Guest Post - Humidifier

We've been busy unpacking and setting up our office, so no posts lately.  However, our good buddy Airiq has provided a guest post about cleaning humidifiers.

----------------------------

After winter has ended, it’s time to put away those humidifiers that helped you through the dry and cold months.  If you’re like me, your humidifier needs a thorough cleaning before storage.  Below are some tips on cleaning the Crane Drop Shape Ultrasonic Humidifiers. 

Cleaning the base of the humidifier is fairly straightforward.  You can soak the dirty parts in white vinegar/water as instructed by Crane’s staff in their instruction manual.  Use only a capful of white vinegar at most.  Let the base soak for about 15-30 minutes then rinse with water and use a paper towel to remove residual mold. 

Mold also grows in the water storage container and this is probably the most difficult part to clean.  While you can soak the storage container in white vinegar/water, it won’t remove the mold particles.  Something I read online is that by using rice, you can remove most of the mold growing on the walls.

Mix about ½ cup white rice with about 1 cup of water in the storage container.  Cap the container and shake vigorously.  As the rice swashes around, it knocks the mold around and cleans the walls.  After about a minute or two, empty the container and start again.  After 3 or 4 ‘cleanings’, your container should be clean.

Don’t forget to remove all the rice before storing the humidifier away for the summer!

Man v. Plant Part 4

I decided to give some sprays a chance after realizing that pulling weeds would be a losing battle.  After spraying Bayer and Ortho branded sprays, most of the weeds have withered away.  However, the really annoying weed is standing strong.  I've been looking around online and can't seem to figure out what this weed is called.  One person suggested it was Cylindrica Imperata.  I see the resemblance, but it doesn't look exactly like it.

Any clue what this is?

Man v. Plant Part 3

We saw some ads about a weed pulling tool and decided to give it a try.  I'll give my impressions of the tool at the end.

Introducing the Fiskar Weed Puller.  It's the strange, orange contraption on the ground next to the hand shovel.  It has an orange handle, metal teeth, and a black lever.  It ran for about $25 at Lowe's so it's relatively inexpensive as far as tools go.  A suggestion to improve the tool would be to lengthen the handle as I do find that it is pretty short for a person my height.

To operate, you stick the metal teeth into the heart of a weed brush, like so.  You can step on the black lever to push the teeth deeper into the ground.  After the teeth are lodged into the ground, you pull the handle in the direction of the black lever.  The teeth will clamp around the root system of the weed (in theory) and your pulling motion will pull the entire root system out of the ground. 

Here is the end result.  You'll notice that it pulls up a lot of dirt along with the roots.  This will leave a noticeable hole in the ground, but you can always shake off the roots and replace the dirt if you want to.  Also, the orange portion of the handle in the bottom right corner of the picture is actually a mechanism that you an use to push the weeds out of the teeth after they have been pulled.  Just like a pump shotty.  Pump and you're ready to go again.

Final impressions: The tool is good for pulling weeds that grow in patches or bushes.  It is not so good at pulling weeds that grow in stalks.  The reason is because it is harder to target the teeth to pull out a stalky weed than it is to target a bushy or patchy weed. 

Another problem occurs if you have a sprinkler or drip system installed in your lawn.  Weeds often congregate around your sprinkler or drip pipes because that is where the most moisture is.  If you find that to be the case, be careful while using the weed puller.  The teeth aren't sharp so they won't cut your pipe, but they are strong enough to latch on and pull up your sprinkler pipe if you're not careful.  

Overall, the weed puller would be great if my weeds were more patchy or bushy rather than stalky, and if I didn't have a sprinkler system.  Definitely check out the type of weeds you have and their locations before deciding whether to buy this tool.  

Man v. Plant Part 2

Today, I decided to tackle the monstrous weed that had been growing at the corner of our greenbelt.  This *thing* had grown to my knee and it was thick.  I still haven't figured out what it is.  Maybe a quick trip to Lowes will help.  This was the before picture before getting to work.

This is the after picture.  It took about 2.5 hours, but the time flew by.  Now the corner is clean!

A pile of fun times.  In part 3, I'll move onto the next part of the greenbelt.

Man v. Plant Part 1

We didn't move into our house until three weeks after closing.  Not surprisingly, the spring weather caused a lot of weed growth in those three weeks.  It didn't help that our sprinkler system was running regularly during that time (our grass thanks us).  

This weed looks bad, but isn't hard to deal with.  The root system goes straight down into the ground so a quick tug will remove the entire weed.  

These weeds are ferocious (click pic above).  They can quickly grow to about knee high.  They're not a problem if you pull them when they're small,but when they grow big, the stalk hardens.  After it hardens, the weed will break off at the stalk if you pull at it.  The only way to remove it is to dig it up with a hand shovel.  Unfortunately, the root system goes deep and spreads out.  Even after digging up what seems like roots, it may not get rid of the weed.

Some people call it a wildflower.  I call it a weed.

Check back on the next post to see the results of hard work.

Starting Simple

Due to inclement weather on Thursday and Friday, I decided to postpone starting the foundation irrigation system.  This gave me time to work on some simpler projects like changing the direction of the dryer door. If you have a front loading dryer, sometimes the direction of the door may not suit your laundry room especially if you moved to a new apartment or house.  Luckily, it is very easy to change the direction of the door.

Initially, our dryer door opened to the right, which was inconvenient because our washer was also to the right.  It would be ideal to have the door open to the left.

The first step to changing the direction of the door is to remove the jamb, striker plate, and door screws.  As depicted, there are four screws.  All these screws must be removed.  The uppermost and lowermost screws are used to reattach the door.

The second step is to remove the hinge.  There are two screws that couple the door to the dryer.  Remove these screws to remove the door. 

After removing the screws, your dryer should resemble:

 

The last step is to reattach the door, jamb, and striker plate to the dryer.  After replacing the screws and the removed parts on the opposite sides of the dryer, your project is complete.