I've been down this road a couple of times. It's a pain when one of the front burners becomes unreliable. I ended up switching the knob/thermostat with one of the back burners until the new one came in. Part of it was not wanting to reach to cook and part was other people forgetting and burning their food.

I haven't found many seeds, usually after things had dried up quite a bit. As you can see with the flower clusters, you can easily have a dozen or more flowers per foot of vine. I'd imagine this takes energy away from doing other things, so I don't know if pinching a bunch of them off will help with seed production. Each flower doesn't last too long, so if you did get any it would probably happen in the next couple of weeks.

Those are clusters of flowers. They grow much the same as the leaves and roots from the nodes. When I first started I went through the same with a few here and there, then clusters all over one fall. I didn't get any seeds at the time. They are oddly shaped little dark seeds. If you get any they will be after the flowers bloom. It's nice to get outside early and see all the activity around the flowers before the sun starts to beat down on them.

What brand battery are you using? LiFePo batteries have some sort of battery management system (BMS) inside, and different BMS's operate differently.

thomas rubino wrote:Although not cheap, the heat fans that sit on your wood stove produce a significant breeze, using no electricity at all.

 

They have a Thermo Electric Generator (TEG) inside them powered by the heat of the stove. Technically you could rig something up to power them with heat for cooling purposes, but with that much cost it would be cheaper to add more capacity/production to whatever off-grid energy source is being used.

I don't know how useful this idea would be for a multitude of reasons, there is a really good video about more efficient ceiling fans here:


If you already have a decent plan for powering a ceiling fan then finding a BLDC fan is a good option. It's possible to find out the specs of the motor and get a different motor controller that hooks up directly to DC power, but that's pretty technical and probably not worth it if you are only running on a 12V or 24V battery system.

I have taken a bunch of used PC fans and hooked them up in various ways to provide cooling. If you have appropriately sides hole saws, you can mount them to a piece of wood and make a duct to move cool air in or hot air out. I had my bedroom set up this way for several years. Especially when using old fans, they sometimes make annoying resonant sounds at certain speeds. Rather than buying individual speed controllers, I just found a voltage that they would run at without being too loud (such as 9V) and powered them with that. Since they were free, I could use a few extra to make up for the loss of airflow by undervolting them. They are already long lived, and running them slow prolongs that life further. Keep them clean and they can run non-stop for several years.

I was also using this for drying clothes. The rain is pretty much daily and sporadic around here, so just leaving a line out in the sun can be problematic. I had a free sheet of steel roofing that I covered a small rack inside a plywood box and used one of those USB power banks to run 4 smaller fans at 5V to exhaust the moisture laden air. I only used what I had on hand just to see if it worked. Nowadays you can find USB-C power banks that are capable of giving multiple voltages, such as 5V, 9V, and 12V which could be used to power a number of fans. You would have to figure out the current draw of the fans and the rated output of the power bank. They make various adapters (trigger boards and cables) to get a consistent output since USB-C needs to communicate with something to output the correct voltage.

You could also use any type of battery with an appropriate buck/boost converter to give what you need. The benefit to this is you can have a small number of quiet fans closer to you and perhaps a few more fans elsewhere for intake and exhaust. I had some small wires going around my bedroom for fans and lighting, but it would be easy to use separate batteries. Of course this is from the viewpoint of someone that can make battery packs for dollars instead of hundreds of dollars.

All of the videos I am finding right now are people replacing the evaporator line with a new one. I don't see any replacing the condenser. The upright freezers are either frost free (fans blowing through mini 'radiators' for the evaporator and condenser) or they have an external condenser on the back. I did see one video with a chest freezer that had a condenser on the back, and judging by the accent they were an ocean away. I'm extremely hesitant to give any info regarding refrigeration and have someone take what I say as fact when I have no idea what hardware they might be working with. It's very easy to make a logical leap to thinking something 'should' work and cause a serious problem.

A quick google image search for 'chest freezer diagram' brings up a bunch of pics with diagrams for various layouts. I'm not in the business of selling the machines, so I wouldn't know one from another purely by model name or number to be able to tell someone across the internet how to go about such a project. I learned on old cars that had leaked out years before I got to them and replaced the entire system with new parts. Those cars used the same r134a that many freezers use, so functionally they are very similar. If someone is looking for info in general then vehicle AC repair videos can give a basic overview of how the systems operate, as well as common faults that can occur.

I see a few videos of people making functioning systems, but they do things I wouldn't want someone to copy. The basic idea is sound if you know enough not to repeat the mistakes. You could disconnect the lines from an evacuated system, add more interior insulation, install a new evaporator line around the inside in a similar fashion to the original and ultimately get better performance. The reality of doing this successfully with the right ($$$) tools is a completely different matter.

I think I lost the two that I made, but I had taken a branch and made around 1 1/2" diameter versions of the kind without the spring that were flat on top. If I needed to keep an important note or piece of mail easily visible so I wouldn't lose or forget it, I could stick it in one to hold it up on my desk. They were also great for bags of chips, pretzels, etc. They got misplaced when moving, but if I find them or make more I will have to take some pics.

