Hello, I am trying to update my porch posts by swapping the old wrought iron columns for 4X4 posts and railing. This is on a 1950’s ranch house with a concrete slab porch. The columns are load bearing, and the issue I am having is the old iron supports were cemented in with the slab. The new larger 4×4’s when mocked up will fall half way on the edge of the slab and half way onto the dirt. Just trying to figure out what the best way to go about footing these will be. I am thinking the only option I have will be to cut the slab out around the columns and pour new footings using sonotubes? Just hoping someone has a better solution or some advice as I have never cut concrete before.

Hello,

I’m trying to make some sculptural “lamps” using skinny copper tubing and fluorescent t5 tubes. The small size of the tubes is restricting for even the smallest ballasts that are commercially available. Because of this I’ve been buying the smallest under cabinet lights that I can find and cutting them apart to steal their tiny circuit board-esque ballasts. These fit my application and running one light is no big deal, but I’m running into problems when I try to hook up 2 lights to one ballast.

The ballast that I’m using is from a 24W fixture, running a 24W bulb. My thinking was that I could run a 13W bulb and 8W bulb using this ballast because together they total less than 24 watts. Is this assumption correct, and I can use this ballast but I’m just wiring it wrong? Or, do I need a completely different ballast?

I’ve tried 2 different wiring setups based on schematics I found online (though, mine isn’t color-coordinated so I am guessing as far as which wire is which) On the first attempt one light worked and the other burned out instantly. On the second attempt (which felt accurate to the schematic) Neither light turned on.

After that I tried to connect the 2 different sets of Out’s (what I thought were out’s) from the ballast to the 2 lights, and then “chain” the 2 lights together in the middle. Both lights turned on this time but flickered strangely and made a really bad sound. Is their a chance that this is correct, but maybe the connections were poor?

Sorry for the essay. Any help that anyone can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I have 5,000 to 10,000 photos on my desktop and need a good software program for organization (easy to do), but for retrieval based on keywords in a separate entry.

I previously uses a Jasc program along with a companion program for sorting and retrieving. Unfortunately, Corel bought Jasc and have had a system that has deteriorated, especially after a crash the eliminated some programs. The current Corel program is near impossible to use for my needs (as I think I have discovered).

Ideally, I would like to keep my photos in albums, which is easy, but many of the photos could be in multiple albums compounding the number of possible photos cross-referenced especially with a growing number of photos.

I do restoration of photos and need to both originals and modified versions. I also an into genealogy and have over 10,000 people in my family trees with whatever photos I have or want to collect in the future.

I would like to have a photo file (could contain photos in defined albums), but also the ability to search using keywords attached to each photo. The keyword could be a date, year, name, individual, location, occasion, holiday, subject, or a multiple of those items.

I am not looking for cheap or free program, but an established one that has the flexibility to get photos easily and work with a good photo editing and restoring software program.

I know this is out there in some form, but have not stumbled on it.

Dick

outside condesnser a/c unit will not turn on unless you take a screw driver to the contactor(contact switch).then fan will spin,condenser will engage.pull screw driver away it will stop,5 min later it will all come on and cool just fine and cycle just fine.both run and start capacitor changed a yr ago.Why such a slow start when the ac hadn’t been used in a while?