In Turner, just south of Salem, (home of the Enchanted Forest, along I-5) the local river jumped its banks. One guy, whose house was flooded years ago, had installed a moat around his house and it seemed to work, but a lot of houses weren't so lucky. Fourteen rivers at record flood stage.
The bridge at the duck pond went under. Lot of tree limbs came down in the gusty winds. Welcome to Oregon in the winter.
My car's battery died, or so I thought. Turned out it was just a loose connection that got wet as I sloshed down the road. Not that I could have fixed it. In my car, to get to the alternator and voltage regulator, you have to take the front bumper off ...
And so it goes ...
5 comments:
The Mini Cooper strikes back?
"One guy, whose house was flooded years ago, had installed a moat"
I love that. It's nice to see someone who prepares his house for those things that everyone *knows* will come sooner or later. It reminds me of the guy in California wildfire country who spent the money to have his home built of fire-resistant materials and, when the fires came, he hosed down his house and it was one of the very few to survive still habitable.
My question is: what does the guy with the moat do with it when there *isn't* a flood?
Dumb vehicle design. Cables work loose or get corroded. They should be accessible. And fixable with basic wrenches.
Of course, my current car's battery isn't even in the engine compartment... (Though I know where it is and how to access it.)
Been a long time since I had a car I could work on. Everything is jammed into a tight compartment, shoehorned with modular this and that, pollution gear, and you need a computerized shop to diagnose the problem. Shade-tree mechanics don't work on anything made in this century, or the last couple decades of the previous one ...
My Miata's battery was in the trunk. The Mini's battery in in the engine compartment -- unless you get the "S" model, and then it's in the trunk. Same general car, same year, different location. Go figure.
If I turned somebody loose in the Mini and they didn't know where to find it, they'd never figure out where the hood release is.
On the other hand, it's a lot cheaper to plug a loose connector back together than it is to replace the alternator -- somewhere around $1100 for the latter, no charge for the former. And it won't come undone again, courtesy of a buck's worth of electrician's tape ...
I think you could have a lot of fun with a moat. Get a couple small gators, feed 'em table scraps.
I dunno if he keeps it filled year-round, but what he was doing was running a big pump and keeping the level down. Seemed to be doing the trick. Course, it's still raining ...
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