Whatcha doin????

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by TrustGzus, Aug 16, 2018.

  1. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    You can be banned through other means without your profile showing "guest". I think my account was banned and reinstated - I drifted through as a guest and found my name had gone from italics to regular text and my custom title had gone. I can only assume I was banned through a lower level panel (I forget what functions are in the ModCP and AdminCP) rather than a 20-point infraction.
     
  2. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Been pulling down more ceiling striips. They are a real drag to get down - they are high enough that they are hard to reach, nailed onto the ceiling joists hard enough that they take a bit of force to pull down, but in a space that has enough other stuff in it that moving a ladder around is troublesome. I'd hoped to get some more cedar from the ceiling but these are just low grade lumber, partly eaten by woodworm. Given the lack of evidence of current woodworm activity I think they were boards that had been partly eaten at the point they were installed. The cedar from the other rooms is in the basement waiting to be used for something; the low-grade junk from this ceiling is cut into shorter lengths to make it more manageable and now sitting outside on the pile ready to go to the burn barrel or the landfill.
     
  3. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Here we go: Our typical 15 minutes of thunder, lightening and big fat rain drops.
    Refreshing.
     
  4. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    Finally finished editing and formatting the drill log for this drill hole I was asked to help out on. Only about 12 hours today...
     
  5. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Guess they don't call it "Labor Day" weekend for nothing:rolleyes::p
     
  6. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    We'll be camping then. Hence the push to get it done.
     
  7. Cloudwalker

    Cloudwalker The genuine, original, one and only Cloudwalker Staff Member

    Probably be out of touch for a few days starting Saturday. Have a hurricane heading our way. Projected to right over the top of us.
     
  8. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    "Dorian."
     
  9. Cloudwalker

    Cloudwalker The genuine, original, one and only Cloudwalker Staff Member

    Yes. Last projection I saw seems to have it coming ashore a little further south. Wick is better for us but not by much since it will be coming ashore as a cat 4.
     
  10. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Went for a long wal in the woods again today. I had planned one walk but got to the top of the first mountain and realised I left my phone in the car. I don't normally use my phone for much when hiking but if I had got into trouble I wouldn't have had any means to call for help, so truncated the walk a little. Since I'd cut it short I decided that once I'd got back to the car and picked up my phone I'd add another loop on. I think Fitbit's measurement of floors climbed involves a lot of guesswork - a route that normally clocks 190 floors only chalked up about 175, and the second stage should have clocked up more than it did. I'd expected to end today pushing 300 floors but instead I'm at 271.

    Also looking for a replacement for the Fitbit. My wife's unit is seriously troublesome and mine is getting flaky. I hate their wrist strap units and the only clip they offer doesn't count floors. So it's quite likely they'll be losing me as a customer quite soon. I really like the look of the newly announced Garmin fenix 6X Pro, but don't care much for the price. Especially if my wife decides she wants one too :)
     
  11. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Praying this thing changes it's course, peters out.
     
  12. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Anyone got tips for dealing with mold? I pulled down some ceiling and wasn't surprised to find the cellulose above it had black areas in it. It's below a patch of roof that leaked for years (recently fixed). I have a respirator with P100 filters, just don't want this stuff getting in the house so trying to figure out what to wear and how best to get it out without spreading it around too much.
     
  13. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Ran into this before. After spending money on products that don't work, I finally settled on using the stronger version of chlorine bleach in a spray bottle, scraping any remaining residue off and, finally, removing the material that won't come clean.
    I will also set a dehumidifier (more expense) in the room with the door shut as they are great for removing spores from the air.
    If you thoroughly spray the stuff down it won't readily escape. Breathe as little as possible - the chlorine also is bad. Your mask helps, but not 100%.
    Spores can also latch onto unprotected (ungloved) skin.
     
    tango likes this.
  14. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Forgot to mention: Spraying vinegar will penetrate the porous materals.
     
    tango likes this.
  15. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    If they latch on to skin, would they also latch on to whatever I wear over my skin? I remember reading that clothing worn during asbestos removal should be bagged up and destroyed, just wondering if the same applies to mold. I'm trying to figure out how best to protect everything, so I'm not getting spores all over myself causing problems later on, but also not tracking any more than is necessary through the house. If I need to I can keep an extra bag up there so when I'm done working I can take off my outer clothes and put them in the bag, although it would seem that would invite spores onto my skin as I did. The room in question is positioned such that I have to walk through just about everything to get out, unless I attempt something truly hare-brained and try to climb out of the window onto a ladder. That seems like it could be a good way to earn myself a trip to the ER.

