Battery killer - Outlook App on Samsung Galaxy S4 Android

Suddenly one my Galaxy S4 Android phone battery began dying halfway through the day. I charge it every night.
I was thinking it was a hardware problem after owning the phone just under a year.
Then I discovered the problem.
I went to :

• Settings
• More
• Battery

Then you see Battery use by application.

Here I saw the culprit. Microsoft outlook had used  55% of the battery. I had never noticed this behaviour before. I had installed Outlook to access my old Email that My provider Bell had given me years ago. Recently I had cancelled my home DSL internet with them. (switched to a CABLE based Provider) It seems they cancelled my Email accounts tied to the account (name@bell.net , name @sympatico.ca.) So the app was not even working. Looking at the settings I saw  I had configured push notifications. I had not received any new emails in over a week. When i selected SYNC it seemed to contuously try to connect to the mail server unsuccessfully.  So the issue was likely the app was trying to continously access the server and failing and retrying every 10 minutes. This not only drained my battery but also drained my wireless data plan. (since I had turned off wifi to save battery when away from home.)

THE FIX

In my case the fix was simply to uninstall Outlook since I now longer needed it.

If you encounter this problem you may be able to disable push notifications, Change how often it does push notification, or troubleshoot any service connection issues.

 

Insulating a cold bedroom over the Garage - "Heated space"

We recently moved our bedroom to a larger one at the front of the house. This was a concern because it was notoriously the coldest room in the house. Its always several degrees colder.
This is a common problem in Canada and there are many service companies do it yourself solutions.
I of course hate paying anyone to do something I can do myself.
So with unused vacation time I had to take before the end of the year I was determined to solve it as inexpensively as I could.
Inspection:
To start I cut some holes in the garage ceiling drywall large enough to stand on a ladder and look around with a bright light.

Then I cut out sections of drywall between the studs.

I was happy to see there was already considerable thickness of pink insulation, however what I saw next changed my whole plan.
I knew I would see the two heating ducts and figured I would need to wrap them with insulation, however there was a third duct just blowing into the space. 
Seeing this I wondered why the space was so cold.


Change of plan
I was thinking of purchasing a spray foam kit and apply it directly to the underside of the floor. Now I realized if I did that I would loose the benefit of the heated space.
So I needed to find the cold areas and improve the insulation.

I could see the insulation on the side walls was not as thick and I could see the builder has not put vapor barrier over them .
So, this was enough to send me off to my nearby Home Depot to buy insulation. I selected Roxul R22 16 inch wide.

Three bats fit nicely in the back of a 2003 Honda CRV. They also come bundled in 3's.  I later went back and go one more.

Also notable, the plastic used to tie 3 bundles together is heavy enough to use for extra vapor barrier.

I slid down the short stubs of insulation and added more insulation above in the outside walls.

Then I added vapor barrier plastic. 

Then I placed more new insulation on the warm side.

Back in the garage ...Outside of the front of the house has a steel I-beam.

After cutting some more access holes I got a better look.
From inside I could see the I beam exposed in the corners, so clearly not enough insulation inside,




I ran a new full thickness wall of new batting along the outside walls.

In the most interior wall I saw plumbing so I had to ensure i didn't cover it. it had to stay on the warm side of the insulation.

As a final layer of warmth I split several bats of insulation to half thickness and layered over top of the  original pink insulation.

The end result is that I feel much of the house is warmer and I expect a better heating bill this year.