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johnridleyI got out relatively early and started leveling the new flower garden. While I was working on that, the neighbor called me over. He had picked up a 2.5 gallon jug of concentrated weed stop, and had borrowed a friend's tow-behind powered liquid sprayer. The jug was enough to do both of our lawns twice over so he said he'd do my lawn too. I'd been meaning to do this anyway; I don't mind dandelions in moderation, but they don't understand moderation.
He was towing it with his big quad bike, and had trouble; the hitch was way too high and it wouldn't go slow enough, so I brought my mower over for him to use.
Eventually we got talking about generators, and he's been trying to sell me his 3500 watt unit. He pulled it out to show me and the stupid thing seized up while he was trying to crank it. We wound up tearing it partially down and guessing that he had a stuck ring (it stopped at TDC). So I went and got some of the "chain lube" that I had in a oil can - it's 1/3 30-weight oil and 2/3 mineral spirits. I squirted in about 10 pumps of that and after some coaxing it started spinning again with only a minor hitch at the top which went away later.
We put it back together and it started up, but even after a couple of minutes it was still blowing blue smoke. I figured the oil ring was stuck too so we decided to put some tranny fluid in the crankcase and run it for a few minutes to break the ring loose. I couldn't find the tranny fluid, but I'd been meaning to clean the garage anyway, so he went back to spraying our lawns while I cleaned the garage.
In the end I pretty much emptied the garage onto the driveway (looked like the world's messiest yard sale). I found the tranny fluid, we ran it 10 minutes, then changed the oil and it was running great after that.
Then I spent the next 6 hours moving the shelves that were nailed to the wall and trying to find proper homes for everything. Finally at about 8:30 or so I just started tossing everything back in the garage so the place wouldn't look like a junkyard (also it looked like it might rain). And I had to be able to get the blue car out, I'm supposed to take it in for service tomorrow.
The garage is still a mess but I think I've identified a large quantity of stuff that can be thrown out or given away, and we now have 1/2 of the attic of the garage available for storage that wasn't there before, so there's hope of getting to the end of this with both stuff put away and still able to move around and do work out there.
He was towing it with his big quad bike, and had trouble; the hitch was way too high and it wouldn't go slow enough, so I brought my mower over for him to use.
Eventually we got talking about generators, and he's been trying to sell me his 3500 watt unit. He pulled it out to show me and the stupid thing seized up while he was trying to crank it. We wound up tearing it partially down and guessing that he had a stuck ring (it stopped at TDC). So I went and got some of the "chain lube" that I had in a oil can - it's 1/3 30-weight oil and 2/3 mineral spirits. I squirted in about 10 pumps of that and after some coaxing it started spinning again with only a minor hitch at the top which went away later.
We put it back together and it started up, but even after a couple of minutes it was still blowing blue smoke. I figured the oil ring was stuck too so we decided to put some tranny fluid in the crankcase and run it for a few minutes to break the ring loose. I couldn't find the tranny fluid, but I'd been meaning to clean the garage anyway, so he went back to spraying our lawns while I cleaned the garage.
In the end I pretty much emptied the garage onto the driveway (looked like the world's messiest yard sale). I found the tranny fluid, we ran it 10 minutes, then changed the oil and it was running great after that.
Then I spent the next 6 hours moving the shelves that were nailed to the wall and trying to find proper homes for everything. Finally at about 8:30 or so I just started tossing everything back in the garage so the place wouldn't look like a junkyard (also it looked like it might rain). And I had to be able to get the blue car out, I'm supposed to take it in for service tomorrow.
The garage is still a mess but I think I've identified a large quantity of stuff that can be thrown out or given away, and we now have 1/2 of the attic of the garage available for storage that wasn't there before, so there's hope of getting to the end of this with both stuff put away and still able to move around and do work out there.
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Date: 2008-05-21 10:14 am (UTC)Did get a carload down to the recycling centre late on Sunday afternoon and some paperwork done later.
We've finished upping the attic insulation to 450mm and already have the specialised tank and plumbing installed for solar water heating - next up is to decide on a design for the collectors.
We've had an early heads-up that electricity and domestic gas prices are due to rise by 45% over the rest of the year - makes alternative energy even more attractive, as I see from the growing numbers of roof-mounted systems locally.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 01:17 pm (UTC)I'm vaguely curious about solar water heating panels on the roof. We do have a big, south-facing, steep roof that's probably almost normal to the sun in the winter. There are houses around here that have solar heat collectors on their roofs, and they're not even as well situated as we are. It might be an interesting experiment.