Category: Pictures

DIY: Bed Canopy Frame with PVC

writ­ten 6/17/24, updat­ed 7/28/24

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Overview

What

Mak­ing a DIY canopy frame over a bed with PVC

Why

Cool­ing. To trap A/C from floor reg­is­ter under­neath a canopy dur­ing sum­mer. Room is top floor of a 3‑story town­house. Can be use­ful for trap­ping heat in the win­ter, too.

Time and Effort

1 per­son project, 2 would be help­ful

Time: 1 hour

Effort: Easy

Materials and Cost

4ft 1″ PVC Pipe (your choice of PVC size and height)

PVC Fit­tings (depends on how many con­nec­tions you want)

Canopy Mate­r­i­al

Fab­ric Fas­ten­ers (ties/clips/hooks/attachments)

Tem­po­rary Secure­ments (option­al, but rec­om­mend­ed)

$93.99 (20 piece)

$24.86 (14 total)

$39.99

$14.99 (25/pack)

$15.98 (Qty: 4)

Oth­er Sup­plies: Ratch­et­ing PVC Cut­ter ($14), Dri­ver, Drill Bits

Total Cost: $189.81

PVC Fittings

For this 6′ x 4′ x 6′ canopy, I bought 4′ long PVC at 1″ width (you can choose oth­er sizes and lengths) and used the ratch­et­ing PVC cut­ter to cut the pieces to 2′ to cre­ate 6′ lengths. T

Fit­tings need­ed for the 1″ PVC

FORMUFIT, a com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in fur­ni­ture-grade PVC sells all of these plus more options in many col­ors. 100% USA made. I bought every­thing but the 3‑way elbows at a local big box store in the PVC aisle because FOR­MU­FIT’s prod­ucts come in packs of 10.

  • 3‑Way Elbow (4 qty)
  • 90-Degree Elbow (4 qty)
  • Exter­nal Cou­pling (4 qty)
  • Stan­dard Tee (4 qty)

Option­al Foot­ers

I did­n’t do this, opt­ing for cross­bars favor­ing sta­bil­i­ty, but using a Reduc­er Cou­pling can work as pipe feet

Schematics

Here’s a hand-drawn dia­gram show­ing dimen­sions. This is 6′ x 4′ x 6′ (L x W x H) or 72″ x 48″ x 72″.

For ref­er­ence:

Bed Size (USA)Dimen­sions (L x W)
Twin75 in x 38 in (6¼ ft x 3⅙ ft)
Twin XL80 in x 38 in (6⅔ ft x 3⅙ ft)
Full75 in x 54 in (6¼ ft x 4½ ft)
Queen80 in x 60 in (6⅔ ft x 5 ft)
King80 in x 76 in (6⅔ ft x 6⅓ ft)
Cal­i­for­nia King84 in x 72 in (7 ft x 6 ft)

Why 4′ width when a twin bed is only 3⅙’ wide?

In this instance it’s to try and cap­ture the cool air blow­ing from the floor duct reg­is­ter, under the over­hang­ing side

This is a Reg­is­ter Boost­er Fan

Cutting the PVC

There are many options! And they most­ly depend on what’s avail­able in your house, how much you want to spend, how much time you mind spend­ing, what mess you want to make/clean up, and future use­ful­ness of any new­ly bought tools (or will it just sit in a box some­where for the rest of your life). Options include any­thing that cuts from man­u­al saws to pow­ered saws to ded­i­cat­ed PVC cut­ters.

Method 1

My first go-to was the Cord­less Mul­ti-tool I’d bought but had yet to use.

Clamped and ele­vat­ed
Cut­ting!
Whoops. Cut line and drawn line are not match­ing!
Messy and very rough edges

VERDICT: It will CUT. But it will also make a mess, cre­ate rough edges, time con­sum­ing, and requires clamps, and it took me a while to fig­ure out if there’s a best blade to use for PVC.

Method 2

I decid­ed to buy a Ratch­et­ing PVC Cut­ter for $14

Mea­sur­ing!
Line ‘er up!
Watch the ratch­et­ing mech­a­nism work
Super smooth edge and NO mess!

VERDICT: It will KEAL and lac­er­ate the PVC. This method is supe­ri­or. No set­ting up, no mess at all, smooth edges, and super-fast. No pow­er source

Assembly

Well. There’s not much to say here. You push the pipes into the fit­tings and form them into what­ev­er shape you want. The hard­est part is hold­ing them in place while you fit more. This is why a 2nd per­son could be use­ful. I did it by myself.

