Stephen B. Thomas

BEL #685

The first day of Harvest Week... And hey, it lived up to its name.

Thanks to everyone else here today (Ben, Chris, Leesa, and Sergio) who prepared tonight's dinner, comprised chiefly of stuff right out of the garden. There was a rogue butternut squash up there on one of the hugels, onions, green beans, radishes, and an assortment of greens. It was delicious!!!



Meanwhile: other things addressed today include the placement of the new Cat House up at Allerton Abbey. No one's living inside it just yet, from what we could see, but that will change soon enough. Tomorrow we'll put in a few blankety-type things to help keep them warm overnight, then the cats will move in.



We did an exploratory delve into the bed where the sweet potatoes have been growing. In one corner, this (very) little guy was found. We think this is a promising clue, so sometime later this week we'll uncover the rest of the bed and see what kind of yield we end up with.



Rebekah...! I snatched up the roots from this echinacea plant today, and more will be harvested later this week. I remember you mentioning I ought to chop it up before drying it. Any additional tips?



Finally: we also added labels to potato and sunchoke plants today. The idea is to leave them in the ground as long as possible, and then whenever we want to cook with them on a warmer winter's day, early that day we'll dig out what we can. We're trying to see if in-the-ground storage works well, so we can increase our laziness factor.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BEL #684

This Sunday brought along with it a number of guests. Welcome to Kay, Kiki, Leesa, and Sergio! Two SEPPers, two Boots: all four interested in helping with Harvest Week.

I touched-up the Red Cabin today in preparation for our guests. Here's the current state of the Rocket Mass Heater in there. This past year, Uncle Mud visited and facilitated a number of changes he and Paul discussed in an effort to manipulate its efficiency levels. Paul and I chatted about these various changes today while I grew accustomed to how it behaved.



The finish coat of plaster will be added during the Rocket Week theme week, in early October. The wood feed is smaller than I recall, but burns well just the same.



And Black Spark was there too, making sure I was safe and sound.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BEL #683

Pedaling around Missoula, waiting to hear back from the tire place regarding some new footwear for Roy, our daily hauler rig.

I must admit, I am envious. I mean, lookit the size of those pumpkins...!



Just around the corner from the Crockett & Bowie Club building, along the Clark Fork River and footpath, is a massive tree of some kind, with red fruit on it. It's easily over 50 feet tall.



Here's a closer look at those berries. I imagine that if they were edible, they'd be long gone by now. Either that, or this weekend was a bumper crop and I'd just missed it last weekend while resting at the same spot.



Meanwhile, across from the rail yard not far from the pizza shop I visit for their happy hour, there's been a new mural installed.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BEL #682

First to report: looks like our mudslide repairs withstood a full day of steady rain. We'll keep moving forward with this general idea to complete the upper portion.



Next up: this was a fun project that the rest of the team and I completed between various maintenance tasks we took care of yesterday and today. It started off as a rainy-day project, and transformed into something respectable and a structure for the cats we can be proud of.

We built a new cat house for the cats living up at the Lab. We're not sure where it will go just yet, but we do know there are several kittens that will need a warmer place to sleep at night up there right now, so with that in mind we came up and agreed upon this design.



Key points include two entrances (which was recommended in various pieces of info we uncovered during research), interior walls that separate the sleeping area from the entrances so there's a place safe from intruders, a sloped roof to help shed precipitation, and although it's not pictured we installed insulation on the walls and roof so that heat will be more easily retained. We'll have a removable roof so it's easy to add and remove blankets and other layers for warmth. Doors are six inches wide, which ought to accommodate most expectant mothers so they can use the cat house as a nursery.

Chris and I fabricated the main housing structure, while Ben focused on the roof. Here's Ben adding the ship-lapped panels to the roof.



He later fitted the roof on the house with a bit of trial and error, fine-tuning things with the oscillating saw.



Here's Chris using that oscillating saw to trim panels on the walls of the house.



Knowing that we'd be adding blankets and padding to the main center area, Chris later added insulation to the walls and roof with the help of a discarded sleeping bag. Here's the work in process:



Between the three of us, it was finished in about four hours, or half a day's Booting. And for a ground-based structure, I'd say that this is one of the best I'd seen, here or elsewhere. The roof has a coat of linseed oil and it's currently drying down at the Classroom. We'll take it up to the Lab on Monday and pick a more permanent spot for the cats to enjoy. Photos of that will follow.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

My every-day-carry these days is a Schrade Old Timer with a single lock blade. I can push it open with one hand and set to work. It's the only pocket knife I've owned that I deliberately went out of my way to repair the pocket clip so I could keep using it.



I think if I ever need to replace this knife, I'll invest in a Milwaukee Fastback. It's probably just as effective for home repairs and field work, and I've learned how to sharpen serrated blades so I could maintain it well.

