Batteries, again.

So last night was a phone-charging night....

A very few hours into the day, I noticed that the battery was much depleted.  Like, estimated cutoff in the middle of the afternoon.  Wut?  That battery should be good for about four days from full charge.

Ponder.  Check info on phone: not helpful.

Reboot phone.  Connect to a charger for a while.  Drain is now looking more reasonable.

And it appears that Google Play Services is running amok; surely it should just be checking for updates, and that shouldn't eat the charge in a hurry... right?

 

Anyway.  Late morning, head off on errands.  Well, try to.  Prius has a dead 12V battery, again.  Well, I hadn't driven it for a week or so (errands planned for last week having gotten postponed for one reason or another).

Get out the jumpstarter.  Getting it to stay on for more than a few seconds takes several tries on the boost button.  Eventually get the car started.  Let it run for 15 minutes or so.  Go off for half an hour getting organized.  Return to car: no start.

(Oh, yes: when I first tries to connect the jumpstarter, the positive lead came loose from the battery.  Eh?  Better torque it down good next time.)

Foo faddle!

Run errands in truck instead.  Discover that the nurseries don't have the little vegetable sproutlings in yet, and the standalone nurseries aren't even open.  Buy groceries.

Afternoon, take battery out of Prius.  Got 5.5V on it, oog.  Connect it to the charger, which gets it up to 7.2V and then proceeds toward a proper 12V charge.  Currently sitting there charging.

Interestingly, the previous battery is sitting out there, disconnected from the charger the past few months, and it's still showing a bit over 12V.  Maybe I'll top it up, put it in the car, and leave the newer one on the charger...?

And: I should probably be checking battery voltage every so often.  Could be the car isn't charging its little battery properly for some reason.  (I guess checking voltage before starting, and while running, might be a good idea.  But, if it's not charging?  I think that's a function of the $$$inverter$$$.

 

Our female duck showing signs of getting up to speed on the egg-laying thing - she's been laying one egg a day, mostly the size of chicken eggs, but yesterday's was the size of a proper duck egg - I did in fact go ahead and order an incubator from Amazon, picking one that gets mostly good reviews, seems to have almost the level of automation I'd want, and is reportedly good for both chicken and duck (and possibly also quail too).  Also a heater thingy for a brooder.  Guess once the eggs are consistently large I'll accumulate half a dozen and then run an incubator cycle.

 

And, I finally got around to removing the painter's tape that had been keeping drafts out of the bedroom and installing new, more suitable weather stripping on the French doors.  It's still not right; I think some fiddling with the hinges will also be required, but we're out of Winter so it's not urgent.

There's also weather stripping on the bottoms of the doors, and that's in sorry shape, but I don't feel like removing the doors right now to examine the situation.  Again, not urgent.

 

Update, Sunday afternoon:  Topped up the old battery and put it in.  With the car in READY, I see 14.00V at the battery terminals, so it is charging.  Guess I need to drive more often.

Oh, yes.  That big duck egg?  Had two yolks.  Maybe this duck just lays eggs that are the size of large chicken eggs, except when they're twins?  Anyway, I think I'll collect the coming week's eggs for a hatching attempt.

Comments

[Rob]

For a brooder box I tried one of these- https://www.plamondon.com/wp/build-200-chick-brooder-two-hours-20/

It really worked well so I built a separate one for the turkeys. I also built a simple 8x8 brooder house to keep the brooder box in so I was always ready for new chicks.

This may be larger than you need but it sure works well for dealing with chicks!