Almost everyday I eat an apple with lunch. Ferdinand loves apples, so every time I eat an apple, he sits there and drools until I am finished. When I finish, I break the apple core into bits so that I can remove the seeds. [Apple seeds have a small amount of cyanide in them, so I remove them just to be careful.] Then Ferdinand sits there patiently while I feed him apple bits. He really has a hard life. As you can see in the video, the poor dog has to lift his head to eat his treat.
I ran my first 5K race yesterday. This was not the first time I have a 5K before, just the first time in an actual race. I have actually run more than a 5K non-stop. Thus far my maximum length running nonstop has been about 3.6 miles. My official time for this 5K was 40:51.3. There were many people walking or walking and running in the race, so I was not last. I was definitely one of the last nonstop runners though. I really don’t care how slow I was. Sure, I’d like to be faster, but running over three miles nonstop is a major personal achievement for me. I’m 40 years old, and for the first time in my life, I can run three miles nonstop. I have never been in good enough shape to do that. I exercise on my elliptical machine almost everyday for an hour. I’ve been exercising on my elliptical machine for years, although I have been getting more and more diligent about intensity and how often I exercise in recent years. However, road running is different from running on an elliptical machine. One of the reasons I like my elliptical machine is there is no impact. There is definitely impact with road running, and I have to be careful to not injure myself, especially my knees. However, for numerous reasons, a month or so ago, I realized I needed to increase and diversify my exercise routine, so I started road running once or twice a week. I started with short lengths: first a little over a mile, then next week, two miles, then the next week three miles. Since then I’ve been increasing it incrementally by adding a couple of tenths of mile. What was strange to me when I first started road running was realizing that my heart and lungs were perfectly fine during the run. Exercising on my elliptical machine had prepared my heart and lungs just fine for road running. It used to be that I could only run for short lengths before getting out of breath and have to switch to walking. Now as I have started running more what slows me down and to a certain extent hurts me is my legs not liking this whole impact thing. Therefore, I run slow, steadily, and within my capabilities. I run to improve my fitness, and I am slowly getting better at road running as I do it more.
I decided to enter a 5K race to have a goal and see how I compare with other runners. I also first decided to enter a 5K because it was Run or Dye, and it looks like a blast. That race is not until June though. Later I signed up for the race I ran yesterday, Arlington’s Turtle Trot, because it was within walking distance of my house, and it raises money for my local wildlife center’s turtle rehabilitation program. I had no delusions that I would win this or even be competitive. Again, I’m slow, and I am fine with that. What I learned today is that I am really slow, but I am slow and steady as I knew I was, and I am improving. I also learned that some runners and walkers have absolutely no knowledge of outdoor running etiquette.
The Turtle Trot was a very family friendly, small, community type race. There were many children running the race along with adults. There were some adults running with children in strollers and running with their also running children. There were adults running in a competitive manner and adults like me just running to say they did it. The race was on the Washington & Old Dominion (W&OD) trail, a very popular paved hike and bike trail that varies from about six to eight feet in width. This is where the problems arose (in my opinion). Participants just gathered at the start with little sorting. The people who were trying to be competitive did seem to gather more at the start, but the people who were planning to walk did not do that much sorting to stay at the back. I stood near the middle. I was trying to avoid the crush of real runners at the front. As the race started, I walked to the start line letting the pack get going first, and as the race was chip timed, it really didn’t matter that I was delayed in crossing the start line. For the first tenth of a mile or so, I tried to let real runners behind me easily pass, and I tried to quickly pass the walkers in front of me. Then after a few tenths of a mile as racers were still sorting themselves out, the race route went from Four Mile Run trail to the much more popular W&OD trail. As with any Saturday morning, the W&OD is populated with bikers, runners, walkers, and their dogs. This made for an even more crowded race route, and this is where my (and I would wager other participants’) problems really began.
