Category: House

DIY Light Up Cable Protector

writ­ten and updat­ed 3/04/23

What: Out­door rub­ber cord and cable pro­tec­tor ramp that lights up

Why: To charge a Bat­tery Elec­tric Vehi­cle (BEV) from a 120-Volt out­let by run­ning an exten­sion cord over a side­walk. This is for very infre­quent use (emer­gency charg­ing in the event of poor mem­o­ry or inclement weath­er). Not only is it a ramp which low­ers the chance of trip­ping, but when placed at night, hav­ing it pulse-shine increas­es vis­i­bil­i­ty. Cou­ple it with a spot­light or porch light­ing, should be plen­ty of indi­ca­tion of a haz­ard.

Sup­plies: Cable pro­tec­tor ramp, util­i­ty knife, razor scraper, bat­tery pow­ered/­cut­table/out­door-rat­ed LED strip with light modes, dou­ble sided stick­er dots, pli­ers (option­al), paint scraper (option­al), Shop Vac­u­um

Cost: 2‑Channel Cable Pro­tec­tor Ramp ($54.19) + LED Strip ($11.99) + Dou­ble-Sided Stick­ers ($5.99) = $72.17

Time: 1 — 2 hours

Process

  • Gath­er Sup­plies (the rub­ber ramp, itself, is extreme­ly smelly, so would rec­om­mend a few days of off gas unless stor­ing in a shed our out­side)

  • Test fit, mea­sure, and mark
Per­ma­nent mark­er

  • Start cut­ting. Use of razor blades are the best for cut­ting through thick rub­ber. Make sure to use safe­ty glass­es and gloves. Be care­ful!
Cut wedges

  • After remov­ing pieces in incre­ments, use the razor scraper to clean up the bot­tom.

  • Test fit again. In this case, the bat­tery case still does­n’t fit, so now to widen the side.
Does­n’t fit with the cord in there, too

  • Use pli­ers, the paint scraper, blades all togeth­er to remove the rub­ber

twist, pull, what­ev­er it takes
lev­er­ing
There it is!

  • Yay! It fits now!
This is a 10-gauge exten­sion cord

  • At first, I thought I’d need to drill holes to make the light more vis­i­ble, but I wast­ed time doing that because it works per­fect­ly with­out the holes!

  • Sticky dots now, to hold the LED lights in place. I am aware that the LED lights have an adhe­sive, too, but for ease of removal/replacement I opt­ed for the sticky dots
They were so annoy­ing to stick, I need­ed some­thing met­al and thin to help me place them

  • Test time!
No porch lights

  • Yay!! It works! I was real­ly, real­ly ner­vous about it out there all night long, but it worked real­ly well, and noth­ing bad hap­pened accord­ing to the cam­eras I had trained on it. I also had the porch lights on, but with­out the lights, it looked real­ly great, too. You can’t tell in these pho­tos, but I left the mode on a fade in and out. Grant­ed, this was win­ter, and there are typ­i­cal­ly very few peo­ple wan­der­ing around in the cold, dark, but I’m glad to see that in a pinch, the option is there to charge my EV overnight.

DIY: Replacing Ceiling Bathroom Exhaust Fan

What: Replac­ing an old Nutone exhaust fan (orig­i­nal to the 1989 house) that had­n’t worked for years.

Sup­plies: Flat­head screw­driv­er, replace­ment fan (Broan-NuTone QuicK­it 60 CFM 2.5 Sones 10 Minute Bath­room Exhaust Fan Upgrade Kit), Wet-dry vac­u­um, tooth­brush (option­al)

Time: 10–15 min­utes (in the­o­ry)

New Cov­er
New unit, motor side
New unit, fan side
  • Old NuTone Cov­er
  • Pull it down from the ceil­ing
  • Squeeze the clasps to pull it from the ceil­ing
  • Repeat with the oth­er clasp
  • Pull the plug care­ful­ly
  • This old one is so clean because I vac­u­umed it last week­end when I was look­ing at it, but it was dis­gust­ing!
  • Flat­head screw­driv­er
  • Twist
  • Ew.
  • Old dust and grime
  • Vent with flap­per
  • Wet-dry Vac
  • Vac­u­um out the nasty stuff (I also used a tooth­brush and suc­tioned as I went)
  • 1 clasp hole on one side
  • 2 clasp holes on one side
  • Try­ing to fit it in. I’m doing it wrong in this pic­ture, you should slide the dou­ble clasp into place first before push­ing up the sin­gle side
  • After about 1.5 hours of war­ring with the fact that the ceil­ing hous­ing thing was unse­cure, I final­ly was able to snap it into place
  • The key here was to remem­ber to push/fix/bend the met­al of the slot towards the motor unit so that it can actu­al­ly catch the tab. It should make a nice *SNAP* sound.
  • Place the clasps in the slits like the old one and BOOM, you’re done!

Help­ful Hints:

  • I had the hard­est time snap­ping the new unit into place because the hous­ing was­n’t secured very well. I don’t have attic access, so it was hard to see up there (and I got stuff in my eyes, so wear safe­ty glass­es!). There was a lot of try­ing to strong arm. Since I man­aged to dis­lodge the entire hous­ing from the screw it was sit­ting on, I fig­ured that hav­ing con­trol over keep­ing the hous­ing still was an advan­tage, so I was able to snap the new unit into place while it was hang­ing out of the ceil­ing before turn­ing my atten­tion to re-secur­ing the hous­ing.
  • If loose hous­ing is an issue for you, the best bet would be to try and attach it to a wood joist if you can get to it. That would have made this so sim­ple. For that I would have need­ed a drill to get through the met­al and screws.
  • Along­side hav­ing the hous­ing free so that I could snap in the new unit, mak­ing sure that the met­al slit where the unit’s met­al tab is sup­posed to snap into place is push­ing for­ward to catch it was real­ly impor­tant.