The revolutionary pet water system

This is for the pet rabbit. About $3. It's a 1-1/4" PVC slip joint p-trap - the J shaped tube. The other part is a hose clamp. I just clamp the J to a PVC pipe glued to the "cage". And of course the "free" standard wine bottle.

It works as any office gravity feed drinking water system or any pet gravity feed system. Rabbits like to topple things. Mounting the J instead of a heavy bowl saves space, and the rabbit cannot step into the bowl. I used bottles with a stem and ball valve. It drips eventually. The mounting on the outside of the wire door is stupid for an outdoor cage, which can be rather cold without covering it up in winter. Mounting inside is still very inconvenient. I tried to make something to mount it but the awkward stem made anything fail eventually.

It happened that a standard wine bottle neck can get into the 1-1/4" slip joint, but cannot pass through the joint. So the water level is perfectly aligned as shown. The bottle can wobble a bit but it's not going to fall off. The only minor detail is that the bottle opening fits the joint too well, sometimes making a perfect seal. To avoid that, I put a plastic soft mesh, such as those used in gardening to protect from birds, on top of the J, before slipping the bottle in. The soft mesh guarantee to disrupt any perfect seals.

Kids know how to add water. But in order not to spill a drop, you need a hand pump for babies, pump out the remaining from the drinking hole, before taking out the bottle.

Sure mr rabbit knows where the water is. He drinks it too. But I'm not sure. For the water bottle with a drinking stem, he learned to drink it in no time. Since the water is flowing slowing, you can watch drinking from it. Maybe he drinks a lot faster from the J, so I don't notice that he drinks from it. I marked the water level in the bottle just to make sure. And he still pees a lot. I'm not sure because rabbits' mouth are a bit clumsy, opening like under the chin. So he has to dip his whole chin into the water to drink from it, unlike dogs and cats.

For dogs it's easier. I brought a float valve from Ace's hardware for cattle. It's like a brick but made of foam for the float. I just mount it on a bucket, large enough that he cannot topple the weight full of water. Water in the bucket is constant when connected to a garden hose. I can go for a few days of holiday and not worry about the water. Food is different.

The only problem is that you need a backyard. It's totally not for indoors. And you need some shelter to reduce the dust, soil, leaves and branches from falling into the bucket.

The requirements. You need a bowl big enough so that your pet cannot topple it deliberately or accidentally. The alternative is to mount it somewhere fixed.

You want to reduce the drinking hole to reduce dirt, not for your pet to step in it or dip their heads into it. But you want it to be big enough so they can find it and drink from it without training.

Water level should be high to reduce dirt, like rabbit litter. But you don't want to keep a large volume of water. It's easier to go stale. It's not as convenient to cleanup the whole setup. You want the water level to be low at a comfortable level for your pets.

You don't want to refill water every day, but you want to save space for your pets.

Kids should be able to refill without mess.

The 1 1/2 P-trap should be large enough for big dogs, if only for vacation. Either you get those huge wine bottles, or you can adapt the 1-1/2 slip holding a standard bottle, to the 1-1/2 standard non slip joint tubes. I can see that you can put a bottle and a J at different places for redundancy when you are at vacation.

ps The wine bottle necks seem to be fairly standard. I use a much smaller bottle now with the same size neck so the kids can do it easily. Water need to be changed every 2 days instead of about a week. The lighter load means that there's less tilting of the bottle - basically it's mounted on a PVC pipe glued onto a acrylic platform. The weight of a full wine bottle will bend the whole thing slightly to one side.

In praise of Wayne Dalton garage door and opener

It was at least a couple of years ago, I picked a Wayne Dalton sectional garage door at the local hardware store. The installers told me I had to get a new opener and sold me a Wayne Dalton jack shaft type, or torsion type, wireless. I didn't know why I had to get a new opener, and I wasn't happy with the price of the opener, which wasn't much cheaper than the door itself. But I let them because they were that at my garage already. I didn't do any research and let my wife coerced me into the hardware store to get a new door. I knew WD is trouble when I tried to replace the remote control that I lost. That was a few years ago. But I'm glad that I ran into two geeks who picked the WD opener. Perhaps you couldn't get anything more expensive and less time to install than this. But I'm happy for the 1st time after so many years.

