Frustrations engendered by a coughing child

[celticdragonfly]

I was up in the wee hours with Jamie this morning, as he was coughing badly and calling for "Mamama!"

On the plus side, he was using a bunch of words through all this. Mama, water, all done, bye.

Got him water, got him changed. Realized neither the humidifier or the steamer was going, and the heat was kinda high - he's coughing because the warm dry air is drying out his throat too much. Poor baby. Got Karl to help give him some ibuprofen. Tried to get Karl's help with the steamer, which wasn't working for me at first, could not. This morning he was asking "how'd Jamie end up in bed with us?" Um, your idea, dear. I love him, but he's such a zombie at that hour, which is a pity when I was dealing with an engineering problem. Environment is making child sick, fix environment, gah this one tool is not working.

After it finally was working, and both humidifier in the bathroom and steamer on the bedside table were going, I laid there, unable to get back to sleep, thinking in frustration about how I'd *like* to fix things.

Why is it that people who build houses only put electric plugs right down by the floor? It's dumb. I would like to put a humidifer in Jamie's room. We have a great big shelf up, that if we cleaned it off would be big enough. But it would have to be plugged in at floor level. I can get babyproofing gadgets that would prevent him pulling the plug out, so he couldn't turn it off or electrocute himself - but nothing I can do is going to prevent him being able to use the cord to pull the thing down off the shelf onto his head. Not a good idea for a room where he is unsupervised.

If I was building a house, I'd put some plugs in at shoulder height or higher - both for babyproofing and for hanging lamps and such. It wouldn't be that hard.

For that matter, why the hell don't they design humidifiers in with the central heating? [1] Just need a water reservoir right under the path of the fan. It could refill itself from the household water supply. Given the grunge at the bottom of the steamer after most of the water is gone (man, makes me grateful we're drinking from faucets with water purifiers on them), it would need to get cleaned out regularly. But that could get automated easily enough - I'd use a lot of design elements from a toilet. You could just have this thing run while the heat is going, or have a humidity sensor that would set it off, the equivalent of a thermostat. It would not be that hard. And it would be a big improvement. We'd be healthier and I would have gotten more sleep last night.


[1] Yes, I know bkseiver in Louisiana is likely to be horrified by this. Trust me, here in Texas it'd be a fine idea.

Comments

how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[dartpoly.livejournal.com]

1. there are lonnnnnng electrical strips (4'? 6'?) that were on sale at Fry's just a few weeks ago. they're designed to run along your workbench so that you have an electrical outlet every 6". and they were cheap, as i recall. run one UP the wall, plugin humidifier at top, fill the rest with "baby-proof" caps.

2. buy the cord-covering strips usually used on floors when you have to run an extension cord across an aisle.

3. there are a variety of split tube/conduit materials, many of which are designed to be painted or in "domestic" beiges and whites to blend with a wall, that fasten to the wall and through which an electrical cord can be run.

4. there are simple fasteners (don't recall the name) that are 2 small nails and a little bridge of plastic that do the same as #3, but are single points-of-fastening (thus more flexible in what sort of path something is secured).

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Wow. Is this "do all four" or is this "pick one of these four methods"?

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[dartpoly.livejournal.com]

more of a pick one... depending on your limitations (don't want to mark-up the whole wall, don't want holes in wall, need to have cord completely contained, etc.) you might favor one solution over another.

just giving the options i could think of off the top of my head...
(aside from "install new outlet at shelf-height")

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[tmc4242.livejournal.com]

"Install new outlet at shelf height": Good answer.

Is this an outside wall of the house or an interior one ? Is there an electrical outlet directly below the shelf at normal outlet height ?

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Interior wall, and yes, there's an electrical outlet directly below the shelf.

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[tmc4242.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't be that hard to add an outlet at the shelf then. The only really tough part might be cutting a hole in or removing the existing outlet box. Beyond that, it's pretty simple - unless the electrician who wired the place did something really unorthodox. That could present challenges. Always that caveat...

I have a 2 meter long 3/4" drill bit that works wonders for getting thru the fire stops inside the wall. You guys are welcome to borrow it. If you can wait until ( conceivably ) after ConDFW for me to have an open weekend, I can coach and/or assist too.

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

We do not have the training or skills to do electrical rewiring.

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[tmc4242.livejournal.com]

I've done several outlets like this over the years.

You're both clever. You could be taught. :-)

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[selenite.livejournal.com]

And we're willing to learn . . . but when the failure mode is "faulty wiring burns down house" we'd rather not be self-taught.

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[tmc4242.livejournal.com]

Where's your sense of adventure ? ;-)

The outlet end is generally the easy part. I personally at least hesitate and consult references/experts before venturing far into the breaker panel.

LOTS of magic smoke in there...

As noted, I'll be glad to help out, but it might be early March before I can get there.

Re: how to keep the child from grabbing the cord

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I can't argue with that logic. It's one thing to do "learn as you go" self-taught carpentry, or even plumbing. The consequences of mistakes range from aesthetic to inconvenient (for suitable definitions of "inconvenient" in the case of supply-side plumbing errors *g*). But "learn as you go" self-taught electricity is considerably more fraught.

Why, yes, they do, dear

[bkseiver.livejournal.com]

Why, yes, they do, dear, design central humidifiers. It shouldn't even be too hard an upgrade. I've seen them on "This Old House". They would just have to pop it in your system upstream from the furnace.

