Looking at that desert / 3d printer one I wonder if you could get a robot to build glass bricks, they could be filled with sand like https://www.brikawood-ecologie.fr/concept-en/ to create a desert city from sand and sunshine
I'm pretty sure ours was dead by June last year, it's seeding and yellowing at the moment. Running a mower over it around now would almost certainly finish it off I think.
I guess I was imagining the air pocket between the leaf canopy and the ground would act as the insulation.
I'm just North of Bristol so reasonably mild. I guess I'll try it on a small area to start.
"But now we have found a new sweet lupin- the Dieta Lupin was bred in the UK specially for human use and is completely non-bitter, even without any special preparation."
Kathleen Sanderson wrote:What irks me is the printers! I've got two printers, one about a year and a half old, the other only a few months old, and neither one works anymore. When you add the cost of ink, it's atrocious! I think when we move, I may go computer-less for a while again.
It's a 12m x 45m (40ft x 150ft) salad crop, small commercial scale. Slugs can make a big difference to the income from it. The 'triangles' will cost a few hundred pounds, but that's only a couple of weeks income from the salad.
They would be entirely contained within the triangular mesh, so would be unable to escape from it.
The main pen would also be completely contained by mesh, so no way for them to get out, or foxes in. (hopefully rat proof too, but that's a tall order)
If I let them free range they will be eaten within 24 hours (from experience sadly)
I guess I'm just going to try it. If I feed them in the 'triangle' sections then I guess they'll go in there eventually.
I guess if I already had a burner with a large burn chamber a tin would probably do fine.
I'm interested in using some rocket principles and getting the combustion as efficient as possible (for the heat generation) so I guess I'm wondering if anyone has done an indoor rocket stove that produces charcoal?
It may be a case of getting the welder out and some scrap and trying a few things.
I'd like to make biochar, I'd also like to use the heat to warm my home.
I've heard that a retort might be the way to go? (I understand this to mean a metal container bolted to the side of my woodburner with some smallish air holes between the burner and 'retort' container?)
I'm mindful of CO poisoning and wanting to keep combustion gasses out of my lungs. Are there some designs I should look for? Or am I going to have to design my own?
In my smaller polytunnel I made such a heat store, it's a copper pipe 60cm deep run along the bedrock, with around 1000litres of water in bottles above it. The air is circulated through the pipe using a 7w solar panel and computer fan.
This certainly helps mediate the temp and keeps it a degree or so warmer than it would be otherwise. I think in the larger new system I'd like some actual heat input.
Maybe it's three or four fans at intervals along the pipe? I'd really like to avoid water if at all possible.
I like the idea, but before I go dragging a load of wood around can anyone point me to a side by side comparison of the same crops with the same water regime?
Hi my new polytunnel will be 20 meters from our house/ woodburner. I'd like to use some of it's heat to warm the tunnel.
The obvious one would be to put a spur off the radiator system and put a radiator in the IBC i'm using as a heatstore. However this has the potential to freeze/ crack.
So I was wondering about a 12cm diameter Insulated pipe dug into the ground with a computer fan at both ends (one sucking, one blowing)
Do you think the heat would stay in the pipe well enough to be worth doing? Or should I think about water some more?
