musings from the sleep deprived

So once upon a time there was a guy. And over the course of his childhood and adolescence, he was in the habit of acquiring model trains for he and his brothers to play with. Nowadays, these would be referred to as “old school” trains, with the fancy switches, electricity to power them, little reservoirs that you can fill with dry ice or something so that the little smokestacks really spit out smoke, everything mounted to big swaths of plywood with fake grass, dirt, mountains, matchbox cars, and 1 inch high people strewn about. This guy, as he got older, thought to himself… you know, wouldn’t it be cool if I could have a couple boys (or, I suppose, girls) and when they’re old enough, they can play with this stuff too. We’ll be able to make it a father/son (or, I suppose, daughter) project and they can learn all about electricity, being responsible with potentially dangerous stuff, and so on. I should also note that this guy would have been thinking and saying these things in German, since he was my Dad, and was in Austria at the time those thoughts would have been percolating.

I should maybe take a moment here, and note that some of this story I’m telling second hand, I was either not there yet or too young to remember when some of these details were happening. I’m also not quite sure of the sequence of events, but it isn’t that important. I suspect there was some embellishment on the part of story-teller, but it still makes for a good yarn, so just bear with me.

Anyway, so let us fast forward a few years now, and now that guy is married, and has two kids, aged 4 and 2. Still in Vienna at this point, but already planning to move over the good ol’ US of A, where the lovely lady has most of her family, and of course, misses them terribly. At some point here, this guy’s stepmother decides that she is going to take that whole train set and all of its associated trimmings and trappings, and send them off to one of her nephews. Dad was apparently not consulted on this, nor was anyone else that might have had some relevant input to the decision. If I’m conveying a bit of bitterness, it is because there was some. I’ll leave it at that, since, again… this predates me, and it is hard for me to feel a lot of emotion about something that couldn’t possibly have mattered to me at that point in my life.

Ok, so there was some animosity, regret, sadness, opportunity missed for some quality Dad/son time there, and life went on.

Another fast forward, and here I am, now a Dad myself. Two kids, 4 and almost 2. And lo, check it out. Opa David (my Dad-in-Law) decides to send us his trains. Once again, these are the old school variety. I haven’t done a complete inventory yet. I do know that there are at least there are two locomotives, at least 3 cars, and a whole mess of track. There are two of the “transformer” boxes that let you regulate the speed and direction of the train. There will need to be some cleaning, probably a few parts that need to be replaced, but even with the very limited stuff we set up today, we were able to get a functioning oval of track around the Christmas tree with one of the locomotives and two cars hanging off behind. It throws off a few sparks here and there, lights flicker on some particular rusty bits of track, but it runs!

This will be a long project, spanning a bunch of years, especially since the kids are pretty young still. This kind of thing, I believe, is a labor of love, with long hours spent with sandpaper, modelling glue, and linear miles of wire so that the little streetlights will all turn on when the room gets dark. Perhaps I’m letting my imagination get away from me a bit here, but … well, what good is that darn thing for anyway, if not to close your eyes and let it run a bit wild the possibilities.

So thank you Opa David. Someday, Madeline and Nicholas will come to appreciate what I already know… just how special a gift this is.

Happy Holidays to all!

Some time ago, I went through, as I do on a semi-regular basis, and updated passwords on everything I could remember. I have tools for this. The tools are very good at making things random and hard to guess or hack. They let me specify the types of characters that should appear in them, and how long they should be, and all kinds of funny rules to consider.

This time, I decided to also update the passwords on my DSL modem at home. The maker is Actiontec, although ultimately that isn’t relevant. On the password screen, they accept any character on the password screen, and entries of any length. Given that, I chose my 16 character mixed profile, which is pretty much the strongest one I generally use. A very few sites/apps accept longer ones, but not usually. The dialog accepted my new password, and saved it, and since I was also experiencing some port connection issues at the time, I decided to reset the modem. No problem, everything came right back up minutes later, and I was good to go.

I popped back onto the admin page for the modem, and was going to login to verify that the memory usage was back down to nominal levels. What’s this? An error??? Let’s see here… “Your password cannot exceed 15 characters in length”. WHAT??? It let me enter 16 characters when it asked. How can the login screen only take 15? So then I think, ok… maybe it automatically chopped the final character off? Nope. Maybe it chopped the first character off? (Ok, I admit thats kind of out of the realm of reality, but I’m getting desperate here)… Nope. After trying many different further combinations, including my old password, ALL CAPS, no caps, etc, I decided to do a little more poking around. Fire up the firefox debugger, and look at the code evaluating on this page. Sure enough, there is a routine in the javascript there that is validating my input on that page, and checking to see that the input <= 15 characters. Ugh.

So, I realize at this point that I could reset the modem back to factory defaults, and go ahead and reconfigure my custom settings. I have some specific port maps setup and this is generally a big pain in the butt, so I decide to try contacting their support first. Hit the webpage, leave a message with my email address, and await my reply. A few days later, they do so, indicating that the login page should be able to accept any password length that the password reset script would have allowed, and that I should check to make sure I’m typing correctly.

o.O
O.o

Really? Um, ok. That is like asking me if the power cord is plugged in. They indicate there is no “backdoor” and that I need to reset the modem to defaults in order to resolve, thank you for playing, we’re considering this issue resolved, and please don’t ask us any more of your stupid questions. kthxbye.

Alright, so now I get back in and try all the things I did before, thinking…ok, maybe they’re right, I just typed it wrong, and went through all the usual logical steps that I could have accidentally done things incorrectly, and I get the same result. As a last ditch effort, I go in and check the code again, except this time, I’m going to try and play with the values. Once again in the debugger I enable a breakpoint in the javascript, and start stepping through the code, watching the values of several different variables I see defined to see how it manipulates things before it finally submits the form. This time, I leave off the final character (going back to a 15 character, allowed value), and step it past the check that was previously failing. It does some more manipulation of the username, password, the current ip address, etc, and then sets that big long string into a new variable just before submitting. So just before the exit, I go back into that variable, and add my character back, by hand, in the debugger console. Click “Run” and close my eyes a bit. Wait 5 seconds… open my eyes… I’m logged in!

Every once in awhile, all the crap I went to school for actually comes in handy. No, not the most elegant hack, but it got the job done.

Preamble:

I apologize up front. This is going to be intensely personal, probably very long, and only really relevant to parents. That having been said, I need to get it out. This is, to some extent, a conversation I’ve been having, both internally in my head, and externally with with friends, parents and my spouse for near around 20 years. My children are currently four and one and a half. This will be a conversation I have with each of them, most likely separately, not likely very soon. But it will happen, because I know the circumstances already that will lead to it being a necessity.

