Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   copper pipe switchback
Friday, February 27 2009
The new hydronic loop to heat Gretchen's basement library presented a number of difficult challenges regarding the routing of pipe. The walls and ceiling of the basement are all covered and drywall, and the ceiling joists are all oriented in a way that maximizes joist intersections along the way. In the past I'd thought about just hanging a pipe soffit from the ceiling and avoiding the joists entirely, but that would make for an aesthetic mess and open other cans of worms. So I'd decided to run the pipes through penetrations in the ceiling joists, and thus I'd cut three large (two by two foot) holes in the ceiling along the way. Two of these were in the hallway and one was in the boiler room. Today my task was to somehow get lengths of pipe to pass through perforations in those joists while feeding them in from the ceiling holes.
The first idea I had to achieve this goal was to cut the pipe into short lengths and gradually feed them through the joist perforations, soldering on new segments of pipe as inter-joist room became available. But in the end I didn't have to use this technique. It turns out that type-M three quarter inch copper pipe is flexible enough to allow it to be fed into the side of a joist from below if the hole in that stud is sufficiently low. I actually used a more complicated technique than that, cutting a series of "assist" holes gradually higher in more distant joists, allowing me to insert an eight foot length of pipe at an angle, pushing it all the way into the ceiling and then flexing it and sliding it back the other way, entering a series of pre-drilled holes along a straight line in the other direction, and then finally pushing it straight back into a straight trajectory of holes. Getting the pipe in place this way was a little like climbing a mountain over a series of switchbacks. I was able to get two eight foot lengths of pipe to run parallel to each other in the hallway ceiling without having to solder a single joint. And eight feet of hall pipeline was all of the length I needed for this project.

In the evening Penny and David came over and picked us up and we all went out together to the Kingston Holiday Inn to see the live bar band that would be playing tonight at their bar, Gathers Lounge. It was something Gretchen had researched and planned. It seemed like an inauspicious place to have a cocktail or a beer.
When we showed up, Gretchen looked through the doors and she was so frightened that we almost didn't go in. It was old folks' home in there, with a bunch of barely-ambulatory octogenarians dancing to covers of classic rock songs from the 1970s. "It even smells like old ladies in there," Gretchen added.
We found our way to the bar (they had Hurricane Kitty). Behind the bar, one screen played a featherweight boxing match. On the other was a Clint Eastwood classic, Pale Rider. I couldn't tell you what anyone was saying; the cover band was playing too loudly. And they must have had enormous bladders because they were relentless. Still, they weren't bad, doing an especially satisfying cover of the John Cougar Mellencamp classic "Hurt So Good" (for which the drummer did the vocals).
We were there a long time, long enough for the scene to gradually change. A number of dumpy single middle-aged men showed up and sat by themselves at tables, leading Gretchen to wonder if prostitutes worked this place. Later still, the mulleted bartender's Asian girfriend showed up and sat at the bar sipping wine and texting on her phone. Then a group of dumpy single women (they looked to be in their late 20s or early 30s) appeared and danced to the music. By the time we were leaving, it had made a complete transition from Senior Center to slightly-depressing suburban saloon. I could see us going back from time to time, particularly if they have a karaoke night.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?090227

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