Teleidoscope

Sun, Aug 09, 2009

Trimmer Line and Shop-Vac

Posted at 3:56 pm MDT to Garden

I've remembered another reason I haven't used my string-trimmer lawn mower much in recent years. It is amazingly hard to find 155 mil string trimmer line locally. The smaller gauge stuff I tried isn't going to cut it (literally).

Even McGuckins failed me, which is a little annoying since they sold me the trimmer mower (years ago, granted, but it's still annoying.

I'll swing by Earl's Saw Shop before work tomorrow and see if they have some in stock. If not, I need to order some other stuff from Amazon so I can get free shipping... otherwise, the shipping will cost as much as the string.

I got a new garden hose to replace the ripped one, and a nozzle-repair thingy for the hose with the squashed nozzle. So now I have two usable hoses.

The truck is cleared out, and ready to be traded in tomorrow.

While I was at Lowe's getting garden hose stuff and the new gas can for the mower, I also picked up a new 12 gallon Shop-Vac for the basement. The old one (an 8 gallon model taller than the new 12 gallon one) is about 20 years old and really won't deal with the dust and grit very well anymore. And the new one has a drain plug for wet mode! No more tipping over the big cannister of sludgy water to empty it down the floor drain. Modern filters for both wet and dry modes are better, too.

The Forrester has a fair amount of cargo space, especially with the back seats folded down, but the box for the Shop-Vac is pretty large. I decided I might as well take advantage of the truck's volume while I still have it available. And I really need to bring the basement to more presentable state.

With the wet/dry vac (and new, working garden hoses) I'll be able to vacuum up the loose dirt in dry mode, then wash the cement floor and suck up the dirty water in wet mode. And once the new doors are installed the basement will be more weather-tight and should accumulate less dust going forward. The lack of new avalanches (because of the beautiful new retaining wall) will help too.

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