Building a lofted storage shelf from a single sheet of plywood

Posted on September 17, 2016 by Jay

My rental garage has 10+ foot ceilings, and I have a lot of stuff to store. To utilize the vertical space, I built a lofted storage shelf from fourteen 2×4 studs and a single 4×8 sheet of 3/4″ plywood to go over my electronics project table. This is what it looks like before I added the electronics table, pegboard and shelves.

Because I’m renting, I needed the unit to be free-standing, and not attached to the walls. I had the plywood ripped at 30″ at home depot for a 96″ wide and 30″ deep shelf, leaving me an 18″x96″ section that was used for both the back and side bracing panels.

Continue reading →

Time to upgrade to LED Lights

Posted on September 15, 2016 by Jay

LED lights are much more efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs, slightly more efficient than compact florescent (with much less mercury!), and have recently really dropped in price.

I just purchased a six pack of 11 watt LED bulbs designed to replace 65 watt flood lights for $27. When lit, together they use 66 watts. (And light up the kitchen better!)

Compared to the 390 watts used by the incandescent bulbs they replaced, this is a savings of 324 watts. If they are lit for three hours a day the savings is substantial; 972 watt hours, or almost one kWh! If we pretend the average cost of electricity is 0.10 a kWh (it’s actually closer to 0.117 for me) this works out to paying for the light bulbs in energy savings in less than a year (270 days!). As long as the bulbs last for at least 810 hours, they have paid for themselves. (The rated life on the package claims 25,000 hours)

If we conservatively pretend the bulbs will only last 10,000 hours (9 years at 3 hours a day), they will continue to save 324 watts x 9190 hours after they have paid for themselves. This works out to 2,977 kWh, or $297 worth of electricity. Not a bad return on investment for $27 of sunk costs.

In summary, it’s time to replace any incandescent bulbs you have with LED’s. (You may as well wait for the CF bulbs to burn out before you replace them.)

Parking and Charging EV’s at the University of Central Florida’s (UCF)

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Jay

If you are looking to park and charge an EV on the UCF (University of Central Florida) campus, plugshare shows three options.

One is right at the visitors information center, one is on the NE side of the first floor of parking garage A (by the elevators), and one is under a large solar canopy in the D1 parking lot next to the Memory Mall. All chargers require you have a UCF parking permit. (Visitors can purchase a daily permit at the visitors information center for $5.)

In September of 2016, the Memory Mall parking lot was the site of construction, so check on that before heading for it. The spots in Parking Garage A may be occupied during the day by UCF employees/students. Continue reading →

Saving Space with an overhead shop vac

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Jay

I have a 12 amp wall mounted shop vac, but I’m not allowed to screw into the walls of my rental garage. I also want to use it at the same time as other high power tools, like my table saw or drill press. This is a problem, because if the tool and the vacuum are both running on the same 15 amp circuit, the breaker trips. My rental garage has a single 15 amp circuit for all of the outlets. Except this one, which is on the same circuit as the lights.

I doubt I’ll be opening or closing the garage door at the same time as I run the shop vac, so putting the vacuum on the lighting circuit solves a lot of problems.

I bolted a 2×4 to the metal rail with 5/16″ screws and nuts and then mounted the vacuum to that.

My countsink bit was too small to fully fit the head of this 5/16 screw, so I drilled a 1/8″ pilot hole, then used my 5/8″ spade bit to drill a small impression before drilling with 1/4″ and 5/16″ bits and then using the countersink bit for the bottom of the conic section.

I needed somewhere for the hose, and the mount needed stabilizing along the Z axis so it doesn’t wobble when you turn the vacuum on or off, so I put another 2×4 on the other side for the hose mount and connected them together with deck screws for stability. I wired up a switched outlet that I can (just barely) reach from the ground, with an extra outlet in case I want to plug anything else into the secondary circuit.

Now I can run the vacuum at the same time as other high current shop equipment because they are on different circuits, and it’s off the floor and out of the way.

