Entropy

Relax in southern comfort on the east bank of the Mississippi. You're just around the corner from Beale Street and Sun Records. Watch the ducks, throw back a few and tell us what's on your mind.
Gold
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Re: Entropy

Post by Gold »

I may be able to send the charger in for repair. The service department of the place I bought it needs to contact the manufacturer. I went to the manufacturer website but there was no direct service. You have to go through your distributor. If that doesn’t work out I’ll do some poking around.

It has two outputs and both are non working. That means it’s unlikely the high current output device. I can look for cooked things.
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

Coincidentally while talking about batteries my big dog zero turn mower refused to start again out in my yard, while I was mowing yesterday and stopped to replace the water meter cover.... (The worthless kids who read the water meters for the town leave the covers off or ajar to make their work easier. :x :x )...

The mower refused to restart. I thought that I measured 12.7V on the battery yesterday so suspected starter solenoid or something more expensive. I inadvertently discovered another way to make it rain, leave my mower in the yard overnight. (1" of rain already).

This morning the battery read a much less wholesome 10.4V :oops: . This is actually a good thing as replacing the battery is about the cheapest repair I could imagine.

In hindsight, I should have trickle charged the battery at least once over several winters of sitting in my carport. :oops: But that's life giving me another failing mark on a test I didn't know I was taking. In my defense this was my first lawnmower with a battery.

This will be a good test for my fancy trickle charger NOCO genius G1100 v2.0... apparently a 1.1a smart charger. They claim 8 modes of charge operation.

Analyze and diagnose..... good news is it passed that step so no shorted cells or obvious catastrophic fault.

Recovery... desulfation process uses current pulses to restore healthy plate chemistry.

Initialize, Bulk, Absorption, and finally Optimization.

This has been working on my tired lawnmower battery for almost 3 hours and still indicating less than 25% charge. This same charger on my much larger car battery gets out of the basement a lot faster, but that car battery is in better shape.

This could take a while, but I remain optimistic. :lol: If this charger can rescue this tired battery it will have earned its bones.

JR
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

My battery charger may be genius, but apparently it isn't a miracle worker... :lol: after a few hours reporting <25% it finally gave me the error code for "won't hold charge".. That is a little genius to diagnose the bad battery, but a VOM already pretty much told me that... Good news it appears to be a common battery and $50 lighter my mower is back parked in my carport. My grass still needs to be cut, and I am tempted to check the weather report, that pretty much missed the 1"+ we got today. :lol:

===

May have some new entropy... the toilet tank is filling slow... If it is just the float valve those are cheap easy... if the water line is clogged, less cheap and easy.

mo lata

JR
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

Yesterday for chuckles I connected the battery charger to my new battery (still connected in the mower). After a few hours it failed to reach 50% charge so I shut it down for the night.

This morning I removed one battery terminal and tried again... This time it bumped above 50% in less than 1/2 hour. Perhaps coincidence but I think I will just remove the battery from the mower next winter and trickle charge it while inside my tool/laundry room. That room is not heated, but less severe than exposed in the car port. Battery is now nearly finished charging. the charger slows down while charging the last few percent. My judgement is that this brand new battery needed to be topped off.

Yesterday at the store I said "just for chuckles, what is the warranty on this battery". The lady answered "3 months, you said you wanted a chuckle." :lol:

I am waiting for my yard to dry out enough to finish mowing later today. I will need to mow the part I already mowed on friday because it has already grown that much after getting 1" of rain.

JR

[update... it took several more hours for the charger to bless this battery as fully charged. By then we got 1"+ more rain, so no mowing today. /update]
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

Because I find it convenient to flush my only toilet whenever I need to, I made the 8 mile road trip to Wally World this morning to pick up a $6.34 replacement tank valve. The new tank valve looked remarkably like the old one.

I resisted the temptation to dissect the old one because it was pretty apparent it was clogged by how fast the new one filled the tank. The first tank full of water was browish/gray due to sediment that had accumulated in the water feed line. I suspect this same sediment is what clogged the flush valve.

The next drama was I noticed some dampness around the feed valve. It appears to leak if turned full open, and cutting it back, makes it stop leaking... Right now I have some paper towels on the floor by the feed valve to act as drip detectors.

