(August) What are you working on now, DIY? ( beehaw.org )

MystikIncarnate , 10 months ago

Oooh, this is a post for me. I have a handful of projects going.

I have a network room that needs a fan installed where the window used to be, I have the fan, just need to cut open the board covering what used to be the window, install the fan, and wire it up to exhaust hot air out of the room directly outside. Non time critical, I have the door to that room open for now, it used to be a root cellar in the basement.

I also need to fix the insane electrical work for the basement lighting that the former owner of this house put in. He put in one of those light socket to plug things, then wired together all the new lights in the basement with Romex (all fluorescent) and finished it to a plug that connects to that light socket. I want to pull apart this hot garbage and wire it correctly, and replace the light switches box in the process (some of the threading in the electrical box is stripped, so the switch doesn’t mount correctly), and move it to a different circuit, because it’s currently sharing a circuit with the recreation room, and a couple of bedrooms for seemingly no good reason.

I also have to replace all the magnetic ballasts in the basement light fixtures with electronic ballasts because we have fluorescent replacement LED bulbs, which only work on electronic ballasts. Yay. I have to check the garage and at least one other room with fluorescent fixtures to see if they’re on magnetic ballasts and replace them too so we can finally have all LED lighting in the house.

Going with lighting here: I have to find my multimeter to test and hopefully fix a lamp my brother purchased that doesn’t work that will go in the living room, and replace all the lightbulbs in the living room with smart bulbs, then have them controlled by an in-wall smart light switch (which is already in place), via home assistant. I also need to do smart bulbs in the recreation room, I also have new light fixtures for the rec room to replace some that had loose bulbs (the bulb base was loose in the fixture), and replace the light switches in there with in wall smart switches.

A whole room is lacking power, it was split between different circuits, one was the basement lights/rec room, the other was to the bathroom, I managed to rewire the room to a single point, and I’m trying to pull a new circuit to the room with 12/2 Romex. Holes are drilled, just need to feed the cable along side another run of Romex, and likely pull one more circuit to separate the bathrooms (which are on different floors above/below eachother), from the fridge in the kitchen. Two new circuits, woo. Need breakers for them.

My brother also bought a gazebo from the hardware store that needs to be built and set up in the back yard, and my father in law bought us some pathway lights that I have yet to unpack.

The back yard garden is overgrown with weeds, and I need to deal with that. We didn’t do any gardening this year so nature took over… I don’t really have many if any tools to deal with it, so I need to do some garden supply shopping.

I’m also prepping to install ethernet throughout the house, I have two boxes of category 6 cable, 1000 ft each (2000 ft total), including wiring going up into the attic for access points.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot, but that’s the projects that are foremost on my mind… Some are pretty easy (like the rec room fixtures, I have them, I just need to hang them, or the new wire pull from the power-less room, I have the cable partly run, just need to pull it the rest of the way).

Longer term, I want to build raised boxes in the garden, plus renovate to add a kitchen and another bathroom (with a shower)… Build a new shed, and replace the old antenna tower with something less rusted and perhaps taller, plus run coax from the antenna tower to my office for my ham radio hobby.

Maybe eventually put solar panels on the roof and perhaps a battery system so we can produce and store our own power…

Seathru , 10 months ago

I also have to replace all the magnetic ballasts in the basement light fixtures with electronic ballasts because we have fluorescent replacement LED bulbs, which only work on electronic ballasts.

Chiming in because I just finished swapping over 15+ fixtures. You can get LED replacement bulbs that do away with the ballasts entirely. At first I went with the LED retrofit lights that used the existing ballasts but I still had issues with the ballasts failing (because they were all 20-30 years old). Found the “ballast bypass” replacements and swapped everything over.

The back yard garden is overgrown with weeds, and I need to deal with that. We didn’t do any gardening this year so nature took over… I don’t really have many if any tools to deal with it, so I need to do some garden supply shopping.

I’m embarrassed how much time and money I put into my garden this spring just to let the weeds take over. It’s so hot out there.

MystikIncarnate , 10 months ago

Thanks! I think in the short term we’re going to try to make the electronic ballast lamps we already purchased work… If we hit any issues, I’ll look around for the bypass.

We only have 10? Bulbs, I think, and we have at least 8 fixtures, each taking two bulbs. So we’ll have to buy more anyways, I’ll probably get what you suggest for the remainder, and test them along side the direct ballast driven ones… Either way, thanks

Seathru , 10 months ago

They both work fine. I mainly meant if you were having to buy electronic ballasts to make the bulbs you have work, it may be cheaper to buy the bypass bulbs and do away with the ballasts. Same amount of work.

PlantJam , 10 months ago

I strongly recommend Bully Tools for shovels and other garden tools. I bought the most heavy duty shovel home depot had on the shelf and broke it two hours into my project. The bully tools shovel handled the same work no problem. I have two shovels, a rake, and a hoe from them.