Shop Time w/T.W. Friends

Having worked in a full service lab - yup. Here’s the CDC page on it - https://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/index.html
It’s close cousins with salmonella - https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/index.html
Equipment has to be regularly tested, so in the slow months, folks were randomly asked for control testing samples… (voluntarily).

 

How about that 0% chance on Wednesday

 

That’s cool

 

I hope your feeling better soon!

 

You haven't been sipping on that colonoscopy drink all week have ya?

 

Very smart idea! Someone else's fingerprints.

 

Depopulation at work (?).
Hope the bugs are defeated, get well everyone!

 

Poll: I have plowed our driveway for 20 plus years. I have hit many things.

 

It was 50 degrees here today -- about 85 in the living room. So go the challenges of Past Tech heating plants, once the coal is burning there is no way to back it down except time.

Staggering outdoors to escape the heat, Mrs Green is quite comfortable btw , I set out for the far reaches of the estate. I walked to 3 of the corners. I hadn't been to the upper corner in probably 20 years but managed to find the survey marker. At one point I could drive the garden tractor to that point.

Down in the lower woods I found this old aluminum pot someone long ago had used for a target.



And this galvanized one too, there hasn't been any shooting since I moved here 30 years ago, these came with the property. You wouldn't think they would last over 30 years on the ground.
Old quality I guess.



There are remains of field stone walls here and there on the property, this section is still pretty recognizable as a wall, probably 50 - 60 feet long.



The hill behind the wall is much steeper than it appears in the photo.



Someone has been snacking.



I hung the pot on a tree for safe keeping, you can see the snack tree behind it and the wall further back.



All this is in the brush to the left in the photo, the wall is perhaps 75 feet from the clearing.
I have mowed it hundreds of times, never saw any of it.
Directly across the trail continues on to the property line, I opened it back up last year after about 15 years of neglect.



It was still beautiful outside and the prospect of roasting inside wasn't appealing yet so I walked (on the road) for a mile. No work done today but a very nice day not to do it.

 

That's got to be quite warm inside! I fired up the torpedo heater in the garage so I could clean the interior and do a rinseless wash on the Tacoma. Had the thermostat set to 80° to get everything to soak up the heat and it was quite warm in there! Can't imagine what a constant 85° inside would be like!

 

It is brutal (for me), sometimes I'm afraid the cats will melt.

The stove "regulates" itself based on the outside temperature - colder = more draft = more coal burned.
There is 100 pounds in the stove, once it is going it is like a locomotive, no stopping it. On a warm day the heat output way overshoots the need.

A longer spell of mild weather becomes problematic, you need to burn enough coal to keep the stove running and also to catch the new coal on fire, you end up increasing the fire rate just to keep it running...
...which makes even more heat...

 

I haven't even started my truck since the end of November.

There is a torpedo heater down at the garage, I call them a jet engine heater due to the sound, it works pretty good although with an 11 foot ceiling it takes a quite a while. Hate the noise.
Then there is the eye popping cost of oil, the thing seems to be constantly empty.

 

Yea I went down and grabbed some fresh offroad for it. $3.89 a gallon right now. Better than it was.

This garage is super easy to heat. The old garage was a two car and had no ceiling so it was pretty drafty. Just having a ceiling in this one makes all the difference.

I also think they mix a little kero into the offroad this time of year. I noticed it burned a lot cleaner than what was left from the onroad diesel that was in there from last year.

 

I haven't checked the price of ORD in a while, it was over $5/gallon last time I checked.
At home we usually use kerosene heaters in the milder weather, at over $6/gallon heating with electric was cheaper for the first time ever.

They put natural gas in down around the garage, unfortunately the hook up cost is around $5000.

The garage is also 200 feet off the road and there are buried water lines, septic, electric and part of the dooryard is paved too. Kind of a case of "you can't get there from here" at least not at a price I can afford.

 

They ran natural gas on an adjacent state road last year. I've been suspecting they might do it on my road since it's a main road. They recently have marked all drainage areas and some other markings are starting to pop up. Wondering if running natural gas on my road is on the agenda for my township this year. The hookup cost wouldn't be near that much and the only thing in my front yard is the well. Cistern and septic are in the back, so there's no lines I'd have to worry about. Although with the price of NG right now I'm wondering if the hookup and converting my boiler would be worth the cost. We'll see.

Personally I'd rather see sewer run through here, but that will only happen after a year after I lay down $40,000 for a new system

 

Usually I don't believe the hook up costs are so high. In this case there wasn't enough funding (a grant maybe ) to cover the costs so some got passed on the the customers, they had to drill under a river to run the main line.

In your case it would probably be a nice cost savings over running oil, you could run a line to the garage for a small unit heater too.

 

I'd definitely put one of those ventless wall units in the garage if they put gas through here! I'd also switch to a gas water heater. My electric bill soared to $264 last month (was $95 last year)!

That, and I know how to run black iron pipe. I mean, everything will be permitted accordingly...

 

When I set up the compressor and lines in the garage I hand threaded all that 1/2 & 3/4 black pipe, what an @$$ kicker...

And then I had to attach it all to the block walls...

 

I got a place that can thread whatever lengths I need. I'm not that ballsy to thread my own pipe. I did that at a manufacturing plant, but they had the equipment to do it.

I don't mind attaching stuff to concrete or block. I have my big DeWalt hammer drill or my cordless. Tapcon's make quick work out of all of it too.


I just realized, I could have some nice gas logs! Oh man!

 

I have threaded uncounted thousands of feet of pipe with a Rigid 300, hand threading is just the same except s...l...o...w & labor intensive.

I have a Duo-Fast nail gun that uses 22 cartridges for power. Using that along with liquid nails I used 2x6 blocks with Uni-Strut to hold all the pipes. Typical for me, I always include extra capacity and could run 3 or 4 more pipes on the Uni-Strut if ever needed.

The main line is 3/4" with 1/2" drops, I don't think I will ever want for capacity.