I took a road trip about an hour or so away to New Philadelphia in the middle of Ohio today to pick up this amazing wicker planter off someone on craigslist:
It needs a little love so I am going to hose it down, let it dry, and put a good coat of paint on it, but it is just perfect and it was only 30 bucks. I’m super excited to put some flowers in it and have it jazz up the front porch.
It was a beautiful day for a drive- sunny, cool, blue skies, and I enjoyed riding with the windows down, and Tappan Lake was just gorgeous. Oddly enough, I was in heartland Ohio for three hours, and none of Salena Zito’s Trump voters held me down and explained to me why he was teh awesome and they would vote for him again.
Pulled up the roma plants today and tomorrow I am taking a little trip to the greenhouse to get some winter crops to put in. That’s it from here. Just a quiet night, other than Steve bitching for food and pretending to eat the dog food.
NotMax
Craving a sparrow egg omelette?
:)
Mary G
My two cats just had their evening snack late and are very displeased about it. That’ll look great on your porch. Chrysanthemums are great for autumn here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What’s the deal? Is it just Mueller? Is Pecker pissed that he hasn’t been invited to join the kitchen cabinet or something?
“his contract with AMI”– that sounds like a loose end that we may be hearing a lot about
TaMara (HFG)
I’ve been getting estimates for a whole house fan. Totally stumped – I have bids from 1200 to 3200. I’m just trying the figure out what the 3200 folks are offering that justifies that quote. I have a handyman as a client who thinks they are all overpriced.
So now I’m frozen with indecision.
John Cole
@TaMara (HFG): what is a whole house fun?
A Ghost To Most
@TaMara (HFG): Do you have a swamp cooler? Ours works so well, I’ve never used our whole house fan.
Platonailedit
@TaMara (HFG):
Buridan’s ass ?
h/t – sheldon
Platonailedit
One big flaw. The totus can’t run.
NotMax
FYI, on top of everything else seven houses destroyed by wind-whipped brush fires in west Maui today. No fatalities. 2000 acres burned so far, fires still not fully contained.
Cckids
LOL at Steve pretending to eat dog food. Our much-missed Pixie, when he was supposed to be dieting, would go grab a mouthful of dry cat food and spit it out at my feet. Then, never breaking eye contact, he would delicately pick up one piece at a time with his lips curled back so I’d know how disgusting it was that he was reduced to such straits.
Didn’t work on me, but was always good for a treat or two from my spouse. I miss that dog so so much.
Mnemosyne
@TaMara (HFG):
Is that just for the fan itself, or does it include installation? And are there any references you can check and screen options out that way?
I should be doing something useful, like laundry, but I am not. At least I was able to get my borrowed Instant Pot hauled up from the car. It’s the 6-quart one, so it’s pretty big.
TaMara (HFG)
@John Cole: Well whole house FUN is a whole ‘nother estimate, if you know what I mean. But a whole house fan is placed in the attic, and either vents into the attic or outside. Here, where nights are cool to cold, you open up windows in the cool evening and in the morning, turn on the fan, suck all the hot air out, cool air in. Close windows. If your house is well insulated, no need for air conditioning.
Mary G
This thread is a little amusing:
My favorite answer:
TaMara (HFG)
@A Ghost To Most: I don’t…I debated, but the maintenance was a bit more than I wanted to tackle. I’m also set up for air conditioning, would just have to add the unit, but I detest air conditioning. So whole house fan won out.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ewwwww
rikyrah
Looks good, Cole. Can’t wait to see it with plants in it?
TaMara (HFG)
@Mnemosyne: They’re all equally rated, and two of them are actually the preferred contractor is I wanted the $250 rebate – they were also the most expensive. Sigh. Good luck on your surgery!
One thing on the instant pot – if you use the quick release method, throw a dishtowel over it as it releases to keep sticky steam from going all over your kitchen… or you.
NotMax
Weird that now each and every time a civil defense or other storm warning scrolls across the TV screen it shuts off the sound on the soundbar. Have to turn soundbar off and then on again to restore sound, then repeat that afterward to restore TV sound.
First time during Lane that town in which I reside has been included in the list of places under an imminent flash flood warning.
BC in Illinois
@Platonailedit:
When you said “closing in,” I had a different picture than wolves closing in for the kill.
I thought first of all about the walls closing in.
As in Andy Kinder’s Tweet:
NotMax
@TaMara (HFG)
Not recommended procedure to block the release valve in any way. Doing so voids the warranty, can damage the pot or even render it inoperable, according to the company.
Related: 5 Instant Pot Don’ts.
TaMara (HFG)
@NotMax: That’s awful.
Platonailedit
@BC in Illinois: LOL. Good one.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: The coming rain will help resolve that. Unfortunately.
TaMara (HFG)
@NotMax: Huh, mine actually said to do it – it’s just placed over it lightly. Not really blocking anything, just keeping the steam from spewing onto the cupboards. But if Mnemosyne is borrowing hers, probably best not to temp fate. :-)
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think there’s another one of these involving elevator surveillance footage.
