambitious, and detailed.

TR Trading Company

Here's a place I learned about today that carries used furniture. I am told that it's higher end stuff that's cleared out of hotels and offices.

The web site appears to have mostly office furniture, but I saw some really nice chairs and a small better-built coffee table that came from there. Of course they have book shelves, and it might be nice to replace my particle board book shelves with something nicer.

TR Trading Company

House Doctor

(with reference to fall planting season below...)

Not that home improvement issues have gone away. Some day when I have a nanosecond of time I'll blog in detail about my travails this summer on the home improvement front. It's liveable, but I'm cooking with a single plate, spoon, fork, and jackknife (somehow the chefs knives are not locatable :( ).

The good news is that Kevin is back on the job. Hurray!

Electrical has stalled this last week, but I did make forward progress in the bathroom with an actual working lavatory sink.

I also made contact with a guy by the name of Pjlevo "Phlee" Hudshon who has the House Doctor business. He's a licensed contractor who lives locally and does home repair. I had him over to talk about flooring, but it turns out that his flyer says that he does Tile, Baths, Drywall, Flooring, Kitchens, Electrical, Patios & Decks, Termite repairs, room additions, and Fence replacement. 310-433-9076.

Phlee thought that his labor charges would be about $1000 to install a floating floor on the approximately 400 square feet that I want to redo. The floor itself he thought could range from $2 to $5 per square foot when purchased at discount. If I go the replacement route I need a floating floor with foam underlayment.

Phlee recommended that I look at Old Masters (Rodeo and Arlington), a flooring outlet warehouse near the 110 fwy at 190th and Vermont, Lumber Liquidators, Moldings Unlimited at near Vermont and Lomita for moldings, Habitat for Humanity for glass tile on the back splash, HD Contractors Supply on Airdrome and Main near Habitat. He also recommended Los Vegas if I were to replace the kitchen cabinet doors.

House update III

Here's a photo-journal of my kitchen odyssey to date




Juli and Martha helped me pick colors last week. I'm not trying to make any particularly bold statements here.

Bathroom walls: MS162 Waning Moon semi-gloss

Bathroom Trim: MS043 Gray Harewood semi-gloss

Master BR walls: MS312 Diving Board eggshell (a pale blue)

Master BR trim: MS064 Chamois Cloth

Kitchen Trim and Cabinets: MS197 Cocoon semi-gloss (the nice sage green that I wanted from the get go instead of the after dinner mint green I have now)

Kitchen walls: MS138 White Calla semi-gloss. I still need one more gallon of this in a eggshell or more matte finish for use in the adjoining room.


I also purchased a sink, tile for the bathroom floor from Cal Tile in Torrance along with matched grout for the tub/shower and a sanded natural color grout for the bath floor.

Alex will be done with the bathroom and give it a final seal on Saturday.

Kevin may have primer on the walls by Saturday, so the dusty part of the job will wrap up soon.

House update III

Things are moving along at the house. I've been taking photos regularly in order to show the transformation. However, my computer access is limited since the whole house is sheeted in plastic. Kevin's doing things that I would never imagine doing and getting them done quickly.

I selected a sheet flooring for the kitchen and asked Lowes to send an estimator over. That will happen early next week. There's some help Lowes can give me with procuring the flooring without the regular 21 day lead time. At this point they could be in to install late next week or early the following week.

I need
baseboard and molding
paint
a sink (I'll go with a ss sink with integral deck mount faucet)
counter top (inexpensive but perfectly serviceable laminate for $100)
flooring for bathroom (tile?)

Alex the tile guy is ready to go on Monday.

Oh, and I'm working 65 hours this week at my regular job and my car is in the shop until next week to the tune of ~$1600. Life isn't slow.

House update II

Kevin was on the job about 7:45 this am

I have a sheet flooring selection from Lowes and will get them to install. Something like $2.50 for the sheet and $1.67 to install per square foot.

Rough electrical will complete after Kevin has framed in some of the new parts. He says Wednesday.

Alex the tile guy gave me a great price of $900 for the tub / shower. I may want to put in floor tile as well, but my preferred floor tile is rough. I'm concerned about trapping dirt in the tiles. Check Cal Tile Center, 5108 W. 190th Street Torrance, CA 90503 Tel. 310-698-4586 Fax. 310-698-4587 for better selection.

Recent pending home sale of a 3+2 bath house + 2 car detached garage a couple blocks away is not encouraging: $328k. It was advertised as needing TLC, however. Still the second bath ought to be good for a lot of extra $$ that I'm not seeing in the $328k price.

New color on cabinets will be a cream color.

