One of my neighbors had a well put in just for his cows about 4 years ago. recently the pump stopped working. Turned out the switch failed from arcing and this lead to questions about short cycling. We replaced his switch and I noted that it takes 19 seconds to fully charge the pressure tank. The tank has a drawdown of 7 gallons at 40-60PSI, so that's 21 gallon a minute flow rate. I measured the amps with an amp clamp and it's 9.8amps. So 240v x 9.8amps / 768watts / hp, gives us a 3hp pump.

So his well driller gave him a 20 gallon pressure tank (7 gallon draw down) with a 3hp pump. Holy smokes.

Recently his wife started watering the garden from this pump and it would cycle about once a minute for an hour each day. She's putting far too many "miles " on that switch.

Ideally, when you have a continuous flow like watering the garden or irrigating a pasture, you need to know the flow ahead of time and size the pump so that it comes on and STAYS on for the duration of your use. Starting it hardest on the pump and swtich due to the start surge.

But a pump running will be cooled by the flow of cool water around it... pumps love to run, they don't like to start as much.

So... bigger is not always better. for his application a 1/2hp or 3/4hp pump would be a much better choice and certainly a larger pressure tank.

Fun stuff. My power company says that up to 20 days a year they may charge 3x as much for peak power. It means that 13c/kwh becomes 39c. They are legally obligated to tell us 24 hours in advance of these special times.

Guess who won't care? My house won't be connect to the grid at all during this time.

learnings... We installed my minisplit heatpump 4 years ago and I guess it's got a slow leak. 4 days ago the house gained 2degrees F and I noted the compressor was drawing 1600w instead of 900. All this gauging I had here is paying off. The hvac tech touched the line set and said there wasn't enough refrigerant in the system to do a phase change to liquid. It was 25% low. He added some gas and the duct temperature in the house dropped from 60F to 48F instantly.

he and I were getting a kick out of someone knowing an HVAC system wasn't working right because it went from 900w to 1600w. My old HVAC system used to run at 3500w.

For today I am officially a retard!
Just so that nobody else here makes the same mistake I'll share this diagram and relay the story......

I had a hedge cutter carburettor diaphragm problem.....a generic new carb with pipes, filter, and a spark plug thrown in for good measure cost less than a Walpro diaphragm......so new carb it was.

Stripped it down, left it for a few days waiting for carb delivery, left it again for a while because I didn't need the machine.

Threw everything together today and it started but didn't stay started for long!!
Anyway, as it turned out I had made the schoolboy error of forgetting that the priming bulb was supposed to suck fuel through the carb rather than suck it directly from the tank and push it through the carb.
So remember, the priming bulb should suck from the carb....not from the tank!

I spent a long time sitting on a stool today picking bugs off my squash. I orderd BT from amazon yesterday and htye promised it would be here today and it was not. So liquid sevin and some neem oil and the bugs slowed down enough... I guess i'm fortunate becuse we are doing the IBC totes and only one of them had the infestation. I literally killed hundreds of them today and got the eggs out from under all the leaves.

Thanks to all you for the advice yeterday. I'm a fart smeller but I can't know every thing.

Well now we know whats getting my chickens. I did have a coyote decoy but it was just outside the barnyard fence due to the goats recently being in the barnyard.

I have now moved the coyote decoy inside the barn yard.

Chain-Saw-Tasks-and-Techniques-1-1.pdf
https://cascadevols.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Chain-Saw-Tasks-and-Techniques-1-1.pdf

A neighbor's mech room is the last 8 feet in a shipping container. 3.5" of open cell foam on everything but the floor. The container is under a metal roof with a large air gap. The only issue is the west facing wall gets full sun in the afternoon.

He's running a Media 8k window shaker minisplit and uses about 5kwh per day (37.2 for the week). It's been between 95 and 100F every day this week.

I think he'll finish a carport / shade structure on that west wall this weekend, we'll see what the heat load is next week.

And those wondering... these DIN rail kwh meters are CHEAP and they work at 120v too.

My neighbor has 45kw of solar panels. I feel like this when I compare his system to mine.

Firedrill: You were bushhogging your around your pond and hit a stump and broke the shear pin in the drive line. Got one on hand? Seems it's a Grade 2 1/2"x3" bolt..... all my hardware store had was grade 5.

Got a spare in the tractor tool box? yeah me neither.

Why do you never hear about horse divorces?

Because they have stable relationships.

Haven’t had rain in a while. Time to clean the pollen and dust off my panels.

The state of new homes in the USA. Build your own.

https://youtu.be/-HyWTml7WsA