I think it is possible that I delayed having kids for a time because I didn’t feel like this dialogue was yet fully flushed out in my head. At some point, I realized that it never will be. This also came along with the realization that some people, for better or worse, never have this conversation. Some have it, realize they can’t live up to this promise, and then have kids anyway. Life is like that. I don’t expect anyone else to live up to this standard. I expect MYSELF to live up to this standard. I’m not telling anyone else what to do. I’m not judging anyone else. Each of us, once we commit to the new life in our midst, has to decide how to approach this on their own, and make their own call about what it means. As mentioned above, I think this is intensely personal, and unique for every parent, with every child. Perhaps this is my disclaimer about what you’re going to read.

And from here on, you need to imagine me (or yourself) sitting across the table from your child, and I’m going to switch that perspective so that someday, if they read this, they will know it is to them…

I’ll start with an analogy. It is one I thought up a long time ago, and maybe now, tonight, I understand it more completely than ever before.

I imagine life is sort of like walking across a stream. We’re walking across together. The water is moving fast. It isn’t very deep, but the rocks we walk on are slippery. Not all of them are stable, sometimes we have to step in the water, on a rock that wobbles a lot, just to get across. But we’ll keep moving forward, together… for now. I want you to know that I’ve walked across this stream, or one very much like it, before. I was walking with my parents. Someday, fates willing, you’ll do the same with kids of your own.

The first part of this analogy is that no matter what, we’re going to keep going. We may stop to rest sometimes, but we will always keep moving forward. For the moment, I’m going to point across the stream, and tell you that is the right direction. At the moment, you don’t know, or can’t know, what that means… for now you have to trust me that I know. Someday, at some point in the future, you’re going to find your own direction, let go of my hand, and strike out on your own. Remember this point, I’ll get back to it later.

Next, there are going to be times when I’m going to see a spot in the stream that looks familiar to me, I’m going to see a rock I stepped on before, and when I took that step, I slipped, fell, and landed on my butt in the water, and got hurt. Maybe it was some physical pain, maybe it was shame, maybe it was just an awkward moment… whatever. I’ll point that out to you. I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t take that same step I did. Maybe I’ll point out a different path, another rock. Or maybe I’ll just ask you to wait a moment until the current isn’t quite so fast, but the choice is still yours. Sometimes, you’re going to take my advice, avoid the fall, and we’ll move on from there. Sometimes, you’re going to take my miss-step anyway, and fall on your butt, just like I did. I won’t tell you “I told you so” (ok, maybe I will) … but maybe it will show you that sometimes, I do have good advice. That maybe I can help steer you in tough times. My first promise is this… whenever you fall, I will *always* do my best to be there to help you back up. I’ll kiss your cheek, give you a band-aid, give you a hug, or talk to you about what happened. Whatever you need right then, I will *always* try to be there for that.

Sometimes, you’re going to take that step, and NOT fall. In those moments, you’re going to see something in me you won’t recognize until later in life. Pride. I’m going to be proud of you. Proud of you for succeeding where I did not. Pride in standing up for yourself and what you believed in, even when I told you there might be a negative outcome. I hope you will see from this that I’m not perfect. I hope you will see I’m ok admitting that. I hope you will see that though I’m not always right, I was still trying to look out for you. My second promise is that I will do my best not to be angry that you didn’t listen to me, and try to see that you’re learning to make decisions for yourself, knowing full well they might not be good ones. That your independence is just as important to me as your success.

I will tell you right now that there are going to be times when I will see the slippery rock, and I’m going to be very insistent that you don’t take that step, that you pick a different path instead, no matter how much you complain. I may use words like “forbid” or “you’re grounded” or “don’t take that tone with me young (lady|man)”. You’re going to wonder why it isn’t like the earlier case where I let you make your own mistake. I need you to just trust me on this one. I may or may not have an explanation that makes sense to you at the time. My next promise is that I will make my best effort to use this “veto power” that parents have as sparingly as possible. I won’t take it lightly, and I won’t use it carelessly or casually. It will only be when I think that the possible outcome is so bad that it would be MUCH worse than the lesson you would learn by making the mistake yourself. It is my hope that someday you will see the logic and understand, even though that “someday” might be much later in your life. Sometimes, the 38+ years I’ve lived more than you have will have more weight than the force of your will and nature.

Now getting back to that earlier point. Someday, we will find ourselves at a spot in our journey where you are going to want to let go of my hand and take off in a different direction. That is also ok. We may not agree on when that time should be. I did the same thing with my parents. I would ask that you recognize how difficult a time that is for parents. Letting go is hard. Maybe *the* hardest thing we’ll ever do. To some extent, we sign an unwritten agreement when we had you that was a long term deal. We knew full well that we were signing up for the long haul. That brings me to the last promise. What we were signing up for was to make sure that when you did decide to let go, and make your own journey, that we had done our very best to prepare you for what was ahead. It won’t be perfect. You won’t always agree. From the moment you let go, you will see and do things we probably would never have imagined. All we can hope for is that we steered you right, gave you the right guidance, and left you with the smarts to make the decisions on your own, the common sense to be intuitive about your path, the independence to be able to stand up straight on your own, the compassion to help those you’ll meet in the future, and the emotional maturity to handle your successes and your failures with grace, humility and honesty.

I guess there is one more thing too, worth mentioning. You may find that the first time you let go doesn’t work out quite as planned. Sometimes there are false starts, and for that part, you will always have a home with us. No matter what the circumstances are, you can always count on the hugs, band-aids and the support you need to try again. Don’t ever feel shame in that. The only failure from falling down is if you don’t learn (or don’t want to learn) the lesson from it. Why you fell… how to not fall again for the same reason. We will do our best to be here for that part too.

I love you. Now go back to your room. You’re still grounded until further notice.

Steve was kind enough to bring over some extra live rock that he had from the shipment. It is, quite honestly, some of the best we’ve ever seen from any LFS around here. It is provided by Tampa Bay Saltwater. Please do check out that link. They have quite an amazing setup.

