Apr 22 2012

The look of the brick

The final brick work. I just have to cast caps on the bricks and this phase will be done. Lastly it will be installing the trim around the columns.

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Apr 21 2012

Wings and Wheels

Today it was a quick flight to Walterboro, SC for the annual EAA event. Bob and Marie are on the way home after a great visit here.

Wings and Wheels is great for the locals. A local car club shows up and about 30 planes of all types.

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Jack and Bob showed up for lunch.
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I did a quick fly by for the crowd and it was home to CHS before the rain started.

Apr 20 2012

Sherman’s Accident

I took a few more pictures of my car before it was sent to Columbia for “evaluation”. They are basically taking him to a junk yard where the damage assessment expert is. They are NOT going to get my car.

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I decided the best way to explain what happened based on physical evidence from the crash site was to write up a report in an unbiased way. I found out after talking to the police officer (he would not change the accident report) and USAA, that the insurance company doesnt alway solely take the police report as final. They look at the witnesses and try to assess what happened to determine who is at fault and assign responsibility.

I felt a report will give them plenty of information to make an accurate determination of what really happened. Either way, Sherman will probably be declared a total loss due to repair cost (hell the hood alone being made out of aluminum cost $1800).

ACCIDENT REPORT ANALYSIS

 

Apr 19 2012

Sight Seeing in Charleston

Sighting was fun this week… Bob and Marie love charleston and the weather here.

I made this short video of them for fun after our visit to the beach.

Apr 17 2012

Bricking is finally done!

Today my nephew and his wife (Bob and Marie) are visiting me. He might possibly move to Charleston which would be great!

I finished up the bricking in a desperate attempt to get it done.

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They finally showed up just as I got done.

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Play time now.

Apr 14 2012

Sad day for the grease car

Tonight was tragic for me… I lost the grease car.

As I was traveling down the interstate in the high speed lane at 60 mph, a car entering from an on ramp traveled across three lanes of traffic into my lane without even coming up to speed. I had slowed down to almost 35 mph from 60 and she all of a sudden slammed on her brakes. I asked her why and she said “I don’t know”. WTF???

Of coarse I hit her from the back and a third car hit me. It was crazy that she didn’t use the merge lane (3 lanes in that location) to accelerate. The wild thing is the cop determined that I was the cause of the accident, because she was “established” in the lane. Apparently it doesn’t matter that she crossed 2 lanes at almost a 45 deg angle right into the lane of higher speed traffic… Apparently failure to yield to oncoming traffic doesn’t matter either.

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I did some measurements and calculations and figured I was doing 35 mph or less when I hit her. The car seems to support the low speed of the impact.

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Both I and the guy who hit me told the officer she hit her brakes first and I had no where to go, but alas it didn’t matter. The officer told me he only saw my skid marks and I skidded 105 ft. and there was no evidence of her skidding. It was dark by the time the officer arrived so it made visual identification of the skid a bit difficult.

I went to the scene today, and sure enough I measure my skids as 70 ft and her skid at 91 ft. Skid length indicates the my car was doing approximate 35 mph or less as skid friction is less than static friction.

Tomorrow I am going to the Highway Patrol Office to ask for a senior investigator to go to the site with me to check the evidence hopefully to get the veridic changed, but if nothing else to correct the record of events….

The only thing is the insurance company will probably total the car due to its age. I can’t see them paying $4000 for repairs if the car is only worth $4000. The car was in pristine shape, with a rebuilt engine. I was planning to sell it anyway, but hate to see our time together come to an end like this.

Apr 13 2012

Pouring concrete footers again….

Started work on the front porch, by pouring concrete footer for the 1/2 walls and the flower planter.

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I finished the pour on Saturday morning. Since I had some old rebar around it was included in the footer as the wall is only going to be one brick wide and I want to be sure the wall doesn’t crack over the years.

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Apr 12 2012

Front porch lighting wired

Today was spent wiring the “night lights” on the front porch.

Sometime I amaze myself… I was DREADING wiring up the lights because I knew I would have to be crawling though the small spaces and insolation of the attic…make me itch and I have wear a respirator or i’ll cough like crazy.

When I started this morning I found that a year ago, when I wired it I had left enough extra wire on the install to reach a power box in the attic… the wiring was SOoooo easy to do. Wow, it was crazy that I didn’t remember it. I do a lot of strange things like that. I find wiring in places I had totally forgotten about to hook up a light or outlet. Got read to do the job, opened up the siding and found a wire, exactly where it was needed.

Anyway, tonight will see exactly how it came out. Instead of wiring a switch, I wired it directly to the house power system. No shut off….

I thought about installing a light sensor to turn them on/off, but I just wanted a very low…dim light source so I am using LED bulbs which draw 1 watt each (2 watts total). LED lights are rated for up to 100,000 hrs , but lets say these cheap ass Walmart bulbs last 50,000 hrs. That is 5.7 years of lighting. Hell, I might have sold the house by then. So it made no sense to install a switch box, switch, photo sensor, etc. This the easiest and best way in my opinion.
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Well, the back deck is stopped… and I am back on the front porch. Crazy eh? The reason is I have Tony’s trailer loaded with bricks and his cement mixer and need to get it back to him I can’t get the panels for the back (12 ft long) until I unload the trailer. There is also 1/4 yd of sand in the back of my truck. After the front bricking is done, then the trailer can be off loaded and be ready to return the scaffolding when I finish the back….

Apr 11 2012

Wiring day

Today was mostly spent on wiring.

I finished installing the lights for the pool area and replaced all the 8 bulbs with florescent ones (9 watts) which had the equivalent output to my 60 watt incandescent bulbs. I now am using 72 watts instead of 240 watts. That is a nice savings!

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I also installed a timer for the whole house fan. If you have never heard of one they are fantastic!! This fan draws 3200 cubic feet of air a minute and can cause a significant draft in the house sucking out the hot air and replacing it with cool outside air. It reduces the electric bill by allowing me to delay using my air conditioning by up to 2 month in the summer. I needed a timer because when I use it at night the house gets too cold. This way it will shut after a few hours instead of running all night.

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I also rewired my attic fans which were not working after I re-roofed the house last Dec.

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The cover of one of the fans was also damaged last year. It was repaired with with some West epoxy and fiberglass. You can fix just about anything with epoxy!

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A very long, but productive day!

Apr 10 2012

First day of Pool Remodel

What a difference a day makes…. Cant believe boxing in the soffits was so easy and quick….should have done it a long time ago.

I didn’t even put in many hours (about 6) as my buddy Bob stopped by for lunch and a look at what I have been up to. Bob is working on an SQ-2000 (Speed Queen). A very cool looking canard. I am going to fly over to see his project in a few days

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This is what the back of the house looked like this morning,

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The gutter was removed (I’ll recycle it)

This is by COB.

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One day while working at the computer 6 months ago, I kept hearing strange noises from my ceiling. I had seen a squirrel climbing around my screen and window (peaking in at me) and thought how cute. Later I found out the noises came from that squirrel climbing into my soffit. He was REALLY persistent and had to be chased out 4 or 5 times before a temporary closure was made to keep that pesky critter out … Tree Rats thats all they are in my book.

Now the soffit have been closed off and they look really good.
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Tomorrow it is time to finish off the siding trim, and install the lighting system….. can’t wait!