Daily Archives: September 17, 2015
Summer’s Last Gasp?
I certainly hope so, because we’ve got 3 or 4 days of mid to high 90’s in store before it cools back down. At least unlike before, where we also had mid 70’s at night, we’ll still have night temps in the 60’s. And by Monday we’re supposed to be back down in high 80’s to low 90’s. We can hope.
As of this morning, our water heater is back in full operation. This morning I replaced both the ECO cutout and the thermostat with the new parts that came in from Amazon yesterday.
Turns out that when I got into it, my water heater doesn’t use the stick-on method of installation, but the parts are held on behind a metal plate. The new ones also come with springs to press them against the side of metal tank.
And just to help things along, I found a tube of thermal paste left over from my computer-building days and used a dab of that on each thermostat to help the heat transfer. Thermal paste was used between the top of the computer’s CPU and the heatsink/fan to help cool the CPU as much as possible.
After I finished the installation and tightened everything down, I turned on power to the water heater and used my voltmeter to check things out. Measuring from ground, I found I now had voltage all the way through to the heating element, so it appeared to be working. But the big test would be when I took my shower tonight.
The frack has been shut down since early this morning while they prepare to switch to the second of three holes they’re doing at this site. So it’s been relatively quiet all day with only 100 vehicles coming through, rather than the 125 to 130 we’ve been running.
So I decided this might be a good time to take the trash down and drop it off on the pad. We hadn’t seen the usual wire-sided trash trailer come through, so we were wondering what they were doing for trash onsite. I had been dropping our trash off at the Whataburger’s dumpster after getting permission from the manager.
But then a few days ago one of the workers mentioned that they did have one on the pad, but rather than the wire one, it was an open-top goose-neck gondola type trailer.
I found it all the way at the back of the pad, and threw my bags in with no problem. While I was there, I was surprised to see actually how much equipment is on site.
This is what it looked like before they started the frack,
but now it’s just wall to wall trucks, trailers, pumps, and cranes. There’s just barely enough room to drive around the sides.
Finally getting my shower this evening, I found everything working fine. One thing I did notice was the water temperature. When we started using it on propane all the time, I was surprised to find how much hotter the water was on gas than when we were on electric, figuring it was just the difference in the two heat sources. But tonight’s shower on electric was just as hot as one on gas, so I figure that thermostat had been slowly dying before it finally quit for good.
I mentioned yesterday that I’d gotten an Amazon Echo with my order that came in yesterday. I’m going to wait a few days before I talk about it so that I can give you more info.
But for now, I LIKE IT!
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Thought for the Day:
I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.
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