June 29, 2023
by dhoytt
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Rental Pool Prepped and Painted

Finally finished painting the pool after lots of prep work after years of neglect in my rental. With Covid restrictions gone, I was finally able to move forward clear debris, prep surface (lots of hours) and paint. I used Dura Seal epoxy with an 8-year life. 

I had debris and sludge built up from the tenants and some campers who trespassed and dumped in the pool, very nasty.  

After cleaning the sludge, I had to pump the water out several times with my trash pump after the atmospheric rains this season. 

I then washed the entire pool down with muriatic acid. After finding different waste hazard places to dump the acid. I washed the pool with TSP. 

Due to the years of tenant abuse, there was still scaling. I tried sanding with an orbital sander and that barely “scratched the surface “. 😉 Then tried sandblasting and that was going to take way too much material and cost. 

I finally found a BAUER 9 Amp Surface Conditioning Tool surface preparation tool from Bauer and sanded the entire pool removing that hard white scale!  I took several hours through a couple of weeks after work and weekends to complete this. 

I then wanted to etch with something other than acid again prior to painting and tried several chemicals like CitrisStrip but that left a residue I had to clean up with acetone and the surface prep sander again. I finally acetone etched the whole pool and did another round of sanding with the surface prep tool.  

I had to wait a while after taping the pool off for painting. I did light washing with the hose pipe and not pressure wash to get surface dirt after doing some patching of cracks and areas when someone dropped a heavy object in the empty pool. I then waited an extra day and painted! 

Finally, I will get a chance to get water in the pool and test out the pump. I hope they did not damage the pump or that equipment! It was working fine when they moved in! 

No more amateur time, the pool will have a professional pool service maintain it and that will be written in the lease!  

Pictures from start to finish as of today. 

Tenants kept my pool like this for years and during Covid thanks to the no evictions nothing I could do and they were already behind.
After cleaning debris after campers dumped trash and I started pumping the pool.

Pumping out water process. That leaves debris to be scooped up. Some of this is what some campers from the neighborhood left.

Another iteration of water after atmospheric rainfall. Didn’t have time to clear all debris. Still was a good opportunity to clean around the perimeter.
Another round of draining after more rain.

A little guy dropped into the pool. I had to set a long 2×4 for him to eventually crawl out.

Doing the acid and chemical washes.
Getting last of acid wash and aftermath of trying different techniques like sand blasting and other chemicals to finish removing scaling.
Sanding and scraping! Lots of time and sweat.
After acetone etching and some more sanding!
Patching and cleanup after patching
I am done painting! I even added silica material to steps and bench area to keep slippage to a minimum!

March 19, 2023
by dhoytt
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Fishing Poles Racked Spatchcock Chicken Dinner

Was able to get most of my fishing rods off the garage floor. The large surf rods I ended up breaking them down in half. I also got my most used rods closer to the ground. I still have some work to do to get my stragglers plus my telescopic rods I’ll just hang off hooks.

Now getting ready for a late Sunday evening dinner with a spatchcock chicken. I did a brine with orange zest, rosemary, apple juice, salt and pepper. Then after washing the brine off today seasoned with butter, garlic, paprika, salt and pepper under the skin and on the skin.

January 8, 2023
by dhoytt
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Site Down Temporarily Due to Atmospheric River Storm

During the “Atmospheric River” storms here out west in California I lost house power where I run my systems. I have not established a geographical fall over for these sites when my home systems go down as it hasn’t been a priority. I do have some pages setup but I haven’t visited that in a while.

After the power was restored one of my power supplies in my C7000 chassis didn’t come up. Due to that power supply not coming up I couldn’t bring up all my server blades online. I chose to keep my music server off and let my 2 blades I use for virtual systems to stay up though I didn’t bring the virtual servers online. My NAS storage came up just fine once again as well. I decided to take care of things like lining up estimates on damaged fencing instead and then watched some football.

Coming back into my computer room this evening I noticed the music streaming system booted up and the power supply was back online. This is the second time this happened, the last time being the prior storm on New Years Eve that took power out. I’ll pick up a couple of spare c7000 110v (398026-001) power supplies that I have already run down from a local source.

Outside of that back up and running as usual.

December 8, 2022
by dhoytt
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Rack of Lamb Smoked

I wanted to smoke this rack of lamb Sunday or the beginning of the week but couldn’t get to it .

Turned out very good and I will be doing this again. I rubbed down with olive oil, then rubbed on salt, pepper, a little garlic and sprinkle of cumin.

For sides eggplants, poblano peppers, tomatoes sprinkles of rosemary from the garden, smoked along with the rack of lamb.

I used my Meater block meat probe thermometer along with my Traeger’s thermometer to get used to it.

December 6, 2022
by dhoytt
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Cooking Journey

A cooking journey for the past month. Beef shanks mid-November, Thanksgiving juicy tender brisket and smoked Turkey. Monday red pepper/honey wings.
Then reached into the freezer for vacuum packed pulled pork (tasted like I just cooked it after boiling the bag and opening)from February 2 2022 and made soup today with late squash and herbs from the garden. Perfect for the cold weather. Was feeling picky about what I wanted to eat.

This is a repost from my Facebook page to test my updated WordPress mobile app and site.

Beef shanks with vegetables.
Hot wings.
Brisket
Turkey
Vacuum sealed pulled pork.
Quick soup made from pulled pork.
Beef shanks on Traeger

July 31, 2022
by dhoytt
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Filet Mignon and Garden Vegetables

Quick mix of garden vegetables eggplant, tomatoes, basil, mad hatter peppers, onions with some filet mignon with two different seasonings for each steak. Also made a dip of clarified butter, sea salt, powdered mustard, garlic, Worcestershire sauce etc cooked on my Traeger Ironwood. Reverse seared filet mignon, first smoke @ 200 on Traeger and then seared on gas grill next to Traeger. Tomatoes were the surprise vegetable stars they were so sweet. Steak was like super tender and tasty with a smoked taste you cannot duplicate.

I had two different seasonings on each steak, one salt pepper and garlic and the other a store bought Santa Maria tri-tip mix seasoning.