My old garage door was the one piece, very thick and very heavy wood door type. Indeed it was welcomed to donate those doors to Mexico to build houses. The spring counter balance was trouble when I moved in, and had been trouble since. Despite the thickness, it was not flat. I learned to lubricate and adjust the counter balance, and to replace them altogether. But it was worse as time went on, relying on the brute force of the opener to pull the door open, and gravity to shut it.

I didn't remember but the reason I agreed to get a new door was because my wife crashed her car on the door twice, from inside! Every time there was significant damage to her car, but not the door though. The door was too imperfect and too heavy for me to fix.

For the new door, I always felt that the two geeks didn't do a good job. The tracks didn't look precisely installed, and the wooden planks that they added didn't look professional. I felt that they were in a rush. I felt that they sold me the most expensive drive on their truck and the easiest one to install.

To add insult to injury, I crashed into the garage door a couple of years ago. I think it's aluminum or steel. But unlike my wife, the door got damaged instead of my car. Actually that's a good outcome. Fixing the door should be cheaper than fixing the car. But I have to replace two sections, which is about half of the door. Since the door still works and you can't see much different from the outside, I never replaced anything. So everyday I looked at the bent sections from inside the garage.

I sensed that WD is trouble when I tried to replace the remote control that I lost. Although I do not have much problems, the customer service seemed scared about the model I had. I took the chance to ask some questions about home link compatibility, but they can't answer anything. I just brought a WD direct replacement from elsewhere.

I think what happened is that WD is very innovative. The ideas are pretty good, going towards an intelligent home, with the garage door integrated with other controls. The problem is, how can they compete with other companies for good electronic engineers? They may out source the design but who's going to support them?

The worse problem is that who is going to install the openers? Openers used to be very simple, just a motor, with belt, screw or chain drive. Installers would hate to install something very different. They would not know anything at all if the electronics have problems. And actually the drives can be installed by the owners. There's not much to do as a professional installer. Actually the whole garage is quite easy to install, relatively speaking.

Why I praise WD after so many years? Because my garage is completely screwed up one day. The installer didn't left any documents, only warning labels and a terse, tiny, programming sheet on the wall. I had absolutely no idea how the door works. And WD seemed to have exited the drive business, and perhaps the Torque Master type of doors.

I was looking for the emergency release like my old door. It disconnected the door from the opener alright, but how am I going to lift the door? The old door will just swing open. I tried to lift the door with great difficulty, and soon it was completely jammed close.

I opened the drive cover with difficulty. I had no manual. To my surprise I saw two batteries. I remembered they call it backup in case of power outage, but actually the motor need to be battery operated. I checked the internet that the batteries had a couple of years of life. They cost too much. I was trying to jump start it with my car battery, when I realized that the batteries were still good.

I thought the electronics were screwed up, so I connect the motor directly to the battery. The motor just gave out sparkles but didn't move. I thought I had to replace the drive, the damaged sections, and maybe the whole door.

Then I found the installation manual of my door, but not at the WD website! There was over 20 steps with diagrams. It looked good but there are 1 in 10 words that I don't understand. It should be easy if you have some idea of how the door is designed and operates.

There's no trouble shooting procedures. The thought of going through 20 odd steps through the installation daunted me. I parked the cars outside and left them there for a week, doing nothing. Before that, the cars were trapped inside the garage. I had to unscrew all sectional bolts so the sections could be lifted up one at a time. With the help of my wife we managed to lifted the sections up to the ceiling rail, let the cars out. My wife decided to drop the sections down that night. But the bottom section wouldn't go completely down, leaving a pet height opening on the ground. Worse still, the bottom was one side higher than the other. I also decided that we should not put the top section down because it might be difficult to get them all up again. So we have only three sections as the garage door, with a bottom slanted opening and the same at the top, for all the neighborhood to see.