I also needed some medium sized alligator clamps one night to replace rusted ones on a battery charger and had to get creative. I JB Weld'ed some 12 gauge wire to the ends of a pair of the spring type, bent in a shape that would clamp on to a battery terminal. I attached the battery charger wires to that so I could charge someone's battery after their alternator failed. I had seen in years past where someone did something kind of similar, using foil around each end and held an insulating spacer in the end tied to a string. If anything pulled the spacer out, it would complete the connection to a micro controller to turn on a light. If you have to work with what you've got, then having clothespins around is quite handy.

56V on a 48V nominal lead acid battery would be equivalent to 14V to a 12V nominal battery (or two 6V batteries as the case may be). Cars typically put out more than that, so it wouldn't be harmful in the short term to see if it does settle in to a lower float voltage once the amperage output is reduced. A charger has to be at a higher voltage than the battery in order to charge, and if it was still pushing 5A then the battery was taking a charge. My understanding with lead acid is once you start getting below 1/20th of the battery ampacity, that between the design and internal resistance you aren't doing any harm to the battery. With 5A in to 225A it's like filling a bucket not quite one pint per hour.

Another thing I've noticed after a bunch of battery babysitting is the difference between the voltage output at the charger, and the voltage of the battery. This is especially noticeable at higher amperage because the total resistance of the circuit amplifies voltage drop as current draw increases. Plus in the case of lead acid, they have much higher internal resistance than Li-Ion/LiFePo. In extreme cases you can end up with a partially charged battery and the charger stopped because it read the voltage as full, and possibly heat damage around connections because all the energy that didn't make it to the battery turned in to heat. I see lots of people online using thermal imaging cameras to find the causes to issues like these.

If you have a halfway decent meter handy to check the voltage, you can try measuring the voltage directly at the charger terminals while it is giving close to 5A, measure the voltage as close to the battery as possible, and then disconnect the charger for a few minutes (with no other loads or charging) and read the battery again. You will probably end up with three slightly different voltages. This means the voltage the app sees (assuming this is just the charge controller and not a BMS like found on some Li Ion/LiFePo packs) will always read slightly higher than what the battery actually sees. Hopefully you can find someone with the same type of setup and experience with the same charge controller and app.

jason holdstock wrote: without sealing up the old timbers perhaps too much?

This can be a real problem when changing the original design. I have seen a number of videos on YouTube regarding vapor barriers showing how problems can occur, as well as some real world mishaps leading to condensation, rot, and very short service life before needing repairs. A warm roof is assembled differently than a cold roof, and if there are points of the year where those temperature invert for more than a few days at a time, it can quickly lead to condensation. The main takeaway I got from it is that you really don't want to have a lot of wood of other material damaged by moisture or prone to rotting right up against the vapor barrier if possible.

There are different kinds of vapor barriers with various amounts of breathability, and using the wrong one or installing it incorrectly might be worse than not having one at all. Any insulation used could either draw up water and grow mold, or hold it up against something that will grow mold and/or rot. There is a good YouTube channel with a bunch of well explained info here: Steve Roofer - YouTube

Do you have the printer connected to the computer with a USB cable? My mother has used cheap Cannon printers for about 20 years, and some use wifi which may be what it is looking for. As far as I remember, it always worked if I used a USB A to B cable. If that isn't an option then you would have to look up your model number and figure out how to connect it to a local wifi network.

I use cheap knockoffs of the SkyRC iMAX B6 charger from Amazon. After seeing the way many of the big name brand chargers actually operate, they seem more dangerous than what I'm using. I put alligator clips on the charge cables so I can get in to any part of the battery and just charge that parallel set. I trickle charge it and see how it behaves. If it gets over 3V in a rather short time at low current (highly dependent on cells and capacity) then it's usually going to recover decently. Doing multiples of the same packs like I did made it easy to see the few sets of cells that weren't going to take a charge. Obviously I had to babysit this whole thing in a noncombustible place, so I would find things to work on and glace over every so often.

I try to be very judicious with my expectations. If you have a particularly well worn battery and instead of a battery that is more aged than worn then this won't fix that problem. If they were stored poorly for too long then a charger can't fix that either. Trying to push in or draw out the maximum the cell spec sheet says on a used cell has the potential to fail catastrophically.

I've seen too many videos about what and how things go on with the cells, with various debates. Depending on who made the BMS (which can change even on the same model battery) it can work a bit different and have different protections and cut-off points and tons of other factors. There's a great explanation towards the end of the video here:


I just tried out a newly assembled pack while riding from St Augustine to Jacksonville and back by lunch, and I forgot to put sunscreen on my legs!

I've recovered a few hundred cells for my ebikes with good success. A lot of times the BMS shuts off for various reasons. It depends on what happened. If one of the safety features turn it off like a short circuit, or the whole pack starts to fall just below the voltage threshold, then it can usually be jump started like mentioned. It can be the same when you install a new BMS, if it doesn't work, a quick tap of the correct voltage range to the input will turn it on.  

Another thing that happens if a pack is left for many months or more, the battery management circuit very slowly draws power from only one of the parallel cell(s), because it would be too inefficient/costly/heavier to draw from the whole pack and use a larger buck converter to power itself. So you end up with one of the parallel cell(s) much more drained to the point the BMS shuts off. These are the packs that would be dangerous to just throw at the charger. If one cell is too low, the difference will be added to the other cells which over volts them! That's the dangerous part.

Some tool BMS's don't balance the cells with the BMS. Some only do it on the charger like RC cars. Some only balance near the end of charging called 'top balancing', and often this ends up with it trying to burn off a few mA per cell on the higher ones so the low one can catch up. If a battery sat really long or has a dead cell then it may never correct itself and needs those cells charged separately or replaced.

