Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT 3rd time's a charm with a 3 car workshop

[loganb]

Looking good

It must have been the warm weather that makes minds think alike.

We were in the mid 50's and that pushed me into an organization day as well. Was able to open the shop doors and get some fresh air for once haha.

I also opened it up and cleaned out a bit! Also did some highly critical tasks like painting garage door keypads to match lol

 

[Boostingaz]

I also opened it up and cleaned out a bit! Also did some highly critical tasks like painting garage door keypads to match lol

Nice! I like that color on the door/trim.

 

[jollygreengiant]

Since we are talking about spending your money....

I would highly recommend that you check out the Makita oil impulse driver. I picked one up a few months ago and I love it! Should have got one a long time ago. The reduced noise level is noticeable right away, and at the end of the day/project it makes a huge difference.

 

[loganb]

Traeger always seemed a little light in total design, it's what pushed me towards carrying the Green Mountain stuff when I was a Parts Manager...and why I have an OG Daniel Boone at my house.

Back then Traeger didn't even offer a digital thermostat, just 3 heat settings if I remember correctly.

It might be a bit newer then as it has an 8 position rotary switch for temps on 25 degree increments. I got a message Sunday afternoon that it was making weird noises and heating up slow again...but I was able to get a replacement auger motor in hand 22 hrs later for 25 bucks....so late lunch this afternoon saw it get replaced and it got up to 250 quickly without any extra noise....so fingers crossed it's fixed till spring.

T
Logan, I have all three M12 Fuel impacts and I think you made the right choice. The older I get, the weaker I get and my stamina is a fraction of what it used to be. That's not a complaint, I'm thrilled to still be walking and talking at any speed for any length of time.

That said, I really appreciate lighter weight tools. Wonderful as they are, the M18 tools are heavy

Honestly I think the biggest competitor to most companies 18v tools are their own 12v stuff. There is nothing I do on a regular basis in my home garage/tinkering shop that I need 18v for, the 12 volts are lighter, smaller and easier to manipulate into tight spaces. For most trades short of full time carpentry or similar.....I'm of the strong opinion that modern 12v stuff is plenty strong enough. Yes there are probably some more speciality tools like inflators and grease guns that the 18v is a superior or only viable option, but for drills, impacts etc....12v wins in my book for the reasons mentioned above!

I forget they make multiples I have the shirt 3/8s Ratchet head. I mean the high torque ones right angle style.

@Bob Heine I'm with you on those I don't use it often I think it was a free tool with another purchase. But damn if it isn't convenient at times especially light duty stuff in tight spaces!

Huh....I didn't realize they made that....hum.....now to justify it

That is a great idea!
Things need to be quickly found.
My brag so far :ring, hello its the wife . she wants to know where something is in my garage. I asked where u standing . Put your hand out waist high. Oh I see it.
2 min to find something

It's incredibly satisfying when we can find it or guide others too it for sure! My father in law was working on his Avalanche and it highlighted to me I had some drawer labels out of date/flat missing the other day so I did some additional labeling to help both me when I'm having a premature senior moment or my wife/others in there with mostly accurate labels on the toolbox. However as I like to put the labels on magnets so they can be easily amused my 3 yr old at times as rearranged them....not

Since we are talking about spending your money....

I would highly recommend that you check out the Makita oil impulse driver. I picked one up a few months ago and I love it! Should have got one a long time ago. The reduced noise level is noticeable right away, and at the end of the day/project it makes a huge difference.

I've looked at those but never actually used one of the oil impulse units...that much better huh? Going to have to keep my eye out for a sale on those....thanks for chiming in from the great snowy north!

 

[loganb]

Nice! I like that color on the door/trim.

Thanks! I'd highlight my wife for the color choice credit...but alas it wasn't her but what prior owner painted it in 2018-ish. We're really happy with the color...big improvement over what it was before and added benefit there was 2 or so gallons in the basement so I had enough paint to get both doors and trim painted without buying more!

 

[Blackbyrd]

Yeah they don't have the same output as your new stubby though. Feel like they would be handy on brakes and suspension work.

 

[loganb]

Well I got vandalized over night

 

[Boostingaz]

Well I got vandalized over night

Damn Hooligan's!! Hope you got them on camera.

Happy 40!!!

 

[OutlawDrifter]

Well, happy birthday! Welcome to the 4th decade!

 

[a_thiel24]

Happy birthday Logan!

 

[fouckhest]

Happy Birthday!

 

[Atlascycle]

Happy Birthday Logan!!

 

[zanyad]

Happy birthday!

