How to get rid of water in underground sprinkler pipes and fix tee thread joint leaks with minimal digging

Some of the pop-up sprinkler in the lawn leaks.  It's not the sprinkler.  Must be the threaded joint in the tee down below or worse. It turns out that my ex-gardener used a metal nipple to joint the tee below to the sprinkler.  That means he repaired the bad thread by making it worse.  I don't know how many he did.  If the sprinklers are not near the concrete driveway, it's hardly noticeable.

It's never easy to replace a section of PVC pipe, not to mention an underground tee piece.  You need at least two bulky unions or worse, two extendable repair pipe sections.  The total cost is silly when a tee is some 20 cents.  For me the labour cost is infinite as I have to dig out enough soil for all those things to get in and under.

I searched the net for ideas and found only one video inspiring.  Of course it is in you-tube.  All credit to him.  What he did was drill the thread joint to enlarge it to become a slip joint.  And sand down a short pvc section to glue to it.  Then you can attach anything to the other end, use a shorter sprinkler or install a flexible swing joint.

After drilling the thread joint on the tee, I think it's easier to drill enough so you can screw in a pvc male section, or just a threaded nipple that you would normally use.  So it depends.  If the thread are very loose, it may be easier to turn it into a full slip joint.  My threads are all "screwed up" so I can't even screw in a nipple.  After drilling with a 3/4" wood hole drill, I can screw in a nipple and have a rather rigid joint.  The nipple doesn't wobble.  There seems to be some good thread left or the bad thread still holds the nipple in position.   If I use PVC glue to seal the thread it would be better than a slip joint.  The PVC glue weld both pieces together to form one single piece with the same thermal properties.

Now the only thing to do is to dry the tee and apply the glue.  It turns out to be impossible.  Closing the water supply, turning on the valves doesn't drain the pipes.  Taking off the entire sprinkler down the slope doesn't drain the pipes.  Blowing air into the pipe with my air bed pump will get rid of water for a moment until more water come back.  I searched the web for ideas and time and time again they use air compressor to force water out of the pipes and out of the other sprinklers.

I don't have an air compressor and it's silly to rent one for a simple job.  I have a hand pump that is ideal but it is for oil change.  I can still use it but then I will be polluting if I just pour the water down the drain.  Pond pumps will be ideal for 1/4" tubes but they don't have inlets.

You-tube have plenty of water pumps that use electric air pump as the driving force.  The problem is that you can't get an air tube down the tee bottom with enough space for an inlet/outlet tube.  Without that you can't lift water with air - the principle of air lift pumps.  I spent a few days in experiments on and off to realize that.

The other possibility is venturi water pump.  But water pumps using that principle are probably not using that principle.

Just when I'm ready to order a real water pump I remembered that I have this:

 

It's as good a pump as anything.  I repaired the broken tube with packing tape, and taped a 1/2" pvc pipe to the hose end.  I have the 1/2" to 1/4" tubing adaptor.  It takes less than a minute to suck out all the water, not even one bucket full.  I also have a wet vac which is easier to attach a pipe to it.  Silly me.  But then I have no idea why everybody use compress air to blow out.

All the time and effort works out.  I saved some money and delivery time.  I learned some science.  I don't need to spend money on tools I already have with superior performance.  The pay off will be coming when I have to check and repair god knows how many sprinklers.

The catch with T-Mobile's $30 monthly plan

It's unlimited text and data, first 5Gb at 4G!  It includes only 100 min.  But you will later find out that each extra min is 10 cents, which is the lowest you can get for prepaid.  So far so good.

You may get the plan from Walmart, but as long as you buy a sim activation kit online at t-mobile, you have the choice when you activate.  I don't how what happened but I got the sim for free, but today it's $10.  I was just going to get a free sim for every kid because I spotted that their $10 pay as you go last for 90 days.  Not so fast now in case they drop that again.

The 1st hurdle is actually with AT&T to unlock my phone.  I setup profile for my wife but the bill is under my name.  It may be the probable cause that I couldn't unlock.  I waited until the contract ended and then some, because I can't risk any mishaps in the busiest time of the year.  Finally I chat with them online and it was quite helpful.  May be it's my phone, they have a procedure that I have to do it.  I don't have another carrier's sim at the time so I didn't try.  I copied the steps from chat but the 1st line is missing before I realized it.

