I added a black light to the living room 75 gallon aquarium tonight. I had the top of the tank cleared off so I could route longer drain tubing and zip-tie it into the tank so I suffer no more floods. Here I am adding water twcie at the max rate just to test the flow capacity of the Weir Siphon Overflow Box. It can handle the flow. It wants to ‘flush’, which is kinda funny. Fills up the overflow box, quits sucking air, then nice full flow to drain. The two exhuasts took turns on flushing. It looked like a cow getting milked, first one tube, then the other would have lots of water just POOR out. Half of the missing water has been put back into the tank. Takes a while to fill it up 3 gallons at a time. I could break out the Python and do it that way, but I don’t have the stick on thermometers to match the sink temp to the tank temp. I just do a 3 gallon bucket a day. Let it warm up to room temp and then poor it in. Black light fish tanks don’t photo to well. you can see the ziptie holding the 2 exhaust tubes from the overflow box for the 4″x4″x4′ tank sitting on top of the big tank. It’s just setting there, full, for the night. No water being pumped in. Trying to leak-test it for a few days before I trust it enough to try again.
Katie ordered Netflix the end of last week. She was missing TV and we agreed not to get cable until this fall when it got cold out. Netflix is to tide the poor thing over.
Well, Netflix has this Instant-watch feature where they stream the video to your computer or whatnot.
I just HAD to try this. So, I ran a coax with RCA adapters from the computer video out to the TV and used the FM transmitter for the iPod in the truck to get audio to the radio.
Katie LOVED IT.
Had to have it. So, computer got moved into the living room.
Nothing is ever as simple as that…
The computer didn’t like being moved. Broke a fan blade out of the CPU cooling fan somehow – if memory serves, I had stuck a finger into it a couple of years ago, and it finally let go.
Ok, 9:15PM run to Best Buy – closed. Damn…
Pinch CPU fan off of another computer so we can watch a movie. It’s a size smaller, no worries, just put it on with one screw and try not to use the computer to hard.
Next day, go to Best Buy after lunch. Try to get the fan I need. No luck. No 50mm cooling fans. They got an 80mm case fan that lights up pretty blue. Blue blinky lights. MUST HAVE Blue blinky lights.
We go to Target, and wander around for at least an hour, looking for a coffee table so we have something to set the computer monitor under. Tried this, tried that. Found what we liked. Decided it was the same money as what we where looking at earlier but decided it was to expensive, went back, looked again, had to have the first stuff. Picked it up, tooled around the store, noticed the colors didn’t match, went back to see if they had matching colors. No. Damn. Looked some more, found something we REALLY liked, noticed it was on sale for less then what we had in cart currently. Swapped items. Left store fast least we spend ANOTHER hour loading and unloading the cart.
You don’t understand. We had the rug we liked layed out on the floor, with the end tables set down with another box to represent the monitor. The people at Target kept asking us if we needed help. Probably looked like we where thinking about moving in.
Anyway, back to the computer, as this is a story about the coffee table. (confused yet?).
Get home, go to put the fan in the computer. Wrong plug type. Double Damn. Hrmm, case fan uses same little plug as the CPU fan did. Plug the case fan into the slot for the CPU fan so the computer won’t self-power-down. Plug new CPU fan (really a case fan) into hard drive power. Computer won’t POST.
grrr.
Take everything back apart, put it back together. Computer POSTs again. YAY. I had the fan pointed the right direction.
Take heatsink back off, drill new holes for the larger fan. Tighten screws down. Put together. Take apart. Loosen screws so fan can TURN. put back together.
Put computer back together. Boots. Doesn’t like the ‘missing’ case fan. Silly computer doesn’t know it’s plugged into the CPU fan header.
Anyway.. on with the real story. The Coffee Table. The two end tables get placed back to back with enough space between them for one of my matching 19″ CRTs. It sits on it’s back-side pointed up, tipped slightly forward it can be seen while sitting on the couch. I had to degauss it to get rid of the color shift, but it doesn’t seem to mind sitting ‘on it’s butt’ so to speak.
A bit of poking around in closets found enough unused Kayak wood stringers and some hinges, and I screwed the night stands together. Put the monitor in. Put a piece of plexi over the top.
You know what? I like it. I really like it a lot.
I still need to cut the plexi and get that mounted, but that’s pretty trivial. Just need to find the draw-knife again. I put it down and I think Brother hid it on me. Spending too much time on the fish tanks and not petting him.
I found the killer app for a Media Center PC. YouTube.
YouTube videos on the TV while your sitting on the couch rocks. I got the video camera here too, so Katie can talk to her family on Skype. I have yet to Skype in the living room myself, but I think it should be pretty cool.
So, know we can watch movies, chat with friends, and yes, even BLOG from the comfort of the couch.
