Rambling thoughts

Well, I haven’t posted anything in a while, I’ve just not been able to bear setting in the house for any amount of time more than absolutely needed with this wonderful summertime warm weather we are having, yes it came with loads of snow but it’s so light it isn’t really a bother at all, in fact I am very pleased and thankful for it because it’s just that much more moisture for this spring’s growing things!

I ran out of hay the other day but was able to buy a load from a neighbor so I ended up spending the day getting it. It’s pretty sad when it takes almost all day to haul a load of hay 10 miles but the snow was inhibiting travel enough that it was quite a time to get through it. After quite a bit of blasting the truck and loaded trailer through drifts and piles there was an area that just wouldn’t let us through, though after a while of mad tire spinning, roaring diesel engine, a few clashed gears and a lot of back and forth ramming a trail one inch at a time we finally got through. Some guys like the sound of a big block hot rod revving up for a race but that doesn’t impress me much, if there is going to be any goofing or hot rodding I much prefer the sound of a large diesel engine and a turbo whine as the RPM maxes out at 2,000 and you feel the torque building. It’s not something I choose to do if I don’t have to though, tires wearing like that give me chills and knowing that loads of expensive fuel are taking the load about an inch forward doesn’t make me feel any better. Those of you who know me well enough can remember the days when I couldn’t leave the driveway without hitting triple digits on the speedometer or seeing how fast I could make the trip to town, I used a lot of gas doing it but it sure saved time when I made the 12 mile trip to get parts in five minutes or less! Well, after a while that sort of thing wears out, especially after you pass a few cops and see the look on their face, as you are madly trying to figure out a way to disappear immediately! My Dad tells stories of when he was a teenager and he did crazy stunts and then tried to evade the cops pursuing. I don’t really want to have to tell such stories to my children (if I ever have any) and besides, that kind of thing is really expensive, speeding ticket or otherwise! Gasoline, tires, etc all disappear really fast driving like that. What gives me a thrill now is seeing just how far I can go on that last gallon of fuel and how long I can make those new tires last! If you happen to be driving in North Dakota and are following a black Mercedes stuck at 55 mph it’s undoubtedly me. I’ve been fiddling and I’ve gained about 4 miles per gallon so far, and that’s on an old diesel with almost half a million miles on it. Frankly, I don’t see why we have to use so much fuel to do everything we do, I am having way more fun figuring out ways to use less of it or none at all than I ever did using it up, especially when I had to open my wallet at the filling station! One of my favorite gizmos so far is a propane supplement system I threw together from scrounged parts. The only thing I bought was the propane in the tank, soon I’ll be producing that myself too so I won’t even have to buy that. Anyway, it’s neat, just a few parts from this and that laying around and I have a new gizmo to play with. I used to use it in the truck when I was pulling a heavy load like the Caterpillar or the backhoe. As I was going I just flip a switch on the shifter and it was like breathing new life into the truck, the boost gauge would go from 15 to 20 or more PSI and the black diesel smoke from the exhaust would disappear as we took off like the load had just lightened. What’s even better though is setting the cruise at 55 and carefully feeling the accelerator pedal as I switch the switch, the pedal immediately responds by lifting and we are using a ton less diesel to pull the same speed. Of course this uses propane, which isn’t cheap either but it’s cheaper than diesel when you consider how little is actually used. One of the next projects is to put a similar fumigation system on the little generator set I put together. Oh, I should tell about that a little while I am thinking about it. I decided that even though I was driving about one quarter what I did last year at this time I should cut back even more as it was just a waste and I was spending valuable time away from home that could be put to better use here doing something productive. So, as a consequence my driving and battery charging both got cut back considerably. Remember I was getting all of the power for my house by charging a deep cycle battery with the car as I drove here and there. With the driving cut I had an electricity problem, I had a little diesel charger that I got working with an alternator but the fact that an alternator is only about 60% efficient if that, bothered me considering I had a perfectly good 90% efficient permanent magnet motor sitting on the shelf in the shop. So the other day it was warm enough to work out there so I got to work and threw the charger together. I really get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing what I can do with scrounged parts, it doesn’t take much to go down and just buy everything already made right out of the box, besides, if I did that I wouldn’t have any time to fiddle with fun projects like generators or other gizmos because I would be spending all of my time at a tax paying job trying to pay for all of the store bought stuff that I could just as well have made myself and had more fun doing it. So the goal with the charger/generator (besides making electricity for my house) was to scrounge everything I could. I have a whole wing in the barn full of great old junk and parts so I am well equipped. I got a 1 horsepower permanent magnet motor out of an old battery powered floor scrubber, I got a bunch of old wiring that was just laying around, switches and nuts and bolts were here and there as were the nails and boards I needed. I made straps to hold things together out of a bunch of old plumbers tape that was cut in pieces, the battery bank I got out of the basement of a place where the guy didn’t want to carry them out himself. Pulleys were laying around as was the belt. The only thing I bought was the engine, and I could have scrounged an old Briggs and Stratton but I wanted a diesel instead of a noisy high revving gutless wonder of a lawnmower engine. I put it all together and was very happy to find that the thing charged at the target voltage at right about 1,000 rpm, just what I wanted. I can stand listening to a slow speed diesel for a very long time as it’s almost pleasant, an engine screaming away at 3,000 rpm drives me nuts. The permanent magnet motor is a 24 volt unit so I can hook the batteries up as 24 volt and charge at about 2200 rpm but my inverter is 12 volts so I hooked the batteries up as 12 volts and am charging slow speed at about 15.5 volts. The engine just barely goes and it’s not much of a load at all, in fact, I can run every electrical thing I have without noticing anything at all. The engine is a little single cylinder diesel that’s about 4-5 horsepower which is bigger than I need but it’s the smallest one I have at the moment. It’s hand crank start but the nice thing about a permanent magnet motor for generating is that if I give it power it is a motor so I rigged up a switch so it’s now an electric start unit. I can use it two ways, I prefer to flip the compression off and crank the engine up to speed, get everything oiled up and set before loading it up with compression, the engine should last a lot longer doing that. So until I scrounge an auto compression release switch I do it by hand, flip the release lever, flip the light switch and the engine turns over, give it compression and it starts, when it’s real cold out I don’t let it have a load until it’s warmed up a minute or so, then switch the power on and it’s done. Once I have it set up in its permanent spot I’ll have the automatic compression release set up and then all I’ll have to do is turn on a light or something in the house, that will trigger the compression release and the starter, the engine will start and keep the system charged. I won’t need to think about the generator at all, it will be all automatic. No more going outside to start it! So far in checking fuel used I am getting about 25-30 hours of run time with a gallon of diesel, that could be way off though because I haven’t run it long enough to do a thorough test. The only thing I am still working on is how to make it auto shut off when I am done for the evening, I may have to be content with a simple cable to the shutoff. The whole system is so incredibly simple even a 10 year old could fix it if it were to have a problem. I like simple. Simple and slow speed are what really excite me about equipment. I guess that’s why I like old equipment, for instance the Caterpillar has peak torque at about 800 rpm. I can pull a 5 bottom plow at 800 rpm all day long, try that with a newer tractor! One of my earthly treasures is a slow speed Lister diesel engine. Unfortunately it was burned to a crisp in the barn fire but I plan on rebuilding it as soon as I get my shop set up this spring. It’s rated at 600 RPM but I don’t need the power it will put out at that speed so I am going to try (if I can get it going again) to run it (powering a 20KW AC generator) at something less than 600, maybe around 400 rpm. I think I’ll save quite a bit of fuel that way. Speaking of fuel, it’s set up as a multi fuel engine and it probably won’t see much diesel. I’ll probably go into that later.