I noticed some of the USB-PD and other car chargers take 12V and 24V input, often having higher output at the higher voltage. I hooked one up to a couple different batteries advertised as 18V-20V and it was able to charge my Chromebook in use for hours which takes 15V.

I realize I'm reading this now entirely too late, but hopefully it can help someone out.

Pearl Sutton wrote:My freezer, similar size, old, used, with 2.5 inches of foam insulation added on all sides (held on with a camo ratchet strap, I'm so stylish!) in 22 hours used 2.08 KWH off the grid.

The inner metal sides of chest freezers have the evaporator (cooling part) in direct contact. You can usually see where the lines are when the frost starts to form. To get rid of the heat, the condenser (hot part) Is connected to the outer sides of the freezer. It's probably harder to tell exactly where those lines are, but they can be felt if you put your hand on the side when has been running for a while. If you move your hand along the surface while running, you can feel warmer parts, and if you keep your hand in place is usually cools down some of the metal, but the thin condenser line stays very warm. The fan on the pump/motor is usually only for those parts, unless it is a frost-free freezer. In most circumstances, you can add a bit of insulation to the top and perhaps the bottom, but insulating the sides is likely to cause it to work much harder.

You may have to look around a lot to find clay in the ground. One thing I noticed when I got my property was the sand road going to it had a number of ant hills around, and a couple of them had red clay mixed in, while others didn't. So I could benefit from their effort to find places where clay is much closer to the surface. It's possible right where you live doesn't have any easy access to good clay, but perhaps not too far away is some place like a construction site that is digging stuff up where you can see they have clay. From there you could ask the workers if you can grab a sample, or perhaps ask other people nearby.

If you can find anyone working with pottery, you may be able to get your hands on some free broken pieces you can turn in to grog. I tried several methods and they all had problems. I didn't like a lot of them, so I resorted to using the 'anvil' face of a vise and a blacksmith hammer. It took entirely too long, but I wanted it done and eventually I got there. In my case I was making an aluminum melting furnace, so the particulars of how I went about many things wouldn't be the same as a J-tube fire box.

I ended up finding a local pottery supply store that was a small business running out of a space on the back of a strip mall. I never would have found it without a bunch of searching online. If all else fails then that may be a good option. Another idea is to find a local potter and see if you can get a sample of clay or work out some sort of trade. In places where they use oil furnaces, you may be able to get leftover refractory cement from an installer. There may even be someone else interested in the same materials like a knife maker, metal caster, or another mass heater enthusiast where you could possibly buy/trade for  their leftover refractory cement.

One thing I noticed going in and out of air conditioned spaces is that it can cause your skin temperature to drop below the dew point, which causes your skin to collect moisture as soon as you step outside. Going back and forth regularly to cool off/dry off usually ends up with more moisture and clothes getting soggy and uncomfortable. It's a bit less of an issue if I immediately hop on my ebike and zip around in the wind for a few minutes to warm my skin temp with the wind keeping me dry.

Modern houses are built very differently than older ones, so some old tricks don't work the same. We tend to have more sealed envelopes with roofs built like solar ovens. It might be worthwhile to get a cheap thermometer/humidity sensor for your bedroom and keep an eye on it for a while to get a sense of when the room is heating up, and more importantly how long is it taking to cool down when the sun goes down. Some houses get soaked in heat and it radiates off for many hours. It may be worth looking in to a radiant barrier in an attic above a bedroom, reflective roof coatings, or other options depending on circumstances. I saw one house down here with an irrigation line on the ridge of the roof to cool it around sunset so the A/C wasn't running continuously in to the night.

An idea a number of people are looking in to this year seems to be similar to the notion of "heat the person not the space", with temperature going the opposite direction. Just the notion of conditioning the air when houses are larger than ever, with fewer people living under one roof, seems less than ideal. I have my own projects I've gotten started on, largely building off of the work of others, and plenty more great ideas that need to be fleshed out. The most interesting one I have come across is Phase Change Materials or PCM's. NightHawkInLight on YouTube has a bunch of interesting videos, many diving deep in to complex chemistry, but more often than not comes up with simple solutions using more common (cheaper) and less harmful ingredients. He's also had a few other videos in the past couple of years centered around keeping cool. For anyone interested in DIY solutions, this video is a good place to start:

You would figure that I would learn my lesson about posting new topics, but brain damage got me again. My apologies.

The Robot Cantina Channel has a bunch of projects that could be adapted to all sort of projects for vehicles and small scale farm equipment. In their recent videos, they did some tests with an engine running an alternator, which then powered an electric golf cart. They posted an update indicating they made a mistake with the figures and actually got much better fuel mileage than they originally posted. This short video tells the story:



You can go back and see the build videos as well as previous experiments that led this far. It is pretty impressive that it isn't quite as inefficient as one might think to convert to electricity and back. I particularly like that by only tethering the engine by wires instead of a drivetrain, you can put the engine wherever it makes sense for stability and different configurations you don't normally see.

For instance, I'm thinking of a 6x6. Something that can reach those otherwise inaccessible areas or pull a structure on skids. You can tuck a larger engine down low in the center and run 3 larger alternators, with each set up as a separate system for each axle. If uptime is critical then you mostly need to stock a handful of items that could be swapped out in the field.