Fastening

Now, this is option­al, espe­cial­ly if your struc­ture will be a tem­po­rary one. Before putting them togeth­er, I mulled over this a lot. If the shape you formed is sol­id, you like­ly don’t need to secure the parts as they’re pret­ty tight just dry-fit­ted. How­ev­er, you have the option of cre­at­ing per­ma­nent or secure-yet-tem­po­rary bonds.

Permanent

Many choic­es out there, but THIS is your tra­di­tion­al plumb­ing primer and cement. Sim­ply fol­low the direc­tions and prime then cement.

Make sure to use in a well-ven­ti­lat­ed area and beware the pur­ple stain­ing of objects and flesh

Secure-Yet-Removable

There are dif­fer­ent meth­ods of doing this: You can use a screw, you can use wood dow­els, I read some­thing about using rub­ber hos­ing, heck you can use tape if you want to. I test­ed out a method that’s sim­i­lar to the oth­ers, just a lit­tle fanci­er.

I opt­ed to try Quick Release Pins. They’re a bit pricey for a project like this that would need many to ful­ly secure, and it was dif­fi­cult to find a size that would not be too long. In the end I only installed the 2 that I bought.

You also need a drill, drill bit, a stool, and a vac­u­um because it will make a mess.

Seems to fit!
Chose the drill bit
Drilling and mak­ing a mess
Hole through and through (drilled from both sides)
Insert­ing!
Aaaand it does­n’t actu­al­ly fit through it.

While the first pin could not ful­ly engage the hole (per­haps I drilled it at an angle instead of straight through), the sec­ond one did. Advice: err on the larg­er side when choos­ing a drill bit. I had to use the bit to ream out the open­ing from many angles just to get the pin to fit

Suc­cess!

The pin secures the pipe to the fit­ting, ensur­ing that it will not come apart. The only flaw in this is that if you use many fit­tings, that’s a lot of secure­ments! I chose the top cor­ners of the frame as it would pre­vent the ends from bow­ing out if the canopy mate­r­i­al end­ed up being too heavy for the frame.

Canopy

This part, I’m still not super hap­py about. It was hard to find any canopy curtain/top/fabric at all, let alone one that appealed to me. Aside from sewing one myself from a cho­sen, ide­al fab­ric (which I may end up doing in the future), I end­ed up choos­ing a can­vas tarp. My orig­i­nal idea was to use an old fit­ted sheet. I did­n’t con­sid­er how slip­pery the PVC is and after about 15 min­utes of wran­gling, I gave up. Plus, how would I secure the fit­ted sheet? The can­vas tarp was not only as thick as I want­ed it to be, but it came in a white col­or. If I want to trap cool air, I don’t want it to absorb heat as a dark­er col­or.

White 8′ x10’ Can­vas Tarp

6″ Bungee Ball Cords

Assem­bly

8′ x 10′ seems large, does­n’t it? It kind of is… I thought that hav­ing the extra length would make it eas­i­er to drape and less like­ly to slip off. Also, that way, I can let the sides down as I please. Lat­er, I thought about spi­ders mak­ing webs in the folds…

Then a new prob­lem arose:

THE CORNERS

What to do? How to fas­ten? To this day, I don’t real­ly know the best option apart from cut­ting it and sewing it togeth­er (which would bring me back to square one with the canopy). I just kind of did some­thing.

Does it Work?

After all of that, does the canopy work? Does it trap cool air? I have to be hon­est, I’m not ful­ly sure! I think there is an improve­ment, yes, but it’s still not an end-all solu­tion. On the very hot days, I was hot and stuffy and found it hard to sleep. Low­er­ing the sides did make a dif­fer­ence, and I also end­ed up buy­ing an Air­tight Rip­stop Nylon Fab­ric think­ing that per­haps the tarp, which was made to be breath­able, was TOO breath­able.

HOWEVER. I do have a FLIR cam­era, so here are two inter­est­ing FLIR images (note: these images were tak­en before the addi­tion of the air­tight fab­ric on top):

A/C reg­is­ter behind the bed in the image (where the blue is)
A/C reg­is­ter to the RIGHT of the image

Blue is cool and yel­low is hot. The A/C reg­is­ter is on the right side of the right­most image. There IS a cool­ness to the canopy com­pared to the area out­side of the canopy. So, yes, in a word, yes, I think it does work.

VERDICT: Yes. It does trap cool air and main­tains cool­er tem­per­a­tures than the sur­round­ing air. Hav­ing a fan to fur­ther direct the air com­ing from the reg­is­ter might make it more effec­tive at cool­ing.

