Basement stairs that don't suck

 One of the big projects that's continually gotten delayed is installing finish stair treads and risers. We've been using the original 2x12 rough lumber installed by the framers.

The original stair treads were 2x12 standard dimensional lumber installed by the framers. They were covered in drywall spray and paint, and some of them had cracked. To make them a little more bearable, we had covered some of them with rubber protectors (which my wife hated).

As I researched buying finish stair treads online, I realized that they are expensive and also the wrong dimension, usually 1" to 1.25" thick. I needed 1.5" finish stock to match the rise of the lumber treads. After looking around online and going in to the exotic lumber store in Seattle to price their stock, I realized I needed a different solution. Once again, HomeDepot came through. I found 10 foot butcher block counter tops made out of Acacia much less expensive. Also, in keeping with my strategy of making things just a little bit "different", I felt like these would be more original and beautiful. 

I cut the countertops in to 40 inch sections, then ripped each section to 11.5" to match the dimensions of the rough treads. 

For the risers, I decided to go with 1/4" thick, black HDPE (high density polyyethylene), ordered from ePlastics. I ordered a full sheet and paid for them to cut it in to riser-sizes. 49 cuts out of the sheet only cost an additional $30 to the order. About $235 total landed cost for the risers -- well worth it. 

The bigger task was removing the existing treads and risers. The framers got a little carried away with their air nailer on some treads and risers -- 5 nails through a tread into a tringer...! Needless to say, tearing off the treads and risers was an exhausting 5 hour job.

The first tread and riser removed.

6 treads and risers removed.

All treads and risers removed.

During the tear out, some of the corners forming some of the steps on the stringers broke off. I had to glue-and-screw them. I then temporarily screwed back on each tread with a single screw to temporarily keep it in place until the new treads could be installed. 

The nails and screws that came out during the tearout.

The tools required for the tearout.

I got Rudy's help to finish them with a couple clear coats of water-based eurethane. Applying the eurethan sealer was done over 2 weekends. 

After a second coat of eurethane, I stacked them to dry in the garage.

Acacia stair treads drying in the garage.

I purchased black, flathead screws for the risers, and larger black structural screws for the treads. 

View from the top level of the finished stair treads.

View from the basement of the finished stair treads.

Overall, pretty please with the result. And gratified to have that project out of the way. Applying the finish/sealer to the treads and the tearout happened on 2 Saturdays. Then installation of the new treads and risers took portions of three days. Over about a month period, culminating on July 1st.

Snow Season Summary 2022-23

The end-of-season charts showing snow on the ground near KnArrow Haus using data from Northwest Avalance Center (nwac.us). Both of these charts use the same data - the white line shows the accumulated snow on the ground.

It was what I'd characterize as a statistically average snowfall season. And the meltout occured a little earlier than average due to warmer-than-average weather.

Adding a Backup Water Supply

The community water system is old. The main system (well, tank and pumps) is only about 20 years old, but the pipes in the groud that connect all the homes are over 50 years old. Even when no one is using any water, the system leaks a couple gallons a minute. 

Every year, sometimes several times a year, there's a bigger leak somewhere in the system requing the pressure pumps be turned off until the leak can be found, isolated, and fixed. Last year it was a leak on a cabin in Division 1, and later sink in a cabin in Division 2.  This year it was a brand new connection to a cabin under construction. Whatever the reason, when the pressure pumps are turned off, water pressure to KnArrow Haus drops to a trickle. Not very useful if you want to take a shower, run the dishwasher, or flush a toilet. 

After a several-week pressure outage last year, one of the long-time neighbors just down the hill showed me the backup tank and system he designed and installed many years ago to the combat the problem. I took videos and pictures of his system, then spent a few weeks thinking about and designing my system. Putting the system in was my Summer 2022 cabin project.

Design for KnArrow Haus backup tank and pressure pump.
I used this to build my shopping list.

The system incorporates a water tank and a pressure pump to supply water if the system pressure is low or off. The tank automatically fills, allowing the backup tank to do what I call "a lazy fill" when the pressure is low. A auxiliary water pump provides pressures the system on-demand, but only when the main system pressure is low. When the main system pressure is high, the pump never turns on.

I can drain the whole house's system in to the tank if needed. And we also get the added benefit that we can close the main shutoff to the house when we leave but still run the dishwasher before we walk out the door.  If the house were to spring a leak or burst a pipe while we're gone, only the water in the tank would spill in to the house, but no more.

The water shutoff and manifold before adding the backup system

Preparing the tank shutoff

The fill valve for the tank is essentially a toilet-style float valve, only bigger. Instead of the typical half-inch flow, it is a one-inch valve designed for larger tanks so they can fill quickly. 