 

[XJSuperman]

Happy birthday

 

[bj383ss]

Oh boy...stock up on some tylenol and advil.

Bret

 

[madison069]

Ibuprofen is your friend in the 40’s old man! Happy Birthday! I’ve been in my 40’s for three years and it’s not bad, but you might ache a little in the knees, back, shoulder, feet, neck, hands, and head….. ok, the whole body!!!

 

[iced98lx]

Woot Woot, happy birthday old man!

 

[legenddc]

Happy Birthday!!!

 

[Blackbyrd]

Hahaha happy birthday welcome to the 40's

 

[Bob Heine]

Happy Birthday Logan!
Good grief, you were born the year I turned 40!

 

[RickP]

Happy birthday Logan!
(are you officially an old fart now?)

 

[bugnut]

Looks great, Happy Birthday!

 

[68400BIRD]

Happy Birth Day!!!! Hope it’s a great weekend.

 

[Bob Heine]

(are you officially an old fart now?)

Rick, I think an AARP card officially marks that milestone.

 

[ODIS]

Happy Birthday! Celebrate Every Day!

 

[tj675]

Happy Birthday

 

[Trapps]

Happy Birthday, Logan!!!

 

[RickP]

Rick, I think an AARP card officially marks that milestone.

Thanks Bob, that helps clear up my confusion!

(so I guess you're saying my official club membership has to wait a couple more years? drat, I thought I was already in...)

 

[loganb]

Catch up time....

Thanks all for the birthday wishes! Much appreciated, even if the family did vandalize my house and office a bit...



I was born in an ice storm so it was fitting there was one on my birthday where I lived....made for some interesting driving Friday night

Fortunately we had supper planned about 1.5 miles away from us so wife and I were able to get out there as grandparents watched the kids




Got a quick industrial vacation



That's Golden, CO area...and yes I at least saw the Coors facility:



But I didn't go in. I was there for some on site support for work, landed around 7am and was back in the air at 4:45 so whirlwind trip but successful which is what matters....now for the expense report and finish the report...boo.

Otherwise aside from holiday stuff, family stuff and some isolated illness haven't had much time for garage projects...but hopefully getting some project time this weekend....fingers crossed.

 

[OutlawDrifter]

Coors Banquet directly from the brewery is amazing...now I need to go find a 6 pack of stubbies. Steak and tater looks great!

 

[loganb]

Coors Banquet directly from the brewery is amazing...now I need to go find a 6 pack of stubbies. Steak and tater looks great!

I must admit.....I've only been in the brewery once and pretty sure I was in middle school so wasn't able to partake in the good stuff in the tasting room at the end! I was going to try and have a beer at the airport, but flight issues gave me about 10 minutes at the gate before I boarded so that didn't happen either. Guess I will have to make stopping there intentional on my next trip!

On the garage front....not much has happened there the last couple days

I did get the Volvo underside treated for winter by a local company a week or two ago...I would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone in the area:

Gottsch's Goo – Omaha's Premier Vehicle Protection Specialists

Gottsch's Goo protects vehicles in Omaha with rustproofing, ceramic coating, truck bed lining, detailing, and more – if it drives, we can protect it!

www.gottschsgoo.com

Top notch service, great communication, sent numerous pictures of the work and even gave me some options on some improvements they could offer for drying out a foam liner behind the front wheel well liners if they could have it overnight. Top notch and would recommend and will use again! In good news the Volvo is driving a bit smoother and a couple random engine area noises are gone, so the work in November wasn't for nothing. Going to try and change the oil this week then I can put the lower air spoiler/airdam/annoying cowl plastic shield back on.

On the house front, the transition of dumb switches to marginally intelligent and hackable wifi connected switches is maybe nearing a close. I've got most of the switches I wanted to swap over done for this first batch. Ended up installing (3) Lutron Caseta dimmer switches as they're the only ones I'm aware of that can do what I wanted without a neutral wire required as my 3 ways on the main level all brought power in at the switch and didn't run neutrals to a switch box. It's a bit spendier of a solution at about $75 per 3 way vs $30 for the Kasa switches but it's done and they're working. Now to figure out some of the schedules and automation/routines to incorporate which is why I wanted to do it in the first place. For example: automatically turning on the kitchen lights at a low brightness Oct thru March at 6:15 am so I'm not walking thru there in the dark

Did have to pull out the 3D printer to avoid a trip to the big box store for this mounting plate to mount the wireless "Pico Remote" for the Caseta switch which functions as your remote switch in 3/4/5 way etc configurations.





