The foibles of furnaces.

I have two mobile home furnaces heating my place. Both are ancient and have had no, and I mean no, maintenance in umpteen many years. One was barely running when I moved in and made unholy death noises every time it decided to come on. The other one was pretty quiet and reliable. Last night the good one got a lot quieter. Too quiet. And it started getting cold in the back half of the house which included the living room and two bedrooms. By the time I got home and started tearing things apart it was 5am. We were heating the house by overheating the front part with the other furnace and the gas stove and trying to move the warm air over into the back.
I found that the blower motor had locked up and wasn't allowing the fan to turn. I got the blower cage off and turned in for the night (well, morning). The next (well, same) morning, I tore the motor apart and found that the bushings that the armature turns in were tightly bound to the armature shaft. There are two bushings that need oiled and not only were they bone dry, the sponges that hold the oil had disintegrated into crumbles.
So I took apart the motor by driving the shaft out of the housing with a drift pin and emery clothed the shafts and bushings. Cleaned up the armature while I'm in there, and reassembled. Made some new sponge inserts, cleaned and greased and lubed and oiled the hell out of everything. Bolted the motor to the squirrelcage, stuck her back onto the furnace and fired that puppy up.

HEAT!!!!

Wonder when the next one will go up? Maybe a little maintenance is in order.

Note to self:    Olive oil is a fine field-expedient lubricant. Not, however, suitable for high speed applications.

Fun in the snow!

Son and Grandaughter playing with the twins, Chigger and Tick.

And 'tater biscuits an' apple butter fer breakfast!

Snow Alert! update...

See the ruler poking up out of the snow ?

• 
  
• Up to 11 inches of snow until tomorrow night. Another storm coming for next Sunday.

Note to self...

Do not drive thru two feet of water and expect your truck to do things when it's freezing cold the next day. 


Like start.

Yep, it's flooded!

This is a high spot where the creek loops around before it hits the bridge. I was actually pretty dumb by driving back there. The water was high enough that there was serious pucker factor going on. I got out of the truck to take this picture, but further on the water was just too high. I discovered that one of the drawbacks to an extended cab pickup is the inability to easily access the bed from the cab. Especially holding a camera.

So, it's still there. I'm collecting a little debris, but it's not bad. I think it'll hold fine thru most of our normal weather down here. I don't think it'll get much higher than this because once it crests it's banks, the creek spreads out over about 20 acres, so it takes a LOT of rain to make it go much higher.
I can see that I have a lot of work cut out for me to raise the driveway so it's accessible all the time. Even though the water will probably recede tonite,  and I've always considered it just a day to stay in, other peoples opinions apparently differ from mine.
I don't think I needed a bridge anyway. I always wanted a moat!

...FLOOD WATCH

...FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING...

* A STRONG STORM SYSTEM WITH ABUNDANT RAIN WILL MOVE THROUGH THE REGION. THE MOST SIGNIFICANT RAINFALL WILL OCCUR TONIGHT. TOTAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS FROM THIS SYSTEM WILL RANGE BETWEEN 1.50 TO 3.00 INCHES. THIS MAY BE ENOUGH TO CAUSE FLOODING ON SMALL STREAMS AND CREEKS IN THE WATCH AREA. ALSO...SHARP RISES ON AREA RIVERS MAY OCCUR. THE MOST VULNERABLE RIVERS ARE THE WEST FORK... THE TYGART VALLEY RIVER BASIN... THE GREENBRIER... AND THE HEADWATERS OF THE CHEAT RIVER. DESPITE MUCH COLDER AIR AND SNOW SHOWERS ON WEDNESDAY...THERE IS THE POTENTIAL THAT RIVER LEVELS WOULD STILL BE RISING ON WEDNESDAY AND WEDNESDAY NIGHT.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Well, It looks like a good first test for the bridge, I would have liked it better anchored in more on the far side, as well as a bit more ballast between the beams on the near side, but I guess we're gonna see if she holds. Yesterday, when they upped the potential rain amounts, I strapped the loose boards to the beams so they wouldn't float away just in case the water got that high.

The water was already running about a foot high from recent showers. With the steep mountains in this area, as well as the many springs, it doesn't take long to fill this little creek up.

The rain has changed over to snow, calling for 1-3 inches, so it's a good time to go over and see if it's still there.