it's weekend time again.

[Intheshop]

Haha

"Here,hold my beer" moment.

We dodged a tornado last night.Ripped through going due N, flipping cars tearing roofs off.Went W of us,and E.We were in a crease of sorts.Wifey and I were playing milineal,each dinking with our phones,sitting on the couch.Both get,beep beep emergency messages indicating tornadoes....... we look at each other with the ohchit.Put it into gear,ran out and ratchet strapped a bunch of stuff together.Grabbed survival gear and tuned to tv radar.

Every shot,put us in a slot of no activity. We get normal winds here sustained over 20mph so we're used to not having plastic "stuff" around.We've been through a dz hurricanes. Friends lost some houses last night,wife had to go to work to check their property damage,they got lucky too.

 

[fiver]

crud.
not doing anything overly physical all winter is showing up today.
the thought is going to have to wait till later in the weekend.

I tore the fire wood crib apart today, moved all the spare tires, and the useful for stuff wood pile.
then dug out the 20' chunk of 1-1/2" gas pipe that was behind it all and moved it over with the copper pipe.
the boy come home about this time, and we pushed the neighbors fence back up straight since one of their 4x4's had rotted away.
I dug a hole on our side and sunk a chunk of well pipe in the ground about 2-1/2 feet and welded a T piece
on the top and made a couple of straps to tie the fence in place.
then I built a new wood crib a little thinner than the last one so it will be a little easier to get the 4 wheelers through the gate.
the end I put the gate on I sunk another 4x4 on both sides one for the gate to swing on and the other one to tie the fence to, to hold it straight.
then put down a couple of pallets for the tires and restacked everything, before raking the whole area and getting the little sticks out of the lawn. [such as it is right there]

it doesn't look like we done anything, but it took me 8 hours to do it.
3 IBU's should help a little..
I'm re-thinking the cut down and tear out the Lilac bush idea right about now.

 

[Ian]

You forgot the put down a 6' hole and help me lay a pipeline 1500 miles to Texas so we can have a little extra to do laundry. Your houses are filling up and I can't beg a drop from the sky.

 

[freebullet]

Lol, that exactly describes the cleaning & restoration industry. All or nothing, yesterday, right now, or never pretty much sums it up.

 

[Ian]

I screwed up. Had another 3,000 gallon poly tank delivered this afternoon, now it won't rain for another four years for sure. Last time I put in a big catchment system on the other side of the house it literally stopped raining for years (drought cycle). We're heading into another one, where the jet stream shifts north 500 miles and this area becomes an extension of the Chihuahua desert for 4-5 years.

 

[Brad]

We are fine on precipitation, it just keeps coming down white.

 

[Ian]

At this point I'd take it in any form. We're supposed to get a little storm tonight but I'll believe it when I see it. Probably just be another two days of 100% humidity and not even any dew on the feeble grass sprouts in the morning.

 

[fiver]

hopefully we get a break for a week or two.
we got 2 jet streams aimed at us this time of year, one brings rain and the other snow.

if I could get a 2" line run that far south I would be all over irrigating your entire yard, and filling up a fishing pond.
once I got it around Colorado it would gravity feed itself the rest of the way.

every hole I dug today was wet to the bottom, not quite saturated mud but damp enough to germinate seeds in for sure.

 

[Rally]

We had about a foot of snow yesterday, and almost 60 degrees today. My pond filled up with melting snow from my field just today. It will be over the banks by morning. Still have lots of deep ice on the lakes and creeks with water running over the ice. Already talk of flash floods with more melting expected the next few days. I live on the top of a hill so it won't hurt me personally but a lot of folks here have lake properties that are going to get wet. The water will help take out the frost though. Had a pair of swans fly over the house this evening when I was running my dogs. They nest in the lake across the road. I think tonight is the first night it isn't suppose to get below freezing. The yard and field are getting soft, but the dogs like having water in the pond.

 

[Rally]

Couple days of 60 degrees and people are reporting skeeters already! Wife and I went to town yesterday. Snowmobiles on trailers heading south and boats heading north. What happened to spring?

 

[Ian]

We actually got some rain today, about 2" of cold, steady, soaking wetness. That's 3" for the year, I'm a happy camper and I bet everything is ten shades of green tomorrow. Enjoy it while it lasts, it will be ten shades of bleached and burnt in about two months. If it sounds like I live in a desert, I actually don't, it's just that there's one (several that run together) about 60 miles west of here going all the way to the Pacific coast, and one about 200 miles south (two actually) that goes all the way to Mexico City. We're in a pocket of green that's what's left of the giant forest of Big Bend that's been dying toward the east for about 80 million years. It's almost got us, couple more million and there'll be nothing but Ocatillo and rocks here. When that happens I might move to Montana.

