There was a few minutes today on the shop floor at Farber Specialty Coach when the normal caucophony of machine hums, rattles, whines, and buzzes, fell into harmony with the songs booming on the PA – first to Led Zeppelin and then to what sounded like Aerosmith.
I spent the day with a file, sand paper, and baking soda, and a few jugs of distilled water, doing some maintenance on our battery bank. These are the batteries that allow us to save up solar power for use on a rainy day, and really it is time to buy a new set, but that would run about twelve hundred dollars that we don’t have right now. Our bank is made of eight Trojan T-105 deep cycle batteries, known as the most reliable, long lasting deep cycle batteries around – given proper care. And we’ve taken real good care of this set, regularly cleaning corrosion off of terminals, checking water levels, and equalizing the cells. But after over 5 years of hard use – freezing cold weather, lots of vibrations from a bouncing bus, and at least 500 charge-discharge cycles, these batteries are ready to start a new life as lead paper-weights (actually, the lead will be recycled for use in new batteries). But they can still store up enough energy for an entire school day without complaining too much, so for the moment they’ll have to do.
Of course, the guys at Farber we’re hard at work today. They put down a wood sub-floor, laid down and glued in the new blue rubber floor, finished new cabinets for the wet lab, and got about half-way through the new bench-top in the computer classroom. Check out the pictures below. Tomorrow is the final day, and I can’t wait to see how everything comes together – it is already starting to look amazing.
