lights

Our 2025 Garden: we have light!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yes!

Finally, I have replacement bulbs for the aquarium light fixture that has a built in timer. The package came in today’s mail.

I was a little alarmed when I saw it, though.

In the first image of the slideshow above, you can see a very distinct bend in the packaging!

Thankfully, in the next two images, you can see that the bulbs were well protected. The angled packaging the bulbs were taped into is very solid. In fact, I will be keeping it, as it will probably come in handy for something!

In the next photo, you can see the bulbs next to the fixture laying upside down on the table.

Not that there is a cover over the bulbs.

That was my first problem.

When we got the fixture, years ago, and assembled it, we were never able to get that cover completely on, so about a quarter inch of it was sticking past the end of the fixture, which you can see in the next photo.

Not a lot to grab on to, but it shouldn’t have needed any at all.

After removing the legs at that end, I fought with that thing for at least half an hour. I ran a utility knife blade between the cover and the tracks. I used WD40. I even found an angled tool that I used to try and lever it from the far end. Nothing worked.

I figured if I had some pliers or something to grip the bit sticking out, that might help. After looking around the basement, I found our old pair of vice grips.

Perfect!

I just needed to close the jaws more and…

…

…close the jaws…

…

…turn the adjustment screw to close the jaws…

(apply WD40 liberally)

Just turn that adjustment screw…

Nothing. It would not move.

Well, I’ve got a handy vice at the table. I’ll just get the vice to hold the adjustment screw and I should be able to spin the vice grips to tighten and loosen the jaws.

Yes. I put vice grips into a vice.

I made that vice as tight as I could. Tight enough that it was actually starting to damage the grip texture on the adjustment screw. I still ended up spinning the screw in the vice instead of the screw itself moving.

Okay, that wasn’t going to happen.

Well, if I found something thick enough, I could put that with the bit of cover sticking out and grip both. It just needed to be at least thick enough for the vice grips to close onto it. Maybe some wadded up paper towel.

Nope.

I tried a piece of leftover wood that almost worked. It was thick enough, but too wide for the vice grips to reach the bit of cover I was trying to grab.

More searching around the basement.

I ended up finding a small scrap of wood in the garbage can I have just for wood, sawdust and other burnables. It was uneven on one side, but that didn’t matter as much. I was finally able to grip the edge of the cover and pull on it.

It took several tries, getting it to move, little by little, before it finally came loose, and I could pull it out without the vice grips.

Once it was clear, I wiped it down along the edges, partly to get the excess WD40 off, but also to wipe off whatever was making it stick. There really wasn’t anything, so I used a utility knife in the track it slid into, to scrap what anything that might have been in there. There were two spots, one on each side, that seems to have something stuck in the track. One spot seemed to be plastic; when we got the fixture, the cover had a protective layer of plastic on it, and not all of it seems to have come off. The spot on the other side might have had some plastic in it, too, but there may also have been some mineral build up from when this was set above the big aquarium. The hinges on the glass covered broke, which is why we got a fixture with legs at each end, in the first place. The other one sat right on top of the glass covers.

So, that was finally off and the tracks cleared up.

I did not put it back on again.

Okay! The bulbs are uncovered. I just needed to rotate the bulbs to removed them.

Just… rotate those bulbs.

Rotate.

Is there a trick to this?

They simply would not rotate, and there was very little room to work with.

Looking closely at the connectors, I could see some black plastic that appeared to be some sort of lock? But how would I move those so the bulbs could be rotated?

I never did find out.

While fiddling with them at one end, I ended up breaking off one half of the black plastic.

At which point, I was able to rotate the bulb. The other end rotated fine; the black plastic rotated with the bulb. Which didn’t happen at the end I was working on.

Okay, that’s out, time to try the second one.

Once again, it would NOT rotate – until half the black plastic piece broke off!

After that, it rotated just fine.

*sigh*

No matter. I could now install the new bulbs. They fit just fine, and even rotated fairly easily into position.

*sigh*

Then I plugged it in to test it out.

I even remembered to flip the fixture onto its side, so I wouldn’t blind myself.

It worked!!! Yay!

It only took me almost an hour to do something that should only have taken a few minutes!

That finally done, I got it set up. I decided to take the other fixture out completely, and that’s now stored under the work table. The light with the new bulbs was set up, with bricks removed to make it lower. The shelve section I’d brought out earlier was set up over the whole thing. The tray with the winter squash was moved off the heat mat and is now under the shop light. That allowed me to remove one of the heat mats and center the tray with the eggplant, peppers, luffa and pre-germinating tomato seeds onto the other heat mat.

You can sort of see the new set up in the last photo. Instagram wouldn’t show the whole image, so the new light fixture looks like another surface over the seed pots.

