Summer

[ken hatch]

I broke into a sweat a couple of days ago, the first of the year. Today I had the fan on all day. Tomorrow if the trend continues I'll fire up the swamp cooler. Seems Summer in the desert may be early this year. Other than limiting midday work it's not a problem, Up early work until 1000 break for pool and nap time until the sun goes down then back at it for a couple or three hours. Snow blowers and lawn mowers are unknown...."Hey, you kids get off my rocks". :)

[Ralph Boumenot]

I am almost ready to move to Arizona but I don't think I could tolerate kids walking on my rocks.

[Frederick Skelly]

I am almost ready to move to Arizona but I don't think I could tolerate kids walking on my rocks.

I'm ok with it as long as they take off their shoes first.

[ken hatch]

In Arizona kids are anyone under 70.

[Hilton Ralphs]

We're in the middle of Autumn but I still have my daily swim at night to cool off. Yesterday the temperature hit 80 degrees. No extreme weather here thankfully.

What's the story with the kids on the rocks?

[Jeffrey Martel]

We're in the middle of Autumn but I still have my daily swim at night to cool off. Yesterday the temperature hit 80 degrees. No extreme weather here thankfully.


You guys use the imperial system in SA? I thought it was a metric country. Or are you just converting it for the majority US members on this site?

[Harold Burrell]

Do you know what? I don't want to hear it. For crying out loud...I can still see snow from my back door.

AND it is supposed to snow tomorrow.

Summer? Yeah, right . We're still waiting for Spring! :rolleyes:

[Joe Bailey]

What's the story with the kids on the rocks?

In the arid climate of the American southwest, they don't have lawns -- they have "hardscaping" -- rocks, gravel, plants which need little water.
The OP is spoofing the proverbial, crotchety old-timer who's forever telling kids to stay off his lawn.

[Hilton Ralphs]

You guys use the imperial system in SA? I thought it was a metric country. Or are you just converting it for the majority US members on this site?
Just converting for the masses Jeffrey. We are Metric but I'm more than comfortable working with inches and fractions.



In the arid climate of the American southwest, they don't have lawns -- they have "hardscaping" -- rocks, gravel, plants which need little water.
The OP is spoofing the proverbial, crotchety old-timer who's forever telling kids to stay off his lawn.
Ah right, got it! Thanks Joe.

[Jebediah Eckert]

Still a foot of snow here but it is supposed to be mid 50s today. The weatherman said it's the first time above 40s in 100 days or something like that.

[Tom Vanzant]

My son in Springerville AZ says his yard is "native grasses" and gets all huffy if I call it weeds.

[ken hatch]

Just converting for the masses Jeffrey. We are Metric but I'm more than comfortable working with inches and fractions.



Ah right, got it! Thanks Joe.

Hilton,

That is funny, I live in a foot, yard, stone world but think and work metric. BTW back before this country completely lost its mind we were on the way to converting and joining the rest of the world. It was not to be, but before that effort fell apart a new freeway was built, I-19 from the I-10 junction in Tucson to Nogales, MX and it was signed metric. Still is, and as far as I know the only road in the States with metric signage.

ken

[Hilton Ralphs]

I-19 from the I-10 junction in Tucson to Nogales, MX and it was signed metric. Still is, and as far as I know the only road in the States with metric signage.


Ken, as in kms? We're officially Metric, been like that since probably before I learnt to count but elements of Imperial still remain. Being over six foot tall is still cool for a guy but no-one talks of pounds or stones it's all kgs. We never save "what kilometer-age are you getting in your car?" and TVs are still sold in inches as are wheels and tyres.

Imagine a world where we all drove on the same side of the road, used the same measuring system and had a uniform bed sizing scale. If you're bored, look up bed sizes around the world. What on earth!

[ken hatch]

Hilton,

Distance markers and exits are posted in kms, just to make things totally confusing speeds are posted in mph. In aviation most of the world except Russia and China give altitudes in feet. in Russian and Chinese airspace it is in meters. Go figure, we like to make things difficult.

Whatever it will not be long till we see afternoon temps well above 38C. 46C is not that uncommon before Monsoon starts in July. Because of the cooling effect of Monsoon, June is our hottest month but swamp coolers work pretty good up till Monsoon starts, after that not a lot of work gets done in an un-ACed shop except late night and early morning.

