Puckaway Motor Club

Log (page 5 of 13)

The day-to-day Puckaway activities, recorded for posterity.

Log: May 7 and 8, 2018

May 11, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Monday

Hannah and I drove in at 9:15 pm. I’m taking the day off work tomorrow so I can get all the leaves collected up here before the storms we’re supposed to get later in the week. If I want any kind of lawn this year, the sooner I can get this done, the better.

It’s going to be hot tomorrow with highs in the mid 80s, so I turned on the AC to get ahead of it. This got me thinking of a quick project I could take care of. I’ve got the ability to remotely control the AC with the Logitech Harmony hub, but I can’t really tell what I’m doing or if it’s responding. As long as the AC is set correctly and then turned off when I leave, I just have to hit Power from the remote app and everything will kick on the way it’s supposed to. I wanted more control and assurance, though. I took a USB webcam and mounted it to the underside of the upper kitchen cabinets. It’s pointed directly at the control panel of the air conditioner. This plugs into the PuckaPi, where a program called fswebcam is used to take snapshots. Now I’ll be able to tell exactly what mode the AC is in and can do more fine-tuning remotely.

Content with my efforts, I spent the rest of the night being lazy and watching TV. I was asleep before 11:00.

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Log: May 6, 2018

May 7, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Riverside drive?

Flying trip today. Came down a very wet driveway at 2:45 pm with a truck bed full of tools and building materials from Mayville. My folks are making the final push to sell that place, and I’m happy to help just to be rid of it. I made some room in the pole barn for all the sheets of OSB and panelling from the Mayville garage and had the truck emptied in about ten minutes. As long as I was here and heading back to Mayville, I figured I’d make the most of it. I backed up the truck to the scrap pile and heaved the burn barrel into the bed. Farmer Joe expressed some interest in this a while back, so today he’s getting it delivered. Rolled out around 3:30.

Log: April 28, 2018

April 30, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Rode in with the whole family around 2 pm after a Menards supply stop and late lunch at Aunt Judy’s. Hannah couldn’t wait to get out of the truck. It’s 55° and sunny—finally, some nice spring weather! I backed the truck and blue trailer up to the pole barn to load up Dad’s riding mower for him. Josh sat on the seat to keep the engine running while Lyssa held the trailer in tilted position and I steered it on board. We need a loading dock.

Buck came over and gave Hannah some exercise as they chased each other around the yard. I had to shoo him back to Danny’s after a while, though. He’s too rough with the boys and kept jumping on them and knocking them over. Lyssa set up Josh’s new tree swing for the boys while I unloaded some supplies in the pole barn. We brought Jake’s new utility cart, and he was thrilled to put it to use by cleaning up the big pile of sawdust left from Jeremiah’s mill last fall.

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Log: April 26, 2018

April 28, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Made it up around 2:00 pm for a quick supply run. There was a big TV sale at Best Buy earlier this month—$200 for a 50″ 1080p LCD. The keep gets a nice upgrade, and the 42″, 720p LCD that’s being replaced will move to the pole barn. I also brought Lyssa’s snow tires back and a few other odds and ends.

The overall size of the chassis isn’t much different, but there’s a lot more screen real estate.

I set up the TV and configured the Harmony remote hub and the receiver to work with it. With that out of the way, I closed up the keep and moved on to the pole barn. I stacked Lyssa’s tires and put the old keep TV on the workbench for now. I really need to spend some time organizing this building again.

Before heading out, I had one more thing to try. Last fall at deer camp, we wrecked my pump fill tube trying to thaw it out. So I used the opportunity to build it better. The new one has a much larger “priming tank” made from a section of 4″ PVC. The drain has been improved, too. Instead of the old drilled-hole-plugged-by-a-big-bolt, there’s now a 3/4″ PVC tee below the fill tube that terminates in a 45° elbow with a removable plug.

With my checklist complete for the day, I was on my way out around 4:30.

Log: March 28, 2018

March 30, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Hannah and I rode in around 2:30 on this unseasonably warm 60° day. Originally, I wanted to come up much earlier this morning and spend the day mowing and mulching, but I ended up getting a lot of errands run at home instead. I brought the ATV and plow back, so I got them unloaded quickly and set my sights on the keep.

I also brought up two six-gallon jugs of drinkable Oshkosh water which I set on the bathroom counter. My goals for today are all Puckanet-related. I want to increase the 4G signal to the router and set up my weather station.

The first thing I had to do was figure out mounting for the sensor module. The higher up, the better, but it needs to be within 300 feet of the base station (and probably closer than that, with the aluminum walls of the keep serving to block the signal) to function. I decided to put it on the top of the bird feeder post. Should get plenty of sun and there’s no canopy overhead to mess with the rainfall gauge.