Or something more lightweight like a reverse trike. There are lots of designs less common in the US that are already well suited to carrying cargo, and there is potential to carry more with a trailer. Adding a standard ebike kit would allow for quieter usage without the engine running. It should be possible to get a trimmer motor, and a small alternator and power an ebike motor, perhaps even be able to use one motor and switch between power sources.

Or maybe you need something more along the lines of an oversized powered wheel barrow, or something that can tow equipment around. I really like the DIY aspect of people grabbing what they already have and seeing what they can make work. It could be used with a biodiesel engine or even powered with wood gas. You could modify the vehicle design so the gasifier isn't fighting for space since the engine can be mounted almost anywhere. The sky is the limit, and I'm sure we will see more updates with the project they currently have going.

It appears that there are 2 valve covers side by side on an inline 6 cylinder engine. The exhaust cam cover would be the one on the passenger side. The intake cover probably needs the gasket replaced as well. Fortunately it seems to be aluminum, so it shouldn't have any issues with warping like plastic parts of similar vintage. A head gasket replacement would involve the timing belt, deck and cylinder head flatness, and a whole bunch of other issues you probably wouldn't or couldn't address with the engine in the car. You should be good without going that far.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I found out that many O'Reilly's parts store have a brake lathe. It's almost always cheaper and no waiting days on shipping. It's so rare for people to shave them down anymore that most of the time you will have plenty of thickness left to shave them smooth. I've brought more than a dozen pairs of rotors there over the past couple of years.

The stuff in the other post and what I linked is not a paver, it's similar in price to the fabric. I don't think the fabric alone is going to stop gravel from migrating sideways. Especially in places where the ground below is already reasonably hard, you may not need the fabric, just the cells to hold the gravel in place. It seems to me like the same money but more effective. I haven't actually used this first hand, but I've seen it used a number of times and appears to work better than a lot of other options. Hopefully someone in the other thread gets back with more info.

There is stuff called Geo Cell that is made specifically to reinforce ground so that when the large weight of a vehicle rolls over it, the material can't squish out sideways. It can be found on Amazon and similar places. Given that the tires of heavier vehicles usually aren't rolling over every square inch, you don't absolutely need to do the entire width of the road, only a bit wider of an area than where the tires make contact and cause potholes. I've also seen people do DIY versions of this with various pipes, cans, or whatever else they had on hand. It would be nice if there was something made from a plant based plastic or something, but I didn't find anything like that.

You can also find or make it in various thicknesses. Given the issues with bedrock being close to the surface, it might be beneficial to go a bit thicker and add more gravel so there is sufficient room for water to go through and not create puddles. It can have issues when installed on slopes, but if your main problem is in the flat areas then this might be the way to go.

EDIT - I guess the other thread that you dug up has more information on this.

I haven't used Windows regularly in 10 years, so I'm not completely up to date with some things, like changes to the names of things and specific directions of how to navigate, so I'm relying on the internet for information.

For the desktop application, the first thing would be to check out the Start Menu > Control Panel > Programs and Features to see if it is showing up as still installed. Not showing up there doesn't mean there aren't files left behind from the original install that could complicate things when trying to install a new version, but if it does show up you could try to uninstall from there. When 'Programs and Features' isn't showing it as installed, try installing the new version. If anything happens that you didn't expect, or things you expect don't happen, or get any errors, you can post them back here for more specific help.

One wrinkle I found to this was a Reddit post saying the program was running in the background but they couldn't find it. I'm guessing here that it is possible for it to run at startup but have the icons/buttons go missing. So it would appear like it had been removed when it is actually running in the background, yet you wouldn't be able to access it or reinstall. You could try doing what they did ("use search spotlight to get to activity monitor, then force quit from there, then you can uninstall"), and hopefully this will allow you to install once the program stops. Here is the link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Grammarly/comments/q76a8i/help_uninstalling_current_version_of_grammarly/

Can you give more info on the system, specifically the OS and browser? I haven't used it but I know my mother uses it in Firefox on Linux Mint. I'd imagine it can work similarly on Windows. I have no idea about mobile.

I have vines growing up the side of my house and they grow decent tubers at the base. In other areas where they grow along the ground, each node where a leaf comes off the vine is capable of sending roots down. I'd imagine if you let it go wild with putting down roots everywhere you would end up with lots of smaller sweet potatoes.

I have grown most of mine in large makeshift containers that get a lot of shade in the summer and the vines grow out in to the sun. I will often pick them up and move them to the side to cut down the grass and weeds underneath so they don't get as much of a chance to put roots down as the vines spread out. I've gotten some large sweet potatoes this way, but I haven't actually measured the yield to see which way gives more overall weight.

I'm also no expert and only grow for personal use. They grow really easy in my location where I don't have to do much to take care of them.

After watching the latest sixtyfiveford video I figured I would give an update here. Apparently he got a pre-release model of a battery adapter system for power tools. The batteries use high quality Molicel cells, and the adapters are much smaller than others, only requiring about an extra ~1/4" or 6-7mm. He does a full review and it looks really good. The most important part to me is what he says at the end. He says products like these force the tool manufacturers to just make better tools, instead of locking you in to 'their' batteries, charging a premium.

