Crikey it’s wet

[nomadpete]

6 hours ago, old man emu said:

Although I'm not getting any rain, I'm getting strong winds. It is strange. The wind seems to start about 10:30 pm and blows strongly until about 9:00 am the next morning. Then it weakens and goes calm for most of the day. When it is blowing, the wind speed is high enough to break limbs from trees.

Sounds like a great spot for a wind turbine.

[old man emu]

Apparently a wind farm is going to be created about 15 kms southwest of my place. 

[facthunter]

Will THAT get off the ground?  Nev

[old man emu]

I think that the company constructing the windmills will have to be propped up.

[facthunter]

They are called "Turbines" for some reason . Extremely efficient Variable Pitch Blades.   A Moving Piece of ART. . Like a good aeroplane or Sailboat.  Nev

 

[facthunter]

At SOME Places.. Nev

[old man emu]

Sarturay night Camden NSW recorded a totoal of 140 mm of rain. The Camden area over the p[ast 20 years and more so recently has been turned from open grazing land to residential estates. Remember the old song Tar and Cement ? The area was always prone to flooding as it lies in the valley of the Nepean/Hawkesbury River. With all that grazing land now covered with roads and houses, I reckon the flooding will be of biblical proporttions.

 

Meanwhile, the Sun till shines and Maria blows.

 

 

[facthunter]

They SURE Put houses in Silly Places. Money Talks. Nev

[onetrack]

Developers always want to make millions from every scrap of "available" land and are intent on ignoring flood plain water height records - and they always manage to capture shire councillors to support them. They either bribe the councillors or dazzle them with the level of extra income the council will get from the development.

 

Nearly every country in the world is the same. Americans keep building in the floodplain of the mighty Mississippi - and every Mississippi flood is bigger and higher than the last one, because all the developments slow up the downstream movement of floodwaters, so the flooding upstream becomes worse.

[Jerry_Atrick]

It has been raining here for about three weeks. At least the Brit humour shines through on the sign in this article: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/31/climate-crisis-flood-risk-britain

[old man emu]

Yesterday it got to 46C inside my place. All I could do was sit on the lounge and read a book with the evaporative cooler blowing cold air in my direction. I went to the kitchen to rinse a glass and nearly burned my hand on the tap. In the afternoon cloud started to build up. Later that evening I watched the lightning in the clouds downwind. When I woke up this morning, my bedsheets and pillow were drenched with sweat. I looked outside and the sky was clouded over, but the clouds were too high to suggest rain coming soon. So I threw my bedding into the washing machine, figuring that in the heat and low humidity it would dry before any rain came. Now it's midday and the cloud has moved downwind. At least my bedding is dry so I can remake my bed for another sweaty night.

 

All week the temperature has been in the high 30s, rising to 40+ by late afternoon. I woke up this morning with no energy. I don't know if that's because it has been too hot to make me feel like eating, or if I've lost electrolytes. It's getting close to midday and the temperature is 36C. After what I have endured this week, 36C feel cool. Luckily I'll be going into see Mum this afternoon. She's got air conditioning.

[facthunter]

You can MAKE a crude evaporative system with  wet bags and some fans. You can't take that Level of temperature. a PROPER EVAPORATIVE SYSTEM  uses quite a Bit of water and you regulate it by Opening window s to let the cooled  Air Pass through the space you. want to cool. They don't work well in high Humidity but should be good where you are. I had a BIG one on the roof at Lake BOGA (near Swan Hill) at the Vinyard. (and a refrigerated COOL ROOM IF it got too Bad). Nev

[onetrack]

The old outback stations all had a room with broombush (brush-wood) walls, an iron-roof, and with water sprays trickling water down the walls from a tank mounted up high. In essence, a big evaporative cooler or Coolgardie safe.

 

People retreated to the coolroom on days that were blisteringly hot, usually over about 42 degrees. Naturally, you needed a good water supply, which most outback stations had, via bores and windmills.

 

Edited 17 hours ago by onetrack

[pmccarthy]

I like our evap ducted unit. I like the humidity.SWMBO wants to replace it with a refrig type.

[Jerry_Atrick]

We must have had a very inefficient evap ducted unit in the house I rented in Bendigo. It really did nothing discernable to the temperature, but we could feel the humidity. Refridgerant airconditioners seemed to get the temperature down to where it was needed. But, jeepers, it was expensive to run.

[red750]

Our little wheel around refrig unit created plenty of water for the pot plants on our recent 40¯ day.

[onetrack]

We've got a big 3HP Mitsubishi reverse cycle air conditioner that cools virtually the whole house when it's running, and we keep the house closed up.

The unit isn't that expensive to run, but we've got 6.8Kw of solar panels on the roof that do a good job of keeping the power bill down. 

 

The original unit went well for 18 years, then a power surge blew the circuit board in the A/C section on the inside wall. It effectively meant we had to scrap it. No-one would accept responsibility for the power surge. We know it was caused by tree loppers a few streets away, they dropped a limb over a power line, and when Western Power restored the power again, it surged and blew the board.

 

WP refused point blank to accept any responsibility and our insurance company declined to pay for repairs or replacement, because the power line didn't fall on our property.

So we had to wear the $1800 cost to replace the entire unit. We bought an identical unit, as the Mitsubishi A/C's we have, have performed so well.

We have two other units in 2 bedrooms, they are 1HP each, and they have been in service since 2005 and still work admirably.

 

Evaporative A/C's are alright up to a point, then you have to open up the house to get rid of the humidity buildup.

[red750]

My wife and I moved into this house with our two young toddler sons just before Christmas 1978. The temps were very high that year, so we had a reverse cycle wall mounted unit installed in the lounge room. We rarely used the heater function, because the house had ducted gas heating. In hot weather my wife used to sleep in the lounge room. The unit is still working and was a boon for my daughter last week.