Through-fitting with shutoff installed at top of tank

Measuring the space between the tank and washing machine

Installing the flexible connecting fittings to the pressure pump

The drain valve at the bottom of the tank connects to the pressure pump,
and it has a shutoff tee so the tank can be drained if needed

I built a small bench from scrap wood to raise the pressure pump off the floor

View to the tank drain valve. I put a hose fitting on the end

Doing a tight loop with one inch PEX isn't very easy.
This was the final connection I made to the system.

The new backup system all plumbed in a ready for service.

Of course, with every new system it seems like there's always something that fails.  In my case, there were actually 2 things that failed after connecting it all up at the end of the Summer. 

The first failure was one of the two sharkbite pressure valves. One had a slow drip that I could never get to fully seal. I tried disconnecting and reseating it several times, and even tried cleaning up the end of the PEX pipe. Nothing work so I simply removed it and replaced it with PEX. I cannot check the pressure of the outside water system now, but it's not a major loss. 

The second failure was the through-hull fitting at the top of the tank. About a month ago, right after we turned on the main to the house, Katie told me water was dripping all over the floor. I ran downstairs and realized the connection through the top of the tank had broken.

The through-hull fitting at the top of the tank that broke. 
In this picture you can see the shutoff valve on top of the tank
that I had to fish out form the bottom.

The brass fitting through the tank snapped in half. Probably because I overtightened it. 

The new nylon fitting I bought required a much bigger hole in the tank

New through-hull fitting connected. System restored.

Now that everything is back and restored to working condition, I've reevaluated what else can go wrong. The one weakness in the entire design that I can think is the float valve itself could fail. If for some reason it were to fail meaning "not shut off" -- which would only happen while we are there with the main water turned on to the house -- it could cause the tank to overfill and leak water all over the basement floor. Again, this would only happen while were are there with the water turned on. There is no drain in the basement floor...

I guess you'll hear from me again on this subject if/when that happens.

The calm after the storm

Well, this blog has fallen in to disrepair. Too much time. Too little motivation...  

Here's a start at catching things up: This past weekend was our first chance to overnight at KnArrow Haus since we just before New Years. 

Had a chance to help out a Yodelin neighbor this past weekend. They had a contractor scheduled for a day job who came in with a trailer full of lumber, insulation, and tools. The road from the freeway to the cabin is covered in 4 to 5 feet of snow, but it has packed and consolidated over the past few weeks. So we hooked the trailer up to Schneewagen and drove in -- no problems.

Always feels good to use Schneewagen for more than a glorified golf cart.

For those paying attention during January, we had a record-breaking snow event that killed power and shut down the freeway for more than a week. Not only did it snow over 4ft in about 24 hours, but hyper cold temperatures followed by an "atmostpheric river" came in dumping rain. 

The record-breaking snow followed by the atmostpheric river are clear shown by the peak in January.

I was seriously stressed knowing there was no heat and no ability to get up there to do anything about it. The power came on for a few hours after a day, then went back out for another handful of days -- over a week in total. The freeway from both the East and West sides of the pass was closed even longer.

Thankfully, KnArrow Haus came through with flying colors. No frozen pipes. I was also worried about the Starlink, since it wasn't able to melt the snow. And I knew there was 5 or 6 feet of snow on the roof that would shed off "spectacularly" at some point.  

After the power came on, the cabin rebooted and all my smart systems came back. Looks like the temperature had gotten down to 40 degrees inside the cabin -- cold, but not freezing!

When the freeway finally opened up, the entire neighborhood community scrambled to get up there to dig out and survey the damage. 

A neighbor's snowtracked Suzuki after the snowfall. 

Shoveling out Schneewagen after the snow event.

Thankfully, the snow shed off the roof without tearing anything off. Some of my neighbors were not as lucky. The only post-event damage I can find is that the snow hood that sheds the snow around the chimney appears a little "wilted" on one side -- an easy fix this Summer. 

KnArrow Haus came through the snow event in flying colors.

Our biggest problem right now is that Schneewagen has gotten a little cantankerous starting in very cold weather. I did the obvious things like replace the battery. But on very cold mornings (below ~10F degrees), it avoids starting. I've resorted to plugging in a battery tender overnight when it's parked at KnArrow Haus, which seems to have ameliorated the issue for now.

Starlink Install

The only Internet option available to us for the last year has been T-Mobile home Internet. It's been barely adequate-to-unusable.  For the most part it's about 5 Mbps down / 1 Mpbs up, although it seems to have improved more recently. The problem is that it seems to cut-out almost entirely at unpredicatable times, especially when we're trying to watch movies in the evening. And when there are weekend crowds at Stevens Pass. 

The Home LTE hotspot is located in the bunk room window on the second floor -- a less than ideal location, since the Google Mesh and Lutron controllers are sitting next to it in the window sill. I was able to sign-up for the Starlink beta in April, and they finally green-lighted me in September. The dish arrived 2 weeks ago. 

Starlink requires a clear view of a fairly wide section of the sky, especially to the north. KnArrow Haus is surrounded by mountains to the North and South, and a handful of tall trees to the North, South and West. I realized pretty quickly it would need to be mounted sturdily above the roof line and away from snow shedding events. 

