Hot and humid although we might be on the downward side of the hill. I think it only got to 107 in the driveway yesterday.
Regardless of the high temp, I hid inside most of the day. All hail Mr. Carrier, without whom, life in Houston wouldn’t be tolerable for most people.
I did some exploration on the honda gennie in the late afternoon, and either found or created an issue with an O ring, so I’ll be waiting for the parts to come in before trying the thing I just discovered. I took my own advice and searched on youtube with a slightly more general string, and the first hit described two things that historically fail on this model, and how to fix them. This was the first time I saw the particular info, and I suspect it’s my problem. I was almost there with my exploration before I obviated any more work by tearing the O ring. There is a filter INSIDE the tank that “looks fine” but the mesh swells with time and exposure to gas, and restricts flow. I was getting steady flow out the bowl drain when I emptied the tank of old gas, but maybe it wasn’t enough. There is also ANOTHER filter inside the fuel petcock, that needs to be replaced sometimes. Both filters are in the petcock replacement kit. According to the YT creator, these are a common but hidden and non-obvious problem with old eu3000 gennies. F me. I hope that replacing those works. They’re not even expensive. Ebay has the petcock kit for ~$30. I went ahead and bought a new spark plug, the O ring, the fuel level gauge, and I’ll get the petcock if cutting a hole in that filter solves my problem. (keeping in mind that this is a ~$2000 gennie new, it’s worth fixing.)
I also spent some time with the manual for my inverter, and started actually planning my little mini-backup battery solution. It looks like the inverter only works as a charger when connected to shore power (120v AC) and not from solar panels. I’m willing to work around and compromise, since I am getting the stuff piecemeal and cheap. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing. Some time ago I got rid of the big pile of commercial UPSs that I was using as battery backup. The batteries finally failed and I wasn’t interested in rebuilding what was only a temporary measure anyway. Plus, I had a running generator…
My wife asked how many backups I planned to have. The quiet gennie, the bigger noisier gennie, the whole house natgas gennie, and eventually installed solar…. with individual inverters and car batteries to back that all up, as well as LiON jump boxes, 7Ah gel cells, small solar USB charging panels, and maybe a biofuel fed peltier USB charger.* Kinda like my plans to keep cooking…
There is no overkill…
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, right?
More cops killed this weekend, more civil unrest. I’m long body armor, bear spray, and staying away from crowds. That means stores too. Which you can do if you keep stacking…
nick
*I have all these already, but don’t have them all in working condition or ready to run. That’s what I’m working on now with a renewed sense of urgency. I’ve listed my plans for cooking before, starting with my electric range and going all the way down to open fires.