This November we had our 4th workingweekend of the year. And although it was cold and wintery outside ❄❄❄we were still kept warm by the all the work we put in projects. We prepaired the terrain for winter, fixed the PTB and the Diever and gave the Oasis a touch up.
Because of the upcoming winter the terrain needed to be prepaired. This meant that all the pipes needed to be cleared of water such that they do not break. WARNING PHYSICS SECTION: The reason this needed to be done is because of the very unique property of water that it expands if it freezes, you will not see this in almost all of the other substances. But why does water does this? When water (H2O) freezes it forms a hexagonal latice because of its distinct shape. This hexagonal latice takes up a lot of space, even more than the same amount of individual H2O molecules would. Conclusion: We need to close all the outside taps on the terrain every winter.
The Pump Testing Bench (a.k.a. PTB) has not been testing pumps for almost a year. Which of course is not what it is meant to do. Last summer the new tubes where ordered, but because of a mixup they did not have the right coating that would protect them against rust. So after a few weeks and multilple layers of paint they were finally ready to be put back in the PTB tower last weekend. They were also threaded and cut such that they have enough ground clearance such that a pump can be put under them. Besides this, the motor that powers the PTB was stuk because of rust, but with a plumber’s wrench and a handy placement of a welding glove it was made unstuck again. In order to keep the PTB from being stuck we need to run the motor a few minutes every so often and we also started to design a cover that would protect it from rain.
At the start of the working weekend we noticed that the Diever was turning rather fast. Apparently the breaking pin broke, which (as its name says) is its purpose. But why do we inculde something a part with the purpose to break? You might ask. This is because we do not want the whole windmill to break itself in, for example; a storm. The breaking pin is meant to break the first in the system and is made to be easily replaced. This is why this job was easily done during the working weekend.
Our work on the Oasis began on Sunday with a relatively straightforward initial goal: to install a new pump. The first challenge was removing the T-shaped pipe connected to the windmill—a task we ultimately succeeded in with the help of a flamethrower. Once that was done, we moved on to installing the pump. This required fabricating a pipe to position the pump at the correct height within the water. However, we ran into a problem: we didn’t have the right thread maker available. As a result, the installation had to be postponed until some next Wednesday. In the meantime, we shifted focus to cleaning the windmill’s well in preparation for winter and to prevent the new pump from getting clogged. During the cleaning process, we discovered a family of frogs 🐸 living there. They were safely escorted to a new habitat.
As part of the cleaning effort, we decided to remove overgrown grass that was spilling into the well. While doing so, we uncovered gravel and brick edging around the Oasis base that had been hidden under a thick layer of grass. This led to a new goal: restoring the base of the windmill to its former glory. We carefully removed the gravel and bricks, cleaned them, and repositioned them. To enhance the restoration, we added bricks to the far side where they were missing and topped the base with fresh gravel. You can see the before and after in the images below.
