Omnium-gatherum
Matt Hanson’s Brain Archive
Welcome
December 11, 2009
Defunct
I’ve effectively retired this site, for now. I’ve not updated in quite some time, although I do have a huge backlog of photos. I occasionally post some pictures on my facebook page and am unsure if I will ever resurrect this website or even end up keeping the domain name. I’ve switched my primary email to my gmail account.
November 4, 2008
I have never met a pumpkin I didn’t like
Happy Halloween! Vote for your favorite, and least favorite pumpkins for the 8th annual Pumpkin-Fest. While it was cold the sun was out and the weather a great improvement over the last two years of rain. This year, 15 pumpkins - less then in previous years but this year seemed more baby convention then pumpkin festival due to the abundance of babies born over the past year.
My pictures of the pumpkins seem to get worse and worse every year! This year they are quite bad. There are even a few pumpkins that I didn’t even take unlit pictures of.
See the pictures of Pumpkin-Fest day.
Sorry in advance about the pumpkin names. I didn’t write any of them down and forgot nearly all of them.
Email me at matt at omnium-gatherum dot org and let me know.
Vote here!
You must all be out of your gourds!
2008 saw another Pumpkin-Fest chez Crouses in Newburgh ME. Good times once again although I seriously slacked at taking pics this year. After a few hours I stopped snapping other then when someone was done with their pumpkin. Sigh. I will make a conscious effort next year to improve my performance.
August 20, 2008
A friend of mine convinced me to sign up for a Facebook account. I was rather amazed at the amount of old friends that were on it. I then found a cool plugin for Wordpress - WPBook, that displays the RSS feed from my Omnium-gatherum Wordpress site.
Now I just have to spend some time updating my site…
October 31, 2007
Ask not what your Pumpkin can do for you, ask what you can do for your pumpkin!
Happy Halloween! Vote for your favorite, and least favorite pumpkins for the 7th annual Pumpkin-Fest. We had a respectable 18 pumpkins to choose from despite the rainy weather.
See the pictures of Pumpkin-Fest day.
If you participated and I got the name of your pumpkin wrong, sorry. I ended up missing some of the names. Email me at matt at omnium-gatherum dot org and let me know.
Continue reading Ask not what your Pumpkin can do for you, ask what you can do for your pumpkin!
This is one small step for pumpkins and one giant leap for pumpkin-kind
Much like last year’s P-fest, the clouds rolled in and the rain fell. The pumpkins were thankful for the mostly dry interior of the garage, unaware they would soon be stabbed, gutted, and then put on display. The humans brandished fire and grinned at them, chewing the lightly salted and roasted seeds of the orange gourds and washing it down with the Pumpkin-Ale. Soon the pumpkins were aware it was not just the humans that grinned at them - they were grinning at each other with their newly gifted mouths. The glowing eerie faces filled the room for another year, and another party amidst the pumpkins.
It’s a Happy Halloween - Omnium-gatherum has been risen from the dead!
I am happy to announce that Omnium-gatherum has been mostly restored to it’s former glory. It’s been several months since I broke it and more then a year since any significant updates.
The image galleries should all be working and now I can begin the process of adding new galleries. But first there are some pumpkins to take care of ….
In Dover, Trick or treating is always the night before Halloween, so was last night. The girls of the house dressed as cats, and I dressed up as a cool cat. The bell bottoms didn’t make it into the picture and we would have needed a wider angle lens to capture the massive extent of the shirt collar. Still, here’s a pic of me groovin’ out.
September 12, 2007
Under Construction
It has been months (since sometime in May) since my website went down due to a poorly planned upgrade of the Wordpress software. It has been even longer since I’ve done any significant updates (i’ve got thousands of backlogged pictures). Summer hit, things got real busy and the website fell to the wayside. It will likely be some time longer before I get to updating this thing. In the meantime, at least the archives are up.
December 8, 2006
Building Science
It’s been nearly 7 months since my basement was ruined by flooding. I ripped out the wall paneling and furring strips that made up the walls, tore up the vinyl flooring tiles and took out the ceiling panels. I learned the basics of a Home Designer program relatively quickly in order to play around with layouts and embarked upon a journey that has proven to be much more complex and time consuming then I had ever thought…I wanted to know what the proper way was to construct a finished basement.
If one wants to know proper construction techniques you need to go beyond the knowledge of not only most “Do-It-Yourselfers”, but also many contractors as well. It’s a relatively easy field to get into it and not surprisingly many do not know or seem to care about the science and technology of construction. Many stick to the common and well-known techniques that have been around for decades and are accepted as common-place. These are the recommendations you will get from walking into a Home Depot and asking one of the workers. What many people do not appreciate however is that there is actually a on-going research and development to improve existing construction methods. This is called Building Science and is studied at many Colleges across the country. One of the most useful websites for information regarding the latest recommendations can be found at none other then buildingscience.com.
