Back on the Farm

The vacation is over at the end of today, and here's what I have to show for it.

Project Number 1: Ceiling Fan

The Michigan summers get pretty hot, and it's nice to have something in the room to blow the air around, something a bit bigger than the little heater/air-conditioner vent which sits on the floor and spits dust into the sky. We've been in this house four years now; it was the second summer, I think, when we installed ceiling fans in the kids' rooms, so now on the fourth, it's high-time to get something in the master bedroom so the parents can cool off a bit as well.


We looked through the ads and the circulars, and spent some time looking through the lighting sections at Lowes and Home Depot and other hardware-type stores, and finally found something we liked. It is big and white and self-balancing and easy to install (well, that's what the box says, anyway!). We actually bought it a few weeks ago, but weren't motivated to put it in until two things happened.

One, I got a bit of a vacation. And two, it got really hot outside.

Unfortunately, since it's in the master bedroom, and the master bedroom has one of those specially-shaped ceilings, it wasn't an easy thing to hang. I had to go up in the attic (early in the morning, before it got roasting hot up there!) and find the joists underneath two feet of blown-in insulation; then figure out where the middle of the specially-shaped ceiling was; then fit the mid-joist electrical appliance outlet box in between a couple joists; then find some circuit to tap into (again, with wires buried under two feet of blow-in); then actually hang the fan without doing serious damage to the textured ceiling.

I got the mechanical portion of it done the first day, but then it got too hot to breathe up in the attic, so I put off the wiring and finishing until today. That took a couple hours. But it was sure worth it when the fan started turning and the cool air starting flowing across my sweat-stained shirt!

Ahhh....

Project 2: Sprinkler Head Replacement

Seems like every year since we bought the house, I've had to perform some kind of maintenance on the sprinkler / irrigation system. Gotta blow the lines out before the first frost, then unseal everything at the beginning of summer so the grass can get watered - all that just so the lawn stays green! Not really worth it, if you ask me. Michigan grasses have been just fine, thank you, long before we came along. They brown up in the summer a bit, but fall, winter and spring sure don't do 'em any harm. And we're just pouring out water like it was free.

But that's just my whining.


First thing that had to be fixed was one of the sprinkler heads out by the bushes. Seems the head got ripped off by the snow-blower last winter, so it had to be replaced. Couldn't replace it with an exact duplicate because that particular brand of irrigation system isn't available in the States (must've been one of those contractor specials), so we had to make do with whatever we could find at Home Depot.

T'other problem was that the boys were a bit reluctant to dig the old one out, being as it was muddy (they're not lazy, just lost their affinity for playing in the mud when they turned pre-teen). Ol' Dad don't mind playing in the mud, though, so after the boys had dug out a pit using the garden tools, I got down on my hands and knees and showed 'em how it's done, pulling out gobs and gobs of wet, muddy clay (it's all clay around here) and piling it up on the side til the pipe was clear. Had to be careful, though, since this particular spigot was in a narrow spot between a very nice bush and the sidewalk, which means that the root system was all over the place. Which is why I was using my hands and not a trowel.

Finally got the pipe excavated, then popped the new one into place and set 'er back down and let the water go. Looks like she'll work out fine. Of course, the old one was one of those fancy-dancy "pop-up" kind (and it popped up to the tune of ten or twelve inches!), and the new one is just a stationary bush sprayer (sitting pretty at fifteen inches altitude) so the watering will be slightly different; but, hey, it's off my list now!

Project 3: Irrigation System Control Setup

The irrigation system controls were originally set down inside this plastic box with a green cover, dug down into the ground about eight or ten inches, all hidden (mostly) from view. Woulda worked great, too, if it hadn't been for the fact that the noobs who planted it, planted it right next to a big fir tree. Idiots didn't understand the concept of growing root systems and earth movement. Come the second summer, the box was warping and the mud from the pile of dirt around the tree was coming in through the not-fitting-anymore cover, and then - can you believe it? - the controls stopped working. Hard to work when covered in mud.


Last summer I pulled the box out and left the controls sitting above the ground, mostly hanging in mid-air. But the mud kept coming in and filling in the hole where the box had been, so that wasn't a really good solution. With work taking up most of my time, though, I didn't have a better fix; and then suddenly it was fall and then winter, and I had to wait on it.

This year I re-mounted the controls onto a pipe that sticks right out of the relief valve (about three feet off the ground) and attached the water lines right on to the controls, and don't have to worry about mud or growing trees or anything. Sure, it looks ridiculous, but since it's behind the tree which faces the street, it's not visible from anywhere but my own backyard, and I don't care what it looks like so long as it works.

I used the opportunity to teach the boys how to use plumber's tape, too. Showed them what it was like with no tape on the pipe threads (i.e. water leaking all over the place), then had them put the tape on each set of threads and tighten down the caps and voila! No more leaks!

It's always fun to turn these little house projects into educational opportunities.

(I decided not to turn the ceiling fan into an educational opportunity because they would've had way too much fun exploring the attic, and I might never have found 'em again under all that insulation...)