Finally I went through the installation process. Very soon I discovered that there's nothing wrong with the hardware installation. The tracks were solid, though they are not perfectly horizontal and vertical, and there are gaps at the joints. The rollers guiding the sections easily comes off, but that's a feature, and the design is quite tolerant to imperfect installation.

Then I discovered what is jamming the door mechanism. It was the counter balance. On one piece swing doors, there is a large spring on each side. Although the door is damn heavy, you can swing it open fairly easily in the spring counter balance is installed correctly. For the torque master doors, the counter balance is in the form or wounded spring inside a small disc box at each end of the shaft.

The door is suspended by two cables. When the shaft turns, the cables are wounded onto the drum at each end. The counter balance is part of the drum. So if the cables are jammed, with all the tension on them, you cannot move the cables to the right place.

There is a bolt on each side to unwind the torsion springs. If you have no idea you just think that the bolt is just a bolt like any others at the door. They are mostly of the same size. The bolt is designed to be turned by an electric drill. I used hex screw driver bits to drive square sockets before. I thought it should be illegal. Now I know, for the first time, that there are square bits for sockets, silly me.

So I unwind the torsion springs until the dial is at zero, straighten out the cable, put the bottom section back on the ground, slide the other sections on top one by one, and screw them back together one by one. So if you install the tracks correctly, there's nothing to it for the sections. It doesn't need to be precise.

So I understand why the door can't be opened in an emergency. If the counter balance malfunctioned or the cables are jammed, the door is just too heavy to open. And even if you opened it, the loose cable will be jumbled up.

Then I tried to calibrate the two sides so that the tension is the same. I don't think it can be done easily, not on my old door anyway. You have to roll the cables a little and tighten the cables a little by the drill. You can't do the same on both sides equally. When I tighten the cables to the same number of turns on the dial, I felt that the tension in the cable are very different.

I tried it all over again by unwinding completely. It's the same. I think the torsion springs aged differently, or they suffer differently. What the hack. I just tighten until I feel that the cable is about the same tightness, and that the door can almost be opened by hand. There's nothing much to it.

Now the door is perfect. I don't know if I damaged the opener's electronic by connecting the battery directly to the motor. Indeed the opener seemed dead. Just when I think that I have to replace the opener, and have to install the conventional overhead opener, I remembered that there's one and only one thing to do.

On the wireless wall unit, there's a little toothpick for you to insert into a hole to start the installation. It doesn't start anything but I know what button to push when I opened the unit. When I pushed the button, the door went up and down twice and wallah, my garage door is all normal again.

All you need to install the opener is to put it right in the middle of the shaft and screw it onto the wall. The opener sense the torque, or more likely the speed, of the cables and vary the speed of the motor when the door is at different positions. There's nothing to measure. The door will close perfectly and open perfectly. The opener knows when to stop exactly.

The whole setup is a big advancement over the dumb openers. Sadly WD is exiting the opener business, even though the openers are still on sale. Or they are just scaling back the number of drives on the market in order to have sufficient support for them.

It's easy to install, tolerant to imperfections. Less moving parts. Quieter and smoother. And since there's intelligence, it's easy to provide more function such as opening a little bit for pets, delay close, and disabling the remote controls.

The mechanics and the motor can be very reliable. The electronics should be more reliable. But if there's trouble, who's going to shoot it? The jump from dumb openers is just too big. But you can't make the jump easier because you want all the features. For example, some jack shaft openers still require to run cables from the drive to the wall unit, which is on opposite ends of the garage!