Model link: https://www.printables.com/model/535606-lutron-caseta-pico-remote-wall-plate-bracket/comments

Printed on the A1, black PLA as it was loaded. 2 hour print time for the pair on a .2 nozzle with .14 layer height, about 30 grams of material in each so far cheaper than the $8 bucks each.

I'm currently looking at no "formal" work days this week between time off and holiday so going to try and make a bit of garage tool progress when I can. My brother picked up a fiber laser thru his side hustle biz and been sending pics which is making me get the itch to get my CO2 laser lens mirror/upgrade finished....then I've also got dust collection automation to start(buying components doesn't count as starting, some random projects out there to finish and a CNC frame which needs significant work to get it functioning....so I've got plenty I should be working on. Let's see if I can get 1 machine going...at least partly?

 

[nicholam77]

Ended up installing (3) Lutron Caseta dimmer switches as they're the only ones I'm aware of that can do what I wanted without a neutral wire required as my 3 ways on the main level all brought power in at the switch and didn't run neutrals to a switch box.

Caseta is really good stuff. I personally don't have any because I went mostly Z-wave in-wall switches before I realized Caseta was a good option, and I didn't want another hub. They are on the expensive side, but Lutron has been in the lighting automation game for so long they really have good products, and niche products (like no neutral options) that a lot of other smaller brands don't offer.

Lutron also integrates well with most 3rd party platforms. The Pico switches are neat, too. If you link them with Home Assistant for example, you can use them for anything. Lights, music, scenes, routines, whatever you want to assign to any of the buttons you can. Adds a ton of convenience when you can have a remote switch control your lights, and fan, and music all from the same fixture, and you can stick it anywhere you want.

Now that you have at least two product lines (Kasa + Caseta) my spidey sense tells me a Home Assistant installation might come sooner that later

Those little convenience automations (like dim kitchen lights in the morning) sound so silly but after you have a bunch set up, if they get taken away due to an outage or something it's really felt.

---

Good luck with your projects over 'break', and merry Logan!

 

[Swanny1953]

Caseta is really good stuff. I personally don't have any because I went mostly Z-wave in-wall switches before I realized Caseta was a good option, and I didn't want another hub. They are on the expensive side, but Lutron has been in the lighting automation game for so long they really have good products, and niche products (like no neutral options) that a lot of other smaller brands don't offer.

Lutron also integrates well with most 3rd party platforms. The Pico switches are neat, too. If you link them with Home Assistant for example, you can use them for anything. Lights, music, scenes, routines, whatever you want to assign to any of the buttons you can. Adds a ton of convenience when you can have a remote switch control your lights, and fan, and music all from the same fixture, and you can stick it anywhere you want.

Now that you have at least two product lines (Kasa + Caseta) my spidey sense tells me a Home Assistant installation might come sooner that later

Those little convenience automations (like dim kitchen lights in the morning) sound so silly but after you have a bunch set up, if they get taken away due to an outage or something it's really felt.

---

Good luck with your projects over 'break', and merry Logan!

I'll second recommendations for Caseta stuff. We had some smart lighting installed when we first moved into the new house in 2016, and have since added even more switches here. I have also done most of the common area lighting at the lake house. With the ability to set up scenes, it's really easy to get the lighting set for a movie vs. everyday lighting (push a single button), and I have the goodnight scene set to turn the master bedroom lights on while everything else is turning off. I have found setup to be very easy as well.

 

[Boostingaz]

Merry Christmas my friend!

 

[Blackbyrd]

Caseta is really good stuff. I personally don't have any because I went mostly Z-wave in-wall switches before I realized Caseta was a good option, and I didn't want another hub. They are on the expensive side, but Lutron has been in the lighting automation game for so long they really have good products, and niche products (like no neutral options) that a lot of other smaller brands don't offer.

Lutron also integrates well with most 3rd party platforms. The Pico switches are neat, too. If you link them with Home Assistant for example, you can use them for anything. Lights, music, scenes, routines, whatever you want to assign to any of the buttons you can. Adds a ton of convenience when you can have a remote switch control your lights, and fan, and music all from the same fixture, and you can stick it anywhere you want.

Now that you have at least two product lines (Kasa + Caseta) my spidey sense tells me a Home Assistant installation might come sooner that later

Those little convenience automations (like dim kitchen lights in the morning) sound so silly but after you have a bunch set up, if they get taken away due to an outage or something it's really felt.

---

Good luck with your projects over 'break', and merry Logan!

Agree on the light setting things sounding silly, but i have almost the entire main floor on hue lights. Use alexa to control it all. when my son was an infant I used a routine to get him ready for bed, turned the living room a dim blue while he snuggled to get him asleep.