It makes sense to me. People generally don't buy cars or electronics from the makers of batteries. Let the car, electronics, and tool companies make their stuff and let the battery people do their thing. Especially since most things are already standardized, and many factories are coming online to pump out cells whether anyone likes it or not, I like the idea of battery experts doing their thing and reducing waste, eliminating vendor lock-in, and forcing the tool companies to make good tools. Not just 1 or 2 flagship products and then a bunch of poorly made stuff to fill gaps because people are stuck on a proprietary connector.

The product hasn't come out, so I can't personally say if it is good or not, but it seems really decent and I love the idea. Maybe one day we will just have one connector for each voltage, and perhaps keying so low amperage batteries won't slide in to high current tools. Anyway, here is the video:

For a long time I had been wanting to try my hand at making my own Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki and I finally tried it out a few weeks ago. The best part is that you can tweak things how you like or to use what you have on hand and it is pretty versatile. Making it for breakfast means you can add it in to your more of your meals and have an option to use cabbage in a different way. I also made it up in a huge batch and froze several meals worth that could be defrosted and reheated in a pan. I haven't yet tried to make the sauce, but I was really happy how it turned out without it.

Edit - I was thinking where I first heard about Okonomiyaki and it turns out the same YouTube channel just dropped a video on Hiroshima. He tries his hand at making his own starting around the 7 minute mark:

Thank you! I know there are some quirks and a few things about the manual that don't seem to line up, but it's been working well for me. My posts tend to get very long-winded, and I do that in hopes that people who come across them through searches can have as many details as I can give. I'm going to gather more notes about the setup and organize them into slightly more digestible chunks.

Sadly with all of the different connectors and proprietary setups, it likely won't be 'plug and play' to connect this to just any ebike. It can be made to work in a lot of cases if you are determined enough. I currently have XT-60 connectors on all of my 36V batteries, and will likely move up to XT-90 connectors for higher voltage packs to avoid any mistakes, as well as making use of the higher current handling capacity.

I'm hoping to eventually get to a point where I have a 48V electric trike that doubles as a power source using an inverter. As an individual who has spent a lot of time minimizing my personal power consumption, it's usually the occasional task requiring a bunch of power tool usage that eats up more energy than almost anything else in my life. For me it makes a lot of sense to have a cargo trike with an oversized battery that can occasionally haul stuff, go on a longer trek, or act as a power source that I can roll wherever I need it. With it being a secondary form of transportation, it can sit around for a few days and charge up slowly. As I keep moving forward I will update things and make more threads to show what I have going on. There are lots of ways of going about using ebikes and solar power. My successes can probably help other people with their goals, and maybe it can spark a few ideas that can be shared back to the community.

There is an interesting boost converter style of solar charge controller that I have seen a number of people use and I had been wanting to test this out for a while. The brand is Elejoy (although I see some for sale with the brand name removed) model number: EL-MU400SP. The 400 meaning 400 (ish) watts of power with 200W and 300W versions also available. Since the price tends to fluctuate wildly at times and the higher power model is often not significantly more expensive, I went for the high power handling model.

To give a good idea of what I have, here is a page from the Grin Technologies Ebike website:

https://ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/solar/adjustable-400w-boost-mppt.html

I need to point out first that this is a boost converter, meaning it takes a certain voltage input and bumps up the output voltage. Because of the way this operates, you need to have at least a couple of volts difference between the input and output. If the voltage of the solar panel is 23V, then the output would need to be set at ~25V or above. I believe it has protection to stop it from attempting to charge when the voltages get too close, but I haven't exercised that part of the device yet. In the future I will go over the manual and some of the finer details of how this thing operates.

I picked up a pair of 100 watt panels for under $120 and can use them in parallel with my 36V nominal battery (42V fully charged, or commonly referred to as 40V for tool batteries). If I move up to a 48V or 52V system, I could put the panels in series. This would allow for lower current at the same given power, which means less voltage drop between the panel and the charge controller. Given that it boosts the voltage, if you need to have a longer run of wire for whatever reason it might be better to lengthen the output side of things. That being said, you also want to protect this from rain or being overheated by the sun, so having the option to use a higher input voltage can certainly be useful.

There is another important point I want to bring up about boost converters. The way they operate is to charge an inductor and then shut off the charge. This causes the inductor to deplete itself as fast as it can, causing a reverse voltage spike. The circuit controls how fast it can charge and deplete. Since it is made for solar panels with blocking diodes, this works fine. I saw some online threads and YouTube comments of people attaching their boost convert to a bench power supply and destroying the power supply, or to a battery for the input and having issues. Myself and a number of other people have had no issues using a solar panel for input as intended, so I would strongly recommend using it with solar only. I'm putting this here both to save anyone down the road some grief, as well as to address anyone who does a search and sees someone claiming to have X years experience and are upset they let the magic smoke out of an expensive power supply.

One last important quirk to mention is that this (and likely other) boost converter style charge controllers are powered by the solar panel. If solar isn't connected, or doesn't have sufficient power to operate the controller then it will shut off. It isn't powered by the battery, so it isn't broken if it fails to light up when a battery is connected to the output. It holds the settings so when solar power resumes it can pick up where it left off.

