That went well.

Yesterday after our Sunday Morning Concrete-Schlepping session, M drove Gulchendiggensmoothen down the wash to the Lair's meadow. After an adventurous trip 20 feet from the wash to the meadow, he got a start on digging out the Lair's septic pit. But it was already after noon, and he and Landlady needed to go back to the city so he left the tractor in the meadow.

He's such a trusting soul.

The biggest problem for a neophyte who's looking forward to playing with a full-sized backhoe is that it really doesn't take very long to dig a big hole with it. So I went around and fiddled with the leach trench. That didn't take long, either. So I...decided to work on that perilous approach from the wash. That took a bit longer, but I was still having fun when I finally ran out of legitimately useful things to accomplish and parked it.

Now I have to get to work actually grading the trenches and assembling the septic system. It would seem ever so much more meaningful if I possessed a functional toilet to use it with. But these things work themselves out.

M's New Toy

I wasn't going to blog about this. M sent me the picture a couple of days ago, so proud a pappa that I'm surprised he didn't enclose a cigar.

Now, while I think it's just as cool as muscle cars it isn't the sort of thing I'd normally think to blog about. Somebody, I thought, will see this and get all worked up about "illegal guns." We don't have any illegal guns because we find that legal ones work just fine, but still the long gun of choice for most of us would have the uninitiated yelling about "machine guns" and such. You know the drill. What needn't be known shouldn't be known even though there's nothing illegal about it.

I told M I wasn't going to blog about it, and his face kinda fell. So okay: I'm blogging about it. And further, I will now express my true, honest opinion of it:

IS THIS THING COOL, OR WHAT???

Gad, I want one.

M has been brooding over this little thing like a mama chicken for six months or more. He had the barrel and gas tube cut down quite a while ago, obtained the buttstock (funny story there) 'way back in the summer of '09, and I don't know how long he's had the receiver. But because it's a short-barreled rifle, he couldn't assemble it until he got the NFA tax stamp. And that took over six months from the time he made the application and paid the fee.

Yes, M has joined the august ranks of the "NFA Firearm Collectors." Statist.

Anyway they finally sent him the tax stamp, and about fifteen microseconds later he had built the rifle and was longing, longing for a chance to come shoot it.

So Friday night when he and Landlady traditionally come in, I'm usually all bedded down with the dogs. But last Friday I happened to be sitting up reading. I saw them come in, the dogs could hardly have left me in doubt about that, but I didn't expect a visit until the next morning, when Landlady and I are in the habit of getting together for coffee. Instead, before they could have unpacked the car M is at my door. "Joel? You up?" See, I would never have forgiven him if he hadn't come show me his new baby right away. Riiiight.

So you know some early-morning gunfire was in the offing. And maybe we were a bit early with that. But I just got off the phone with my neighbor J, and it seems we accidentally caused a bit of an incident.

J's wife H heard what she thought was automatic gunfire early in the morning, and alerted the neighbors who were all properly outraged and scandalized. The, er, version of the story I heard is that "unknown strangers" were suspected, but...

Well, that was a busy weekend...

Resolved a couple of open issues this weekend, opened at least one more I had thought settled.

M helped me get the generator's carb apart. We sorted out the needle valve, put things back together, cleaned the spark plug, and the generator was back in action. The genny still being on the trailer, we drove it back to his dome where he'd need it later, unloaded it, then loaded the trailer with a bunch of cement board that had come for Landlady with his last load of concrete. Took the cement board to the Meadow House, unloaded it, ditched the trailer, then went out to the Secret Lair.

M wanted to know if I'd actually tested the new toilet I'd attached so firmly to the Lair's floor. Well no, I hadn't: The toilet isn't actually connected to anything yet, so flushing it would just dump a whole bunch of water under the cabin. He just stared at me expectantly. Well okay then. I'll just go get a bucket of water, shall I? I filled the tank, and wouldn't you know the tank has some hairline cracks and won't hold water without leaking. Bother. We're now zero for two on salvaged toilets, both with cracked tanks. Maybe used toilets aren't such a good idea.

