The new deicer is frozen in the ice. It did get relatively cool last night. The 1:00 am auto report I get every morning from The Weather Channel said the temperature, at that time was 13F with a wind chill of -1F. At 7:00 am, when I got down to the Sun Room, my thermometer said the outside temperature was 10F and the pond water temperature was less one degree above freezing.
I decided to return the new deicer to Amazon and order another which is from the same company but is higher wattage (1,250 watts) and a floater. The average review is lower and, as with most of these devices, most of the negative comments involve short lifetimes. I will try to be diligent in regards to cleaning the heating element at the end of each season of use.
Afternoon update:
The ambient temperature never got above freezing, but it was a bright sunny day and I was able to extract the old/new deicer from the pond. The water temperature was still about 33F, but the heating element was cold. I brought the element inside a quickly plugged it into an outlet. The element started heating immediately. I got a work light out of the garage and plugged it into the dry-box receptacle at the pond. No light. I tripped and reset the GFCI (the indicator light went off and then came back on) and retried the light. No light!. I plugged the light into the receptacle right next to this one (the one that supports the pond pump) and the light lit. I plugged the light into the dry-box receptacle north of the chess board and the light lit. Obviously, despite the indicator light, there is no power to the dry-box receptacle at the pond. This is why the heating element did not heat, but I'm going to return it and get the floater anyway.
Squirrel Update:
Yesterday, I had put the ultrasonic boom box in the southeast eave and crackers, with peanut butter, in both traps. Very soon thereafter, I got notice of movement in the eave. For the next hour or two, I watched a squirrel try to get to the bait by various means except to actually enter the trap. The animal got so violent at one point that it knocked the boom box off the top of the trap. It seemed to give up at that point.
Awhile later, I went up to ensure the bait was still in place and to reposition the boom box back on top of the trap. I got another notification or two the remainder of the afternoon, but it was much less frequent. Last night, I got no notifications until about 8:00 am this morning when I captured a clip of a squirrel running by the camera.
Jury is still out. Undoubtedly, the squirrel was attracted by the peanut butter. Whether the boom box was responsible for the stop in the attempts to get to it or not will be found out today. The fact that I've only had one "hit" over the past 12 hours is encouraging. Yesterday, even before adding the peanut butter, I was getting movement notifications several times an hour.
Afternoon Update:
As of 2:00 pm, not a single motion "hit" since the one at 8:00 am this morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment