Jon's Home Blog » summer

June 30 Severe Thunder Storm in Ulster County, NY

JonC — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:59:47 +0000

I know I’ve been posting a lot of these thunder storm and wild rain downpour videos. I tend to get a lot of search hits for the specific areas and dates though, so I will continue to do so. People seem to be interested in it for personal reasons, or perhaps to show friends, or insurance agents.

Anyways this storm on June 30th, 2009 was pretty intense. It came in 4 waves in this area, so it seemed more like 4 separate thunder storms. Unfortunately the house did not get out unscathed in this one, the built in gutter gave way and leaked water into the walls which managed to spot drywall on the top floor ceiling, and additionally the walls on the first and second floor around the window frames which are right under that gutter got wet as well, peeling some of the drywall tape on the joints by the window frames. Thunderstorm rain always seems to be so much more intense than regular storm rain. I guess all heck just breaks loose in the sky and results in massive downpour.

I didn’t notice this was happening until I saw water dripping down the window blinds behind my computer monitor. When I went upstairs the ceiling was spotting and wet up there in a couple of sheets that extent parallel to the window.

I’ve been trying to get a hold of someone all day to come out and fix or at least temporarily patch it but I could not get a hold of one single person. Possibly because the holiday weekend and all, most ‘make our own schedule’ types are taking the rest of the week off.

I’m not a ladder guy myself, and becoming a quadriplegic for a stupid gutter is not going to be my demise. I called a local rental company and I can get a 35′ boom arm lift for the entire weekend for about 250 delivered, so I’ll probably do that and fix it myself, safely.

I also manufactured a ‘low budget pole cam’ so I could get a look up into the gutters, it worked out pretty well, good enough for me to see where the problem was. Also the soffits in that area are in terrible shape, even more so after that storm, so I may be rebuilding my sofits as well if I have all the tools to do that, my budget is pretty thin at the moment.

Anyway, here is the video, enjoy.. at 1:35 I got the camera to focus right on the rain itself, really impressive downpour.

Here are those additional pictures of the water damage

Wholesale Elimination of Ants in and Around the House

JonC — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:50:44 +0000

Yes, the ants have been driving us crazy around here. There have not only been a lot of them outside, but also inside. It’s time to get rid of the ants!

Near the beginning of Spring I went into one of the local Home Depot’s looking for some pesticide to kill ants with. At the time it was mostly little ants that were roaming around outside around the foundation of the house and the sprinkler timer, singing little marching songs, eating stuff, etc. They can have the yard if they want, for now, but the house is ours!

For some reason going into the insectiside aisles of the home store, they always feel more dimly lit and I somehow feel like I am about to commit an evil crime of some sort. I imagine it’s the same way that a vengeful lover feels when going into a gun-shop, on the seedy side of town, with so many different and exciting weapons to choose from. (Although with killing bugs you get to skip the whole prison dating scene!)

The first thing I bought was sprinkle on ant killer granules. The packaging is always less than exciting and reads like lawyer talk. They could make it a bit more exciting but, well it is what it is I guess. The sprinkle on stuff, to be specific was ‘Spectracide Ant Shield Home Barrier‘. This worked pretty good on the little ants, it comes in a little bin with a flip top and you just shake it around the base of your house then struggle for another 5 minutes trying to get the flip top to stay closed. Most of the little ants abandoned their nests, or more than likely exploded inside of them to the terrifying screams of the other ant comrades. Ethyl!!! Ethyl!! They killed Eth.[..Pop..]

Unfortunately this was not the last wave of ants, it was but the first. I can only suspect the black ants sent the little ones in as a distraction, perhaps to lul us into a false sense of security. The black ants were finding their way into the kitchen, and even after scrubbing down every surface as best as possible to remove trails, and anything remotely tasty or otherwise, they kept comming. You’d napkin one on the counter, then open the cabinet door, and one would be eyeballing you from the top of a can of soup, you’d napkin that too, and see a third one darting off towards the pantry. The kitcken was spotless by this time, so I can only imagine they were after the tasty wood of the kitchen cabinetry.

I went out to the gun-sho…. insecticide aisle at one of the local home centers again to see what else they had. In this case I bought some Ortho Home Defense MAX.. (note, it’s not Max.. it’s MAX. It claimed to pretty much kill everything you sprayed it on, or make it suffer and not want to risk coming back to your place.

The Ortho HDM worked pretty good. The built in pump/sprayer thing worked neat too. I sprayed it around the door frames, window frames and the sill plate of the house the first time. Outside stuff only. It worked for a couple of weeks and then we got a big rainstorm. I guess that washed all the HDM off because the ants came back almost immediately.

I went to spray the second time and that neat stupid #$%@# gun jammed. Seriously, the little pump in the included spray-gun thing seized up and it wouldn’t move any fluid. I swear I heard little-ant feet applause at that moment. I had to go to the hardware store again and buy a ‘professional pump sprayer’ jug. Then I sprayed a second time and again the ants vanished.

This was all kind of annoying because the home defense max stuff isn’t all that cheap. Finally the third time the ants came back another few weeks later I decided to test the indoor properties of the Ortho Home Defense Max. The bottle claims it’s good for indoor/outdoor use, I just didn’t like spraying it inside. Additionally, it says it will be washed off outdoors, but can last up to 12 months indoors. I just sprayed again indoors and the ants have once again dissapeared. Hopefully this will be the last time I need to repeat this procedure.

Conclusions: I’m not certain that I am actually killing the ants, it’s quite possible they’re building up a resistance to this stuff and just come back to get their latest dose. At one point it may end up like a 60′s horror movie and we will be swarmed by these things one night and gnawed down to the bones. I hope they’re being killed though, I really hope! The Ortho Home Defense MAX seems to be doing the job, I just wish it lasted longer outside, but hopefully the indoor application will be better. I was thinking it would be cool if ants were smart enough to realize ‘bad things’ happen if they come near my place, but then I realized smart ants wouldn’t be such a good idea, considering how annoying they are just on pure instinct alone.

Some Options for Sprinkler Timers

JonC — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:27:57 +0000

Having had to grow a new lawn in 2 areas covering around 2000sq ft we really needed some sort of sprinkler timer system. I had actually spent some time searching online to see what it would take to put an in-ground system in at one point. Although most of the components are extremely price friendly, there are a couple which are not. The first is the sprinkler system timer, and the second is the back-flow prevention valve which can run up to $300 in itself on top of the rest of your system. Add in the additional digging and modifying your plumbing, etc, it’s a lot of work and perhaps a job better after settling in for a couple of years.

Vigoro 3015V Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer (also known as a Melnor Electronic Water Timer 3015V)

We ended up going with some garden / home improvement store variety water timers / sprinkler timers that you just hook your hose to. The first one we purchased was a ‘Vigoro Model 3015v’ (same as Melnor) branded item which had a lot of programming flexibility, manual override and, in this package, the moisture sensor. The water timer without the rain sensor function is $26.30 at Amazon. (not the number of ‘review stars’ in the amazon popup when you hover over that link) The one with the water sensor is pictured below.

Overall this seemed like a pretty good timer. It has a lot of flexibility in the programming schedule. You set the current time (in hours only) and set the start time (in hours only). You then program how often the timer will open the valve in hours or days to water your lawn, and for how long it will do it each time, in minutes, or hours.

We used this unit at first on four oscillating fan type sprinklers. I noticed right away that the water pressure to the sprinklers was very low when they were ran and series (VALVE –> SPRINKLER –> SPRINKLER –> SPRINKLER –> LAST SPRINKLER) type setup. I bought a 4 way splitter valve and then split the hose 4 ways to the 4 separate sprinklers. This evened out the pressure much better (and is called a parallel configuration)

While the water pressure had improved with the 4-way hose splitter it was still weak, this of course is not the sprinkler timers fault but just additional useful information if you’re trying to water a large area with multiple sprinklers.

The rain sensor / moisture sensor did a reasonable job, and lets you adjust how sensitive to ground moisture it is. The setting varies from 1 water drop to 3 water drops to tell the system how wet you want your ground to be. If the moisture sensor detects that your lawn is wet, to the level you selected, the main unit will bypass any sprinkling times until your lawn dries out enough to require watering again. The rain sensor is great as it prevents the system from watering your lawn when it has rained recently, saving you money and possibly sparing you the dirty looks from your enviro-conscious-neighbors if your sprinklers happen to turn on during a torrential downpour!

Special Note: Attach your hose to this unit before attaching the wireless receiving antenna. Speaking from experience it is much more difficult to get the hose on when the antennas is attached!

