Mysteries of the Attic, Revealed II

Ok. This has gotten pretty complicated so i'm going to try to summarize. About one year after i moved here, intrigued by smell, dust, sound of belts of cars starting, i popped the attic lid that was made of drywall with popcorn on it. One corner was cracked. Too bad back then i didn't take pictures of everything.

None of the three pipes from all levels did have an individual passage through the roof. Mine was laying on the floor like this blowing insulation and smell above the kitchen window and in the parking lot and the other two were hanging near an airing vent, partially evacuating the smell in the attic.

First i replaced the lid with i guess 3/4 inch white laminated fiberboard to which i attached two hooks. Later i added an alarm to it (and it was effective, for a while).

I put all three bathroom exhaust together with a fan on top near a vent and enclosed it. I made an enclosure too for the 6" kitchen exhaust. After many trials it all started looking like this:



All three pipes in the first of two picture above have dampers at the end near the vent. There is one more damper preventing backlow in the attic.

Today they look different. I attached some pieces of rubber pipes in the end for attenuating vibrations.

After the neighbors downstairs let their exhaust fans running for years and creating all sort of problems, i moved my pipe near my kitchen exahust with some dampers preventing backflow both in the attic and in the bathroom exhaust. The kitchen 6" exhaust pipe does not have a damper at the end but has one near the lower end on top of the present mold evacuation system (not seen in last picture). The polystiren foam adapter for that damper broke and i replaced it Monday with a plywood ring.

Today i moved back my exhaust pipe near the other two since currently the bathroom fan downstairs is running less than an hour a day like it's supposed to. This way there can be no suspicion that i'm using it to pump stuff back in the kitchen exhaust and into the floor but there will be that i'm using to pump air back in the other two bathroom exhaust but there are two dampers on each of those, one installed by me at the upper end as seen in the pictures and one near each fan. (All three pipes are fitted and connected symmetrical with dampers and everything). But to me there is no doubt to me they will adapt and will come with more insinuating actions like last night leaving the window cracked. Cause they are http://georgesblogforfriends.blogspot.com/2012/01/kaiser-khazaria-and-lenin.html Now, featuring ninja.

The two 1.5 pipes hanging near the attic damper where the fan pulls air from the attic insuring the airing at all times are connecting to the two exhaust pipes' housing from the lower levels, as some of the pipes are leaking. Airing those housings, through thermal flow only.

The fan in the picture below is now above my stove in the place normally used for the kitchen exhaust, that is the lower end of the 6" pipe seen in the pictures above and turns counterclockwise as most BLCD (BrushLess DC) computer (not laptop) fans do http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor . (BLCD is an improper name, they are actually AC motors with a built in inverter). It is part of the system that pulls with two 1.5" flexible hoses air from the floor, behind the fridge, where there's been a leak and near the bathroom. Initially built last November for eliminating mold from floor after a leak, i keep it running now for eliminating smoke (probably cigarette) that for some reason is present in floor and kitchen wall common with the next entrance) near the fridge.

Computer fans can't turn the other way because they are actually synchronous AC motors with a built in invertor (improperly named BLCDs). By inverting the polarity of the power supply they simply won't start.

ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor#mediaviewer/File:Poles.jpg

One more thing before i forget. I might be wrong, but there is one passage visible from the parking lot, a chmney like 3 or 4 inch thick structure somewhere above the kitchen that doesn't seem to have a correspondent in the attic.

This is the last configuration as of 03/04/2015 10 AM

03/05/2015 @7 PM

04/06/2015 I discovered this: Just above the kitchen, the exhaust 6" pipe sits next to the hot water pipe that goes left to the kitchen and right to the bathroom. The tape was all dried and not sealing anymore. Parts of it came easily. The remaining one was put by me more recently, however that is not a good job either, is very hard to work, you have to kinda sit on your knees beacause the roof is too close. So i poured two cans of Great Stuff Fire Block that actually does not extend as much as the cheaper foam. It covered almost to the last fold of the pipe. I'm gone keep an eye on to see if the foam does not bend a pipe or cracks a solder joint or something but i don't think it's possible in open space.