A couple of days later, I received an email with the instructions.  This time they have an unlock code that I don't think I have it before.  When the T-Mob sim came, I inserted it, power on, entered the unlock code and it seemed to work.  I was on the t-mob network but can't make any calls because my sim wasn't activated.  But I am sure they can't fuck me up on the carrier unlock.

I considered carefully when to activate.  I tried the activate website and it seemed to work and help to transfer my number too.  But when I actually do it I want not to be at a very busy time when there are no real agents to trouble shoot.  And I have 2 days off so there is one spare day for fuck ups when they claim to do it in 24 hours.  And I don't want to wait too long when it's close to the deadline of the activation of my free sim.  And I don't want to start losing things from the package.

So I took the plunge on Xmas eve day before I realized it.  It went totally smoothly online until the last payment page.  I use Linux and they screw up.  Who wouldn't do a website nowadays without sticking to some common standards?  I was afraid that I got the number transferred but I can't call because my service wasn't paid.

They don't have online chat.  It's terrible when there are so many numbers involved.  I tried to pay elsewhere online but they don't have my number registered yet.

I called as the last resort and very soon an agent answered.  He was helpful.  He got those data that I entered online.  Instead of payment, he first deals with the transfer first.  AT&T wants to screw me.  They want my AT&T account number instead of my phone number.  But I have a browser tab on that ready.  Now that was OK and before he continued, the phone got cut off.  I was using my mobile phone.  So I switched to my landline.

Another agent answers the phone very soon.  I think the 1st guy is American dealing with carrier transfer and tech stuff.  This woman is in India dealing with other non-tech stuff.  Now, I got too many apologizes in one day.  It sounds as if he is sorry that t-mob website don't support Linux well enough, but that would be a first.  She is sorry for the cut off.  After a minute or two she confirmed that the transfer is successful and transfers me to payment.  This 3rd call center could have been in Mexico.  Again I don't have to wait and some agent pickup the phone soon.  May be I picked the right day in the year?  She is not sure what my problem is and I understand that the usual automatic prepaid payment via the phone is available.  So I said goodbye and dial 223 or something.  It was wrong.  You dial 611 but * or #  then 223.  Seriously!

I dial 611 again and realized the correct number should be prefixed with a * or # (that I don't remember).  It doesn't matter because I couldn't pay anyway.  Because the transfer is actually not completed.  I called 611 again to find out that I have to wait 2 hours until I got the completion text.

Before that I registered on t-mobile website but then the registration wasn't real because I don't have an active number to go with it.

A couple of hours later I can receive call too.  And I got the completion text.  Now I can pay online, after registration again.  And I sign up for automatic payment.  But as soon as I paid, learned to check the balance, my 100 min was up as indicated on the website!!  What's going on?  I called 611 again with no waiting.  The guy assured me that my account status was OK and I can use the phone.  1st they have a funny way to tell the balance. I paid $30 and they say my balance is $0 and I will be paying $30 next month.  But really the minutes count is wrong and after some wait the used minutes drops from 100 to 10.  But I don't think I made 10 connected calls.

Before the transfer completion I can dial out but incoming calls go straight to my old AT&T voicemail.  I looked it up and enter the t-mob voicemail number into my phone and it didn't seem to work.

Somehow it all worked.  Then I wanted to setup visual voicemail (for my wife).  There is a subscribe button on the website but it does nothing except redirect to your homepage.  Then I did what I prefer to do, switch over to her google number voicemail.  Android reported that it can't do it and I have to talk to t-mob. 

After a while of online search, I confirmed that t-mob don't allow visual voicemail nor forward voicemail for prepaid accounts.  This is pretty strange as I would think $50 and up prepaid plans are more popular and the money isn't too bad.  I thought I got an old internet post of how to switch to google voice email.  In GV I setup a contact with my mobile phone number, then I setup a group for it.  If group members call, GV will not try to ring any numbers so the call will go straight to google voicemail.  Now I just need to setup call forward in my phone, to forward when no answer to my google number.  But the problem is, forwarding isn't allowed by the t-mob network, and that's why you just can't simply change over to GV voicemail.  A waste of time.