I need to put replacing that feed valve on my plumbers bucket list because it looks like it is sweated onto a copper pipe. As long as that feed valve doesn't leak water ( a black mold problem) I'm golden until the tank valve clogs up again. :lol:

JR
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mediatechnology
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Re: Entropy

Post by mediatechnology »

The feed valve is called a "stop" and that's a common problem.

If you have a long enough stub...

They make stops called "Shark Bites" that do not require sweating a new one on.
With a Shark Bite stop you can cut the old sweated one off and install a shark bite which is self-sealing.
About the only thing you need are a hacksaw and some emery cloth to de-bur it.

https://www.sharkbite.com/products/bras ... pply-stops
They usually have these at Home Depot, Lowes et al for copper plumbing.
billshurv
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Re: Entropy

Post by billshurv »

Well I think JR jinxes us all. My toilet at home has started having flushing issues. Started with little one being a bit too enthusiastic with the push and the button stayed down. Dab of vaseline has fixed that but still doesn't always stop flushing. I think at the moment a pneumatic issue. Moral: a 4 year old can break almost anything!
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

mediatechnology wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 4:34 am The feed valve is called a "stop" and that's a common problem.

If you have a long enough stub...

They make stops called "Shark Bites" that do not require sweating a new one on.
With a Shark Bite stop you can cut the old sweated one off and install a shark bite which is self-sealing.
About the only thing you need are a hacksaw and some emery cloth to de-bur it.

https://www.sharkbite.com/products/bras ... pply-stops
They usually have these at Home Depot, Lowes et al for copper plumbing.
Yup I recall when my plumber did the hook up for my water heater, he just cut off the old sweated connections. The feed line is sticking up through a hole in the floor and I can pull it up a few inches so not rigid. A sharkbite sounds like an option.

For now I found the sweet spot in the valve that doesn't leak. I may be figuring out how it got clogged.. A few weeks ago we had a few days of cloudy/dirty water. My small town has a flaky water system that often springs leaks. Coincidentally with that last water event, we got a boil water notice in the mail a couple weeks after the event. That's why I drink beer. :lol: (I did replace the sediment filter on my RO water filter, but that fills up regularly after a few months of normal water.)

I have another outdoor water valve that needs replacement.

@ Bill don't blame me for your offspring's mischief.

JR

PS: It seems that a little more discipline about using "interchangeable parts" in valve design (like Eli Whitney pioneered) would make old valves relatively easy to repair/restore. Apparently there are so many different design variants the play is to just cut off old valves and discard.
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

More rain ditch drama...

For the second day in a row I had to reset my silt buckets.... I have them anchored to a tree so they can't wash completely away...

The drain box hasn't floated up since I piled a bunch of new dirt/mud/sod around it. But this morning the drain box lid/grille disappeared... This is a 12" drain box so a decent sized robust plastic grille... I found it almost all the way to the far back ditch... Probably travelled 60 yards or more away. It was up on my yard about 15-20' from the far back ditch and side ditches where the flash flood carried it with other flotsam. 1-1/2" of rain in a short time period can do that.

It was unlikely to disappear through the far back culvert pipe because it doesn't drain worth a flip... But I don't believe in depending on luck, so I put it back on the drain box, and secured it with thread cutting screws. I don't expect it to travel like that again, at least not by itself.

The weather report has been worthless, not warning about two different 1"+ rain storms back to back.... (must be global warming). :lol: I could lower my mower deck if I knew we were getting 1" of rain every day.

JR

PS: I was back up on my ladder cleaning pine tree branches out of my gutter/downspout. This is still residual from that once in a decade wind event. The gutters are not supposed to require this much maintenance. My pine trees are not that close.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

I got a visit from entropy today, but in hindsight this was a self inflicted wound. I like using UVc lamps to disinfect stuff,,, like my fermenters for making beer.

I recently upgraded my puny 6W UVc lamp to a 12 or 15W UVc CFL lamp.... more is better right? BUT today while disinfecting my priming tank to bottle a batch, I put it over the CFL lamp, and then proceeded to get distracted, apparently for too long. When I went to retrieve my disinfected priming tank the CFL lamp was dark and I could detect the unmistakable smell to toasted electronics. I still have the old 6W tube that I may return too, because it doesn't over heat. Or a cheap simple timer might help with the higher power CFL...

So this was entropy but accelerated by my lack of caution about over heating, even though I have seen multiple CFL lamps die that way.

Another pop quiz given by the stern teacher AKA life... :lol:

I'm working on the answer.

JR
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