I will have to come back to this another time and go over more details, but my favorite feature is being able to dial in the voltage. I have always been a fan of not pushing my cells to the extremes of 100% or under 20% charge when I can. I have to charge all the way to top balance the cells occasionally, but not every single time. This has been a huge problem with my wall chargers, as they have no built in way to stop charging where I want them. I have also had issues with them cutting out before the BMS could balance the cells and the first pack I built had one cell drift a fair bit away from the rest. This is a huge topic that I will have to dive in to another time, but I can choose to stop it around 80% or I can measure the voltage at the cell and perhaps dial in 42.2V or 42.3V to make up for the voltage drop and get a full balance charge. Even if the cells reach 4.23 volts a couple times a year, it wouldn't be overcharged to the point of being dangerous, and the lower charge between balancing will greatly extend the battery life. I have had great luck with used cells in the packs I built and little loss of capacity after years and a few thousand miles on them. This charge controller can help me step up my charging game and further extend the life of my batteries while using the sun for power.

The knock-off Wago connector on the one side immediately broke, which worked out fine since I wanted to add a fuse and XT-60 connector. On the input I have a wire with MC-4 connectors to attach to the solar panels. On the output side I made a crude connection, but it works. The blue tape has electrical tape and soldered wires underneath. Heat makes the electrical tape adhesive ooze out and come unraveled, and I find the blue tape holds up much better when I need a quick semi-permanent fix.

Things have progressed a lot with the trike this past week. There was a fair bit of struggle trying to build things from scratch, and as mentioned before I had to limit the scope of certain changes. Part of it was to limit how much time is sunk in to this one project, and some of it was simply my lack of welding skills. I've gotten a bit better but still have a ton to learn. My main issue which seems to be common is fixturing. I used whatever C-clamps and magnets I could find at the moment and dove in. Having more clamps, magnets, right angle jigs, and a proper table to work on would have helped tremendously, as well as better stock. None of that was in the cards, so I just did what I could.

I'm mostly happy with the outcome. The brake setup worked out way better than I thought it would. It didn't take much time to get it work. I was fortunate that the one part of the bracket was close enough that I simply needed to make a caliper bracket out of a flat piece of steel, and the built in adjustments were enough to get it lined up tight. I got the motor in really close to the axle which I'm guessing will help avoid chain issues, and not protruding too far back. I made a chain tensioner to help keep the motor from torquing the bracket out of square, however I haven't given it a full test yet. It may need a bit more reinforcement, but I'm hoping not to need to redo the entire bracket.

My first test across the yard without a tensioner showed that it does work, and it does absolutely need the tensioner. I saw in advance that the chain might slap the frame to the axle and put something on to protect it. The chain got loose but never came off, so hopefully the tensioner is enough. I took it all apart to make the tensioner which I finished yesterday, and next I need to get it painted. It's my least favorite part of any project, but I don't have any other viable options at this time. I also need to paint the basket and eventually the battery box when I get that finished. I'm doing everything I can to avoid painting any more parts. Once I get things closer to completion I will take more pics to show exactly how it works.

I spent entirely too much time trying to remove rust from the basket, wheels, and various parts. On the one hand I really wish I never got involved in burning so much time on it, and on the other hand I'm glad I am able to get this project nearing completion instead of scrapping everything. Maybe I should have tried something like vinegar, molasses, or Evapo-Rust, but it's too late now. The battery box and painting will eat up a few days time that I'll never get back, but I'm this far in and the test ride yesterday definitely helps me see that the end is in sight.

As long as the structure you are building off of is solid then it should be fine. Here in the Southeastern US there are plenty of houses with porches built that way. Because of hurricanes we use strapping to tie everything together. I've built plenty of them. We would put a ledger board on the existing structure to set our rafters on. The outer corners are 4x4's and a header on top, with more supporting 4x4's in between for longer spans.

Given that the structure is solid with no racking, and the roof is properly nailed off to avoid racking, you shouldn't need much or any diagonal bracing. The only caveat being if there is no foundation under the 4x4 posts. Even if you don't want to dig and set piers, it might be a good idea to dig a bit at the surface to remove any organic matter in the soil (if needed) so it doesn't sag over time. Fill, tamp down, and level off as needed. I wouldn't try this in any place prone to strong winds, but otherwise it should work. If you are also using 2x6's as sort of 'ladder rungs' for storing lumber, then that mitigates the bottom of the posts shifting towards or away from the building. Perhaps find something to keep the bottom of the post from shifting side to side such as driving a piece of rebar in to the ground. As long as they are kept from going side to side then there isn't anywhere for it to go but up. Once loaded down with wood it would take tremendously strong wind to pull it up. It will be a fair bit of work, but when you need storage, nothing else can replace it. Good luck!

As an update to the previous video I posted, there was some testing of the tarps as well as a cheaper and less toxic method of waterproofing. It's always nice to see update videos like this.

To add on to what has already been said, there are now not only much cheaper solar panels, but you can find bifacial solar panels for not much more money. These panels are designed to produce some amount of energy from light hitting the back side of the panel. This makes them useful for projects where they aren't flat close to a surface like a roof. It's particularly beneficial for any situation where you have a few feet or more behind the panels. It also can make more power for installations facing more towards the east or west.

While my current PV solar plans can't make good use of the bifacial panels, I can certainly see one good use in my situation. Here it is incredibly hot, and very humid largely due to the extreme amount of evaporation that occurs. I've noticed a large difference in vegetation when it has a good amount of shade through part of the day. You can often find a lot more growth along walls and fences than out in the open with no shade. Planting my sweet potato plants so the root zone stays in the shade as the sun gets higher in the sky and letting the roots grow out to the sunny areas seems to keep them very happy.