    I plan to bag stuff up and leave it by the window to at least attempt to lift it out from a ladder, just don't fancy my chances of successfully climbing out of a window onto a ladder.

    My respirator will take a filter (I'd need to buy them but $20 is worth it to protect my lungs) that is rated P100 and also filters out a bunch of gases. I'm not sure if chlorine is among the gases, although I don't imagine it will hurt.
     
  16. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    Sounds like a smart plan. The chlorine is an irritant, mostly.
     
  17. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    I went to my local Lowe's and found a mold killer that contains no bleach. Hopefully it will work, if it doesn't we have bleach on hand. Since this stuff doesn't contain bleach it looks like I won't need the respirator filters that catch gases including chlorine but I got a set anyway in case I end up needing bleach. I can always return them, if I find I don't need them. I'll use the regular P100 particulate filters while I work - although from what I've read N95 is enough I figure I've got the higher grade stuff so might as well use it.

    I also got some heavier duty bags to gather up the contaminated cellulose. Normally I put that stuff into a regular garbage bag but if I'm potentially also getting bits of drywall and possibly nails in there too I want something that won't split and dump nasty stuff all over the house. The cart was topped off with handy things like rubber gloves, a new large spray bottle, scraper etc.

    I'd rather not be wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants this time of year but from what I can see the forecast tomorrow isn't supposed to be too hot. We are due rain and possibly thunderstorms, so my original plan of a fan in the window to suck the air out probably isn't going to happen. Maybe I'll just figure which way the rain is blowing and see if one of the windows will face away from the prevailing wind, and put a fan there. I've got a fan that's cheap enough to be sacrificial - from what I've read it sounds like it's almost impossible to get spores out of the fan once it's been used like that.

    Here's hoping that tomorrow isn't a totally disgusting job. I'll need to give the floors a very thorough sanding to even them out but that won't happen until the new drywall is in place, so hopefully that will help catch anything that falls to the floor. It's inevitable that some will get on the floor, so I guess my water-based separator will come in handy when sucking it all up.
     
  18. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    It looks like there's a lot less mold than I feared, and I'm wondering if it's even black mold at all or just mildew. Some of the drywall was so badly damaged it took a single finger's strength to break pieces off it. I've got the rest of the strips of wood down from the ceiling and a nice big patch opened up in the drywall, with a big pile of cellulose brought down along the way. Patches of the cellulose were black but there's no sign of white around edges anywhere so either it isn't black mold or it isn't growing. I sprayed my mold killer all over the freshly exposed wood near where the black patches were, and now I'll leave it until tomorrow before getting back in there.

    Along the way I found out why it gets so cold in that room. There's a clear air gap from the ceiling cavity right through to outside, and that part of the ceiling had no insulation in it at all. So the freezing cold January air could blow in through the air gap (probably there for ventilation), then down inside the concrete blocks and seep out through one of a hundred cracks in the mortar all the way down the wall. I'll need to think about how to drop the flow of cold air down into the bricks while also allowing warm moist air to rise up and out through the bricks in the summer. It may be the best course of action is to simply insulate over the top of the space so that the air can still get down inside the bricks but the inner face is insulated - I want moist air being driven against the outside of the wall in the sun to be able to circulate/ventilate up and out, but don't want icy air getting into the living space.

    Along the way I found just how good the bags I got from Lowe's are. I bought a roll of polypropylene bags from Amazon a couple of years back, to put the rubble from pulling down lath and plaster walls. They work, they're just a bit small. These bags are still polypropylene bags but much bigger, and rated to hold up to 110lb. That makes them ideally suited for putting hunks of drywall in - previously I had to choose between regular garbage bags that would tear, or the tough bags that were small. Now I've got bags that are big and won't tear. I just won't fill them with 110lb of stuff, or I'll struggle to move them around and load them up for the landfill trip.

    Maybe tomorrow I can get in there again and pull down some more ceiling.
     
  19. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    Got back from camping. We counted and there were just over 50 people in about 10 families from our school and church community so that was pretty nice for all the kids to play with each other. It was almost like roving games of kids. The weather behaved very well which made everything that much nicer and there was no campfire ban as there was last year.
     
  20. IMINXTC

    IMINXTC Time Bandit

    The devastation from Dorian in the Bahamas is simply unbelievable.
     

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