The issue, for those unaware, is that, as this hobby has become more popular, there were a number of “bad players” in the market who were harvesting live rock from active reefs around the world. Unfortunately, the reefs of the world are already facing decline from any other variety of factors, and us meddling humans just going out and further hurting that was just going to make that worse. So there has been an active ban on that for some time now. What Tampa Bay Saltwater did was to gain a permit for a five acre lease of underwater area in the Gulf of Mexico, and created his own reef. According to the page, they have over four million pounds of rock that they have put out there to “grow” their own, in short creating a “farm” of his own, and preventing any destruction of active reefs. As you can see if you poke around the page, the rock he’s shipping out is just rich with life.

Finally, it brought to light another aspect of this that I’ve long believed, but never really any confirmation of. Reef tanks need a “cleaning crew”, consisting typically of snails, hermit crabs and so on. If you take a look at this page on his site, you can see the ratios of critters he recommends (based on number of gallons). For our size tank (225gal), he recommends approximately 440 pounds of live rock, 220 pounds of live sand, 220 blue leg hermit crabs, 110 astrea snails, 10 tiger tail cucumbers, 5 serpent or brittle stars, and 5 peppermint shrimp.

Wow.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this guy is trying to sell you a product, and obviously, will probably error on the side of more rather than less when it comes to giving you amounts that you need. I have previously seen estimates that are roughly half that for the amount of live rock. But even if I went with numbers 1/2 of what he indicates, that is still quite a serious commitment in terms of the life in the tank dedicated to cleanup.

I just went to the closest LFS I trust, and this brings our current population up to: 1 emerald crab, about 15 hermit crabs, and about 5 snails. Even with really conservative estimates, we’re still a LONG way from having enough in there to keep the reef clean. But we knew this was going to be a long project. No illusions there. Now it just puts a number to it. Oh, yeah, and just for scale? That guy sells that whole lot of stuff to you in what he calls “The Package”. Essentially all of the aforementioned rock, sand and critters in one bulk shipment. His cost for our size tank? $2614.00. Yup. Thats right. And that is without shipping. And quite frankly, for what you get? Thats CHEAP. His prices are either on par or slightly cheaper than buying from local stores. Again, even if you cut that number in half, you now get a sense for what kind of commitment you’re talking about in maintaining a large reef tank.

I hope to get some pictures up at some point here of some of the new critters and such we’ve got going on.

Oh! And in one further bit of tank news. I did get the Spa-Flex plumbing installed, and even found the *exact* right connectors to get it hooked up to the current sump and the overflow box side to get rid of the frankenstein connection I had previously built. The overflow is working great, and has a minimum of tubing now, so there isn’t this massive drain down if the power shuts off anymore. Now we just need to drill the small hole for the suction break, and we’re pretty much good to go until we get a new setup under the tank.

I did get the new collection cup for the skimmer, and put it under as well. It isn’t running currently. We turned off and removed the other two canister filters. I suspect they were actually contributing to instead of helping out with the algae problems. As previously mentioned, they aren’t really designed for a reef ecosystem. So if things are stable in the coming few weeks here, we’re probably going to switch gears a bit, and get a few more fish to pretty things up a bit.

Oh, one final note. When you brush a whole mess of algae and crap off your rocks, that will get sucked into your overflow box. The filters installed in there will start to get covered with all that crap. Guess what… that reduces the volume of water that can get sucked down! Who knew. Yeah… this guy. Of course things get less efficient in that system when you do that… duh. That balance of the water getting sucked out of the tank to that getting pumped back in gets disrupted, and makes you more prone to overflows or pumps running dry. Lesson learned… make sure you check all filters after doing major cleanings like that.

A couple things to mention since the last post.

This month’s tank budget was spent entirely on replacement light bulbs. They have arrived and are now in. Finally we are getting proper light wavelengths and spectrum. And, aside from that … it is nice to have the whole tank lit during both the light and dark (actinic) phases. A few old and/or burnt out bulbs makes for a less than ideal viewing experience, to be sure. So that is done now.

We continue to experience algae issues. At some point, maybe I’ll get pics of the various types and post them, but suffice to say it isn’t going away. The weird part is that we have, effectively, nothing in the tank “feeding” it. There are only a couple fish, which should be adding almost negligible amount of waste matter to the overall ecosystem. We have only a few pounds of live rock at this point, and it probably is not doing much at all to contribute either. Nitrate/Nitrite/Ammonia levels have been effectively zero since very early on.

At the moment, I think it is a lack of biological filtration producing this problem. That can really only be remedied by having a proper live rock environment plus active refugium with macro algae to consume those resources. I think we need a bit more overall water flow, but it isn’t bad as it is now. The addition of the overflow box and wet/dry box underneath is definitely helping as well. I cleaned out the two canister filters today. They ultimately aren’t intended for a reef system, but they should help keep some of the major particulate matter from circulating.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of research on sump/refugium/skimmer systems. A few notes on that. There are dozens of vendors for each individual piece of that. They come in a variety of flavors, but the basics are as follows.

The sump tank serves a few purposes.

• It allows you to maintain the level of water in the main tank since that level is now dictated by the overflow system. Any water level changes will now be in the sump tank, and are much easier to manage.
• You can “hide” all the major elements that would otherwise have to occupy space in your display tank down in the sump instead, allowing you to keep the display tank relatively free of clutter. This includes things like heaters, water supplement systems (ph balancing, carbon reactors, etc).
• You can a good part of the biological and mechanical filtration to the sump tank/refugium, again, keeping the display tank occupied with the kinds of critters you really want to see, instead of having a big ol’ glob of macro algae floating around in there. And it gives you a place to put your protein skimmer (more on that in a minute).

The refugium is mentioned above, but I’ll summarize anyway. Generally, a full reef ecosystem requires solid biological filtration, in the form of macro algae, live rock and live sand. Some of those elements would generally be unsightly in the display tank, so having a refugium out of the way is definitely aesthetically better.

And finally the protein skimmer. This is a weird contraption, but definitely essential. So it has a pump, that spins the water up inside a cylindrical chamber, and injects air into that as well. When it is functioning properly, that column of water and air creates a frothy layer of bubbles at the top of the cylinder. Fantastically, those air bubbles tend to hang onto some of the waste products in the water and that froth layer pushes up into a collection chamber and must be emptied periodically. The resultant goo is REALLY smelly and if you’ve ever seen or dealt with them before, you’ll know just how nasty that stuff is. It also stands to reason that anything smelly that nasty really has no business being in your tank. I’m going to plug one of our local businesses here briefly to show you a picture of one of these things. Give that a clicky. I’ll get more into Lifereef in just a minute. This is a much bigger model than most tanks need, and I pointed to that one just to make the parts really clear. That whole column is a spinning mass of water. It looks cloudy because of all the air bubbles. At the very top is the aforementioned collection cup, which as you can see looks very brown. And yeah, it looks and smells like sewage. Yuck.

