Tom Strode

My property was logged off before I got it and they left the Osage as undesirable so I have a bunch of it. The squirrels have gotten most of the oranges by now but I saw a couple the other day by the fence where my cat likes to hunt. If you haven't already gotten some let me know. If you can find a young branch that's straight enough and the right size it makes a nice walking stick. Sand the bark off down to the white sap wood and the sanded off thorns look like little brown poke-a-dots.

I'm heating a building with underfloor water. I love the heat but I have a Kentucky wood gobbler furnace and it takes huge amounts of wood. I didn't learn about RMH's till after I had installed this system or I would have gone that route. The warnings that go with using a rocket heater to heat water are pretty drastic. I have modified the system I have to get more efficiency. And, I put a insulated riser in a drum, like on a RMH, as a bell on an old fisher stove and boosted it's efficiency to where I use it as my primary heater. There is a discussion of that here  https://permies.com/t/32812/cantenary-arch  I was worried that the heat would burn out the interior stovepipe that the riser was built around and deteriorate the insulation, but I checked it this fall and it was in great shape. I used drums that I had and now I wish I had gone to 55 gal barrels. With a modest fire the chimney stays cool which shows that all of my heat is staying in the building. As I crank it up from there I'm still getting a lot of heat radiating off the chimney. If I had a shorter chimney I'd put another bell in before the chimney. I might anyway. What I've done has given proof of concept. I'd like to replace the Fisher with a rocket stove to boost the heat and efficiency then, after the riser/drum, put it through a vertical masonry mass. If winters continue to be as mild as this one there won't be much pressure for that though.

I'm not finding much information on that Calmarpannan, and what I am finding is in Russian. Can you link me to more information

For insulation under the mass I'd look at aircrete.  http://www.domegaia.com I'm afraid of all that weight compressing Styrofoam or polystyrene.

I "scribed" it in using a batten to transfer points. You can get very good accuracy that way. The pitch of the porch roof running into the curve of the building throws you way off if you try eyeballing it. It was a technique I had used in boat building to cut a bulkhead to fit a curved hull. This was just a little more three dimensional since I wasn't coming in at 90 degrees to the curve. I was working alone and cooking up there in the sun so I did a pretty fast and nasty job but I was rarely more than 1/2" out. There is probably a YouTube video showing the technique but I didn't see one, running a quick check. I only checked about 20% of what came up for "scribeing". I can give more detail if you need it, or maybe make a video if I can't find one.

I bolted upright 4X4's to the building every 10' and ran a beam between them to support the weight, so the porch is it's own structural building that's bolted to the main building. I put a lag bolt through the wall into the butt of each of the rafters to hold them to it.

Ame's makes a super flexible tape and some waterproof sealer to put over it that can hide a multitude of sins. The building does have quite a bit of movement in the wind. It took a few of years for everything to settle in. I went over it with another layer of tape and sealant the second year and have mostly just touched up since.

I didn't know that it could be done when I started. Now I have proof that it can work and that is mostly what I was putting out there. I would have really like to have known someone else had done it successfully before I started.

Back when I ordered my metal building I talked to the engineer at the plant that makes them. I mentioned that I was thinking of putting a porch on the side of it. He stated, very flatly, that that's impossible. You can't match the contour. Okay, I don't bother to argue with engineers. When the well came in dry and I had to go to roof catchment for water I went ahead and put a porch on so I'd have a place to hang the gutter. That was 8 years age, or there about's. I was a little worried about the joint holding since we get some intense winds here and I was afraid there would be to much movement. I did have to go over it every year or so for the first few years. Very minor fix ups. . . the water coming in was from higher up where that engineer assured me that the joints would be tight.

Anyway, something on one of the other forums jogged me into thinking that someone else might be interested in how it's done. I didn't take pictures while I was doing it but if anyone wants to know more let me know and I can the process.