On the W&OD, you need to be courteous and allow others to pass you when they are faster, stick to the right if possible especially when you are slow, and politely and quickly pass others being cognizant that someone else may want to pass you as you pass others. I walk (with and without my dog), run, and bike on the W&OD often. I’m used to these rules of shared space courtesy and happily accept it because I enjoy using this trail. Some of the participants in the Turtle Trot either do not accept these rules of common courtesy or are really obtuse. There were some participants and some people simply using the trail who made it difficult to pass them, especially some who were participating in groups of more than two and thus taking up the entire side and then some of the trail. There were two female participants who absolutely drove me crazy for the first half of the race. They were walking/running along side each other. They would run faster than me for a bit and pass me. Then they would walk, and I would have to pass them. As they were taking up the entire right side of the trail, I would have to pass them on the left side, which often meant waiting until it was free from opposing cyclist/pedestrian traffic. Then shortly after I pass them, evidently because I was running so slow, they would start running again, pass me, then start walking again. This nonsense went on every five or ten minutes or so, for almost the entire first half of the race, until finally, thankfully, they either stopped their running sprints or I as a steady, slow runner had gotten far enough ahead of them to avoid them. To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with walkers who do running sprints. I used to exercise like this before I was able to run nonstop. I think it is a great way to get your heart rate up while walking if you can’t yet run for extended periods. I wouldn’t even have a problem with them doing this in the race if they were not walking along side each other and had courtesy of others around them. If they were walking single file, it would have been much easier to pass them. There were others who did similar type things, which also got annoying, but they seem to pass me less, or it was one person not in a group, who could thus then pass me or allow me to pass him/her more easily. There were also children in the race, some not running alongside adults. Many of them were also walking then sprinting with some of them doing this in an unpredictable manner such that it became difficult to know if a child was going simply stop right in front of me causing me to have to quickly swerve around them. Some of the children also passed on the right or left in groups and just plain ran in unpredictable ways. I can forgive the children a lot easier. They’re children; they may not know better, and well, they were acting like children. All of this made for some serious frustrations during the race. I’m sure it doesn’t sound like it, but I actually like the diversity of people in the race. I like that there were children, walkers, and noncompetitive runners. Exercise is so important, and I think it’s great that people of all ages are out there exercising. Also, having other people in the race who had no anticipation of winning the race gives me as a slow runner encouragement to enter races to improve my personal time and to have fun, as fun runs should be.
Overall I enjoyed my first 5K. I am glad I did it, and I hope many turtles will be helped by my entry fee. I hope to keep improving in my fitness and running and perhaps run a few more races in the future simply as a goal to improve my time, especially when the entry fees help a cause I support. I just hope my future race organizers will better communicate to participants about race courtesy and most importantly that my future fellow participants will practice race and shared space courtesy.
Geeky Girl Engineer’s Home DIY Tips for Morons
All houses have numerous cover plates for wall openings such as electrical outlets, light switches, and vents. The cover plates can be fancy or plain and come in various materials. Vent covers are normally metal, but specialty ones come in different materials. For two floor vent openings in my family room, I bought unstained white oak covers that I then had stained and sealed to match the hardwood floors in that room.
Wooden vent cover stained and sealed to match the hardwood floor
Light switch and electrical outlet covers are normally plastic but can also be various materials and colors. In my kitchen, I used stainless steel light switch and outlet covers to match the stainless steel tiles in the backsplash and the stainless steel appliances.
