Trellis

Jake has been out all week, as has Uli. Eli phoned in sick. That left just me and Lalo. So we erected the center trellis today. The post holes had been dug earlier. We raised the 14’ long 4 x 8” posts and packed them in with river rock. (We have plenty of rock.) Then we cut off the tops of the posts to make the at the right height to shade the summer sun but not the winter sun.I cut the cut-off tops into corbels and we screwed them into the tops of the posts with 12” long screws. Then we cut the 2 x 10” 14’ long planks to length and bored holes for the rods that hold them together. One by one we hoisted five planks onto the corbels and threaded them and pre-drilled spacers onto the rods. Since our holes were not perfect, this ‘threading’ turned out to be harder than anticipated. It really meant pounding them on with a rubber mallet.

That little exercise took all day and was more physical exercise than I’ve had in ages. I have to stain all the cut edges and we have to screw the planks to the corbel, but it looks good. Two more, smaller trellises remain. They are mounted on steel brackets fastened to the wall, so the process will be somewhat different.

Early in the morning I noticed that the ERV was noisier than I wanted, and measured the sound level with my iPhone. In the bath it is 40 decibels (A-weighted) and in the bedroom 39 db. A quiet bedroom should have a sound level of 30 db. (Each increase of 3 db is perceived as twice as loud.) So I will ask the mechanical contractor to replace the sheet metal ducts in the mechanical room with insulated ducts. The ten feet of duct closest to the ceiling register is insulated, but I find it more effective to reduce the sound closer to the source of noise, namely the fans in the ERV.