Greg In The Desert

In Mid April I started a Solarization experiment where I use solar heating to kill off everything in the soil of my back yard. So far the results have been mixed.

The weather in Rio Rancho has cycled between days of heat and days of cool with rain. The cool days help to create a greenhouse effect under the plastic that cause plants to grow and the days of heat have killed them off. This is good since it’s easier to kill plants than seeds. Hopefully everything that can sprout has sprouted and died.

Since we haven’t had enough days of heat in a row, I don’t think the ground has really baked deep into the soil. It doesn’t appear it has baked the surface enough to decompose organic matter there.

The cycle of rain and heat appear to be over and we are now we are just getting heat. Parts of dead vegetation with sharp edges along with the prolonged time in the heat has caused some of the plastic to break down and break apart. Of the two sheets I put down one has almost completely broken down. The other sheet of plastic is partly shaded and has held together, it is currently experiencing a greenhouse effect with some plants growing underneath.

All the early summer rain has caused a large amount of goat heads plants (Tribulus terrestris) to sprout outside of the solarization area. I did my best to pick the plants but I had to violate my rule of not using chemicals and apply Roundup to a most of the back yard. My concern with using Roundup is the potential of creating weeds that are resistant to Roundup. Also, Roundup is turning out to be toxic.

This will be one of the few times I used chemicals to control weeds. Depending on how much time I have for the rest of this summer, I will try to apply more plastic to the backyard to take advantage of the late summer heat.

A few days ago I wrote about Google using goats to control grass on their property. Techcrunch didn’t seem impressed and was worried about the jobless human mowers.

The city of Mesa, Arizona has used 70 goats for the last 50 months to clear vegetation around a water reclamation plant. They expect to save $10,000 by using goats.

Besides being cost effective, it reduces the use of fossil fuels, toxic chemicals and pesticides. It’s a pollution-free way of ridding the three retention ponds of compromising vegetation, Satter said.

Goats’ bodies break down plants in such a way that they won’t grow back when it becomes waste, making the job more permanent than what a machine can do.

It’s not mentioned how many people it took to mow the grass with machines vs. taking care of goats. I suspect goats are more labor intensive that mowers.

Sometimes doing your own repairs on cars saves money but its also good to consider how much your time is worth. I recently helped a friend to do repairs on their 1997 Saturn SC2 Coupe and the car was not drivable for almost two weeks because the window couldn’t be rolled up. A simple problem turned into long down time for the vehicle.

The powered passengers side window was having problems rolling up. The first thing I did, and in hindsight was the wrong thing, was to roll the window all the way down. Previously when it wouldn’t roll up my friend would push it up with their hands. Apparently rolling it all the way down locks the window into place and it wouldn’t roll up even with manual force.

It was a Thursday afternnon and New Mexico’s warm weather was turning to cold, wind and rain. Not the ideal weather for having a car with a window that wont roll up. I have never dealt with a window regulator, that’s what they call the scissor like mechanism that moves the window up and down on a power window. That didn’t stop me from removing the door panels to take a look. Somehow I thought that I could remove the panel, do something, and the window would now magiclly work. What that something was wasn’t clear to me at the time.

Saturns are a different kind of car, they have a plastic outer door panel and the outside panel must be removed with about 10 metric torx screws. Before the door panel can come off the door handle needs to be removed. Instead of being held in with a screw it has a plastic pin that holds it in. Easy enough, you pull the head of the pin out and it door handle comes off.

Except when the plastic pin head breaks off half way. I ended up drilling out the pin. If your intereated in how this works, I recomemnd viewing a video on YouTube by richpin06a entilted “Rear Outer Door Panel Removal Saturn S-series“. It looks so easy in the video.

Before I took the door off, I looked at removing the switch first. I couldn’t figure out how to remove it from the center console and taking it apart appeared to be a complicated mess. Taking the door apart looked easier and that’s why I started there. Mistake number two.

Once I had the door off and the glass out of the door I could check the electrical connection to the regulator motor. There are two wires when depending on the direction of the window one wire or the other gets 12 volts with the other wire going to ground. I checked the power to the motor in both directiosn and I was getting 12 volts on both wires. I determined the motor was defective.

We called around and no one had a motor in stock. I thought it would be a good idea just to replace the whole regulator since I had to pull it off anyways to replace the motor. Nobody had the the regulator either except the dealer. Saturn of Albuquerque is now part of Galles Chevrolet so we called them and ordered it. They said the part would be in town in two days.

In two days we called Galles Chevrolet and they had no record of an order being placed. They placed another order along with payment and said it would be in town in two days. Two more days passed, we called and again no record of an order being placed. I can’t imagine why General Motors is on the edge of bankruptcy.

That night we determined that Galles was getting its part from Saturn of Santa Fe. We decieded to go to Santa Fe the next day and get the part ourself. We we called Saturn of Santa Fe the next day they didn’t have the part. Where the fuck was Galles getting their estimates? Apparently from up their ass.

We are in something like a week and a half of the car setting in a garage because the window wont roll up. We ordered the part from Autozone. After another few days of waiting the part arrived. It was the correct part for this car but the plastic housing had to be modified for it to fit. The motor was installed, glass put in. I tried to roll up the window with the new regulator motor and the window would still not roll up.

I thought that maybe the realay for the window was bad, perhaps it tested fine without a load but was failing when amperage was applied. I replaced the relay but it didn’t improve the situation.

Somehow, out of desperation while sitting in the drivers set reviewing all the troubleshooting steps I figured out that hte center console didn’t have to be taked apart adn the window switch came out with enough force.

I took the switch out took it apart to find the plastic worn and black soot on the inside. I cleaned up the switch and reinstalled it and the widnow now rolled up. When checking the power to the motor I should have verified voltage using the ground through the wire, I used chassis ground. It makes perfect sense… now.

I ended up breaking the drivers side switch when I took it apart so a new one needed orderd. Both windows were rolled up so the car was at least drivable until a new switch could be acquired. Total cost was about $250 and it took about 2 weeks to get the car drivable again. Next time I will roll the window up and start at the switch.

Some people in a Rio Rancho neighborhood hit by a water main break on Sunday are saying that the city isn’t doing its part to assure that they have clean, drinkable water. “It’s just getting really old,” said Renee Popovich, a homeowner near Rockaway and Pyrite in northeast Rio Rancho. “We’re not getting any support from the city to provide at least drinking water for the residents.” Popovich said that her children had to spend the night with friends so they had water to get ready for school on Monday morning. The break carved out a mini arroyo in front of several homes leaving people unable to back their cars out of their driveways. Rio Rancho officials say that they are aware of the problem and have recently removed asphalt over the water main in preparation for repairing the faulty pipes, which have failed several times in recent months.

The city came and fixed the water main break in front of my house pretty quickly. This break seems much worse than mine which might be part of the problem. Perhaps the city should do a better job of communicating to the residents the problems in fixing this and how long it’s going to take so it doesn’t end up on the news. Just sayin’.