GE BR30 Reveal Light Bulb

In my new kitchen can lights, a cheap contractor pack of Sylvania 65W flood lights didn’t even last one year before all 13 bulbs burnt out. I’ve replaced them all one-by-one with the GE Reveal bulbs, and none have burnt out, over one year later.

I’m sure the performance has a lot to do with having dimmers. I’ll bet it’s a lot more gentle on the filaments when you turn on a light with the dimmer down to begin with. Even still, these Reveal bulbs are great.

Overview

When we remodeled our kitchen a couple years ago, I envisioned a television or other media device wall mounted in a particular spot opposite our refrigerator. When I first saw the TouchSmart, I knew exactly what needed to go there.

During the remodel, I wired ethernet/phone/coaxial ports up the wall near the light switches in anticipation of this.

Note: Quick word of advice – mounting this thing is not for the faint of heart. If you have any hesitations about attempting this, I’d recommended enjoying your computer and its warranty on your desk . For the brave, read on…

Planning

Remember the old saying, “Measure twice, cut once”. Okay, some things to keep in mind:

1. You have to mount this into a stud. Don’t try to use drywall anchors, the unit is too heavy for that.
2. If your stud very far off-center from where you want to mount, you’ll need to consider a swivel mount instead of the one HP offers.
3. If your stud is slightly off center, you may be OK, as you can put the VESA hanging bolts off to the right or left a bit (I’ll show that later).
4. At first glance, the mounting bracket looks uneven, but don’t get concerned. The flange on the left is shorter than the one on the right. However, when you slide the bolts into the holes, they slide back to the left and everything is centered.
5. Lay everything out first and do some dry runs, seeing how everything will fit together.

Some things you’ll need:

1. Corded power drill with 5/32” drill bit
2. 7/16” socket and ratchet
3. 7/16” hex stainless steel lag bolts (2 1/2” long)
4. Level
5. Philips and Regular screwdrivers
6. Measuring tape
7. Short ladder
8. Stud finder

Attaching the Mounting Plate to the Wall

Using your stud finder, locate the stud and mark both sides at the approximate height where you want the center of the unit to be.

My stud was about 2 inches off center from my ideal spot for the unit, but after laying the mounting adapter out, I realized I could place the mounting bolts on the adapter off to the right or left instead of in the center, which would help bring it closer to where I wanted it. The pic below shows the six holes you can use. You can either use the four corners, or the group of four to the left or right.

Using a level, hold the mounting bracket up to the wall so the holes in the center align with the middle of the stud. Use a pencil to mark each hole on the wall.

Get on a ladder or chair and using the 5/32” drill bit and power drill, pre-drill the holes as straight as you can.

The mounting bracket came with Philips head screws. The directions show a person manually using a screwdriver with force to screw these in. This might be fine on newer homes with softer studs, but my house has 80 year old fir, and that stuff is hard as rock and doesn’t budge. When I tried to screw these in, it was too tight a fit. I re-drilled each hole to ream it out and widen the hole a bit. I tried again and stripped one screw, and a second one actually broke in half inside the wall, just from using the manual screwdriver.

Frustrated, I took a trip to McLendon’s Hardware, and purchased 5 stainless steel lag bolts with a hex head. These are much stronger than the chincy zinc ones they gave me, and won’t strip if you use a ratchet.

With the broken screw still in the wall, I had to move the holes down a little and re-drill. The lag bolts were much better and went in so much more easily.

Attaching the Mounting Adapter to the TouchSmart

The VESA mounting adapter from HP comes with some great instructions on how to add the adapter, remove the legs, etc. I just followed to the letter, and marveled at how well the whole computer was designed and engineered for this. Grab some towels or a blanket, and place your TouchSmart face down on them on a flat surface.

When it comes time to put the mounting bolts on the adapter, you use the shortest and smallest screws it comes with.

You can mount these in four holes either left-of-center, right-of-center, or four corners. I chose left-of-center to bring the unit closer to the center of the wall space, since my stud was off-center to begin with.

Finally, get someone to help you hold it, and mount it up.

Wiring

The power supply brick is absolutely huge, and needs to be considered. If you only have power at an outlet down near the floor, I’d recommend fishing some wire and putting an outlet on the wall behind the unit.

