Grey Friday . . .
Overcast and it rained too. In fact this seems to be the start of rain every day for the next seven days or so. Not very conducive to the outside stuff I want to work on. But I did get a couple of things done inside that were on my list.
One of the things I’d been wanting to do was to install a fan speed switch on our front AC thermostat. I had installed one on the rear thermostat years ago, but we never needed one on the front unit, since in the larger area it needed to run wide open most of the time.
But our new Coleman Mach XV unit that I installed last August is over 10% higher in BTU’s (15,000 vs. 13,500) than our old Mach V, and in addition the fan in the new unit is more powerful. So what this means is that the new unit tends to short-cycle in milder weather.
This means that the unit doesn’t really run long enough to remove the maximum amount of moisture from the air. This is why the AC unit in your sticks & bricks needs to be correctly sized for your house.
If it’s too small, of course it won’t cool the house down enough. But if it’s too large, it cools the house down too quickly, without lowering the humidity, leaving you feeling cold and clammy.
In the case of the unit in the rig, the best thing to do is to slow the fan speed, so that’s what I wanted to take care of today.
On the thermostat in the bedroom I was able to mount the switch on the side of the case,
but because of the little shelf that mounts around the front thermostat, this switch would have to be on the bottom.
I started out by cutting a small notch in the bottom lip of the case and then I SuperGlue’d the SPDT switch in place.
Next I cut and stripped a small length of wire and soldered it to the center lug of the switch
I then connected the red wire to the thermostat terminal strip and soldered the HI speed and LO speed wires to the switch.
All I had to do now was reassemble everything, put the batteries back in and it was ready to go.
I’ll leave it set on LO except in the summer when it’s the hottest. In addition, keeping it on LO cuts down on some of the noise from the fan, so it’s a two-fer.
Next up was to finish up the kitchen LED light upgrade I started last month after the two fluorescent tubes died in the kitchen fixture. I was short one strip so I just fixed it up temporarily until I could order more. Then we got busy on the gate so it got put off until now.
So this what I started with.
I had just taped the LED strips to the plastic sheet and wired them up like this.
So today I was going to add the last strip and tape all of them to the top of the fixture. The strips come with a peel-off adhesive backing that makes it easy to mount them up in the fixture. So after I wired in the new strip and got them all mounted, it looks like this.
These six strips put out about 15% more light than the fluorescent tubes they replaced, and they’ll last a lot longer too. And I’ve now got enough strips to convert all the other fluorescent lights in the rig.
Here’s the ones I used, these Super Bright LED Light Strips and it looks like they’ve actually come down a couple of dollars, since they’re now $5.99 a set.
Wrapping up, Amazon has a couple of really good deals going on through Saturday. The amazing Kindle Fire tablet, normally $49, is on sale for only $35.
You can check it here: Fire, 7″ Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB – Includes Special Offers, Black
And even better, they’ve got the Amazon Echo, normally $179, on sale though Saturday for only $149.
Jan and I both love our Echo and it gets daily use here in the rig, and we even used it outside on the gate. I’ll have a review on ours in the next few weeks.
Finally, don’t forget about Landon’s Kindergarten Class Gingerbread Man project. A number of you have already sent in postcards and we greatly appreciate it.
To recap, Landon’s class needs picture postcards from around the country mailed to his class describing sightings of the missing Gingerbread Man. You can just say something like, “We saw the missing Gingerbread Man here at Mt. Rushmore.”
You can mail them to:
Traci Blocker
Keiko Davidson Elementary
26906 Pine Mill Ranch Drive
Katy, Texas 77494
Thanks for your help.
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Thought for the Day:
Information is the currency of democracy. ~ Thomas Jefferson
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