weekend stuff
After almost 11 years of seasonal use, the batteries for our lawnmower are no longer taking enough charge to be useful. At first I could do our entire 1/4-acre on one charge, then most but not quite all, then pretty routinely a 2-day task (with a recharge overnight). But a friend pushed the batteries pretty hard a few weeks ago (deep discharging will permanently reduce the capacity of some battery types), and yesterday the mower barely did the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the streets. That used to be the first leftover portion back when the capacity first began to drop off years ago. Searching for replacements by the mower brand got me prices around $130. Opening the thing up to get to the batteries so I could see that they were two 12-volt, 17.2-amp-hour sealed lead-acid batteries (wired in series for 24v) was much better. The best price I found was $35 each (I'll need 2), from the same place I bought 12v/7ahr SLAs for my bike lights in 2006. (Shipping will add another $23-$25 for the 28lbs (12.7kg).)
Web searching found people whose batteries had not lasted as long as mine. Maybe their mowing seasons are longer, so they had more discharge cycles; or maybe they should have paid heed to the instructions to wrap up quickly if the charge meter went from green to yellow and stop immediately when it dropped into the red, so they weren't deep-cycling batteries that weren't designed for it.
The mower's blade is long overdue for sharpening, too. (We don't seem to have the right tools on hand for that.)
I got a Havahart trap from Freecycle a few weeks ago. We've seen a rat in the yard this summer that comes out when things are quiet enough. anniemal set it up on the deck yesterday, and the lure of a little peanut butter snared a squirrel pretty quickly.
Last night we went to a potluck in Fulton, MD. Fulton does its fireworks on the Saturday after July 4th, and they were good fireworks. We had an excellent vantage point from their balcony. We know the hosts from contra dancing, and about half the guests were dancers.
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