I got a bunch of paneling work done on the Lair's loft, then attempted to drive back to meet Landlady and M at her house. Unfortunately the Jeep chose that moment to run out of gasoline (the fuel gauge never has really worked all that well) and so I got a nice hike to the barn, grab some gas, and then back to the Jeep. That's the last of my stored gas, too, so I needed to spend some money.

Landlady had meanwhile been laying cement board to line the surface where her fancy raised bathtub is going. She brought the plumbing fixtures for the tub up from the city, and they're really gonna look nice.

M brought the last parts we need to get HPAV Gulchendiggensmoothen running again, he and I installed them and the engine started right up and ran sweet and loud. Leaving the tractor's battery on the new Battery Minder for a week seems to have had great effect, and the tractor was officially open for business until the next problem reveals itself. Then we all loaded into the Jeep for food and gasoline in town.

This morning I cooked beans, and Landlady made huevos rancheros for breakfast. Then we went to M's Dome and schlepped concrete to fill one of his retaining walls. 22 bags of concrete poured into the top of a wall 12 feet tall at the tallest point, one coffee can at a time. A bit hard on ol' Uncle Joel's back, but we're slowly gettin'er done.

At that point, M wanted to run the tractor out to the Lair and dig out the pit for the septic system barrels. This has been much on my mind, because there were a couple of possible problems doing that. My driveway has one very (very very) steep spot getting down off the ridge onto the meadow where the Lair lurks. It's enough of an adventure getting there in the Jeep, and I surely wouldn't suggest anyone try it in a big yellow tractor with a rather high center of gravity. The alternative was coming up the wash, and before the Monsoon that wouldn't have been a big deal but since the floods the transition from wash to meadow had a bunch of fairly deep gullies installed that hadn't been there before. It's all soft sand, just made for high centering a tractor. So the process of getting Gulchy onto the meadow proved rather more adventurous than I would have chosen. No way I was going to do it, but M's got more stones than I do - besides it's his tractor. We did in fact manage to get her stuck, and in unsticking her M put her through some acrobatics (damned near aerobatics) that had me running for cover at one point because I didn't know exactly where she was going to land. When he finally got her back on solid dirt she was kind of stuck between a tree and the gully she'd just escaped, without enough room to back and fill to get pointed in a better direction. He looked at me a bit helplessly, pointing at the tree. I shrugged and yelled, "It's your tree."

Yes, HPAV Gulchendiggensmoothen will knock down a large tree. In fact it doesn't seem to notice the effort of doing so.

Once on the meadow, the process of actually digging out the pit went without the slightest difficulty. Our neighbor L had originally dug the pit just before Monsoon with her much smaller backhoe, and she had needed to adjust the pit's location a bit because she encountered a large buried rock she couldn't move. M's tractor didn't even find that rock a minor challenge: Out it came. I now have a pit intended for two barrels, which is large enough for a root cellar.

Right after Landlady and M left for the week, my phone rang. It seems that Saturday morning there was a bit of excitement among the neighbors because of what they took to be automatic gunfire coming from our area, rather early in the morning. That'll be the topic of the next exciting post: M's New Toy.

Off-Grid Electricity on the Cheap

When I decided to build the Secret Lair, I had a series of problems to overcome. They all had to do with Money: Lack Of.

As much as possible of the Lair is built with salvaged material: All the dimensional lumber, windows, wood stove, appliances, most of the plumbing, almost all the electrical. In fact, early plans didn't call for running water or electrical at all, because I didn't think I'd have access to water or enough electrical components. M kindly let me plug into his water supply and a friend with a backhoe trenched all the way down the ridge, so that meant I got a shower and a flush toilet just like a civilized person. But the electrical: Well, there I got lucky with scrounging. My current electrical system is about as simple as a solar electric system can be, so it's a pretty good case study in how a very basic system is constructed.

