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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Went out after that and picked up a few gallons of ammonia for the racoon. Thought about mixing it with bleach to really smoke them out, but everybody seems to think that's a really bad idea.

I'm going to try just the ammonia first, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If I have to sleep out in the garage for a few days I will if that's what it takes to get them out. Seeing what I saw yesterday I really don't care if they get poisoned and die. I'm so done with this.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Went out after that and picked up a few gallons of ammonia for the racoon. Thought about mixing it with bleach to really smoke them out, but everybody seems to think that's a really bad idea.

I'm going to try just the ammonia first, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If I have to sleep out in the garage for a few days I will if that's what it takes to get them out. Seeing what I saw yesterday I really don't care if they get poisoned and die. I'm so done with this.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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You got me a little curious.

In your belief system, how many breathes of cyanide do you imagine you can endure?

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Hey Jack

Thanks for the update!

Hi Brenda

So every day you find a new surprise? Is it like Christmas in summer?
How's your brother doing btw? Still making progress? To me, that's the most hopeful thing. Not to say people don't get better after going backwards for a while, but the going backwards can be hard on everyone. So to keep going forward is always a good thing, imo.

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https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/nation/ridgecrest-earthquake-afte
rshocks-are-moving-toward-dangerous-faults-sparking-concerns/article_c223e0c5-8b52-5f7a-a7d5-2f2ddfd2a5a1.html


Ridgecrest earthquake aftershocks are moving toward dangerous faults, sparking concerns of triggered temblors

The U.S. Geological Survey says the chance of an earthquake of magnitude 7 or greater from the July 5 earthquake is 1 in 300 — “possible, but with a low probability.”

Some aftershocks have rumbled northwest of the Searles Valley earthquake, approaching the Owens Valley Fault. That fault triggered an earthquake of perhaps magnitude 7.8 or 7.9 in 1872, one of the largest in California’s modern record.

The Ridgecrest aftershocks have also headed southeast toward the Garlock fault, a lesser-known fault capable of producing an earthquake of magnitude 8 or more. The fault along the northern edge of the Mojave Desert can send shaking south and west into Bakersfield and Ventura and Los Angeles counties. “Those are places we would be more concerned,” U.S. Geological Survey research geophysicist Morgan Page said. “Little earthquakes are telling us where big earthquakes are more likely.”

Perhaps the most famous example of triggered earthquakes in California occurred in 1992. An April 22 magnitude 6.1 earthquake in Joshua Tree National Park began a quake sequence that migrated north in the coming months.

Then on June 28, an earthquake 63 times stronger ruptured — the magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake with an epicenter more than 25 miles northeast of Palm Springs. Three hours later, a magnitude 6.3 quake struck about 20 miles west, just a few miles away from Big Bear.

“We always worry when seismicity picks up very close to a major fault or if it’s at the end of a major fault — whether it’ll push it enough to start a major rupture,” California Institute of Technology seismologist Egill Hauksson said.

Sometimes fears of seismic triggering don’t materialize.

The Easter Sunday magnitude 7.2 quake of 2010 directed tectonic stress toward Southern California from Mexico. There was concern about a potential triggered quake on the Elsinore fault, capable of a magnitude 7 quake, which extends into Orange County and the Los Angeles area and could produce devastating damage to the region. But seismic activity eventually ended before it reached that fault, Hauksson said.

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“Every earthquake actually increases the probability of more earthquakes,” Page said. In fact, earthquake scientists actually model quakes like disease epidemics. “It’s based on the idea on how a contagion spreads to a population,” she said. “Earthquakes are like that … in general, if there are a lot of earthquakes going on, it’s more probable for a large earthquake to go on.”

While earthquakes do relieve stress to some areas around them, we become less safe after earthquakes because they “redistribute the stress and can push other faults in the area to failure,” Page said.

One big observation so far has been that there’s now a line of seemingly missing earthquakes between the northern end of the July earthquakes and the southern end of where the Owens Valley fault finished rupturing in 1872.

“That’s a kind of thing seismologists can get nervous looking at. It’s got to be filled in,” said USGS seismologist Susan Hough, who has researched the Owens Valley fault extensively. “There’s certainly room to put another earthquake.”

Both the July quakes and the 1872 Owens Valley quake lie in one of California’s great seismic zones, the Eastern California Shear Zone, which generates earthquakes as a result of the southwestern part of California sliding up northwest, toward Alaska, compared with the northeastern part of the state. (Yes, that does mean that eventually, L.A. will be right next to San Francisco a long time from now.)

The San Andreas fault gets the most attention because it’s the main boundary between the Pacific and North American faults. (I think they meant plates.) But “there’s other fault systems that slice California into ribbons,” Hough said, including the Eastern California Shear Zone, which carries a good chunk of the earthquake burden needed to accommodate that tectonic plate movement.

The zone covers a swath of California from Palm Springs to the Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada, “and we know there have to be big earthquakes eventually everywhere across this zone,” she said.