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I Have Skeeter Syndrome

Writ­ten 5/28/24, Updat­ed 8/19/24

Asian Tiger Mos­qui­to IMAGE SOURCE

Foreword

Hel­lo! I suf­fer from skeeter syn­drome! I’ve had it since I was a kid, and while mine can get pret­ty bad, my sis­ter has it worse than I do! I’ve had sev­er­al humdingers over the years well into my 20s. Then all of the sud­den in my 30s, they quit pop­ping up as much. In fact, a few years ago, I got — I’m NOT jok­ing — at least 100 mos­qui­to bites from play­ing with my dog at my grand­par­ents’ house with­out bug spray or long cloth­ing and not a sin­gle one of them got larg­er than a dime. They even cleared up with­in 4 days. I thought I was cured at least for the local mos­qui­toes. Leav­ing the area would net me some nasty ones, but none ever larg­er than about 3 inch­es in diam­e­ter. I quit wor­ry­ing about it until May of 2024 when chop­ping down some over­grown tree limbs blessed me with 4 bites from some mys­tery bugs (not ticks). All 4 of them blew up almost instant­ly and proved that I am not immune!

This post is to chron­i­cle my larg­er cas­es so that oth­ers don’t have to feel alone or just to sate some curios­i­ty.

Skeeter Syndrome

What is it?

Accord­ing to The Cleve­land Clin­ic Skeeter syn­drome is “a large local aller­gic reac­tion to mos­qui­to bites marked by sig­nif­i­cant inflam­ma­tion.” It’s a hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty reac­tion to the polypep­tides in the female mos­qui­to’s (males don’t bite) sali­va. In short, it’s when your body reacts severe­ly to a bug bite.

Symptoms

Large wheal forms with­in min­utes to hours of con­tact, with heat, swelling, red­ness, itch­ing, and pain that appears sim­i­lar to cel­luli­tis. It often pro­duces blis­ters around the hard bump of the bite site, inflamed lymph nodes, swollen joints, and can induce fevers/malaise. Large lesions may cause move­ment dif­fi­cul­ty.

**Stop read­ing and seek med­ical atten­tion imme­di­ate­ly if you expe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, severe headache, nausea/vomiting, con­fu­sion, or unusu­al mus­cle weak­ness (espe­cial­ly if it’s only on one side of the body)**

Treatment
  • Oral and top­i­cal anti­his­t­a­mines (e.g. lorata­dine, cet­i­rizine, diphen­hy­dramine, etc.)
  • Oral and top­i­cal cor­ti­cos­teroids (e.g. pred­nisone, methyl­pred­nisolone, hydro­cor­ti­sone) for severe cas­es to reduce inflam­ma­tion
  • Over-the-counter lotions, soaks, and creams (e.g. calamine lotion, aloe gel, oat­meal baths, alu­minum acetate, etc.)
  • Cold packs
  • Pres­sure (not scratch­ing, just pres­sure, like tying some cloth around the wound)
  • Antibi­otics will NOT help an aller­gic reac­tion. Only use­ful if the wound (e.g. by scratch­ing) were opened and became infect­ed
Prevention
  • Bug Spray — Off Deep Woods works well for me
  • Elim­i­nate Stagnant/Standing Water — You can use the mos­qui­to pel­lets and/or aer­a­tion if you have a pond. Mov­ing water kills mos­qui­to lar­vae. They only need a lit­tle bit of water to repro­duce!
  • Wear Light Col­ored Cloth­ing — Mos­qui­toes can favor cer­tain col­ors, while not being fans of oth­er col­ors*
  • Wear Long Sleeved Clothes and Closed-Toed Shoes — beware any flap­py sleeves or that gap between your shirt and pants!
  • Avoid Per­fumes

*More on this at the end of the post

Does it Get Better? Or will it Always Be Like THAT?

It is under­stood that this type of reac­tion hap­pens when they indi­vid­ual comes in con­tact with a species of mos­qui­to that the body has not yet encoun­tered. That may explain why I had a peri­od of time where I was­n’t react­ing heav­i­ly to any­thing local, just out­side of the area.

