Phil Stevens

You can get LED grow lights that are a combo of red and blue emitters and one or two of these will make up for weak winter sunlight and short, cloudy days. Most herbs do best in full sun, so having a little assistance will increase both the quantity and quality an indoor plant produces.

What herbs do you like best? Fresh basil is a treat to cook with and if you've got a sunny windowsill you can probably grow that in the winter. Chives are another good one...easy to grow and versatile.

If you can move quickly, there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity going on right now in the southwest with the super El Niño. There is already a lot of unseasonal rainfall happening in that region and it's likely to continue through the winter and spring, so if you can get some seed onto the land and whatever organic material is available, you're almost guaranteed a good germination rate. Let that grow up a bit and then run stock through it, using a Savory-style rotation if at all possible. Be ready to adjust stocking rates if there's a drought, because the quickest way to turn a regenerative grazing showpiece into a moonscape is too many mouths for the available feed. You want (need) that 2/3 of biomass to be left behind on each pass if there's going to be any long-term improvement.

Even dry wood gives off lots of water vapour when it burns. Most of what comes out of an RMH is steam, and if it cools down in the flue you get condensation. Mine does this and it eventually rusted out the thin duct that I used in the cob bench in my original build, so over the winter I tore it down and refashioned it as a stratification chamber. I've still got a relatively cool stack, barely over 40 degrees where it leaves the bench, so I probably have a lot of water in the chimney but I don't see it because the joints funnel it to the inner surface.

Some designs that exit via a wall put a tee at the transition to vertical so that this water can run down and out of the system instead of getting trapped. I'm thinking about doing this on mine before next winter.

Jay Angler wrote:It seems as if Mike and Phil think there's something fishy about that map...   (sorry, couldn't resist!)

Good catch!

Another great bunch! But one of them not only left us off the map literally, but missed the fact that David Shearer brought not one, but two dead snapper to parliamentary question time in 2013. So double fail on them.

I'd put the ball design in the category of "cost effective, works great if you make it a monthly or quarterly habit to check the drain and blow it out if it's got schmutz in it" and also add the caveat that one reason they're popular here is the mild climate. In most of the North Island it just doesn't get cold enough to freeze one of these things...and if it's full of water on a night that is that cold, the rain stopped a long time ago and you should have checked the drain. Another motivating factor for keeping on top of this is that a blocked drain means it's not diverting and you're getting bird poop, pollen, and who knows what in your tanks.

Rainwater harvesting is not a set and forget system, in my experience. Gutters need to be cleared, screens washed, valves inspected, and tanks vacuumed out from time to time. If you're used to outsourcing all the operational overhead to the municipal water works, then providing your own supply requires a shift in mindset and a reasonable maintenance schedule.

When I want to simmer something on the wood fire, I set the pan on a stove ring. The one I'm using is the base of a stainless colander that fell off (poor quality spot welds) and it provides about a 2 cm gap. I can also move the pan to a corner where the surface isn't radiating as much heat...does the "left" side of that cooktop qualify?

First flush diverters are relatively easy to make from pipe fittings. The most common design uses a hollow ball:

Example

If the volume of water is big enough (at least several hundred litres) and it starts off relatively pure, there will be a background population of benign bacteria that keep it clean enough by metabolising organic matter and outcompeting pathogens. John Daley talks about this a lot. We have thousands of households here and in Australia who use plain unfiltered tank water and have no issues.

Concrete tanks are the best for enhancing this process because they also raise the pH of the water (and improve the taste).