Kevin Olson

Here's one more log splicing technique I spotted, this time taken from Finnish church construction details.  The long wall splices are buried inside a "block pillar", basically a miniature log pen, forming a column or pilaster in the wall.

I'd stumbled across this while trying to find out more information regarding the step-lock corner joint used on the Petajavesi Old Church (and other places too, but it's an early example still extant); however, as usual, one thing leads to another.  I may just break down and order Jarmo Hiltunen's book on restoring the Old Church, since he apparently includes some history as well as a step-by-step recipe for cutting the step-lock corner joint.

According to a blower door testing report I came across, some of the lock joint styles (though the step-lock corner was not among those tested) can be nearly as air tight as a Diamond/Norwegian/Saddle/Dalarna type of shrink-fit joint.  The specific high-performing variant was a half-dovetail, with a vertical lock notch at the interior shoulder.  So, now I'm wondering if a lock joint with simpler geometry (and therefore more easily/quickly made) might not be a reasonable compromise for one of the true shrink fit notches.

Phleps does show multiple examples of lock notch corner joints in "The Art of Log Building" (among dozens of corner joint variations - even joints specifically for underwater cribs for docks and the like), but sometimes his commentary is less elucidative than are his drawings; he doesn't really say how air tight these lock style corner notches might be, and under what circumstances they might be appropriate.  Sometimes, he is very clear on the relative advantages and disadvantages of certain designs and details, but other times, he only shows a sketch without commentary.  Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for Phleps, but he doesn't have very much to say about the lock notches.  I don't recall seeing the block-pillar in Phleps.

Carla Burke wrote:Is there a feasible 'plan b' that doesn't require just staying put?

Carla -

This just popped up on the front of a house in the little town next to ours.  I have no idea how this will work for them come winter time - there will be snow ankle deep head first, and they'll almost certainly need some sort of snow-keeper-outer structure over it - but it appears that they yanked the stairs off the front porch and replaced them with this.  No doubt they can be obtained to provide access for just a few stairs worth of elevation change, or for a full flight.

I haven't checked, but I would surmise that there is an equally vibrant used market in these as there is for the stair lifts which I had investigated.

So, another possibility to facilitate gracefully ageing in place...

Kevin

Here's the small tear with the patch just basted in place, more or less.  This tear may have some material missing - perhaps someone was nibbling on this?  Whatever the case, there isn't enough mesh to actually close the gap, so a patch is necessary to prevent excessive bunching and puckering while keeping out the worst of the biting bugs (today, it was mostly mosquitos and deer flies, but I'm sure there must still be some black flies around, too).

Here's another of my mending projects: when I set it up this spring, I discovered that the screen on our screen house had two large-ish tears, the larger of the two big enough for a blue jay to come through, so not stopping mosquitos or black flies, for sure.  I'd saved the old screen, even though it was in rough shape; if nothing else, it had some zippers, but I am loathe to throw things away (much to my wife's chagrin!).  The old screen had one bought patch on it that I could remove (using a utility knife hook blade as a seam ripper, as one does!) and reuse on the new screen for mending the smaller rip, but the other larger tear needed something else.  I debated cutting a piece of the old screen as a patch, but decided to just try to close up the gash by stitching the edges together; if necessary, I can still cut a patch from the old screen.

Here are the photos.  Though I thought I had taken one of the smaller gash when patched, but I'll append one later, on edit.  No one will mistake my work for that of a cosmetic surgeon, that's for sure(!), but at least the bugs stay out (mostly - that's the most you can hope for, realistically).

C. Letellier wrote:So Thoughts?

There's a lot here.  I'll need to give it some time to make sure I understand your proposal in detail.  And, I may not be qualified to properly evaluate/understand some of it.

I do agree that Thorsten Chlupp's design is pretty impressive - for a new build, where it's easier to build the huge tank into the heart of the structure.  In some retrofits, he did use an external buried tank (one I saw looked like an old propane tank - the sort they fill the trucks from), with spray foam insulation, and then buried.  But, that didn't allow for much stratification.  His library project used concrete tanks, as I recall, as part of the basement excavation (but, again, a new build).

Thorsten's automatic stratifier return pipe is pure genius, in my opinion.  To maximize the benefit of the stratification, you'd need a tank that was relatively deep for its footprint dimensions.  Tall/deep tanks will be trickier to build with lumber, due to the increased hydrostatic pressure.  Building it like a barrel (with tensile hoops in the circumferential direction, to take those stresses) might be viable; they used to build water tanks and molasses tanks this way (but, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood).  I know you've given tank construction considerable thought, but you're basically building a concrete form to hold the pour indefinitely.

My inclination, for my personal situation, would be to use IBC totes, salvaged fuel oil tanks, or 55gal barrels, plumbed together in series and housed in an insulated compartment: modular, and thus easier to wrangle into an existing space; relatively inexpensive; and the containment is built in.  With careful plumbing, some level of stratification can be accomplished with the series plumbing (but Thorsten's auto-magic stratifier is not easily implemented, so some potential gains will be missed).

Thorsten's systems also relied on custom programed  industrial controls to manage the pumps to the drain back collector panels.  Though it's been a while since I listened to his lectures, I recall that he was using PLCs, not just a simple differential controller.  There are some details available on his setup, but I don't know if there are enough to really replicate it.  The Cold Climate Housing Research Center at University of Alaska Fairbanks had continued doing some research based on Thorsten's designs, and may have more info on the controls aspect.  He was also working in an extreme climate (Fairbanks, AK) , and running his collectors in winter.  Extracting some net solar gain from flat panel collectors at such high latitudes, in winter, is pretty impressive, at least to me.

