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delayed by having to apply a patch that doesn't even work
Saturday, January 6 2024
After the usual Saturday morning routine in the living, I resumed work on the split installation project. When using a hole saw to cut a hole horizontally through the bottom of the south wall of the laboratory, I accidentally gouged a copper pipe carrying hydronic fluid for a mostly-unused zone heating the upstairs bedroom and bathroom. Since this part of the wall was about to get crowded with more pipes and wires (for the split), I didn't want to have to worry about that old hydronic pipe springing a leak. So I did what I could to drain it and then attempted to patch the gouged part with a length-sawn straight coupling fitting. But when I tried to heat up the pipe to solder on the patch, all I managed to do was roast the nearby insulation (mostly polyurethane and polyethylene), putting a toxic layer of smoke in the laboratory (thankfully, as plastics go, the ones that had burnt in this situation hadn't released particularly noxious fumes). I opened the window to clear the smoke and then reset, this time with more barricades to keep the flames off the insulation. But even after three attempts, all I managed to do was burn more insulation and unsatisfactorily tack the patch onto the pipe. The part of the pipe I was trying to solder to was in a low, seemingly undrained part of the loop for the bedroom zone. Since I didn't want to go through the bother of cutting into the pipe to drain it, I decided the gouge wasn't worth repairing. It wasn't bad enough to cause a leak, and that zone isn't even used anymore.
Fortunately, the hole I needed to cut through the wall for the refrigerant lines wasn't difficult to make, as there was no horizontal structure in the wall where the laboratory floor had been pinned to it (about a quarter of the way down from the top plates of that wall). Since the bottom of the indoor split unit will be lower than the laboratory floor, the refrigerant pipes will have to slope downward towards the indoor unit. This also means that condensate drain must travel a different route, since it must slope downhill from the indoor unit. My plan for that is to run it down into the garage and then outside through the west wall. Meanwhile the outdoor half of the split will be on the east side of the house.
Later I did what I could to remove the condensate line from the right-hand drainage port on the indoor unit and move it to the left-hand port. It was supposed to be possible to remove a large plastic panel to get access to this stuff, but the directions were extremely vague and the large plastic panel (like those on a cheap laptop) seemed more intent on breaking than on being removed. I was never able to remove it, but after some effort (along with curses and bleeding finger tips), I was able to get one corner of that plastic panel high enough to get needle-nosed pliers in there to release the clip holding the condensate hose. Once that hose out of the way, I had plenty of room to install a little rubber plug to ensure that condensate only came out of the other port.
With all that struggle behind me, I wanted to do some drinking. So I painted what I thought would be a quick and dirty painting of a rooster. But the canvas was so small (two inches by a little less than three inches) and thus the proportional granularity of the canvas weave so large that I struggled to get the details in the right place.
As I wasn't on any other drugs at the time, the alcohol felt a little unsatisfactory, and after a few drinks I wondered why I was still drinking. So I managed to stop all on my own and go to bed at a reasonable time.
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