Spotted behind a mall undergoing renovation:
Perhaps they were loading it from the end and didn’t notice the instructions:
Protip: Always get the biggest dumpster available!
Category: Home Ec
Things around the home & hearth
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Seedling Shelter Frame Deployment
Mary bound up a mesh cover for the shelter frame and deployed it to protect some yummy seedlings:
Seedling Mesh Shelter – installed Those will become the next round of lunchtime sandwiches:
Turkey Sandwich with Excessive Lettuce It’s a quarter-pounder: 4 oz of turkey, 4 oz of lettuce, and a layer of Swiss and good stinky Provolone cheese. Yum!
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Power Outage
A gusty thunderstorm knocked out power across Dutchess County, including half the service to our house. Being glad the refrigerator and freezer were on the live phase, I shut off the affected breakers on the dead phase, as well as all the 240 V breakers, and, with the living room darkened, we skipped our evening storytime.
By the next morning, a quick lamp test showed the recloser out on the pole had worked its magic, so I flipped all the breakers back on. The living room remained dark, prompting an investigation of the fuse box feeding the original house wiring:
Blown 20 A glass fuse Yup, another blown fuse.
Given what happens while wind and falling branches knock power lines askew, anything is possible. I have no idea where the fault current went, but replacing the fuse brought the living room back to normal.
None of the various UPS / lamps / phones seem damaged; I admit not peering inside the outlets to check for arc damage.
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Carolina Wren Construction
A great musical interlude on the patio announced an airlift of construction materials eventually producing this pile inside the top cover of the propane tank:
Carolina Wren – nest started atop propane tank The male Carolina Wren switched from the Tweedle of Great Nestbuilding to the less musical Mighty Chirr of Disapproval, presumably because he noticed a mouse (or, perhaps, chipmunk) occupying the lower ring of the tank. Rodents and birds do not coexist well at all; I have no doubt a mouse would climb right up the tank for a supply of breakfast eggs.
I must blow the crud off the tank before the next fill.
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Homebrew Mint Extract
I clearcut a stand of spearmint and turned it into three jars of what should become mint extract:
Homebrew mint extract – start 2021-06-17 The left jar has 3 ounces of mint mostly covered with 80 proof vodka and the other two jars each have 5 ounces submerged in 180 proof grain alcohol.
Nine days later:
Homebrew mint extract – 2021-06-26 The vodka is now on the right and shows a weird layering caused by the leaves extending above the light yellow liquid; I’ve been inverting the jars every few days. The grain alcohol looks more like the previous iteration, with uniformly decolored leaves in dark green liquid.
A closer look:
Homebrew mint extract – vodka vs grain alcohol – 2021-06-26 What’s happening in the vodka jar does not look like a nominal outcome …
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A Spider at Breakfast
The underside of a spinach leaf makes a fine place for a spider to guard her egg sac, right up until the leaf arrives on the kitchen cutting board just before breakfast:
Spider guarding egg sac We deported her (and her incipient family) to the flower garden just outside, wished her well, and continued with breakfast.
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Dripworks Micro-Flow Valves: QC FAIL
We recently installed a Dripworks drip irrigation system for Mary’s garden and, of course, pre-assembled the emitter / dripline tubing, fittings, and supply / filter / plumbing for each of the beds in the Basement Shop. A few days after burying the main lines, plumbing the filter + pressure regulator, and plugging in half a dozen bed assemblies, Mary noticed some emitter tubes weren’t delivering any water and other beds seemed too dry.
N.B.: We bought everything directly from Dripworks. This is not counterfeit crap from a sketchy Amazon seller.
I cut the dripline just downstream of the Micro-Flow valve on a completely dry bed, whereupon no water emerged. Cutting the supply tube just upstream of the valve produced a jet squirting halfway along the bed. I tried and failed to blow air through the valve: it was completely blocked despite being in the “open” position. I installed another valve and the emitter tube started working properly.
I sat down at the kitchen table with a bag of unused valves and peered through them (the pix are through the microscope):
Dripworks valve – mostly open lumen That’s one of the better-looking valves, with only a little mold flash in the lumen.
Partially occluded lumens were more typical:
Dripworks valve – partially occluded lumen Quite a few were almost completely obstructed:
Dripworks valve – mostly occluded lumen For lack of better instrumentation, I blew through the valves and sorted them by effort:
Dripworks valve – sorted by blockage Two of the valves in the group on the left are completely blocked, with the others mostly blocked.
The middle group has enough mold flash to produce noticeable resistance to the air flow. I think water would have more trouble getting through, but the emitters would at least look like they’re delivering water.
The group on the right has mostly unblocked valves, with visible mold flash but little restriction.
I have no way to measure the actual water flow, so it’s entirely possible the QC spec allows considerable blockage while still delivering enough water to the emitters. More likely, the spec assumes a clear lumen and the mold flash is a total QC faceplant; it’s obviously not a controlled quantity.
Well, I can fix that:
Dripworks valve – drilling That’s a 2.3 mm drill going straight through the valve body. I drilled the valves from both ends and blew out the swarf:
Dripworks valve – drill swarf That produced twenty valves with clear lumens. Of course, the drill leaves a slightly rough interior surface, but it’s now much easier to blow air through them.
We hadn’t installed the driplines in two beds with three emitter tubes per bed. I cut out those six unused valves and sorted them by resistance:
Dripworks valve – six samples Both of the valves on the left are blocked, the three on the right are mostly OK, and the one in the middle is partially blocked.
With two dozen repaired valves in hand, we returned to the garden, I cut 22 valves out of the installed driplines and replaced them under field conditions. Returning to the Basement Laboratory, I blew the water out (*), sorted them by resistance, and produced a similar distribution, albeit with no pictorial evidence. Although we have no immediate need for the used valves, they’re drilled out and ready for use.
In very round numbers, you should expect:
- A third of Dripworks valves will pass (close to) the expected flow
- A third will have a minor flow restriction
- A quarter will have a severe flow restriction
- One valve in ten will be completely blocked
Plan to drill out all the Micro-Flow valves before you assemble your driplines.
AFAICT, none of the other ¼ inch fittings we used have any interior flash, so it’s only a problem with the valves.
We are, as the saying goes, not amused.
(*) If you will eat a peck of dirt before you die, I’m well on my way.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 