Seems silly, but from there it expanded to a ton of different lights and conveniences.

 

[loganb]

Caseta is really good stuff. I personally don't have any because I went mostly Z-wave in-wall switches before I realized Caseta was a good option, and I didn't want another hub. They are on the expensive side, but Lutron has been in the lighting automation game for so long they really have good products, and niche products (like no neutral options) that a lot of other smaller brands don't offer.

Lutron also integrates well with most 3rd party platforms. The Pico switches are neat, too. If you link them with Home Assistant for example, you can use them for anything. Lights, music, scenes, routines, whatever you want to assign to any of the buttons you can. Adds a ton of convenience when you can have a remote switch control your lights, and fan, and music all from the same fixture, and you can stick it anywhere you want.

Now that you have at least two product lines (Kasa + Caseta) my spidey sense tells me a Home Assistant installation might come sooner that later

Those little convenience automations (like dim kitchen lights in the morning) sound so silly but after you have a bunch set up, if they get taken away due to an outage or something it's really felt.

---

Good luck with your projects over 'break', and merry Logan!

I completely agree sir...Home Assistant is probably coming sooner than later lol. I had the Caseta with the bridge for a couple switches in the Chicago house and never put it back up here till recently....so the entry cost was a bit lower with already having a bridge and some switches/remotes to reuse.

I'm already liking some of the basic "convenience" things the new switches can do. For example the passage/entryway off the garage into the house is a bit dark and when entering at night can be stumbly, especially with little kids sometimes leading the way. But replacing the switch with a motion sensor that is right in the path of the door swing so as soon as the door starts to open the lights come on, but only between 5pm and midnight and at 50% brightness has made coming into the house more civilized when lights just work. Next is to get it to then trigger some other lights farther into the house based on that motion....then probably some automation/routines based on geofencing and the garage door closing from us returning to run a "welcome home" routine etc....that will be a bit though. The wife was initially skeptical of the work, but has at least stopped laughing at it lol

One of the common complaints/gripes I hear about HA is on documentation, or lack of accurate/current documentation. Any places you'd suggest to start my learning journey?

Merry Christmas my friend!

Thank you Boostin! Hopefully your kids get the white stuff all over for their 1st Christmas at the new home!.

I'll second recommendations for Caseta stuff. We had some smart lighting installed when we first moved into the new house in 2016, and have since added even more switches here. I have also done most of the common area lighting at the lake house. With the ability to set up scenes, it's really easy to get the lighting set for a movie vs. everyday lighting (push a single button), and I have the goodnight scene set to turn the master bedroom lights on while everything else is turning off. I have found setup to be very easy as well.

Thanks for jumping in and sharing Gary! If i'm honest here(don't tell the wife)....the lights for the big TV in the basement (that we rarely watch) is what really drove this to start. 5 different switches in 3 locations across the basement control the lights that impact the TV area and they're just generally a pain to find the right one, turn it back off when you forget etc. So replacing all those to get on smart switches so I could have single button control on a scene/routine etc started things...then I couldn't not do it on the main floor....right? Now I've got the switches done...but nothing after that....baby steps!

Agree on the light setting things sounding silly, but i have almost the entire main floor on hue lights. Use alexa to control it all. when my son was an infant I used a routine to get him ready for bed, turned the living room a dim blue while he snuggled to get him asleep.

Seems silly, but from there it expanded to a ton of different lights and conveniences.

The more I play with it, the more it's only silly until you experience what it can do....so far it's still good that Alexa can't understand the 3 yr old well other than to say "stop timer"....the 6 yr old has it figured out pretty well. I really want to get the fireplace(gas log with a low voltage switch for the gas valve) but haven't found a cheap enough alexa/google home compatible relay and a bit skittish on voice activated control on the fireplace. But they can reach the physical switch to flip it on and off and they know they're not to do it unless we tell them it's ok....so I'm probably overthinking that one

 

[loganb]

Got to put the new M12 stubby impact to work



Family member called with nail in a sidewall in a parking lot and they're not physically able to change it themselves and too late to drive it to a shop. So stubby, floorjack and a couple blocks for tire chocks and off I went. Easy swap then rewarded myself with a new set of impact 3/8 drive metric deep well sockets

 

[zanyad]

Merry Christmas, @loganb!

 

[jon72vega]

loganb,
Merry Christmas from my family to you and yours!
I'm always interested to see what you have been up to on your thread!

 

[legenddc]

Merry Christmas!