BEL #681

It's Thursday, and that means I'm posting a Wheaton Labs GAMCOD update...! Here it is:



Thanks for reading/watching, and enjoy your day...!

Here's a brief update on how things stand.

I checked the pressure inside the pressure tank, and it was very low. I filled it to the recommended 48psi and I will have a look at it tomorrow to see if there is any change.

After filling that tank with air, I closed-off the water line leading out to the hydrants, and activated the pump. Pressure seemed to hover round 20psi with little change. At least there's no fluctuations at this point. Once a steady stream of water would start out of the relief valve, pressure would gradually drop, and then the motor would again shut off on its own. Opening the relief valve when the pump was not running resulted in air and glugs of water until only air would escape, then nothing else.

We're still very low on water in the cistern, so allowing that to refill is the priority. It ought to run the well's pump without the pump house running, and with an ample supply of water we'll literally have more to work with. It's forecast to be rainy and cloudy all day today, so tomorrow ought to be the first time we'll have any appreciable increase in water levels. Leaving the hydrants cut off for now.

Thanks for everyone taking the time out to respond here. A plan of action is being cobbled together.

- yep, isolate the hydrants from the pump and pressure tank and see what happens when we manually turn on the pump.
- check the pressure level inside the pressure tank. Add air if necessary.
- if everything's nominal, work on bleeding out air from the lines.

I'll have a go at this list of trouble-shooting steps today.

We've replaced two hydrants this calendar year. It doesn't seem like any more of them are damaged, failing, etc. So if it's not something close, then it's possible there's a buried line somewhere that has problems.

Regarding the submersible pump: we have one on-site, but it's not part of this system. The water is gravity-fed from the cistern into the pump house. As the cistern hasn't been filling, it may be that we're not able to draw enough water into the line from there for some reason.

Also, it's known that the local well companies are not interested in working with a solar-powered well system (unless one agrees to be charged exceedingly high rates, of course), so we've not reached out to them yet about this.

Thanks again to everyone's responses. Should anyone have additional suggestions, please drop 'em in here. It's appreciated!

BEL #680

Didn't have an opportunity to work on the mudslide site today, so that will be on the agenda for tomorrow. It's actually raining now, as I type, and I'm curious to see how our efforts hold up to some precipitation.

Meanwhile, we did some preliminary measurements and placement for the upgraded site for the sawmill. We're planning to relocate Leviathan (the solar power station), the sawmill, and the skiddable lumber shed, used to dry new planks and boards. Ben, Chris, and I paced things out and set out markers to help us visualize the final placements and to ensure that things would fit well enough.



We'll be using these posts as semi-permanent supports for the legs of the sawmill frame. They're actually not far from the site, having been salvaged from the structure we've called "Skeleton 2" in the past. It's former site is located right next door to the proposed site for the sawmill.



Also in the first part of the day, we visited Allerton Abbey for some gardening. One of the new developments from earlier this year I'm most pleased with would be the various pecan tree nurseries we'd set up inside the perimeter. I'd say there are still close to 20 pecan trees still surviving, spread over 4 or 5 small spots like this one. We'll batten down the hatches before the first frost, and see if they survive into next Spring.



Finally: Black Spark has been following me around quite a bit these past few days... Too bad that right now she smells like she's been sprayed by a skunk. But she's a great cat and a hard-workin' mama, seriously.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

We're having issues with the well house's pump pressure and motor over at the Lab. Please have a look and provide any guidance you can.



From the video description:

We're encountering serious issues with the water system here. Although I did not install the water system, we're trying to use it on a near-daily basis and are looking for help in diagnosing the problem. This video depicts the water pressure gauge found in our pump house.

Two big issues: water pressure is low or non-existent at the hydrants spread across the property, and the cistern doesn't seem to be filling. It's estimated to have about 7 or 8 inches of water in it, at the moment.

To Sum It Up:
- pump turns on, as per usual. Battery power reads 89% (it's an off-grid, solar-powered system for both the well and the pump house).
- A cycle begins: pressure builds up to about 20psi, but then suddenly drops down to 1 or 2psi. If the motor doesn't shut itself off, then the cycle will repeat.
- I've attempted bleeding the line both while the pump is working, as well as while it is not. There is some gurgling, but while the pump is running this seems to clear up and water flows as expected.

I thought of a few possible reasons why things aren't working like they ought to, though I am far from an expert and this is all based solely on observation and not book-learning:
- the cistern is too low for water to come through the plumbing to the pump house.
- there's an airlock somewhere between the cistern and the pump.
- the motor in the pump house isn't strong enough.
- the well pump is going bad or is done.
- there's a leak somewhere between the cistern and the pump (this seems the most unlikely, in my opinion).

Any ideas? Please comment here. Thanks in advance!