February - Calm before the storm

"The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you lived." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 I saw this online recently and thought it was hilarious - in a very dark humor sort of way.  We ought to be able to have a laugh now and then about unfortunate events.

 Things have been reasonably calm recently, but this will be coming to an end soon, as work winds up for the 2025 outage.  This year the gas turbine rotor will be replaced, as it has aged out.  The gas turbine generator rotor will be exchanged for a new one, and the stationary part of the generator will be rewound.  This is a big project, and even though I'm just on the operations end of most of it, it's daunting.  The outage is scheduled to last 2 months, so spring of 2025 is pretty much shot already.

Below:  A new or refurbished gas turbine rotor.  The compressor blades have been installed on the left, but the turbine blades have not been attached on the right.

 Below:  A refurbished generator rotor (more often called a "field")

Below:  A freshly rewound gas turbine generator.

One of my goals before retirement is to get this facility safely and successfully through these big projects and then maybe do something interesting part-time - maybe some volunteer work, or a restoration small business - to keep me occupied.

But in the meantime, there's plenty to do!

 The dog is high-maintenance.  She tugs on the leash like a feral animal when there's snow on the ground, and it's about all I can do to stay on my feet.  I can see how the Siberians came up with the idea of using Huskies to pull a sled!

 This has been the first-ever winter since we moved here in 2012 that I've gotten away with not plowing the driveway until February.  The first part of winter was warm enough that most of the precipitation fell as rain.  

Below:  Clearing the area in front of the mailbox.  When the county plows the main road, all the slop winds up in front of the mailbox, which then compresses and forms a thick sheet of pack ice.  I learned the hard way to keep this area cleared!

We run a dehumidifier in the garage and shop all winter due to the amount of snow that falls out of the vehicle wheel wells and melts on the floor.  I have to dump the humidifier reservoir every couple of days.

And the drive to work was interesting this morning, as the snow has become quite dry and drifty.  It was blowing straight across the road, but fortunately wasn't settling down and creating big mounds.

I also need to revisit the Air Compressor repair for a couple of reasons, and I'll probably do a quick post about that.   The over-pressure safety valve screws into the pressure switch.  Once I got the tank up to pressure, it squeezed the pipe thread compound out of the threads, and that joint began leaking air - which was what caused it to overheat and shut off in the first place.  I guess that one will get the teflon tape.

Secondly, the pressure gauge is sprung and reads 20 psig when it was removed and on the bench.  It's hard to set the correct start/stop pressure when you don't even know what the pressure is... 

So look for a post soon about that.  In the meantime take care of yourselves, dear readers!