Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Tyla has been very good about letting me fill up the garage with tools. I didn’t need much in the condo and now I’m finally getting to the point where I can start and finish a job with the tools I already have. Some have been duds and some have been great choices. Here are my top recommendations:

• DeWalt DCK280C2 Li-Ion Compact Drill and Impact Driver Combo Kit – This set uses the new DeWalt battery technology so if you have older stuff you might want to consider something else. This was my first DeWalt cordless product so I went with the new stuff. These drills are incredible! The compact drill is light enough to use around the house but powerful enough for big jobs, and if you’ve never used an impact driver, you owe it to yourself to try one out. It’s like magic! The batteries on these things last forever. I couldn’t be happier.
• Sony ICFCDK50 Under Cabinet Kitchen CD Clock Radio – This might be a confusing entry, but I was looking for a good radio out in the garage. This one is perfect because I can mount it on the bottom of a shelf and not take up any space! It has an aux-in jack for an MP3 player and is plenty loud enough for when I’m working in the garage or out in the driveway.
• Toro 2-Cycle 25.4 cc Curved Shaft Gas Trimmer – I don’t have a very big yard, but I really didn’t want to go with an electric trimmer. This one wouldn’t be a good choice for someone doing really heavy work, but it’s good for this place. I was a bit skeptical of the attachments, but those have turned out to be a real bonus. The shaft disconnects and you can put on other heads. I have the edger and a simple blower (good for cleaning up grass but I have a more powerful one for lots of leaves.) You can get refurbished attachments for $30-40 which is way cheaper than buying individual items and maintaining even more gas engines!
• Craftsman Ratchet Set – I don’t know exactly which set I have, but Mom and Dad got one for me as a birthday gift a few years back. It’s incredibly handy, comes with a nice case, and has never left me wanting for any type of socket!
• Big Jake Premium Leather Gloves – I have huge hands. None of the gloves at Home Depot fit me. Logan showed me these and even gave me a couple pair of them. These things will last forever! I keep one pair in the car and the other on my workbench.

What’s your favorite tool? I’m always looking for something new!

The area on the northeast part of our lot towards the cul-de-sac has always been mushy and swampy. One day I was out there when the sump pump turned on and I saw it shooting out a LOT of water right down the hill into that area. After chatting with Tim, we decided to see if we could improve the situation.

We met at Home Depot one Saturday morning at 6am (he had to drop Chelsea off for a half-marathon) and were done with the project by 9:30! We trenched 30 feet out to the street, connected the top end to the sump pump and a downspout, and installed a popup drain right by the curb. When the pipe fills with water, the drain pops up and water flows out to the curb.

It was super helpful having Tim there. He taught me a couple great little tricks:

• If you don’t want to reseed the area, cut rectangles of grass on three sides and then fold it back.
• Lay down some plastic and throw the dirt on that. It makes for super easy cleanup.

I might need to dig up the popup drain at the end and redo that some day. It has a small hole at the bottom that let’s excess water drain out. But since we just set it right on the dirt, the wet dirt filters up through that hole and plugs it up so now I have a layer of dirt at the bottom of the pipe. I imagine that over time it will start to plug up the pipe. At that point I’ll dig up the end of the pipe, dig a small hole right underneath that point and fill it with some gravel. There’s no rush though. That can wait.

We’ve had pretty consistent rain since this project so the swamp has never had a chance to fully dry out. At that point we’ll know how much this drain helps. I suspect it will still be wet down there since this area used to be a pond and we’re at the bottom of a hill, but hopefully it helps. When we redo the whole yard in a year or two, I’m tempted to tie all my downspouts into drains like this and also run a big French drain along the west side of my lot to stop water from flowing down the hill.

When we bought this house, the inspector found a few outlets that didn’t work and quite a few that didn’t hold a plug very tightly. Since I had to replace quite a few, I decided to just replace them all. We chose to go with the Decora style outlets and switches. Those are the rectangular ones. I went for the tamper resistant outlets meaning that it’s difficult to shock yourself by sticking something in. Replacing the existing outlets and switches is a pretty simple process (once I picked up a device that helps me figure out which circuit I should shut off), but it’s time consuming.

