In which we discover the True Meaning of Agile Development…
Saturday Morning Yogurt Fest
Ever since I stopped getting up to watch cartoons, I’ve never really been motivated to jump out of bed early on Saturday mornings. But we recently started making our own yogurt, and it turns out Saturdays are the best days for yogurt making and almost as entertaining as cartoons.
Continue readingLife Under The Glide Slope 1
Our house sits pretty much right under the glide slope of runway 14 at Boeing Field (ahem, King County International or KBFI), which means we get to see a lot of interesting (and occasionally very loud) aircraft. Today we have the Boeing 777x, the newest generation of the 777. According to Boeing, this is the largest, most fuel efficient of the 777 series. I got to ride one of these when they subbed one in for the Airbus we usually rode on the SEA to AMS (Amsterdam Schipol) flight. It was very nice, and I encourage you to consider one for your next flight, even if it means flying through Doha to get from Philly to Charlotte…
Crawlspace II: Piers, Joists and Plywood
With the earthwork mostly done, it was time to work on the deck structure itself. The only preparatory work that remained was the laying of 6-mil poly moisture barrier across the whole space. I also needed to put together some retaining walls, which were pieces of scrap plywood and chip board covered with 6-mil to protect it from the dew. I originally thought I could attach stakes to the wall boards and pound them into the dirt, but the Bentonite made that impossible. So I laid them aside and moved on until I figured out how I was going to make the wall work.
Coming Attractions
Acoustic Panels
This project was a quick and dirty project to provide some soundproofing from the birds, in particular Pancho. Seems he likes to chime in whenever I’m on a Teams/Zoom meeting, and he has a particular affinity for my boss’ voice. So what to do? Acoustic Sound Dampening Panels of course.
I came across this design by accident one day about a year ago; I’m not even sure how it crept into my world, probably might have been a YouTube suggestion. At any rate, the design is very simple: create a bottomless box out of 1×4, cross-braced of course. Into that frame, insert a batt of Rockwool Safe’n’Sound, then cover the frame with acoustically transparent cloth. The size of the panel is 48 x 17, the Rockwool bats are 15 1/2 inches wide, designed to fit into standard wall construction. Most of the YouTube videos use a 24 inch wide batt, but the 15 inch was all Lowe’s had at the time.
Crawlspace: The Digout
The goal of this project was to set up a platform in the crawlspace to use for storage. The platform I had in mind would be 8 foot by 8 foot. It would be constructed from deck platform pier blocks, two-by dimensional lumber for the support beams (joists) and plywood for the deck. I also wanted to put down 6-mil poly sheeting as a moisture barrier, and insulation underneath the decking between the joists. I also wanted retaining walls to keep dirt from getting on to the platform.
The crawlspace had been partially excavated several years earlier by a meniacal Trinidadian who was convinced we had moles or voles or something like that. He dug out about eight cubic yards of dirt before deciding he was wrong. It was an expensive dig that removed quite a bit of storage space that included storage for my workshop.
That was about six years ago. It took me all that time to figure out the platform idea, so early last summer (2020) I headed in with a bunch of shovels to move dirt around.
Since the dirt was still sloped from the back of the house down to the entry to the space, I thought I would just level it at the mid point. But it didn’t quite work out that way — I ended up taking it down to the level at the doorway, which was a fair bit below the threshold of the door.