Luckily I have some light switches below the unit, so I can tap into the power from there and run a short cable up for a new outlet. I’ll post another picture of cable management when I’m done with that.

Reaction from my Wife

So after all this work, and finally getting this thing up with no major screwups, what was my wife’s reaction?

“I can’t reach it, you put it up too high.”

Oh brother…

I was missing a part before the installation, and he was nice enough to stop by the stove place in Lynwood and get the part.

Both times I had to ask and make sure that they caulked where the gas pipe enters the house. But they were much more reasonable than the installers that Rich’s Stove and Spa recommended.

I’d certainly recommend if you need that kind of service in the Seattle area.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

• 1 5 gallon bucket
• 4 gallons hot water
• 1 cup TSP
• 1 cup bleach
• 1 cup pinesol

Mix and then scrub the walls. Then they’ll be ready for paint.

The folks there were very friendly and helpful, and we got an amazing and very unique slab from them.

Additionally, we had ordered a marble-topped vanity from overstock.com that came with a chip in the corner. We asked for a price to have them take the square edge of the marble top (with the chip in it) and router the edge to make it rounded to get rid of the chip. They just decided to throw that in for free for us, and made a separate trip out to fix that edge. They routered the three sides of the marble top flawlessly right at our house.

I’d recommend them if you have any granite fabrication to do in the Seattle area.

The company I bought the radiant tubing system from recommended that I would only need to insulate my crawl space joists by simply stapling up sheets of thin reflective foil-bubble-foil insulation to the bottom of the joists, and then tape the seams between each sheet with some foil seam tape.

I did just that, but after a cold winter this year, I was not satisfied. My joists are 2×12s, and that left a lot of airspace between the tubing stapled to the subfloor, and the foil insulation stapled along the bottom of the joists. When I would go check the crawl space, the foil felt warm to the touch, but the crawl space was frigid, and it just seemed to me that a lot of heat was lost trying to warm up that airspace and the foil.

So now I’m going back and redoing each joist bay, and individually insulating it with both the foil insulation, and then regular fiberglass underneath.

My first task was to go back and re-do some of the stapling. My first time through I left the staples a little too far apart, and the tubing was starting to sag in between, so I went back and moved them closer (about 12 inches instead of 18). That made the tubing flush with the subfloor everywhere.

After that, I cut several 20″x48″ strips of the foil (the roll comes in a 48″ width), and began stapling it up about 1.5-2 inches below the tubing, in an upside down “U” shape. I got the 20″ measurement by using the tape measure to figure the approximate amount I needed for the U shape between the joists. I could have cut a couple of really long strips that spanned the entire length of the joist bay, but at 20″ I could have only gotten two strips, and would have had a wasted 8″ strip leftover.

I stapled one side first, and then pulled the other side taut to keep it flatter, with a lower arc, and away from directly touching the tubing.

I used an electric stapler to make things go quickly. Of course, the chincy PowerShot stapler I used had to get a jammed staple, which cracked the plastic track on the bottom, ruining the unit. After a trip to Lowes, 45 minutes later I was back in business with a really good stapler made by Arrow. I bought the Arrow model because the whole chamber and track where the staples go is all metal, and not subject to cracking.

After finishing the first piece, I started stapling up the next piece, slightly overlapping the original piece by 1/2-3/4 inches. I continued down the joist bay like this – it took about five sheets per bay.

When I was done with the foil, I went back and used a foil tape (like the type used on ductwork) to tape the seams.

Finally, I used rolls of R25 insulation (not batts) underneath, and hung it up with insulation hanger wires (much easier than stapling everything).

NOTE: If you are using Kraft (paper) faced rolls of insulation, make sure the paper side is facing up. In a crawl space, it would be a fire hazard to have the paper side exposed. I prefer the ComfortTherm rolls, because they are wrapped in plastic and less messy to work with.

Fun times. Right

I went downstairs and the unit was flashing once, indicating that there was a problem with the pressure switch. This was on Sunday, and of course their support line is not open on Sunday, so we were without hot water and heat (the Polaris powers our only source of heat, radiant tubing) for the day.

I called this morning, was on hold for about twenty minutes, and then got a woman who took down my information, and told me that the Commercial department would handle this, and that they would call me back. I had called the commercial number, but for some reason got transferred to the residential line.