Anyway, so I have a skimmer. It is a Coralife model, I believe intended for a 125 gal. tank. unfortunately, the collection cup dropped onto the porch and broke into a few pieces, and is not reparable. Fortunately, the replacement part is only about $40. I believe this will be the next thing purchased on next month’s budget. Even though it isn’t what we will use in the long term, since we really need one that is bigger and can handle a larger tank, it will also improve our current filtration situation.

In the last post I mentioned that I was also going to be working on getting the tank properly covered. There is some progress on that front. I made it over to Jeff’s house (he has a table saw) with my acrylic sheets, and measurements to cut them to the proper size. Thanks Jeff! That was cut to four pieces, two for each side of the tank. I have a plastic “hinge” that you then put between the two pieces and slide them in, and then you effectively get a lid that can swing up on one side while the rest remains covering the tank. The cover is there to prevent stuff from dropping into the tank from above, and also to help limit the amount of evaporation that will invariably occur. The downside of using acrylic is that it has a tendency to “bow” in the middle if the pieces are too big. It also won’t support the same kind of weight on it that using glass would, for sure. But that generally isn’t a huge issue as you aren’t normally putting stuff on top of the tank anyway. It is *definitely* easier to work with if you have to make cutouts for things like return spouts or power cords for water movers, etc. I may have been a little bit too tight on the tolerances in my measurements, and may need to make another cut to make everything fit perfectly, but it is looking good so far.

Oh yeah, one other thing to mention. So… with overflow systems, there is one really important thing to worry about. What happens if you lose power? With a poorly designed system, you are going to get a whole mess of water that still is flowing down into your sump tank that ISN’T subsequently being pumped back up! Sounds disastrous, eh? Well, it can be if you aren’t paying attention to how that all is supposed to work. On the “input” side of the overflow system, it fortunately is based on the water level in the display tank “overflowing” to provide the pressure/suction to move water down into the sump tank. If things are setup properly, if there is no more water being pumped back up into the display tank, that should level off in short order and won’t contribute more water after a short time. In our case, I can expect about a 1/2″ of water that will still overflow after the pump stops. Given a surface area of 8’x2′, that means roughly 5-6 gallons of water. Not a big deal. However… you also need to consider the output side. The problem on the return side is that you may (and probably do) have the spout for the return water submerged by a little bit. If you consider that for a moment, you’ll realize that if that is a “closed” system (so to speak), and if there is no more active pressure pushing water out (since the pumped turned off when the power went out), and given that that pipe goes down below the level of the display tank, gravity is actually going to then start sucking water out of the display tank, down the return pipe, and back into the sump as well. THAT level of water is unfortunately not dictated by the carefully controlled overflow system, only by you, and might be one or even several inches down below the level of the water in the display tank. It will continue to suck water out until the water level goes below that spigot, and sucks air back into the tube, breaking the suction. 1″ = 10 gallons. In my quick testing, a power outage would cause a SERIOUS overflow of the sump tank. It just isn’t designed for that much water. So that leads to my other discovery… you MUST have a small hole drilled ABOVE the level of the water (but facing down into the tank) on that return line. That provides an immediate suction break, since air can be sucked in as soon as there is no more back pressure from the pump. Essential! Amazing how physics just works and stuff. Dig it.

A good friend from one of my old jobs also recently got in touch (Hi Steve!) and is also getting into the reef thing with his son. He is going to come over soon to take a look at what I’ve got going on here, and we’ll hopefully be able to exchange some of our collective wisdom. I’m certainly no expert, and any advice is helpful. Apropos, we had a brief discussion on the phone the other day about Aiptasia. As it turns out, the live rock we thought was dead isn’t quite dead. We have a few of these damn pests poking up. A good reference page for what this stuff and how to deal with it can be found at this great Reefkeeping article. I was going to try and get a picture, but the conditions for taking pictures isn’t great at the moment. That site linked above has some good ones anyway. It probably does mean we’re going to need to get some Berghia (also mentioned on that site) soon to deal with them. That, in my somewhat limited experience, is the only really effective way to be rid of Aiptasia.

Finally, I did want to again mention Lifereef. In my investigations about getting sump/refugiums custom built, I found them. This guy (Jeff Turcheck) runs a company that has been doing this for 28 years or so, and his products are really something. Rave reviews on all the boards I’ve been reading about stuff, and his current backlog for building stuff is 5 months. He also sells complete systems, so you aren’t doing the “pieces parts” thing over and over and having to struggle with plumbing and how to get everything attached right. He provides *everything* to get you up and running. I’ve had numerous email exchanges with him already and one phone call, and I’m convinced that having him build something for us is the right long term solution. Downside? Expense. Instead of being able to buy a skimmer one month, then save two months and get a refugium, etc … I’ll basically have to save up about 6 months of aquarium budget to pay for the whole shot at once. His prices, once you remove shipping (since I can just drive down there and pick it up), is just slightly more expensive than what I would pay for going piece by piece. But I think that tiny extra expense is more than made up for by his quality of workmanship, 10 year warranty, and ability to provide a full solution with no hassle. That and being able to support a local business and I consider this a solid win. Now I just have to convince the budget committee (wife) and I’ll put my name on his list. We’ll see how that goes.

Good enough for now. Hopefully there will be more new info soon.

So a bit of progress has been made in terms of the megatank.

I’ve done a bunch more reading on reef tanks, refugiums, DIY acrylic work, overflow boxes, etc. I suppose I should preface this with the circumstances we’re in, and go from there.

We had quite a bit of existing gear from the old tank (92gal. bowfront with builtin overflow). Refugium, protein skimmer, return pump, some tubing, a whole mess of lace rock, some water movers, and two canister filters. We also had a smaller tank that was designed to be used as a refugium for this tank. The problem was that, with the stand we made for this thing, you really need to have put that tank underneath the big tank (essentially, inside the stand) BEFORE you closed everything in. As it stands now, we would need to remove too many structural supports. I was willing to remove one, since it is actually really well built, but not two. With the one removed, I was literally like 1 freaking inch shy of being able to squeeze that tank in. No dice. That brings us back to the old refugium we were previously using for the bowfront. It fits under just fine. However, it is really too small for this tank. Yes, it’ll do for now, but in the long term, we will need to get a bigger one, or perhaps more to the point, another smaller one that I can create a junction between or something.

