I got back to the splitter and added guard-rails to protect the filter, added a flat plate on the push guide's front vs wood wedging the rod,s end (restricting some play) and etc maintenance. I contacted the donor to Confirmed Over Kill On Fluid! The Log Splitter was Initially Manual and had grown to Hydro before I continued it. It had to be a Monster Manual Bottle Jack splitter and I'll respect it as a 10 ton with the Hydro Cyl 3.5" ID X 24" X 2" rod. Plus, due to the 4X4X.25 rail X 1" pin and adjustable wedge. I H/N found one that compares. "This Explains All I Thought About The Splitter". I felt it was originally manual with the small wheels and front handle. Except, the plate for the tank and pump were throwing me off. The Donor who is a machinist and perfectionist explains the plate that I thought was Factory added (due to how it was formed and welded). He explained the 5 Gal Hydro Fluid tank could have been 2-3 Gals. The 5 Gal tank was the easiest to find vs welding up one or using the 4X4 rail as the tank as many. I'll still test it good with 4 Gals (which has never shown any signs of heat (Why?), "at the pump's 3 GPM rate as below", plus specs below in the same range or above this splitter suggest 3.5 Gals which sounds correct. Too Much To Spell/Grammar Check! LOL. loger PS. I'll be looking for some wood for next season soon!! http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipment/hydraulic2.htm Let's look at some of the specifics of these components to see how a real hydraulic system works. If you take a trip down to your local building supply center or a place like Northern Tool and Equipment and look at the log splitters, you will find that a typical backyard log splitter has: 1. A 5-horsepower gasoline engine 2. A two-stage hydraulic oil pump rated at a maximum of 11 gallons per minute (3 gpm at 2,500 psi) 3. A 4-inch-diameter, 24-inch-long hydraulic cylinder 4. A rated splitting force of 20 tons 5. A 3.5-gallon hydraulic oil tank

"How hard is it to change out the bearing in the lower shaft? That's where it appears to be coming from." Rusty gave you "how to" for replacing the seal. It is not likely you need to replace the bearing which is simply bored in casting and would require reaming with special reamer to oversize, insertion of bushing and re-reaming with another special reamer. Not many places even have these reamers any more. I would try your local NAPA Auto Parts store for a seal, they also have, generally on one day delivery, small engine parts. By The Way, The IPL for that Model and Type number engine clearly shows that it MAY or MAY NOT have a filter. I think the lube number mentioned denotes full pressure lube or slinger. And another foot note, the presence of a filter does not necessarily indicate full pressure lubrication. Walt Conner

