Wildfire - Michael Martin Murphey

Since I am not using so much data this month ( cross my fingers ), thought I would put up a video or two.

The meaning of this song is a bit inverted from what I want to do.  The song is about an escape from farming, but here I am wanting to get into it.  Well, not exactly...

The grass is always greener, as they say...

Light that fire

"I have made fire."

This movie is more about survivalism than what the plot is about.  The plot seems sad beyond belief, but to me, the character's survival in spite of great odds is a triumph.

All a matter of how you look at things.

Preparing for the swamp cooler

The swamp cooler will evaporate a lot of water, so if one doesn't want to saturate the air with water vapor, there will have to be a lot of ventilation.  If the air is saturated, it will not evaporate further, and will not cool, you see.

With that in mind, a few modifications of the current setup is necessary.  The tentative location for the cooler is in the bedroom.  The bedroom is in the hottest part of the trailer for most of the day.  The idea is to ventilate air through the a/c, and out the ceiling thingie, which opens up through the ceiling.  Air will come in through the a/c in fan mode only, and hot air presumably will exit through the ceiling.

There is no fan installed on the ceiling thingie, so I made a stand for one.  The small fan is now operating on solar power with the a/c fan blowing.

Now for the cooler.  There is already a setup for using the ice chest to blow cold air through the heater core.  Instead of using that, the water hoses can be hooked up the swamp cooler.  The water could be made colder by using ice in the ice chest.  The swamp cooler will sit on top of the ice chest and blow air towards the sliding door.  The sliding door should stay open, as the water laden air will mix with air already in the trailer.  Doors and such can be open to further aid in ventilating the water laden air, so that there is no humidity buildup.

If everything works okay, then trailer should be significantly cooler throughout the day.

Now let the swamp cooler come, and this show can get on the road.

Swamp cooler on the way

It will be another experiment to see if it can be made to work in this trailer.

This model should be a bit more powerful than the last one.  An idea to purchase just the evaporation media only was considered, but set aside.

It will only use 80 watts of electricity, which may make it possible to use with the small solar panel that I have.  Imagine using only solar electric to cool down this place.  If that works, it will be a big deal.

The evaporation rate is a little over a gallon per hour.  It would seem that this is a bit more than I would like, so it may be necessary to run it for a shorter period of time in order to conserve water.

I look forward to the arrival of this machine.  It will be an interesting experiment.

Sorry drawing

A representation of my idea to make 8x8 segments.  Each of these is to have an overhang, and will be connected together to make a 24 x 8 structure.  Actually, since the overhangs will become a part of the structure, you could add about six feet to the width of the structure, plus maybe six to the length giving a total size of 30x 14 feet.

I am thinking of adding a glass addition to the roof in order to cool down the roof in summer, and to evaporate water so that it can be cleaner.  I will possibly recycle the water in the swamp cooler.  I figure that the roof could evaporate as much water as I am going to use in a day.  That is, it could do that in the summer.  No net loss of water then for swamp cooling.

The overhangs may have aluminum foil reflecting the sun off in order to gain more cooling effect.  No sun should hit the main structure, and the sun that does will be reflected away, or used to evaporate water.

It will cost extra for the glass, but if it works the way I want it to, I won't have to use much electricity to keep the place cool in the summer months.

In the winter, the overhang to the north can be enclosed so as to act as a wind break from the north winds.  I'll have a way to keep the cold out a little better than without it.  As for the roof and the water, I can use that for passive heating, although that has proven to be something of a disappointment.  Better than nothing, I suppose.

This is a crude representation of my ideas, but I think it gets the ideas across.

Cabin 8x8 foot segment with overhangs, skip the overhang on the west side except for last segment

My summer vacation

There was a Cheech and Chong comedy skit, which started with "Chong" talking about his summer vacation.  It was a pretty dull routine that went like.. On the first day of summer, I got up.  On the second day of summer vacation, I got up...

Yeah, it is like that lately.  Uninspiring.

So, I'll describe what I did today...