Ok, so that led to the idea of making my own. How hard can acrylic be to work with? Turns out, it isn’t too bad. There are some great resources out there to assist with the process. Most notably, this thread over at Reef Central. When I realized this was no minor undertaking, I also tried to see if there was anyone out there making custom sump tanks/refugiums. That led to this guy, who appears to do some really quality work. Somewhere down the road, a new sump tank, or at least something to supplement the existing one, will be in order. For the moment, we have what we have.

In the process of testing the sump, pump and skimmer, I also broke the skimmer we have. Ah well. What we have would have been undersized anyway. Another thing that has to be put off a bit due to cost. I refuse to get a crappy one this time. We’ve dealt with crappy ones too many times. The pump we have will push 1200 gph. With a 5′ (approx) head, that is probably more like 900 and one 90 degree elbow reduces by another 50-100gph. All said, that is too little flow. But again, it’ll do for now.

And that brings us to the overflow box. The bowfront had the overflow built in, so that required no additional hardware. This one is not pre-drilled, and doing that yourself is always a gamble. So we opted to just go for one of the HOS (hang on side) variety. I ended up buying an Eshopps PF-1200 Overflow Box. I think for the tank size, it is just about right. It does have two downspouts, of which I am only using at the moment. I will get into the plumbing required here shortly. The key with this type of overflow is maintaining the suction (in my head, all I can hear is Craig Ferguson harping on “the proper amount of suction”). Getting that to work correctly is pretty easy, actually. It really only took a short amount of time to get a decent balance going with the water level in the tank and overflow and the water level in the sump tank. Well, and this was take 2 on that effort. This first pointed out a few leaks that had to be resolved. $40 and some plumbing solvent/cement later, and all was well. No leaks that I can see.

Ok, some pics… taking a short break from this post to get my gallery uploader all working and automated again.

Off to the right is a picture of the overflow box hanging off the back of the aquarium:

Overflow

You can see a few things here. First, I am not using the second downspout yet. Until I get a sump/refugium setup that can accept two inputs, there isn’t any point. Second, you can see how stupid the types of connectors you get with these things. Or, perhaps, my stupidity in plumbing. To get a flexible hose to the refugium of the right size, I’m using “sump pump hose” from home depot. The connectors on the overflow box are also not any standard that I can identify, so makeshift plumbing hack it is. Closer inspection of the “U” tubes that provide the suction will show that there are very nearly no air bubbles at all at the top, which is perfect. Nice even flow the whole time with no danger of it just stopping function. The picture links back to my gallery where the full size image can be found. Ok, lemme see if I can get multiple image to play nice in the layout here…

Plumbing

Ok, good enough. So there you see the tube I used to connect the overflow box to the refugium. Why so long, you say? Remember the aforementioned “sump pump hose”. Well, it comes in a 24 foot length, and the only place where you can put clamps on it is at 10′ intervals. So there’s obviously a bit extra there. I don’t consider this a long term solution, but it’ll work for now. It doesn’t leak, clamps on well, and thats about it. Definitely the “budget” option, here.

And so it is up and running. I haven’t tried measuring the outflow rate, but it is definitely cycling, and the water level is right at the top of the glass (when viewed from the front of the tank. The part of the overflow box that hangs inside the tank is black, and the background paper on the tank is black, so it is barely visible unless you’re really looking for it. There is already a difference in the surface particulate matter that was accumulating, so it is doing its job well. We’ll see how much water evaporation we get.

There is a LOT more work to be done here before the system can be considered to be fully operational and capable of supporting the kind of life we want it to. Next steps, as budget permits:

• Replace broken bulbs (just a couple actinics, I think)
• Get glass or plexi tank cover sized and slotted correctly
• Settle on tank layout plan, including water flow
• Supplement water flow with movers as needed
• Decide what to do with the extra canister filters (if anything)
• Replace skimmer

There will definitely be more of these posts as we make more progress. The only real limiting factor in continuing these efforts is just money. So as budget frees up, we’ll knock out some of those above items.

The final leg of the journey went fine, and sleep-less-ness aside, all is well. I sat out on he porch (pictures forthcoming) by myself for about 30-45 minutes once we got settled in. It was about 11am local time, and maybe 70 degrees out. There was a slight wind constantly going (as is normal here), and the bliss feeling was nearly instantaneous. My earlier complaining about the process of travel, while not invalid, was quickly outweighed by the benefits of being here in particular. I do really like it. The view is awesome off the porch. There is nothing going on here except us relaxing. No pressure to do anything or see anyone. This is, by far, the way I prefer to travel. I think we have two actual agenda items to hit while we’re here, and no particular day those things need to happen.

One is to get the kids to the beach here. There will likely be some minor stress associated with that, but no more than normal kid-wrangling for any outing, anywhere. And the second is to go fishing. No idea what is in season right now, and honestly, it is more for Madeline than me. But I’d like her to see the whole process anyway. I have no idea what she’ll think of it. She might not like it at all. Sometimes she is utterly fascinated by things that squick other kids (Zombies), and other times, the smallest things frighten her (vacuums). Its hard to predict. Right now, it seems like she is hesitating, so we’ll try to come up with a way to sell it. She’s also never been on a boat before, so that might be a challenge in and of itself.

Nearly finishing with Game of Thrones (first book). Not sure how I feel about it. It probably would have been better to read it BEFORE watching the show, to be completely fair. I am struck by how well the show has stuck to the book. Normally, there is so much license taken with making something “screen-worthy” that you either lose a lot of content, or you end up adding in things that were just flat out never the author’s intent. But so far, omissions have been small. I did bring the second book with me as well. I may take a break from that series to read one of the others I’ve brought though. We’ll see, I suppose.

And this brings up the one rationale I can possibly come up with to own a tablet reader device. Travel. I probably will read half of what I brought with me, and books just add significant weight to everything. I’d certainly much rather tote around a 20 oz. tablet with all my books on it than all the books themselves. And certainly, technical references are the same example. I can lug around a bookshelf worth of O’Reilly stuff, or a tablet with all the PDFs. Duh. Easy sell. Now that I’m focusing on management instead of pure technical stuff though, maybe that day has passed for me. In most work scenarios, I’m also going to have internet access from either a laptop or main machine, so the reasons break down there to some extent as well.

It just occurred to me that these long stream-of-consciousness posts are decidedly anti-blogorific. Blogs that are well read (at least, by me) tend to be focused on single topics and explore them thoroughly, as opposed to traipsing all over the current day’s thoughts. Maybe I’m forging a new path. Or maybe I’m just limiting who is likely to read this. Ah well. IyamwhatIyam.