Gary: I'm pushing 70, but in my mind, I'm still young. When people start thinking old, they start to die and I'm not ready yet. The glass fish tank I had as a child had a painted iron frame with a slate bottom, but all glass ones, usually mounted in wrought iron frames have been around for at a long time. The fanciest I ever saw was in an antique shop in Brighton, England. The proprieter claimed it was early Victorian, which would have put it at somewhere around 1860- ish. It was about 5 ft. high, with a hand blown bowl that fit into upturned arms, with all sorts of elaborate bits of metal and glass embelishments on it; cherubs, fanciful fish, vines, flowers, glass balls, etc. Frankly, I thought it was hideous. But the Victorians did have larger, metal framed glass aquariums and kept the fish alive with continual water changes, which is easy if you have an estate, a conservatory, and an army of servants. Following the Great London Exibition and the Crystal Palace, glass conservatories became all the rage among the monied, landed Brits. My own love affair with small tropicals started in the Balanced Aquarium Room of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago in the 1940's, when keeping any FW aquarium fish still depended far more on a balance between plants and fish than mechanical filtration and one of the reasons I still strive to affect it. The better balanced the tank, the less dependence on any filter. budcarlson: A survey? Okay, but I honestly don't know that it will help you, because every fish keeper has different likes, dislikes and tanks, as well as their own notions, but for what it's worth.... a) Filter type (duh) Box, sponge, canister, UV. b) Water type (fresh, etc) Fresh c) Gravel/sand/etc It's called substrate, but in my situation, it depends. The baby, grow-out and Q's are all bare, but fairly loaded with live plants in clay pots. I use a lot of low to lower light level types in my black water show tanks, as well as java moss and naja (guppy grass) in the livebearer tanks, as cover for babies and harried fems. I've been experimenting with different substrates in my show tanks. One that's worked well is sand over Flourite, but Gary wrote of using garden soil and I'm finally going to try it in a big stock tank this summer, but it will be outdoors, so if it turns out a muddy mess, I can just stir it up to slurry and use a sewage pump to send it all through a hose to the tomatoes. d) Plants/amount As all of my tanks are Amazon or Asian, all are farily heavily planted, mostly with Cryps and Anubia, but I keep the light fairly high in baby and grow-out tanks and have many wide shallow clay pots of Vals. e) Daily/weekly/monthly/yearly maintenance (filter only) I switch box filters in baby tanks daily, so I can load on the food without fouling the tank. But I don't use loose floss in them. I cut bonded pond filter media to fit the boxes and rinse them clean, getting at least 10 -12 uses from each and it makes changing easier, as does keeping the charcoal and zeno in net bags instead of loose in the filters. But the box filter frames are bleached cleaned after each use, and why I have at least 4 dozen of them. I do them in bulk, weekly. Foam filters may go several days in baby tanks, but are all doubles or quads, which allows me to squeeze half in tank water and the other in fresh, to make sure at least one is always loaded but one very clean, as to draw the most effectively. The plastic housing of the power filters are flushed out at least bi-monthly regardless and washed completely clean as new whenever they accumulate enough gunk to make me think they aren't flowing as well. The sponge pre-filters on power filter intakes are only to trap fines, not for bio-filtration, so are squeezed out in clean water in a bowl with repeated fresh water until it's clear at least bi-monthly. f) Necessary yearly supplies Impossible to make a comparison. I load in frozen foods from F & S once a year during winter, to take advantage of the flat rate shipping. Overwrap a package in foil and seal it into a freezer weight bag and as long as the freezer holds at 0 deg., it will be as good a year later as the day it arrived rock hard via FedEx Overnight. I buy dry food in single ingredient bulk bags from Ken Menard (kenfish.com) and make my own custom mix, with something to appeal to every species I keep. I mix it up in a 20 gal. tub, then pack it into small zip bags, inside larger freezer bags and store it also in the freezer. g) Major long term maintenance issue Keep to a regular maintenence schedule and there aren't any, unless you have a glass tank that suddenly starts leaking and if it does, as long as the glass is intact, resealing one like new is easy- IF you know how, and I do. h) Advantages To what? i) Disadvantages For me, being retired, instead of freezing my ass off in Illinois, messing with fish, I could be in Aruba, eating them fresh caught. j) Realistic monetary investment per year Also impossible to make a comparison. For some, the cost of setting up a 5,000 gal. reef tank is chump change. For others, a 5 gal. Eclipse with a single Betta is their limit. k) Have you ever had a catastrophic filtration system failure, and if you remember or know, why did it happen (and how could it have been prevented). If you had a near-failure, how did you save it? Certainly. That's when I learned the Awful Truth about UG's. It happened because I did everything I was told to do, using powerheads on both uplift's and suctioning the water at changes through them, but in the end, all it took was my getting too sick for a week to do a good change and the gasses trapped under the filter plates exploded and I lost an entire breeding colony of Sterbi. If I ever had a near failure I was unaware of it, because I did something to avert it- probably a water or filter change. Unless the filter quits and you aren't paying enough attention to your tank to even notice it, if you keep the tank clean with regular water changes, a filter break-down alone- CAN'T kill your fish.

Since you've evidently left the carpet sitting wet for longer than a day, it's not salvageable. Remove it at once. Unless you're in the tiny minority of the population that is extremely susceptible to moulds, you don't need a "pro" to remove mouldy materials. Just be sure to use rubber gloves, an N95 filter or equivalent and goggles. Work carefully to contain the mouldy materials, e.g., double bagging. Then you're ready to attack the source of the moisture. Here is a link that might be useful: Combatting Mildew and Mold