 

[fiver]

I don't think we can get any more water in any of the reservoirs.
all the ones I went to last week were running over the spill way, and there is still a lot of white on top of the mountains.
the weather is calling for more rain from Sunday to Wednesday next week and I am not looking forward to even a little bit more for a while.
if we get that much more then the valley below will be seeing some flooding, the river heading that way is at maximum and running brown and the run-off will be more than it can handle.

 

[Ian]

That's going to take more than a 2" pipe....

I got room for another 8,000 gallons in the tanks and even after today am starting to get a little worried about making it through the summer and fall without using the well. The well water comes out so hard it has to be broken up with a hammer to get it in a drinking glass and it ruins all the appliances. If we don't get at least 6" of rain in late May/early June we're gonna be hurting, and you probably pumped enough to top off our whole catchement system out of your basement in the last week. At least the whole countryside isn't on fire from stupidasses lighting off brushpiles, yet. That'll be next.

 

[fiver]

easily could fill your cistern I have been pumping 2- 2.5 gallons a minute since mid-march.

one of the things I do to our soft water system is throw in some citric acid about once a week.
I know some of the new systems use it and don't use salt.
so just before it goes into a re-gen at night I throw about 1/8 cup of lemi-shine down the spout.

we used to burn out the elements about every 2 years and fill the bottom foot and a half of the water heater with calcium, and you could forget having a dish washer last more than a year.
but none of the pipes leaked.

 

[fiver]

woo-hoo got the boat out and on water today.
the Bass are still in pre-spawn and are all getting fat, but their tails ain't ragged out just yet.
some of the males are starting to move on the beds and are just moving the annoying little things with hooks in them out of the way.
the females are slapping anything in their face and are starting to wake up.
I didn't do anything with it last year but grease stuff and make sure the fuel system was dry and covered it up again.
it showed today.
the bearings were all greased and good to go, the tires were up, the battery's took like 15 minutes to top off since I charged them before storage last fall, and all the lights worked.
we got it on the water and the motor started almost instantly, I turned the air/idle screw about 1/32nd of a turn and let it warm up a bit and it run like a champ all day, no smoke no sputter no problem.
not bad for a 30 year old boat motor that hasn't been started in like 2 years.
I'm positive most of the reason is the maintenance and the ethanol free premium fuel same as I use in the other small engines.

 

[creosote]

+1 on ethanol free fuel. Worth every extra penny.

 

[Ian]

Midwest refineries have much better fuel than we do here on the Gulf Coast.

 

[Rally]

Our refinery, in Superior, Wi., just blew up a couple days ago. They got the fire put out by evening but some liquid asphalt put off a lot of smoke. Was an evacuation for people close, but they are back in their homes now. Twenty injuries but no deaths. Kudos to the first responders and emergency protocol within the plant. EPA is monitoring water run off and smoke all around, due to it being so close to Lake Superior and Namandji River. Gas prices went up and down a nickel in two days! Hmmmmm

Ian,
They blend winter fuels up here, and still able to get ethanol free regular at a few spots. Stations sell a lot of premium, ethanol free fuel, for boats and snowmobiles. Most loggers i know won't put ethanol fuel in a chainsaw either.

 

[fiver]

I can get it in a couple of places, one has it marked as trace ethanol which I think is them measuring little bits of fuel still in the hose.
the other place runs 2 hoses one for the 85, and the other for the 91 and the ethanol free 91 I'm sure it picks up a trace too.
a little bit is fine for breaking up any water in the fuel, but IMO for anything that is going to sit more than a month it's waay worth the extra 50 cents a gallon.

 

[Ian]

The only ways I can get ethanol-free is to buy the off-road gasoline that only one place in town sells for an extra buck a gallon, buy the little cans of two-cycle premix, or make it. I don't use more than a gallon or so of chainsaw fuel a year, so I buy the Tru-Fuel stuff and love it. My genset and Bobcat are both diesel, and I just converted my last carbonated vehicle to FI and put a barrier-hose fuel system in it so it can stand the alcohol crap better, so I don't separate the alcohol anymore like I used to. Actually, what we get here isn't really gasoline, it's "motor fuel" stripped of all fractions that could possibly be utilized for something more profitable (i.e. plastics, jet fuel, and asphalt), pumped up from Corpus Christi, with a healthy dose of reformulated industrial waste meeting minimum road fuel requirements from Flint Hills, plus oxynenators and the state-required level of ethanol that can be from 12 to 25%, "depending". It's murder on zink plated steel, vulcanized rubber, and aluminum alloy.