More later.

So I’m sitting in the observation deck of the Halifax airport. It is 4am local time. Madeline and Nicholas are sleeping somewhat fitfully, but asleep nonetheless. Ella is trying, but mostly failing at same. But we knew this was the likely outcome. But really, did getting a hotel here really make sense? Arrive on flight at roughly 1:45am (local time), pay some exhorbitant fee to get to the hotel by 2:30 or so. Take 30-45 minutes to get the kids sleeping. And then reverse the whole process at 6am to be back here in time for the next flight out. No, it really doesn’t. So here we are.

The flights have been decent. Air Canada has always been on my “they don’t suck much” list as far as airlines go. Air travel (and actually, most travel, for that matter) sucks. I mean, the mechanics of getting from Point A to Point B. Once you’re there, rested, and doing stuff, its all good. But the act of picking up and moving one’s self across uncountable miles is just draining. I used to be ok with parts of it, and I could rationalize the rest as a reasonable compromise. Now, add in two kids into that mix, one an infant, and it just gets unreasonably ugly. Madeline was great today, no whining or fussing. Fascination with the flights, taking off, landing and generally being agreeable. More than anything, I think she is also just anxious to reach the destination and see Oma. She has LISTS of things to do. LISTS I tell you. Nicholas was *mostly* good. He is in a weird slightly disagreeable phase right now, and it manifests in ways that have the potential to make for a LongTravelDay. A few small incidents aside, he’s been ok.

Again, once the destination is reached tomorrow morning, there will be naps. OH YES. Perhaps by dinnertime and a shower later, and we might be close to reasonably human again. I expect there will be many posts this week. Vacation has a habit of bringing that out in me, I suppose. Or it could be that whole “free time” thing. Amazing, wot? As I am in the habit of doing when I look at my blog, I re-read the last post, and realized that a whole mess of stuff has transpired since that last post. So there is a lot to talk about, and I expect some brain dumping to occur.

For the moment, though, I will constrain myself to opine on the nature of this airport and this fine observation deck am I currently stationed in. I’m sitting on the windowsill, staring down three floors to the concourse. At this early hour, it is devoid of any activity. No refueling activity, luggage cars sitting in semi-organized groups in seemingly random areas strewn about. Planes all parked and dark. Thankfully, the Tim Horton’s downstairs doesn’t sleep, and that yielded up some caffeine goodness to keep your humble blogster (is that a word?) properly fueled himself.

As I stare into this currently lifeless hub, I can’t help but think of things much bigger. In a few hours (maybe not even), the drones will begin their droning. Luggage will move from place to place, fuel will make its way into the veins of these wing’ed beasts. Passengers will begin their frantic loading and unloading. And this little corner of the global lifeblood will again be participating in the global dance. It strikes me as all maddeningly complex. Just this one small microcosm of activity, repeated in thousands of similar venues all over the world, that drives (or, ok… at least keeps greased the gears of) this immense engine of civilization. It seems to me that all the pundits of every scree and order who proclaim to understand some small inkling of a piece of all of it are just whistling into the wind. The reality of their verbal pissing is just so much refuse. just that… piss. Not worth much more than to fertilize the mind of the next pedant to navigate those same waters.

Took a short break there to hold my sleeping son. There are fewer moments like that as time goes on, and you have to enjoy them when you get them.

Fast forward until shortly after 5am, and now activity has picked up a bit. When we got here, there were probably a half dozen people sleeping in here. They’ve all left at this point, presumably for earlier flights than ours. And now this mom/dad/son combo has intruded on our otherwise isolated space with a MONSTROUS NOISE. Yelling and looking out at planes and what was surely going to be a beating narrowly averted. Yes. 5am. They have definitely seen that we have two kids sleeping here, and we are otherwise quiet and trying hard to keep it that way. Is that a Canadian trait that I was heretofore unaware of? Apparently. Actually, they sounds like Minnesotans, if my ability to place accents is at all up to snuff. Anyway, my Muse is interrupted, and not likely to return.

Cheers for now.

We’re really getting close now. Plumbing is 90% done. Basement electrical trim is done (there are a few items upstairs still to do). They’re going to be starting carpet tomorrow after a thorough cleanup. Fish tank goes downstairs tomorrow as well, and possibly the trim around the tank if they get time. We’ll have a trimout inspection probably early next and final walkthrough next week. Amazing journey, this.

The daily pictures are posted here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/118195920712839083844/albums

You do need to be in my circles on G+ if you want to see that stuff, though, so circle me if you can’t see them and let me know, and I’ll circle you back promptly.

I’ve also done almost all of the wiring closet wiring at this point as well, and I’m very happy with the result. All CAT6 runs done, all RG6 runs done, all speaker runs done. The only remaining work is a couple more cables that come from the tv (2 HDMI, 1 VGA, a couple more RG6, etc). I still have to mount things like the infrared distribution thinger, the RG6 cable splitter, the UPS. I need to cut and put up the other time wireframe shelves too. They will hold the receiver, cable box/dvr, my two servers, the slingbox, the NAS and um… oh, the DVD player. I think that is it. All the wallplate work still remains. That should be pretty easy though, just a matter of getting around the room with some free time and doing it.

I was really pleased to see that the CAT6 keystone are punchdown and not crimp. My hands are just not as capable of hours of crimping cable like they used to. Punchdown is easy. The RG6 compression crimp is NOTHING compared to CAT5/6 cable ends. I’m actually contemplating hitting up one of the local network cable supply stores for a whole mess of 1′, 3′ and 6′ patch cables. Need to price that out and see if its reasonable and worth it. I’m sure they hire some kind of slave labor or college kids or something to crimp cables, so I’m really just pumping money into the economy, right? Right?

What else… not much I guess. It is a lot quieter now that all the saws and cutting and stuff is done. Its so close now that we’re getting into the sort of anxious excitement mode now to have our space back. Very ready for that, to be sure.

I have no idea what we’re going to do furniture-wise yet. There are a few items that were not damaged in the flood that we kept, and they will probably go down pretty quickly to start making the space usable again, but there are definitely a bunch of things we’re going to need to buy again, and not all of it (in fact, not most of it) will be covered by insurance. So it may take a little bit to get everything restocked, so to speak. In rough order of purchasing, I suspect it will go something like: couch, desk(s), shelving, exercise bike, guestroom bed, and then miscellaneous stuff like end tables and whatever else we need to fill out the space nicely.