Now I need to find new excuses why I am not blogging as often as I would like.
We woke up Saterday morning to this. Yep, a half empty 75 gallon fish tank. The culprit is somehow my new Overflow Box. It didn’t seem to leak. The only thing I can think of is that one of the the drain tubes (looped back on itself here to test for leaks) was in a bad spot and caused water to drain out of the tank as opposed to into the tank. Here I have looped the drain tube onto itself to test for leaks. I filled the overflow box up. Note the water in the box vs the green tank. Here you can see that the water drained out of the overlow into the tank. So there IS a leak, but it’s on the tank side. Not a big deal, really. There is a joint on the tank side I can’t seem to be able to seal up.
I just can’t figure any better then the tubes weren’t long enough and moved in the middle of the night so water drained out the side of the tank. I am going to cut longer drain tubes and zip-tie them into the inside of the tank.
First off, what is the world is an aquarium weir siphon overflow box?
Well, everyone knows what an aquarium is, and that I like my fish tanks! Most people are familiar with a siphon – a hose that allows you to drain water out of a container over the side of the container. A weir is basically a long dam where the water overflows for the full length of the dam. An overflow box is a type of aquarium filter.
So, basically, I am making a dam, that siphons water out of a fish tank. The neat thing about doing it this way, is that the siphon won’t ‘break’ when the water level gets too low, as the weir (or dam) will hold the siphon. Quite a clever setup actually. I wish I had thought of it. I read about this probably well over a year ago. I did a quick search, and found the same site! http://www.melevsreef.com/acrylics/overflow.html
So, with a quick look over their instructions, I completely disregarded them as to measurements, and made up my own. I just wanted the concept.
So, after much scientific analysis, here are my measurements. Yeah, Yeah, I mocked it up in cardboard. I did actually take a measurement! I measured the inside of my 4″x4″x4′ nano tank. The idea is that I will make a ‘stream’ fish tank like nobody else has!
So, from the 1 measurement, I made it square, as an overflow box MUST be BOX shaped, or it’s an overflow rectangle, and, well, we just can’t have that. I started cutting away at my plastic.
This is a high-precision operation I run hear. Silicone my tolerances! I taped the two sides together, and cut them with a coping saw.
After many long, excruciating seconds calculating the flow rate for the whole contraption, I just held the damn thing up to the tank and eyeballed how high I wanted the water to be in the tank and made the weir element that tall.
Here you can see the start of the inside of the siphon element. You can start to see the difficulties assembly will incur, due to the various bits and pieces getting in the way of sealing the seams. It can really only be assembled from the inside out and be able to be sealed. (high tolerances, remember?)
This is what the completed unit would look like. It’s just taped together here, waiting to be cut apart and glued together.
This is what it looks like hanging on the side of the tank. Pretty cool looking, I think. I need to add the outflow pipes yet. But you can get the idea. The water will overflow the weir on the right side, inside the aquarium. The water will be siphoned over to the left side, where it will overflow the second weir into the outflow box.
Remember those high tolerances. Yeah, you know, measure twice, cut once. Don’t let the ruler slide around as you cut. I have a leak. I turned the thing upside down, and filled the siphon area to see if it will hold water. Nope, my work ‘sucks’ air. No worry. 100% Aquarium silicone to seal up the leak. **grin**
At work, the HVAC guy was in yesterday, trying to hunt down the leaks in the roof. (We had a leak the night before when it wasn’t raining, so there was an AC condensation buildup, the traps had gotten messed up this winter. )
He was tasked with sourcing the OTHER leaks as well (not sure how that’s his responsibility, but, to some a leak is a leak, if he can fix one, he can fix them all). Talk about mission impossible. Flat roof, with lots of stuff sitting on top, with holes poked through for whatnot.
Rainy day, the roof leaks. They can’t work on it in the rain. They come a day or two later. How do you catch the leak then?
My idea, send a ‘salesman’ out with my idea. Find the leak, mark it.
You know those 3/4 rotor UAV/RC helicopter thingys?
Yeah, like that.
Use one of those in the attic space to fly right up and have a look at the roof.
I am thinking dual video cameras, with rotating polarizers and multiple colored lights to make the water leaks visually ‘pop’ out at the UAV operator.
Basically, it would need to be a ‘smart’ R/C able to fly up to a wall, maybe even brush it, but not drive hard into it even if told to.
The UAV would need some pretty good sensors to keep from trying to fly through the wires that hold the ceiling tiles up, insulation, etc. If done right, you could probably even get it to fly through the roof structure steel ‘by feel’, letting it bump and dodge it’s way through.
Hrmm, a RC flier that can ‘feel’ it’s way through an obstacle course. Might be fun in the woods too…