If the electronics goes wrong, there's nothing much to do except to swap it out. If you are not supported by WD technicians they do not have the boards to replace yours. Sending it back to WD to "repair" seems too much trouble. If WD doesn't cover it, it may be too expensive to replace the electronics. Why can't they do it as if it's a TV? It's quite reliable and you don't expect it to fail, not initially anyway. It's guaranteed for a number of years and there's extended guarantee. And nobody is afraid to "repair" TV's although it really can't be repaired, just swapping out the bad boards and bad parts, or take it back to "factory" to repair, in reality you get back the old shell with everything new in it.

WD is the way to go, but they seemed to fail. I'll still recommend the wireless jack shaft drives, whether you install it yourself or not. But make sure that you are covered if the thing doesn't work initially. As with other electronics, if it works during the burn in period for a couple of months, it will not likely to fail for years. Have a look at the installation manual, and if you are clueless technically, you may want to cover yourself for at least 10 years. The WD service department seems to be afraid of any technical questions regarding electronics.

The P-P-Trap

Awesome. I just copied the idea of a P-P-trap. The idea is that you do not need to modify existing plumbing and screw this cheap device in. You can insert a filter or screen above trapped water. You can open it often to inspect without getting wet and messy.

Warning: the P-trap together with proper venting, is to avoid siphoning the water out so that sewage gas can get into the house. This device is not approved by any local codes and use it at your own risk. But I can't visualize that water in both traps are siphoned out to dry. Also, if you have your own house, the worst is that you are gased by your own sewer. Whereas in an apartment, the gas can come from everybody else.

The details: you should have a p-trap that can be unmounted, and that both parts can turn. Then this device will fit. Typically a p-trap has on one side a 1.5" union, and a 1.5" (or 1.25") slip joint on the other side. Both parts can be unscrewed and turned.

While 1.5" piping fittings are standard, slip joints are of different standards. For standard 1.5" pipes, the inside diameter is 1.5" while the outside diameter is larger. For slip joints, a 1.5" joint means that the OD of the bare pipe is 1.5", the ID of the coupling is 1.5".

The parts:
A p-trap same as what you have
A tee
A threaded male plug and female adapter
A 90 deg bend
About two 1"-2" pipe sections to joint the components

A tee is usually available in all hubs, that is, will accept standard size pipes inserted into it. You need to adapt the opening into a screwed end to accept the plug. You split your new p-trap into two at the union, and put on both ends of the tee. You only need an extra bend to join everything back together again. There are bends with one end hub and the other end bare pipe. The short pipe sections are to join the hub-to-hub. You can glue everything together in a minute or two. Positioning is easy, everything should be fair and square, no customizations needed.

When the thing is dried in 15 minutes, you can screw it into your old p-strap, split at the union. As long as the new union is the same as your old, they will fit exactly just by turning the slip joint and union.

Tips. My plug needs a little plumbing tape to make it water tight. Also my new union is different from the old union. I guest the biting angles are different. I dropped two 1.5" ID rubber seal rings and a lot of joining compound into the mismatched union to make it water proof. I suppose a seal that is a little larger than 1.5" ID and have a thick wall will do the trick without the joining compound. (The joining compound is not a glue, usually for sealing threads in place of tapes.)

For the filter trap, I rolled up a plastic mesh about 5" wide from the building department. Aluminum mesh will be perfect but they are expensive. For plastic I can throw away the filter instead of cleaning it. As the configuration in the diagram, water will push the mesh towards the plug, therefore securing it in place. Waste water will through right in the middle of the filter roll. I caught my wife pouring a little rice pudding down the drain, or is it me? No water spill out when I opened the plug, except for a few drops at the threads which is a little wider and hence lower than the pipe.

I'm sure there is water in both traps. But to be sure you can use clear PVC, and also you can see what is being trapped without opening the trap. The problem is that they are not standard, and even a piece of pipe is expensive. For example, the permaflow clear p-trap use slip joints at both ends. There are clear p-traps which is nothing more than a tee without a union. A clear tee will be good here, but it cost a lot and PVC and ABS use different cements.

