Home Improvement – Page 2

I need a clamp

April 7, 2020 by tim

So I need a clamp, specifically a corner clamp jig. Google finds this: And I was inspired by this fireball tool mega square but they are $190.00 for a 12 inch. Yes, made of cast iron, but I was curious if I could make this myself. For one, a MDF clamp would be just as … Read more

Kitchen Shelving

December 27, 2019 by tim

As we renovate our house, we are living in a much smaller place with a really small kitchen. When we got a Linea Mini and a Eureka Zenith 65E High Speed Espresso Grinder for Christmas, we needed a good spot and I designed a set of shelves to fit in our kitchen alcove and dramatically … Read more

Three Way Troubleshooting

March 10, 2017 by tim

Tonight, I was rewiring switches to a more modern set of switches. These days I don’t have time to learn by experience, I have to think my way through this. Without experience, I have to go back to first principles. Funny enough, understanding a four way switch is very similar to understanding digital logic and … Read more

New Jersey School Heat Map

February 12, 2017 by tim

This morning before church, I wrote some code to build a contour plot of schools in New Jersey. The “hot” reddish regions have the best schools and the cooler regions don’t. Tech Stuff: How it’s made This wasn’t that easy. Since I had all the code from my previous post, it should have been very … Read more

July 4th Home Project: Thermostat Bracket

July 3, 2016 by tim

This post is about how to use design tools to save time and build nice stuff at home using computer controlled machines (CNC). In addition to describing my design process, I’ve also included the helpful references I found along the way. Our old thermostat was too small for our wall. I could have replaced the … Read more

Amana 7200TW Door Latch Replacement

October 12, 2014 by tim

Quick post, just to help others who might find themselves in a similar situation regarding a front-end loader washer with a door latch that doesn’t close Big trouble . . . door latch broke on our amana front end loader. First thing I do when I need to fix something is look for ownership so … Read more

GE GXULQR Twist and Lock Kitchen or Bath Filtration System Replacement Filter Won’t Fit

July 19, 2014 by tim

If you ever have to replace your under the sink GE filter (specifically the GE GXULQR), be ready for a frustrating ride. It looks like this: You can find the manual here and the ge product page here. It is billed as the “Twist and Lock” Replacement Filter, the inside female hex socket sometimes rotates … Read more

Practical Cutting Stock Problem

April 27, 2014 by tim

Warning. This post is for an audience of close to zero. My technical friends will find this pretty basic, and my non-technical friends will find this too technical. Welcome to the middle space that I occupy between these two worlds. I wanted to build this series of retaining walls to replace the overgrown ivy and … Read more

Analysis of The Boohers’ Energy Usage

February 16, 2014 by tim

Using my Vera Lite and Z-wave home energy monitor I was able to record a week’s worth of electricity consumption at 30 second intervals. I was surprised how hard it was to use the data to do anything, but amazed with how my behavior changed when I knew our household consumption was being tracked. Again, if you want to improve something, I feel it needs a tracking system. Electricity usage is a nice case study for this, because it has a clean metric (wattage) over a time series.

Home Energy Usage

February 15, 2014 by tim

I decided to look at my home energy usage. Below are notes on how I’m approaching it. I wish I could get insight from the MIOS graphing plugin, but it is pretty basic and can’t throw out outliers and has terrible zoom capability. I also never figured out how to set the y-axis. In order … Read more