Because I couldn't find a ready-made bracket, I made my own. After trip to Everett Steel and then to Karlin's Homemade Old-fashioned Rootbeer and Amature Welding Emporium I was on my way with an L-shaped, steel pole to bolt to the lower roof beam on the front of the house. 

Custom Starlink mounting pole.

I spent an afternoon drilling holes and grinding/smoothing the welds; then a couple coats of black paint. Unfortunately, a neighbor's 34' ladder ladder just wasn't quite tall enough to reach the roof...

With some help from a friend, I procured a 40' ladder and had him haul it up to the cabin on the weekend. I'm planning to store the ladder on the side of KnArrow Haus with a locking bracket so that we can use the ladder whenever we need it without it "walking off."

What follows are the pictures of the 40' ladder and our creative efforts to mount the post bracket and attach the Starlink satellite dish to it.

Eyeballing the task at hand.

Colin heading up with Abbie, Richard and myself steadying the ladder.

With one bolt securing the bracket to the beam,
rotating it upright proved more involved than
we anticipated, especially at the dizzying heights.
Colin's brother was on the roof pulling on the rope.

Pic taken inside the bunkroom.

The post mounted, we gently hauled
the Starlink dish up on a line.

Colin anchored the top of the ladder to the beam
with some webbing. Then he anchored himself in his
climbing harness to the ladder so that he could lean
back comfortably to set the dish on top of the pole. 

The finished installation. 

For now, I let the cable hang down and ran it under the garage door. Getting it running couldn't have been easier. Plug in the cable from the dish to the power box, then plug the box in to the wall, and wait a few minutes. The Starlink dish automatically points itself skyward, and starts to deliver bandwidth after about 10 minutes, which gradually improved over the next 15 minutes. 

In the monitoring app, we didn't experience any outages longer than a second, but I'll have to wait for at least 12 hours to figure out if the the trees are out of the field of service enough that it will be reliable long-term.

I don't think the Starlink dish improves the KnArrow Haus aesthetic much, but it definitely improves the bandwidth. Movies in hi-def from now on...

Bandwidth test after about 15 minutes.

Next week I will run the cable and secure it down the side of the house and in to the laundry/utility room.  Unfortunately, the conduit I ran to route Internet Cat-5 cable from the outside in to the utility room is only half-inch, and the Starlink cable needs a 3/4" hole... I'll have to figure out a new route in to the laundry room through the garage.

Garage door cleanup

The garage door has been asking for some final trim for a while now. I had a few pieces of Ipe' left over that I was able to use, and literally just enough screws to get all the boards attached. 

Garage door trimmed in ipe'.

After the drywall was installed 2 years ago, I realized I'd forgotten to insulate above the garage door so I sprayed some foam in. It was November and cold when I did that, and the foam lay dormant over the winter. Then when things warmed up, the spray foam expanded and bent the drywall out so that it prevented the garage door from opening. We've been limping by for a year now by pulling on the top of the door before pulling up.

I pulled off the drywall above the garage door and sawed off the excess foam.

Spray foam sawed off above garage door.

Pine installed over the foam above the garage door.

I have some blue pine left over from the interior window walls and basement ceilings that worked nicely to cover the insulation above the door. The garage door opens without coaxing now. Now I just need to wash down the outside -- it's filthy, dusty. 

Fireplace mantel and speaker bar

Installing the fireplace mantel was more work than I was hoping. I bought one of the fany new floating shelf brackets that supposed to be easy to install and hold over 200 lbs. The mantel isn't that heavy, but I wanted to make sure it was stable. 

After sanding and finishing the exterior, I proceeded to route out the back to receive the male part of the bracket. That was a lot of work. An inch wide and three-quarters of an inch deep. The female bracket on the wall also needed to be perfectly straight on the wall. It took several attempts for Abbie, Colin and me wrestling to get it on.

Fireplace mantel and speaker installed.

Sideview of the floating mantel.

I angle trimmed and sanded the end of the mantel to prevent anyone coming down the stairs from getting caught up on it -- it's right at an adolescent head height. 

While I was at it, I got a Samsung speaker bar with subwoofer. The TV's sound just wasn't quite sufficient.

Summer Maintenance

Summer is the time to get all the maintenance stuff done. Schneewagen was in desparate need of an oil change, and the transmission has been causing problems. not getting in to gear smoothly. I borrowed a trailer from one friend, a trailer hitch from another friend, and a pickup truck from a third friend to retrieve Schneewagen and bring it to the lowlands for service.

Retrieving Schneewagen for service in the lowlands.

It turns out that the oil change fixed the transmission issues as well. Because its a wet transmission and the snow tracks take extra effort to turn, they encouraged me to change the oil more frequently. Problem solved. Set for the winter. (Thanks to friends.)