Stainless steel light switch/outlet cover which matched stainless steel tiles
Thus, you don’t have to use the standard type covers. You can buy fancier ones to coordinate with your decor. You can also buy covers that are specially made to be painted or wallpapered so that they really match your walls. However, these are special ones. You can’t, or rather you shouldn’t, paint any metal cover. If you paint metal, it needs to be primed properly, and if you want the paint job to look nice, it needs to be applied carefully, preferably it should be sprayed on for a really nice, smooth coat. Otherwise, you get this:
Improperly painted vent cover
I’m not sure if the photo really shows how bad it looks. The paint is chipping all over. Brush marks can clearly be seen, and in some places, the paint pooled, making the coat very uneven. Most importantly, if you refuse to heed my advice on this, please, please, take the covers off before painting them. Don’t paint them while they are on the wall. If you paint them while on the while, this happens:
Outlet after cover that was painted while on wall was removed
See the lovely lines where the cover was? That is due to a thinner coat of paint where the cover covered the wall. Here is a similar outcome with the vent cover.
Vent after cover that was painted while on wall was removed
Closeup of vent after cover that was painted while on wall was removed
The very worst part was that the paint had flowed underneath the cover and essentially glued the cover to the wall. I had to use a flat-head screwdriver to pry the covers off the wall. In some places, it didn’t come off cleanly.
So please, don’t do this. Your house’s future owners thank you.
Last weekend I went to see National Museum of Natural History’s 2013 Orchids of Latin America exhibit. The exhibit is now over, but it had an amazing variety of orchids. I love orchids. I think they are insanely beautiful, and I am amazed by the variety of them. Granted, some of that variety is due to humans breeding them. Below are photos of some of the orchids that were there.
As part of my home renovations, I have been installing new light fixtures, including several from ELK Lighting’s Elysburg line. I wanted to use a three light chandelier in the downstairs foyer by the front door and at the second floor landing at the top of the stairs. The only problem is that they hang 22 inches from the ceiling (at their shortest), and since my house has 8 foot high ceiling, this means the chandelier is hanging a little low for an area where people are going to walk. As with all chandeliers, it came with chain to allow it to hang lower, but there is a limit how short it can be. Thus, I decided to hack the chandelier to make it even shorter. Here is the chandelier at its shortest as designed.
top of the chandelier before
Chandelier before
The way the chandelier connects to the outlet box is pretty standard.
Outlet box crossbar holds screw pipe
Screw collar loop attaches to clip ring to canopy nut
The simplest way to shorten the fixture seemed to be to eliminate the screw collar loop, clip ring, and canopy nut by somehow connecting the light fixture screw directly to electrical box’s screw pipe. The problem of course is they are two different diameters and threading size. I considered using a bolt that was the same size as the fixture screw, in place of the screw pipe, then just connecting them using a coupling nut. However the light fixture screw is a M10 x 1.0, and after a half hour of internet searching, I couldn’t find a single vender for that size coupling nut. Another method that I thought of later, was to bring the light fixture screw directly to the box crossbar using a nut, then drill holes through the canopy and use screws through those holes to hold the whole fixture up. The problem with that is that I was a little weary of drilling holes in the canopy in case I messed up, and also, I would need decretive screw caps to cover the screws, and I didn’t know how to find those.
What I did, was searched to aisles of Home Depot in search of something I could use to connect the pieces somehow, and I finally came up with the following solution. These are the materials I used. I used the chain that came with the chandelier, a nut to fit the light fixture screw, and a crossbar adjustment kit I found in the electrical aisle. I bought the crossbar adjustment kit solely for the piece that in the photo is outside the package it came in. I have no idea what the piece is, but it looks like to two very strong washers held apart in a parallel manner by a bar.
Materials for chandelier hack
Here’s what I did. I put the parallel washer thingy piece on chandelier screw, then used the nut to hold it on. I then cut one of the chain links in half and used it to connect the top part of the parallel washer thingy to the chandelier’s screw cap. [You will note that as an engineer, I sometimes use highly technical terms like "thingy".] I had to use a pipe wrench to bend the cut chain link into a closed loop. It’s rather strong.
My hacked way of connecting the chandelier to the screw cap.
The finished chandelier now looks like this. I was able to shorten the entire chandelier by about two inches. Not that much, but enough that hopefully less people will hit their head.