Most of this is pretty boring, but it’s fun to look through the Leviton product catalog and see all of the interesting stuff that they offer. Here are some off the non-standard things that I’ve installed:

• Digital timer switch that calculates sunrise and sunset. Read more in a previous post.
• Bathroom fan timers. These come in 5-10-20-30 minute and 10-20-30-60 minute versions. I used the shorter ones for the bathrooms that just have toilets and the longer ones for the bathrooms with showers.
• Remote control dimmer switch. I have one of these in the theater room and one in the bedroom.
• Nightlight outlet. This light isn’t very bright but it’s just enough to light up a dark area at night. It has a light sensor so it turns off during the day.
• USB outlets. I put two of these in the bedroom for charging our phones and Kindles. There are a few different models around but these are UL approved.
• Surge protector outlet. I haven’t installed one of these yet but I’m tempted to. It saves you from having a bulky surge protector lying on the floor for one or two devices. I’m holding off because I’m thinking about installing a whole house surge protector instead.

The other day I was standing in a bar with my boss and we were going back and forth rattling off different fun things we had seen in the Leviton catalog. That’s when I knew that unequivocally, I was an adult. A geek, but an adult.

At our last homeowner’s association, a Woodinville police offer was a guest speaker. She talked about the types of calls that came from our area (there aren’t many), and the size of the Woodinville police force (only 1 or 2 officers on patrol at any given time.) At the end of the talk, she offered to come by our houses and talk about security. Most people seemed to ignore this line, but I got her card and a few days later, we set up a meeting.

When she got to the door, she said, “I’ve been in this house before.” “I hope it was for something good!” “Oh yes, the original owners were the neighborhood watch captains.” Phew!

She walked around inside and outside and gave me some tips. Overall she said we were doing really well. Obviously I’m not going into detail about what she suggested we improve, but here are some general things she talked about that she sees:

• Don’t put big bushes in front of your windows. This gives burglers a place to hide while they peek in. Keep them trimmed down below the bottom of the windows and the bottom of the bush should be 1-2 feet off the ground.
• Make sure all your windows are locked or have dowels in the track to avoid them being forced open.
• Where can someone hide outside your front door? You want to be safe if you step outside at night.
• Which entries are the least visible from the street and your neighbor’s houses? Those are the most enticing.
• What electronics can you see if you look in from the windows?
• What kinds of friends do your kids have? Kids talk and if you have cool stuff in your house and an easy way to break in, word is going to get around.

I’ve made it a point to get to know as many of my neighbors as possible so hopefully they’ll notice if anything odd is going on. While there’s not any special history of burglaries in this area, there’s no reason not to take some simple precautions. A lot of this is common sense, but the trick is to make your house harder to break into than your neighbors’.

At some point we are planning to put in a proper irrigation system, but I think the backyard remodel is a couple years out. Since I’ve been spending so much time learning about caring for a yard, I don’t want to let it die off during the summer months when we don’t get any rain. But I also don’t want to have to move sprinklers around the yard by hand and have hoses laying in the grass. By pulling up an aerial view of my property from King County, I realized that with three sprinklers, I could cover most of the front and side yard.

I picked up three Melnor spike sprinklers, a 100 foot 8 ply 3/4” hose, and some female and male hose repair ends. (On a side note, I’ve been so impressed with that brand of hose that I have picked up two more of them.) I took the brand new 100 foot hose and cut it into three sections to run from the spigot too the sprinkler and then on to each other sprinkler. The hose repair kit gave me new ends for the hose and that all works very well without leaks. Tim had given me a hose timer so once I get into regular watering mode, that will come in handy.

This setup fulfills my requirements of not having to move sprinklers around and I can leave it set up semi-permanently. The downside is that since each sprinkler is covering a different span, the yard isn’t watered evenly. Also, when we had a plumber add a pressure regulator valve to help with the water hammer in the house, he turned down our water pressure to 40psi. Now that I’ve installed arrestors on every termination point in the house, I was able to crank that up to 50psi. 40 wasn’t enough to power all three sprinklers but 50 is just enough.

I also added some Y valves to the middle sprinkler which allows me to selectively shut off sprinklers down the line. This will come in handy when I need to water that big first section a little longer, and it was also helpful for tweaking the water flow to each sprinkler.

It takes me about 75 minutes to put down 1/2” of water in the big section on the east of the house. (An easy way to measure it is to set a used tuna can out in the yard while you run the sprinklers.) Once we get into summer I’ll set it so that it puts down 1/2” twice a week. For now we’re getting a few tenths a week spread out over many days. I’ll supplement the rain with a deep watering every once in a while.

Hopefully this work will leave us with the nicest yard on the block!