I have intended to build initial collector panels on the cheap, following Richard Heiliger's modified Thomason trickle down (MTD) collector panels:
https://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/MTD/MTD.htm

That's a totally different collector scheme from yours, of course.  Heiliger's MTD definitely would have a shorter life span than yours, constructed from perishable materials as it is; still, that might be OK for some initial experimentation.  My intended pilot MTD project, to learn something in a low-risk situation, is an outdoor shower water heater for seasonal use, where leaks and other errors will be of minimal consequence.  If that proves successful, then I might rig up a DHW pre-heater for my residence; space heating for the house would require a lot more work - either under floor radiant heating (only possible on the ground floor, without undue tear-up) or converting the existing low pressure steam radiator system to vacuum (a potential project for the future to jump the system efficiency, with or without solar hot water, but not at the top of the list).  But, drain back collectors - of whatever design - do seem to be the most foolproof low tech approach, in climates like ours where freezing is a concern.

Heiliger's collaborator on the MTD project, John Canivan, has some details on building a DIY controller on his YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@jcanivan/videos

He also has quite a bit on DIY storage tanks, flat panel collectors, etc.

I recently picked up a used copy of Canivan's self-published little book on building a solar hot water system.  In that one, he gives a recipe for building a pretty typical flat plate collector - aluminum absorber plates (from roll roof flashing), copper tubing and Kalwall glazing - and open barrels plumbed in series for the tank(s).  He used a closed loop for both the collector loop and the DHW, with antifreeze in the collector loop for freeze protection and contra-flow for the DHW - the tank water is isolated from both, and is just a heat store - whereas Chlupp's systems are open loop (collector and storage), with his DHW being heated with an exchanger coil immersed in the (top of the highly stratified) storage tank.

Your coil-in-a-hot-box design is a lot simpler (I think) than even Canivan's DIY flat plate recipe.

Anyway, I'll try to give your proposal some proper attention, and if possible, offer some constructive feedback, but it may take me a bit to get to it, since I've got a bunch of projects with which I am either helping or which I am doing for myself, at the moment.  Please be patient, and ping me to remind me if you don't hear from me in a bit.

A ground drive sickle bar mower might be nice for longer grass like this (and for other things, like a reaper binder), but I haven't ever seen one "in the flesh", even though I know they existed, hstorically.  I have a nagging suspicion that a more modern reel mower might be rejiggered to drive the bar from a hedge trimmer or some such.  It would be a nice little fab and machining project, I'm sure - keep me out of trouble for a little while, anyway!  Ideally, one might track down a 2" section sickle bar mower and use that for the conversion, since parts might still be available.  Haban, and maybe some others, made such rigs for smaller garden tractors - Simpliciy, Cub Cadet, maybe Gravely, too - and if I recall correctly, those used the smaller 2" sections, rather than the more standard 3" sections, which would require less stroke to actuate.  The sickle mower attachments for David Bradley and Simplicity walk behind tractors were also pretty small, and might be a good start.

However, any such project is pretty far down "the list", even though I'll keep my eyes open for a nice donor sickle mower attachment or larger hedge trimmer to add to the "projects not yet started" heap.

And stopped "in the cut" as a reference for just how out of hand this had gotten, while we were away.  The rule is a vintage (or maybe just old!) 24" folding carpenter's rule, each section of which is 6" or about 150mm long.  The wheels on the mower are about 10" (250mm) in diameter.  Most of this grass was at least 6" tall, but you can see that there were dandelion heads (gone to seed and in the wind) which were as tall as the tops of the wheels.

This mower has 5 blades on the reel.  Some reel mowers (especially powered ones) have more - 7 up even 11, but generally an odd number.  Higher blade counts on the reel would not work very well such tall grass, though; the blades would be more closely spaced, which tends to just push taller vegetation, rather than catching it between a reel blade and the bed knife.  Even with a 5-blade reel, this was a challenge, and an exercise in patience and persistence.  I only set the mower over a few inches - maybe 4 or 5, say 100 to 125mm - each pass, so that any particular bit had the mower pass over it at least 4 times (since it has a 20" wide reel).  There were still some stragglers and holidays, which I had to go back to tidy up.  I might have made quicker progress with a scythe in this long grass, but I haven't gotten the grass blade sharpened up yet this season.  I've spent quite a bit of time these past couple of weeks, helping my sister convert and old yard shed into a chicken coop, and adding a covered run to that shed, so I've foregone a few things, here.  Projects, projects...

And a slightly different angle of the same:

Here's a photo of a halfway done mowing job, after having been out of town, with grass grown far too tall for efficient cutting:

Here's where I bought the Pin High back-lapping grit I've been using:
https://shop.jescoproducts.com/pinhigh-lapping-for-homeowners/1-lb-220-grit-pinhigh/


Jesco manufactures lapidary compounds, also, but Pin High is their gel-carrier back-lapping compound brand, in several grain sizes.

As I'm writing this, they do not show a price for the 1 lb tubs ("call for price"), but the 5 lb tubs are $28.50 (USD).  I seem to recall it was 7 or 8 USD each for the 120 and 220 grit  tubs I bought from the a few years ago, plus some nominal shipping charge.

California Trimmer, a manufacturer of powered walk-behind self-propelled reel mowers - including an electric model -  also sells 1 lb tubs of 80 grit:
https://caltrimmer.com/products/h0906f-backlapping-compound-jar-80g-all-models

 
 

That is a steep price - about the same as the 5 lb tub from Pin High (Jesco).  But, a little goes a long way, in my experience, so it might be another viable source.