The whole pipe was covered with an insulation blanket; every time i was using the exhaust stuff was getting in it. This spring when it got hot the first time it was stinking really bad, i went in the attic and removed the blanket from the top of the pipe. But there is one more thing. During the night time the pipe was cooling (in the morning i have to leave the water to run like one whole minute). Since everything was covered with an insulating blanket, i assume the whole pipe was heating and cooling loosing heat but also dilating and contracting, with the folds opening and closing. Quite a piece of engineering. Also cannot understand why they didn't use that T at the right the other way and save an elbow. Just to make the hot water pipe run under the elbow of the exhaust?

Dust In The Wind

I did it once, let me see if i can do it again. But now, i'm no mood to make calculations.

Aproximately, how much weight brake rotors loose by wearing off? A quarter of a pound every 50 thousand miles would be fair? An average car front rotor is 10 pounds. 5 percent? Seems too much. Let's say 2.5%, a quart of pound of metal. Seems about right. It matches what i remember since i made the calculations.

I've been working at Les Schwab and resurfaced brake rotors. You can do that 2-3 times for a rotor and the rotor loses like 10% of the thikness in it's life time. But the rotor, besides disk, it has a bigger piece of metal in the middle that does not wear out.

Conservatively, i'd say a brake rotor looses in 50 thousands miles a quarter pound of metal just for braking. About the same for the pads. By 4 that is a pound of dust, plus ceramic and other stuff, including asbestos for older cars and some after market pads. So almost a pound of metal (heat resistant alloys, that contains, besides iron, up to 10% of all kind of heavy metals including chromium) per car per 50 thousand miles or the interval between two brake jobs.

In a city like Portland there are 2 million cars running an average of 20,000 miles per year. That is 40 billions miles per year. Divided by 365, we get 109 millions miles per day. Divided by 50,000 we get approximately 2200 brake jobs a day, with the same amount in pounds of dust metal and other good stuff released in the air (not talking about resurfacing but actual braking).

One metric ton of very fine, microscopic, heated, partly un-oxidized, metal dust released in the air in the whole Portland area. Is it much? Is it little? I'd say anything above zero in that category is too much.

But think about tires and road wear-out. How much asphalt dust, rubber dust? How much asphalt dust a studded tires car creates in a season?

Portland is kinda lucky because of the rain. During rain season much of this is washed out down the drains, into the river and into the Ocean. One ton of metal a day just from Portland.

That's why leaky oil pans, unburnt oil and fuel are good. All this stuff acts as a dust binder (including for mineral dust from insulation in the attics of houses near streets) and traps lots of it. However, in time it flies away from under the car, drys out but some gets trapped in the soil around streets and again into the drain. And let's not forget that engine oil contains as well high alloy metal and when it burns, it releases it... Fine metal in oil that does not oxidize and when burned, it is partly in metallic state.

That's why i think it's not a good idea to eat stuff grown in the cities or around busy highways.

Don't ask me what a good idea is to blow it with blowers on the sidewalks or parking lots.

With newer cars, less leaky, with catalytic converters that turn everything into CO2 is even worse. No binding of the dust. The hope comes from electrics and hybrids that do not use classic brakes except for failure of the regenerative braking system (turning braking energy into electricity and store it back in the battery). Smaller with smaller tires.

Mysteries Of The Attic, Revealed

Before picture date

After i discovered this i started working on. Damn thing was a trap. You touch it, it's your responsibility. Unnacceptable the way it looks, the smell from bathroom and kitchen coming back into the attic.

I though i was smart enough to mess with it. For about a year, several versions, unsuccesful.

About a year ago it became what is seen in this picture below.

A piece of plywood covering the vent hole. A 12 V computer case fan right under the vent, encased in the 6 inch vent. 4 one way valves with three flexible pipes, two from neighbors and one from me (that is not shown in the first picture above because it was laying on the floor blowing the insulation through a hole right above my kitchen window) in the covering plywood. Three 4 to 3 inches reductions. All sealed with silicon and 3M quality tape.