This light fixture does put off some heat. When we were still allowing the cats in the living room while we had seeds started, we would sometimes see Fenrir, in particular, sitting on the light fixture, keeping warm. It isn’t much, but that will provide at least a bit of warmth to the winter squash tray above.

I had the heater running the entire time I was working on this, and it didn’t seem to make much difference to the room at all.

So that turned out to be a much bigger job than expected, but we now have more light for the seedlings.

If it weren’t for the temperature down there, the basement would actually be an excellent place to set up a plant room. Ah, well. We make do with what we can!

Meanwhile, I peaked at the tomato seeds, and I think I could actually see radical emerging on a couple of them! I’ll check again tonight, before I shut the lights down. If I really was seeing radicals, that would sure have been fast – they were set out to germinate only yesterday!

Not too shabby, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Got some progress

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, today, I finally got it done. My daughter and I made it to Costco in the city and survived. ;-)

It wasn’t too bad, actually, though I did have some concerns when we first headed out.

Of course, the critters got fed before we left – and Ghost Baby made an appearance, too! As you can see, it was snowing again.

Chadiccus is not impressed with more snow.

It was coming down heavier by the time we left; enough to make visibility a bit of a concern. Especially when passing oncoming trucks, and all the snow they were kicking up. The main concern was more about deer than traffic – and I counted at least three dead deer on the side of the road, just between our place and the town my mother lives in. By the time we picked up a bit of gas and breakfast, it was starting to clear up, though, so that was good. We did see several deer crossing the highway on the way home, though. Thankfully, visibility was just fine at the time, and all the traffic could see them and slow down!

One of the changes in today’s plans had to be about my glasses. I don’t know how much they will cost, but I did have an idea of what our shopping list would cost, and I knew we probably couldn’t do both. I still thought I might be able to get an eye test, though, which our insurance covers 100%, once every 2 years. While standing at the counter, being ignored, I noticed their sign on the eye exam door making a big deal about masks, due to close proximity. All restrictions are supposed to be lifted in our province tomorrow, but I’ve been able to go without even my Mingle Mask (which I shouldn’t be wearing, either), without any problems lately. This Costco location has been particularly good, except for the odd harassment from customers, though I’ve heard of others getting abuse from staff. I think it can depend on who’s on shift at any given moment, and how much they are into power tripping. Either way, after reading the sign, I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and left. I’ll see if I can get a eye exam somewhere, later, and hopefully will not have to deal with medical discrimination any more.

There were a couple of things I found at Costco that I decided was worth getting, even though they were not on our list. One was a large bag of soil for seed starting. I’d been getting smaller bags until now, because that’s all that was in stock. With this one, we now have enough for all the seed starting we need to do, and probably have some left over, all at a significantly lower cost.

The other thing I got was a shop light that was remarkably affordable.

Last year, we rigged up the long aquarium light fixtures that are currently being used on the big aquarium greenhouse that they were designed for. This is brighter, and much less fragile! If I can avoid moving those more than I have to, that’ll be a good thing.

While it’s intended for the sun room, once we start transferring our seedlings there, I have it rigged up in front of the mini-greenhouse right now. For an overcast day like today, it’ll be much more efficient than the little lights I’ve been making do with right now. I’ve actually got it hanging from one end from a plant hook in the ceiling of the living room, in front of the mini-greenhouse. It’s braced in place, but I do have some concerns a cat will knock it aside. If that happens, at worst, it’ll just be dangling from the ceiling and not lighting up inside the mini-greenhouse. We are still relying on the aluminum foil lining the back and sides to reflect the light. At some point, we might be able to get smaller lights that will fit under the shelves of the mini-greenhouse but, honestly, by the time we’re ready to invest in those types of lights, we’ll be using larger, sturdier shelving to start seeds in, so it’ll be a moot point.

This light can be linked to others, so if it works out in the sun room, we might pick up more. If they’re still available by the time we can test it out, of course.

The remote control is an interesting thing to have. It means that we’ll be able to control the light from inside the house, if we want to. Most likely from the bathroom window, which overlooks the run room.

We’ll see how it works out and adjust accordingly.

While we were unloading the van, I spotted an Agnoos. He was having so much fun rolling around on the cat house roof, he almost rolled himself right off of it! :-D Silly boy!

So we finally did the big shopping trip we normally would have done at the end of last month, and are all stocked up again. We now also have all we need for starting the remaining seeds, and even an extra light. About the only thing we’re short on is a storage bin of the appropriate size and shape for when we start the kulli corn. We’ve been saving our toilet paper tubes to use again, with some modifications after things didn’t work out as planned, last year. We got 100 kulli corn seeds in total which, if we can find the right size and shape storage bin, we should be able to fit into one bin. We still have the under-bed storage bin we used last year, but that will be too long for just the corn. Last year, it fit both corn and sunflowers. It worked, but I’d like something less awkward to move around, and we’re not starting sunflowers indoors this year.

