Rõika 15

With the washing machine in the far corner of the house, you do not hear it at all. Which is good when it runs, but then you also don’t notice it is done. While working on home automation projects I came across a project where any washing machine can be made smarter by adding a SonOff POW. It measures the power use and once that is below a set threshold you can set a notification. I had ordered a SonOff POW and this week I made a test setup. It seems the average voltage in the house is between 237 and 242 volts.
On Wednesday the burner wash in error mode, something it has done a few times over the past months, but after a reset it would recover. But this time it did not. After a few phone calls a technician came in to check it out. He took out the burn cup which turned out to be full of pellets (after resetting the heater a few times, where every time it loads more pellets) He emptied the burning cup, cleaned ot out a bit, but it back and it all worked again. Lets hope this was an incident.
During the weekend I was on the roof again as there was a tiny little leak left. And because I could not finish the last part of the insulation untill I had confirmed this last leak was closed also, I started to take measurements for the wood that would cover the ceiling of the bed room.

This week was very rainy, it showed clearly there was one leak left. You’d say it would be easy to fix that last roof, but it turned out to be tricky. Because after I put another wider layer of repair material there was still a little water coming in. In the mean time Mo filled the last seams between the tiles in the hallway. And together with Mo and Marc we put in the last parts of the roof insulation during the week.
In the weekend ABC had another 25% discount and with the shortening days we found out the back yard was pretty dark, so I got some LED spot lights and some motion detectors. The weird thing was that a halogen spotlight including a motion detector was cheaper then just the motion detector, but since I did not have a use for the halogen spotlights I decided to earn back the difference while using the spotlights.
Besides I wanted to install a doorbell, after looking around I found a doorbell with two different sounds depending on the button you press. So I installed one at the front door and one at the back door. Very interesting to see almost all doorbells in Estonia work on 230V up to the button.

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With the starting fall we also get a lot of rain. Which in a way is good, because it shows where there is still a leak in the roof. So this week was dedicated to finding and fixing the last leaks.
While putting in more roof insulation I found another leak that turned out to be hidden under moss, but this one was so clear that after cleaning the moss away the leak was fixed in one go. Here also the scaffolding of Jan came in handy.

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With the fall coming in fast, the roof insulation will get priority now. Jeff helped getting the insulation materials with his camper and agreed to come and help on Sunday.
On Saturday Mo and I insulated the roof above the bathroom area of the house. Already while working there you noticed the attic was getting warmer. Very curious what this will do with the heating.
On Sunday Jeff came to help with the main part of the house as the beams here where thicker also the insulation we used was a bit thicker. 15 cm mineral wool vs the 10 cm we had used on the other attic.
It turned out to be Jeff’s birthday, which he didn’t do to much about as Pille was away on a work trip anyway, so we had decided to surprise him with a home made apple pie. (Plenty of apples from the garden to do something with.) This was a big hit. Jeff had two big pieces and was excited to take the rest home afterwards.

This weekend I borrowed the Toyota IQ of co-worker Anna. At some point I had found out she had one and I always wanted to try one. This gave a good excuse to visit Mo’s mother and stop by at the Saunamaailm to check out what we would need to put a saltwall in our sauna. Answer: nothing special, just just have to make a frame that holds the salt.
During the week there had been plenty of rain to test the latest roof fixes and it turned out I had to get back on the roof to seal more parts that where still leaking.
Once that was done I went back to the bathroom to create a fake backwall above the shower and in from of that the edge for the indirect ligth. Now it was getting to an end it was giving an idea of how it will be later on.

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With another room fully plaster-plated I thought it would be a good time to get some rotband and fill the space between the plates and the screw holes. The coarse structure works fine for the big gabs between the plates and fill the big gab next to the toilet door, but it sure will need some finishing after that.
To be ready for the upcoming colder season, I wanted to put in the bathroom window properly. This was a nice job after a workday.
In the weekend it was time to get some time back from Gorden who I helped out with his bathroom tiling a few weeks ago. I thought it was fitting to work on our bathroom with him. I wanted to work on a lowered ceiling with indirect light from the edges.
Work progressed very slowly as every piece we put up had to be measured individually as the ceiling was not level in any direction. The laser really helped out nicely here. At the end of the day the edge around the ceiling was the only thing that was actually finished. Not very satisfying but still work that needed to be done.
On Sunday I spend more time trying to find the last small leaks on the roof. While that close to the roof I filled some cracks with PU foam as preparation for the insulation works.

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After playing around with the ESP replay, I dug up an ESP AI-TInker from my parts box to try to flash it. Unfortunately this did not go as smooth as I wanted. Oh well, no direct need for it, but would have been fun to finally have some software running on it.
Later in the week I finsihed the plaster plate around the front door. Suddenly it looks so much more done. After that I set up the scaffolding Jan had stored under the train roof in the hallway. This way finishing the ceiling in the hallway went very easy, at least for the reachability of the ceiling. It still was a lot of measuring, remeasuring and cutting to get the ceiling in, but the result was satisfying and the lights we bought weeks ago also look great.

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The Monday started very productive. In between installs I found an online tool where you can select parts of a picture and give then curtain colours. That way you get a pretty good idea of how this colour will look on your house or room.
Then I got home I started with some grass cutting. The lawn mower worked very well this afternoon. After that I decided it was a nice evenng to build a little stair for the backdoor. There you see again that having good tools really helps creating something nice. Towards sunset the stairs was finished. A great improvement!
When I got inside to tried the ESP-programmer and ESP relay that I had gotten over the mail. It worked pretty smooth. The drawback of these ESP’s is that the need and external powersupply which gets rid of the much lower price as the SonOff devices.

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This week was a week with an extra free day, as it was re-independence day on Tuesday. So after I tried some first filling of holes and connections of the plaster plates with Rotband (which was coarser then I was used to in the Netherlands) I put in a ceiling in the toilet on Tuesday. Because it was nice weather I also straightened the front yard an sowed clover there. This was a nice tip of an acquaintance, who told it does not grow tall, so you don’t have to mow it and it has nice flowers that also attract bees, so the choice was easy.

During the weekend Jeff helped getting more plaster plate and I changed the pressure vessel from the heating system from laying horizontal to hanging vertical, as that was what it said on the vessel and it was not performing as expected.

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Monday the week started with taking out the door frames and taking of 2,5 cm from the top so the doors would fit in nicely. Even though it was a bit annoying this had to be done since apparently there are two different standard sizes, the result was very rewarding.

Tuesday I started to put in the first rows of sauna insulation panels. They work very nice, so pretty soon I had 3 layers done. The next day I put in the last layer and we started to check where to put the sauna benches. As the sauna is a bit higher then average, there is an option for a 3rd high bench, but we wanted to know if this would fit.

Then another evening was spend taping all the seems between the insulation plates.

Saturday we went to check out the wood for the sauna wall at Puumarket as sometimes you just need to see how something looks and not just rely on measurements. After that we picked up some parts from ABC so I could hang the toilet sink. In the afternoon I made the floor tiles for the utility room fit, so I could put them in on Sunday.

Before putting in the tiles I picket up some glass fibre wall ‘paper’ at K-Raute as they had 30% off and I received a gift certificate for the store and a trash bin at Bauhaus which was very nicely on sale.

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