A video of the same content on YouTube:

A U-Haul 20 foot truck gets 8.7 MPG

Posted on July 17, 2016 by Jay

What MPG does a 20 foot u-haul truck get? 8.7 MPG.

My data point: Driving a 20 foot loaded U-Haul truck from Atlanta, GA to Orlando Fl (444.1 miles total, average speed around 65 MPH, using the AC) used 50.939 gallons of gas, giving 8.7 MPG.

Improve your photos by using professional framing choices

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Jay

The two photos below are of the same subject. The first photo was taken by an amateur photographer, making rookie mistakes. He decided to use a vertical layout to capture the pool, but this chopped off the near corners. He does not include the sky or a visible horizon, and the background is an uninteresting wall of green. The center of the photo falls in the water, with no interesting details.

Below is the same subject photographed by a professional photographer. Notice how the landscape orientation she has chosen complements the vertical layout of the pool. By moving to the other end of the pool she includes sky and an implied horizon. Notice also how she has placed the vanishing point at the splash of color inside the pool shed to act as a focus point. Simply by changing the focus point, orientation, and camera location the subject is made to sparkle!

Sexist Google Image Search filters

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Jay

I was sitting next to my wife who was goggling for images of haircuts. (I have to admit, I’ve never performed this type of search before tonight….) She showed me a few of her search results, and I noticed that she had some super cool search filtering options across the top of her Google image search results that I had never seen before. (I had thought I knew all the tricks of how to use Google image search…..I was wrong.)

As it turns out, I just hadn’t been using the right search terms, like “for women”. Here is an image of what I’m talking about.

That’s right, when you search for “short wavy haircuts for women” you can filter by “over 40”, “over 50”, or face shape! But why can’t I filter images of men by age or face shape when searching for “short wavy haircuts for men”?

For that matter, how come I don’t see any men when searching for “short wavy haircuts”… Continue reading →

Sink Drain Sizes

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Jay

Repeat after me: 1-1/2″ for kitchen sinks, 1-1/4″ for bathroom sinks. Or, you could construct an adapter like this….

Follow along with me from left to right: we start with a 1-1/2″ to 1-1/4″ drain and trap connector, which is required to connect to the steel drain pipe. But then things go downhill, as we have a 1-1/4″ to 1-1/2″ adapter, a 1-1/2″ (kitchen sink) P-Trap, followed by a 1 1/2″ to 1 1/4″ adapter to connect to the bathroom sink drain.

I’d like to think that somebody decided they really wanted a larger P-Trap on the master bath sink…but I suspect that the plumber only had a kitchen sink P-Trap in his truck and didn’t want to make a special trip

Since I needed to change the length I went ahead and used 1-1/4″ throughout. I think it looks a bit nicer. (I also sealed the hole into the wall with expanding foam while I was under the sink.)

Secret birdhouse camera

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Jay

This ratty old birdhouse has a secret. It was actually an “outdoor enclosure” for an indoor WiFi security camera (D-Link DCS-920). The birdhouse worked well over the last five years protecting the camera from the weather. (I lost one power supply, which hangs outside the birdhouse, so I waterproofed the replacement with hot glue and lots of layers of electrical tape.)

It looked better five years ago (the perch was gnawed off, probably by a squirrel), but it was never operable as a birdhouse, as the entry hole is covered by clear Plexiglas and acts as the viewport for the camera. It’s basically the opposite of Dennis Nino Clasen’s birdhouse camera:

Now that I’m retiring it, I can post the secret on the internet. It was relatively difficult to notice the camera inside the birdhouse. Over five years of operation, I only know of one person who noticed that it was a camera (and then called over the whole crew to take a look…)

I did feel (only slightly) guilty about the number of birds that flew to the perch and tried to go inside….

One of these animals is not the same….

96 °F charging

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Jay

I tested my 80% profile (limited to 25A) on a very hot 92 °F day. The chargers reached 65 °C but did not shut down due to overheating. (My 80% profile ends charging when the draw reaches 10A.)

A charger temp of 65 °C is still much hotter than I would like, so I don’t plan on charging in 90 °F heat very frequently.

Jay's Technical Talk

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