To Vapor Barrier or Not to Vapor Barrier
To illustrate some of the difficulties and confusion in construction here’s my story of what I thought was a simple question - “How should an interior basement wall be constructed?”. Ask 4 ‘experts’ and you may very well get 4 different answers. Such was my experience and I decided I really needed to get to the bottom of this. While science sometimes does not provide conclusive answers, there often is a ‘right’, or at least a ‘best’, answer - it’s just typically mis-understood, mis-applied, or purposely obfuscated.
Basements require careful consideration as they tend to trap moisture laden air. In the summer time the moisture condenses on the colder concrete surfaces. Vapor barriers trap this moisture and can promote mold growth. Even if the vapor barrier is completely air sealed, moisture can wick up though the concrete and get trapped behind the vapor barrier. Fiberglass batt insulation, especially those with the kraft paper facing, can suck up and trap moisture and provide paper-food for mold. The proper way to construct basement walls therefore is by covering the concrete with extruded rigid foam insulation (XPS) who’s purpose is several-fold.
- water comes up and through concrete via capillary action. The XPS insulation serves as a capillary break, limiting the amount of water transported into the basement through the walls and footing.
- It raises the temperature of colder concrete wall, thereby stopping water from condensing on the surface.
- It serves as an air barrier, preventing drafts from entering. All the insulation in the world won’t help if air, laden with moisture, has a way to enter. While less of a concern along the basement walls, this is an important consideration above the foundation walls in the rim joists. Therefore, XPS or a sprayed foam, is recommended all the way up the wall and in the rim joists.
By reducing the possibility of condensation, and allowing the walls to dry if they get wet (the XPS is permeable), unfaced fiberglass batts can often be used as cavity insulation (between the studs) without as much worry. The use of a dehumidifier in combination with ventilation is also a good idea. One can also use paper-free wallboard if mold-growth is still a consideration (if the dehumidifier properly controls humidity then regular wallboard can be used with worry). All these recommendations can be found at buildingscience.com, textbooks on Building Science, numerous technical articles.
The General Contractors
In the last 7 months I’ve had 5 general contractors come to my house to discuss the basement, not to mention water-proofers, concrete cutters, electricians, and plumbers. Here’s what each GC had to say about basement wall construction:
- GC #1: A carpenter by trade, he was a really nice guy and even offered to help me load up a truck with brush while he was there. His idea of a basement wall was to cover it with a vapor barrier, use a double layer of fiberglass batts followed by a second vapor barrier! I’d have 10″ walls, with wood, fiberglass, and paper trapped between two vapor barriers.
- GC #2: This was one of the big guys in town. He did lots of basements, with the standard old approach. Framing with fiberglass batts, followed by a vapor barrier. As an aside I never heard back from him with an estimate until a couple months ago when he send an email saying “wow I really dropped the ball on this and your file got pushed aside - sorry, does your basement still need work?”
- GC #3: The 3rd contractor struck me as very knowledgeable. His specialty was high efficiency homes but not much building going on these days. He was very conscious about proper building techniques and I learned a lot in the 2 hours he was here. Unfortunately, he was never able to make time to do an estimate for me, much less any work. We communicated via email and he seemed to want to work for me (”I like customers like you who understand quality”) but had too much other stuff going on. It was too bad.
I had pretty much decided to go with GC #3 at this point by as time went on it had become apparent it wasn’t going to happen. During this time, sparked by my conversations with GC#3, was when I really started researching building science and educated myself. Eventually, I started the process again, bringing in another two contractors.
- GC #4: This contractor worked in a pair, and they both came. They had done the nursery school in the neighborhood this summer after it was flooded, and worked at the teacher’s home as well. He was highly recommended. They recommended rigid foam insulation and had experience in all types of work. There were a few things that concerned me, such as they wouldn’t bother with foam sill gasket between the concrete and wood (recommended for same reasons as XPS on wall), but that was really a minor issue.
- GC #5: The last contractor I brought in came to my house a few times, was very interested in doing the work, but his methods left a lot to be desired. When I spoke to him about my concerns of moisture and thought rigid foam should be used his response was “this isn’t the right application for rigid foam”. He would use fiberglass insulation with the kraft paper facing. GC#3 had suggested azek board (it’s like a plastic) for baseboard or a wainscotting in case things flooded again and I asked this contractor about it…..he finally gave me a quote using the azek board but also the fiberglass batts. Sticking with the batts completely defeated the purpose of the azek board. Not to mention he was going to put in carpet and said if it ever flooded ALL I would have to do would be rip up the carpet, let it dry, and replace the carpet padding. Hmmm, ok - how about a solution that can tolerate water in the first place??? His estimate of $50K seemed quite high considering he didn’t listen to anything I wanted and it looked like it would be a hack job.