The propane fumigation on the little generator engine produced some interesting results. I had it bolted to a big wood block and it was running about half throttle on the shop floor, all the while jumping around and slowly moving across the floor, these aren’t Hondas remember! I had a makeshift fumigation system on it and I adjusted the gas a little more and a little more until I noticed a difference. I was testing to see how much I could give it. It started hopping around less and less the more gas I gave it and finally it stopped hopping entirely since it was running so smooth, then as I gave it more gas it started hopping again but this time the opposite direction as it was with no gas. I am not sure why it did this but it was interesting to note. At any rate the propane sure helps give a cleaner burn when I run crude and thick fuels like hydraulic oil and waste engine oil (both filtered really well). I have been forming plans in my mind for a methane digester as well as a wood gas generator, both of which I want to build as soon as I get the shop in order. That, sadly, is becoming a big project. I’ve got to fix some broken windows, I’ll scrounge some glass and cut new panes to replace the broken ones, then I need to fix the benches as they are too small. The biggest project is going to be getting the power source for running the tools. I have a wild idea to solve that, though I don’t know how well it might work yet as I haven’t thought it out thoroughly yet. So far I am thinking I can run a fairly large air compressor (I have a scrounged pump, though it’s small, I may build a pump out of an old engine, I imagine a V-8 ought to pump a lot of air) off of the old windmill (the old water pumping kind) which can keep a 500 gallon propane tank full of compressed air (I’ve found some tanks that are out of service but ought to work fine for air, they cost very little). I hear that pumping air isn’t the most efficient way to store energy but the wind is just going by right now so I figure I ought to reach out and catch some. Also, air tools cost almost nothing compared to good electric tools, and I won’t have to start up a noisy generator to run them. The two experiments, wood gas and methane, ought to be interesting, if I can keep from overwhelming myself with other needed projects I might actually get started working on them this spring!

Speaking of spring, I’ve been working on what I want to do about an orchard and I think I am going to jump in and do it this spring. I have wanted an orchard for as long as I can remember, I remember the fort I had as a kid in the old Yellow Transparent apple tree that was in the corner of the little group of fruit trees we had and it’s a good memory. An even better memory is eating all of the apples from that tree, we would eat them from the time they were big enough to recognize as apples (about the size of a quarter) until they were all on the ground with wasps eating holes in them, I don’t think I have ever seen an apple tree that constantly produced as many apples as that little yellow transparent tree did. I’ve been out in the yard pacing out areas I want for fruit trees to see how many trees I can fit in here, next I’ll have to figure out a watering solution since they will want plenty of watering this summer.

You know, I was thinking today about winter and I realized that this has been one of the best winters I have ever had, I’ve been so busy that I don’t want winter to stop, I am enjoying it too much! Usually by this time of year I am so tired of snow and cold that I just take off to somewhere warm but this year I am not tired of winter at all. It won’t be long and I’ll have to start figuring something out for a lawnmower as I have a lot of grass that will need mowing! I realized the other day that the freezing weather will not last forever and I had better come up with some solution for keeping food cold. I don’t have a refrigerator or freezer, so far the food keeps just fine in the box I have with an opening to the outside to let in cold air, that won’t work in July though. I either have to start cutting ice and building an ice house like they used to have or I have to get a refrigerator. I don’t want to get a refrigerator but I don’t know much about cutting and storing ice, anyone know how well that worked years ago? I’ll be keeping my eyes out for a propane refrigerator, I should be able to convert one of those to multi fuel and use the fuel that is most handy, that project may take a lot of tinkering though, I would have to figure out how to properly jet and regulate the different fuels to produce the exact amount of heat needed to cool the refrigerator. Sounds backward doesn’t it, you need heat to freeze things!