Patio sliding doors are pretty much all the same, right? Ought to be able to just take the dog door out of their slider and put into my mine, no problem. Well, not quite. First difference was that their slider was on the right while mine is on the left. That turned out to be easy. The latch is held in place with two screws and is reversible: unscrew it and put it on the other side. The next difference: their door is about an inch and a 1/4 taller than mine. Still not too hard. The dog door frame is aluminum and was fairly easy to cut down to size on a band saw. Sorry Bennets, it will no longer work in your door.
OK, so now the dog door is in place. Let’s see how the slider shuts and locks… It doesn’t. My slider is just a smidge thicker so it will not fit all the way into the channel on the dog door frame, therefore the latch won’t, and the door cannot be locked. This is not as big a deal as it at first seems. We were locking it with a half inch dowel in the lower channel anyway. Just cut it to fit in this position.

That was actually OK…until some winter weather arrived. The wind just blew right through because the sliders only make a (fairly) good seal when the frames of the stationary pane and the slider are aligned. As it is, there is about a half inch gap between the frame and the glass.

I was somewhat at a loss as to how to fix this problem and resorted to Home Depot for ideas. Here is what it took:
Some neoprene rubber, the kind used for garage door top and side seal, some double-stick mounting tape, and some white sheet metal screws, the kind used for aluminum rain gutters. It is rather tricky getting this work. The rubber must be mounted on the frame so that it does not quite touch the glass. Otherwise it binds against the glass and makes the door really hard to open. The double-stick tape is not strong enough by itself and the rubber just peels off after opening and closing the door a few times. The sheet metal screws prevent that. Just be very careful when drilling the pilot holes in the frame that you do not hit the glass.

The plug-in adds another collapsible bar to the bottom of WordPress Post editor. It is very easy to use, allowing you select photos from your computer to upload en-masse. The only drawback I noticed is that if the photos have not been resized, they do take longer to load. And so far I have not succeeded in getting the pictures to display on a separate page. [Update: Version 2.0.1, installed on 2/14/2009 does work as advertised.]

Oh yeah, we have noticed that when the heater and fan are on, there is no more whistling at the air vents. It used to wake us up when it came on in the morning. Now it’s barely audible.

A week or so later, the marvelous instant hot water dispenser, which was installed with our new granite counter top and sink two and half years ago, began dispensing when no one was around. And not just into the sink but under it as well! It only had a one year warranty and I’m embarrassed to say how much we paid for it. But a phone call to the manufacturer got us a relative bargain on a replacement with a three year, in-home service warranty $152.74.

Next up: the dishwasher. It’s a little over three years old, and it gets much less use now with only the two of us in the house. Nevertheless, it seems to have gotten lazy, producing not quite clean and not quite dry dishes on a regular basis. Someone’s coming to look at it Saturday.

So you see I’m doing my part to stimulate the economy. I have practically spent my whole economic stimulus check a couple months before it even arrives!

Most of the fence was already old when we moved in in 1985. Nearly all of the posts have been replaced, always after a wind storm, some as many as three times. In 2002 after a particularly vicious wind, there were ten broken posts. So I have gained a fair amount of experience in this particular repair. But I am still mystified as to why the posts don’t last longer.

The fences I helped my dad build on our two rural properties in Lassen County were quite different than my backyard fence. They were barbed wire and so had no problems with wind, even though it blows 50 miles an hour every fall. I don’t remember that setting a post was such a big deal either, except for a corner post. An adequate hole could be dug in a few minutes with just a shovel in the sandy soil there. Then drop in a split log post, fill the hole and tamp it down with the shovel handle. If properly tamped, that was the end of it. I never remember seeing a post rotted off the way they do here in SoCal.

The first time I had to replace a post here, I dug out the old rotten one and set the new one in concrete in the resulting hole. The next time that one broke a few years latter, it was an all day ordeal to replace it because of the size of the concrete block that had to be removed. The resulting hole was about three feet in diameter. The 150-200 pound concrete plug had to be broken up with a hammer and chisel into chunks I could actually pick up.

I had a conversation with a coworker who was also a do-it-yourselfer who clued me in to a better way: after digging out the old post and concrete, refill the hole, tamp it down, and then use a post hole digger instead of an ordinary shovel to make a hole about eight inches in diameter, just right for a 4×4 post. Extend the concrete above ground a little because wherever wood touches dirt, it will rot. That’s the part I have yet to master. This time I happened to have an empty 5 liter plastic jug. Cut the top and bottom off and it makes a pretty good, one-time use form. I have also learned the hard way that pressure treated wood lasts far longer than untreated wood of any kind, even redwood. It is well worth the increased initial cost.

The controls on the outside of the hot tub are pneumatically operated so that there is no possibility of people getting electrocuted. The only thing connecting the push buttons to the control box is plastic tubing. Pushing the button decreases the volume of air trapped in the tubing, increasing its pressure. The pressure in a diaphragm connected to the other end operates a lever which in turn pushes a button on a microswitch. I could hear that the light switch was working, which has exactly the same mechanism. But the pump switch refused to click. I couldn’t actually figure out what was wrong with it at first so I took some pictures of it. While looking at the enlarged pictures on the computer, I suddenly saw the lever pressed against a familiar type of microswitch and I got it. This microswitch just would not release anymore.

I used the tip of a knife blade to depress the microswitch button and heard it release. I reconnected the air tube and tried the button again. It worked twice and then stuck again. Another couple of minutes of persuasion with the knife got it to release once more and I decided to quit while I was ahead. The pump and heater still work normally without the high speed jets.

A phone call to the local pool supply ascertained that they do carry that air switch but were out of stock. It would take about a week to get it from Arizona. But the water was warming and Patty would not be disappointed after all.

One night last week I noticed what at first I believed was a piece of glass laying on the bottom. Closer examination revealed it to be a piece of clear plastic that had broken off of the light cover. That kind of gave us both the willys since we were in hot water up to our necks when we realized what it was. Then we calmed down as I figured that if the break had somehow energized the water we would both be dead already.

Yesterday I started draining the tub so that today I could see what part(s) would be needed and how to get the old cover off. I thought the hardest part of the job would be just finding the right part, since a quick internet search had not revealed anything so small and inexpensive. But I did find a dealer nearby who carried parts from the original manufacturer.

“Do I need any special tools to replace this?”, I asked the young man behind the counter. “No. The nut just unscrews.”, he answered. “From the back?” I queried. “Yeah. Just remove the skirt to get to it.” “That’s gonna be messy.” There is a space of only about two or three inches between that side of the spa and the house.

Even empty, all that wood and acrylic was way too heavy for puny little me to move. But I remember that two guys had managed to install it after rolling it across the yard on some heavy duty plastic pipes. I got out my trusty crowbar to use as a lever and lifted it enough to place a piece of aluminum conduit and and some metal rods from an old floor lamp under one end. That did the trick, making it surprisingly easy to slide it out.

What a mess behind it and under the edges! With all the leaves and dirt and water, there was an unintentional compost heap, complete with live earth worms.

By now I was feeling pretty good, thinking the worst was behind me. There is an access panel with just a couple of deck screws to secure it. The only trick is they have a square drive head. Yep, my Leatherman tool has one of those. However, the hole behind the panel is covered with a sheet of cardboard. The knife makes short work of that.

Then comes the show stopper. The light fixture is completely coated with some kind of hard goop! I have serious doubts about the odds of removing it without damaging the acrylic shell. Have to think about this awhile…