Those are the catches.  I spend half a day doing it, on xmas eve.  May be I'm lucky.  I could have waited for 24 hour and nothing would happen because AT&T wants my account number.

Mulching fallen leaves on lawn

This is another "why I didn't thought of that" moment.  I was brain washed into racking up the leaves, and put them in the green collection bin.  That is a lot of work and last many weeks for all leaves to fall.

I didn't know what triggered me to search how to deal with fallen leaves.  Indeed I didn't remember what I was searching.  I agree that mulching fallen leaves save a lot of resources.

Just happened that my 1st season small battery mower had a mulching attachment.  I only know that it is for grass, and I use it a lot out of laziness.  I also use the grass chip collection bag because it is convenient too.  At the front yard, mulching the grass cuttings may spread the chippings into the sidewalk.  There's more work to clean up.

My mulching attachment is to keep the grass chips in a loop around the blades, instead of allowing them to go out into the bag.  The grass are cut finer and drop back onto the ground.

Leaves look very different from grass so I doubted.  When I mow the fallen leaves, I was impressed.  The leaves are palm sized, dried and brittle.  One pass over the yellow leaves, the pile is gone leaving a green path.  I can still small dots under the short grass.  But instead of a very yellow pile, the ground turns green with barely visible yellow dots at an angle.

It's easier than mowing.  You can easily see where the leaves are done.  My mower isn't that big so the lesser the overlapping passes, the more effort are saved.  But my small mower is very good at manoeuvring to get to the leaves.  Even for a big pile (by nature) you can still see the lawn after all leaves are mulched. 

Now I can just mulch the leaves when I mow the lawn as soon as the leaves fall.  I don't need to wait for sufficient leaves to pile up before raking.

Clean and seal your grout perfectly with green chemicals

Grout is like teeth.  The two very effective cleaning agent is baking soda and hydrogen peroxide.  Dry or paste baking soda helps to polish away trapped dirt and especially grease.  Hydrogen peroxide bleaches.  I always know that.  If your grout is white for example, you can get back the original color as white as you want.  The problem is the amount of work and the amount of hydrogen peroxide to use.  Now I made it perfect.

First option.  You add first-aid 3% hydrogen peroxide slowly into baking soda powder.  You just add enough to "wet" all the powder and obtain a paste.  For horizontal surface you can make the paste thinner.  Now you just need to apply the paste on the grout.  The hydrogen peroxide will stick and bleach much longer than if you spray the liquid onto a vertical wall.  If helps if you brush the paste into the grooves to get rid some of the grease and dirt first.

You rinse or just wipe when dry.  Residue baking soda is eatable and safe.  Hydrogen peroxide turn into water and oxygen.  If your grout is white, the residue baking soda actually makes your grout look snow white.

Water tends to separate from the baking soda paste.  You can add something like a little guar gum or xathan gum to the mixture at room temperature to thicken and stabilize the mixture.  If you use corn starch, you probably have to warm or heat the hydrogen peroxide first to get a gel.

Option two.  Hydrogen peroxide plus acid is a bleach.  The hydrogen peroxide is more table is acid.  Citric acid crystal from food supplies is a good acid.  A one pound bag doesn't cost that much and last a very long time.  One teaspoon per cup of hydrogen peroxide (or water) is a stronger acid than vinegar.  You can make a much higher concentration acid until the crystals no longer dissolves.  Now you need to thicken the bleach to save peroxide.  It's a few dollars a quart but you have walls and walls of tile in the bathroom, kitchen or the floor.

I get the idea from computer preservation enthusiast.  They thicken peroxide to work on plastic shells of old computers.  I already told you.  The warm or heat the peroxide in the microwave.  Then add corn starch or other starch to make a gel of peroxide.  You can add guar gum or other gum in room temperature.  You save gums if you warm the peroxide too, and it works better.  You will use a lot less gum than starch.  Just don't add baking soda to the acid as it will react.

