Good Morning!!!! 72F @ 4:45AM. Abundant sunshine. High 101F. Winds light and variable.
The coming weekend's chances for rain are rapidly evaporating, but at least this heat spell will end. Can't ask for everything I guess, but the hot weather is keeping firefighters very busy with several call outs a day in this area.
Ceiling paint jobs are a literal pain in the neck, Thomas. And arms, and shoulders, too. Hope yours goes quickly and easily.
Did you put the Seafoam in the fuel, or squirt it into the carb, Don?
You're really reaching out to that frog, Ron. Had to rescue a toad that got trapped in one of the trenches yesterday. It didn't at all like riding in my gloved hands to the tall grass where I let it go.
Poppies in the middle of the road, Eric?
Glad the nice weather is perking you up, Jay. I want to pull the covers over my head and go back to bed in the morning when I read what passes for news these days. Not just bad, but down right frightening!
How in the world do you back up a truck pulling two trailers, Bill?:shocked:
Some issues have emerged with the electrical work. In the previous week's walk through, we'd discussed a problem with the conduits as they come up to the back of the house not emerging from the ground in an exactly perpendicular fashion. We talked again yesterday morning about a solution, then I went off to do some other work, with the understanding that the electrical lead come get me so we could work together on a fix. When I came by a couple hours later to see when we were to get together, this is what I found:

Then he showed me that the connections where the plastic conduit connected to the steel were cracked. I asked how they got that way, and was told that's how he found them. They seemed OK the day before when I cleared the debris out of the trench for the last time. But now the smaller conduit they'd run all the signal and 110V AC lines in was too short to reach where he'd installed the new box. And he couldn't snake the wire up inside the wall because he said it was packed with insulation, so he shoved everything from those three conduits inside one even smaller conduit. But the crowning glory is that "S" bend plumber's nightmare. I'd be embarrassed to do work like that, but he thinks it's OK because he can blame my lousy conduit installation. I need to have a talk with him this morning, and I don't think it's going to be pleasant. But there are several solutions that could have had better results if he had come to talk with me when we'd agreed.

Then there's this at the north side of the house where the conduits come in from the pump house. One was supposed to be used to bring the solar power feed back out to the well pumps, the other was what I was going to use for new RG-11 and CAT5 cables. Grid power (the line I'd damaged) was going to be repaired by pulling out the old wire and running a new one. The same contractor said that wouldn't work because there were too many bends in the old conduit and the wire inside couldn't easily be removed. But that's not what he said during the walk through the week before, when all was hunky dory. So now my two signal leads share a conduit with 240V AC from the grid, and I'm worried about AC interference, which he says won't be a problem. And who knows what's inside that upside down U bridging the two boxes?:shocked: In the walk through, I'd also asked about a bypass switch that would reconnect the household loads to the grid should there be a failure in the solar power equipment. I really never got a straight answer to my question, and now that's been troubling me as well. My sense is that the salesman made promises this poor guy is having to deal with, and that four hours of driving a day is causing him to spend more time on the job than he's been allotted. Another difficult conversation awaits...
And it's Hump Day already.