New, Fabulous Ure Crackpot theory time!
Lookie here: I don’t know if the moon going Void of Course on December 18th has anything to do with things, but this week has turned into a real crap-storm of “best laid plans of mice and…”
The the big puddle-dumper (and now 43-people dead if our reader clicking the counter hasn’t missed anyone) has thoroughly screwed up the idyllic life here in the woods at Uretopia.
For one, during the storm we had a big power outage. How big, exactly? Well, big enough to wipe out an inverter on the back-up power system, getting past a big-ass surge suppression system (and did I mention my EMP preps?) when the power came back on.
Well, now we get into a story of cascading failures.
You see, on that leg of the AC power in the shop/office is a branch off to run the back-up well pump and the small freezer for the things in our long-term storage that need to be kept frozen. Granted, there’s not much, but there is Panama’s stash of used-to-be-frozen Belgium Waffles, too…
So when the power came back up, the obvious thing to do would be pull the output line off the inverter, wire in a big herc’ing plug kept for just such emergencies…and then plug the former inverter output into the the former inverter input (which transits a 20-amp outlet box purpose-made by the designated system designer. (Yeah, me.)
Well, fine…it all worked…for about 30 minutes. The wireless router for the office came up (the satellite router is on hot UPS power and never goes away, at least for several hours).
The CLICK! A heard – so much as seen– there was a flash of light from a nondescript location in the office and the breaker, now feeding this part of the office (being jumped around the inverter) fails.
Well, crap.
So I click back through all the things that could go wrong and it occurs to me that it might have something to do with running over the schedule 40 buried conduit that takes power from the office and runs 20-feet underground over to the former wood crib, to which we added a roof and tons of insulation – where the freezer is housed.
With power off, I ohmed things out at that end, but even with the follow-on leg (up to the greenhouse) disconnected, I found myself total screwed.
Night before last I was arguing with myself about cutting the cable at the conduit inlet (which would give me occasion to install a waterproof outdoor outlet that I nave no use for) so I decided to have a glass of Grandpa George’s Scottish Cure and think about things.
No, nothing wrong with Sched. 40 buried a foot…so it MUST be something else. My infallible engineering doesn’t fail that easily.
As soon as Peoplenomics was done (disengage economic brain, re-fire the electrical engineer brain) it occurred to me that something in the office might be at fault…
So I pulled everything in my office off the circuit and by God, it held.
About here, although my beard is too short for real beard-stroking, I sat down and have a cup of hot soup.. .since in the midst of working on the inverter in 35-degree weather, I wrenched my back (lower left) and it hurts like hell. Where’s my Oxy dealer, when I need him, right?
Finally, with Elaine looking on, I started plugging things back in, one at a time and sonofagun if it didn’t turn out to be one of those three Sceptre 246X-1080 24” LED monitors that I had explained in a Peoplenomics article (or here, mind is going) about how cool it is to refurb old electronics by replacing the capacitors in the power supplies.
Except that was a year to 18-months back (calendars and I aren’t on good terms…especially today)…and it was time for one of them to fail again.
How, exactly, I don’t know. That falls down the “To do” list. I can get by with two monitors.
Knowing that the inverter was going to need a trip to the doctor’s office, I decided to give it one more test as I was getting ready to box it up.
Just as I was doing this, all of a sudden (I can’t make this stuff up) there is a gentle pushing on my butt as I’m bent over in the king of all awkwardness positions.
One of my neighbors has a 6-month lab pup (nice dog, actually) but as young dogs will sniff the damnedest places. This one decided to sniff Mr.