But it’s far from certain that the next big earthquake will happen on either of these two faults.

The Eastern California Shear Zone isn’t just one single through-going fault; there’s a bunch of faults there that slip over time. And it’s possible that other faster-moving faults might be better candidates to move in big quakes next, Hough said.

One might be the Garlock fault. A simulation of a hypothetical magnitude 7.7 earthquake on that fault would bring severe shaking to towns across the Mojave Desert and send strong shaking to Santa Clarita and the San Fernando Valley.

Another fault might be one underneath the valley sandwiched between Owens Valley and Death Valley — the Panamint Valley fault, according to some recent analysis conducted in recent weeks, Hough said.

But there are other plausible scenarios as well — earthquakes lighting up south of the July earthquakes and north of the 1992 Landers quake.

Or the next big quake could strike somewhere with no connection to the July quakes at all, say, a devastating temblor on the San Francisco Bay Area’s Hayward fault.

“The bottom line is we don’t ever have a crystal ball,” Hough said. “The next earthquake may be something that no one sees is coming.”


Despite the limitations in what scientists can glean from tracking aftershocks, it’s still worth doing. “Most big earthquakes have foreshocks. It’s extremely common,” Page said. One notable example was small quakes before the magnitude 6.3 Big Bear quake of 1992. “It’s lighting up areas where there’s more stress to be relieved.”

The reason why the Garlock fault is one that scientists are concerned about is that the seismic strain on it accumulates at one of the faster rates in California. It’s in a category a notch below the most worrisome faults in the state — the San Andreas, San Jacinto and Hayward.

The Garlock fault hasn’t ruptured in a big way in the modern historical record, but paleoseismic work suggests that the average time between earthquakes of at least magnitude 7 on the central part of the fault is about every 1,200 years, Page said.

But there’s huge variation in that average. Sometimes, only 200 years can pass between major quakes there; other times, 2,000 years can go by before a repeat performance.

The last time a big earthquake is believed to have hit the Garlock fault is roughly 465 years ago, give or take about a century.


©2019 Los Angeles Times

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Rain has arrived.

And also don't you hate it when people try to blame you for their mistakes.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Rain has arrived.

And also don't you hate it when people try to blame you for their mistakes.

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Cringe. Oh no. I think I hear a story about your boss coming on. Peeks an eye open. That's too bad.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Went out after that and picked up a few gallons of ammonia for the racoon. Thought about mixing it with bleach to really smoke them out, but everybody seems to think that's a really bad idea.

I'm going to try just the ammonia first, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If I have to sleep out in the garage for a few days I will if that's what it takes to get them out. Seeing what I saw yesterday I really don't care if they get poisoned and die. I'm so done with this.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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You got me a little curious.

In your belief system, how many breathes of cyanide do you imagine you can endure?

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To answer your question though, I don't suppose I'd live very long messing around with cyanide. I never looked into it before. Never had any reason to.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I'm glad to hear it's just non-serious stuff!

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Hmmmmm.

You are trying to create cyanide by mixing bleach and ammonia.
But you have no interest it evaluating the effects of the cyanide you'd be creating.

Why do you think entire towns or neighborhoods are evacuated when spills of these happen? Unless your garage is in a different township. Or maybe your attic is better ventilated than THE OUTDOORS.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I actually knew someone who did this. It involved a table to lift the blower up to the window, and an extension cord. I suppose he could have rigged some kind of cowling between the blower and the window. But yes, it's doable! :)

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
78 degrees on the 2nd floor as I write this.

So... I didn't quite get down to an equal temperature outside. The low last night was 74 degrees a few hours ago, but only for that hour. Right now it's around 76 degrees. It might be impossible to get it completely even without any actual cooling forces at work. You've got to figure that there are heated up areas, particularly in the shell of the house that's exposed to the sun all day long, that are just not going to have all of the airflow necessary to cool off completely in the time between sundown and sun up.

Seeing a temp in the 70's is still amazing though, given how hot it was yesterday and how it didn't drop that low last night. I do believe that the next few days will be entirely manageable without A/C, even if they aren't 100% comfortable.

I actually woke up at some point in the middle of the night and with the box fan on me I was so chilly I had to pull up my blanket!

It was 85 degrees on the second floor at around 9:30PM when I first turned it on for the whole night. By that time, since I had already run it about 20 minutes earlier, the attic was already much cooler than it normally would have gotten until around 4:00AM. I figure that compared to my average night here without the new system in place, I got an extra 4 degrees of cooling on that 2nd floor thermostat than I would have in the livable space. The attic is just as cool now, which never happens. It's unknown how much effect this will have though.

My hope is, that overall, the temperature on the 2nd floor thermostat doesn't go over 83 today with the windows closed, even though it will get to 94 outside. Fingers crossed.

...