And yes, you can have your wiring done that way. I specifically had the IV therapy room at the cardiologist's "new" office wired with waist-high plugs for IV pumps. It's not (you should excuse the pun) a matter of "code" - just tradition.

Re: Why, yes, they do, dear

[archangelbeth]

*nod* Our humidifier and central heating are plugged together, too. Except the humidifier pump is frotzed and it was running constantly, so we had to turn it off. O:p

Re: Why, yes, they do, dear

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

And if I ever get rich and build my own house, it WILL be built that way. And babyproofing built in all over the place, and that invention of mine with the extension cords.

I wonder if we could upgrade to a central humidifier. I'll mention it to Karl and we'll probably do some google-search later.

Re: Why, yes, they do, dear

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Ditto DEhumidifiers for us Gulf Coasters. Though those are more complex and thus awfully pricey, IIRC.

Re: Why, yes, they do, dear

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Yep. We had to run dehumidifiers in the basement radio station I worked at in high school. Used to supply the science lab with distilled water for experiments.

We used to joke about setting up a humidifier and dehumidifier in the room together and let them fight it out.

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

They do design houses that way, under a design idea called universal accessability.

Door have handles, not knobs, outlets are at convenient heights, including on the front of cabinets, doors are wide enough for wheelchairs, etc. However, it's not caught on yet.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Whimper. I wanna be rich enough to build my own house!

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

I think some builders do have packages like that, but I'm not 100% sure.

[taral.livejournal.com]

It's not always the best idea -- handles are bad, for example, if you have cats.

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

If you have family members that have arthritis or have anyone in your family with mobility issues, then you get to cope with the cats.

Yes, it's easier for the cats to get in, but it's also easier for those of us who will end up wth twisted claws instead of hands. Sorry, in my house, my ability to move around takes priority.

Then again, I dislike cats intensely, so it's not liable to be a problem.

Sorry, hot button issue.

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is why they insist on putting heating vents in the ceiling??

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Just imagine small toddlers dropping toys, food, crayon pieces, etc down a vent in the floor. The house in south Redondo Beach, where Maggie was born, DID have a big heating vent in the living room floor. A perpetual problem.

As it is, forced air heating vents in the ceiling make far more sense than the type of heating many houses in California had - electric wires that ran through the ceiling and heated up, radiant heat I think they called it. in the ceiling, no kidding. We had that in the rental house up in Lompoc. And of course, previous renters had been dumb and hung up hanging plants and such, screwing the doohickeys into the ceiling and breaking wires - so sections of the house didn't work at all.

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

I grew up with hot water baseboard pipes and liked them just fine. Of course, they did get awfully dusty, and weren't easy to clean. But the head when where it was needed, and they didn't dry the air out.

[firedrake-mor.livejournal.com]

Having once, a very long time ago, been a toddler, I thought it was a Very Fine Thing one time to take the crayons my mommy had given me for drawing on the plexiglass panel in my playpen, and chuck them down the furnace vent next to the playpen. The resultant smoke elicited the arrival of the big red truck and all the nice men with the wonderful siren, so I was delighted. I got all the attention, because they were concerned I had suffered smoke inhalation next to the vent before my mother noticed -- having been at the other end of the house doing laundry and thinking I was safe.

My mother, you might imagine, was less than pleased.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Or my friend's kid who, during the Early Potty Training Days, got the vent confused with the proper recepticle.

[archangelbeth]

Why, dontcha know, that's so the cool air will sink down when you turn the system on!

O;>

(Lived in Austin for much of my life. Remember the 90+ degree summers well.)

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm in Atlanta myself...but we do get winter eventually.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

It's a lot easier (and hence cheaper) to run the associated ducting through the attic space than through most foundation/floor designs--especially concrete slabs (which make up the vast majority of Houston foundations, though I can't speak for D/FW homes). Ditto installing furnace, central air, etc., in the attic rather than taking up valuable cubage in the living areas.

And if the majority of the work they do is *cooling*, the ceiling really isn't a bad place for them.

[callibr8]

Another idea that might or might not work, depending on what kind of overhead fixture is in the room - add one of those convert socket-to-plug things (about $4 at a hardware store) to one of the sockets of the overhead fixture, and string your extension cord along the ceiling from there, to the humidifier on the high shelf. Depending on the distance, you could secure the extension cord to the ceiling with masking tape, even.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

I think the idea about using solid conduit to keep kiddie-fingers from grabbing the extension cord that is run up the wall would be the simplest to install.

Shelf of Untouchables

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

What we have for the Mite's room is a shelf with a large
hole drilled in it (large enough for the wassname, giant adaptor bits that come with so many plug-in-ables these days) and, beneath it, in front of the Actual Outlet a small dresser.

The which has been attached to the wall via boards of a thickness to create a gap wide enough to pass cords + adaptors.

We have one of those multiple outlet thingies (it's late, I'm tired and getting over the 'flu and I've lost all my vocabulary. Gah.) Power strip? Plugged into the Actual wall outlet. All electrical appliances plug into it.

The one dresser drawer that pulls out (and gives us access to the power strip) has a child-proof lock on it.

We pretty much have everything electrical she's likely to use up there at one time or another.

I know it sounds complicated, but it was actually pretty easy to put together with stuff we had on hand.