I have a variable voltage power supply for the fan. When it's hot in the attic (it can reach 120 degrees) i turn it to the maximum ant it cools the attic at least 10 degrees. At 6 Volt works but if one the neighbors forgets the fan like it happened almost every day within last 10 days, it won't cool the attic.

The one way valve that opens in the attic has been modified (re-balanced for a much lower flow). The others are plain valves for dryers and they work the way the were designed.

When one or two of my neighbors uses the bathroom fan the one way valves close and don't allow back-flow on any vent. There is one more one way valve at the other end of each pipe near the fan in each bathroom. Enough redundancy here.

For the kitchen exhaust, i used a computer fan fed by a 5 V USB power supply right above the microwave. If i don't use that one after i cook and stop the main fan in a few hours everything around it in the kitchen starts to stink really bad. I tried with a one way valve and didn't work. So that fan runs all the time.

In the attic i replaced the end of the pipe that was damaged and surrounded with a piece of plywood like in the picture.

Yesterday i discovered that for the vent shown in this picture above part of the tape was taken or blown apart. A small percentage of the whole flow was back-flowing. The two pieces of plywood that surround the pipe are cut around the pipe real nice and there is no much play. However i put new 3M tape and pushpins to secure the tape in place.

I also found 4 or 5 leaks in the other joints of the vents shown in the other pictures and re-taped them all.

Very difficult to work because they were numerous vehicles and small planes making noises like for every move i made. At first there was a big truck with pneumatic brakes that was releasing air every time i was breathing. This makes me very nervous and i make mistakes. My ground level neighbor also turned on the fan for about half hour. This always happens when i start working on those things. But since i write in here everything is quiet except a car or two.

woo

08/08/13 7:07 PM:

Last year i taped this piece of 7 inch flexible pipe only at the joins and where it was leaking through tiny wholes. At the picture date and time 08/08/2013 07:05:39 PM i discovered several leaks, only with the main fan on. The wires are from a 12 V computer fan that is powered by a 5 V USB charger. It works all the time to prevent back-flow from the wind and bad smell to accumulate in the 7 meter/6 inch exhaust that goes in the other side of the roof near the vent as shown in the first picture. So i covered it completely with tape, 3M, Tough, 7 dollars at Home Depot. The valve that shows open in the 2nd and 3rd picture was sticky and wouldn't open or close easy. I checked and find some chip of plastic (1 mm long) hanging from one of the side like it was trimmed with a knife but not completed. It was out of balance too. I re-balanced it and checked to see if there are leaks so i covered the valve's entrance with a piece of cardboard and set the fan on 12 V. As soon i was removing the cardboard, the fan was going maybe 30% faster and noisier. When i installed the whole thing more than a year ago i put 2 big tubes of GE II Silicone and sealed the space between the vent, shingles and plywood. I installed two hooks for the attic lid and replaced it with painted fiberboard when i moved here. The hooks have threads and are long and go over the sheet-rock and into the wood. Today i found one more hole one inch next to one of the hooks that was corresponding to the attic and one of the hooks was replaced with a shorter one and wasn't reaching the wood. Fixed everything.

Yesterday and today i found two more small holes near the bathtub, corresponding inside the wall and attic space. Covered them.

In the last few days there was "attic smell" inside. I'll see if it disappears after these fixes.

FAA Rules Violations

Dozens of planes making a terrible noise, for years. I've been complaining to PDX noise management and FAA until i got tired of it. On Port of Portland noise management web site there is a link to www.webtrack.com.

One day i got so mad after a conversation with FAA that i started making a collection of what i think are clear violations. However, this web site is not reliable. I saw planes flying much lower and closer than shown there. So i picked a date, May 1st and dragged that slider with the mouse and took screen shots until i got bored. I forgot about that little project but i saved a few screen shots. Here there are.

According to FAA, a plane cannot fly in urban "congested"  areas below 1500 ft above ground level. Average elevation on the map below is 200 to 300 ft, and where i live, where the house is shown on the map in the last 4 pictures below there are about 750 ft.