As far as where everything is going to go… I really have no idea. The only “fixed” things are the couch, tv spot and the fish tank. The fish tank is going to be a huge project. We are definitely going to have to start it out fresh water, though I think the long term goal (once money permits) is to get back into a reef setup. The startup costs on that are going to be huge. Rough estimates say to have one pound of live rock for every gallon of water. So 250 lbs at roughly $4-$6/lb. Yeah. Now you’re with me. And that doesn’t include any of the ancillary gear you need like protein skimmers, more pumps, filtration, blah blah blah. Oh yeah, and something living. Both reef fish and corals are all on the high side of cost (at least when compared to fresh water fish). I think for the fresh water setup I will probably need some more substrate to add to what I had just purchased for the 75gal. tank. I should be able to get away with inert stuff since what I got before is good quality. A few plants, probably 1 or 2 pumps for circulation and probably some additional heating. The glass covers need to be replaced, and I want to get better quality lighting as well. I need to take a good look at the filter that came with it as well, and whether or not I can use it in conjunction with my existing eheim. If not, I’ll probably pick up another eheim. So it will be more in the order of a few hundred dollars, not a few thousand. Might not happen on day 1, but it won’t be too long in waiting either. Since it is such a central part of the new look of the basement, I’d really like to have it up and running as soon as possible.

I need to get some sleep… more to come very soon, with hopefully some final thoughts on this whole basement epic once they have wrapped up here in a week or so.

As you might expect, work has been proceeding apace on the basement. I have been documenting that every day they do more work with pictures posted up to Google+. If you are not currently using Google+ or aren’t in my circles there, you won’t see them. If you are, here is a quick link to the albums page:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/118195920712839083844/albums

I created a new album (Day1, Day2, etc) for each day’s worth of pictures. Obviously, the days didn’t all happen in a row. Some days nothing except delivery of new materials, or an inspection of current work to meet code, or what have you.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the quality of work and the speed things are getting done. Communication from the contractor has been good, and responses to questions and concerns are generally handled the same day or at worst, the next day. All the subcontractors have been very professional, courteous to us if we’re home, and even ok with the dogs being upstairs and occasionally barking. Again, I’m hesitating to give any final recommendations until we see the final product, but my current sense is that I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending these guys to anyone, or calling on them again in the future to help us with additional work.

I will express one thing in particular, since it was so notable in all this progress. As I mentioned in a previous post, the owners of this property before us really did a number on the house when they “finished” the basement. As noted before, the electrical system in particular was really just not handled in a safe way. All of the downstairs circuits were simply tied back up into existing junction boxes upstairs. The net effect of this was two-fold. First, we would very commonly overload a circuit with it having load both downstairs and upstairs. Fuses popped all the time. Further, when they did the tie-ins to the junction boxes upstairs, they just didn’t do it right. Very often, we’d be left with an upstairs wall plate that was loose or just flat out not working. So the end result is that when we “fixed” the basement, we also wanted them to go to all the upstairs boxes that had been tied into, and fix them as well. In the end, we asked them to just do a full “audit” of all the electrical in the house. They expanded the panel in the garage. If we ever want to put more capacity in the house we can. This was done so that we could “properly” run a sub-panel downstairs. Every wall socket and switch on the house is now replaced with new plates. All junction boxes have been checked for safety.

Here’s the scary part… and it only confirms the fears I had about how it was improperly done the first time around… when they went through and checked them, three of the junction boxes had to be pulled out and replaced because they were charred on the inside. Right. Burn marks from sparks or who knows what. We really are fortunate the whole place didn’t just burn right down to the ground along the way.

So when I got home that day after all this work was done, I walked around the whole house, checking outlets, flipping switches, etc. I really didn’t understand fully just how much all that had been weighing on me over time. To have everything finally be safe? Worth every single penny. I’m fact, I’m not sure I can even place a value on that. I truly felt (and still do) like a burden had been lifted, and relieved.

What’s next? Well, as the pictures show, they are up to the point now where mud/tape on the drywall is done and drying. They will come in I believe on Saturday to texture. Trim package and tile arrives on Monday. I’m not sure if they will start in with the trim and tile work on Monday or wait until Tuesday. I think they are also going to try and get the fish tank moved downstairs then as well, since some of the trim work depends on it being in place already. I also think we slightly over-estimated on the weight of the tank. Troy had originally told me it was about 700 lbs. empty. Based on some online calculators for it (not like I can just weight it)… it is probably more like 500, or slightly less even. In any case, they will get a few of their guys to come in one of those days and lug that thing downstairs. I’m grateful I don’t have to do that myself for certain.

What remains? Trim and tile. Cabinets, doors, shelving installation. Full cleanup, sweep and vacuum to prepare for painting. Paint. Door and bathroom hardware install. Final HVAC, electrical and plumbing. Carpet install. Final inspections. Final walk through and punch list. Done. I do believe we’re still on target for a completion date in the first week of March. It has definitely been exciting to come home from work every day, walk downstairs and see the incremental progress. Quite an adventure, to be sure. I’m anxious for this all to be done. We have this vision of the completed product. We will have a lot of work after that in turning it back into a living space. There may be a bit of lag in replacing some of the furniture, of course. We got rid of a few things that insurance isn’t covering (for example, the hated futon), which we will need to replace once money permits.

Though we do have notions of where things like desks and office stuff is going to go, I suspect that once we actually get stuff downstairs and have the ability to move things around in the space, we’re going to end up with a different configuration. Its very difficult, even with the walls up now, to imagine how things will work out once the space is occupied again with furnishings, bookshelves, paintings and such. But that part, I think, will be fun. I do expect that there will also be some additional stuff we decided to throw out at that point. When we were lugging everything out of the basement to get it out of the way, we didn’t really pay that much attention to whether or not we really wanted to save all of that still. Stuff that has been sitting in boxes for 15 years under the stairs? Maybe its time to look at it more closely and see if it really should remain. Having to carry it all back downstairs again shouldn’t happen until that evaluation has taken place. As I said, though, I think we’re both looking forward to that part.

And of course, the kids will have a lot more space to play again. I think that has been the hardest adjustment to this period of time … where everything is essentially cramped into “half a house”. We’re climbing over each other constantly. There is NO space that isn’t also occupied with the kid’s toys and books, etc. You can clean that up every day, and in 2 hours they will return it to the state they prefer the next day. Its almost not worth even trying to clean up after them. I’m looking forward to having proverbial elbow room again.

