Nice big-ish compressor for nowt!!

[Jonzjob]

Yesterday we had a de chetterie run and just as we were leaving I saw a

nice big-ish red compressor outside the office. People leave stuff there

for anyone who can use it. I was told that the woman who bought it in

just said it didn't work.

So now I have a nice big-ish red

compressor [8-|] that runs fine, but doesn't pressurise the tank. there

is slight pressure but not enough to show on the guage.

So far I

have disconnected the compressor to tank pipe, lots of air flow. Swapped

the tank pressure guage with my small compressor and run the small one,

the guage is OK. The small machines guage in the big job still shows no

pressure.

So I took the head off to have aa gander at the

gubbins and found 2 reed valves, one for in and one for out. The out one

was in 2 bits!! Golly gosh was my expression and I had the idea that I

have a couple of sets of feeler gauges that haven't been used in years.

IBM standard issue! I measured the thickness with my dial very near,

vernier to you, 10 thou. So after I have chut a 10 thou feeler to size I

fitted it and then put the head back on and tried it.

This is the head and shows both the broken bit and the new. It's 25 metric things and as near as dammit to 10 thou

[URL=http://s47.photobucket.com/user/Jonzjob/media/Odds%20and%20sods/IMG_1175_zpse1c4gxkw.jpg.html][IMG]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f180/Jonzjob/Odds%20and%20sods/IMG_1175_zpse1c4gxkw.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

The cylinder bit

[URL=http://s47.photobucket.com/user/Jonzjob/media/Odds%20and%20sods/IMG_1174_zpsgor1z6im.jpg.html][IMG]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f180/Jonzjob/Odds%20and%20sods/IMG_1174_zpsgor1z6im.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Now I am the proud owner of a big-ish, 50 ltr, compressor for nowt but a bit of my time

[Théière]

Nice one Jonz, I love finds like that. Had several small successes where people chuck out things with just a fuse blown.

[Alan Zoff]

Amazes me what folk will throw away. We have quite a few cast-offs.

A couple who had bought a house nearby asked if I would mind taking an "old lawnmower" to the tip for them in my trailer. It was a Webb petrol mower which looked a little tired but cleaned up nicely and after a quick service, I soon found that it ran perfectly. It has been cutting our lawns for the past 6 years and starts on the first pull every time. Easy to empty grass collector, too. Better than any mower I have paid good money for!

[Chancer]

Only one thing gives me more pleasure thanr ecycling something that someone else has thrown away and that is on the rare occasions that I cannot fix something i give it to someone cleverer than I who can, also when I have no choice but to throw away something serviceable like the excess materials that I have at the moment that someone can take them and use them, so thats two thngs really.

 

Trouble is that around here there is a real mentalité méchante people beg things from me with the longest and most (un)convincing of sob stories when in fact all they want to do is get the item for free and sell it, I have called many out after seeing my (now their) stuff on Leboncoin or at rédéries, worse still people will borrow something and when I have to ask for its return (because they never return anything, to them if you are stupid to lend you deserve to lose) then they lie and say they returned  it to me with another long and detailed fairy story, again I find my stuff on Leboncoin or them selling it at a rédérie, its come to blows before now when I took back my invertor welder, they were shouting out for help saying that I was stealing it, and these were neighbours [:(]

 

So at the déchetterie anything put to one side is being sold by the operator, OK I sort of get that but when people have no luck selling their broken stuff as good running order and finally dump it they will systematically destroy it so as to make sure that no-one else could give it a second life, I saw a compressor once, the déchetterie guy wanted money for it but when I looked  someone had disc cut grooves into the tank, underneath where they couldn't be seen, not all the way through but enough to weaken it so that it would explode and maim possibly kill when pressurised, they were fresh shiny cuts done within the last 24 hours.

 

Now had they drilled a hole in the tank to prevent it being pressurised because it was rusted and weakened I would completely get that, we do that with diving cylinders that have failed test and must never be used again, but no, this was plain méchanceté like putting razor blades in a halloween treat. 

[Jonzjob]

That is the difference with our guy C. He is totally genuine and will

help anyone. We have been really lucky and on the odd occasion that we

have had to go to another dechet we really notice the difference.

We are on first name terms with the boss there and take anything we want to be rid of for other people, so there is a ballance. As we are sorting out for our move that is getting more too! [:-))]

When we go with our trailer full of garden waste he takes the fork off of SWMBO and helps me empty it. When our neighbour takes her trailer he reverses it up to the skip and does the same for her. He is a real gem!