My Memorable Cases — With Pictures

Stan­dard Process:

  1. Ini­tial bite
  2. Spread­ing of inflam­ma­tion, pos­si­bly sev­er­al lay­ers of expan­sion (usu­al­ly 2–3 for me)
  3. Pro­duc­tion of a small, raised bump that’s insane­ly itchy (inevitably, it pops from fric­tion or just on its own)
  4. 24–36 hours: THIS is where if any sign of headache, fever, and malaise occurs, SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION
  5. Lymph nodes may become enlarged and itchy/hot
  6. Lesion cycles through weep­ing and hard­en­ing (some­times liq­uid, some­times gooey flu­id)
  7. 72 hours: the worst of the inflam­ma­tion and itchiness/pain is gone. Lesion has deflat­ed to a more man­age­able size
  8. Day 5: almost for­get about it. Min­i­mal itch­i­ness, flat lesion
  9. 3–4 weeks: returns with a vengeance. Goes through the heal­ing process again (inflam­ma­tion, weep­ing, itch­i­ness, mul­ti­ple scabs that shed over and over) for about 2 weeks
  10. Cycle repeats for sev­er­al months to years until final­ly the wound dis­ap­pears (I’ve had them around for a few years if I scratch them)

Normal Mosquito Bite Reaction

For Com­par­ison’s Sake

July 2024

*NOTE: Both loca­tions had After Bite admin­is­tered quick­ly after con­tact

Loca­tion: Right Arm

Min­utes After Con­tact

72 Hours

8 Days

Loca­tion: Back of Thigh

Min­utes After Con­tact

48 Hours

9 Days

Skeeter Syndrome Cases

June 2013

Loca­tion: Right Cheek

Bite on Cheek

Swollen Lymph Node in Neck

July 2013

Loca­tion: Left Tri­cep

This one was excit­ing because I’d nev­er had any of them get large enough for the ends to touch on the oth­er side of the limb. First time for every­thing! When they get large like this, it not only itch­es, but it hurts. It’s also real­ly heavy and you smack it on every­thing. Prob­a­bly should have seen a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al, but I did­n’t and just like the oth­ers the swelling went down with­in a week

Day 1 — 1 Hour

Day 2 — 24 Hours

Day 2 — 36 Hours

October 2018

Loca­tion: Upper Left Thigh

You can see how raised it got. You can also under­stand why a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al would mis­take it for cel­luli­tis, but it’s not. That will hap­pen, where it rais­es from being flat to the skin. The right image shows the ini­tial bite lesion (red), sec­ondary inflam­ma­tion (blue), and then ter­tiary inflam­ma­tion (yel­low). This par­tic­u­lar bite only expand­ed twice.

May 2024

Loca­tion: Arms

24 Hours

Right Fore­arm

Left Fore­arm

Left Tri­cep

48 Hours

Lines indi­cate growth (black, red, green, then black). Con­tact: 5⁄23; Before: 5⁄24; After: 5⁄25

Up Close of Blis­ter­ing and Weep­ing

The blis­ters are extra itchy and as the cher­ry on top, the heat com­ing from these lesions make it feel like you’re being microwaved over and over again as the skin is so flam­ing hot that it com­bats the cool­er air tem­per­a­ture. If you’re faced with heat whether from out­side or from a hot show­er, it gets even more itchy and painful, mov­ing from itchy to painful as the heat lev­el increas­es.

For this par­tic­u­lar case, they became so unbear­ably itchy that I went to see my PCP who pre­scribed a Medrol dose pack (methyl­pred­nisolone). I think I had a fever by the end of day 2 and over­all malaise which is not some­thing I’ve endured before, and that pushed me to seek help. By the time I got in to see them (72 hours post-con­tact) it was already start­ing to come down. What I did­n’t know at the time, was that brew­ing under­neath and in the same area was my first ever aller­gic reac­tion to poi­son ivy which end­ed up being incred­i­bly bad (that’s a dif­fer­ent post). So, were the two influ­enc­ing each oth­er? I don’t know.

10 Days Since Con­tact

At the 72-hour mark, the bites decreased in size and symp­toms dras­ti­cal­ly. Then again, it might have been because I had a more seri­ous issue to deal with (as you can see), but usu­al­ly after the major inflam­ma­tion goes down, you most­ly for­get that you have them

*Ignore the Poi­son Ivy lesions*

Resurgence/Healing

Here’s an up-close pic­ture of peel­ing

This is when it start­ed get­ting real­ly itchy, hot, and inflamed again. You can see how it gets red, then starts to bleed, weep (can weep to the point of soak­ing through bandaids), and scab on its own, then the skin starts to peel in lay­ers. Then the cycle keeps repeat­ing with the itch­ing, bleed­ing, scab­bing, peel­ing.

