I discovered this nifty online tool via GarageJournal.com, the Icovia Room Planner by CB Structures.  It’s Flash-based and thus it works across nearly all platforms and there’s nothing to install.

The app lets you lay out rooms of all kinds – kitchens, living rooms, garages, etc – and has a decent variety of objects you can place in your rooms, such as furniture, fixtures, and shop equipment, and the expected assortment of walls, doors, and windows.

For a free app, it rocks. It does have a few quirks though. You can’t change the order in which objects are layered.  For example, if you want to place a drill press on a workbench, you have to place the workbench first.  If you place the drill press first, it will appear to go underneath the workbench.  To workaround this, you’d have to either delete & re-add the drill press, or create a copy of the original object, then delete the original. It would be helpful if you could change the ordering.

When you start a new plan, the dimensions shown will be the inside dimensions, and the app will add six inch walls to the perimeter.  This means a 16×24 plan will have outside dimensions of 17×25. If you want 16×24 to be the finished size, you have to start with a 15×23 plan.

Even with its quirks, I really like the app. You definitely can’t beat the price. If you want to save your plans, you have to register by giving them your email address and ZIP code.  They don’t ask for your address, and giving your name is optional.

Here’s a screen shot of the plan I worked out for my future shop (click to embiggen):

You can also print your plans and share them with people via email.  The email will contain a link to the planner and will load the plan you’ve created. For example, click here to see and play with the plan I made for my shop.

Check out the app and let me know what you think.

We were told last October during negotiations to buy this house that the central A/C didn’t work and that they (the previous owners) didn’t know why.  No biggie, we thought. The house is a great price and we’ll just worry about the A/C after Winter is over.

Well, Spring lasted about three days before Summer hit.  It’s been about 90 degrees for the last several days.  Time to get crackin on the A/C.

I removed the screws from the maintenance cover and took a peek inside.  A little corrosion on one starting cap, but no big deal.  I set the thermostat to Cool, turned the temp down, flipped the A/C breaker on, and went back outside.  Since the power was on now, the contactor (relay) was buzzing.  The A/C unit has its own electrical disconnect on the side of the house, so nothing was actually running yet.

I flipped the disconnect to On.  The compressor fired right up, but the condenser fan wouldn’t turn.  I left the compressor running for half a minute or so so I could feel the refrigerant lines.  Sure enough, one side got cold and the other side got hot.  This was a relief since I don’t yet have the knowledge or equipment to work on refrigerant loops.  (I want to tackle making my own ground source heat pump eventually, so that knowledge and equipment will come along.)

I turned the disconnect and breaker back off so I could turn my attention to the condenser fan motor.  A couple of the spade connectors were broken, so I replaced those.  I also removed the top cover that the fan motor bolts to so I could take a look at the motor itself.  I took the time to replace some wire nuts with crimp connectors.  I did some staring and thinking and internet research.  (This was very much a learn-as-you-go situation.  See my post on Cutting Failure Down to Size about why.)

I determined that the fan motor, which is not original to this A/C unit, had been wired incorrectly.  The wiring diagram of the original motor is on the maintenance cover and, according to it, the original motor had three wires, but the new motor has four wires.  They had cut off one of the wires, covered it in shrink wrap, and tried to connect the remaining three according to the original wiring diagram.  This may have, in fact, worked at one point (read on), but it was still incorrect.

I removed the shrink wrapped, extended that cut-off wire, and wired the motor in correctly.  I turned the power back on and… it’s still wouldn’t turn.  I had the top cover sitting upside down at this point, which means the motor and fan were exposed.  As a troubleshooting step, I reached over and spun the motor by hand.  Sure enough, it spun up nice and strong.  This told me the motor was good (and that the previous incorrect wiring may have actually worked), but that the starting cap was most likely bad.

Off to Home Depot for a replacement.  They don’t carry them, which I found a little odd until I realized that Home Depot is about building things, not necessarily repairing things.  Fortunately, a helpful employee told us of an A/C supply shop not far away.  We stopped by, grabbed a new cap ($15), and trotted off back to home.  Plugged in the new cap, double-checked all the electrical connections, and threw the power back on.  The new cap did the trick.  We now have working air conditioning.

No, not in the “it was filled with junk and I cleaned it out” kinda way – I found the one I want to build!  I’ve put hours and hours of thought into what I want in a garage, going through revision after revision.  Each time I’d try to find something online that’s close to what I wanted.  I’ve finally found something that’s almost perfect:

24x30ft, large enough for room at the back for a vehicle turned sideways, gambrel roof, and a shed dormer on one side.  The only modifications I’d want to make are:

• Fill the dormer wall with windows
• Move the man door to the left corner, which will place it in front of the stairs to the loft
• Remove the upper floor cargo door
• Remove the right hand garage door
• Move the left garage door to the right about two feet
• Add short windows high up on the long wall that the man door is on
• Dump the cupola. Not a fan of those.

Put a 2-car parking pad in front with a one-car carport on the right side and it’d be perfect. The long side with the dormer will be the south facing wall.  The lower wall will have solar air heaters similar to this one: http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/solar_barn_project.htm

The bay in front of the lone car door will have a flush-mounted BendPak P-6F lift.  I was thinking I’d get a two-post lift, but after thinking it through decided that the lower lift height of the P-6F would suit my needs just fine.  It also doesn’t require a huge ceiling height, which will make the garage less expensive to build.

The lower floor will obviously be shop space for my wood, metal, and automotive work.  There will be no normal windows on the bottom floor, just some short windows high up on the south wall for good natural light.  Having uninterrupted wall space will maximize bench & tool layout possibilities, and be more secure as well.  The upper floor will serve multiple purposes – extra storage, a home gym, relaxing space, and one end of the dormer will be partitioned off for an office.

Here’s the website where I found this plan: http://www.coolhouseplans.com/details.html?pid=chp-43119&FoundID=2&sid=chp1

I’m thinking barn red with a white standing seam metal roof and matching white trim.

Our well pump motor froze overnight. Our first "country" troubleshooting problem. Heh. We put a light bulb shining right onto the motor and put a small space heater in the well house. That unfroze the motor in about 15 minutes, so we have water again. Going to have to beef up the insulation (of which the previous owners left a sufficient supply) and put a small heat lamp on a timer out there.

Better news – it got damn cold last night and the pipes were nowhere near frozen.  The pipes going to and from the well pump were actually a little warmer than ambient temperature. I like knowing that.

In a separate problem, our tankless water heater also seems to be frozen. It’s mounted to the side of the house.  I don’t know how much insulation there is inside the housing, but I imagine it’s not much if any because the unit itself is fairly small.  I’m going to have to come up with a way to keep it from freezing up.

As I posted before, we just bought a house.  We’re in love with the place, which sits on a full acre, but it does need a few things.  Such as a workshop/garage.

We’re hoping to break ground on a shop sometime around April.  I’ve done my share of working on houses, but one thing I’ve never tackled is foundation work.  Specifically, slab foundations.  So, to get some experience with them I’m going to pour a small slab, large enough to park a car on.  It’ll serve as a place to put a car to do suspension alignments.  It’ll need to be perfectly level, but I figure that’ll be part of the learning process.

Over time I want to experiment with several suspension setups on my Protégé.  I can do the suspension work myself, but one thing I can’t do yet is my own alignments.  The level slab will enable me to do those, too.  Once I have the shop built and I can do alignments indoors, we could turn the first slab into the foundation of a good-sized storage shed.

I want to pour the small slab for the experience and to see if we could do a larger foundation ourselves, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one thing we have to have done professionally.