Full Moon or ???

Is this all the fault of the coup in Honduras? Or ??? This morning the VSAT connection was down. At first I had assumed the batteries that run it had died. One is on the "is it ok?" list. Nope, all was well. All the right lights were on on the VSAT modem. I plugged in my laptop. It would not talk. A power cycle of the modem and all was well.

I then moved on to my next task—fixing stuff that the albanil broke. That was actually what I was going to write about. But, I then noticed that the batteries here were only charging a little. It is overcast but I finally realized it was a lot brighter than the 40 watts I was seeing. Well, the PV voltage was close to 90V. Output current was 1.7A. The batteries, at 24.5V were only charging at 1.6A. Even if that was all the panels were putting out, 5A would be more like it.

Ok, I power cycled the PV controller. The batteries are now charging at about over 50A with a PV current of over 20A. That has never happened before and neither has the VSAT modem strangeness. I would love to blame it on a power glitch but the VSAT modem is 400 meters away and running on a totally different electric system.

Anyway, back to my real intended post. After about three months, the albanil (sorry for no ~ but this system has an interesting problem as well) is almost done. Long ago I refused to do any work on the house while he was still here breaking things. The work should have taken less than a month and he was being paid for the job, not by the day. Ana now understands that he is, well, loco.

Anyway, he has patched the holes he made in the side of the dome drilling the holes for the kitchen counters, put drains in the garden area such that about the time water reaches the surface it will drain off, fixed the windows so now all the water will run in the bottom because the sill is as high as the slider frame and some other creative things. But, that's all Ana's problem. Mine is to get the kitchen ready for use.

When I went into the kitchen I noticed a piece of tape on the electrical conduit that runs behind where the stove will go. I pulled it off. Off came a fair sized chunk of PVC conduit as well. I am not sure how he managed to do this as it was a few inches from the end of the countertop but, in any case, it was done and not hidden all that well. A bit of conduit, creative cutting and PVC cement and it is "patched".

The first item of business on my list was to install the faucet on the stainless steel sink. I had long discussions with him (including giving him the faucet to show how it mounts) to get him to actually leave the right hole in the concrete. Well, first problem, the faucet would no longer fit in the hole in the stainless steel. Ok, easily traced to the fact that used the "insert using hammer" method of installing the sink. The back got bent and the hole is no longer round. Now, if this was a retrofit I guess I could see this happening but he is building a new countertop for a new sink.

Anyway, a reamer and cutting a way a bit of the plastic gasket to deal with the fact that the mounting surface is no longer flat "fixed" this problem. Now, the way it mounts is with a washer and nut. We had a long discussion about this showing him the clearance that was needed for the nut and the fact that the threaded part of the faucet was not long enough to reach below the three inches of concrete. Ok, 30 minutes on my back under the sink chiseling concrete and the nut now fits. Hooked up the water pipes and all seems well.

Cool. Just a quick install of the drain fitting and drain and all would be well. Wrong. In his "shape adjustment" of the sink, it was bent enough that the drain hole, while still large enough and round enough to accept the strainer/connector, is bent. The stainless steel in the center is higher than around the edge. So, the strainer will sit above the bottom of the sink, it will look ugly, and/or it will leak. Yup, I'll fix it but I just wanted to take an NL break.

Before you get the feeling that I think all construction people in this country are morons, that is not the case. The guy who build my garage is great. For example, Billy Bob said my garage was better built than his house. The people who did the addition/remodel on my house in Esteli did a great job. I am sure there are more. But, this guy is just not a winner. At least Ana is the one that picked him. :-)