Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   shop water
Wednesday, September 5 2007
There is a cat in the neighborhood, a smallish striped grey tabby (not too different in appearance from Marie) who enjoys coming into our yard to visit amicably with our cats. I've seen him (I'm assuming it's a him) sitting around in the driveway near our black cat Sylvia. This morning he was down in the weeds beneath the east deck yowling up at it, Romeo and Juliet style. Eleanor came out and with one glance knew that this was an interloper. She ran around and tried to cut the mystery cat off on his retreat route back to Crazy Dave's cabin (I suspect the cat belongs to Crazy Dave). I heard a scuffle in the forest, a burst of barking that concluded with an instant of what sounded like doggy pain. When I next saw Eleanor, she had a fresh bloody gash on the right side of her muzzle. That mystery cat knows a thing or two about dogs.
It's interesting, I'd just like to note, how fierce and indignant our dogs become whenever they see strange cats sneaking through the weeds. Evidently they can distinguish these cats from the five they live with at a great distance, even when they're similar in appearance.

Last summer when I was finishing the walls of the garage and shop, I installed a bunch of new shelves as well as the old cheap countertops that had been ripped from the kitchen when the granite went in. In one of those old countertops had been the old kitchen sink, and there it was, in the shop, looking like a shop sink. Having a basin that actually drained was such an obviously-desirable feature that I'd bored through the concrete floor and installed a functioning drain and used PVC bits to attach it to the sink.
Today I figured out a way to give the faucet running water. The system I set up was simple: I suspended a five gallon bucket high above the sink and attached a hose to a nipple piercing its side (the nipple is doing the piercing as opposed to being pierced). I then ran the hose down through the counter and attached it to the faucet's cold water supply threading. Now every time I turn on the cold water knob water flows from faucet. It flows a bit faster than I expected given the small 3/8 inch hoses and the low pressure of the water (about 2 pounds per square inch, as opposed to normal household water pressure, which is 40 pounds per square inch).
Of course, the faucet can only run while there is water in the five gallon reservoir. At some point I might figure out a way to automatically recharge that reservoir using runoff from the roof. All this stuff can freeze solid in the winter time, so I don't want anything that will break when that happen. Should freezing cause a leak, the reservoir is suspended directly over the sink, which should be able to catch and carry away any deluge. It may not seem like I do this, but I often plan for the worst possible scenario, since I've had bad experiences with these (though these mostly predate my web writing). [REDACTED]


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?070905

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