I would have already shut it off now, but we're having a thunderstorm and the humidity is plunging a bit in the next 1 1/2 or so. Maybe I can get a little of that drier air in the house before I button it up for the day.



Next 3 days will be the real test. High of 94, Low of 79. High of 98, low of 79. High of 93, low of 73.

After that, the highs all seem to be in the 80's with the lows in the 60s. I won't count on that until it happens though.




Oh... and the house has probably never smelled so nice. I'd imagine that there were parts of the house that haven't seen much if any airflow in decades that got all that fresh cool air.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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You are trying to create cyanide by mixing bleach and ammonia.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Basement is supposed to hold around 55 degrees. Unless it is exposed, not in dirt, the ground.

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If you get your attic down to mid 70's, then 2nd floor should be up to 10 degrees cooler, and 1st floor another 10 degrees cooler. That runs out of scale on the thermometer, so it's likely closer to 75, 68, 61, 55. But you suck in humidity from outside, middle of the night.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SIX, that's great news about the attic fan! What you've done is install a "whole house fan" which does a great job pulling cool air from the outside and venting hot air out the top! One of these days I'm going to try something similar. Yes, we have AC and solar but the attic must be about 130 F up there during the day, and for sure it heats the ceiling and just radiates heat into the house. I'm really glad you got that figured out because I read somewhere that you're going thru a heat wave about now, right?

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Yeah. Pretty bad heat wave for a few more days. I think the high today was only around 90 because of the thunderstorm but the heat index reached over 100 degrees. 96 tomorrow and 98 on Saturday before it cools off again.

I was really looking forward to using it again tonight, but I don't think it would make any sense really. Last night did so well getting the temps down that even after being heated all day the house is still relitevly comfortable. It's even not half bad in the attic. So until 2 hours from now, the temperature outside isn't going to even be lower than what I'm reading on the first floor currently (81 degrees), and it's only dropping to 79 for an hour or two early this morning before rising again.

Other than just moving the air around, I don't think I'd be accomplishing anything tonight other than wasting energy and possibly bringing in more humidity than is already in the house.

So that leaves me starting tomorrow morning off 4 degrees warmer than I did this morning.

Not the end of the world though. Since the attic was cooled and never got super hot today, the total rise in temp was less than it usually would have been, on top of the fact that I was able to cool it in the living space about 5 degrees more than I would have without the fan. Starting the morning off at 81 isn't bad considering it would probably have been closer to 88 to 90 degrees in the house right now and probably would have only dropped to around 86 to 87 before I had to close them in the morning.

Temps look to be around the same tomorrow night, but I probably will have the fan on at least half of the night though since I will probably end up being around 86 to 87 by the end of the day tomorrow night.


I highly recommend a whole house fan. Especially if you can afford to have a professional do it that really knows what they're doing. I really just half-assed it here with very little knowledge and spare parts I had out in my garage. It's amazing. It's probably not super cost effective though the way I've got it set up. If you had a real pro job done you could probably have the same results by only needing to have the fan do the work during the cooliest 2 or so hours in the early morning instead of leaving a 20-30 year old furnace blower motor running for 11 hours straight.

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Hubby, dear daughter and I moved most of our big stuff back into the newly-painted, re-windowed bedroom and newly-cleaned bathroom. I bought some new shower fixtures for hubby ... he's been looking for that feeling of standing in a warm rain since whenever ... and fortunately the shower head and wand turned out exactly right. We unearthed a "Purple" mattress that I bought a while back ... we have both been looking for a mattress that we can BOTH sleep on and not wake up with an aching back (not enough support) and sore shoulders and hips (too hard), and so far this mattress works for both of us.

The next thing to do is move some metal shelving from the garage to the spot in the hallway and set it up as our "mud room" - not that we have a lot of mud, but a place to hang keys, sun hat, dog leash, umbrellas and to set down purse, grocery bags, shoes, outgoing mail etc. It'll be great to have that all in one spot.

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When it comes to daily heat cycles, even this far inland we often get an ocean breeze starting anywhere between 3PM and 6PM, for about an hour and a half. Sometimes it's earlier, sometimes later; sometimes cooler, sometimes not as cool; sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker; sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Still, it cools the house down as long as it's breezing and the windows are open. But when it stops, the temperature inside the house can go up as much as 10F because the structure itself is really warm. And that heat radiates in from the ceiling and the walls. The other thing I've noticed, like in this last heat wave where temps were always above 95F and never below 75F, is that the structure builds heat day by day. So every day the house starts out warmer, and fails to cool down quite as well compared to the previous day.

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At some point I'm going to have at least an attic fan installed, but I'm hoping to have a solar one with battery and thermostat, to avoid having to run wiring.

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Many years ago, when I was the newbie kid on the block and all the old people (like in their 80's) had been here at least 4 decades before me, I asked one of them what they did in the days before AC. (I was hoping for tips on livability.) And she said with a laugh - 'we just moved slower'.

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