It's perfectly safe to heat the peroxide.  The peroxide will decompose faster but still in a slow rate compared to the bleaching.

In this option the ingredients are all natural and biodegradable.

Now the difficult part is sealing of the grouts once it is clean.  There are plenty of grout sealants to choose from if you don't mind the toxicity.  Pick one that whitens as well as sealing.  Then you don't need to worry whether the grouts are clean enough for sealing.  And you don't need to match the color of the grout in various shades of white.

I was wondering if there's anything naturally non-toxic for my kitchen counter?  Easy to apply but do not need to be permanent?

Simple - wax!  I actually tried before to use a candle to seal the grouts.  I gave up.  You cannot rub the candle wax into the grooves.  And you cannot melt the wax by burning the candle - too much soot.

Just happen I have emulsifying wax NF at hand so I tried.  You have to melt it and pour onto the grouts.  Then recover the excess wax that solidifies.  You cannot spread the wax easily because the tile will cool and solidify the wax.  It will have a lot of waste and inconvenient.

I have the almost perfect solution.  The wax comes in small peas.  You just put a pea on the grout and melt it with a gas lighter type barbeque lighter.  The wax will melt and follows the tip of the flame down the groove.  The wax stays white when solidifies.  You can use organic white bees wax if you want.  It's at even higher melting point.  This lighter method seems to be much better than direct pouring, when the wax solidifies as soon as it touch the cool surface.

Since grout is very porous, I doubt if you can easily get rid of all the wax.  Initially the whole groove is covered by wax.  It's unlikely you can melt the wax by any hot objects unless you pour boiling water on the wax.  How often does that happen?  If that happens you can "repair" the wax in no time.

So far the wax stays in the grooves, translucent white in deeper grooves.  When there is wax, no way can dirt get in there or stain the grout.

It's not a quick to seal with wax.  But it's pleasant and you can spread the work in as many stages as you want.  The area of the kitchen counter that you prepare food isn't that big.

Minimal kick/push scooter stand/rack

4T - the scooter stand with a twist.

This is what the 4T scooter stand looks like.  It is made of only 4 tee PVC couplers.  So if you count, the material cost is slightly over $1.

The 1st principle of stands is that you have to make use of your own weight.  There is always a groove between the flat feet rest and the front wheel of every scooter.  This is where the scooter is slightly lifted off the ground by a horizontal bar.  Whether the front wheel is turned sideways does not matter.  It depends on what position of the scooter design feels more stable.

The stand is based on the 45 deg slope design common for bikes.

In the original design the two sides of the stand are parallel.  The handle rest on one of the side bars with a little bit off vertical.  It is still very stable.  The intention is to add some guides at the top end of the pipes to make the handle perfectly vertical with respect to the front-rear axis.  However, it was discovered that a little twist of the side bars will do just that.  And because the base is now wider, the stand is more stable.

You can make it prettier, stronger, but you can't beat using only 4 tee's.  So this is it.  Obviously when you are doing a rack you can modify it to be more space efficient.  But you can put the stands as is very closely side-by-side with the twisted legs crossing each other.

If you just lift the handle the stand goes with you.

Self-balancing bike stand / rack

I was moving the bikes from the garage to store outside with weather "proof" covers.  So the kids can take a ride whenever they like without having adults to bring the bikes out of storage.

I was trying to work out the physics but got stuck on some points.  So I built one base on other practical criteria but not on the absolute stability.  It is based on the common 45 deg inclied design.

Inclined bike rack

The stand for one bike, not the whole rack, is itself stable, rigid, do not waste space and do not waste PVC material.  The problem is that the stand is not making use of the weight of the bike itself.  It doesn't matter much for the whole rack but the inherent instability shows with only one "slice" of it.

I shortened the top rail so the wheel rest tightly on the 45 deg slope, shorter than the diameter of the wheel.  Like this, but the angle is 45 deg.

Wheel locked bike stand

In doing so the centre of the wheel is moved away and down from the rack.  But it turns out that the main instability comes from the centre of the wheel, trying to topple over to the sides.  I was doing the opposite that is desirable, that the centre of the wheel (probably top of the wheel too) should be restricted by the stand as much as possible.

