Air Compressor Still Limping

Pool Near Full


Oh...I don't know...where to start this morning?

Of course I couldn't just run over to Home Depot yesterday and buy a couple feet of hose and some hose clamps and come home 20 minutes later...things only come out that way something like 1 out of 100 trips and I'd already had my lucky single repair part purchasing trip sometime earlier in 2009.

This time the difficulty was because HD no longer has the hose selection they once carried and I needed small 1/4" diameter hose capable of handling 110 PSI of pressure.

Clear vinyl aquarium tubing wouldn't cut it, so on down the road to Lowe's we went.

They had exactly what I wanted--all $0.60 worth--and after rummaging around to find the hose clamps (two isles over) I was on my way with Pat and the Turbo Pup in tow.

Makes sense to me to sell tubing on one isle in plumbing and clamps in the garden or lumber department, doesn't it? Using the same logic I think WalMart should start selling boxer shorts in the shoe department and socks in automotive.

So any way, then the guy at the register fumbled around getting the price on the hose and in the process FAILED TO PUT IT IN THE BAG with the weed killer and other odds and ends we purchased and we didn't notice until we were back home and I started working.

So then we had to go BACK to Lowe's to retrieve my 60 cent hose.

Long story even longer...an hour and a half later my thirty minute shopping trip was complete and within another twenty minutes I had cut out the bad section of aluminum tubing and spliced in the new flexible section of tubing.

Both of the new clamped connections held for...OH...about 45 seconds before the one that is hardest to reach decided to blow apart.

Possessing the vast experience gained by opening the compressor housing earlier, the follow up repairs were completed again in less than five minutes with an extra bit of torque applied to all four hose clamps in the jury rigged temporary air passage.

I reassembled the housing and this time managed to blow up the entire top ring of the little cheep above ground pool before again having my air plumbing system suffer a rupture after about a minute and one half of operation.

The poor thing (the compressor) spent the night on the carport in it's feverish condition because I didn't have the patience to open it all back up again and by then it was near 90 degrees in the back yard and my face and head was melting in the sun.

I took the rest of the afternoon off and cooked a couple of my soon to be internationally famous pizzas for our guests and after the toddler and the Turbo Pup called a truce and sat down at the same coffee table everyone chowed down.

A few beers and a cigar later and I was done for the evening.

Today the Turbo Pup and I have the house to ourselves as Pat escorts the guests to that tourist hell known as Gatlinburg to do the Ripley's Aquarium and eat queer things like funnel cakes and buy trinkets you never knew you couldn't do without.

I'm going back to bed as soon as they leave...see y'all later...