STORM! / fridge / Bloger Sucks!

There was one HELL of a storm here last night about 2:00 AM. Its starting to look like 2:00 AM is the magic time for storms around here now days. This storm was really bad and worst part was that the super high wind was out of the west which put it broadsiding this trailer. I was almost tempted to head for the tank a couple of times and brave the flying sheets of metal flying around and heavy rain to do it.. The vents in here sounded like a jet engine going over heard several times. I felt drops of water hitting me so had to head for the vents and windows to close them and the trailer actually felt like it could go over several times. Note the scattered metal siding scattered around. Before it was neatly stacked, laying flat on the ground and had that  steel 55 gallon drum half sitting on top of it with some considerable chunks of wood in it. The wind just flipped it over and the siding took off. This storm reminded me of the one we had when the old pole barn vanished.

More scattered siding.

After I post this I'll be out rounding up all the siding and re-stacking it, but this time I'll be putting some heavy rocks all the way around it along with the drum that got dumped off of it. There's another 20% chance of storms today. Sure hope the Ocotilla didn't get much damage out of this. It was a little more than unnerving hearing the sheet metal flying around because it was actually singing as it sailed past the window in here. I'm sure glad there wasn't anything else in the path that could have gotten damaged. There was another .7 inches of rain in the gauge this morning so between night before last's rain and last night that makes a little over 1 inch. I'm real surprised because only one solar panel got flipped, but fortunately it wasn't damaged. From looking at the Ocotillo now it doesn't appear that the siding bent it over it looks like the wind tried to tip it out of the ground.

The drum that got flipped and the wood is under it.

Got the solar cooker to.

Fridge

The old mini blower I put on the mini fridge took a dump and I'm not sure I'll do anymore with it now because it sucks too much solar power for the good it does. I guess I'll put the butter back in the freezer of the propane fridge and live without the mini fridge in here again. Its cooling down enough to where the propane fridge is starting to work half way decent so I'll live with that for now.

Blogger Sucks

Don't know if anyone else is having this trouble or not. Maybe its  just a Firefox/blogger problem or what, but before when you clicked on pictures to view them the pictures came up and could be further expanded. When you clicked the back button then you were taken back to the blog. Now they have the cheesy slide show come up when you click on a picture to view, they can't be enlarged and when you click the back button you are sent back to the history file that you were at before visiting the blog. This sucks and I really wish blogger would quit screwing around! The way I see it is IF something ain't broke don't fix it!

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Mini Fridge \ Solar \ Rain

Above pictures of my new Mini Fridge. Well it isn't new, but it works. The old Coleman electric fridge potted out when the fan motor died. No chance of getting another one and it actually died so lubing the bearings with WD40 was out. On this one I'm using a small blower out of an old computer on the hot side (Which would be called the condenser in a normal refrigeration unit.) This thing actually uses a refrigeration chip and electricity is the refrigerant.

Since it hadn't worked very good when it was working I hoped that putting the refrigeration unit in the small ice chest might make a freezer out of it because there would be far less volume to cool. Well that didn't happen, but it does cool sufficiently to chill drinks and keep a small amount of perishables in and it runs off of the solar so I don't have to buy propane for it. Problem is the small size, but then it is small enough that it takes up very little room in here. That won't replace the freezer in the propane fridge which will at least make a small amount of ice and I can chill drinks in it before moving them in to the small fridge in here to cool them even more. Later in the season when the weather cools I'll be able to use the propane fridge, but for now it isn't a lot of good. Perhaps one of these days I'll find a cheap home styled fridge or chest freezer to run off of the solar. Believe it or not one of them probably wouldn't use any more solar than this mini fridge because this one pulls 40 watts 24/7 and a full sized fridge would pull much more, but only intermittently. Perhaps 20 minutes on and an hour off.

And for the Solar Part...

Some of you may know this while others may not so that's why I'm talking about it. Those who have solar need to be aware of the fact that you need to keep them clean and especially remove anything that can cast a shadow on any part of them. In the second panel photo just the shadow of my hand in the red square is enough to cause the WHOLE panel to drop to 50% output. That's right. Just that one little shaded area drops the efficiency of the whole panel by 50 percent. Dust and durt can be a real killer on solar panels and I've seen them on roofs where they had dirt all over them and the people couldn't figure out why they weren't working as good as they should be. That's one benefit of keeping them close to the ground where a paint brush can be used to keep them dusted. Its also a lot easier to clean them with Windex and a rag to get the bird poop off of them because dusting doesn't work for that.

And for the Rain...

Got woken up at 2:20 this morning to the loud sound of heavy rain pounding the roof and high wind. It only rained about 5 minutes, but it was raining so hard that it totaled up to just over 1/10 inch. The wind finally settled down around 8:00.

