Joshua Flux

Not correct, if the municipality use chloramine to treat the water, rather than chlorine gas.  Activated carbon, catalytic carbon, and reverse osmosis are all candidates when looking to remove chloramine.

I’ve been thinking about creating a (FREE) simple and intuitive bartering/exchange marketplace website for permies and natural systems tinkerers where we can share our cuttings, scion wood, seeds, etc.  Please let me know if this sounds like a good idea to you.  Also, if you have any suggestions for features the site could/should have, just let me know!  I have some development skills, and I’m confident I can make this an awesome space for us to exchange stuff.

Awesome!  I’ll start on this now and have something early in the new year!

Hi all,

I’m an environmental engineer, and have been working diligently on improving my pencil and pen hand sketching, particularly related to landscape and site design.  I’m now moving into vegetation drawings.  I’d like to share free tutorials on how to improve this type of sketching with other permits and natural systems tinkerers.  That said, please let me know if there is an interest in this topic.  If there is, I’ll setup a free website with a really awesome educational series that we can build around.

Let me know your thoughts!

We're close by a fairly large river (Hudson), and experience constant wind on the property.  Regarding water, since it was an establishment year, I made sure they had an inch-ish a week.  We normally get 60-ish inches/yr, but not sure how much this growing season.  These hybrids should grow 30 feet by year 3.

I don’t have experience with Osage Orange cuttings, but early this year I purchased 100 Willow-Poplar hybrid cuttings and pressed them in the ground in three staggered rows — 18” spacing between cuttings and 18” spacing between each row.  The cuttings were 20” in length, and they were pressed 10” in the ground (10” above ground).  I planted in May and today they are 15-20 feet tall!  This Feb I will cut down/coppice them, so they grow stronger next year.  This will also give me about 400 new cuttings to plant.  So far, so good.  I’m in zone 5/6.

Don't believe the hype.

All gravity flow water filters are designed using gravity to provide the physical force through a media.  It is important that the media remove both biological and chemical contaminants from the water as gravity forces it along.  This said, you need to (1) start with a media that has the appropriate physical ("porosity") and chemical ("cation exchange capacity") qualities to accomplish this feat, (2) determine the time it will take to accomplish this feat as the media and water interact with each other, and (3) design a vessel that provides the media and water enough time (the "residence time") to accomplish this feat.  

Start with what's in your water that you like out of your water.  Find a media (porosity and cation exchange capacity) and vessel (that provides proper residence time), and you're on your way to wonderful water.

Getting to Berky, I once in the relatively current past, tried to pry info out of them related to their media and proper residence time design.  They were not forthcoming.  I do know that they rely on activated carbon (I'll discuss this briefly, below) and a proprietary ion exchange resin of some sort.  This said, I'm very speculative.  I need to know what is in my filter and how the design works.  I hope they become more transparent in the future.

Now, what about activated carbon.  I could write a book on this topic, but what I'd like state here is that all activated carbon is NOT the same.  It is critically important to understand where the carbon came from -- was it municipal or medical waste, or was it "organic" coconut shells?  You can find this out by REQUIRING the "material safety data sheet" (MSDS) or the "material sheet" (MS).  Additionally, regular carbon or char CANNOT clean water like activated carbon.  How do you know you have activated carbon?  You have to trust the source and their processes.  For example, I purchase my activated carbon from 3M, and it comes with a MSDS, a confirmation that it is activated carbon, and their source of carbon.  It'll cost you more, but you'll protect your health.

How do I know this stuff?  I'm a licensed environmental engineer, with a specific discipline in water resources.  I work as a public servant for a environmental protecting federal agency and lead many humanitarian water supply projects in developing nations.  This is my life.  I figured I'd share with you.

What's my water situation?  I live on municipal supply.  I gravity drip that municipal supply through my 3M activated carbon with ample residence time, and I renew my activated carbon once per quarter.