Peter Roberts

Hi you dont mention the vertical position of the tanks relative to the barn down spout level. I would do everything i could to plumb the water from the roof direct to the tanks. We call it here an inverted siphon, where the 4"  down pipe is buried and then rises up to dump in the top of the tank . That means that you have to have clear outs on the buried parts as they will get crud building up in them, secondly i dont think the 1/2 horse pump has a snowballs chance of handling that much water especially as its only 55gal  sump and in my view it would be better if you must stick with that system to put the spare  redundant 1hp pumps on that end and let the 1/2 horse do the pressure side. I understand your wish not to have aerial pipes every where but buried systems in my view are not ideal . I have mine like that and i am considering shifting my tank so that i can go direct from the roof . and my tanks are 1, 25000 litre About 6,000 US  Plastic tank and a approx 10,000 US gal Concrete one, so its a major. Once the water is in the tanks it is easy to plumb the pressure side to wherever you need it, Alkathene farm water piping is great and goes around curves  as against the PVC drainage/ down spout pipe that has to be in strait lines with glued fitting at the corners.
Just my thoughts

Hi
I read about a air refrigerant cooler that used a vertical shaft salvanious type wind mill to drive a compressor that was buried underground in the coolth of the earth . The compressor was made from a 60litre oil drum (12 imp gal) sorry dont know the US gal equiv, The piston was just a sheet of heavy plywood  and the crank from the windmill was arranged so it had a adjustable stroke. The idea was that the large volume of air that was compressed went into a buried receiver then up to the fridge cabinet where it released into a expansion phase that caused the cooling. The guy was operating it as a fridge at 4 psi and he was working on getting a little more power from the windmill and fixing some of the inefficiencies in the piston seal ect and he hoped to get it to 8 psi which he had shown with a mechanical driven compressor would give him a freezer . Its one of the things i am going to try when i get some time, My thoughts are to use the windmill to drive a horizontally opposed 2 diaphragms pump to overcome the leakages of the piston seal and build a more sophisticated copper condenser equiv to take all of the heat of compression out of the air before it is released in the fridge cabinet. I think it was on one of the Yahoo groups

Thanks for those tips people . I had been wondering about nitrogen depletion  and thought that as we have a big Dairy farm just up the road i may be able to get some of the manure still runny from the 'cowshed"we call it i think you call them milking Parlor that would fill the voids more easily that the sand i thought i might be able to pack in with a concrete vibrator.  Also i have available  Radiata Pine logs they are the slash from managed forests of this weed that grows here i understand it native to west coast North America , are they suitable for this purpose?  i have noticed in the past using woodchip mulch sourced from the people that trim back the treees on roadsides that some varieties dont seem to work as well and even suppress growth. Any comments appreciated
Thanks
Pete

Hi  I have been looking at the hugelkulter as a way of gardening for me . I am Paraplegic and live in New Zealand. I have made some raised Garden beds and some troughs to alleviate bending down , they work well as far as growing , but keeping the moisture right is a battle . I was wondering if anybody has had experience with logs cut to say 2 feet long and stood on end packed together in a walled structure  to allow about a foot of soil on top of them  to try and moderate the moisture .  Id thought i might Ram some clay pretty tight for a base then stand the logs and surround them with sand  , then put the soil on top. The reason for this is that the conventional mound you fellas use is not accessible to me because of my mobility issues. Any help appreciated. Pete