As you can see, I've still got some carpentry in my future. The panels will soon be mounted on a home-made rack. The process starts with the solar panels. I've got six small panels rated at 48 watts each. They're very old so I doubt they can really crank out that much. But in total, I can probably count on about 250 watts, which is enough for my use. One thing I've learned over the past four years is that I actually use relatively little electricity: Really just lights, my laptop, and an occasional power tool. I don't need power for water pressure, and the well pump has its own power source. But for a normal household, this wouldn't be enough. Needless to say, the Secret Lair does not have electric kitchen appliances in its future. Wired together, the panels produce about 18 volts.

The power from the panels goes to a charge controller. The controller regulates the power that goes to the batteries. The batteries (I'll eventually have four) are wired in parallel, so that the output voltage is roughly 12 volts - actually more like 13-14. Again, carpentry: I've got to get these under cover before it starts to snow.

Power from the batteries goes inside to the inverter. This is a 1500-watt auto/RV inverter, and one day I'll almost certainly replace it with a bigger one because 1500 watts isn't enough to run tools like a circular saw. Bother. But it's more than enough for common household appliances.

The inverter has its own internal protection against short circuits and such, so the breaker panel is probably redundant. But still - izza house. You want a breaker panel. This one's got four breakers, which is ludicrously overspecced for my 200 sq. ft. lair. But it was free. All this stuff will eventually be covered up by the kitchen counter.

One thing Landlady and T learned to their grief: The balance between the power output of the solar panels and the storage capacity of the battery bank is very important. You're actually better off with a battery bank that's too small than one that's too big. Lead-acid batteries must be fully charged much of the time, or they will lose capacity and gradually just stop working. Big storage batteries are tragically expensive, and it's a truism around here that you always kill your first bank of them by making mistakes that in hindsight seem fairly obvious.

When in doubt, go bigger on the solar panel array and/or smaller on the battery bank. If your batteries aren't fully charged by early afternoon on a sunny day, you've got too much battery or not enough solar. Ideally, you should have enough battery capacity to power your needs for two days without sun, and enough solar power to charge the whole bank by early afternoon of a sunny day. With that in hand, you won't go too far wrong.

And that's it, really. Obviously, a proper solar electrical system is rather more complex than this, but not in concept. It's also far, far more expensive. ;^)

QoD - "All you need is me" edition...

It takes a special kind of hubris to wake up one morning and decide that what this world is lacking is your visionary leadership, and an even more perfectly-distilled narcissism to think that if millions of people don't like you, the problem is with all of them.

Water, water, right where you want it.

About a week ago I kinda-sorta promised a series on our own real-world form of "Eco-living." That, by the way, is not a term I've ever heard used out here. We just call it "living." Anyway, I haven't forgotten about it, and this is the first one: Getting Water.

If you're gonna live in the desert, there's a whole bunch of questions you need to answer.  Ain't nobody gonna do it for you.  And probably the most important question is, where's the water coming from?  You need water.  This is not optional.

I actually know some people who get along without a water well.  It can be done, but it pretty much reduces you to marginal living right off the bat.  I don't recommend it.  If you do have a well dug, you still have a problem.  Where we are, the water is roughly 250 feet down.  Once the well is dug, artesian pressure may (also may not) push the water up the pipe somewhat.  But it still isn't a shallow well.  You won't be bringing it up with a hand pump or a windmill.

(There are exceptions to the windmill thing.  Old-fashioned windmills are actually fairly common here, and some are even still in service.  But those are quite shallow wells.  Pockets of shallower water can be found, and I'm not enough of a geologist to be able to say why that is.  But I can tell you the water from those shallow wells is not potable, except maybe in emergency.  They're used for watering livestock.)

Anyway!  Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  How to get the water out of a deep well.  There are two ways, and they both require electricity.

See, this is why I live in the desert.

Landmines.  I need more landmines.  And claymores.  With automatic sensors to detect the sound of "I'm from the government, and I'm here to..."  BANG!

And on the subject of batteries...

Check out the big charge on M's tractor battery!

