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like a Nigerian romance scam
Saturday, January 20 2024
[REDACTED]
During our usual Saturday morning routine, Gretchen suddenly realized it was only a half hour until the beginning of a brioche baking class she would be taking today at the home of the Little Loaf Bakery over in Poughkeepsie (that is, more than a half hour away). So off she went. I called after he, "Don't drive crazy; it's not worth it." Evidently she didn't drive too crazy, because she made it there without incident, though she was only ten minutes late (which suggests a certain amount of crazy).
It was brutally cold outside, but I managed to get Charlotte to come on a walk with me by bribing her with peanuts. We walked to the south end of the Farm Road and then came back through the forest east of the wetland that runs along the Farm Road's east side. Along the way, I kept being distracted by spongy moth egg masses, which I felt compelled to destroy. I figured that if I cast the eggs into the snow, that wouldn't be that good for them even if it wasn't 100% effective at killing them. What definitely does kill them is fire: when you throw an egg mass into the woodstove, it sounds like tiny popcorn popping as each little egg reaches boiling and then explodes.
Later I managed to load up both dogs in the Forester and then drive out to 9W. I returned the conduit bender at Home Depot and then managed to find brass adapters that could connect 5/8 inch flared fitting (what I have on the low-pressure refrigerant lines in the mini split) to half inch male NPT. The inside of that half inch male connector was very close to being a half-inch sweat fitting, which I figured I could use it for. As I was heading home, I saw a freight train coming through, blocking my escape on Boices Lane. So I drove over to Lowes on the chance that they had plumbing tools that Home Depot does not. (They never do, and this time was no different.)
Back at the house, I used some leftover low-pressure line and one of the brass fittings to make a long adapter to do the horizontal run leading from the bottom of the wall the refrigerant pipes emerge from on the outside of the house to the outdoor unit. This section required two sharp turns, one of which I was able to easily make because of corrugations embossed near the end of the pipe. For the other, I used my spring-based bending assist tool (which left the pipe a little flatter in one dimension than the other through the bend. To attach the brass fitting, I reamed out the part that looked like a sweat connection (since it was a little too small) and then soldered it. Not wanting any flux to contaminate the refrigerant, I was careful to clean the soldered connection thoroughly with paint thinner. Also, since the adapter piece was over 80 inches long and had been outside, it had gotten some snow into it, so I made sure to heat its ends up to drive all that away.
After hooking up all the pipes, it was time to connect a vacuum pump to suck out all the air in preparation for adding refrigerant. I'd bought a kit for this, and it consisted of a couple pressure gauges, hookups, and a vacuum pump (who knows, maybe I'll make my own vacuum tubes!). But when I tried to connect the vacuum pump to the mini-split, there was no compatible connection. I improvised something and ran the pump for awhile, but it soon became clear that the pump wasn't evacuating anything. Further research revealed that there was mini-split pump adapter that I needed and it hadn't come with anything I'd bought. Worse still, it wasn't anything I could buy anywhere local. I placed an order online and shelved the project until the adapter arrived. This damn mini-split installation project is starting to remind me of Nigerian romance scam in that there's always one more bit of bad luck preventing me from getting the thing that I want.
We'd had a little sun, but nowhere near enough to have hot water. So I ran the boiler for a half hour or so to get hot water in the hot water tank and then took a bath. By then, Gretchen had returned from Poughkeepsie with pink boxes full of delightful baked goods, a couple of which she'd made in her class.
Charlotte in the snow east of the wetlands east of the Farm Road. That tree behind her appears to have been scratched up by some critter. The fine-ness of the scratches suggest a bobcat more than a bear.
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