In the last month I’ve brought in GC#4 to do other, related work: new basement windows, some rotting wood and sill in the front of the house, and installation of a active radon mitigation system. I’ve been testing radon myself with an electronic radon sensor over the last several months and found this house had extremely high radon levels (16+ pCi/liter vs the max EPA recommended of 4 pCi/liter). With the radon system the levels have dropped to 1.7 pCi/liter…I just have to live with the pipe going up through closets in my house and a suction fan in the attic.
Someday, hopefully soon, we’ll actually get the basement project underway. I think I still have some more research and planning to do but overall the time spent has been worth it. Contractors are often viewed somewhere between used car salesman and lawyers and it’s definitely worth spending time to find one that you can trust. It’s important to do your homework and ask questions about the things that are important to you.
October 31, 2006
A Pumpkin by any other name is still a Pumpkin
Happy Halloween! Vote for your favorite, and least favorite pumpkins for the 6th annual Pumpkin-Fest. This year there are 21 gourds to choose from. Unfortunately, the pictures are even more sloppy then in past years as it was a bit of a rush job (we were short on candles due to loss of electricity).
See the pictures of Pumpkin-Fest day.
UPDATE: Congratulations to Martha Crouse and her pumpkin Hagatha for winning Pumpkin-Master with 19% of the vote. And to Sara Mahoney for getting a whopping 26% of the vote for Pumpkin-Head with “Van Gogh” - A truly inspired bad pumpkin.
Continue reading A Pumpkin by any other name is still a Pumpkin
It started as a hobby, descended into a sport, and then … into madness
The 6th annual Pumpkin-Fest, as it is now referred to, was held in the metropolis of Newburgh, ME, where it had been in two previous years. For 5 years we have had decent weather, if not warm at least not rainy…until this year. The winds raged over the old farmhouse and when it blew the right direction one of the large roof tiles on the barn would clatter sounding as if the entire roof was falling in. Tucked in the large garage, safe from the biting winds, this years Pumpkin Carvers worked diligently. It would be several hours before the last of the tired butchers stumbled out and the last pumpkin had felt it’s last cut. But this year there would be an additional complication for those later arrivers. The storm eventually took our electricity. Working by candlelights and flashlights, we finished and lit all the pumpkins.
Come see pictures of Pumpkin-Fest 2006. Voting will be up soon.
October 27, 2006
The Neighborhood
I find myself again sitting on photos a long time before even looking at them, as I used to do with film. In fact, I still have at least a dozen canisters of film yet to be developed from at least 6 or 7 years ago. It’s like a time capsule, I’ve always loved going through photos that I’d forgotten.
This event however, was from less than 5 months ago, and was a Neighborhood Picnic. Unfortunately it rained that day yet we still had a good turnout. Tune Buggy played out of my garage and patches here and there of sun without rain allowed the kids to play some to the music. It was a fun thing to visit with the neighbors we knew and meet those we didn’t.
July 25, 2006
A Mild Disaster
It was still early morning on Mother’s Day when I ventured downstairs. I don’t remember exactly why I was headed downstairs just that I didn’t get all the way to the bottom when I noticed a peculiar sheen to the floor. A small bit of panic swelled from somewhere inside me. Slowly, not sure I wanted to do this, I looked over to the right to survey the rest of the basement. The panic leapt into my throat when I saw things floating. The kids were up and I had a serious problem on my hands.
“Kiimmm!” It was not how I wanted to wake up my wife on Mother’s Day but I had to forgo my breakfast plans for her…and sleeping in wasn’t an option either. Sorry hon.
We were only one of many houses in Dover, in fact in all of NH, to experience basement flooding during these rains and we learned what a destructive force water can be. It only took several inches of water to destroy most everything - furniture, speakers, lots of books, the dryer - we were lucky it didn’t hit the furnance (just another inch). I’ve since ripped out the floor, the wall paneling, drywall (which got very moldy), and all the wood. Our basement is finished no more.
The upside of this is that we will get to refinish the basement in the way we’d like to do it. I’ve been playing with Home Designer to visualize the exact layout. It will still be another couple months before I can even get a contractor out to the house, but it will be a cool addition when all is done.
All in all we got off lucky considering how many people’s homes are completely devestated by floods every year.
July 12, 2006
It’s always difficult to fit in everything around Christmas time. This year we didn’t do Christmas with Diana until April and so combined it with Jeff’s Birthday - see the lollipop-cake-man!
We also had some very good weather in April, so here are some pcitures of the girls playing in the backyard and other various pictures of them inside as well.
Colored Eggs
Easter is colorful time. Egg painting has become a tradition at our house and Kaley loves dipping and coloring them. Maizy however is not at a point where she can sit and color eggs or even handle them. She’d be far more content throwing the eggs on the floor, stepping on them, then pouring or drinking the egg coloring. Perhaps next year. This year we used paint, stickers, and traditional egg water colors - take a look inside!