Chandelier after
Top of the chandelier after
So that’s how I hacked the chandelier. If anyone out there has any suggestions for a better way I could have done it, that does not involve welding, I would love to hear it. Please leave a comment with suggestions.
I’ve lived in the DC area for two years now, and this is the first time I’ve visited the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms. They were not quite in full bloom when I visited, but they were still quite pretty, and the DC monuments provide a nice backdrop for many of the photos. Here are a few of the photos I took.
Cherry blossoms
Cherry blossoms
Cherry blossoms
Cherry tree with Potomac River and Arlington Memorial Bridge
Cherry trees blooming on Potomac River near the 365 bridge
Cherry blossoms on Tidal Basin with more cherry trees blooming on other side
The Jefferson Memorial provides a lovely backdrop for cherry blossom photos.
Cherry blossoms with the Jefferson Memorial
Cherry blossoms with the Jefferson Memorial
Cherry blossoms with the Jefferson Memorial
Cherry blossoms with the Jefferson Memorial
Other beautiful flowers are blooming near the Tidal Basin also, including one of my favorite flowers, saucer magnolias.
Saucer magnolia (Magnolia × soulangeana)
Saucer magnolia at the George Mason Memorial
Saucer magnolia with the Washington Monument
Also forsythia is in full bloom.
Forsythia at the George Mason Memorial
Geeky Girl Engineer’s Home DIY Tips for Morons
This is freshly installed drywall.
Guest room after drywall and new window
Drywall is that stuff you paint and hang things on. It is also known as gypsum board because the interior of it has gypsum in it. In bathrooms, green board is used because it is moisture resistant, but it is not moisture proof. It is called green board because it is green. Yes, home buildings supplies have very creative names. It is seen below in my guest bathroom as I was tearing it out for renovations.
Downstairs bathroom deconstruction
Drywall is screwed or nailed to studs. It covers up the insulation, studs, wires, pipes, and everything else that goes behind a wall. Fairly simple, right? Evidently not so much for the morons who “renovated” my house at one point before I bought it. Here is the room that is now my guest room when I was tearing things down to renovate.
guest room deconstruction
Look at the wall on the right that still has the drywall. See the brown outline around the door? Here is an up close photo of it.
Guest room deconstruction. Two layers of drywall for unknown reasons.
That outline is due to a second layer of drywall that was unpainted and revealed when the door trim was removed. Here is another look at it.
Guest room deconstruction. Two layers of drywall for unknown reasons.
So let’s just be clear: there is absolutely no point to two layers of drywall on one side of a wall. One layer of drywall is all you need. In fact, if you add a second layer, then the electrical outlets and light switches don’t fit through properly. I have tried to come up with a logical reason for the two layers of drywall. Best I can come up with is that they noticed the mold on the drywall on another wall in the room and assumed it was from moisture from the adjoining bathroom. Therefore they decided to put up a second layer of drywall to stop the moisture. This makes no logical sense, and the drywall wouldn’t stop moisture from coming through the wall. Assuming this is the reason, they entirely missed the reason for the mold anyway. The mold was due to the fact that behind the drywall was furring strips on cinder blocks. The cinder blocks formed the exterior wall. The two exterior walls of this room are underground, hence the cinder blocks, and there was not enough moisture protection to prevent moisture from the ground coming through the cinder blocks which then would gets to the drywall.
However, I really don’t know why they put up a second layer of drywall. The mold is simply a guess. When I tore down both layers of drywall, I didn’t notice anything wrong with the covered layer of drywall that would explain why it was covered. The summary of this is, there is no reason for two layers of drywall. It is a waste of drywall, and it is stupid.
I have been renovating my current house for two years now, and I realized before I bought it that it had been built and originally owned by smart, caring home owners, but it was later owned and “renovated” by morons. Therefore, in order to help and possibly stop morons out there, I have decided to start a new, sporadically reoccurring series of posts called “Geeky Girl Engineer’s (GGE’s) Home DIY Tips for Morons.” First, a few disclaimers though as to why you should either ignore or not ignore anything I write.
