Some Van Repairs and Picking Blueberries With the Peeps

Posted on July 3, 2018 by Bob

Tuesday July 3, 2018 Guerneville CA.

Van repairs and picking blueberries

Today I needed to do a little van prep as I hope to be going on a trip soon.

I finally found a steering wheel cover that would almost fix the van’s truck type steering wheel. It said it would fit a sixteen and a half inch diameter wheel. The van’s wheel was just a bit larger than that.

Get the old one off

The first thing I had to do was get the last one I did a number of years back off, meaning peel all the old tape off.  I broke it trying to get it on the wheel, so just taped the part that was on the bottom that broke and it worked pretty good. But the plastic on this old one is getting rather sharp on the edges so I’ve been looking for a replacement for quite awhile now.

Here’s the old one after I removed all the tape. You can see the tear where it broke on me as I was putting it on. The new cover is on the right and looks small.wheel

 

Heating up the new cover

From past experience in breaking the old one, I left the new cover in the van and closed the windows so it would heat up and warm up the cover so it will hopefully stretch better without breaking.

I left that to let the sun do it’s job and went on to the next task.

Replacing the worn gas hose

A piece of the van’s fuel line is old and cracking and I wanted to replace it. You can see it with the gob of silicone that didn’t set that I put on to repair it. It’s hooked to the fuel filter and I think the gas is lower in the tank than the filter outlet as the tank is three quarters full so if I’m careful the gas should stay in the tank.filter

 

The hose is a short one that goes to the electric fuel pump. I only tipped the filter a couple of times and spilled a little gas. All fixed.hose

 

Looks like the peeps like ladders

I needed to wait for the van to heat up and the steering wheel cover to warm up, so I was sitting in the chicken pen watching the peeps and I noticed some of them had gone up the ladder in run 1 where I had a ladder and were sitting on the roost.  I didn’t make a ladder in this run but instead just put some logs up to let them go up those. But a ladder is an easy thing to make when you already have the materials so I spent about an hour making this one in run 2. So far they haven’t gone up it.ladder

 

Tacking the steering wheel cover

By then the steering wheel cover was warmed up and so was the van. I went in and closed the doors to keep it warm.

I started at the bottom which is at the top in this photo and started stretching it around and it would barely go. It took quite awhile to pull and stretch it and work it onto the wheel. I didn’t think I was going to make it, but I kept at it and it was finally on and I was really sweating in the hot van by then. If it broke which I expected it to do, I’d just tape it on again as it worked just fine that way.

The new steering wheel cover in place and not broken this time.cover

 

The hard plastic steering wheel on the van is real hard on one’s hands without the cover. There’s no power steering either.

I puttered around the yard doing this and that and mostly trying to tidy up a bit where I had been working as when I work, I concentrate on the work and tend to make a pretty good mess with tools laying all over the place.

Blueberries need picking

Later in the day when the sun was getting low in the sky, I decided I’d better pick some blueberries instead of just eating them as there were now more than I could consume.

Blue blueberries in the patch means they are ripe.bluebush

 

Peeps want in

I was picking away and heard the chicks at the gate. I’d let them in here once before and they seemed to remember and wanted in so I opened the gate and let them in. They seem to love it in here.peeps

 

They were running all over the place under me as I picked and I had to move my feet slowly as I moved and we got along fine.

I’m not sure if they eat blueberries yet or not, but there are a lot of other things in there to eat. I do drop a lot of berries as I pick so there are plenty of them on the ground.

I noticed this chick is starting to get it’s colors as well as some of the other chicks.colorpeep

 

Blueberries for he freezer

These picked blueberries will go into the freezer and I will forget about them until winter time. There’s still plenty more berries on the bushes.blueberries

 

That was enough to keep me busy today for another nice one.

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Checking Our Water Springs and Discovering the Leak Just Before Dark

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Bob

Monday July 2, 2018 Guerneville CA.

Spring maintenance as in water

I got it going and let the chicks out of the coop and into their runs. Then I sat around for a good while.

Worm training chicks

A bit later I got the shovel out and did some digging in the mulch run for some worms for the peeps. I was hoping they’d get the idea and go for the worms as I dug so I didn’t  have to pick them up for them.

So I started to turn over some ground with the shovel and saying chick, chick, chick and  it worked. At least some of them were hunting worms as I turned over the soil and soon more of them joined in.worms

 

More of the chicks joined in the worm hunt. They get all excited over worms.peeps

 

Riding up the hill to check on  our springs

In the afternoon I jumped on my brother’s motorcycle and rode up to our spring fed water tanks to see how they were doing as far as how much water was in them.tanks

 

Only half full so did some measuring

Well, they were only half full which showed someone was using too much water or something?

The thing to do was measure the input from our springs so I had to walk up this gulch where I have some water valves to measure the spring inputs.gulley

 

I measure the two spring lines here. I fill the gallon container while timing how long it takes to fill.watertest

 

Springs slowing down which is normal

The main spring was one gallon, down one gallon from two the last time I measured them.

The other spring was down to just under three gallons a minute, down a gallon from the 4 gallons I measured last time which meant instead of six gallons a minute we were only getting just under 3 gallons a minute into our tanks.

That meant I  should ride up the hill and check spring pipes and springs for leaks just to be sure it was only a normal slow down.

I headed back down the gulley watching my step.trees

 

And back to the tanks where the motorcycle was parked.tanks2

 

Checked on Indian spring

I rode up to this spring which we call Indian spring to check things out. I found about a gallon of water going around our main spring, but where it was coming out of the hill was not a good place to tap a spring.gulley2

 

Hill top ridge

From there I rode to the top of the ridge and looked down on the town of Guerneville.guerneville

 

On the way down the hill I rode over to another spring and checked it out in these bushes.spring

 

Advise Tom to cut down on watering

Everything looked ok so I rode on back to my house where I ran into my brother Tom and told him he’d have to cut down on his garden watering somewhere. He said he’d turn a well on and use it instead of the spring for one of his garden plots.

We discover where all the spring water is going

Later in the day, just before dark, I was making a cup of coffee when my brother Tom comes to the door and says I think I know where all the water is going, come on over to one of his rental houses.

Big gushing leak

So as soon as my coffee was made I walked on over to the house. There was a big leak in the wall which could be heard easily as lots of water was gushing out.

It was under the bathroom sink so I got under there and found the wall panel had been removed before and put back in a temporary manner so I removed them. There was a big leak in the copper pipe. My uncle had driven a steal nail next to the pipe to hold it in place and the nail was touching the pipe. Two different metals cause a battery which cause the copper pipe to get a hole in it. By the size of the hole I’d say that leak has been there a long time and finally got big enough to make enough noise to discover it.

We try a repair

I went back to my house to find a cap and my soldering equipment and a saw. My brother says just cap it as that pipe isn’t being used right now.

Easier said than done

I cut the pipe and tried to solder on the cap, but when I heated the pipe water would come down and mess up the solder joint. I tried twice to solder the cap on. The second time there was a little sixteenth inch leak which would be ok until tomorrow. Tom is going to the hardware and get one of the newer bolt on copper pipe fittings that should do the job.

That should improve the amount of water we have for sure.

That was my day and a good one now that the water shortage problem is solved.

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