Level Thinking

Last week I was participating in a service project week with youth from several locations. We were divided into teams on arrival and my team got a project to finish building an awning/grape arbor. The concrete piers had been set the week before, but as we proceeded, it became apparent that the piers had some height variation along the 32 foot run. We wanted to know how much it varied, but we had limited tools.

We did have a large plastic tote and a long garden hose, so we constructed a simple water level. First, at one end of the run we filled the tote with water and immersed the garden hose to remove the air.


Next we pulled one end of the hose over to the the first pier 32 feet away. By moving the hose end up and down we could roughly tell when it was just about even with the level in the tote. We used a pencil to make a mark.


From this we measured a gradual slope of about 6 inches over 32 feet. We decided to let the height change over the run length since it was gradual and it was destined to hold grapes vines anyway. Also the house was not completely level either.
I had these photos taken and I explained to the team that it was for my blog. We got to talk about my blog during the week, we finished the project a bit early and I had a fun week.

Cooking With Gas

My daughter and I were recently preparing a Mother's Day lunch. I had primary responsibility for grilling the Salmon after my daughter created the recipe by combining several recipes from the internet. The grilling was going well, but it did not have the nice grilled finish on top that I was looking to create.

Enter the blowtorch.


That's what I call cooking with gas.

It worked great and everyone loved the result. They also found the process entertaining.

Rick

Low Flow Situtation

We rented a big house during the weekend of my sons wedding. It was great and we filled it up with friends and family. A problem developed with toilet. Modern low-flow toilets tend to get plugged up more easily it seems to me.

So we kinda needed this to work again and I could not find a plunger. Since it was flowing a little, I decided to try the following. First, I filled up a trash can with hot water from the shower, then I carefully filled the bowl with this water up to somewhat near the brim. Next, I added a lot of liquid dish soap, maybe about 6 ounces. Then I left it alone. Here is a photo.


About 15 minutes later, I heard a whoosh sound. Problem solved. This may not always work but this time it did.

Rick

Suspenseful Story

All the groomsmen, plus the father of the bride and I, the father of the groom, were putting on our tuxedo finery when we had a problem. Understand that we all had clear instruction to wear suspenders. Some asked "Why suspenders?" and the rest of us explained "Because the bride said so." We also added that it makes the slacks straght and flatter. No argument from me since I was in favor of anything that makes me look slimmer.

Back to the problem. The father of the bride had defective suspenders! Gasp!

So I fixed them with a pocket knife.

The metal clasp part was bent over kinda backwards, so I bent it back. Oh, I used my son's old Boyscout pocket knife and the Bestman took this photo with his iPhone.

Rick

Laptops

Fellow Rotarian's arranged for the donation of a quantity (more than 80) of used corporate laptops. None had disk drives or power supplies and there was a mix of models.

I took the project of getting them back to operating condition. It has been quite a project. About half were the same manufacturer and model (Toshiba M2) , so I started with those.

Some have swappable parts and others are hopelessly broken. All the steps to get these working again is a long story that involved a local used computer store, ebay, and a lot of trial and error.

It turns out that there was a way to get these to work again after all and so for I have completed 10. Shown below are units 7 through 10 that I completed just this morning.


Through connections in our Rotary club, we are getting these to El Salvador. Shown below is a scholarship student with one of the earlier laptops that I completed a few months ago.


I set these up with an "English" and "Espanol" user logins. I used OpenOffice 3.0 with a Spanish language pack for word processing and spreadsheets. It automaticaly switchs languages by the login type. I also installed the Spanish version of the Firefox internet browser. They turned out rather well. Time to make more.

Rick

Major House Repair - One Option

The house across the street was sold a couple of years ago. It needed a lot of repair. Actually, the house had been moved to the lot from another location about 50 years ago. The house was old when it was moved and it has been maintained but not improved much since.

The new owners liked the location but not the house, so they elected the following repair option.


Crunch and dump.

Though old, it was not historic. The new house will meet modern energy efficiency and structural safety codes. At this point, the old house can now be officially called "dumpy" since that is where it is at.

Rick

Overheating Engine

This is a post about a project from the past. A year and a half ago, a College Kid (CK1) I know had some engine overheating troubles with his 96 Subaru Outback. It had overheated on the way home from college on Thanksgiving morning.

We did some web research and made some phone calls and determined that it had all the symptoms of a leaky head gasket. It turns out that this is a classic problem for this particular engine from this time period. Specifically, a leaking head gasket allows combustion gas from the cylinders to pass into the cooling system. Air in the cooling system messes up the flow of coolant and the transfer of heat. Result, engine overheating and a slow stream of air bubbles in the coolant reservoir tank. This car had both of these problems so it seemed conclusive.

The bad news it the cost and time of replacing the head gasket. So, I recruited a second college kid (CK2) to help with the project. CK2 LOVES to work on cars and his winter break started earlier than that of CK1.

So, starting on a Tuesday afternoon in December, we pulled the engine.


Doing this involves a lot of steps and tagging of parts so you can put them back where they belong. It also involves getting greasy and problem solving when things don't come apart as easy as expected. This car started out in Vermont so some corrosion from the road salt made it hard to separate the engine from the transmission.

On removing the head gasket, it had this small area with inadequate sealing and you can see evidence of a bad seal and condensed exhaust gasses in the photos below.



That is all it took to fail. Subaru has redesigned this gasket a couple of times since 1996 due to this problem. The old gasket used a combination of metal and fibrous gasket material (a very standard design) and the new gasket used multiple layers of thick and thin metal with sealing compound applied in a detailed pattern at certain edges. The replacement gaskets looked very, very robust.

So working almost daily in the afternoons, we put it all back together and finished on the Tuesday evening a week after we started. The car has not overheated since so it looks like we succeeded and we saved CK1 about $900 by doing this in my driveway. CK2 and I also had fun and we had no leftover parts. Success.

Rick