Our baby owl is about to fly!

We want to talk a little bit about our pump and water system here at the park, but before we get to that we'll show you some more pictures of our baby owl. Actually, it's not so much a baby anymore...it's a youngster.

The changes in the owlet have been amazing over the last two weeks...

Here's the first picture we saw, taken May 8th...

Just a baby.

Taken yesterday, May 20th. Mom seems to be giving the little one a bath.

"Hey Mom, leave me alone!"

Ruth has been doing some research, and apparently the young owls leave the nest and start walking on nearby branches at about 6 weeks old. At that point, it is another week or so and they begin to test their wings, but they don't become competent flyers until they are about 12 weeks old.

Yesterday was the first time we saw it outside the nest.

Okay, on to our pump and water system. I think now that I have it figured out, but if anybody has any ideas for improvement, I'm all ears!

Here's the pump itself...

The black hose to the left supplies the campground, and of course the white hose on the right is the intake from the lake. The green hose is simply a bleed off hose with a tap valve on it. We use that valve and hose to keep the bucket on top full when priming and bleeding the system of air.

The whole thing is pretty unsightly.

The main problem has been the water level. Where that bucket is floating is only about two feet deep. The intake filter and check valve has a brick on the end of it that sits on the bottom, and the floating bucket has a rope that is about five feet long to keep the intake off the bottom. Right now, the flotation system doesn't work of course because of the low water level. The water level will supposedly rise about six feet over the next month or so.

The system has a pressure switch.

The system is designed with the pump supposed to be running constantly 24/7. But they've installed a pressure switch that shuts off the power if the pressure drops below 40 psi. We try and keep the pressure at this part of the line around 80 psi when everything is working properly.

This T is simply a pressure release valve. The pipe going straight ahead supplies the campground, and the valve to the left bleeds back into the lake. It is this valve that we use to adjust the water pressure.

Bleeding back into the lake.

When the system is working, it works well. But what's been happening is that the system shuts down for no apparent reason. 

I'll have it fired up and running fine for hours on end, and then out of nowhere it shuts down. The cause of the shutdown is that the water pressure drops below 40 psi and the pressure switch kicks in and shuts off the power. When I go to fix things, the entire intake line is full of air, not water. So what's happening is that the intake is somehow getting a gulp of fresh air, and the pump instantly loses it's prime. I know that it's related to the low water level, but I still couldn't figure out why it would run for literally hours without a problem, and then stop. I think what may have been happening is that it's causing a vortex and that the intake is close enough to the surface that the vortex sucks some air.

So, after the above pictures were taken, I fashioned a longer intake pipe and got the intake filter out into some deeper water...

This seems to have fixed the problem, because when we woke up this morning, the pump and water system are still working! First time since we've been here that it hasn't shut down overnight.

On to something else.

Last year, the campground purchased a brand new fancy zero turn mower. I haven't talked about it yet because it's been sitting in the corner of the shop waiting for new blades. This brand new fancy mower (worth $8,000 or so at least!) hadn't had any service work done to it since it was new, and was simply parked in the corner last fall without even as much as a thought about cleaning it up for storage. Covered in grass clipping and mud.

I'm sorry, but whoever was the manager last year was useless. Obviously had zero pride in equipment maintenance. Or the maintenance of anything for that matter.

But the new blades came in the other day, so yesterday I put them on and got the machine cleaned up. They sent me the wrong oil filter, so I'll pick up the proper one today and get the oil changed for the first time. Fortunately, it's only got about 42 hours on it so it's not like it was overdue for an oil change, but it still should have been done before being stored last fall.

All cleaned up.

 The mower you see in the top left is our old one, but it still works fine. Our hired help parked it there and didn't clean it off first. He's been told.

Yesterday evening, we took a walk in the hills behind the park.

The leaves are starting to come out.

A deer making it's way through the park.

It feels like summer has arrived! Calling for sunshine and 24C (75F) today, and sunny and 27C (81F) tomorrow. Yeehaw!