Laminate countertop for $100 from Lowes. I can screw up several times installing it myself for the minimum cost of the install. Will ask Kevin to do it.

Drop in sinks w/o faucet holes not available at Lowes off the shelf. It may be more cost effective to re-route the plumbing to standard undersink style given the special order cost of some of the sinks. Plus will do away with need to run special dish washer water line. Need decision soon on this.

Need to pick wall / ceiling color for bath and kitch.

House update

Plumbing is done. PeterClarkePlumbing.com completed this job on time and on budget. I did not put in water lines for a dish washer. I think I will do that, but leave them dry so that there's room for expansion later. For hard to find plumbing parts, I have to recommend Reback's Plumbing N' Things, 14617 S. Western Ave, Gardena, CA, 90248. 310-324-4877. Peter referred me to Reback's. If you ever want to know where the good stores are, ask someone in the trade.

Rough electrical is done. Gene from local firm 1-Stop Electrical is doing this work. Gene is timely, reliable, and honest.

Monday the real demolition starts - both kitchen and bath. Kevin Janek will do the heavy lifting. Kevin and I seem to have a good rapport.

Today I met with Alex the tile guy and he gave me a good price estimate for retiling the bathroom. He can start after Wednesday.
Alex Hernandez
MGC Granite
562.480.3673 (cell)

I've purchased a basic tile from Home Depot and some fancier trim band tiles. I hope that together it's the right choice - not too fancy and not too basic. Alex will put in an integral niche and shelf for soaps, etc.

In the past week I've purchased a new medicine cabinet, bathroom vent fan, and wall mount range vent, all online. Most of my purchases for stuff like that have been online, and it's been a good experience so far.

Still to do:

find trim that I like

find sheet flooring for bathroom

find adhesive tile or sheet flooring for kitchen

Pick countertop for kitchen. HD says 1-2 weeks after they measure they can deliver a laminate countertop that I can drop a sink into. It's more expensive that I thought, however.

Pick paint colors for all over

Viola Park

For the next house...

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www.violapark.com

Electrical redo I

I've contacted Gene from 1-Stop (he did my electrical service entry and breaker box is 2006) for a bid on new circuits for the kitchen and bath. Might as well get them done when the access is good.

Bathroom redo II

See also Bathroom redo.

The Bathroom redo project wasn't just about the bathroom, since I planned to replumb the entire house in PEX and change my water heater as well. It's just that the most visible change would be in the bath.

However, I also wanted to go tankless with my water heater for two reasons: 1. My existing tank water heater was at the end of its service life and 2. I could recapture scarce interior space in my home by moving the new tankless heater up into the attic.

My new water heater is a Takagi T-K Jr tankless water heater. It was a bit more difficult to procure this heater than buying a Bosch from Lowes or a Rheem(?) from Home Depot. Nonetheless, I made the effort based on professional plumbers' inputs that extolled the virtues of Takagi over Bosch and Rheem, a refrain I heard over and over again - often enough to believe it. While the day to day benefits remain to be determined, from a do it yourself perspective it's exactly the opposite: Bosch has it over Takagi. Here's why:

1. For Bosch the required 3" double insulated stainless steel vent tubing is conveniently available at Lowes, the same place I'd purchase the heater. The 4" Cat 3 stainless vent tubing for the Takagi required a trip to a full service plumbing supply store - a marvelous place indeed, but not incredibly convenient.

2. The Bosch uses water flow to spark its ignition. Takagi requires a hard wired electrical connection (though for temporary testing purposees changed it to a plug).

3. Clearance issues. I discovered to my chagrin that the combustible materials clearance on the Takagi 4" vent pipe is and additional 4" from the pipe. It is only 1 inch for the Bosch double wall 3" vent pipe. This required that I widen and reinstall the roof vent from the old heater instead of just re-using it.

These issues combined made the Takagi more difficult to install from a do it yourself perspective than I think the Bosch would have been.

Bathroom redo

After a day of labor yesterday, my bathroom looked like this today. This week I expect to have a return to basic functionality. I don't have a plan with a schedule for finalizing the finish work.

New vanity and sink

Ronbow VMA1816-F08
Finish: Cinnamon
Series: Mica

New driveway III

See also my prior blog posts, New driveway and New driveway II.


In the AM.














By 4PM. There's small gravel in the permeable interstitial spaces between pavers. This guy is brushing it into place. A sealer goes on next. Miguel Cisneros sure did a good job.











The pathway is defined with a different paver orientation. Too subtle?

















6 P.M. B.C. is taking the first stroll on the path.












Some late night visitors in the backyard. Mom and two babies. They also tried the driveway later on their way to the sewer drain.