Nothing is free, gotta pay for the beautiful shorts and T's mid-winter days.

ken

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Hilton,

Distance markers and exits are posted in kms, just to make things totally confusing speeds are posted in mph. In aviation most of the world except Russia and China give altitudes in feet. in Russian and Chinese airspace it is in meters. Go figure, we like to make things difficult.

Whatever it will not be long till we see afternoon temps well above 38C. 46C is not that uncommon before Monsoon starts in July. Because of the cooling effect of Monsoon, June is our hottest month but swamp coolers work pretty good up till Monsoon starts, after that not a lot of work gets done in an un-ACed shop except late night and early morning.

Nothing is free, gotta pay for the beautiful shorts and T's mid-winter days.

ken

Swamp coolers??? That's a new one on me. Care to explain?

I promise this is not a gloat, but it was actually very chilly (for us) yesterday- 75F/24C. We drank hot tea and got under blankets, and again I am serious. For us that's usually January temps. We also had a bit of wind so wind chill was additional. We even shut the windows on the windward side, which we never do unless it's raining.

Hilton, can you guys please turn off the "pitching machine" this year? I refer to the one that hurls "fast balls" at us from June to November. If not, set it to throw curve balls aimed to the north.

[Clark Christenson]

Swamp coolers??? That's a new one on me. Care to explain?

In the dry, hot western states homeowners will often use a swamp cooler instead of AC. They can look a lot like a window AC unit and any one from the east would assume that is what they are. I guess, they do condition the air but they don't use a compressor, coolant, etc like traditional AC. There is a fan inside the unit that pulls air from the outside into the house. The outer framework of the swamp cooler will have some sort of filter (I always saw furnace filters) on several sides. The bottom of the unit is a small basin that holds several inches of water. There is small water pump that takes that water and pipes it to the top of the filters where it flows down through the filter back towards the basin. Since there is basically no humidity in the outside air, the energy used to evaporate the water when air is pulled through the filter cools the air significantly.

They work very well and are super simple. Swamp coolers are also very cheap to run but the obvious downfall and the source of their name is that the basin of water can get a little "swampy" smelling after a while.

Clark

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Makes sense. We are cleaning the screens today and it always cools things off a bit.

[Shawn Pixley]

Most marine navigational charts are in fathoms for shoaling depths. Horizontally, they can be in Miles, Nautical Miles, or Kilometers. I an use them all but wish they would stick to one. Wind speed is in nautical miles.

[Shawn Pixley]

I hear you! It was 88 degrees F. (31 C) yesterday. All doors and windows open. No AC or swamp cooler here. But with any breeze, it is largely pleasant in the house. In the Garage / Shop it will be fine with the door open. When I am using the hand planes, I can get pretty sweaty but it is better than a gym.

[ken hatch]

A little more to add about swamp coolers. Depending on the Relative Humidity, evaporative cooling can be very efficient. I use to ride motorcycles long distance such as coast to coast in less than 50 hours. to do LD rides you have to stay in the saddle and one of the ways to stay in the saddle when riding through the Desert Southwest is to use evaporative cooling. As an example a typical mid-day ride in Death Valley the OAT could be 118F or even higher. Heat injury can happen very quickly at those temps but by using evaporative cooling on that 118F day with typical Death Valley RH's (<10%) I might ride in a 70F bubble of air. In the Desert swamp coolers can work very well, come Monsoon with high RH's not so much but even then evaporative cooling will cool.

I have a portable swamp cooler for my shop, most of the year it works very well. For the two months of Monsoon I go swimming.

[Jeffrey Martel]

Still is, and as far as I know the only road in the States with metric signage.

ken

Might be with metric as the only signage. But I do recall seeing metric values posted in Maine on I-95 alongside the default imperial values.

[Curt Putnam]

Ken, What does the wet air from the swamper do to your tooling? BTW, it was in the 80s last week but it's going to be cooler & wetter this week.

[ken hatch]

Curt,

RH here is usually below 10% except during Monsoon. The Swamp cooler sets with the iron apprentices at the far end of the shop a good ways from the hand tools. While I haven't measured the change in RH in the shop I expect the rise in the bench area is very little and to date I have not seen any evidence of it causing the hand tools to rust. I do worry a little about my wood because it is close to my wood stacks and I expect in that area there is enough change in RH to slow the drying and/or raise the MC of the dry wood.

That's a good question and one I worried about at first.

ken

[Bruce Page]

We're supposed to get to 80 today. I need to mow the back yard - I fertilized it last week. We have "Zero Scape" in the front - "rocks, gravel, plants which need little water."
I'll probably set up the shop swamp cooler this week.