Well, That’s Not Going To Work . . .

We are now the proud owner (renter?) of a 5’ x 5’ storage unit at the Extra Space Facility in Dickinson, only about15 minutes from here. We’ll take some stuff over Friday morning and also pick up some bins.




When I called earlier today to check out pricing, I also confirmed that they did NOT required insurance like the Public Storage place does. And although I was told that the monthly rent would be $28, but I thought I’d seen it online cheaper. And I was right.

If I booked it online, the monthly charge dropped to $23. That’s $60 a year saved. Nice!

The two actuator remote controllers that I ordered for my remote dump valve system came in today, and I quickly discovered that this idea wasn’t going to work.

Well this won't work

I had planned to use this 2 gang outlet box to hold the remote modules with 1/4” phone jacks mounted on the front plate to plug in the actuators. But I found that through I had measured everything, I hadn’t allowed for the extra protrusions. So the modules won’t fit.

So it was back to Amazon to order a larger case, which should be here Friday.

New Actuator Box

So hopefully I can get it all put together this weekend. I’ve got a handle on how I want to mount the actuators on top of the valves, but I’m still not sure how I’m going to connect the actuator shaft to the dump valve handle. I want something that I can quickly and easily disconnect so I can dump manually if I want. So I’m still chewing on that.

About 5:30 this afternoon I cranked up our Onan generator to be sure it was good to go our visit from  the RV Mobile Lube guy on Friday afternoon. He’ll want to warm it up to change the oil. I was happy to see that it started right up with no problems, and about 45 seconds later the transfer switch kicked over and we were running on the genset.

One thing I’ve noticed before is that the transfer switch is fast enough that the DirecTV /TV combo didn’t even glitch, nor did the front AC. I had turned off the rear AC, because the generator stutters a little with both AC’s running.

Now I’m probably going to hear from readers that I shouldn’t start the generator with the AC running. But that’s you should let the genset come up to speed and stabilize before you put it under load. Which is why my transfer switch has the 45 second delay build in. In fact the only way I know that it has switched over is the voltage dropped from 124VAS to 121VAC, the standard output voltage for my genset.

However, though the switchover to the genset is pretty unnoticeable, the change back to shore power drops out both the DirecTV DVR and the TV. But it doesn’t seem to affect the AC or the coffee pot clock.

But at least we’re ready for the lube guy.



Thought for the Day:

I waited until the price dropped to $1000 before I bought one for my Commodore Amiga.

hardisk-waiting-for

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