Martin
@TaMara (HFG): Ours was around $1500 last year.
Doug R
@TaMara (HFG): You could probably install an a/c system for $3200
A Ghost To Most
@TaMara (HFG): Not much maintenance to ours, and having cool air bomb our living room in the middle of the day makes it worth it. Our roof is pretty flat and accessible, though.
NotMax
@TaMara (HFG)
May vary by brand of pot. I think it has to do with the interlock on an Instant Pot which is supposed to prevent the lid from being opened at pressure. If that is damaged, Instant Pot will not function in any mode.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not only is Pecker facing felonies, AMI is as well. This is bad enough that the NY AG could simply pull AMI apart. Pecker is probably going to get sued into poverty by the hedge fund that owns AMI. Pecker is a shitbag, but he’s not a guy that envisioned going to prison.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: And that hedge fund is tight with one Chris Christie.
Platonailedit
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: If you only had rain in the forecast.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TaMara (HFG): Maybe the higher estimates are for a whole house FUN. What you’re getting sounds like an attic fan to me.
Jay
@TaMara (HFG):
Still confused on how that’s supposed to work.
With a properly insulated and vented attic, we open the windows at night, close them up in the morning, close the blinds, keeps the cold air in the house all day. There is no heat build up in the attic.
TaMara (HFG)
@Martin: That is so helpful! Thanks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jay: Out here in California, the sun shines on the roof and heats the attic like an oven.
TaMara (HFG)
@?BillinGlendaleCA: They are much more powerful than an attic fan. They can pull air from every room in the house, and the basement if you have one. We had one when I was a kid, in Nebraska of all places, and didn’t have to turn the A/C on until late afternoon.
Mnemosyne
Since IANAL, I have no idea how accurate this Slate article is, but it seems to indicate that the specific charges that the jury deadlocked over in the Manafort case leave him open to state-level prosecution in 4 different states on state income tax fraud charges even if Trump pardons him on the federal charges:
https://amp.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/paul-manafort-will-likely-go-to-jail-if-trump-pardons-him-thanks-to-a-lone-holdout-juror.html
Jay
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Here, in summer, the sun shines on the roof, and if improperly vented, heat builds up in the attic to about 150F. Properly vented, the attic only heats up 4 or 5 degrees hotter than daytime temps, so about 100F.
So, we clear and block the soffits, superinsulate, and install 1 passive vent every 4 rafter blocks. We also recomment more reflective roof coatings, not dark colours. Keeps the house cool in summer, warm in winter.
We also use fan only settings on our furnaces to push cold basement air through out the house.
TaMara (HFG)
@Jay: You sound like you disapprove. Which is kind of weird, huh? You are using your furnace as a whole house fan. Just without all the power. Believe it or not, energy efficiency, heating and cooling are one of my skill sets, so I actually do know what I’m doing. My house is fully insulated, etc. If you need to know more about the benefits and energy efficiency of a whole house fan, google is your friend.
Jay
Our furnaces have 12v DC Brushless PM motors. It draw’s 40 watts. It’s controlled by the thermostat, so it cycles off an on during the day.
99% of the time, it never even kicks on.
Running a Construction and Renovation Company has left me a bit jaded about “quick fixes” and mechanical solutions to something that can be solved with passive measures.
MoxieM
@A Ghost To Most: My mom always managed to do it with a box fan or two in the attic. Open and cooling all night, buttoned up during the day. We never had any AC (in eastern MA) until well after I grew up and left home. Of course my folks had a big old house with high ceilings.
I try to emulate, although I lack the attic, by putting a box fan on exhaust in the least used upstairs room. Since my place is well shaded by deciduous trees, it generally does the trick.
I have an R2D2 portable unit on each floor (I live in a big river valley and it gets heinously humid here). I ordered some ~.25 in thick plexi (I have stupid ass casement windows everywhere…) and used a rotary cutter to make hole for the exhaust hose for the AC unit. It works great and I have light through the windows. I just bundles the things up and roll them into closets for winter. They cost about $350 each, plus another $100 for both sheets of plexi. Much cheaper than installing central air! A little more work, but I’ll take the savings. Apparently Whole House fans aren’t so great if you live in a very humid climate. I really wanted one, but, oh well.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@TaMara (HFG): We had one of those in our first house in Detroit. It was up in the third floor attic and was taller than I am. The house was built in the 30s, so there was no central AC. We put it in when we replaced the oil burning furnace with gas.
Pogonip
@Jay: My mom did that when we lived in Texas in the early ‘60’s. It was base housing so there probably wasn’t an attic, but I remember our house being less hot than the neighbors’s houses.
jharp
I used to hang out in New Philadelphia, Ohio many years ago.
ninja3000
I have a wicker planter almost exactly like this one. Gift from my New England mom.