I was worry wrongly about that the front wheel will turn itself horizontally and so the whole bike become unstable.  The front wheel does not have the tendency to turn, and friction make it difficult even if it wants to turn.

Vertical lock bike rack

The other is the vertical design that use the top rail and one of the bottom rail to lock the wheel so the weight of the bike is on top of the stand.  However, the vertical bar is too far from the centre and top of the wheel.  You can see there are "wings" on the side for balancing.

Horizontal support bike rack

There are horizontal designs that seem to use the weight of the bike.  And the centre of the wheel is close to the stand, but not the top of the wheel.  In any case it requires the kids to lift the wheel off the ground and onto the stand.  May be just a little bit of lifting but rolling over a pipe is much easier.

Self-balancing bike stand

My design turns out to be looking like a wheel clamp.  The wheel must be standing on two lower points of the stand (A and B), not touching or barely touching the ground.  Then a vertical bar raising up at an angle close to the centre and top of the wheel.

The stand, only about 5" wide (slightly wider than the length of two 3/4" tee couplings), is able to hold the bike vertical against strong wind without anything else.  So I gave up the idea of a rack, allowing the kids to park anywhere they want, even carrying the stand along with a bike ride.

Point C doesn't do anything, not touching the wheel.  It provide closure and support, otherwise the vertical bars on the two side of the wheel will be floating.

There is no need for exact dimensions, as long as the front wheel don't touch the ground.  You can make the length A-B short enough to make sure of that.  Short A-B doesn't lead to instability.  The bike is very stable in that direction.  You can also raise point B off the ground a bit to ensure that the wheel do not touch the ground.  Or use thicker pipes than 3/4".  You can also raise point A off the ground but the front wheel need to be lifted a bit to get into the stand, rather than roll over point A.

The gap between the bars is slightly thicker than the tires so the bike can get into and out of the stand freely.  As of now, because the spokes near the centre are thicker than the tires, this is where the stand holds the bike in position.  If that is not the case, the stand will hold the bike at the top of the wheel.

The perfect angle of the near vertical bars are just incidental.  You just need to make it close to the centre of the wheel and the top of the wheel.

8 tee's and short pipes may be about $2 total.

You can put the bike on a thin wall.

Validation of the Green Pee litter system for rabbits (and cats)

The modified Breeze litter system

The homemade Green Pee litter system is designed for cats, with ideas from the commercially available Breeze system.

The Breeze is one of those products that give away good, tested ideas when people can make it for next to nothing.  And if you promote it too much, it will affect the profitability of your other products.

First, the Green Pee is two stacked trays.  The top one has holes in it to drain liquid waste, and pea sized gravel for cats to cover their solid waste.  The bottom tray collects liquid waste and allow you to put in anything you fancy to deal with the odour and ultimate disposal.  You scoop away cats' solid waste on top, and sacrifice some gravel to go with it.  You have to maintain the level of gravel with new additions and the old ones are supposed to be rinsed and dried from time to time.

The Breeze that inspired Green Pea is the same thing.  The top tray has a plastic grid on most of the bottom for drainage.  The grid maintain the strength of a fairly large tray, some 20" by 12" (check spec).  The bottom tray is securely snapped onto the top, but has a drawer like tray in the middle that can be pulled out.  The tray just fit a custom sized pad with probably very absorbent gel.  The drawer is very shallow but will allow the gel in pad to expand a lot and hold a lot of liquid waste.  Instead of gravel, Breeze has it's own pellets that is perhaps made from soft rock with a waxy coating.

I got the Breeze just because I wanted to use disposable pellets that I liked - feline pine.  The slots will work better than drilling holes.  And that the feline pine's own double tray system, very similar to both, is only available online with expensive shipping.  The Green Pee is better, and cheaper.

The other reason I got the Breeze is because I was obsessed with adapting to rabbit use, getting rid of the pills / pellets / pebbles in a convenient way.  Unlike cat waste, the pills are the same diameter as typical pellets, so you can't scoop or filter them out to reuse the pellets.