I could potentially do some sort of agrivoltaic system with either panels facing east and/or west and providing a bit of shade to the ground while making power, or put them higher up off the ground to cast a shadow behind them and plant vine plants like watermelon or sweet potato so the root zone is shaded during the worst part of the day, all while making more power than I would with standard panels. This is particular to my area, but any situation that has you using panels with space behind them to capture either direct or reflected light can increase the total power output using bifacial panels.

I've had some thoughts about hugels lately where it seems like there is a minimum critical mass. Below a certain threshold, the effort invested might never be regained. For instance, there is a ratio of diameter to volume that changes massively as diameter increases. With logs acting as a sponge, having logs be both large and numerous will vastly increase the ability of a hugel to absorb and then release water. The same number and length of 4" logs won't be half the volume of 8" logs, but rather only one quarter. If a place is particularly dry then below a certain amount of sponge action it won't be enough to keep up. If it is compounded by getting a lot of rain at once then the sponge may not be able to absorb enough to make it until then next rain.

Another thing is erosion. The surface area to volume problem also applies, even if it is a bit more difficult to calculate the volume of a rough hugel shaped mound compared to a log. Below a certain size, the yearly erosion may be significant enough to render it ineffective in a short time, whereas a hugel over your head is likely to still be a substantial earthwork for years to come even without maintenance. The effort of building and maintaining one that isn't able to retain enough water may be more effort than it is worth, and that gets compounded if the location is such that there is no room for it to erode down and spread out a bit without being obligated to address the issue. Obligation is poison and future person may resent past person for giving them that burden.

Obviously there are tons of factors to consider. In my area of sand, lots of rain, and no freeze cycle, things in the ground quickly get broken down by fungi, carried off by bugs, or washed deep below the top soil. Massive hugels can still work, but even they aren't going to be as long lived around here. Perhaps properties with much more clay and protection from erosion can make good long term use of them. Rain isn't an issue, but the rain we get is created by evaporation. Mitigating evaporation and erosion would be more important than the sponge factor for me because it rains so frequently. Of course in the long term the sponge factor would likely break down very quickly, so oversizing for that would be important if I don't want to have to rebuild it in a few years. The only redeeming factor for me is that sand is very easy to dig.

One other thing I think about regularly is in one of the early podcasts where Paul talked about mulching, and how if you can only afford so much mulch, then it is better to have deep mulch over a smaller area than too thin mulch over a larger area. Having a few very happy plants is likely to be an easier time than a bunch of sad plants. There's a certain critical mass there too. It might be different depending on the region and the plants involved. Sad plants will always struggle, content plants will be ok in fair weather and sad in poor weather, and really happy plants will be bountiful through good times and bad.

To come at this from another angle to give some other context that might resonate with some is a thing I have heard on Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. There are the select few times in history where a smaller group manages to defend against or fight off a vastly larger opponent. Those stories get told and retold in books and movies thousands of years later, but those are very much the exception and not the rule. By most historical accounts, the larger army almost always wins. Sometimes there is an obsession with quality and picking through the finer details of things, and it can certainly be for good reason, but as Dan Carlin says, "Quantity has a quality all its own."

The next few parts to the trike build are rather time consuming. I need to clean up all of the wheels. Since I'm not mounting the battery under the rear basket, I can focus on just making a bracket for the motor, brake caliper, and build in a trailer hitch. Building the battery is a tedious task. I've had a bunch of other tasks that I needed to complete in order to be able to do some of these parts of the project.

Having to reinvent the wheel several times over is much more time consuming than rebuilding an entire car. With a car, if you have the skills and the tools, you generally don't have to worry too much about the fitment of pieces, or if one change is going to cause a chain reaction of throwing everything out of position. You simply get the parts, install according to the manual, and that's it. This is where a lot of people customizing cars can get in trouble, where trying to get the 'best' components for several parts ends up making the car louder, or narrower power band, or the suspension too hard or unwieldy, and can end up with a worse car and an empty wallet.

That's part of the reason why I'm not going all in with every change I can think of on one build. It's easy to add weeks worth of work figuring things out, undoing work you did previously because of changes to plans, and it can get expensive fast. As the old saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor.

A big time sink has been getting all of my tools together and in shape to do what I need. I'm going to need to weld to make parts for the motor bracket and battery box. I probably haven't used my welder in over a decade. I got a new spool of better quality wire than whatever I got from Harbor Freight. I opened it up and got all of the dust out and the power cable that I had upgraded wasn't seated in the bushing properly, so I got that fixed.

The batteries in the welding helmet went bad and I happened to have a pair of new batteries to replace the old ones. You can solder them in place, but since I had the spot welder, I decided to try that out on a real project for the first time and it works really well. You have to clean all of the surfaces, otherwise oils from your fingers or from manufacturing will cause issues, but I was prepared for that. I might need more rubbing alcohol by the time I'm done cleaning all of my cells.

And boy do I have a lot of cells! I am going to go ahead and get my spare fat bike battery put together, the battery for this trike build, and the battery for the next trike build. Fortunately I had gotten all of the cells pretty close to where they needed to be voltage wise a few months back, and they all held their charge well. But I still had to triple check everything. Plus with the better multimeter, I can get the charge much more accurate. The first battery has 60 cells, the second 80 cells, and the third one has 112 cells, so that was a ton of babysitting and making certain that everything was ready to go. The used packs had some plastic housing pieces that needed to be trimmed, along with bits of metal strip that connected them to the old BMS's that had to be removed, so that too ate up several hours.

