Last week my brother and I laid the new 2″ HDPE penstock (pipe) for my microhydroturbine system to power the barn (and the cabin if necessary). Last winter absolutely trashed the existing pipeline of Schedule 40 PVC.
The 2″ HDPE came in giant ~6-foot coils, each of which weighed several hundred pounds. Once these were unraveled we had a rasslin’ match that looked like a monster movie with giant snakes. If you’ve never handled large dimension HDPE it is unbelievably tough and strong, slippery and cantankerous. Not to mention ridiculously expensive compared to Sch40 PVC, but I am expecting it to be worth the added investment. I got 15 years from the Sch40 PVC so this should outlast my time in Shangri-la.
Even two stout redneck brothers were no match for the Super Slinky. We wound up lashing the end to a long rope, feeding the rope along the path we wanted the pipeline to follow, and then pulling it up the ravine with my beloved little 4WD S10. The pipe was more than a match for two ~septuagenarians but was no match for 210 h.p. x 4500 lbs.
Here are the old and new, side by side. This level of damage to the old penstock was present in about 75% of the 1000+-foot length.
We finally connected the new pipeline into the system and had water flowing! I discovered that even at the bottom there was a crack in the PVC joints, so that needs to get replaced as soon as I can find the time. It’s working, now, but who knows for how long?
The work is not done by any means. I’ll let the new HDPE pipeline relax and lose its coilification to the greatest degree possible, then work the line from top to bottom leveling and lashing it. Reducing the up and down of the lay is critical to making the flow have as little turbulence as possible. If all goes well I will be able to run the system year round. Here’s hopin’.
Just as last week was all about loading up and teaching Historic Woodworking (more about that later) this week is all about unspooling, laying and connecting over a thousand feet of 2-inch Heavy Duty Polyethylene water line for my hydropower system. My brother is here for a visit and I am working him like a rented mule.
The water line is heavy but not brutally so, each of the four coils is probably about 350 lbs, but being coiled up for an unknown period of time it is set hard into the coil shape. Basically it is like straightening out a giant Slinky that wants to beat you up at every turn.
I actually watch a lot of Japanese woodworking videos and welcome this new tutorial approach. As much as I like the videos in Japanese shops, they are usually in Japanese and mostly without translation. Since I neither read nor speak Japanese this English chyron approach is most welcome. Not that I do much better with English…
Not only was a substantial portion of the inventory worthless, it was all soaking wet. I had to change my shirt after loading my struck. I wound up standing it outside for five days to get it somewhat dry.
My name is Don, and I’m an old coot.
Last week Mrs. Barn and I took one of our occasional trips to the big city, in part for me to restock some routine building supplies. It had been a very long time since I bought much in the building materials realm as I had really stocked up while constructing the barn almost two decades ago. Slowly over time that inventory had dwindled down and it was time to do a little restocking. Plus, replacing some decking was on the autumn agenda.
The sticker shock almost put me into a wallet-coma. Some CDX plywood, nothing special to say the very least. Enough decking to refurbish an 8’x12′ deck with some left over (even disregarding the need to sort through the pile since about a third of it was useless). Checkout was well on its way to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. To say that I was ranting all the way home like a curmudgeonly old coot vastly underemphasizes the pungence of my rhetoric. Not only do they not call material what it is, they tripled the prices since I last bought stuff. $60 for a 3/4″ sheet of CDX plywood? $14 for a 12-foot piece of PT/SYP decking? Insanity.
It would be easy enough to condemn the lumber stores and the lumber markets, but markets just do what markets do. Their moral duty is to maximize legal profits on behalf of their shareholders.
The real crisis is inflation, a crisis I do not believe we has a culture have the knowledge, wisdom, or courage to address.
It would be easy enough to blame the bankers, especially The Fed. But even though they are integral to the crisis, the central bankers are only doing what the legislative, executive, and judicial politicians are instructing them to do.
Even though they are misanthropes integral to the crisis, the spineless weasel elected politicians are only doing what the electorate is instructing them to do; spend money on us that we do not have. When legislators and executives spend money they do not have, in order to purchase votes they need as they need food, water, and air, there are only two “solutions.” 1) raise tax revenues to cover the expenditures, or 2) create/borrow phony baloney money to do the deed.
The limits to the first are well established as history has revealed an almost iron-clad truth: governments can only extract about 23% of the economy in taxes regardless of the taxation scheme. Hence the drive towards totalitarian collectivism, a/k/a abolition of an economy.
As for the creation of phony baloney money, also known as fiat currency, the only limit is political. The blame for inflation comes down to us, the electorate. In the aggregate we demand the gubmint give us stuff we cannot afford and cannot be paid for. So they do the “rational” thing, they create money out of ones and zeroes and fractional reserves, reducing the worth of the money in existence. Intrinsic prices are not rising, it’s the value of the money that is falling. That has always been and always will be the proximate cause.
Until we in the electorate tell them to stop spending money on us (yeah that’s gonna happen) the inflation locomotive will be picking up steam as it charges down the tracks, the engineers unaware that the bridge up ahead is collapsed (if it has not yet occurred, servicing the debt will soon be the largest component of the Federal budget). And collapse is the only possible end point. Get ready for it. I do not know the current score in the game nor do I know how much time is left on the clock. But I know the end result.
So Don, are you saying you are smarter than all the smart guys in Washington?
Yup.
But then I live in Cootville and the perspective is not in sync with the outside world. As CS Lewis said, “Reality is a ruthless instructor. It does not care whether you agree with it or not.”
Recent Comments