By Jack Roland, CBRE, AMD and CBNT

KLove /Air 1 EMF Colorado Engineering.

Greetings all!  Well, due to a busted iron pipe (as old as me, literally as my house was built in 1960, same year as me, the KEØVH hamshack and radio/laundry/storage room is undergoing a complete renovation.  The room prior barely had room to walk into and move around,  much less for my wife to do the laundry or anything else.  The room contained the freezer, washer , dryer, hamshack and years of accumulated storage and tools, paperwork, bins of blankets, storage, etc.  So when we discovered a busted pipe backing up under the concrete, my wife and I decided to remove everything (necessary for many reasons including not getting concrete dust in everything including all my ham gear and electronics).  MAJOR JOB!  Amazing how much you accumulate over nearly 30 years, 8 children, and a family’s life!  When we emptied the room we found that the rest of the house, and garage became totally full!  Amazing!   So once that was done, which took about a week or more, I rented a jackhammer and busted up the concrete where the break was located, essentially right where the floor drain, kitchen drain, and washer drain was located in 53 year old iron pipe fittings.

 

            

                                                                     Old Pipe Place

                

                                             Old Pipes, see the HUGE hole?

Once this was uncovered, it was time to scoop out all the drainage from under the pipes as you can see in the black dirty dirt in the avbove left picture, and look at the corrosion and the HUGE hole in the underside of the old P trap junctions on the old pipe.  So, onward to the repair!  New PVC piping was fashioned and installed with a rubber junction at the old pipe out of the house where it was healthy and solid.  Only had to go about 5 feet or so for that.   In the picture below you see the new piping, floor drain, and washer drain.  All this done in a day!  WHEW! 

 

New Assembly!

The next day, my buddy Nick, who is an expert concrete installer (in my opinion!) came over and we were done in a few hours, the floor nice and smooth again, and ready to tackle the next job!  Paneling the previously stud walls, and painting the north wall concrete with a sealant and the color my wife wanted for her corner of the room.  These series of pictures show the progression of phase 2 of the project!

 

                                                   The Freezer Corner

 

                                   The Hamshack Corner

In the above picture to the right you see the yellow wall where the freezer is located sealed up and it really turned out well.  The 2×4 studding is now going to be covered with a paneling and sealed up.  One of my kid’s room is on the other side.  The upper right picture shows the hamshack corner where the old setup was, with the coax’s and station ground strip plainly visible.  The perfboard material will be totally removed, and after a Saturday of working on the paneling, here is the result:

The “NEW” radio corner!

Then the next step is to build the operating table and supports.  It turned out pretty good!

 

So the next step is to install the racks, shelves, and equipment of course.  I will include those pictures in next months installment of the “KEØVH Hamshack”!

AND, Coming soon to a youtube video, KEØVH and KK6GSJ in “Ice Road Engineers”.  Will let you know!

And as written before, we are exploring the capabilities of the Argo Avenger snow vehicle with its new wider tracks and we have using it to get to sites in the snow here in Colorado.  Here on the left you see Nick, KK6GSJ at the transmitter box on top of the hill in Eagle with the Argo. The picture on the right is on Sunlight Peak, just south of Glenwood Springs.  The hill on the right side of the picture though proved to be too steep and powdery, so we had to abort that hill climb.  And, with another round of snow coming in behind us we didn’t want to get caught at 10,000 feet, so we headed back down.

                             KK6GSJ at Eagle                   

                                                  The Argo on Sunlight Peak

Look at the snow depth’s!

As always don’t forget the SBE IRLP (and Echolink) Hamnet, the first Saturday of the month.  AND the EMF Hamnet now is the same manner on every Monday evening at 7pm Mountain time for radio discussions, both broadcast engineering and Amateur radio.  Details on how to join are at  http://www.qsl.net/ke0vh/sbehamnet.  I hope you will be able to join us and share your engineering and ham exploits!

73’, God be with you, & see you next time!  KEØVH