Site and forum cleanup

[Ben]

I will spend a few hours in early August going through the website and forum to clean it up a bit. Many of our website pages are dated and could use newer information.

If you have any ideas to help clean up the website, please let me know here.

My main ideas so far involve refocusing the homemades section to make the differences between the designs more clear. I'd also like to remove anything I think might be dangerous. If I have time, I might redo the APH guide with different parts to improve the build quality and safety, but that's doubtful at the moment.

[Ben]

I'm going to postpone this cleanup a little bit due to a change of plans.

Again, if there's anything in particular that you'd like to see cleaned up, let me know in this thread.

[wetmonkey442]

As the Homemades section stands now, there are a lot of public-facing links. I think consolidation would be a very good idea.

I am hoping to build another APH before the end of the summer. I would be happy to take extensive pictures of the process and work with you to put together a comprehensive and updated APH guide.

[atvan]

I will also have plenty of pictures of APH construction, though mine will not be a classic APH, so that may not be good. However, it would be cool for the customizations page to have pictures for each one.

[Ben]

wetmonkey, if you could improve what I have with your build, that'd be great. Don't feel restricted to the "classic" APH design if you think you can improve it. I can help write the guide. I'd like to include everything the current guide has and add some new sections.

There are a number of improvements we can make to the gun:

- Improve the pump seal. I haven't kept up with recent innovations, but I hope people have figured out a better way than the wood pumps I used. I recall people had trouble with them, but they always worked okay for me.

- Ensure all components are pressure rated. This mainly means switching the bell reducer to a coupler and bushing. All fittings should have NSF-61 or NSF-pw stamped on them and all pipe should have a pressure rating.

- Develop good reservoirs. I never looked much into this.

- Reduce the cost and number of parts. The current APH guide doesn't stray far from what I first made! I didn't know about 3/4" male to 1/2" female bushings, for example.

More current prices would be helpful. Keep your receipts.

More customizations would be great too. I'm thinking that page should include a bunch of links to different builds on the forum.

[atvan]

A wonderful piece I stumbled upon at Lowe's was the 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch elbow. Small, but helps a lot with copactness and overall smootheness.

[Specter]

there was one problem i experienced with my wood handle pump in my APH, which was that mold grew all over it and inside the pump tube, i tried killing it with bleach but it just grew more over the pump handle, so i ended up throwing it out. I was able to salvage the o-ring though.

If anyone has any other pump methods, that'd be nice.

I think i used an elblow like atvan mentioned in my aph as well

[wetmonkey442]

I'm not sure if this is a widespread thing, but my local Lowes does not carry pressure-rated 3" pipe any longer. Home Depot hasn't carried it for years and the largest I can find locally is 2". If we can determine if this is a general trend, then we should probably modify the instruction to call for several longer 2" PCs over a smaller number of shorter 3" PCs, in order to satisfy the need for safety.

[atvan]

My Lowes did not have it. They had a whole aisle of 3 and 4 inch pipe, and it was all drain, even the fittings, except for the ginormous peices, which might have been pressure rated. We went to home depot, and they had a nice little rack with pressure rated 1 1/4, 2, 3, and 4 inch pipe, 2 feet long. It was great. They also had an almost identical selection of smaller fittings. Now I kinda hate Lowe's.

@Specter- I don't remember where I saw this, but it was a good idea- put the pump shaft in front of a dehumidifier after every use. This should reduce mold problems.

[DX]

Oh crap, I need rated 3" pipe for a new version of Douchenator. I'll have to check that brand new Home Depot on 111 in Trumbull. Are they still carrying 4"? Anything is preferable to 2". The PCs have to be pretty big to lift an APH out of the 40s rangewise.

[Ben]

It seems I'll have to put this cleanup on the backburner as I have some other things to take care of first. Sorry everyone.

[atvan]

That is fine by me.