I though of using clear flexible tubing. Tubing has ID 1.5" for example, which will fit 1.5" slip joints with the same OD. But if they are exactly the same you cannot insert it. Hose clamps are cheap though. The standard connection is via barbs. But the other end is usually threaded and you have to adapt it to standard slip, which the whole thing will be clumsy.

Also, to be code compliant (at least for mobile homes) you may need a check vent under the sink, between the 2 traps. It's cheap and you can screw it in instead of the plug, if it works sideways.

Applications: Currently on sale online are some traps to avoid lost of rings and ear rings. Some have a little window to look inside. This thing has a lot more screening capacity.

I see one p-trap for hair salon. This is way better and can filter more hair. You can clear it daily without dripping water.

For a proper grease trap you need a larger box. But my experience is that if you make a blind 90 deg downwards, a lot of grease will collect there. For example, if you connect a 90 deg bend to the tee instead of the plug, pointing downwards, it will collect grease. But obviously a lot more will flow away.

Household Hazadous Waste Collection Center visited

I always wanted to go to the HHW to dump my waste, but I left them in the garage instead.

I used to have absolete mercury thermostat nicely packaged in a safe place in the garage , but my wife throw it away in the trash before I could dump them. I had two old fire extinguisher that do not have enough pressure. I had a few empty camp butane gas tank, and soldering butane gas tank. I know they can be recycled but few collect them.

Some empty aerosols, like WD-40. Some solvents like PVC cements.

A lot of batteries. A lot of places take them but I have faulty car startup battery station. And battery in tooth brushes.

I have a lot of old chargers for everything. Nobody seem to want them and state them as electronic waste. Nobody wants electric cords either. But I know some collect them.

The urgency is that I have some car fluids since I do everything myself, or trying to. I had a little overflown brake fluid. I hate to keep that little bit for years.

I tries to build a good relationship with my local auto store. I brought oil from them and took oil back to recycle. But that little shop is good at internet catalog, but bad in recycling. I have to take my container and walk through the front door, then walk to the back of the store and pour the oil into a large tank. It's impossible for a 5 gallon tank which doubles as a oil collection tray. Pouring the oil back to the container and leave the whole bottle seems better. But I do not know if they can keep the bottle.

Also they do not recycle oil filter. Few does. Some mechanics shop do but they don't sell anything, only service, that I am trying to replace. The auto store that recycle oil filter cans is a couple of miles further away. They also have the oil filters that I wanted.

But when I dropped off my child at school, the HHW collection center is only 5 more miles away, not a lot further than the other shop. The trip will cost me less than $2 for the SUV. It's best if I bring my oil and filter there to recycle or dump.

It was a scenic route, even though the occasional traffic are all waste collection trucks. Only at the end are dirt path full of dust. I followed the map but went into a green waste collection point instead. I asked for direction and got further a little to the end of the road.

As advertised, the center is well signed posted. When I stopped at the stop sign, two technicians immediately came out to take my stuff. I just sat in the car to fill a simple form of my name address and phone number. When I finished the box at the back of my SUV is gone, and I was all ready to go.

But really you need a yard or garage, or both, to be able to visit the HHWCC. If you live in an apartment, you have no place to store the oil after you changed the oil. You have no place to store oil smelly cans like WD-40, and rusty things like old butane tanks.

Best shower curtain and splash guard

I tried to fix up the kids' bathroom so they can also take showers there. I tried long ago but I didn't understand why it's always wet after they shower. And I gave up.

Installing a bath wall and sliding door will cost over $1000. Now that I can saw metal easily, I though of finding some kits to do it myself. No luck. A shower screen cost a lot too.

I was thinking about to make two tall walls on each side of the tub, and leave a hole in the middle to walk in and out. I gave up. You have to have a strong metal bar running the whole length of the tub. You have to drill a lot of thinks only to test if my wife and kids will approve.