And for Blogger...
Just been viewing my blog and it looks like Blogger has screwed up big time one more time! The way viewing the pictures works now really SUCKS!

Harvest Moon over 9 Points Mesa

I didn't know last night's moon was anything special other than it really looked cool (Especially the way it was peeping out in a cranny of the south corner of 9 Points Mesa) I decided to take a few pictures and only this morning found out it was the Harvest Moon.

You can read about it Here

And a little Photo Magic?

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Don Briant

Frann and Denese came by yesterday morning on their way to a tour of Don Briant's domes. Of course they were in the little red dodge truck and there wasn't room in it for three so I was given the choice of riding in the back or taking the jeep. I'd imagine you'll can guess what my decision was.

First structure we were taken to by Don was this unfinished structure and I think it was before the domes. After looking at all of this I think I can pretty well figure John Wells got his inspiration for his Field Lab trusses from Don.

Don has home made jigs for everything he builds. In this case it was a simple, but very effective rod bender for making some of the stuff he uses on the domes and other stuff he builds.

Another jig for making the components for domes.

Here he's in the process of building a giant ball. For any of you who have traveled down 118 from Alpine headed for Terlingua you may have noticed some of his work atop a tower just this side of Alpine. Unfortunately he is in the same boat as me with the DAMN burn ban. He can't weld and neither can I so neither of us are getting anything done. I say RAISE THE DAMN BURN BAN! Better yet vote for someone who will next election!

Another piece that was going to be part of a dome or ball laying out on his property. There are many such components that haven't been used. Perhaps they were experiments gone bad?

Another jig for one of his domes. These are very ingenious! Matter of fact all of his jigs are.

And another one.

One of the many domes he's built from a distance. He told us that him and another guy built several in Houston Texas. Sure would like to see them because they are two story and much taller. He said no welding was used on them the rebar was all wired together before the concrete was added on the exterior and interior.

Here you see Don on top of one of the domes. Frann says he is 90 years old, but he still gets around like a teenager and is as agile as a mountain goat.

After there we went to another place Frann thought she could get a metal satellite dish for the roof of her earth bag building, but the guy wasn't there. The road goes down behind Nick's place and we were going to stop by and check his progress and on the way we saw a pretty large mule deer buck. I'd guess at least a 6 or 8 pointer. Unfortunately I was having to try and take the picture of it while driving to keep up with it and through the windshield so the picture came out pretty lousy. The deer can't really be made out, but you can see the dust trail it was kicking up as it ran down the road in front of us. We did stop by Nick's place, but he wasn't home and as far as progress there doesn't appear to be any since our last visit some months back.

At another place in the road and at an ant bed in the raod we came by this horny toad. You rairly see these any more, but many years ago there were lots of them. This is the largest I've seen in many years and may not have seen over four that I remember in the last 30 years. You see back in the 60s or 70s some AH got the bright idea that they looked like miniature dinosaurs and the word got around that they would sell up north for the cool factor of having one. Hunters hunted most of them down and they were sent off to other parts of the country and the numbers dwindled. The population never has recovered. I think they are on the endangered species list now fortunately!

Skids / Got Water???

Bought 3 old rails like you see along curves on highways yesterday. The guy I bought them from delivered them which is good because I wouldn't have had a way to get them here otherwise. They are 26 feet long each. I got 3 for $50 which I considered a very good price especially since they were delivered. Now you might ask "What in the heck did he want those for?" Well I've had in mind for a long time to build a skid building instead of building a permanent structure. Reason being they can tax you on permanent building and they can't on portable buildings. I plan to use these as skids for my cabin if and when I ever get around to building it. Being how they are 26 feet long I'm thinking maybe a 12x12 or 16x8 one. Haven't figured that out yet, but it looks like once again I'll be measuring and drawing lines in the sand to get an idea of how it would be living in either size. In other words draw a building plan on the ground to help me make up my mind what I want exactly. I'll post about that later though.

Now for the Got Water?

I highly recommend buying, begging, borrowing or renting a copy of this DVD. It will change your whole perspective on buying water in a bottle. What it boils down to is corporations are buying up rights to water just like the oil companies did oil rights years ago. Eventually the cost of water will skyrocket and flushing a toilet will cost you an arm and a leg. The government is right behind it and some politicians are actually investing in it and buying land where water can be had for selling.  You may think catchment would be the way to go if that happened, but more than likely that will be taxed to.

I can't stress enough at least renting this DVD and watching it!!!

You can get to the web site here.
Blue Gold World Water Wars

JAJFLC

Yesterday I finally got the sun to try out the JAJFLC or John And Julianne's Fresnel Lenses Cooker, but the focus point John had built in caused it to cook very slowly. Matter of fact it would have probably taken hours to cook the 4 hot dogs it was setup for because the area just wasn't hot enough. Of course the wind blowing across the hot dogs probably didn't help any. I jury rigged my rack so that I could cook one hot dog at a time by cutting it in half and placing the two pieces side by side. Still took about 45 minutes to cook me two hot dogs.