So, while many might be able to learn something from this series of posts, before you attempt any type of home do-it-yourself (DIY) tasks, please try to figure out if you are in fact, a moron. Consider the follow questions:
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you might be a moron. If you are going to do anything more complicated than changing a light bulb in your home, you might want to consider calling in a professional. Actually, you may want to consider if you are even capable of changing a light bulb. After all, someone had to be the inspiration for all those “how many _____ does it take to change a light bulb” jokes. Please consider carefully. Your future self, and any future owners and occupants of your home will thank you for it.
There is the introduction. Stay tuned for tips based on the incredibly stupid things I have encountered in this house. Contact me if you have questions. Contact me if you have tips or photos of really stupid things done at your house that you would like to share with the morons out there as something not to do. I can promise that if you ask me a question, and I don’t know the answer, I will not make up an answer, but I may be able to refer you to some sites with actual valuable information.
Previously I wrote that I was testing my house for radon. I got the test results back this week, and the test results came back as an average radon level of 2.9 pCi/L. The good news is this is less than the 4 pCi/L action level. The bad news is this is still elevated above average house level of 1.3 pCi/L. This test involved collecting radon over four days. At work, I am currently working on a project that involves looking at the indoor air variability due to radon or volatile organic compounds intrusion from the soil and groundwater. Thus, I know better than most how variable indoor air concentrations can be. They can vary a lot. Therefore, before deciding what to do, I have considered the following items:
Therefore, I have decided to test the house again, but this time for a longer duration. I have also decided to run two tests simultaneously. I plan to place two testers in the house, one in the guest room again and one upstairs in my master bedroom. I have ordered a long term home test kit that can be used to test between 90 and 365 days. I plan to run the test over an entire year to get a much better indication of what the long term average radon concentrations are in the house. Also, by testing both the guest room and master bedroom, I can better understand what my average exposure is both in terms of the average annual concentration and in the rooms where I spend the vast majority of my time. I will also add that while the guest room is a guest room now, as it is bedroom, legally and real estate-wise speaking, and thus in the future it could be a normal bedroom if my life changes or if I sell the house. Therefore I still consider it important to know what the long term radon concentrations are.
Check back in a year, and I will let you know what happened and how I am proceeding.
I’m testing my house for radon, and you should also. Winter is the best time to test your house for radon, which is one of the reasons I am testing it now. What is radon, and why am I testing for it? Keep reading.
What is radon? It is an odorless, tasteless, invisible gas that also happens to be radioactive. It is produced naturally from the decay of uranium, which occurs naturally in soil across the United States, and other countries and continents. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has this neat map showing uranium soil concentrations across the US. Due to its radioactivity, radon is a carcinogen. In fact, it is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. Radon gas is pretty much everywhere, both outdoors and indoors. Like all carcinogens, there is no safe level of exposure. You can’t completely avoid exposure because it is naturally occurring, but it is best to avoid it if you know it is present.
The US EPA estimates that the average home has an indoor radon concentration of 1.3 pCi/L, this means pico Curies, a unit of radioactivity, per liter of air. If your indoor air is above 4 pCi/L, then they recommend you fix your home. I’ll get to what fixing your home means next. Finally if the indoor air concentration is between 2-4 pCi/L, then they recommend you consider fixing the house. It is in that range that the concentration starts to get high enough above background that you might want to take action.
What happens if the radon concentrations in your house are high? First, don’t panic, your house can be mitigated to reduce the radon concentrations. You can hire a professional to install a mitigation system in your house. A mitigation system can either prevent radon gas from entering the house, or it can remove it from the house once it gets in. For example, one type of system sucks or pulls gas from beneath the house and then pipes it safely above the house where it can disperse into the atmosphere. Mitigation systems can be very effective and will greatly reduce your risk of lung cancer due to radon exposure.