I got up...

lol

Okay, I did a little more than just get up.  But not by much.  One thing I spent some time on was to run down some genealogy ( boy that is a funny word to spell ).  Wishbone gave me a pic of an Injun chief, and told me it was a distant relative.

I couldn't connect the Chief with what I knew already, so he gave me a link to a detailed work that another distant relative did.  In fact, this distant relative made a book out of it.  However, the book is not available to non-family members.  I don't think I should link it up here, so I won't.

Anyway, with the help of his link, I did find the Chief.  He heap big Chief, kemosabe.  Make Senator Warner plenty jealous.  Bad medicine, kemosabe.

Actually, it was an interesting time going through that stuff.

Another thing I did was to sketch some drawings of my proposed cabin out west.  They are so bad, that I won't post them here out of embarrassment.  But at least I may have gotten the math right.

Next up, I did an experiment with my swamp cooler.  You know, the one that doesn't work worth a damn.  Yeah, I kinda figured out a way to evaluate how well one of these can work.  Just take their evaporation rate, and compare it to this gizmo.  This gizmo maybe used a half gallon of water in six hours.  Way less than the advertised rate of some that I was looking at.

Some of thee things use a lot of water, which I take to mean that they will cool things down pretty well.

Swamp coolers could be critical in getting the cabin to a livable state in the hot summers out there.  Air conditioning is going to be prohibitively expensive to operate.  I want to be able to avoid using one of these if at all possible.  One swamp cooler I saw uses 1.2 gals per hour, and uses only 40 watts or something like that.  However, it could be like this one.  It gives me an idea anyway.  Others will go up to several gals per hour.  Thirsty mothers.  That could raise another issue with water.  So, it is a balancing act.  One thing I know for certain, this one I have is just plain inadequate.

As for what else I did, I won't say.  For one thing, there isn't a need to know.  For another thing, maybe you don't want to know.

That is all..

Tilt

If you are an old timer, you might remember those pinball machines.  If you got too rough with them, they would quit, and display the word "tilt" on them.

As I read through the news, I am like that pinball machine of old.  I'm about to go "tilt", and quit.

Something has to motivate you to continue with something.  It has to be a belief.  Perhaps it is not a rational thing.

So, what can motivate me to keep writing?  A desire to write only?  Perhaps that is it.

One thing I noticed is how blogs have become so commercialized.  If you can attract an audience, then the thing that can motivate you is greed.  Yep, good old fashioned greed.

Here's what I believe to be true:  too many people seem driven in pursuit of false things.  The pursuit of wealth for its own sake is a false thing, in my estimation.  It is false because money is not an end in itself, it is merely a means to an end.  What could go wrong? 

Consider the cause of environmentalism.  Is it not a reaction against the plunder of the Earth for material gain?  There was a time when environmentalism seemed like a good thing.  Now it just seems a lot like the same crass commercialism as what spawned it in the first place.  It is the same commercialism that has ruined blogging.  People in the field seem only interested in cashing in on the movement to protect the environment.  Same thing with blogging, it seems.  Blogging seemed like a good alternative to the traditional commercial news, but now?  It just seems like crap, like everything else.

What drives blogging?  You have to have an emotion to prompt you to spend all the time it takes to make a blog.  I think blogging may be a lot like the environmentalist movement that began in the sixties.  People wanted an alternative to the commercialized news sources.  Or it seemed like people wanted an alternative.  Perhaps it was all an illusion.  Perhaps people really like the commercialized crap that they see on the news each day.  Perhaps people prefer the crap.

After a pause for a bit, I continue...

Let's just say I prefer the truth.  For example, if AGW was an honest science, I would not criticize it.  If it were honest, there would be no name calling towards people who do not accept man made global warming.  There would be an honest debate about what causes climate change.  Climate change has occurred before in geological history.  Can humans cause it?  It is a fair question.  Why not attempt to answer it honestly?  But that is not what happens.

So many things are like that.  Where do you go for truth?  Maybe nowhere.  There's no money in it.  That could make you go "tilt".

If I go on with blogging, it won't be about money as an end in itself.

But it is hard to do when everybody seems to prefer the crap.