KAISER, everywhere

In March 2010 we moved here and they installed a new carpet and padding.

In July 2011 i tried to replace the padding under the carpet. It was stinking like naphtha, glue and something else. Back then i didn't know what something else was. I bought a new padding but it was smelling again like naphtha (which back then i didn't know what it was.) even worse that the one in place and i just returned it. Complicated but quite simple. The sweet smell comes from the organic glue the fiberboard is made of besides wood fiber. Probably residue from slaughterhouses. Blood and collagen. It turned into a dust and entered the padding on the low side. The red dots are where i injected deodorant a about a month ago and it dissolved the dust. Deodorant was made of water, propylene glycol and/or enzymes. Almost transparent, nothing red in it. I also used pounds of baking soda. But that one didn't go beyond the carpet.

For about 200 dollars in 2011 i bought self adhesive liners and sealed the floor. I did a good job since it's still there after two years and still intact. Nothing comes now in or out of the fiberboard. However, it was one year to late. It entered the padding and is still there. (In order to seal it you have to sweep the floor really, really good for dust so the liner would stick there. I have it on the hard floor in the kitchen area and it stays there for more than a year and is better then other sealants).

I would have benefited if i replaced the padding but what was bothering me, the naphtha smell was still there as they gave me a similar padding with extra naphtha. Again, i thought the fiberboard was made with formaldehyde.

Back then i forgot (i was too sick to the stomach) to take pictures of it and to this day it was my fantasy now came true to take pictures and here they are.

If anybody is curious about the smell, there's only one thing i would tell him/her. Be my guest.

Carpet Pad

In the last month, maybe years, i started to have some neurological problems. Main symptom is general weakness, slight paralysis especially in the spine. There are better days and worse days.

But lately i started to make a link between the temperature, the vibrations and my symptoms. And i think i found the problem i suspected before. It's the pad under the carpet.

I believe in the summer of 2011 i tried to replace it. I wrote about here. I gave up because the new one was smelling the same.

Yesterday at times i was feeling like could not stand or walk easily. Lately there's been a lot of stomping around here. Apparently i have a new heavy weight neighbor down stairs who likes to cook and move around. So he's shaking the building really bad, sometimes for hours.

Vibrations also come from planes, helicopters (every time i leave the building at least one plane making big noise showes up, i just came back when i started to write this from a short walk (a different story), when i left there was a heavy helicopter at maybe 300 ft above, probably the OHSU helicopter), or from heavy diesel powered trucks, like the garbage truck this morning. Garbage truck comes always when i eat or immediately after. Always.

When the building shakes or vibrates, whatever is being released by the padding mixes with the air in the room faster and the concentration is bigger. Dust also falls from the walls. At times i feel high. At times like i cannot breathe easily. Lately i feel some sort of weird pain and paralysis on my spine.

The smell of the padding is a combination of sweet smell, diesel fuel smell and 10 year old worn-out perspired snickers.

So i decided to do something about. And i was thinking. 2 years ago, under the padding, on the floor i put some self adhesive shelf liner when i tried to replace the padding, to seal the floor. About 10 rolls in total. Above the padding there is some sort of thin plastic foil i thin that has holes at places. But actually the pad is sandwiched between two foils of plastic. So i injected 6% chlorine for home use between these two foils, in many places, using a syringe needle with a small polyethylene bottle (flux dispenser for soldering) one foot apart for the whole area except under the furniture. That sweet smell is gone but now it smells like chlorine and i think the chlorine is trapped between those two foils and will stay there for a while.

For those who don't understand what's going on, the small pad in the picture from the link above has been in the closet in the balcony for almost a year and it smells so bad i cannot describe. The smell didn't go away.

But i believe the pad itself is not enough to explain what's happening. Probably whatever substance is coming from it is combining with something, maybe sulfur from the walls, i don't know (Sheetrock is made of gypsum, which is calcium sulfate, that in certain conditions can decompose).

