Plumbing Update:
Still have a no start on the plumbing project. We used all the little crimp rings getting my sister in law's house up and running. I reordered over a week ago and still no new rings. Asked the 'Zon where and why, but got no answer. They just moved the arrival date to Tuesday. I canceled the order on Thursday and reordered from a different vendor. Still no rings. Hmmm...... supply chain issues, I reckon.
Still have water under the house, and found out my son's trailer is pouring water. Way worse than my house. I wonder if all this stuff is melting due to the heat?? Ha, I'm making myself laugh....
F150 Truck Update:
The F150 started to clunk on the front end. I couldn't figure it, so kept listening.... Usually when there was some reversing or pulling under load. I found an empty parking lot, cut the wheels hard left and went to see what I could under the passenger side.... Well there is a bushing that split. "Wonder what that thing there is called?"
Radius Arm (aka number 15)....
So I ordered a pair of the number 17 - bushing set, radius arm
And I ordered a pair of number 12 - bushing, axle pivot
And I ordered new front pads and parts for the rear brakes as well. Might as well....
Waiting on one number 12, and two number 17. All ordered at the same time, from a company that USED to be able to get things to you in two days or so. Supply chain issues, I reckon.
Times.... they be a-changing....
CPO delivery:
No change in status on the CPO. Seems that family developed ANOTHER Koof infection. Job jab for a loss of yardage.... I'll get it delivered when they are up and around.
Mentor Visit!
I met my mentor via a post at Practical Machinist many moons ago. I went to his town regularly to support our office there. I'm big on feeding while visiting people, learned that at home. So I offered to buy lunch and talk. That turned into a long friendship. I've gone over there loads of times, met for lunch, met the family, seen his shop, etc. Great guy. Since I've been laid up, we met a few times. Once last month about halfway at a decent burger joint. He came to my house yesterday. And he bore a gift!
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| Thank you Spartan-C!! |
Not sure why, but Cletus at CEE always measures things with bananas. I guess it's something about being "down under". So, I decided to use my reference banana to give him a sense of scale if he ever looks at the blog. I didn't have any farthings or pence or pounds to balance the handle on, so I used a penny. They used to have those too, I think. I've read that feral Aussies are very skitish around unknown objects. I tried hard to make this "inclusive" and "familiar" so if he did see it, he wouldn't bolt for Ayers Rock. Which I found out this week is the bottom side of the Arizona Meteor Crater. It's been an eventful week.
Here, the reference banana is used to quantify capacity. It appears that the cup will hold an imperial or short banana, but not the metric or long banana. I had no idea that bananas were valid standards for length, width, height AND capacity. But maybe that is why it is the standard unit of measure in Australia. Quite the versatile UOM.
I also included the calibration sticker for the banana. It fell off while I was manipulating the Johansson Banana (they can also be called Jo-Bans or Gage Bans). You will have to trust me on this. Usually the chain of custody is broken when the sticker falls off, but it fell on the green mat, and I just skidded it around to where it was visible. Honest.
I hope to quell the leaks as soon as the rings show up. I've got another date with a shovel (NOT pronounced Shove-ELLE no matter what Pete the Yankee said). Gotta dig out a little so I can get under the kitchen sink. It's a pier and beam house on the original cedar posts... and assorted other devices used to level it over the last 100 plus years.
No rest for the weary, wicked or me. Thanks for stopping by the shop. (It'll be nice to use it sometime)
Pex pipe is polyethylene, which when kept out of the sun, and not exposed to high temperatures, is about a tough a material there is for water supply. The bad part about polyethylene is that the it can only be fused, or joined with a mechanical fitting. Joining to anything else requires special adapter fittings, and if they are push on, they're too expensive for most budgets and never recommended behind walls, or inaccessible places.
ReplyDeleteI've never found Pex to leak, except with the wrong fittings, slices, abrasions, or poorly clamped fittings. The heat of Summer won't cause it to fail.
Thanks for your input. I only had experience with some old tubing in my son's trailer and push on connectors. It was awful. But I saw folks putting blue pex under concrete floors for heating and I had to study some more.
DeleteI've read what I can about it and bought some proper tools to use. The crimp rings and fittings seem to work fine. The pressure at my sister in law's is pretty high. No leaks at all and flow rate seemed good, too. Everything is under cover there, and will be here as well. It's a new technology to me, and so far, appears to be good.
I guess the proof will be how long it lasts compared to galvanized pipe and this terrible soil. I don't plan on burying it, just running it along the joists and up to the cutoffs.
I worked with polyethylene in one form or another for decades. The larger sizes we fused with specialty machines, unless it was an emergency situation. With those, we used large mechanical compression couplings. Some of the repairs, as far as I know, still haven't leaked after years of D-9 dozers running over their buried location.
DeleteWhat's going on here!? "Banana based measurement systems"???
ReplyDeleteWhy, that sounds suspiciously like heresy against the metric system... the Supply Chain Gods will punish you for your anti-metricism, STxAR!!!
Kurtis at CEE makes fun of inch / imperial measurements by calling them 'bananas'. I was just running that gag to death. He is a metric machinist.
DeleteSide note: The inch is defined as 25.4XYZ millimeters. I find it weird though, that the standard meter is a metal bar with two scratches on it. Not much different than an inch being defined by wheat seeds or some such. And if decimals are that important, then the world should be glad we can count in multiples of two and sixteen and eight and twelve in the US. I can't imagine how goofy a computer would be that only counts in tens.... a ten state device? How cumbersome is that?? ;)