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expect to find this on the Space Shuttle
Sunday, August 28 2005
Despite the price of gasoline I made several runs into town because I had reached a critical stage in the just-in-time planning of the boiler room part of the solar system's plumbing. I'd go lay out some things, realize I needed something critical, run in town to get it, and then when I'd lay the larger thing out I'd suddenly realize there was something else I needed. The last of these things was a backflow preventer, which is supposed to go between the cold water supply and the reduction valve that lets in more water should pressure fall in the closed hydronic system. A backflow preventer had been omitted from the existing plumbing system, and since I suspect its existing reduction valve is broken, I'm folding its replacement into the solar project.
But then when I got to Herzogs I saw that the backflow preventer cost nearly sixty bucks. But what could I do? I needed the damn thing.
In the late afternoon I finally got around to doing the first soldering of the solar project, building the cold water resupply subsystem as a single installable component. It ended up looking like something you'd expect to find on the Space Shuttle. Gretchen was impressed, and finally she could stop with her talk about how I was too chickenshit to begin the plumbing phase of the project.
Clarence with the dual cold water supply system.
This evening Gretchen and I had a vegetarian barbecue dinner over in Tillson with our friends the Tillsons. Mr. Tillson showed us all the fancy progress he's made with the upstairs shithouse (though he's resisted repeated calls to expose the three-inch-diameter copper shit pipe that passes through the living room hidden in a non-load-bearing wall).
Later Ms. Tillson showed us sad silent movies of her old dog Louise shortly before she had her put to sleep due to unmanageable behaviors suggesting a tumor on the pituitary gland. Actually, the movies weren't really silent, but Ms. Tillson had the audio on mute. It was better that way, both more respectful and more affecting.
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