Tried putting in a picture of the building but the Img button asks for a URL, just like the URL button next to it. I tried attaching it but I don't know how it will look.

http://www.insulation4less.com/default.aspx  

It is flexible but it's reflective not see through. I use bubble wrap over windows to let the light in. I went out and looked at the tank and it is showing deterioration on top but on the sides where it's vertical it looks good as new except for some obvious impact damage, and it's been up for at least two years.

Back when I had chickens we'd get a glut of eggs every now and then. My solution was to can them as custard. That was something I would eat later, my wife just never would remember to use frozen eggs. I don't remember the recipe but it was pretty standard except I doubled or tripled the amount of eggs per milk and sugar, it was a very rich high protein custard. The trick was to keep it from boiling over while canning. I used pressure canning because they were so high protein, and put water right up to the lids to buffer the temperature changes. You get the boil-over if the temp. is to high for the pressure so you have to bring them down real slow.

That's an awful lot of eggs. I've heard that they keep better under refrigeration fresh rather than boiled as long as they aren't washed, the hen puts on a protective coating when she lays them.

I've gone over to steaming eggs instead of boiling them. . . better texture, easier to peel.

We are living in a metal building. Insulating it was a big problem. the best solution we found was. Foil/foam/foil. You can buy a foil/bubble/foil at Lowe's but we were afraid of the bubbles losing integrity over time and went with the foam core. We had some left over so we wrapped a water tank we use for roof catchment. That's been a couple of years ago and I am amazed at how well it has held up. It's right out in the weather and the duct tape we put it on with has weathered off a couple of times but the insulation itself is holding up very well. (done right you glue it on with a tube glue) You can buy it in rolls, the stuff at Lowe's comes in folded panels and is a lot more expensive. It's kind of the old joke. . . if I had known it was going to hold up so well I would have protected it better. For a protective coating on things like that I like spray on rubberized automotive under-body. You can get it at Walmart. Check the paint Dept. as well as automotive, they carry a couple of kinds and one is about half the price of the other. The cheap stuff works fine.

I found a number of takeaways in Dr Inghams work.

The synergistic action of the soil micro-organisms with the plant roots was one. For the soil to work it has to have roots in it, so cover crops work better than mulch.

It's the diversity of the micro-organisms that make it work. The bacteria content hits a ceiling, then boosting fungi (up to 75%) gives more improvement. But you still need the higher organisms, nematodes and arthropods. It's a dynamic process that is constantly adapting. So, there's no magic inoculant that is going to work for everyone, every time. The best you can do is introduce as broad a spectrum of micro-organisms as you can, and hope you are supplying what's needed, when it's needed. It seems to me that reinoculating periodically might help in case something died out because the necessary habitat for it hadn't yet developed.

Not tilling or disturbing the soil while it is developing it's diversity is important.

A biggie, that doesn't seem to get mentioned in the discussion of "tea's" is that anaerobic is bad. At     there's a guy collecting soil micro-organisms, and it looks like a pretty good technique. But then, he soaks it in water/nutriment for a month which is going to make it go anaerobic and defeat his whole purpose. I think that he could do an active aeration extraction, or just mix the rice into his topsoil, and be way better off.

I haven't heard Dr Ingham address biochar. It seems like it would be beneficial but there is some controversy about it. It's something I want to get into, but I haven't yet. Does anyone have a DIY on building the Kon-Tiki?

There's lots more that could be said on any of these subjects (and many more), but while you focus on any one of them it's important to remember that they all work in a synergistic way. If you change any part of a system you change the whole system. Even something that gives you a big boost isn't good if it throws a healthy system out of balance.

You are only seeing a small part of the building. There's that tall garage door in that wall and I wanted head room to put in a chain hoist for unloading, but the building is only open all the way up for 10 ft in from that wall. Our living space is up in the loft next to, and open to, that space you see. The heat actually does go to where we want it pretty well. The pottery shop in the front of the building has underfloor heat fed from a furnace (another modification project). That stove was never intended to heat the whole building. There will be fans for circulation.`