Oh, there was something else that has progressed. Or should I say, has actually stalled. We hit the mail before heading into the city, and I found a letter from the RCMP. My PAL application went through, but my “credit card” didn’t work. They can’t do debit Visa. I don’t have a credit card. The letter included a form for new credit card information, but I’ll have to phone them tomorrow and see if I can mail them a check, or if I have to go to the bank and get a cashier’s check. There is also a letter saying the quality of the photo I sent them was not good enough, and they want another one. I could probably use the same photo; the problem would have been with my printer. I’ve printed other photos since then, and the quality has been much better, so I’ll try again.

Anyhow. We got some good progress during what has turned out to be a very dreary day. Not as warm as was predicted (no surprise there). We’re also getting predictions of above freezing temperatures tomorrow, but still overcast, so… we’ll see what actually happens!

Tomorrow, however, is pizza night. One of my daughters has a birthday this month, so she’s treating the whole family to pizza. The place she wants to order from is a 45 minute drive away, but what birthday girl wants, birthday girl gets. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

And early start in the dark

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was that day of the month that always reminds me how much I dislike shopping! :-D

Actually, it went very well, all things considered. So I’m happy about that.

I got an early start to doing my rounds, which meant it was still very dark as I switched out the memory card on the trail cam.

I also paused to take this photo of our lights.

Continue reading →

New Lights… mostly

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Some time back, my older brother and his wife generously passed on items to me that used to belong to my brother’s late MIL.  Among them were outdoor LED Christmas lights, and a timer.  Today… er… (glances at the time)… yesterday, I took them out to add to the stings of white lights we already have at the fence line near the gate.

I had two areas I was considering to put the timer.  One was in the garage, where the main power cord is plugged in.  I figured, if I were able to get the timer to sit at the window, I could set it to turn on from dusk until dawn.

Turns out, I can’t do that.

The timer’s plug in area is slightly recessed and rectangular in shape.  The power cord’s plug is round and rather large.  It doesn’t fit into the space.

The other possibility was to put it between the new strings of lights and the set of white lights I was adding them on to. This way, the white lights would be on all the time, while the Christmas ones would only turn on at night.  I even had a clear plastic bag to put over the timer to protect it from the elements, while still allowing the sensor to detect light levels.

Nope.  I could plug a string of lights into the timer, but the timer’s plug has three prongs, and the light strings can only accept two prong plugs.

So I just added them on, as is.

It turned out to be 4 strings of lights in total, already plugged into each other.  Which was just fine by me!  I strung them out and affixed them to the barbed wire with zip ties.  Though they had power running to them, there was too much sunlight for me to see how they looked. I waited until dark to go back and see them, since there’s too much brush in the way for us to see them from the house.

20181017.new.lights

So… they look just fine…

Except for the gap.

20181017.new.lights.gap

I did test these in the house a few days ago, when I was deciding what to do with them.  They were all working fine.  I was all set to put them up in the sun room and had even started to unroll the bundle a bit, before I realized I didn’t have a way to affix them the way I had in mind.  Finding an entire string of lights out was a bit of a surprise!  Checking it out with a flashlight, I could see nothing to tell me why it wasn’t lit.

So I’ll be going back tomorrow with something to cut the zip ties, and remove the string that’s not lit up.

I was rather impressed by how much the white ones light up the area around them.  I definitely want to pick up more of those, when I can.

Yeah, I know, it’s not even Halloween yet, so it’s early for Christmas lights.  I figure, better to get them up now, before the snow arrives to stay.  :-)

The Re-Farmer

New Lights

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I replaced the old Christmas lights on the fence with the new indoor/outdoor LED lights yesterday, and left them on.

Then I waited until full dark before checking on them. :-)

20180930.lights

At first, I didn’t think I’d be able to get any photos, then remembered that I have a “pro” setting on my phone that allows me to adjust ISO and aperture settings.  Well.  The virtual ones, anyhow.  These are the two extremes of what I got, after playing around with the settings.

The strings of lights are slightly longer than the old ones, and they have at least double the number of bulbs.

My brother tells me the lights used to have a timer in the garage.  I know I saw one, but couldn’t find it.  We do have at least one in the house, and I even know where it is, so I will set that up later. :-)

I’m rather happy with them.  According to the box, up to 20 strings can be added together, without causing problems.  I certainly have no plans to do that, but they are inexpensive enough that I might pick up a couple more to extend away from the gate.  As I eventually clean up the fence line in the other direction, it would be nice to have them strung all the way to the corner. :-)

The Re-Farmer