Sick Swampy er... I need Catchment!

Yesterday I was sitting in front of the Swamp cooler and surfing the net when I heard a noise and crystals started shooting out of the cooler's discharge. Good thing I wear glasses while I'm on the computer. Anyway one of the Stalactites that had been growing inside it because of the crappy water down here evidently broke loose and the fan started chopping it up in small crystals and spitting them out at me. After that I heard a weird noise coming from inside the cooler so my project for today was taking it down and cleaning it up. Turns out that in all of this the O-Ring belt that drives the pump got broken which is bad news because I hear the particular cooler is no longer made and you can't get parts from the manufacture anymore. More than likely the same O-Ring can be found from other places where it would likely be used for other applications, but I don't have a clue where that might be?

You think the outside looks bad you should have seen the inside. Some of it you will, but I'd forgotten to take pictures until I'd already started cleaning it up.

Part of the inside.

Shows the broken belt

You can see the broken O-Ring here and fortunately it was still in one piece. Just Me suggested using super glue to reconnect it so I tried it and it seems to be doing ok. Not sure for how long though??? In the mean time I'll be trying to track down a new one. If I can find them I'll probably buy several.

The insides

Note the scale buildup around the float shaft. This was supposed to slide up and down and move a lever showing how much water was in the pan. It was totally cemented in half full position so the only way I knew when it needed more water was when it started blowing hot air.

The inside was full of Stalactites and this just shows a few. I believe this is probably from dissolved calcite because of there being so much down here.

Glued together belt back on.

All of the crap I could get out of it. I really need catchment because rain water down here is about the only thing that would combat this problem. Of course which well the water comes from has a lot to do with it to.


All in all the little Swamp cooler is really amazing and who ever designed it was plenty smart! Its super efficient as far as power consumption goes and the design for pumping water from the sump and delivering it to the pad is very ingenious! Manufactures of residential, commercial and industrial evaporative coolers (Swamp Coolers) could learn a lot from looking at one of these.

Remnants of Don

Sure looks like we should get some rain out of this, but there is only a 50% chance predicted for now. Was 60% yesterday.

Remnants of Don shown from outside. I can see occasional lightning to the south. Its fairly windy now, but not too hot for a change and the wind feels pretty good.

Got the rain gauge Dave gave me put up last night so IF we get any decent amount of rain I should know how much. (at least for right here)

Currently

Raining.

Looks like Don may make it here so probably more to come tomorrow. This rain has just turned in to sprinkles after about 20 minutes of slow rain.

TRASH TRASH TRASH!

Photo from http://www.treehugger.com

I'm with Frann on the burn ban and something needs to be done to give us some relief down here. Alpine has trash service or a way to dispose of trash, but we don't. There was a place in Terlingua for three weeks ends where we could take our trash and put it in dumpsters, but that has been stopped. Worst part for us in this area is that it was 25 miles away from here. I was sick for the first couple of weekends it was there and didn't feel like making it and when I did on the third weekend all the dumpsters were already full. (I got there fairly early in the morning)  A woman there pointed to a mound of trash toward the back of the property and said I could dump it there, BUT there were quiet a few people there rummaging through the trash looking for treasure and considering I had some personal info in my trash I decided against dropping it off for people to rummage through. Of course that was after driving 25 miles to dump it and wasting the gas for the 50 mile round trip.

With this said the commissioner for this area needs to come up with something permanent or lift the damn burn ban on burning trash! This crap has gone on long enough! My storage tank is getting full of trash! Perhaps help both the people south of here by keeping dumpsters there and a couple up this way to so we don't have to drive 50 miles to get rid of trash!

Photo from http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-trash-house-and-garden.html

I really don't want to build out of trash so rather than do the above maybe the county commissioner can use it?

Just Pix

That's all Folks.

Raining again!

Yep... Pictures later of the broken window from HIGH wind.

 Rain on the way and a very high wind came out of the south and over powered a real heavy stainless steel crow bar I was using for a prop rod to keep the door open after another high wind some time back broken the latch. It slammed the door so hard that it shattered the glass in it. I walked over to the door expecting to have to force it open because of the high wind I thought was still out of the south, but as I opened it the wind had done a 180 and was out of the north. Yep this wind down here is CRAZY! Anyway it caught the door as I was opening it and slammed it back against the trailer scattering the already shattered glass everywhere.

Shattered

It looked like the rain was headed this way so I  took a brand new tarp and cut it to size and taped it over the hole. Good thing I did because the wind had shifted for a third time and was then blowing out of the west north west and the rain was blowing directly toward the door.

That thing is HEAVY!

It rained for maybe 10 minutes and is now sprinkling off and on.

Missed Engagement

Most who follow this blog have seen where I have said Santiago Peak reminds me of a mountain I was on in Viet Nam. That mountain was Nui Ba Den and I was on top of it for about 90 days. I had returned to the base camp from there about 2 weeks prior to the Massacre in the video above. I left Viet Nam on emergency leave I think on the day before this happened. (May 12th 1968) That mountain has haunted me every since I laid eyes on it for the first time. I always wondered what it would be like to be on top and finally found out. Very fortunate for me that my time was up on it before the massacre or my time might have been up for another reason. I can't help but feel bad for those killed up there and their families. For that matter anyone who was injured or killed in that Stinking war!

And for this thread's Zune list...

The Climg by Miley Cyrus

This is one of the ones I put on the Zune for my grand daughters and I got to like it. I'm by no means a Miley Cyrus fan, but the lyrics and music are good. Believe it or not this one usually helps when things are not going good and I'm down in the dumps. If you listen to the lyrics you can probably see why.

One of the granddaughters loved this song and loved to dance to it. I also got to like this song and found that it reminds me a lot of a movie called Some Kind Of Wonderful

Red Red Wine by UB40

First time I heard this song was at the Balloon Festival in Plano Texas many years ago. It was done by a local band there and I preferred their version very much over UB40's. We had a couple of the younger granddaughters with us and they began to dance to the song. (They being about 4 and 6 years old at the time) The youngest is going to Med school and should be a doctor in a few more years. The older one plans to be her nurse. I loved that bands version and wish I had a recording of it.