**This is where if you scratch it (because you’re going to want to, it’s so itchy), the cycle will keep going for a very long time, months, even pos­si­bly years. And there’s a high pos­si­bil­i­ty for it to get infect­ed as evi­denced by a red streak/line com­ing from the bite. So, DON’T SCRATCH IT!**

Loca­tion: Left Fore­arm

20 Days

24 Days

26 Days

28 Days (4 Weeks)

30 Days

35 Days

Day 42 (6 Weeks)

Day 49 (7 Weeks)

Day 105 (3.5 months)

August 2024

Loca­tion: Face Next to Ear with Lymph Node Involve­ment

24 Hours

48 Hours

72 Hours

5 Days

9 Days

Got this from rak­ing up years of dead leaves. It was the only part of me uncov­ered (fig­ures). Lymph node involve­ment with­in 24 hours, very painful to touch for about 6 days. Dimin­ished and asymp­to­matic by Day 9. Lesion spread behind ear in 72 hours, imped­ing hear­ing by par­tial ear canal occlu­sion due to inflam­ma­tion for 24 hours, con­tin­u­ous weep­ing by Day 5 and also peel­ing. Face lesions usu­al­ly heal quick­ly

The Science Behind Mosquito Bites

SOURCE

Accord­ing to researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton:

Mos­qui­to species: Aedes aegyp­ti (aka the Yel­low Fever Mos­qui­to)

Col­or Attrac­tion: red, orange, black, and cyan

Col­or Deter­rents: green, pur­ple, blue, and white

  • Mos­qui­toes can smell CO2 (car­bon diox­ide)
  • Once they smell the CO2, then their visu­al sens­es acti­vate (like you smelling the aro­ma of good food while walk­ing down the street and then look­ing to see where it’s com­ing from)
  • With­out smelling the CO2, mos­qui­toes don’t care about humans much. It’s only when they catch the scent
  • Mos­qui­toes can smell up to 100ft away yet can only see about 20ft
  • CO2 can trav­el far dis­tances
  • Orange-red col­ors in the skin allow mos­qui­toes to locate a host
  • Mos­qui­to detec­tion sys­tem: Smell CO2, look for red col­or, detect heat, is that sweat? Oooo body vapors!
  • Study was con­duct­ed on 1.3 mil­lion mos­qui­toes in a large wind tun­nel which allowed for a con­trol­lable envi­ron­ment sim­u­la­tor
  • Con­clu­sion: by under­stand­ing mos­qui­to neu­ro­science then humans can turn them­selves vir­tu­al­ly invis­i­ble to mos­qui­toes

SOURCE

Researchers at Johns Hop­kins

Mos­qui­to species: Anophe­les gam­bi­ae (trans­mits malar­ia)

  • Mos­qui­toes can dis­crim­i­nate amongst mul­ti­ple peo­ple in an open area
  • Despite many dif­fer­ent com­plex odors, some peo­ple real­ly do attract mos­qui­toes more than oth­ers
  • Dif­fer­ent con­cen­tra­tions of 15 air­borne com­pounds pro­duced by sub­jects in the study seemed to attract mos­qui­toes more
  • Mos­qui­toes real­ly like car­boxylic acid (fat­ty acid class in sweat pro­duced in sebum and also by ben­e­fi­cial microbes on skin that smells like ran­cid but­ter or cheese), and ace­toin (pro­duced by skin microbes)
  • There­fore: skin micro­bio­me is impor­tant in attrac­tive­ness to skeeters
  • Researchers test­ed 4 soap brands’ abil­i­ty to pre­vent attrac­tion, where 3 of 4 seemed to ampli­fy attrac­tive­ness, but over­all, the results are not straight­for­ward
  • All soaps con­tained limonene, a known repel­lant, so the con­clu­sion is that it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the brand of soap but the con­cen­tra­tion of ingre­di­ent and how it inter­acts with an indi­vid­u­al’s skin chem­i­cals
  • More diverse micro­bio­mes tend to attract mos­qui­toes less than less-diverse micro­bio­mes
  • Mos­qui­toes have evolved over time to adapt to human inter­ven­tion as they rely heav­i­ly upon human blood to breed. For exam­ple, to over­come the use of bed nets, they have begun to feed ear­li­er in the day.
  • Con­clu­sion: mos­qui­toes have a com­plex sys­tem to iden­ti­fy humans that does­n’t’ rely on just one sig­nal path­way. Each human has a par­tic­u­lar, per­son­al odor and per­haps the key to pre­vent attrac­tion is find­ing what mix of repel­lents is best for the indi­vid­ual. DEET is still the best, and nat­ur­al repel­lents, while they work, are not as effec­tive and require repeat­ed reap­pli­ca­tions