A couple of weeks ago I received a gift from a generous blog reader, which (the gift, not the reader) advertises itself as able to restore sulfated batteries.  In the intervening time it's been attached to one of my big household gel cells, so far without indicating much in the way of success.  But Monday I attached it to the old lead-acid 12-volt on M's tractor to see what it could do with that.

And if the LED's on the Battery Minder mean anything, we've brought that old battery back from a lamentable condition!  Thanks, generous blog reader!

How very strange! And cool! And - um - useful?

I was looking up LED lightbulbs on Amazon, which seems to be where my online-buying friends go when they want to, you know, buy something online.  And I came upon this, apparently for no better reason than my amusement...

The Sylvania LED Ecolight Water Powered Shower Light is a multifunctional product that can make showering both safe and energy efficient. There is a built-in LED light that requires no batteries or wiring; it converts incoming water pressure into a power supply. A built-in sensor will change the color of the LED to let you know the approximate water temperature. Now you won't have to be shocked by freezing water or burned by scalding water; also great for kids. Both the LED light and the showerhead connection pivot up and down and side to side for added safety. By using this LED you can go without using your standard bathroom light in the morning or evening and save energy. With this clever bathroom product you can enjoy innovative lighting technology in a practical way.

 Er, yeah, except that the only way to turn the light on is to turn the shower on.  Which may not be your top priority first thing rising, at ohmigod-30 in the cold dark morning...

Still, however comically useless the application, a lamp that requires neither house current nor batteries is pretty cool, in and of itself.

Nice weather for it, though.

Lord, it's been gorgeous lately.  It was up in the mid-seventies the past two days, and the weather report promises it'll keep coming.  Down around freezing every night, but really nice by nine or so.

Been piddling with a bunch of little things.  Put in a couple of light switches in the Lair's loft, because it turns out the lamps I scavenged from an RV - which I wanted because they have their own switches - don't fit in a standard light box.  But even so, though the lamps I'm currently using aren't exactly - um - still, when I hit the switch everything lights up.  I'll spare you pictures.  Anyway, now I've got to scrounge a bunch of other lamps!  Bother.

I'm filling the last of the pipe trench at the foot of the cistern - last year we didn't do that, thinking it'd be all right if we drained the cistern at the lair, and ended up with a bunch of busted pipes anyway.  Since there's quite a cats-cradle of pipes and valves right there, I made a couple of access boxes out of 6" PVC that M scrounged from somewhere.  Still have to build one wooden box for a more complex structure, but most of the shoveling is done.

We'll still tackling one old-tractor problem after another with HPAV Gulchendiggensmoothen - so far the ol' thing hasn't done a single useful thing except piling some manure at J&H's.  Last weekend M sent up new radiator hoses with Landlady, and I've got them installed now.  Still waiting for a couple of new fuel lines, though.

And finally, I'm a little stuck on the generator's problems.  I got the carburetor off without hassle, but it's this weird asian thing and if I ever knew how to take off the float bowl I must have forgotten.  I'm pretty sure the only problem with it is a misaligned needle & seat, which will be simplicity itself to fix but only if I can get the bowl off.  Maybe M remembers how.  One of us had better, because he's gonna want it for running the cement mixer this weekend and it sure ain't gonna run the way it is.

A gulcher's life for me!

"He can't help it that he's a psycho. He comes from a broken home."

Paulo the Former Stallion update:

Well, Paulo's lapse into reasonable behavior after his gelding was somewhat brief.  He still can't stand the sight of Spirit the Unreasonably Large Mare, and seems to feel the solution should involve violence.  In an attempt to keep him from jumping the five-foot iron fence that keeps him in his corral, the corral has gotten smaller ... and smaller ... until now it's not much bigger than a stall.  Which makes it a little harder to clean up after him while he's in there.  A couple of sessions ago he faked me out and escaped while I was dragging the shitwagon in there with him, and then had lots of fun cantering merrily around the edge of a frickin' cliff until we cornered him.  The mares found this very exciting.