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Log: March 4, 2018

March 8, 2018 / / 0 Comments

The boys have been getting cabin fever lately. It’s been in the 40s and almost all the snow has melted, so we decided to make a day trip to Puckaway. The five of us (Hannah needs to get out of the house, too) piled in the truck and made it to Aunt Judy’s by 11:15 for a late breakfast. The boys drew some pictures for Judy to hang up, then made short work of a pair of adult-sized omelets. Shortly after we sat down, Danny and his wife came in, too. They both remarked on how much Jacob’s grin reminds them of Richie.

We made it to Puckaway around noon. Hannah started her strafing runs and the boys headed straight to the pole barn to get out some of their trucks. I unloaded the day’s project: major Puckanet upgrades.

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Log: February 23 and 24, 2018

February 27, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Pre-Trip Summary

It’s been quite a week. The wild swings in temperature have brought on a lot of snowmelt over still-frozen ground. Back in Oshkosh, this resulted in a lot of water pooling near the back of the house. The catch basin and 40 feet of buried 4″ PVC drain pipe that I put in to combat just this situation were rendered useless as they were plugged solid with ice. Water started leaking into the basement because the utility pump I bought out of desperation just couldn’t keep up with the melt rate. To top things off, something was wrong with the water heater from the keep. It would shut itself off after only lighting the burners for a few seconds, which prevented me from using it to flush my drain line with hot water. I felt defeated as a homeowner because my drain solution had failed, discouraged at the prospect of no more hot water at Puckaway, and sick thinking about the freezing rain in the forecast and how it would affect my basement.

My wonderful wife helped me put these (still mostly managed) problems in perspective and suggested that what I needed was some time to recharge and reflect. She would take the boys down by her folks for the weekend and said I should head to Puckaway with the pooch. An overnight stay in February would be an unprecedented event, but probably just what the doctor ordered. Just the idea of a Puckaway trip got me in a better headspace, and by Thursday I had come up with a solution for my frozen pipe problem.

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Log: January 15, 2018

January 17, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Rolled in with Hannah around 3:30 to some light snowfall. Time to collect the blue ATV and plow for the driveway back home. Hannah was sure happy to be here and got right to work making high-speed laps of the yard. This came with some pretty spectacular wipeouts, though. Thanks to the quick freeze-thaw-freeze cycle over the last few days, the yard is full of glare ice patches hidden beneath the fresh snow. Hannah, for the most part, was unfazed by this and just wanted to keep running.

I went to fire up the blue ATV and the dials went completely dead. What the hell. I’ve had this on the trickle charger, just like the green ATV and the mowers, and none of them are any worse for wear. Then again, I think this battery is at least six or seven years old and probably due for replacement. It’s a shame these require their electronics to function. Even with a pull rope, there’s no way of getting this to run without a battery.

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Log: January 3, 2018

January 5, 2018 / / 2 Comments

Pulled in at 1:00 pm and noticed a welcome change right away. The truck box is gone! Peter hauled it over to Danny’s. Sure, it’s only moved a few hundred feet, but at least it’s out of the driveway and off of the property.

Ding dong, the box is gone.

I parked by the pole barn and started layering up. I brought my Carhartt bibs and jacket, balaclava, and warm gloves and hat since it’s just below 10° F out (sadly, this is the warmest day we’ve had in a week) and I’ll be spending this entire trip outdoors. A few days ago, I saw Peter’s truck on the pole barn camera. When Dad asked him what he was checking out, Peter mentioned he would have free use of a Skytrak (large, all-terrain boom lift) for a few days and wanted to know if we were still thinking of trimming the trees leaning over the pole barn. I jumped at the chance, which is why I took a half day off of work to meet him here today.

While waiting for Peter to show up, I carried my propane heater over to the keep and fired it up. So far, the little UPS heater seems to be doing its job admirably, but it’s been so consistently cold this past week that it has never turned off. I want to make sure the thermostatic switch does its thing when the temps rise above 30° F. This will serve as a test of the switch as well as give me a nice warm place to change out of my winter gear when we’re done today.

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Log: December 4, 2017

December 6, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Flying trip! Took advantage of this unseasonably warm (nearly 60° F) day and stopped up a little before 3:00 pm to drop off the summer tires from Lyssa’s car. While I was here and it was so nice out, I took a minute to collect most of the logs and branches from the tree that fell during deer camp. It wasn’t long before there was a pretty big stack in the pit.

There was one more reason for the visit today. I picked up another smartplug, but this one can also measure and report power consumption. I’ll be able to tell remotely whether or not the UPS heater is running. I plugged this in just behind the thermostatic switch and got it connected to Wi-Fi. Once I had the app running on my phone, I plugged the heater into it directly to verify the readings. 68.5 watts. Even if this thing ran 24/7, it would only add $5 to a monthly power bill. We’re supposed to be in for some cold weather, so we’ll find out soon enough. I closed everything back up and was on my way out by 3:45.

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