When The Smell Hits The Fan

Wallpaper from kitchen and bathroom lit from behind 4x30 fairly new fluorescent lamps. Pictures are clickable to enlarge. I think a good enough software could give you the composition of the "wallpaper" by its absorbtion spectrum given the fact that we have in the pictures behind the wallpaper a known source of light and pictures are unprocessed. It's not really wallpaper but some fabric reinforced with animal glue. I bet the material in there is collagen and/or blood from slaughterhouses they used to make glue in the past from. When you have something like this in your bathroom and take a shower it's going to start stinking, and in years even enter the drywall made of sheet rock (gypsum, calcium sulphate which is porous). In my case it migrated from bathroom to bedroom through two layers of sheetrock. There's no insulation in the interior of this apartment.
Cause i got this stuff in the rented apartment both in the kitchen and bathroom. When  they dug the holes outside seen in the pictures below everything inside started to stink to the point it became unbearable then i started to look for the source. Although i spent the last three years cleaning the place in never realized what was going on. The smell was coming and going and sometimes was stronger and sometimes weaker. Somehow we got used to it.

But there's more. The drywall on one of the walls in the bathroom turned brown at places because of so much cigarette smoke coming from one of the apartments beneath inside the wall. That was somehow covering the smell. But that's how i realized the drywall is actually porous because i saw it was brown in all its half inch thickness. When the wall vibrating like from cars and planes it spreads the stuff even more and the smell becomes stronger.

I think whoever wanted to make a point had done it really well.

The stuff, like any toxin, it is probably addictive, hence the title.

1.WB=5500

2.WB, fluorescent
 


Here is a link to a jpeg full resolution together with ARW uncompressed file (Sony ARW). The preview showed by Google for the ARW file in the linked folder is Google's interpetation of that file. The ARW file can be accurately seen only with specialized software that has the Sony codec included. https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B-ShIhkErMIPUDMxcG9YeVc4U0k/edit?usp=sharing

And here is the missing link. Holes have been dug around buildings for some wiring work for lamps for more than a month now. It looks like they are trying to replace the wires or look for a shortcut. This particular hole has been dug for weeks. Strains of mold and bacteria that usually live deep under ground travels through the air, gets inside and attacks the wallpaper which seems to be made of fabric with some sort of organic, maybe animal (i heard in the past they used bovine skin, hoofs and blood from slaughterhouses to make glue) material and makes it stink really bad especially in the bathroom where there is humidity after showers. It was raining for days, i don't know what effect that had on those but i assume it's not like freshly dug anymore. But it's not the stable ecosystem usually encountered in this place at the surface of the ground either.

I'm already starting not to feel anymore the pain from formatting a whole partition that included pictures from the last three months. But i recovered some half of those using photorec and testdisk (with this occasion i discovered a good method of recovering a freshly formatted and deleted partition, you can use a Linux Live CD like the ones for installing Linux and an internet connection, after booting from the CD, you download testdisk then use the command photorec) and here are a three of those included here.

2/14/2012

2/24/2012

Friend With You or Fuck With You...

And another song that i couldn't ever figure the lyrics...

Close Encounters of The Less Kind

My neighbor left @6PM and forgot the big speakers on. I don't know what it was on, TV, radio, don't care. But @8 i thought i had it and went for a walk. It's 11:44 now and it's still on by the way. I can only hear the base.

It's not the noise so much as the dust. I used some flat paint when i moved in thinking it's going to be better than glossy, more noise absorbent and with TiO2 that acts as a catalyst in it could help with decomposing the formaldehyde emanated from the fiberboard of the floor.

But when the half inch panels the walls are made of vibrate they also release dust. This type of paint catches dust easier and it releases it when a plane or loud car passes by. Sometimes exactly when you are trying to have a meal, ending in your plate. (I dusted the walls and ceiling with an electrostatic duster a couple of days ago).

So i left for a walk. There was a guy with a dog dancing with his dog in the night. I mean they made unpredictable, complicated moves and to me it looked a bit like he was driving his dog on the sidewalk and the street in a very curious and sophisticated way. Left, right, forward, back then again left, right, etc.

