Hurray! It Works!
After 3 months of waiting, installing, flooding, more waiting, shipping, fixing, and re-installing, we washed our first load of laundry Saturday!
Oh, man, it was beautiful.
Previously, Sylvia, the lady who works in our house, had been amazingly hand-washing all of our clothes in the sometime bug-ridden basin out back. This will ease a bit of her work, and also keep some of our favorite t-shirts from getting so stretched out.
Now for the final hurdle: learning to use the blooming thing. You’d think it would be easy, but somehow it ends up reminding me of the helicopter story. So to help, we’ve taped a photocopy of the instructions up on the wall above the machine:
Yikes.
It’s true about the helicopters. The most amazing part of flight school was learning the helicopter systems and how all the effects/counter-effects were countered. With modern systems, it’s all digital, but back in the 60s when most were designed, all the feedback mechanisms were analog, and based on fluid flow, rotational speed, centripital force, etc. Absolutely incredible the amount of math and engineering that had to go into those systems.
One of the neatest parts of the Blackhawk is the mechanical mixing unit, which takes all the inputs from those 4 systems that the article talked about and using levers and offset hinges adjusts the output of other systems to cancel out 90% of the feedback. Every single pilot I’ve flown with has no idea how the thing works, they all call it black magic.
Woohoo! Clean clothes… you gotta love them. And, oh my dear Lord… THOSE BUGS ARE HUGE! I’m glad you don’t have to share your laundry with them any longer!
Looks like all your precious greywater is going down the sink. You should try collecting it to water your plants. When you get into town I will show you this cool book about creating greywater wetlands. How cool would that be. You could have a wetland in Tanzania. Hope you two are doing well. Peapod says hey.
Your Dorky brother in law
Andrew: Holy crap, that’s fascinating!
Jamie: I know! Sylvia laughed when I busted out the camera.
Michael: We’ll totally have to look at that book when we’re there. We’re actually forming a small wetland in our driveway as we speak, but I think that’s just because a water pipe broke underground. It’s already playing host to some really interesting green stuff…