Since its finally summer, decided to get going on some misc projects I've had in mind for a while, mostly focused around the garage.
Step one, kickplate. Old one was rotted to nothing. New one all sealed up nice. Still need to paint and/or replace the door trim that has rotted away but this is a start.
Did some shopping, found a good deal on the Nest Protect (they're back on sale again), works dandy, and since my house is so small, one is probably fine.
Next, I saved some metal from the alley...neighbors were putting out a 5000W electric heater into the alley and I offered to give it a good home. Checked out garage panel and voila, room for more in the family:
$100 worth of breaker, box, and 10/3 cable later, voila:
All wired up and testing:
This is my first foray into wiring 240V personally, but I've seen about 100 circuits wired at work now so I knew it would be easy. Not sure how effective it will be at either one-time use or just keeping the temp stable at 50° or whatever I set it to....but I did the math and in the dead of winter, if I need to run this thing for 24 hours straight it will cost me about $15. Not cheap but I'm hoping it is powerful enough to run on/off and keep things warm in there and maybe powerful enough to use just it during wintertime projects. I will keep my trusty gas-powered torpedo heater just in case (for augmented heating).
While I was crawling around up in the garage attic I found this:
It's an insulated panel to cover the huge hole up into the attic. The hole that's been there for the 9 years I've lived here. How I've never seen it or looked for it...idk, it was way in the back. Maybe it got shoved there during the inspection or maybe the previous owner never used it...idk but I'm a bit pissed. The rest of the garage is fully insulated....all those long winter car project sessions...bleh. Having this in place would have helped.
All that crawling around in the attic and some relaxing time at home derpot got me thinking, sure would be nice to have easier access up there. So, the today spazzy swung by and I put him to work--along with jax the friendly neighborhood greyhound:
We put up a nice aluminum attic ladder! I have proceeded to start to organize my
garage sale parts and am hoping to get things nice and cleaned up out there as time goes on.
Turbo approves:
Still need to seal around the edges (maybe some trim? idk) and clean up the shims, but all done for now...oh, and need one of those insulator-tents for it, they didn't have those in stock.
Next project will be to begin sealing up around the wooden garage door...leveling, new bottom seal, sides, and top. Gotta keep that new heater running as little as possible
Thanks spazzy for the help today!