Is It Warm Yet?

Here we are just entering May, and it's been anything except winter all winter long. Well, there were a couple of days where it got down to the lower sixties and possibly upper fifties, but that's been about it. Now, however, it's just bloody hot.

I do give the doggies a brisk workout when we do our walkies. It's about a four-mile loop we take. From our house, we pretty much follow the bay all the way into town to the Post Office and Market, then back up 6th Avenue to Vivi's Meat Pies - not that we stop there every day, but it's on our route, and back along the shore to home.

We walk briskly. A good day, even with stops, it takes us about an hour. I finally remembered to ask Dianna to take my photo to give you an idea of the amount of sweat generated each day. Now, it's not usually like this in April or May, but it will be like this till about November. A shower feels excellent afterwards, as does the pool in the afternoon.

Just Returned From Walkies - Thanks Dianna for Taking the Shot

The other day I mentioned I was installing the guy wire to help support one of the stanchions for the pool awning. Here's the turnbuckle and other stuff for that.

Turnbuckle After Installation

And here's the turnbuckle all set up and functioning. Finally. Not that we won't still have to think about taking the awning down in a strong blow, but it will give us some breathing room before we get to that point.

Turnbuckle Hooked Up and Working

Here's the other end of the affair and the post that will hold it all. I have to say, this project would have been done yesterday if I'd used a tape measure. But, I figured the ol' Mark I Eyeball (as we used to say in the Navy) was a pretty good judge of distance. I mean, what's three feet among friends?

Other End After Installation

Among friends, it may not be much. Between two posts, it's everything. In this case, it was too short. So, it had to wait till this morning for me to make a trip to Lano's to buy the appropriate length of cable.

And that allowed the project to come to a speedy and successful conclusion.

The Other End

The other mini-project that popped up just a couple of days ago was our ceiling fan in the living room. Sunday morning, we turned it on and all that happened was an extremely weak effort from the fan to turn the blades. Not even enough to provide any breeze whatsoever. And with this heat, our living room had become a sauna. Not just any sauna, but a well-functioning and hot sauna. Not ideal.

Being the optimist that I am, I figured a quick trip into town and I might be able to find a replacement capacitor for the fan. I knew from past experience, that finding an exact match for the capacitor (or an 'accumulator', if you happen to be of the British persuasion) is pretty much an impossibility. But, if you can find them within one point either way (I had a 4.5 µ F (micro Farad) capacitor, so 3.5 to 5.5 µ F would work). The concern is that if you go larger, you stand a good chance of damaging your circuitry with a larger current spike or lower, that the thing won't work at all.

Defective Ceiling Fan Capacitor

I could easily tell that the original capacitor was going to die because a blister had formed on the case. Sometimes they even melt. Anyway, I stopped first over at Marin Electric to see if they had anything that would work. The lady there hauled down a box full of capacitors, most too large, being 7 µ F or greater. Finally, she found a bag of three on the very bottom of the box. They were all 5.0 µ F - perfect for my purposes.

As soon as I got the last wire hooked up, Dianna flipped the wall switch and viola! We had a properly functioning fan once again and no more living room sauna.

We had a serendipitous event happen a few days ago. Carlos, who works for us one day a week, also bring plants for Dianna once in a while.

Well, this one, we didn't even suspect was coming. Carlos had bought it some time back over in Orange Walk (I think) for his wife. Since if was just in bulb form at the time, he kind of lost track of it for a while. He potted up another plant for Dianna, inadvertently potting up this thing too. A gorgeous little purple puffball about six inches in diameter when it finally popped above the ground. Dianna said she's not giving it back either.

Carlos was surprised and said he had wondered what he did with the plant. We did tell him, as it produces more bulbs he can have those to replace the lost one. We had a plant similar to that, sort of garlic lilly or something, but with a white flower. Not near as pretty as this little thing.

Puff Ball Surprise Flower

Well, that's it for now. I'm hot - even with a functioning ceiling fan, so, it's pool-time.

Pool Awning Project - Part Two

Contrary to some rumors apparently circulating, I do do some work. (Isn't English wonderful - how you can mix a scatological thought in with a serious comment on work? Maybe there is a connection, hmmmm...)

As you can see from the following shots, I'm hard at work dragging and connecting the 1/8" wire rope, vinyl-clad cables to the framework. The shade cloth fabric will be suspended from these.

First, I had the good folks at National Hardware cut four lengths of the cable to length, each about thirty-eight feet long. Then, when I was ready, I laid out the cables on the deck. As you can see, I wore leather work gloves for part of this project. The wire or cable (here the terms are interchangeable) had a coating of some really sticky oil on it - I assume to protect the vinyl, but, who knows

Working With The Cables

Anyway, after laying it out, and beginning to work with it, the didn't seem to be much of an issue, so the gloves went away when I began attaching the fittings to the wire and the stanchions.

Laying Out Cables

As you can see, I even work from the dizzying heights of the pump house rooftop. Here I'm connecting the first of the cables to the stanchion, using what are called thimbles - metal tracks the cable runs in as it goes around a tight bend. The thimble prevents the cable from making too tight a turn through a curve, thus protecting the cable from needless abrasion and other wear.

Connecting Cable to Anchor Point

Assuming that at least some of you didn't know that a thimble could be anything other than a metal thing that fits over your finger to keep you from jabbing yourself with a needle, the picture below shows, on the left, a wire thimble. The item to its right is a threaded shackle, a very strong item used to connect all manner of rigging. The shackle pin is threaded and one leg of the shackle is tapped so that the pin can be inserted.

Wire Thimble and Shackle

 The turnbuckle, which you see below (along with a thimble and a shackle) is used to tighten the wire. It's done by inserting a screwdriver or other rod into the long hold in the middle and turning one direction or the other to loosen or tighten as the case may be.

Turnbuckle

And lastly, for this segment, if you look closely (you can click on any of the photos to expand them) you can see that all the wires or cables have been drawn up taught, ready to have the shade cloth and caribiners attached. I have the caribiners, but we're still waiting for Jose, the upholsterer, to return from the States.

Wires All Tight

Till next time, Cheers.