That sounds like a really nasty and stupid thing to do to a pressure tank! Hopefully the bloke in charge made sure it was destroyed!

I have just had a gander at my new toy and all is well and nice and shiny red, no marks at all..

[Chancer]

If only, he was pi55ed off that he wasn't on to the earner that he tought he was and promptly went to the benne with all the cans of paint and aérosols to find something to hide the deadly weaknesses [:(]

 

This is a special area, not much surprises me now but last night i was saddened to hear the owner of a dance school congratulating my friend who teaches ballet and contemporary dance there on how much the children love her, how patient and inspirational she is to the handicapped children or those with learning disabilities of which there are many, then she said that it was bad for the school because last year she had a deputation of parents demanding that a trisomique child be removed from their daughters class and when she did not the numbers for that class dropped from 12 to 5 including the charming trisomique girl, this was 3 weeks into the year which they had all paid for.

 

A female neighbour asked me deadpan and serious did i know that the dentist i was using was a pédé? I thought perhaps she meant paedophile but no it was indeed that he was homosexual, I said why should that bother me and she copped the hump, said it was my look-out and that she would never allow someone like him to treat her daughter [:(]

[Jonzjob]

"that she would never allow someone like him to treat her daughter"

??? [8-)] I would have thought that he would be the safest person to be with. Silly woman!

[Chancer]

Exactly.

 

Back to recycling stuff, I had some Lidl or Aldi domino induction hobs, worked fine on test then I stored them in the cave while the reno continued, lent one to some friends to be told it didnt work and they were right, on testing neither did the other, I spent lots of time testing but lack the electronic Equipment that I had sold on (again pleasure to know that a student would get good use from mu oscilloscope) so I sold them both as spares on UK E-bay.

 

Only got 99P for them, one had one working ring which went to a guy for warming his homebrew mixes, the other to a hobbyist, I asked him to tell me if he found what the fault was and could repair it, he said that the fans were stuck and the unit would not heat unless they were operational, just needed an initial push start, it gave me great pleasure to tell the other guy what to do to get the second ring working on his one.

 

Contrarily I have found with customers whether it be fixing their broken down car or an access control system or automatic gate if i told them that it was in fact a very simple fault they would often get angry with me.

[dave21478]

My local dump is sickening. It used to be an old-fashioned place where you could dump pretty much anything and take anything too. Now, the local dump literally has better security than the local bank. Electrified fences topped with razor wire, cctv everywhere, nightshift gaurds....

Anything that goes in stays in...nothing can be removed so now I get to look at the piles of old mowers and bicycles in the metal bins, vacuum cleaners, tvs and laptops in the electronics containers etc and can take nothing.

I pointed out that me repairing or repurposing something was better than it being shipped to China to be melted down to make more cheap toss, but nope....interdit.

Coincidentally* these changes happened when it was taken over by Veolia and it became less about disposing of rubbish and more about making money.

[Théière]

[quote user="dave21478"] these changes happened when it was taken over by Veolia and it became less about disposing of rubbish and more about making money.[/quote]

Nail squarely hit on the head,

[powerdesal]

I once worked for Veolia - not a nice company.

[nomoss]

Some while ago I met Mr Malherbe Jean-Pascal, of La Livinière, an interesting man, who was pulling stuff out of the bins at the local dechetterie.

He gave me his card and told me he would collect anything I wanted to get rid of which might be useful, as he said there were plenty of poor people around who could use things that others threw away.

Out of interest we drove over to his place, not too far from us. There we found he has a large collection of antique objects, from bedsteads, furniture and doors, to crockery and trinkets, housed in a series of lean-to shacks around a courtyard, although he specialises in, and collects old locks, keys, hardware, and ironwork.

I asked him if he would be interested in taking away some things we had, and the following day he turned up with two strapping sons, who loaded an amazing amount, in weight and volume, into a battered Renault Express. This included, among other items, a bathroom suite, two fake stone fire surrounds and a 2 1/2 metre long slab of hardwood which the previous owner of our hose must have intended as a table top. It took two trips, and the tyres of the van were just about touching the inside of the wheel arches, but that didn't worry him at all.

We now call him whenever we have things to dispose of which seem to be too good to throw in the tip, and he always turns up with a beaming smile, pleased to take them away.