Ian Shere

S Bengi wrote:

John C Daley wrote:S. Benji are you blowing air along the buried tubes?

Yes, the fans are blowing air through the buried perforated pipes in the ground.

We're just starting down this road, as we consider moving from Phoenix, AZ (where we have too much heat - hardiness zone around 9b), to Kirksville, MO where there's much less (hardiness zone 5b)! We're convinced we're going to need a greenhouse and have been tossing up between a walipini style greenhouse with no heating or a more above-ground style with a climate battery. I just watched an interesting video from a guy who has (had at the time) 2 fairly large houses warmed with climate batteries - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acByGuSMALc. He talks about the pros and cons. A walipini also has some drawbacks. Considerably more excavation which is permanent, needing retaining. Potential blocking of sun/light to growing areas, especially during lower sun angles. Finally, drainage due to it being below ground level. While we love the walipini idea, we're yet to be convinced that it is what we want/need.

Sorry, a lot of preamble to give you our thinking before I ask the actual question! In your image, I note that each layer of piping have different inlets and outlets. Is this for some reason, rather than having air circulate throught the entire network in one long tube? I am guessing it's to do with the ability to push air through the longer series of tubing as opposed to 2 shorter runs.

After watching the video, I believe that I used "undershot" incorrectly. Ours would need to be a stream wheel, which I now understand to be the least useful. The river is pretty flat, as much as I can see, so the velocity would be low. I haven't seen a legal survey of the property, and I haven't yet visited it. So, it may well be that the lot doesn't extend into the river any way at all, which makes the idea of hydro null and void. We're heading there in the next few weeks to look at it, and there seems to be a survey available, but I just have not seen it.

The downside of solar on this lot will be it's narrowness at 89') and it being heavily treed. We'd prefer not to roof mount  as they will be very visible (proposed design is a mono-pitch shed roof sloping down from south to north, meaning high relative angle of panels to the roof). This would mean ground mounting behind the house (viewed from the road) with the degradation of available sunlight hours.

My wife and I are looking at a piece of property in GA that has some riverfrontage. It's a smaller river, but I don't know what sort of velocity it has year-round. I was wondering if anyone has experience utilising an undershot waterwheel to produce electricity.

What information do I need to figure out whether it's both feasible and viable? Given Europe's recent "come to Jesus" moment, I'm not confident about relying on solar alone, but only as a secondary source. The area and the lot are heavily treed with old, tall timber, so wind power would be wasted money unless I could put in a seriously tall tower! So, I'm stuck with hydro and solar, unless there's some other source I hadn't considered. Open to suggestions.

Mom always had 3 enamel mugs in the fridge at any given time. As I grew up on a sheep farm with  some cows as well, we always had a mutton roast on Sundays. She would add a couple of generous scoops from the "current" mug to the pan before adding the leg/shoulder/whatever. At the end she'd carefully decant the "drippings" back into one of the mugs. Of course she always got more this way than she used so we always had lots.

We'd use that for any type of frying that we did, though I never remember her using any in other cooking .

@Yen Yus, where are you located? I'm originally from New Zealand and used to design houses there. I specced  worm septics a few times and they were the bomb! Over here (in the USA) no one has a clue about them, so I figure getting one through your county/city for planning permission would be a nightmare!!

@Anne, having specified them in the past,  and having spent 15 years as a designer i'm well acquainted with how painful cities can be too deal with.  But that was not my issue.  I just wanted to know if they were available here.  They are better than any traditional system hands down.

I'm brand new here, and apologize if this is the wrong forum - it looked the closest.

We're about set to buy a property in TX that is currently on a conventional septic system. While it has the potential to connect to the town system, we're very much of the option that we want to keep "government noses" out of our business wherever possible. I was an architectural designer back in New Zealand and specced a worm farm septic system on a couple of rural projects (not necessarily this firm, but here's a link to an Aussie firm who supply them - https://www.wormfarm.com.au/). I'd really like to use this system to either replace or retrofit what is there. They produce amazing compost with next to no intervention.

But.... I'm having a horrible time trying to find anyone in the US who even talks about them, let alone supplies them. Has anyone come across these or knows where I could get one or info? Thanks.