Eric Hanson

Hi everyone,

It is spring here in Southern Illinois and that means that the peach trees are blooming, but at a dangerously early time of the year and we are getting freezing temperatures.  Probably this means that there will be a much-reduced harvest this year, but it had me wondering about a way to maybe save the trees.

In the past, the locals have used smudge pots--basically burn some oil (?) that produces a thick, black smoke and enough heat that the trees *might* stand a chance against freezing.  This had me wondering if there was a better way to do this.  So I was wondering if there was some sort of RMH that would be cheap enough to buy/construct in numbers great enough to deploy across many, many acres of peach trees (perhaps hundreds of acres).  Of course it would burn hot enough to prevent freezing, burn wood efficiently, completely and without smoke.  Maybe there would be a way to reflect some of the heat that would ordinarily rise up so that it projected out to cover a large distance?  

And of course it would have to be simple in design so that it could be set up in place with maybe a day's worth of warning and then disassemble and store easily.


So, any thoughts?



Eric

Daniel,

Nice example.  

Regarding the fancy models--that is actually what I have connected to my system.  The BMS has leads that connect to each battery cell to measure each cell individually.  The BMS connects to my phone via Bluetooth where I can see the exact voltage of each cell.  And by exact, I mean to the 1/1000 volt.

But I am also experimenting with a concept design so I might be overdesigning it.


Eric

Les,  you nailed it.

John,

Thanks for updating this thread and kicking me in the butt to get things finished!! I kinda got distracted.

But back to your question, I am afraid that the BMS is very particular about its configuration.

Here is the deal:

My BMS is a 4S type.  This means that it connects to each cell individually in order to read each individual cell voltage which is absolutely critical in this type of system.  The BMS will—to a degree—try to balance the cell voltages to get them exactly identical.  They will sorta take energy from a higher cell and send it to a lower cell.  This can happen passively in the background as is the case with mine.  Active balancing does this much quicker.

But if you doubled your cells in parallel and connected each pair to the BMS as though it were one battery, the BMS would not know which cell it was talking to.  In fact, it would just assume that there was only one battery.  This becomes problematic when charging and discharging, especially to the extreme operating ends (near fully charged and nearly fully discharged),  In this case, the BMS may allow charging when at the max point because the less-charged cell would lower the pair’s overall voltage.  The higher charged cell would still get overcharged.  And near the empty point, the BMS may allow further discharge because the higher cell raises the overall voltage and the lower voltage cell drops into dangerously low to a state where it can no longer be charged again.

If you want to go with a 4s2P system, those BMS devices are easily available .

Does this help?





Eric

I agree with Carla and Alex.

This is eco-friendly marketing word salad.  It sounds like it is something special, but how non-vegetarian can vegetable matter be?  

Coffee is plant derived.

Surely there are earthworms and other biota in the soil in which the plants grow, but this has nothing to do with it being vegetarian.  And this would be a desirable characteristic.

Overall, it sounds like marketing nonsense.


Eric

Ok Thomas, I don’t know what to make of this, but this year my region had a winter that was cooler than normal and we had a good 9” snowfall—some places more.

We started out drier and warmer than typical and I was wondering if I would even need to attach snow clearing attachments to my tractor.  But then it happened—we got a good snowfall and it was even a dry, crisp type of snow that drifted just a little.  Too bad that it didn’t drift more so my students would have first-hand experience with blowing, drifting snow.  But a good snowfall nonetheless.

Yesterday the high was 71f, humid and we got a brief but temperamental rainstorm.  As I type this now at 2:30am (just getting up for the day), the temperature is 39f!  By now we are on the cooler side of what I thought was going to be a warm winter.

Ain’t weather crazy!


Eric

Ok, I haven’t seen Firefly, but I have wanted to for so long.  

My all time favorite for that era (mid-late 90s?) has to be Babylon 5.  It was an amazing series that was intended to run for a full 5 years and its conclusion was essentially written before the first episode.  It was incredibly ambitious and had to compete directly with Star Trek DS9.  

And it changed TV story telling where stories, even full seasons are told in arcs where the events of one episode directly impact future episodes—sometimes out of the blue!

My favorite, but I need to give Firefly a chance.


Eric

Never count out Osage Orange.

It is an amazing firewood—burns hotter than any other wood I can think of.  It’s also the hardest of hardwoods.  It would make a great tool handle.  And once established, it grows back at a phenomenal rate.  It might be the absolute perfect tree to copice.



Eric

Some suggestions:

1) plant deep-rooted legumes like crimson clover or hairy vetch.  There are numerous variations on this theme.

2) plant a deep-rooted crop that likes to take up the nitrogen.  Daikon radish, Buckwheat, certain grains come to mind.  Again, numerous variations

These are two very easy options.

3) pile on wood chips and plant into the chips.  Technically the plants will need to be planted under the wood chips, but the chips will break down surprisingly quickly

                                OR

4) Since you have those wood chips, try inoculating them with mushrooms--specifically Wine Caps.  Nothing will turn woody mass into fertile garden bedding faster than Wine Caps

5) Make compost piles on the beds over winter.  Don't get too concerned about getting browns & greens correctly balanced--just get the stuff piled up on the bed.  As it  slowly rots over winter, all the leachate will be drawn down by gravity into the soil beneath.  In the Spring, maybe take whatever is left and pile up into a more properly constructed pile, but who cares a this point (you could also just chip the stuff in).  All that leachate will do wonders for all over fertility.

6)  If you feel industrious, you could make biochar and that in.


There are just a few easy-to-do steps that can work miracles on your garden bed.  I can't speak highly enough for the Wine Caps or the impromptu compost pile that is just left to sit.  And if you can get that pile a bit on the green side of things--that's actually pretty great as all of that green juice will work its way right into the soil beneath.


Good luck and please let us know how things work out.


Eric

I thought I would add something about the battery converters.

I did buy a Orange to Red converter (Orange batteries on a Red tool).  Generally they work, but there might be a few limitations.  If the tool is one that talks to the battery to get every bit of power out a battery so that there is no lag or drop in power when drilling long, deep holes or cutting thick stock.  In those circumstances, the orange battery simply acts like a normal battery and does not talk the way that a dedicated Red battery would.

But there are a whole lot of applications where I don't care in the slightest about the tool and battery talking to each other.  Flashlights or lighting in general is a perfect application for one of these adapters.  Also, every single day I use one of my Orange batteries (actually a generic Orange) to slide a little 18v to USB converter to use the battery as a power supply that lasts many recharge cycles.  Again, I can't imagine that a converter matters in the slightest.

I will get a Red to Orange converter sometime in the near future and give more feedback.



Eric