Is your house at risk? As shown in the USGS map, some areas have higher concentrations of uranium in the soil than others. Areas with higher soil uranium concentrations will generally lead to higher radon gas concentrations. Also, houses with a crawl space will generally have less radon infiltrating the house than houses built on a slab or with a basement. The crawl space can allow the radon to dissipate before rising into the house. Houses with cracks in their slab are more susceptible because the cracks serve as a pathway for the radon to rise into the house. Also, pipes and conduits such as for wires from the house to ground can also allow radon to enter if they are not properly sealed.
So how do you find out if elevated levels of radon exist in your house? It’s fairly easy. Many states regulate the testing of radon, so you may try contacting your state radon department if it has one. Most of the time, you can go to your local home improvement store and buy a test kit for about $20. That’s what I did. The test kit I bought included two little containers that detect radon. The test kit had certain specific directions for the test containers such as they needed to be at least three feet off the floor, at least three feet from an exterior wall, etc., and they needed to be open for four days. The test containers were supposed to be placed six inches from each other. I presume you get two that are supposed to be placed in the same location for replicability. So here are the high tech test kits.
Both radon detectors placed for testing
Yes that is a tape measure in the photo because it said to place them six inches apart, and I’m an engineer. Now be quiet. The detectors should be placed in one of the lowest habitable rooms of the house. My house is built into a hill such that the front door on the first floor is ground level, and the back door of the second floor is also ground level. I chose to place the detectors in the guest room, which is on the first floor and in the back exterior corner of the house. The back wall and 3/4 of the side wall of the guest room are underground exterior walls, and thus this room would be one of the most susceptible to radon infiltration from the ground. The room that serves as my office and workout room is next to the guest in the front exterior corner of the house. Two of its walls are also exterior, but only about 1/3 of its side wall is actually underground. However, there is a crack in the slab about two feet long in the office, so I considered whether the test kits should be placed in this room. [Due to the extensive renovation I've been doing on this house, I know where all the cracks and openings are.] That crack could serve as a major route for radon to enter the house. However, I ultimately decided that the guest room would be more susceptible to radon infiltration because of the amount it is underground.
After choosing in which room to place the detectors, I then found a good location that was far enough away from an exterior wall and above the floor. I then proceeded with the testing protocol. I unscrewed the containers and let them sit for four days. Whew, that was exhausting. I deserved a drink after initiating that test. Here is one of the detectors unscrewed. It’s quite simple looking.
Radon detector open to run test
After I let them sit for four days, I screwed the caps back on, filled out the form that came with them, and mailed them into the lab. It cost $30 to have them tested, so with the cost of the kit, the entire thing cost me $50. I consider $50 a small price to pay to make sure I am not unknowingly breathing in a carcinogen everyday. I’m currently waiting for the results from the lab, and I will update my blog when I get the results.
One final note, I said at the beginning of this post that winter is the best time to test for radon. The reason for this is winter tends to be the time that the radon concentrations in a house would be at the highest. When the weather is nice, people tend to open windows for ventilation instead of using the AC or heater, and people just tend to open doors more often to go outside for whatever reason. Thus in the winter, the house is more closed off, and radon concentrations can build up due to less exchange of the indoor air with the outdoor air. Where I used to live in south-eastern part of US, I probably had windows open more often in winter, as I constantly used the AC in the summer, so this might not hold true. That and the fact that indoor air concentrations can vary day to day, is why experts recommend that if you get high levels detected with a short term test, you consider doing a longer term test such as over several months, to determine what the longer term average is. The test kits do have false positives, especially at lower concentrations, so if you test your house, and it comes back high, once again, don’t panic. Test your house again, this time with a longer term test, and see what the longer term concentration is, and then determine if you need to take action. However, don’t remain ignorant about the risks. Test your house; it’s important and could save your life.
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