Cooking two haves of a dog here. While I was doing this yesterday a large fly decided to sample the dogs. It never had a chance to tough down before it decided that wasn't the place to be. I almost had fried fly to go with my dogs.

Melting the cheese here. Didn't take long.

This morning I modifies the design a little and it took about 12 minutes each to do a full hot dog cut in half and I had two hot dogs for lunch again. I cooked and ate the first one while the second one was cooking. It got a little too well done on one side, but I like them like that. The second one I brought in to eat and then fired up this computer to check email and forgot about the cooker until I started to smell wood smoke. The sun had shifted enough in that short time to where the focus was starting to hit the wooden frame and it was close to igniting the wood by the time I got back out there to stop the process. Whew! Needless to say the lens is covered again now. While I was trying to get the right focus for cooking I threw the t-shirt across the rack so I could get an idea of how big the focus area was. At that time it was almost at full focus and it instantly burned a hole in the shirt before I could get it off.

Looks like using the laser at the party was really the only way to fly though because in the time it would have taken to cook all the hot dogs that were eaten at the party there would have still been a line of people standing out there waiting on their first hot dog. I don't see a future for cookers this small to be used to cook large quantities of food, but its fun to play with and cooking for a couple or three people could be done. If the lenses were about 4 times as large then it might have a future at a party. I had a chance to get a lense that large someone had left at the legion some time back, but at the time I didn't snap to how it could be used and by the time I did someone else had already gotten it. :(

Those type lenses are used in the old rear projection TVs so if you see one setting by the curb to be hauled off it would be well worth the effort to remove the lens!

Update

More pictures of tried modifications. I think its where it will stay and no more modifications.

I made sort of a solar oven type deal out of aluminum foil and connected it to the under side of the grill to reflect any night not blocked by the hot dogs back to the underside of the dogs. I crinkled the foil so it would give wider dispersion of the light.

Then I used a Pyrex pie dish I had laying around to cover the dogs.

I'd moved the rack up and to a position that would allow the 4 half dogs to be covered with the light and tried this out on my last two hot dogs. Thanks goodness because I'm burned out on hot dogs after eating two a day for the last 4 days!

The focused light would have been a little cooler than on the other experiment yesterday, but the dogs still took about 20 minutes to cook. Perhaps they would have cooked quicker, but the hot dogs kept steaming and fogging up the bottom of the dish. At any rate I'm finished modifying the cooker and am calling it finished.

 

Labor Day Weekend Party

See if you can spot the two cutups in this picture.

The Foots were down here for the Labor Day weekend so I got the bright idea to have another party. The above pictures are of the guest and this party just broke a record for the number of guests that showed up. (19) Gypsy Jess and Dan were also invited, but they couldn't make it because she had to work. Maybe the next party they can make it. Nick was also invited, but for some reason didn't show?

Some time back I'd given Just Me several Fresnel lenses and it just paid off. In exchange for one given to John Wells by her I was given the solar cooker John built with one. He and Just Me had intended to cook the hot dogs for the party on it, but as luck would have it it had clouded up so that didn't work too well.

Here there was a small bit of sun light peeking through the clouds, but unfortunately it was too little to late to do any good.

I had to resort to the Gazolian Laser seen here along with a cast iron skillet for Robert Dawson to be able to cook the dogs. Now note that with the burn ban outside flames are not permitted and although this might look like a turkey cooker its really a propane powered laser. (Very high tech!)

I was warned by both JW and Just Me that I needed to keep the lens covered while it was sitting out in the sun or it could catch the wooden frame on fire. A 1000 degree + beam of high intensity light is produced. Well I finally found a use for a gag t-shirt that Nick had given me some time back. It was too small for me and didn't have a pocket so was just taking up closet space. It should work fine for this.

Here you have a metal plaque given to me by Bigfoot. His son has a CNC table and made this at Bigfoot's request. I LOVE it!

And here Juan and his wife were in attendance of the party and it just so happened that I had one final payment on the tank. I made it here so now the tank is officially mine. ALL MINE!

Dave counted 19 people at this party, but I only counted 18 including myself. I don't think I missed anyone so that makes the record 18 in attendance. Below is the names of those at the party.

Couples
Bill & Caren, Chuck & Kathy, Robert & Lanette, Juan & his wife (Don't remember her name)

Singles or those without their spouses.
Denese, Lee, Frann, Ring, Julianne, Dave, Don Bryant, James, JW and myself.

Missing were
Nick, Gypsy Jess and Dan