Anyway, I waited for a couple hours, never got a call from commercial dept, so I called back the commercial line, and got a nice gentleman (I believe his name was Tom). I told him again the symptoms, that the blower was constantly on, and that the indicator light was flashing once.

He told me to open the right control panel, grab a screwdriver, take the blunt end of it, and tap the upper left corner of the ignition control board. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. To solve the issue, he actually wanted me to bang this control board with a screwdriver, which would shut off the blower.

It worked. Strange. Apparently their original control board wasn’t big enough to support an adequate sized electrical component, so if the voltage dropped a little bit, it made the pressure switch go wonky.

They are now overnighting me a new board that fixes this issue, and the guy threw in a new igniter as well, which he told me tends to fail after 3-5 years.  Of course I had to pay for the overnight shipping charges, around $30.

It sucked that I couldn’t get that information on Sunday though.

Sure enough, I was right. Man, what an experience, 6 hours long.

First off, if you are looking for a TempurPedic bed, you should know that TempurPedic has very rigid policies regarding the pricing of their beds. There is a fixed minimum price for each bed that no merchant is allowed to go under, and there are also policies prohibiting any discounts, promotional deals (like free pillows or mattress covers), tax adjustments, or any other competitive practices. Failure to follow these policies is grounds for termination of the merchant’s service agreement with TempurPedic.

That said, people are still trying to make a buck, and be competitive to get your business. I’ll tell the story, but I won’t mention the store names so as not to get them in trouble with TempurPedic (you could easily figure it out).

We started off at a major mattress store (I’ll simply abbreviate it as SC), and got the typical mattress salesperson, asking us a lot of questions, demonstrating all the different features and mattress options, and generally trying to sell us on his establishment. He was a really nice guy, but I always get suspicious of sales people, because I know they read books on techniques for effective selling, and I always feel like they are stretching things for you.

For example, he mentioned that they had a 45 day return policy, but that he could "push that to 90 days for us". When I hear that kind of thing, I immediately think that the policy is probably 90 days to begin with, and he’s just wording it to make it seem like he’s doing us a favor and "extending it".

At one point, the sales person asked what our son’s name was, and when we told him, he said "No kidding, that’s my son’s name too." I thought to myself, "yeah right, another sales trick".

He priced everything out for us, threw in two TempurPedic pillows, free delivery, told us it would be delivered in a couple days, and asked "So, how would you like to pay for this?". Of course we told him we just started looking, and wanted to try out a few other models at other stores in the area. He seemed upset, asked if there were questions we had that he didn’t answer, or something we didn’t like. We told him no. He then told us that they would beat anyone else’s price by 5%.

So we then went to a modern furniture store that also sells TempurPedic (I’ll abbreviate this one SK). We got a no-nonsense, no-pressure sales rep who basically just handed us a price sheet. They also threw in two pillows as well, free delivery, and were about two hundred dollars cheaper. The only downside was that delivery was about two weeks out.

After that, we had one other store to go to, (I’ll abbreviate this one RTB), so we drove there and started talking with the rep. It complicated things a bit because they didn’t have the model we were looking for, the "Deluxe", instead they had the "Solution Bed", which was closest to the Deluxe bed but with some tweaks, and was made specially for RTB. It was kind of like shopping around for home appliances, where you can’t really compare apples to apples because Maytag makes a model for Sears, and a different model for Home Depot, and another one for Lowes, each with slightly different features and prices.

His quote was a couple hundred dollars more than SC, and when we showed him our other quotes, he got real defensive and pointed us to a printout of a memo sent by TempurPedic, outlining their firm pricing policies and guidelines. You could tell he was trying to abide by the agreement, but he still wanted our business, so he was going to throw in one free pillow and get rid of the delivery charge.

Of course that didn’t compare, so we ended up back at SC, and they honored their agreement. We got the two free pillows, the 5% price beat, and scheduled free delivery. As we were paying for the mattress, the salesperson pulled out his cell phone, and showed us a picture of his son with the same name as ours, so I felt pretty bad for thinking he wasn’t being straight with us.

So, I guess I got two things out of the weekend, 1) shopping around saved us some money, and 2) sometimes a nice sales person is just that, a nice sales person.