Model: Vigoro/Melnor 3015V Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer w/Wireless Moisture Sensor
Cost: $24.95 (excluding moisture sensor feature)
Pros: Simple to setup, manual override, reliable, easy to read.
Cons: Splits hours evenly. a 6/noon/6 schedule is not possible, you only get a midnight/6/noon/6 schedule, and I didn’t want to water our lawn at midnight and I didn’t want to water too early in the morning, or too late at night like I could achieve with an 3 x 8hr schedule. This unit has received terrible reviews in general.

Orbit 4 Zone Water Timer / Sprinkler Timer

After messing with the Vigoro sprinkler timer and having the water pressure problems as well as the ‘watering at midnight’ problem due to limited timer configurations with that unit I decided to go to Lowe’s and see what they had in the way of a timer with multiple zones. Well, there wasn’t a lot available other than this Orbit ‘Complete Yard Watering Kit’. In all honestly it didn’t come with the 300 feet of hose or 5 25 dollar sprinklers so I’m not sure how ‘complete’ I would say it was. It did come with a 4 way valve manifold, the timer module and 2 electronic valves, expandable to 4 (additional valves are 12.95, mail order only from Lowe’s site and rarely in some stores).

This timer seems pretty well built, and it’s pretty easy to setup. It is somewhat the same parameters as the Vigoro module above with the addition of individual zones. As an added bonus, they seemed to know you did not want to water your lawn at midnight, and it allows you to set a schedule for 6am, Noon and 6pm, and to skip any overnight watering possibilities. GOOD IDEA!

With the addition of multiple valves, you have multiple sprinkler zones. I split the sprinklers down into 2 watering zones for the main peninsula lawn and set the timer to run both sets of control valves, one at a time, for 20 minutes during each watering period for the new lawn. It works great and reliably.

I like this timer much better, but it has it’s own problems as well. While the programmable portion of the timer is pretty great. The fact that you have to buy additional zone valves via mail order only is kind of a lame, but not impassable barrier. Additionally in manual mode it would have been a nice feature to be able to set individual times for each zone. With this module you can turn on one sprinkler zone for X minutes. Or alternately you can turn on all zones for X minutes. You cannot set Zone 1 for 10 minutes, Zone 2 for 20 minutes, Zone 3 for 10 minutes, etc.

Model: Orbit Complete Yard Watering Kit (Model #: 91591 / 27752)
Cost: Spotty Availability, cheaper version now available for around $49
Pros: Very flexible timing options and multiple zones. Expands up to 4 valves and is reliable. While discontinued the additional valves are still currently available.
Cons: You can only buy sprinkler zone control valves through mail-order. I have received and viewed some reports regarding the reliability of the reviewed unit in a poor light and in fact when I changed the batteries the unit died on the spot but in general Orbit has better product reviews than the Melnor products Vigoro re-brands.

Summary

I wasted so much time and money with these sprinkler timers that we might have been better off trenching and putting in our own sprinkler system. By the time we got everything taken care of working right, the amount of money spent on sprinklers, hoses, timers, watering at weird hours, etc could have just been resolved with a real sprinkler system with an indoor based multi-zone timer for a couple hundred more. Perhaps next year, things are working okay for now but not optimal. If you’re not able to do your own sprinkler system installation, then these may be the way to go, if you’re just being kinda lazy you may wind up regret it.

If you are looking for a short term solution for a sprinkler timer then I think these two models can provide you temporary relief. If you’re looking for something that is going to last you longer and multiple seasons, you might want to look at other sprinkler timers. I’ve found that while the particular multi-zone Orbit I reviewed has higher failure complaints, their smaller single zone units have a bit better reputation such as the Orbit 91213 or the Orbit 62001 which has been getting excellent reviews. If you want longer life from your timer, don’t leave it or the valves out over the winter. When you change the battery it may be beneficial to rub something like petroleum jelly over the rubber seal on the battery compartment to help it seal better. If you buy a unit that doesn’t have a sealed battery compartment, take it back.

If you liked this post, please see my other Lawn Related Posts and also my new article where I disassemble the Vigoro 3015v to see how the valve works.

I’ve tried to keep this post updated with recent information based on feedback from readers and information I find from other review sites and reviewers so that my readers can be better informed on their choices. I last updated this page on June 7, 2011. Best of luck with your lawns and gardens this Spring and Summer.