i leave for belmont by 11:30am. the air is brisk but it's not too bad. at least i'm not involuntarily crying that i sometimes do when the temperature is so cold my eyeballs are trying to not freeze solid. when i make to belmont, my parents are making breakfast-lunch, but they already ate, and they're just some for me: toasted panettone sweet bread, ing'er soup, orange juice, and bacon.
after lunch i get started on assembling my aeroponics system. one question i still had was just exactly how large a hole to drill for the 1/2" grommet. the instruction video i was watching said a 3/4" hole, and the specs from the grommet manufacturer says something about a 3/4" hole as well. but on the home depot question and answer page for the grommet, some people are saying 5/8" hole, with others are adamant it's 11/16". i went to the garage to fish out our spade bit drill set. fortunately we also have an electronic caliper and used it to measure the exact diameter of the grommet hole. 3/4" seems a bit large. 11/16" there's some clearance. 5/8" is a little small, but the grommet is made of rubber so it can stretch a little bit. i ended up deciding on 5/8": i figured if the hole is too small, i can always made it a bit wider (but i can't make a big hole smaller).
with that decided, i started on drilling the net cup holes on the tote lid. i bought a 3" hole saw just for this occasion. i traced a dozen circles on top of the lid, then used the hole saw to make the holes. it went through the plastic fairly easily, but only because i was drilling the center, which was a flat surface, compared to elsewhere on the lid that had thicker reinforcement markings.
before i could cut the remaining holes, i went with my mother on a walk around 1:30pm. our destination was star market, to collect some boneless chicken thighs on sale. we though my father might come with us, but he'd just used the bathroom and said he needed to rest. my mother was afraid it might be very cold outside, but it wasn't too bad, despite the temperature hovering in the 30's. i think it was because there was hardly any wind today, just a calm sunny day.
after we were done shopping at star market, i ended up carrying everything in a saggy backpack and a grocery bag. walking back along belmont street, i accidentally brushed against a wire mesh fence and ripped a small hole in my winter jacket sleeve. i took a photo of a pile of signs. a girl walked by said she'd photographed the same thing, and tagged it as, "if you're looking for a sign..." there was also a bunch of football games today, one of them being the patriots-bills game. felt like the whole sporting world was rooting for buffalo, on the account of damar hamlin. oddsmakers had the bills with an 80%+ odds of winning. so i was surprised to see the game tied at 14-14 when i checked the score on our way home.
we got back a bit before 3pm. i continued with my aeroponics system construction. i finished cutting out the rest of the 3" holes on the lid. some of them were hard to cut, and the drill jams a few times. it also made quite a mess of shredded plastic curls and dust. i dumped out as bunch as i could from the storage box before rinsing out the inside in the bathtub. i also vacuumed the carpet in the sunroom where i was working.
after the net cup holes were cut, it was time to drill the grommet hole. i was afraid because if i got the size wrong, the storage bin would leak, and i'd need to get a new box. i used the 5/8" spade bit and slowly drilled a hole. i inserted the rubber grommet. it seemed to fit fine. i then inserted a 1/2" drip irrigation elbow through the grommet hole. it fit perfectly, very snug. i think a 11/16" drill bit would've worked as well, and probably 3/4" too. but the perfect size hole for this particular 1/2" grommet was 5/8".
when i tried to remove the arbor from the 3" hole saw, it wouldn't come off. it must've tightened even more when i was drilling the dozen net cup holes. i did some research on how to remove a stuck arbor. easiest way seems to be using an impact drill. another way would be to remove the drill guide and using a long screw driver, twist off the hole saw while it's held in a vice. either way, kind of a pain. i should've used an arbor with pins, those don't get seized like these simple threaded standalones.
next was drilling holes into the 1/2" PVC pipes of the manifold and installing the micro sprayers. the sprayer instructions said to drill 11/64" holes. i had to get a set of drill bits because i didn't have that size. i drilled 16 holes on the "bottom" of the manifold. in some instructions i saw they drilled on the top, but then water sprays everywhere when the pump is turned on. having the sprayers face downwards makes more sense, and easier to check inside the storage bin when it's running and not get sprayed.
installing the micro sprayers was more challenging. the tiny sprayers are threaded, so the trick is to push into the PVC holes as you twist in the sprayers, so the sprayers thread themselves into the plastic. pushing with too mush force risk breaking the sprayers, which was what happened to one of them (not a big deal, i bought 180 pcs). they were so hard to push in that i bloodied my fingers. i figured out a trick though: grab the sprayers with a paper towel for better grip. that made it a lot easier and i managed to get all the sprayers installed. the sprayers come in 3 types: 90° (blue), 180° (green), and 360° (red). i installed 180° sprayers all along the sides of the manifold, and 4 360° sprayers in the center.
it finally came time to test the aeroponics setup. i did it in the kitchen, figured it'd be easier to clean if water ended up spraying everywhere (although the bathroom would've been the better choice). i attached the PVC manifold to the pump sitting in the center of the container. i didn't want to fill up the storage bin completely with water, since it'd be too heavy to move. but after pouring in several buckets of water, there still wasn't enough water for the pump to work. apparently the pump needs to be submerged in water before it'll run. so we ended up filling a bucket and submerging the pump into the bucket (basically tricking it into thinking it was sitting in a full tote). that worked, but only for about 10 seconds before the pump drained out all the water from the bucket (400gph!). in that time though, we were able to see potential leaks, like a spot where the pvc didn't attach snugly with a t-connector. i tightened it up, that fixed the leak. i'll do a more robust test tomorrow. after placing the container in its final location, i'll fill up the tote with 10 gallons of water, which is the final amount for the system. i also attached a length of clear 1/2" tubing to the irrigation elbow sticking out from the grommet hole. this will act as a gauge so i can see how much water is left in the storage tote, and when do i need to refill it.
patriots ended up losing. i wasn't watching the game but had it on in the background, and would occasionally glance over to see the score. at least new england kept it competitive for a while, before buffalo broke the game wide open. not sure who i'll root for in the playoffs. patriots loss is still too fresh in my mind, but i don't dislike this buffalo team, and if you know anything about their history, the bills fans have been waiting a long time for a super bowl victory.
it was my mother's turn to order a bunch of stuff from temu, after one of my aunts sent her a photo of a rabbit bracelet sold on temu. my mother ended up buying $100 worth of merchandise, including various yarns. i had to use my account to get the $30 off $100 purchase. when it came time to pay, i saw that temu had changed their discount: now it was a $30 coupon for future purchase, not an immediate discount. so the discounts on temu continue to change. probably eventually they'll do away with free shipping as well, or maybe a minimum purchase to qualify.
for dinner my mother made a home-style zhajiang noodles. i went home afterwards. my parents told me to take one of the cars because the temperature had dropped to 30°F and they thought it was too cold for biking. i thought it was just fine, and i strapped the two beauty rest pillows we bought from costo last weekend onto the back of my rear bike baskets. not sure if these pillows will be for the guest bedroom, i kind of want to use them myself, but i already have a pair of memory foam pillows.
one last football game on tonight - lions vs packers. detroit had already found out they'd been eliminated from the playoffs, so this was a spoiler game for them: beating green bay would prevent them from making it to the playoffs. sure enough, the lions won the game. detroit along with pittsburgh are the two teams that didn't make it into the playoffs despite have winning records (9-8) while the buccaneers - with a record of 8-9 - will be in the playoffs. it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it's a design defect of the NFL playoff system. i remember the same thing happened to the patriots a long time ago, when matt cassel was the QB after brady got injured for the season.