Some how I vaguely remembered or came across splash guard. The smaller ones are only a triangle of size 5"x7". I went to into the shower myself and see that the corners were the real culprits. Basically it's a waste of money to buy a plastic right-angled triangle. And that the corners are rarely perfectly square.

So I just get a piece of plastic from the gargage, cut a rectangle and then two triangles. I glued it to the wall and bathtub using transparent caulk adhesive. Of course accidentally I knocked on the triangle after installed it, but it didn't come off. Rather tough guys.

Also I was surprised to find out that water went straight through the shower curtain! And I had the same curtain for years. So I looked for a waterproof shower lining. In the whole world there is only one that caught my eyes.

The lining must be plastic to stop water. I can pour my fav bio acid to kill anything and get rid of anything. It must be soft or else you fill like a prison in a isolation unit. The one at Walgreen says it contains 3 magnets. I was puzzled but immediately I went to get a magnet and found out that the bathtub was magnetic. It opened up many possibilities, say using magnets instead of shower curtain clips that the kids can use. But still I don't know what uses are the 3 magnets for.

I went there, paid about $4. It is soft plastic that I wanted. It's flimsy and may break but I can replace it with another $4. At the bottom corners there's a little pocket that contains a small magnet inside. There's also one in the middle at the bottom. Now I understand. You place the magnets in the bathtub and hold in place the lining almost covering the entire bathtub area.

When it was done my bottom hit the tile soap dish. It fell down the tile wall and left a hole in it. So I haven't tested the setup yet.

ps Look for PEVA for shower curtains.  Absolutely not PVC.  I tolerated the foul smell for a few days if that's not bad enough.  It's toxic.

High pressure sprinkler valve

My gardener didn't tell me for a decade, but I found out that I have two lines directly connected to the main valve. One goes into the house, and branched to the lawn irrigation system right outside the house. The other line has an outlet at the bottom of a slope.

When I first arrived, the 2nd line has a manual shut-off valve, which goes directly to the sprinklers at the top and bottom of the slope. I asked my gardener to change it to an automatic electronic valve as the rest of the zones. There are six in total.

With difficulty he did it. Now I understand why. After about a decade, the valve failed. I replaced it with another 1" sprinkler valve but it cannot operate. I was surprised that it goes directly to the main line. Therefore the pressure is at over 100 psi. There is a pressure regulator at the other line. Since I thought that we only have one line, all the pressure would have been regulated.

I replaced it because I couldn't find parts - the diaphragm - for it. Also I cannot shut off water to the house for long. Replace it with a new one doesn't cost too much extra. But I was wrong. That valve was special, works even at high pressure. The ordinary ones only works up to 70 or 80 psi, but will not break up to 125 psi.

So my choice will be to add a pressure regulator at about $70 (it was $50 many years ago). The minimum I have to add a shut-off valve. A tap will be excellent as I can still have water next to the house even if the water into the house is cut off. A hose connection at that point will be perfect, saving the trouble to run 100 ft hose to reach there. Also unions or the like so I will never have to cut short the plastic pipe from the ground again if I need to reinstall or replace something.

The other option is to find a high pressure valve. And it won't be expensive. With high pressure, your sprinkler heads will have trouble all the time, which I experienced when the other regulator failed.

I went for the regulator, which saves money long term, the proper thing to do, and make me fill nice, although I'm pretty broke. The regulator itself have a union, so I just need another one. It turns out that a huge compression joint is a union and a joint so I went for it. I paid a few more dollars for a valve tap, which will not need to replace seals/gaskets, and the kids can operate it.

It ended up quite tall. There are only brass regulators and taps. I reviewed the screw joints of mixed materials in the other line. It was good after many years. So I have complete confidence. All the parts stay dry without any leaks. The compression joint did failed once. I didn't know why and it wasn't because of not enough torque. I just do it again and it worked perfectly. After all, the outlet is outside of the house. I can only lose water.