It turns out that for rabbit use, the best adaption is nothing.  When you rinse the gravels, the pills will float while rocks sink.  You just pour away the pills and flush it, or pour the pills into a sieve / colander to get rid of the water, then dump the pills in trash.

Some people put a semi-rigid screen on top of the gravels to prevent the pills from mixing with the gravels.  You scoop away the pills from time to time.  That doesn't save much work because you need to wash the screen at least daily for the semi-solid waste.  And you need to wash the gravels anyway.

My particular problem is that the screen on top of gravels is too comfortable.  My rabbit occupied it as his bed and pee on his normal sleeping area.  Without the screen, he still likes to sleep on the gravels and pee on the corners of the tray.

I see no advantage of the Breeze pellets to gravels.  The regular cylindrical shape of the Breeze pellets may drain better, and the coating may reject water and therefore odour.  But I don't see any problem of using pure rock instead.  You can use finer gravels for you rabbit if you worry about their feet without pads.  There are very smooth and exotic aquarium gravels, but for a few dollars I get a huge bag from gardening store and filter out the larger than 1/4" stones with a discarded potting tray with a grid bottom.

As for what to put in the bottom tray, newspaper and baking soda is excellent I'm sure.  If you can get the huge baking soda box in the laundry department (non-food grade from the same manufacturer), it's much cheaper than from the baking department.

My problem is, I don't have any newspaper.  But even though the Breeze has a tiny tray, you can still put a lot of other stuff in it that will last you about a day or two.  If you only want to empty every week, you just need to put the Breeze on another tray and get rid of the drawer.  You can put crumbing cat litter and scoop away the crumbed solids.  But they are not that environmental friendly.  You can put anything absorbent down there and let nature equalize the liquid distribution.  You can put biodegradable gel for camping but that would be expansive.  I put in feline pine because I have some left.  There are similar much cheaper pellets but not in my town.  The pet store do have some pellets from recycled paper that are cheaper.  In general compacted pellets are more absorbent than other loose materials.

To convert a Breeze into a Green Pee, I put a screen on the grid, under gravels.  Some of the gravels are too fine and fall through the grid.  So far I keep the drawer system because it's a piece of cake to empty every day.  People use plastic canvas from sowing / craft stores for the screen that you can cut to size.  I use bug screens or those for windows and doors.  I use the thicker ones that seems to be weaved from nylon threads and coated with plastic.

The reason I gave up on pine pellets is that you have to keep paying for the consumable.  You can't separate the good pellets from the pills.  You need to keep adding fresh pellets so the degenerated dust will not stick to his feet and being carried around.  (This is minor.)  The Breeze drawer is too shallow for the pine pellets.  And you have to use a scoop to "encourage" the wet dust to go through the grid and down to the drawer.  The dust should fall through by itself but fresh pellets and wet dust can accumulate to a thick layer and it gets harder for the dust to fall through.  Feline Pine's own system may be better but I don't see how the problems are totally eliminated.

The only problem is drying the gravels.  You need two or three sets to rotate.  And you need a yard but can be done without one.  Pouring away the pills, soaking the gravels overnight will allow any dirt to rinse away the next day.  If you have space, spread the gravel into a single layer and sun dry.  If they are completely dry, you are not creating an environment to accumulate germs.  Germs cannot survive without water.  If you feel the need to disinfect anyway, household beach is effective when you soak the gravels.  But it is not environment friendly and can be harmful.  Germs that survive on animals adapt to neutral pH or 7.  You can kill germs with extreme acid or alkaline.  Vinegar can kill many germs.  If you buy citric acid crystals you can get more acidic solutions.  Washing soda should do too but vinegar is safe because you can eat it.  Baking soda is a weak alkaline so it cannot be effective.  You cannot mix acid and alkaline because you will neutralize them and become useless.  Alcohol and hydrogen peroxide are effective but because of the cost, they are only limited to small surface areas.  For Vinegar or Washing soda, you need to consider the concentration level.  If you can, check with cheap pH papers to get less than 4 or more than 9 for sufficient concentration.  But since washing soda is so cheap, I would think it is easy to be alkaline enough.