A working shower is a requirement for an occupancy permit. Since when is the ability to take a shower a life or death situation? Arguing with the building inspector, however, might be.
When we poured the concrete slab, which will be the finished floor, the idea was to have a shower floor with a smooth transition and no curb between the shower and the main bathroom floor. To make that happen, the area where the shower was to be installed should have been blocked off and filled in later. Since it was all installed at the same level, we are stuck with building a shower pan on top of the concrete slab with some sort of curb, or transition between the shower and the main floor.
I had to level the floor area around the drain. The drywall mud and tape over the nail holes and drywall joints was all taken off before applying the waterproofing. (rookie mistake)
For the pan, we decided to use a prefabricated system. This one, made by Schluter, is sold everywhere and is almost idiot proof (perfect for the home owner DIY customer)
Starting with the Schluter shower pan.
The walls are made waterproof with the Schluter membrane, and all the seams and joints are sealed with specially made pieces. The drain is made to be integrated with the system.
Schluter membrane installed. I did the walls before the floor because I didn’t want to wreck the shower pan by walking all over it.Installing the pan I used quite a bit of thin-set to fill in around the drain area and I weighted it down with some bags of mortar until it cured.
We decided to install the floor tile first, a decision some professionals may not agree with. But what do they know?
Dry fitting the floor tile After dry fitting, the tile is spread out the way it needs to be installed because once the thin-set is mixed and placed there is not a lot of time to fuck around. Notice how the tiles left out for the drain align perfectly. Beginners luck.Figuring the layout took at least as much time as actually installing the tile.It’s a fucking shower, with hot and cold water, as the final occupancy permit requires.
Heat and a shower are two of the requirements for an occupancy permit. This house will have a combination boiler providing hot water to the heating pipes embedded in the concrete slab and hot water to the domestic hot water supply. The wall mounted boiler weighs 120 pounds, or so. Trying to lift it so that the mounting points align with the little mounting bracket, which is overhead, proved to be not only difficult, but downright dangerous. With a little bit of old people engineering, and a pulley from Harbor Freight, we were able to fashion this redneck contraption.
Square Body Chevy comes in handy.We still needed to lower it, then put our shoulders into it to get it to seat in the bracket.All the plumbing is connected.
The plumber made the final connections to the pump panel. Long story short, the central heating (all the plastic pipe embedded in the concrete slab) works. The domestic hot water does not. This SNAFU will be worked out eventually. Meanwhile it is quite aggravating.
Update:
The domestic hot water function does work. The boiler looks for .5 GPM flow before turning on the flame. The aerator in our chosen faucet restricted the flow so much that the boiler wouldn’t fire. Pulling out the guts of the aerator allowed for enough flow for the boiler to recognize.
I broke my leg in a snow skiing accident when I was 15 years old. This was in 1969. While sitting around the house I found out about the Herter’s catalog. I have no idea how I was able to get my hands on one, but I would thumb through every page and imagine what I might order. At the back of the book, there was a table where I could pencil in the item description, item quantity, item price, and total price. Then I could tear the page out of the book, fold it to fit in an envelope, along with a check for payment, and send it into the ether. Some time later, a package would arrive.
At the time, I was fascinated by tying flies for fishing. I’m not even sure I had ever fished with a fly rod before then. Herter’s had everything: grizzly hackle, peacock herl, vices, chenille, glue, tying thread, deer hair, turkey wings.
55 years later, I still have these.
It was the mystery that fascinated me. The words and the materials seemed as exotic, to a Montana boy, as did Minnesota.
Obviously, I sent an order for everything I could possibly need in order to tie flies. With a little practice, I was able to convince a fly fishing shop in Montana to contract me to tie flies for sale in their store. I tied hundreds of “Joe’s Hoppers” for them. How they were able to sell them was not my problem.
Now, in 2024, when I want to buy something, I just open up my little TV monitor (which folds up to the size of a food chopping block, and which magically connects to the ether) look at every angle of every item I am interested in, tell the TV monitor to charge my bank account (don’t worry about it) for the item(s). From then on, I am able to track my order and know exactly where it is and when it will arrive. Fucking amazing. Almost always, the items show up as predicted. Fucking amazing.
Any business selling a commodity product needs a robust, easy to use, website with a shopping cart function. This brings me to the reason for this post. From 2004 to 2017 we owned specialty retail bicycle shops. More specifically, one from 2004 to 2010, and then another one from 2010 to 2017. The first shop failed spectacularly. I mean super-nova spectacular. Part of the reason was my ineptitude at working in retail. The other part is that W., the worst president in my lifetime, presided over the global economic meltdown of 2008. Because he was, and is, dumb as a barrel of Texas oil.
The bike, so called, “industry” hated the idea of selling on line. There was a strong backlash about selling anything related to bicycling on the interwebs. All of the wholesale distributors of bikes and bike accessories forbade selling on the internet. They would also not do business with you if you did not have a storefront.
Bike Touring News was born out of frustration and desperation. Frustration that the bike industry would not accept that people actually bought things online. Desperation came from desperation.
The business model was to offer products not available on the local, racer-centric scene. Another essential part of the model was to educate consumers about how they might use what we sold.
When shopping online for products not available in the local market we look for an easy to use website, with informative content, and with a simple and secure checkout.
