Pellet heads!! What's up today?

The worst is behind you and now to look forward to your new exciting path

 

Nice job! Congratulations!!

 

Wow, huge decision after 39 years. You had to love what you were doing to stay that long. I’ve been at my “job” for over forty one years, I’ll never leave her. Good Luck with your decision!

I did a thorough tear down and cleaning of the beast today. I’ve found that there’s no sense in fussing over this stove, it just doesn’t appreciate it. I’ve been burning LaCrete’s and the stove hasn’t skipped a beat. I don’t get errors, less troubles with back pressure from high winds. I get less crap in the vent pipe, as demonstrated each time I run the 200 mph pipe cleaner. My settings are rendering about 22 hours per bag or less, while experiencing normal winter temps. If I try to get more from less the beast just starts whining with alarms. I really wish good pellets had a more reasonable price per ton, but filling the hopper up every three days and not changing the settings constantly is working for me.

We leave in the early am to spend the holidays with the kids. Getting to see the grandbabies waking up after Santa’s visit makes the whole holiday hustle worth while. Thanks to the logistics folks for making things easier also.

I wish you all a very safe and happy holiday season.

 

half day of work today then x-mas party to follow at local steak and seafood joint, off till weds. then

 

I was originally going to buy a lightly used car to replace the '07 focus that has 215k miles, drips oil, will need a clutch in the next 20k miles and now has a plate light that works intermittently. Oh, not to mention has not amenities at all besides a basic radio (can't even play my MP3 player). I'm going for good gas mileage as I'm hoping to make the replacement car the "daily" driver and use the Explorer for bad weather days and hauling days only. After the first of the year I will be putting on a minimum of 25,000 miles a year commuting to work (between the two vehicles - and the bike). My looking range was $10-14k and less than 40k miles.

Well, some Ford dealers just started aggressively cutting prices on 2018's (this change is since Tuesday, a day I stopped and test drove some cars). I found a place that has a Fiesta with heated seats and side mirrors, and back up camera, with a manual transmission for $13,400 (and no dealer fees). Another place has a Fiesta Titanium and a Focus Titanium (Titanium's have NAV and some other less important upgrades - plus are auto transmissions), for a little over $17k (and possible 1.9% finance). Drove a 2017 Fiesta the other day and it wasn't horrible - I think I could do that. Now I just gotta see if the dealer with the Titanium's will want to get their prices closer to what the manual Fiesta is advertised for.

Of course I may prefer the manual transmission and I can always get an updated Garmin to go with that first car.

 

I know that many use their phones or other devices for NAV, but ever since having a factory NAV, its definitely the way I prefer.

Good luck on the search....the bug has got ya

 

57 at the house this morning, looking at a high of 62.

 

Freezing rain and 4" of snow today.
I had to be on chauffeur duty this morning, roads were slick

 

I don't have unlimited data. As it is, the few times I've used the truck's NAV (which goes off my phone because I didn't get a SIM card when I bought the truck) I've been charged for overage. Plus I don't like to use my battery (it doesn't get eaten up by the truck's NAV). Not a deal breaker but really nice to have

 

Opposite here. Both vehicles have built-in NAV, but I much prefer to use phone NAV, because it’s always up to date with features, maps, traffic conditions, etc. Honestly, apple car play is the best of both worlds. You get to use the NAV app of your choice and it displays on the big NAV screen in your vehicle. Use to be only Apple Maps supported this, but as of iOS 12, google maps and Waze (and probably others) also support it. Pretty slick!

 

Waze app > factory navigation

 

I’m also in the camp of no longer wanting factory nav. Wanted it for years but phones caught up. Nice benefit is you can get a lower tier package on the car since you no longer need nav.

Will be trading my subaru and 2wd truck in a few months to consolidate to one vehicle (a 4wd truck). Still researching. I’m sure this crew has their opinions.

 

Anxiety is definitely a Beotch....

Been down the road before (Giving notice that is) Back in 1990 I quit a good paying job with a company that I had worked for for 20 ++ years.

All to chase a dream of being a heavy trucker.
Went trucking for over 20 years and never looked back...met a lot of great folks, made good $$$$ and had a helluvalotof fun in the over a million miles I traveled in the big rig.

I did meet a few !@#$% I am glad that were short lived encounters...

 

Android Auto on the truck screen here.Just plug the phone in and good to go.If you have limited data like me make sure you only download and update the maps over wifi.Waze is great.

 

The besy part of Waze is the live traffic,accident, and hidden folks with radar updates. FWIW, I run waze at least 10hours a week and have only used 500mb since Sep 19 according to my phone.

 

I have a Garmin. But it doesn't get Netflix.
So what good is it? I don't go anywhere.

Dan

 

Facepalm

 

No smart phone here,just cheep tracfone,but,if available in your area I recommend subscribing to NIXLE.

 

UPDATE

The shell plant manager offered to let us use their portable nut cracker.

Sweeet.

They use it to sample a customers product before they bring it to the plant.

They take random samples of product, crack the nuts, look for amount of worms, blanks, mold and other things that will dictate value of the material.

The unit was sitting in the warehouse not being used and the manager offered it for the season.

Their current cracked shell handling SUCKS (Managers words) they are going to take the old Bag house/hopper and move it to the new building and remove the current POS...

But this will take time and $$$ to get it done.

Time is the big deal...getting product out the front door is the first order of business.

So we are using the little cracker and it gives us a good PRECRUSH size and then we run it through our little grinder....

We crushed two 55 gallon drums full this afternoon and then ran out of time.

The stuff goes through the grinder real quick now..

Filled the big stove up with the new stuff for the evening and will see how it does.

Far less of the real fine dusty stuff in this batch.

Here is the Widdle green machine

The cardboard in the one piccy was to keep shells from bouncing out and making a mess.
Since the machine is not fine I will not modify things to stop the problem...

I would like to copy the machine and make a few changes along the way to improve it for my use..

Hopefully by next season the plant will be all fixed and things will be as they used to be for the last 27 years or so....
Buttttttttttttttttttt.. I am going to measure the machine very carefully so I can copy the design.

1/2 horse motor 120 volt
6 inch rotor
2 pillow block bearing
Belt drive
Angle steel frame

This unit is fully adjustable, but I think I will look at an adjustment that allows some adjustment to allow for wear (Steel angle used as the fulcrum for the nuts to pinch against.

I would like to see the fulcrum replaceable easily (Bolt in)

I want to make the fulcrum the adjustable part and keep the rotor solidly mounted to the frame...

An air cylinder to hold the fulcrum in adjustment would be nice and allow quick decouple in the event of BIG STICK, ROCK OR OTHER DEBRIS getting caught between the roller and the fulcrum bar.

We had several pieces of crap stall the unit and necessitate backing off the adjustment to clear it.

Loads of fun...

 

For quantity grinding/crushing,what i see missing is a flyweight/flywheel.You must have great friends out there,to "borrow/loan" that rig!Buy the way,by heat content,a 55 gal drum of your shells compared to pellets?Thanks.