I got up this morning planning on taking my boat out since I haven't used it for awhile. I have an 18' Seacraft built in 1978 by Bill Potter in Miami.
Since the boat has not been used for awhile, I thought I better try starting it at home before venturing to the ramp. And of course, the battery was dead. So, I pulled my car up next to the boat and put the jumper cables on the boat. The batteries were so dead it took me a long time to get enough juice to try and crank the engine. After a while I decided that the engine may be flooded, so I took the spark plugs out to let the gas evaporate. Luckily, I have a cover over the boat so I can work in the shade.
I have an Evinrude engine that looks like this with the cowling off.
So, now with time on my hands and no boat, I thought maybe I should tackle the other pending project: Replacing the sediment filter in the water system. My son tried to change the filter and broke the unit off so I put a temp fix on it and bought the parts waiting for the right day. I guess that day was today.
Step One: Cut out the old parts
Water purification systems can be very complicated or quite simple. For over 30 years, I used a stainless steel, steam distillation unit. However, this system is just a basic unit with a sediment filter and a salt tank.
This is the salt tank. Below is the replacable, sediment filter.
Below is the top of the new unit.
When rebuilding something in PVC that is in the middle of the line, the trick is to leave yourself one variable piece that can be manipulated to make things fit. Once a part is glued in...it ain't movin'!
Once the top was secured into the line, it looks like this:
All that is needed now is to screw on the bottom with the filter inside. I did this, then turned back on the pressurized water....slowly. It began to leak so I turned the water off, took it apart and found there was a missing O-ring. I had to dig through the trash to find it, but I installed it and tighten it back in place. Slowly turning on the water, I waited, gave it more water and then it blew apart at one of the joints where I didn't use enough glue. I dried all the pieces, added more glue and shoved the pieces together. Here's the finished product:
OK, maybe it's not the prettiest thing, but I had to work with the space I was given and now we have a sediment filter. So, back to the boat. I reinstalled the spark plugs and using jumper cables again finally got the boat started again. I let it run for awhile to charge the batteries (2). With the day mostly shot, I decided to give the chickens fresh hay for their roosting boxes.
Cleaned their pen area.
So somehow my R & R day turned into home repairs. But at least a few things got done that needed doin'.
Oh, did I mention I had a supervisor for the day? Sonny!
There's more good stuff on Jupiter over at:
