What have you done to your Branson today?

[LouNY]

Let us know how it goes. I bought some for a project a couple years ago. Never managed get it to work but I don't really have a good source of heat anyway.

Well the first attempt didn't do much good, it looked better so I put her back together and gave it a shot. Still leaking maybe a bit slower but not much.

 

[ptsg]

Well the first attempt didn't do much good, it looked better so I put her back together and gave it a shot. Still leaking maybe a bit slower but not much.

Now a little bit of JBweld for those tiny holes and she'll be good again.

 

[LouNY]

Always a possibility,
I am thinking about ordering some Muggy Weld Super Alloy 5 and giving it a shot.

 

[ning]

Recently set up a few summer greens garden beds.

It gets really hot and dry here in the summer and salad greens grow fine but taste really lousy, so we're going to plant lettuces and some other things experimentally in these beds - there's still a decent amount of sun at various times during the day but should be much less sun scorching.

As you can tell, this is a hillside; I'd previously cut some terraces with hugelkultur-ish mounds at the ends - basically logs and branches covered with dirt, then soil, then chips. To place these beds I scraped this particular area fairly flat with the back blade. The upper two terraces+mounds have raspberries which are in rude health - they're loving the setup and I've been enjoying a few raspberries each day for the last month and a half.

The boxes are made from some old roofing metal that was found in a junk metal pile that was sitting on our land over 25 years ago when we bought it; I occasionally still find something useful in it. It's basically a standing seam metal roofing, very heavy gauge, and it has a decent amount of structural integrity. The boxes will presumably be topped with wood 2x4's. I'm not particularly fond of the metal look but it was really cheap ($0)...

That chain link fence also dates from before we got the place; I've re-fenced the perimeter of our land and no longer need the chainlink, so it's coming out during the next wet season when I can easily pull the posts.

The boxes are filled at the bottom with semi-rotted oak and dirt, with recently cut scrub oak twigs and lots of oak leaves, then topped with some partially composted chips, finally with a good layer of soil from my compost pile which is mostly chips and chicken coop discards (we don't have a traditional compost pile as all of our kitchen discards go to a place the chickens can grab and eat it; we empty the chicken house - poops and straw - and the chicken run - chips and poops - into the compost pile and it's pretty good soil the next year with a few tractor bucket stirrings along the way).

The semi-rotted oak is from when I split wood and find rotted chunks; there's a place that I dump it and cover it with dirt and ignore it until I need some fill.

It's pretty decent stuff if you don't dig too deeply and get the red clay (though going in the bottom of a box it's not a big deal):

though it's strongly advise to pull all the poison oak roots out of it before putting it in your wife's garden

 

[LouNY]

Well my new condenser ($598) and receiver/dryer ($135) got in at my dealer today so I went down and picked them up. May get started tearing out the old and putting in the new tomorrow.

I do know that if I was a bit younger and going to be messing around with this type of stuff I would have done it a bit different.
A universal 18" by 18" cross flow condenser would have been around $150 a drier/receiver with the right threads $35-40 then one hose would have had to be modified and one new short one made up. Hose, fittings and a crimper would have been under
$250, so I'd have been into for less then $500 and been ready for other work as needed.

 

[LouNY]

Well the AC in my Branson 8050 was rocking and rolling this afternoon when I shut her down.
Had 45F air coming out of the AC vents with an 85F ambient temp and sitting in the sun running at 1600 rpm.

Setting in place with my fancy tube protector, put one on both upper corners,

bolted in,

lines all hooked and receiver/dryer in,

Almost done, horn and air cleaner bracket mounted AC pressure switch and horn wires connected, and screens installed,

Air cleaner mounted and filter switch hooked up, just got the battery left to put back in,

Got her all together pulled a vacuum on the system held it for an hour, gauges still looked good,
so added about 5 oz. oil to make up for what she'd lost charged her with R-290, at 1600 rpm
we had 45F air coming out the vent with 85F ambient air and sitting in the sun. I'll check her tomarrow
and see if it's still good, and hopefully call it good.

Had an interesting surprise when I opened the very large box that the condenser was shipped to the dealer in,
we I opened it there were 5 condensers in the box, so I guess tomorrow I'll take 4 of them back to the dealer.

 

[K5lwq]

Glad you got it installed Lou. Maybe that is why it Was so expensive. It is a five pack.

 

[LouNY]

That would be nice if it was only 20% of the $568,
but I had another quote which was even higher $741 and $167 for the drier.
My guess is when they ordered one the warehouse must have shipped one case of them.
It was tempting to stick the others upstairs in the shop and see what happened but I'll take them
back so they can send them back as they see fit to.

 

[Zork]

Installed a hydraulic top link yesterday. Got the tires, power beyond spool, and front remote, grapple installed a few weeks ago. I need some different fittings to use my QA my loader hoses at the spool and the top link hose. The placement of the second spool worked so nice, I'm thinking of upsizing it to 3/4 JIC

 

[tacticalturnip]

Hydraulics are such a game changer; have lots of fun!