Friday, July 26, 2013

Storm / AC / Buzzed and More


Storm
Had one hell of a storm this afternoon!
I thought I'd struck a gold mine (OR maybe Water mine) this afternoon when one hell of a storm came through. I was sure when I looked at the rain gauge and saw another 3/4 inches of rain/small hail in the rain gauge that I had cleaned up on water catchment. As you can see the high wind and heavy rain broke the catchment system so I didn't come out worth a darn as far as catchment goes. Most of it went on the ground. I've never seen a glued PVC joint come loose before until today.

When I took the rest of the PVC loose from the tank and checked the filter screen I noticed it was pretty near clogged up with gnats. What is in the red circle is what I cleaned out of the strainer.

The high wind and driving rain/small hail flipped over all of the solar panels that had been supplying the trailer and water pump. Note in the background out buy the main battery bank and battery hut were unaffected. Fortunately now this is panels I'm not using yet. They will be added to the main battery bank later.

From another angle looking east showing how the panels and pallets were flipped. Also notice I now have the little AC installed.


The AC

I finally got the window type AC installed in the cabin wall. Needs more work, but I was thinking I was going to be cool for a while. It was cooling down in here nicely yesterday after an hours running, but then the compressor started over heating and started seizing up. I tried it again after it cooled down some last night, but it conked out after about 5 minutes.

Well it got up to 110 degrees this afternoon and it was 101 in here at the time and I decided to try something else and see if the AC would work. The picture was taken after it had started cooling down in here. I filled the condensate pan on the AC with water which is a way the manufactures use now days to get extra efficiency out of small AC window units. It helps cool the hot gaseous freon  from the compressor and condense the freon more easily. Dang if that didn't work and it ran from 1:50 until 3:30 when I cut it off. Of course part of that time was during the storm and it had cooled down outside by a bunch.


And More

Got buzzed by three more C-130s early this afternoon. These pictures are of the same one with one over by 9 Points. Another one was between Black Hill and 9 points and out of sight.


And since part of this is about planes check out this video. It is amazing!!! I don't think there was any luck involved here it was a very skilled pilot flying the plane all the way to the ground which saved his life.


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9 comments:

  1. We're you running the AC off the batts or the Ching Chong genny? Just curious.

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  2. Running off the bats yesterday. I have found out that I can run a battery charger off of the genny and would be able to extend the run time of the AC well in to the night. Problem will be if the AC will keep running that long?

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  3. Oh and whether the Chinese genny will hold up or not. Of course the AC was made in China to though so that's two strikes against me right there.

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  4. It seems now that China has taken over the cheap products that Japan used to make now that Japan is making higher quality stuff.

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  5. I think its been that way for a good while DD. I hear that with China buying up all of the American equipment eventually they will have quality stuff to, but I wouldn't bet on that.

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  6. What a bummer that after such good rainfall your catchment failed!

    Darn it was hot in the desert, I do not know how you do it and then for the a/c to conk out too!

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  7. MsB, I'll probably fix the catchment system tomorrow because I need to go south so will get the caulk I need to fix that back. I plan to screw the PVC connections so if they come loose again it will be because they break and not because they come loose.

    I spent the morning adding another 160 watts of solar panels to the main battery bank and then found out that the connection on a 50 watt panel had come loose so that was actually like adding 210 watts, Also found out there was a bad connection tying the two new batteries to the battery bank so got that fixed. Between that and running the small AC at 80 degrees (which feels comfortable) I should be able to run it most of the day and probably some of the night to using the small generator with a charger hooked to it.

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  8. It's really quite a risk to 'go at it alone'. Heh. Especially ACs, with their components, their delicate wire work, and their very specific engineering. My dad does all the electronics in the house, yet even he wouldn't dare touch the AC when it busts. Instead, he'd get AC repairmen; you know, all those people who specialize in this kind of thing...

    Willow Renick

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  9. WR, I was an AC repairman for 30+ years. ;)

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