Finally passed him while cars passed me and went further down the street on Eagle Crest towards Stephenson. But exactly when i saw the two big neon 5s at nr 55, a noise and some lights appeared on the sky, first faint then louder and brighter, then louder then louder then i felt my spine vibrating. I pulled my phone trying to call home so i can record the noise on the answering system. But it took too long until it rang 4 or 6 times and the thing passed 100 feet above me, some 50 feet above the trees, climbing. I could see its gray belly with 4 wheels. I think they were 4 wheels. No, it couldn't have been the OHSU helicopter, that one is orange.

Two hours later i opened Port of Portland Noise Management page with a link to WebTrack site. As i was explaining to that lady at FAA one day (she said "what, your are tracking planes on a site???"), it's a site where yes you can track planes, not in real time, but with a two hours delay so you can complain (in vain, i tried so many times) of noisy planes or helicopters. So i waited two hours, opened that site and put in my address, time, etc and tried to figure what was that. It came from the OHSU all right, but couldn't figure the type of the helicopter or where it went cause it disappeared from the tracking area of the site just south of Aurora, OR. It might have been an emergency, alright, but why every time when i go for a walk on Eagle Crest when i come at nr.55, no sooner, no later, there's always one or two planes, civilian or military or helicopters flying by? Sometimes there are more as i go towards Stephenson. Always under 1500 ft which is the safety limit established by FAA. I assume it's 1500 above the ground level not see level, cause it wouldn't work on higher grounds. So if nr.55 is at about 600 ft, they are always in violation at that location. But why? Is nr.55 some sort of a portal to other dimension where there is no common sense, no laws and generally people can do whatever they want, including what they see in movies? Fulfill their fantasies and fly above a cuckoo's nest?

Or maybe they are just test flying a new helicopter they bought from the recent 125 million donation from Nike?

It took me about two hours for that strange physical sensation to disappear from my back. It literally moved my vertebrae in all directions.

When i climbed back on Eagle Crest from Stephenson, i saw at nr.55 the huge two car garage door opened withe lights on and a guy moving around the house.

But i was lucky. They were evenings where i could count 10-20 planes mostly big liners approaching to PDX from SE, most under the 1500 ft limit during a 30 minutes walk. Tonight there was only that helicopter and maybe a plane or two, can't really remember. Why are they approaching at this angle, since main runaway is kinda parallel to this direction, don't ask me. They go NW pass above here then make a 180 degree turn within 3 miles from the runaway then land from NW. But that is only @8PM and only when i go for a walk. Otherwise i don't hear them from inside. Here is the map with the tracking of the helicopter. Can click to enlarge. On the map the height of the house (apartment) is considered at 0 ft above see level which is not true. It is at 720 feet. The helicopter at its closest point of the house is just above 1000 but i thing it was just 100 feet above the house. I was not at home but further down the street at nr.55 as i said but my wife confirmed the big noise.

Why i didn't say this before? It's not really fun to write about these things...

Breaking Ice on The Roof

My place, 1/11 2013

Apparently 10 days ago i myself cleaned the leaves from the gutter above the bedroom, using a stick and a hose cause they started to stink. Weather was fine, but it took me several hours, to get them from the balcony with a long stick with a hook at the end.

Here in Oregon the weather is under freezing several nights, mabye a couple of weeks in total in a year. Mostly during night time.

Today it was frosty and holiday but they came to clean the leaves from the other gutters in the building.  Leaves, of course frozen in the gutters that were full if they were like mine. I don't know how they had the guts to walk on the frosty roof like that. And the energy. Those two Mexicans were all day on the roofs until night and they didn't seem tired to me. It's their business, after all.

But they hammered the gutters for a couple of hours and everything inside was shaking like hell. People who don't live in wooden houses don't understand. Then they climbed with a power blower and blew whatever it was left on the roof. After a couple of hours they moved to the next building. When it though everything was over, a big diesel truck from a towing company came and shook everything for 15 minutes with a different frequency.

My place, post date