South Central Oklahoma Farmhouse

[Pat]

Here is a shot of the fans with lights under the back porch.

[Pat]

There is a "FLOWER" bed atop the retaining wall just south of the sitting room off of the master bedroom. Here are the "FLOWERS" we planted (AKA peppers and tomatos.)

Well, they did have flowers! They aso had two of the largest fatest tomato worms that I have ever seen. They met with an unfortunate accident.

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[egon]

Tomatoe plants and the Doctor told me not to eat tomatoes!! [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

Egon

[egon]

See -- there are advantages to being short! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon

[donh]

Pat, I chose the same light, with flourescent bulbs, for my current house as an experiement before I put up several in the house we will be building. I love the look, and they are sufficiently "outdoor proof" that I'm not worried about them in South Florida! However, I'm not thrilled with the amount of light from the flourescent bulbs, and may look for another solution for the new house. Also, I tried the add-on remote control, and it is really a hit-or-miss operation. The fan works pretty good with the remote, but the flourescent lights don't like the remote, and of course, they don't dim with the dimmer control on the remote.

Bottom line: mixed review. If I can get the same thing, or similar, with incandescent bulbs, that's the way I'll go.

[Pat]

Don, I wanted lower light so should be happy with these fluorescent units. The other day we had hundreds of swallows perched in the back yard and many on the garage roof (45 degree angle.) Bunches of them were flying a holding racetrack route behind the house. The circuit included flying within a foot of the windows at the back porch. Between aerial demonstrations many of them perched on those fans until I hit the switch. It didn't take them long to look for another perch.

I'd not try to dim CFL or regular ballast type fluorescent (transformer or solid state inverter ballast) lamps as you can cause component failure (potential fire.) There are dimable fluorescent ballasts but they are still quite expensive. The best dimable deal I've seen are retrofit kits that Lowe's had. It let you change out the tungsten filament bulbs in can lights to CFL (4 pin plug in type.) These were made to be dimable with a standard lamp dimmer. They were $40/each.

You could always use these same fans but change out the light kits. The fans are much more aerodynamically efficient than the plain tilted flat blade types.

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[Pat]

So... Here is some of what has been keeping me off the streets, out of bars, and away from strange women.............

This first shot is a window sill that I did. I put a layer of fiber cement Hardy backer board down with glue and nails over the rough wood sill. Then mastic and the same porceline tile as on the floor of the room. The wood trim was customized from a scrap of red oak crown mold. It is undercut in back so it wraps the ugly cut ends of the tile.

I used tile scraps that were good on three sides and scribed a line with a 1" diamond blade in a Dremel tool and broke then on the line. Well 2 out of 3 wasn't bad. One had to be chipped at for a while with a crescent wrench.

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[Pat]

Here is a shot of the water filter area. So far I have two filters. the smaller one has a 200 mesh screen and is clear plastic so you can see when it has accumulated sand and the like. You then hold a bucket under it and briefly open the ball valve. there is a conveniently close drain but I didn't bother to plum the valve's output to it.

The larger filter gets the water after the screen filter. I intended for the screen filter to "run interference" for the finer replaceable cartridge filter and lengthen the service life of the cartridges.

The two vertical pipes on the right are the two water sources. One is rural water (like city water but in the country) and the other is our well. To switch sources you close a valve, move the connecton from one to the other and open the other valve. It is illegal to be able to have both sources cross connected hence the way the change is made.

I gave the OSB a coat of paint because it is in a water handling area (next to water heater, possible bost pump location, etc. I sealed the tops of the OSB with caulk to prevent "end grain wetting."

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Pat]

This is one of the two fans in the sun room. Even though my wife picked a frily girlie fan it pumps air suprisingly well.

The light bulbs are CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) and only use 7 Watts each while providing the light of a 40 Watt incandescent.

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[Pat]

Here is the range hood above the new range. This is a 5 burner gas stove top with 2 electric ovens side by side below. It was dead simple to change the orifices to convert it from natural gas to propane and swap a part in the regulator end for end. the range hood will work swell for the back three burners but I am considering options for modifying it to work better for the front two burners.
the range hood has two blowers, one brings in outside air and the other exhausts air to the outside. The plan is to pump out slightly more air than is brought in. The air being exhausted is mostly not conditioned air so the fairly strong hood doesn't put a large load on the A/C.

Again I used porceline tile as back and side splashes as it is cleanable and doesn't absorb anything.

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