Getting Steamed Up

I've got a fair bit of tile in my house. In particular the kitchen and the bike nook are covered in a tile designed to look like wood (why?), and those tiles are naturally separated by grout, which naturally looks pretty disgusting.

Steam cleaning is supposed to be pretty good on grout though, so let's give it a try.

I got this model because it has a continuous feed pump that will inject water into a small boiler chamber. Most cheaper steam cleaners just work like a kettle, boiling an entire pressure vessel of water all at once, which takes forever, and can't be refilled while in use.

But not this one. It heats up quickly, and you can pour in more tap water at any time.

So let's do a little before-and-after test on this grimy looking patch of grout.

It sure looks filthy. But after a quick steam clean it looks...

A little better? I guess? Still not great.

Hmm, let's try some science.

A little soak with some bleach cleaner, then a second steaming, and...

It's a little better? Maybe?

Let's try a different spot, how about this bit over here.

There's definitely some dirt build-up here. A bit of steaming later and...

Well, the grime on the surface of the tile is gone, but I still feel like the grout isn't really coming up shiny and clean like I was hoping.

It is changing a little though, we can see that with this side-by-side where I cleaned some of the grout but left some as it was.

But it still doesn't scream "clean" to me.

This here is more what I'm expecting the grout to look like.

Nice and light, blending in with the colour of the tile itself.

And actually now that I look at it, this grout is a little dirty too, let's try steaming it.

Ok well now it looks worse.

So I think for the tile this is turning into a bit of a mixed bag. But let's try something else, the grime that's been building up around the outside of my shower doors.

There's a mix here of hard water crusties, aluminum corrosion, and some sort of pink-orange slime. Let's see what a blast of steam does!

Hmm, well, yes, it's cleaner. But is it more cleaner-er than if I had just used some warm water and a scrub brush? I'm not so sure.

But I do know something that won't come off with just warm water and a scrub brush: latex paint drips stuck to concrete.

The steamer does a really good job of lifting that up.

So that's something, I guess.

It also does a good job on the oven door. Here you can see a half-and-half where the lower part is cleaned while the upper part is just how it looks after running the oven's self-clean cycle, which somehow never manages to do anything to the dirt buildup on the glass.

And the full reveal with both sides cleaned.

It doesn't completely remove the fully blackened carbon bits, but it's a lot cleaner than it started so that's nice.

All in all, a bit of a mixed bag. It wasn't too expensive though, so I don't think I regret buying it.

Tying Up Loose Ends

When we last left off, the majority of the electrical for my sprinkler project was in place, but the run down the side of my house to the panel was still left to install. I had a few hours of good weather this afternoon, so I decided to take the opportunity to wrap things up there.

First off, I needed a small spacer board on the fence here to avoid having to melt another section of PVC conduit into a makeshift fitting.

If the cuts look a little strange here, it's because the two faces of this board aren't actually parallel with each other, and I have no idea why. It was a leftover board that I salvaged when I ripped the shitty shelving out of my car hole, so who knows where it came from before that.

Anyway, I have to say it's a real pain in the ass dragging out these extension cords to the side of my house here, I wonder if I should think about putting in some outlets along this wall or something?

Well whatever, I'm sure I'll get around to that eventually.

Anyway, the conduit from the fence hole and up the wall came together nicely, thanks to some careful planning ahead of time.

Although I maybe didn't plan the locations for the conduit straps quite as well.

Oops. Well, nothing a little caulking and some touch-up paint can't fix.

The outlet box here gets centered under one of the bathroom windows. Eventually I'd like to move my water heater to this side of the house, and I figure that putting it directly under this window is the least likely location for me to want to use, so I should be safe putting the outlets here. Should be.

I'll probably end up putting the water heater to the right of this box, though it may end up going to the left between the two windows. That, however, is a bridge I can cross when I come to it.

Balancing out the bad luck I had with that one conduit strap, it looks like some good luck came my way with the length of this piece of conduit.

I was dreading having to move my generator shed in order to access this joint to glue in the next piece.

And speaking of the next pieces, these are the last conduit bits to be installed.

So that means it's time to pull some wire.

Now just because I'm using stranded THHN doesn't mean that everything necessarily goes smoothly. Particularly due to conduit bodies not being exceptionally wide in the 1/2 inch size.

Up there in the shadow is the end of my fish tape, which I was luckily able to grab with some pliers and get it to come through.

I had considered getting the opposite angle conduit body, but that really would have just traded one problem for another, and thankfully it worked out anyway.

So with a few more pulls, all the lengths of wire are run all the way to the last box I left off with previously.

And then I just had to button things up while I still had some light left.

Or possibly while my work light still had some battery left.

But either way I got it done. This isn't the last of the last work I need to do, as I still need to put in the last few irrigation emitters, run the sprinkler control wires to the two valves in the front along the fence, and then connect them up at the controller and set up a watering schedule. There's no big rush on that, though, since the rainy season is going to last a while longer yet.

Mixing Electricity and Water

In a previous blog post, I covered last week's adventures in installing an irrigation system in my front yard. Well, those irrigation valves aren't going to open and close themselves (at least I hope they aren't). They'll need some external assistance.

Like the last entry, this one is a long one so click through to read more.

Bread In Motion

I've got my bread baking down to a pretty decent routine, so I figured it might make sense to publish a video illustrating the technique I use.

I experimented with doing a multi-cam shoot and I think the result turned out pretty well.

But that's just me, who knows what other folks will think.