Jay Gaulard Blog

LG Electronics 12,000 BTU Window Air Conditioner

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Yesterday was a big day for Home Depot. I know I said I was going to start shopping at Lowe’s, but this Home Depot is so much closer. They mostly have what I need, so I guess Home Depot it is.

I bought a few things, one of them being a new air conditioner (along with everyone else in the store). I got another LG Electronics 12,000 BTU Window Air Conditioner with Remote. I bought the same exct one last year for the living room at the other house. It works really well. It’s down in the living room here now.

This time, I got one for the master bedroom. I had the smaller 6,500 Btu all set up in there. It was working ok, but yesterday, I notice sweat dripping down my face as I worked in my office. I got up, took a shower and drove to the Depot to grab a new one.

I put the new, larger one in the master bedroom and the smaller one in my office. I have them on power save mode, so they keep turning off and on as needed.

This is the smaller one in my office. It works really well because the room is relatively small. I noticed that it stayed on in the bedroom because it could’t keep up. Now, the bigger one kicks butt. Within minutes, it gets the room to the right temperature and then turns off.

Concrete Basement Floor Ideas?

Friday, May 30th, 2008

I am going to put this one out to the masses. I recently became stumped with what to do with the basement floor. Unfortunately, the stump”ness” came about after I tore the whole thing up.

If you don’t know me all that well, I oftentimes shoot first and aim later. At first, I thought this was bad, but later on, I realized that by doing this, I don’t mosey around over-thinking the whole thing. Since many of my projects come out very decently, I intend to stay this way.

Ok, here goes. We have this finished basement that is very dry. It has a concrete floor that used to have carpeting covering the majority of area and those linoleum tiles covering the rest. There is a dehumidifier downstairs keeping any moisture in the air down to a nice level.

Yesterday, I decided to peel up the linoleum tile and carpeting. This took me a few hours, but it’s all nice and clean now. I cut the carpeting up into squares and took up the underlayment. Everything is now out in the garage. As for the sticky goo, underneath the tiles, I used mineral spirits and a brush to get that up. Then, I used Simple Green to clean the entire floor.

Why did I do all this? Well, for one, I don’t really like carpet. I like hard wood or tile. Dogs like to pee on carpets and dust mites like to live in them. Also, I never like to think about what’s growing under a carpet, especially in a basement. Even thought basements feel dry, there is always moisture coming through the concrete. That doesn’t sit well with me.

The basement floor is in very good shape. It’s dry (as I mentioned above) with no cracks. There is one small hairline crack, but it’s hardly noticable. There are gaps between areas where they poured the concrete.

My initial idea was to tile the entire floor. We pretty much had tiles all picked out. Then, I started doing a little research on the internet. That may have been a bad move. One guy says, “Yeah, go ahead and tile right over the concrete.” The next guy says, “Sure, you can tile down there, just use cement backer board.” The third guy says, “You can’t use cement backer board on concrete.” This goes on and on across any number of websites. It seems like no one knows what in the world they are talking about, but love to give uninformed opinions. I am going to call the tile guy who did the old house for advice.

Since my reading, I have had some other ideas. I thought that we could put down a bamboo floor or laminate. I promised myself that I would never use laminate again, so that’s going to be hard.

What I am looking for is ideas and advice. Will those gaps in the concrete affect the tile? Will temperature differences from outside to inside make the tile crack or pop up? There is going to be a pellet stove down there too, so the temperature will be quite different from outside, especially when it’s a cold January night.

By the way, we don’t mind a cold floor.

Coopers Irish Stout Is In the House

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

A few days ago, I took at look through Amazon and MakeBeer.net to see if the Coopers Irish Stout I have been waiting for was back in stock. It has been unavailable since before St. Patrick’s Day. I guess all the Irish scooped it up.

Guess what? I was in luck. A new shipment of ingredients had arrived from Australia. I quickly ordered the Irish Stout kit and it arrived today. This is just in the nick of time, because I am running really low on my existing batch of regular Stout.

I am pretty excited about this upcoming batch. The ingredients include some extra malt for some reason. It says that it gives the beer a better head retention and something else…I forget. Whatever…if it makes the beer better, I’m on board.

I mixed everything togther tonight and placed the jug downstairs near the boiler. It’s a warmer, constant temperature down there. The brew has to stay between 70 and 80 degrees.

Here, I took some pics…

It’s pretty hard to take pictures in the dark. I had to turn on the flash, which I hate to do.

This was going to be my favorite shot, but it came out a little blurry. I tried to clean it up in Photoshop.

Here is that familiar jug we have all gotten used to by this point.

I really hope this batch comes out good because I have been waiting for it for a long time.

Bottling My Home Brew

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

Well, the day finally came. I was supposed to wait between four and seven days for the fermentation to stop with my home brew. It’s day seven and it just about stopped. How do I know it stopped? Well, the bubbles became few and far between. Also, the hydrometer reading was between 1.008 and 1.010. That’s the ideal reading for home brew with the type of sugar I used. If I had used regular white sugar, I would’ve had to have a reading of less than 1.006. Why did it take the full seven days? Because the temperature wasn’t as warm as I would’ve liked. The warmer the temperature, the faster the fermentation.

This is a photo of the hydrometer at work. It’s hard to tell the reading, but it’s about 1.009. After I found out that the brew was ready to be bottled, I had to add the carbonation drops to each bottle. All carbonation drops are is sugar balls. You can use regular sugar or these types of drops. The company that made the brew kit likes to make things easy for you. I had thirty 740ml bottles, so each bottle took two carbonation drops.

This is the adhesive thermometer. This tells me that the temperature is OK to bottle. The only reason the temperature is this high is because I had the tub sitting in front of the pellet stove. It’s hard to keep it this warm in the Winter.

This is what you call a “little bottler.” It helps to bottle the beer. You don’t really need one of these, but I guess it does help not make too much of a mess. It sticks right in the tap. Also, it’s imperative that you have a tablecloth like this. It helps with the bottling.

Me starting to bottle…

…and me bottling.

This is a photo of all thirty bottles full of beer. I have to wait another seven days with the bottles at 21C-27C and then another seven days at room temperature. I can then drink them. They say that if I wait up to three months, the flavor will get better and the bubbles will get smaller. We’ll see.