So the new doctrine is that Paulo has to come out of his stall/corral/paddock/whatever when it's time for me to clean it.  Which is a pain, but not as much as trying to work three inches from his teeth and hooves while also maneuvering a wagon and shit fork.

The weird thing is, get him into another corral and then do nothing but shower attention on him, and he's by far the friendliest of the horses - even to me.  Which won't stop him from thinking about taking a square foot of skin off my back next time I'm in there with him and drop my guard, should his mood be wrong.

H's latest theory/excuse for his behavior is that Paulo, as a foal, was treated the way many breeders treat stallions: Take him away from his mother when he's weaned, then isolate him from all other horses.  Because he's a stallion, and stallions are pretty much supposed to be psychotic.  Except Paulo is so poorly socialized that he couldn't even breed.  He's got no concept of "teasing," which I'm told is horse language for foreplay, and unless another horse did it for him (not an uncommon practice, which just seems cruel) he couldn't even get to second base with a mare.  Not, alas, that that's any longer a problem.

H still has hopes that he'll settle down and perhaps one day even be able to share a corral with another horse without mayhem.  But personally I'll believe that when I see it.

I'm done reading about the election now.

The next likely Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and the next likely House Majority Leader, Cantor, met with reporters this morning to react to last night’s Republican landslide victory that resulted in the GOP seizing control of the House of Representatives. ...


...Boehner said the vote was “a mandate for Washington to reduce the size of government and continue our fight for a smaller, less costly and more accountable government.”

Continue?  I must have missed the press release: when did you start?  Because your record, Mr. Boehner, doesn't give me a whole hatful of warm fuzzies as to the future of this latest Republican Revolution, vis-a-vis individual liberty.  Meet the new boss.  Quite literally same as the old boss.

Shutting up now - I've a load of more honest horseshit to shovel.

Harry Reid says he's going to quit Congress and start a business...

Well, that's the only logical spin I can put on his post-election remarks...

"As far as I'm concerned, my No. 1 job is to help create jobs, and I'm going to do everything I can. The only thing that's going to solve our economic problems in this country are jobs, jobs and more jobs."

 Or, maybe he's just planning to increase his staff.  Certainly that's the only way he ever 'created a job'...

Needs more cowbell...

Via Uncle.

Happy voting day.

So!  What'll it be, citizens?

You can have Boot-On-Your-Neck Party Candidate A, and bravely stay the course.

Or!  Revolution!  Boot-On-Your Neck Party Candidate B!

Remember!  If you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain!

ETA:  Kevin Wilmeth's How to Vote on Election Day.

Oh. Well, I suppose that's good to know.

Information for people interested in building an off-grid electrical system on the cheap: A 1500-watt inverter will not, in fact, run a circular saw.

That is all, carry on.

Also, damn.

The Song in my Head...

...reminds me of wet mornings, when all those broken bones and wrenched joints complain...

No, I was never a fighter. My nickname was "lucky."

If you didn't resist, you must have wanted it!

Courtesy of Claire, here's a very interesting article drawing parallels between the way courts traditionally and - er...modernly? - approach rape cases and 4th Amendment cases.

...there are many parallels to be drawn between rape and Fourth Amendment consent law. Although both claim to protect the dignity of choice, like rape law, the Fourth Amendment fails to ask if a subject wishes to be seized or touched, focusing instead on the amount of force and coercion used by the police. Also like rape law, the Fourth Amendment fails to recognize that subtle forms of coercion are incompatible with true consent. Both Fourth Amendment and rape law blame subjects who submit to subtle coercion, telling them they had a choice. Just as rape victims were told they asked for it by wearing short dresses and not screaming for help, individuals are told they asked for it by extending their arms to be searched.

When celebrities hold their own nonpolitical rallies, at least the signs are good...

Here's a site with what they're calling the 100 best signs from that Jon Stewart rally, about which I know and care nothing further.

Some of them are quite witty.  Some, only about half so.  WARNING: Takes forever to open.

Four Years!

Isn't that weird?  Four years ago sometime this week, I first came to live in the high desert.

Lotsa stuff happened.

Still loving it.