Slow Day

It started out as a breezy, sunny day. Thought I'd go fishing, but the wind quickly picked up to almost gale force. The wind does that commonly down here. At least it is remaining sunny. When it gets this windy, the best thing is to stay inside and read, or blog, etc. Or go to a palapa that has a back porch in a protected area. We'll probably do that later this afternoon for "happy hour."




Turns out, the morning was dedicated to repairs of the Porter power company. We have a nice solar system which generally provides all the electricity we need. Four solar panels tilted towards the sun can generate upwards of 30 amps per hour. The power is stored in a bank of six volt batteries hooked up in series, then parallel to provide 12 volt electricity.





When we call for power, we turn on our 2000 watt inverter, which powers our 120 volt ac appliances - TV, computers, satellite dish, hair dryer, etc.



In rare cases, such is when it is cloudy or there are special heavy power requirements, the 5.5 KW generator is turned-on. Last nite Mimi needed the microwave to cook some squash, so I turned-on the generator. Figured it would boost the battery, and also heat some water for the showers later. After about five minutes, the generator went off-line. Damn power company! Went outside to reset the circuit breaker in the generator. While doing that I noticed gasoline dripping from the supply line going into the carb. Humm, BIG FIRE HAZARD !!. So I turned the generator off until I could further diagnose the problem this morning.



There is a little in-line gas filter that turned-out to be leaking. Bad news, since a replacement is impossible to get down here. I consulted with Bob, our local expert on such things, and we came up with a plan A and B.









The first attempt will be to fix the leak, using some special Marine Goop which Bob had. Supposed to be amazing stuff. It will take 24 hours to cure, so we won't know if it will work until sometime tomorrow. Your can see the filter in the picture below, with Goop running down the sides. I really shoveled it on!









Plan B will be to remove the offending filter, and splice a generic filter into the line using some clamps. The local auto parts store in Mulege should have a small filter. We will be keeping our fingers crossed.


For those that are curious, our next trip is in the planning stages. Check the Links section on the right of the screen. There is a link that begins with an X.