The sight of everything around the homestead being overgrown annoys me some. I have to remind myself that we’re letting it all go wild intentionally this growing season. This time next year, it’ll be tidier, though we certainly won’t go overboard.
That’s not what annoyed me yesterday, however.
Early Sunday morning, I used my smartphone to turn on the air conditioner in the cabin. Five minutes later, it tripped the GFCI circuit. That’s a nuisance we’re used to, actually, and I did what I always do — reset the GFCI and turn the AC back on, and from there it runs fine.
Except it wasn’t fine yesterday. It kept tripping the circuit protection. I fussed with it awhile, without success, and surrendered temporarily.
We drove to the laundromat and took the Jeep, celebrating the third anniversary of Mercy’s “gotcha day.”
I had time to do some research while our laundry was tumbling. Seems these new-fangled inverter-type air conditioners use a “variable-frequency drive,” which has a habit of not playing nice with GFCIs. To isolate our particular problem — and rule-out a malfunctioning unit — I needed to plug the AC into a non-GFCI circuit.
Thing is, we don’t have any of those yet. But I had a plan.
When we got back to the homestead, I fired up our Predator 5000 generator and plugged the AC into one of its 20A outlets. The chiller chilled flawlessly for four hours.
Then I disconnected the unit from the generator, plugged it back into the GFCI circuit and… no problem. Weird.
I turned on the air conditioner this morning, and the result was the same. It worked perfectly. Weirder.
We’ll keep an eye on it. And yeah, non-GFCI circuits are in our future.
My plan today was to put the finishing touches on our reserve supply of fresh water by addressing the 55-gallon barrels we began using a year ago. The first step was to pump the (sanitized) water out of them, which didn’t take long.
Next, I gave each the peek’n’sniff test to check for any sort of nastiness. I’d found a small amount of algal growth after emptying them last winter, but this morning both checked out fine. I gave them a thorough flush anyway.
I moved the barrels to a spot on the gravel just behind the IBC tote, with the goal of gathering our liquid reserve onto a compact footprint. Once they were level, I filled them with fresh water and enough chlorine bleach to bring the solution to 5 ppm.
Last, the barrels got new covers, identical to the one that shields our IBC from UV light. Blue polyethylene probably is enough protection, but I want to do whatever I can to keep our fresh water fresh.
The other benefit of covering the barrels is that it stops grime from collecting around the bungs and (when we remove them) contaminating the water we’ve worked hard to preserve. That’s been a problem, and this solves it.
I took advantage of this morning’s exercise to tidy-up the catch-all space under the camper’s gooseneck. Everything — folding chairs, folding table, firewood wagon, extra propane tanks, compost bucket — got hosed off, wiped down and put back in a way that makes sense.
I don’t expect we’ll be using the area a whole lot longer, but that’s no excuse for a cluster. It felt good to put it right.
For Deb and me, the next few weeks promise to be different, nothing at all like the last 52. Without getting into details, I can predict only that they’ll be unpredictable.
Everything’s fine. Our attention to PERSEC, however, dictates that I won’t be saying more ’til we emerge on the other side. Sorry ’bout that.
There’s a very good chance that at some point, Ubi Libertas Blog will go silent for a week or so. Longtime readers will recall that’s happened twice before, both times in 2022.
Again, we’re good. I just didn’t want you wondering.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB