The Seagull

My father long ago claimed I was like a seagull in that I would pick up anything I could get for nothing, now in my 70's nothing has changed.

Needed some bones to make bone ash for a smelting project, a logical source the local butcher shop. I now get all of their waste, once this waste has been rendered, I get gelatin, tallow, bone meal and dog food from the meat crumbs.

All of these products are easily converted into cash.

Building a larger rendering tank from landfill discards.

My $100.00 investment, the meat scraps and fatty tissues first ground to liberate the fats during the rendering process.

Just curious ... what was the tank in the first pic ? It looks like the right color for a Boiler Mate or Extrol tank but i've never seen one configured like that before.

Was the third pic a heating element from a water heater ? Opposite side of pic #2 ? Nice cut. Plasma cutter maybe ?

Blue tank is Extrol tank with a blown bladder, hot water tank heating element was cut out ti save the weld on scully flange which I''ll reuse on the rendering tank I'm building.

The thermostat used to regulate the water temperature. so I don't have to baby sit.

Cut was made using a zip abrasive blade.

Interesting stuff. I've never seen the metal Extrol tanks done that way before. The fiberglass water pressure tanks supposedly have a replaceable air bladder but the plumbers just throw them away and install a new one. Saves a lot of time when they're billing $ 60.00/hr.

Ran into a stainless steel hot water tank today. It was something along the lines of a boiler mate in the way it functions but had a stainless steel heating coil installed with the Scully flanges. The heating coil for the boiler mate mounts in like the flanged Extrol tank in the first pic.

Well .... i think the world has changed some from when we were young. Was in the trades for 30 years and running my own small carpentry outfit for sixteen of them. There's a lot of pressure to get the job done as quickly as possible nowadays. It might only take 45 minutes to swap out a pressure tank with a new one. It could take hours to swap out the air bladder. All the while ... the labor meter is running.

I think another factor is the warranty on labor & materials. Throw in something new .... you probably won't get a callback on it for years. Fix an old thing and you might have to come back in a year or two when it reaches end of life. The customer gets PO'd because they had to pay for it twice.

Whew ... i hear ya on the Jetta solenoid. The center bearing on the drive shaft for my Subaru Outback went a few months ago. You can't even buy the center bearing anymore. You have to buy the whole prop shaft assembly from front to back.

That one has turned into a saga. First tried ordering the center bearing on ebay. They cancelled the order after a couple of days. Ordered a new shaft assy from rockauto and that failed in the first month. Eventually figured out that i'm gonna have to go OEM and that one is scheduled for tomorrow. What should have been a simple $ 30.00 part replacement has turned into a project that will probably run over a grand by the time it's all said & done.

Humm .... let's see ... how many pounds of #2 copper does that work out to ?

Yeah ... the blue tanks like the one in your back yard seem to last longer but the plug up with rust where it does a 90 deg if you have a lot of elemental iron in your well water. They seem to clean out pretty good with muriatic acid but you have to be careful.



Found a nice Amtrol WX -250 on the dump years ago. Carefully cleaned it up and put it back into service. Having such a large tank really cut down on the pump cycles and saved on the electric bill. It's nice when the power goes out too. You have more of a draw down before the tank runs dry.

It's funny ... i've seen quite a few of the galvanized tank setups in the older places i've worked on over the years but never had call to actually work on one. They were all phased out in favor of the bladder tanks by the time i came on the scene about 35 years ago. Almost all of the jet pumps have been phased out in favor of submersibles now as well.

I think it has to do with the water table here. A single pipe jet is only good to 30 feet before it starts to cavitate. A two pipe jet with a foot valve is pretty much limited to 100 feet. It's not uncommon for our drilled wells to be 200 - 500 feet deep so a submersible is needed for that job.

The submersibles seem to pair well with the bladder tanks. They usually give you at least twenty years of trouble free service as long as the installation was done right. In a way ... those submersibles are almost too reliable. The impeller stacks slowly wear over the years and there's an imperceptible loss in pump efficiency. That results in longer run cycles from "cut in" to "cut out". You end up using more electricity.

It would almost be better of they had to swap out the pumps with new one a little more often.

Maine is cold, but your part of the world must be much colder in the winter. I wonder if your bladder tanks freeze more often than ours do.

I trained under a Master Plumber / Master heating technician for about five years while i was working in building maintenance. He was a good teacher. Later on i worked as a journeyman plumber for a few years then moved on to run the local municipal water district for awhile. It was all good work. Plenty of new learning and fun challenges to take on.

I was thinking about that 2 pipe jet pump conversion you did and it brought back a fond memory. Was called in to work on one and it seemed like the foot valve was plugged with sediment because it didn't seem to be working quite right. A two pipe system works like a counterweight elevator. Water going down the return side helps lift water up to the pump intake side.

Lol ... well i got a bright idea but more likely it was just dumb luck. (Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn.)

I detached both pipes from the pump and figured i would run compressed air down the return side to clear the foot valve. Miracle of miracles ... water came jetting up the intake side and soaked me from the waist down !

Discovered a new way to pump water with my air compressor that day. Never had a problem priming a two pipe jet pump after that little incident.

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Just for fun ... check the air pressure valve at the top of those bladder tanks on the dump sometime. There's no mistaking a water logged pressure tank where the bladder has burst. Those suckers are heavy.

My experience has been that most of the tanks have the bladders intact and are pressurized vessels. It's fun to pierce them with the thumb of the backhoe when i'm tending the metals pile in the morning. They go off with a bang !

(Pretty good for getting the neighbors up and ready for work at 6:00 A.M.)

Priming a shallow well pump using vacuum from the service truck engine, you need a quart jar installed inline with a shut off valve. Close off the vacuum when water begins to fill the jar or you could end up hydro locking the engine.

The main problem as i understand it ... is lift. You can only lift water under a vacuum to a depth of 30 feet or so before air bubbles start to develop. You lose your prime.

I suppose you could think of it this way. There are gasses dissolved in the water. Lowering the pressure causes the dissolved gasses to come out of solution. It's kinda like opening up a bottle of carbonated soda. Crack the cap, drop the pressure in the bottle, and all the little bubbles form.

Same basic idea i guess.

That's the virtue of having a submersible pump at the bottom of the well.

I was wondering with the butcher shop waste alloy. Is it possible to make something like diesel fuel by rendering the animal fats ? Seems like it might come in handy as a heating fuel source during a cold Canadian winter. Maybe even run your car on it ?

Yes vacuum will lift water to 30 ft at atmospheric pressure at sea level at higher elevations the amount of lift decreases.

Also at higher elevations water will boil at a lower temperature and or this reason liquid cooled engines have radiator caps rated at 15 psi. The cap mechanically keeps the coolant at sea level regardless of the elevation.

The new precision digital sale recently purchased due to the elevation of where I live, the sale had to be re calibrated to compensate for this.

A: All scales are affected by altitude. Weight is essentially the pull of gravity. The further from the core of the Earth, the less gravity, thus the less you weigh.