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.

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Tallow has a value of $8.00 lb, if turned into soap the dollar value increases significantly.

Each aluminum pan contains two pounds and there's a lot more where that came from.

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

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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.

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The seagull strikes again, our landfills do not have anyone willing to evacuate freon. I'm going to do the online course to get my ticket.

The metal piles are remote from an electrical supply, I have a belt driven compressor which I'll switch over to a small gasoline engine this will be more convenient than lugging around a generator in addition use less fuel.

I can purchase a portable scale which uses battery's.

My compressor used as a vacuum pump is large enough to tap into multiple fridges / freezers at a time.

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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.

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Originally Posted by hills

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.

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That Stainless steel water tank my bet is someone would be interested in ownership, would make a good still for essential oils or ethanol.

Now that the snow has melted first time this year in the back yard, living in town I either have to dismantle my treasures in the back yard or inside the shop. Anyhow after a trip to the landfill this afternoon came home with a load of microwaves.

In the back yard discovered I have another of the blue metal tanks, we use a fibre glass tank at the other house.

Yea replacing the whole tank is probably cheaper, the other day inquired on the price of a solenoid for my Jetta TDI diesel, $180.00 a new starter is $20.00 less expensive.

They don't want people fixing their own stuff anymore.

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 ? o:)

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.

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Originally Posted by hills

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.

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At our BC property we had a very large water tank with a snifter valve and that tank was at least 30 years old and still going strong when we moved, those bladder tanks maybe five years tops in this Province.

I often see small 2 gallon tanks attached to the water pump, and think to myself every time a toilet is flushed that pump fires up and the hydro meter spins, you absolutely right with the larger tank pump cycling is lowered.

Not many people are aware that when an electric motor starts there's a huge amperage draw.

Complete article - Here

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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.

All of the bladder tanks I've come across have failed bladders, my trip to the landfill this morning there was a water softer tank that had froze and split the casing. Often find discarded submersibles.

At the ranch had a 10 hp submersible used for irrigation, I had installed under ground PVC with hydrants 300 ft apart. The irrigation wheel held 900 ft o line a water turbine would reel the line back to the wheel when the canon made contact with a push bar the water would shut down raising the pressure.

The rise in pressure detected by the pressure switch at the pump house would turn the pump off, no bladder tank on the irrigation system.

I had also installed a submersible in the same well below the large 10 hp for domestic water, before that we were getting our water from a creek via gravity feed but our new born did not take kindly to this water supply from the creek.

Ranch had two water licenses, one on a river located across the main road and the creek above the property, gravity feed from the creek only required moving the aluminum pipes and clearing out minnows from the sprinkler heads.

Do I miss the ranch, No. It was too small to earn a decent living plus we had more horse than cattle.

A plumbing company would all on me when they had a work overload, one day got a call customer had no water. Water table had dropped below to what a single line pump could draw. Customers pump was convertible, just need to add a few parts.

This turned out the be the most miserable pump to get primed, keeping my words of disgust silent after a couple o hours finally had the pump primed. A week later the customer showed up at my shop giving me a brand new pipe wrench and a sears gift certificate, asked him what this was for and he replied it was for my conduct on the job.

On another pump install, new pump - customer is happy to have water.

A week later the outfit feeding me these odd jobs calls me up, when I arrive at their shop the counter guy is kinda nasty with me saying the pump had quit and that I would be replacing it free of labour costs.

No problem, I grab a new pump and get it installed, when I have a look at the pump just removed discover a slug had entered through the cooling vents at the rear of the motor.

Motor must have been in the off position when the slug entered, anyhow when the pump motor started with the slug in there the centrifugal start switch could not function as it should have. So the start winding's could not disengage.

When I get back to the plumbing shop told Terry to stuff it where the sun don't shine.

Was a good gig while it lasted, they paid me a rate well above an hourly wage.

The awesome part is the responsibility of keeping the pump motor free of trash including slugs would have been the customers duty.

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. :lol:

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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.

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Originally Posted by hills

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 ?

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To the best of my knowledge any oil, vegetable or animal based can be made into bi-diesel, I've previously used waste restaurant cooking oil which in its virgin state contains canola, some restaurants are using palm oil.

My father once told me during WWII when fuel was rationed the commercial fisherman on the Fraser River used fish oil for fuel.

The fish oil would have been derived from what is known as the candle-fish, the fish put into a large vat then allowed to ferment the oil floats to the top of the mass.

The majority of the gillnetters used Gardner diesels, many of these engines survive even today.

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It wouldn't be a bad thing if you could produce your own bio-diesel with the meat cuttings. You might have the time and certainly have the knowledge of chemistry. There seem to be some more changes in the wind.

OPEC + announced further crude oil production cuts a few weeks ago.

https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...ts-2023-04-02/

That's bound to drive energy costs higher. That will trigger even more inflation for everything we buy at the store. About the only good i can see coming from it all is that it should help support higher scrap metal prices.

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Smelts ... wow ... blast from the past. Catching smelts when they were running was a big thing here in my grandfather & father's day. Fishing is a prime driver of our local economy. It's so sad. We must have fished over 25 different species prior to the 1970's but the resource has been all but laid to waste now. The smelts haven't run here in years. Most of what little is left revolves around lobster fishing.

Was talking with a commercial lobster fisherman a few months ago and he said : " Now I know what Custer's last stand must have felt like. "

The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than any other body of water in the world. The lobsters are gradually migrating North away from the heat to the cooler waters off the coast of Canada. Good for you guys but not so great for us here in the states. Our way of life is slowly slipping through our fingers. Ohh well .... :(