Finally, somewhere along the process of the aforementioned work, I will also be getting the remainder of the wiring closet work completed. Both the wall plates and the termination point in the wiring closet need to be punched down and finished off. Though I can already feel the cramping in my hands just thinking about doing that, I do like getting all that done and everything linked in properly. I’m quite certain I will be photo-documenting that effort once I get to it as well, to satisfy the geekiness of all that.

More to come as this progresses…

Finally, some quick picks of Maddie taking a bit of a joyride in the basement on her Christmas tricycle. She can’t really ride it upstairs on the rugs, so downstairs on the nice smooth floor seems like a perfect opportunity. It looks dark and wet because it was just mopped.

Pics from here on should be once the work has begun…

Basement Joyride

Link to the final cleanup photos…

Final Cleanup Photos

Link to the Demolition photos…

Basement Demolition

So its been several weeks since my first part of this series. Suffice it to say that alot has happened. In the interest of brevity, I will summarize here. My intent over the next, say… 8 weeks or so is to document the remainder of this adventure with pictures.

Cleanup of the basement was somewhat involved. Once the initial water was gone, it was clear that what remained was essentially trashed. Most of the furniture (desks, couch, chair, a good portion of shelving, etc was all water damaged and barely, if at all usable. We had a few scary days where we had a mold bloom down there and really thought we were going to have to move out. A bit of creative fan work and that was resolved.

At this point, we had some hard thinking to do. We have, essentially since we first moved in here, wanted to redo the basement. A previous owner, and we’re not even sure which (though we certainly have suspicions) “finished” the basement. You’ll note the quotation marks please, as they are quite intentional. How you should really read that sentence is “A previous owner seriously fucked up the basement”. How, you ask? No new electrical circuits, they simply tied lines to upstairs junction boxes. Several lines were never even properly connected, leaving bare, live wires in the ceiling. Several wires were reversed in the “coloring” of the wires. So that green wire you thought carried ground? Nope, not so much. Good way to kill someone, quite honestly. And speaking of grounding… NO outlets, even those near water sources, were GFI. Oh, yeah… speaking of water sources? Hmm… this warrants a bit further explanation…

Since we’ve moved in, we’ve had several “events” where we’ve had basement flooding at a much less serious level than this one. Normally only during serious rainstorms, and usually only when the gutters were not working properly in their jobs of carrying water away from the house. When this would happen, the source of water would always appear to be coming from somewhere behind the shower. So as we’re going through this process of evaluating the costs of redoing the basement, we’re somewhat fearful. What are we going to find behind that shower? Some serious chasm in the foundation that is letting water seep in? Even to the extent of having someone come out and price out fitting the basement with a perimeter “gutter” system that would all run back to a sump (about $11000, btw). Scary stuff. So… we’re tearing out the basement down to the concrete (I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit), and eventually get to the shower. What did we find behind it?

Wait for it…

A window. Right. Quality work there, I tell you. They had closed the window, put in two layers of styrofoam, duct taped it to the frame, and stuck the shower in front of it. In all honesty, it was a relief. Once we got over the shock of just how inept they were, we were mostly grateful that we were not going to have to go through some serious cash to water proof our investment.

Ok, so back on the timeline again… we had several contracting companies come over to walk through with us. Initially, we were thinking we would ask them to give us some design ideas (most of them will do that step for free to get your business). Then we would evaluate the designs, and attempt to do as much of this ourselves as we could. The only parts that (well, time and money permitting, obviously) I will absolutely NOT do myself are electrical work and plumbing. There are good reasons those tasks require permits and inspections and “certification” that you’re not making the dwelling unsafe to live in (like say, the previous owners had). Second, electricity is scary. I probably have explained this in previous posts, but I’m too lazy to go search for them and link them right now.

For those of you who aren’t savvy to such things, I’ll give you some quick pointers. At least in this area, a “basement finishing” will run you about $35/sq.ft. This is an *average* price, with average allowances for all the things you can decide on, like paint, rugs, hardware (door knobs, faucets, lighting, etc). If you choose really premium options for those things, it gets more expensive. Anything beyond the “normal” work you’d expect someone to do.

Ok, so at this point you’re probably thinking… “so whats the big deal, you get the insurance money, spend it on the new basement, done deal, right?”. No. See…. the insurance company isn’t paying for the refinish. Their paying for exactly the things they assessed to be damaged beyond repair, and that DID NOT include the drywall or structural elements down there. The only significant structural piece they’re covering is the floor covering. So that is why this was such a hard path to go down. This is not cheap, and while we did have some savings… it didn’t really add up to that. Suffice to say we wrangled together what we needed to.

Contractor selection was interesting. We had everything from very professional treatment to a pair of stoned guys with a tape measure. With several more in between that I could get into, but won’t. In the end, after lots of back and forth discussion over design details and examining quotes and checking of references, we ended up going with . I’m going to reserve any statement about quality of work since they haven’t begun yet, but the experience so far has been very positive. They are responsive, attentive to our input and questions, willing to work with us on a variety of “nitpicky” elements, and their references were stellar. They also completely itemized the quote, giving us complete transparency into which elements we have the ability to cut back on or splurge on. They even listed their own profit in the quote. I really can’t ask for more than that.

As I inferred earlier, the first step was to completely gut the basement. A few quick notes about that.

• Do not underestimate the power of drywall dust to completely trash your lungs. Wear well fitted filtration masks and eye protection. Seriously, I mean it.
• It is *shocking* how fast you can destroy a structure. Admittedly, this one wasn’t well put together, but even if it had been. Holy crap. 4 people, 3 hours, and it was piles of trash on the floor.
• Invite friends over for this. It is WAY fun to tear shit apart. I’d even go so far as to say therapeutic. (BIG LOVE to Jeff, Geoff and Eris for their help!!)
• Be sure to keep a good grip on the sledgehammer. This may seem obvious. It should be. Just sayin’
• Be *very* sure where your electrical wires are, and either turn power off if you can, or be extra careful when tearing down around the live elements.
• Rent a rolloff dumpster. We went through TWO 20 cubic yard dumpsters all told. Granted some of that was flood damaged furniture as well, but still. Its a CRAPTON of trash. Be prepared for getting rid of it all.

I think this is a reasonable place to end this. The posts over the next weeks here will likely all be accompanied by pictures of the progress, or at least links to a gallery or something where I will keep all this sorted… in fact, I’m going to go make that now.

Watch this space for updates!!