The rains set in Tuesday afternoon and that meant no work for me Wednesday. Even though I needed the hours, it did give me a chance to get some little things done in the shop.
First off I got the return air box done for the little DC fan I found in the back of that guys truck I talked about last time. This will sit under the bench and a flex hose will go through the wall and into the bottom of the Solar Beer Can Heater to increase its efficiency and heat the shop quicker. Now to hook it all up.
Like I said, the rain came in and I had to drain the first flush on the rain water harvesting system. I almost forgot about it because it has been so long since it really rained back to back.
I took a quick video of the process, but decided not to put it on here because I sounded like a dork so I found this frame in the video and snapped a photo of the gunk coming out of the pipe. Technology is amazing.
The photo is right when the cap came off and you can see how nasty the water is. If I didn't have a first flush on my rain water system then all that stuff from the roof would end up in my tanks making it where I would have to take them down once a year and clean it all out. If it was a small system it wouldn't be that bad, but draining and wasting almost 4000 gallons of water and then crawling inside two twelve foot tanks with only an eighteen inch man way would be tough.
Anyway, now you can see how important a first flush is on your Rain Water Harvesting system.
Guess what me and the wife did Tuesday Night. Oh come on, guess......
Nope,
Nope,
I would have liked too, but nope,
We went to a prepper party. Yea no kidding!
Some folks here in town held a quarterly preppers meeting and me and the wife got invited. How exciting is that?
I told myself on the way there to just sit, listen, smile and don't say much. The reason why was because I didn't want to come off as a know-it-all because after all, I don't know it all.
They had two different speakers. The first speaker hit on food storage and bug out bags and the other speaker was on EMP attacks, gun control and how all that ties into Fema camps. Great knowledgeable speakers and it was a wonderful time. I even picked up a couple of useful tips along the way.
See there, you can teach an old dog new tricks.
After a hour and a half I just could not stand it anymore and had to start asking questions. They were harping on the one year food storage pretty hard at the end and I had to ask, "What will you do after that?"
With blank looks from the crowd the wife and I went on the explain how you have to have a way to restock your shelves when your one year runs out. Of course that led into how to use alternative energy to cook with, which led to water storage from the rain and so on. Before I realized it, me and wife had the rooms attention and questions were getting fired at us right and left about growing your own food, water filtration and so on.
So now we are scheduled to be the speakers at the next meeting. Look what we went off and done. I really was going to stay quiet.
Got to meet some really nice folks and I look forward to the next one.
Other than that, that's all I got for now.
Mark my words, I will never again complain about the rain. Last night it set in and it will be gone tonight. Even though it may be short, it will leave about 2" of the precious liquid behind. At this point I would settle for anything.