Assembling the packs with the new spot welder should go a lot faster than previous builds. I still haven't tried out the nickle strip with cell level fusing. It should work well, but it needs to be cleaned off without wrecking the little pads, as they get caught on things easily and bend out of place. I might build a small tool battery to test it out and get the spot welding power setting dialed in. All of the welding, spot welding, painting, and more is going to take at least another week.

The elementary school I went to was a fairly new building at the time, and while I didn't fully comprehend it back then it was a pretty amazingly advanced place. The windows had tint that was extremely dark to look in but not nearly as dark looking out. Above those windows was a series of smaller windows without tint. There may have been special coatings like you find today to allow visible light through while blocking damaging UV and heating infrared.

The really cool part relevant to this thread was the light shelves. It acts as a shade to the lower window and reflects light through the upper window, bouncing it upward towards the ceiling to add light fairly deep into a room. I can remember many times when the teacher would shut off the lights and do various things to get everyone to calm down a bit after running around outside, and the room felt more than 3/4 as well lit just from the sun.

I believe the light shelves were aluminum, which is highly reflective and probably had a coating to reduce oxidation, and the ceilings were high and particularly white to scatter the light once inside. There was a Mythbusters episode about Indiana Jones myths where they tried getting sunlight deep inside their set where the mirrors worked to get the light in, but it wasn't until Jaime stepped in front of that light beam with his bright white shirt that it scattered the light for better illuminating the space.

I always thought it was an interesting way to do solar lighting inside a house. In a lot of cases, you could probably upgrade a house without having to modify the structural members of the framing. If someone was already looking to upgrade their windows to something more insulating, better UV protection, and a higher impact rating like modern windows have, then it wouldn't be that much more work to plan for a light shelf. If the header is at the top of the wall, you could make the opening larger both up and down without needing a framer, engineer, and more permits and inspections. Or you could do like the school did and add a small window above a regular window. With the right combination of shade, light, and efficient design, you could potentially save a fair bit of energy on lighting and cooling.

With light shelves there are more benefits for warmer climates. Interior rooms without a direct line of sight wouldn't get any light, where the light tube idea would work really well. I guess like most things it depends on a lot of factors like house orientation, roof size, and other factors of the design and location of the house. I could potentially see some sort of manifold that instead of optimizing for the flow of fluid, you optimize for light. Perhaps it is much larger at one end, with a bit sticking down to direct a portion of the light downwards, and then a smaller section to the next angled reflector for the next room and so on. You could even do two coming from opposite ends of a house for morning and evening light.

I couldn't find any pictures that really expressed my understanding of light shelves, but I found a short video that shows the basics of how they work. They seem to make it out like the shade part can't also be reflective, but The Wikipedia Page on Light Shelves says exterior ones are more effective.

I have been doing a bit more digging around to figure out exactly how I want to move forward with solar and charging various size battery packs. I keep finding various tidbits of information that are changing my mind on how I can go about my solar aspirations.

I dug through my YouTube subscriptions and found an old video using a Turnigy charger that is almost exactly the same as my current chargers. The layout, screen, and beeping sounds are identical. I will have to fuss around a bit more with the ones I have, as I remember having an issue where the discharge option for a single cell wasn't working. I also see this Turnigy model has a tiny fan built in that kicks on while discharging, so it may be that my cheaper model doesn't have the parts for this option installed. In any event, the video goes over much more than I could reasonably write in one post, so here it is:

There was a great video posted this weekend of a lumber mill and he mentioned that there is a USDA guide for building and running wood kilns. I searched around a bit over the weekend and saw that as well as a few other PDF's released by different universities that also goes in to details of various types of kilns, including ones that are solar or powered by scraps from the lumber mill.  

There were a few noteworthy things for those who don't want to watch the whole video. They let the wood air dry for months first to let some of the moisture out before kiln drying to avoid case hardening. Once kiln dried, the cells of the wood on the outside collapse and will slow down moisture both from leaving or entering the wood. That means once properly dried it won't be as affected by seasonal change as air dried wood.

The solar kilns have an added benefit that because they don't run constantly, the down time between heating allows the moisture from deeper in the wood to equalize and reduces grain stress and less cracking or warping. I'd imagine the same would be true of the manually operated wood fired kilns. Depending on your goals, it might not be as desirable to have a large mass heated and keeping the temperature constant. I guess it depends on whether you want to dry wood more quickly to move it through and be able to load the kiln up again, or if you prefer the slower method which yields more consistent results. I haven't read through all of the materials available yet, but this video should help point you in the right direction:

I think the best part about a high lift jack is that it is lightweight and portable. If you have off road vehicles or farm equipment, you can keep it on hand and not have to run back and forth to find something more substantial to get unstuck. That portability also helps with fencing, pulling bushes, and other stuff you would be doing out in a field. It can also be used on buildings, but I have a preferred method I use with lumber as it can be made a bit more safe. Sadly every video I have seen on YouTube about this seems to do things in a way I would consider less safe and/or more difficult. I've been seeing it a lot lately, so I might have to make one and take pictures.

In any event, the high lift is a really useful tool, but gets more dangerous the higher you go. If you can build up from stable ground with something substantial enough to support the weight then you can minimize the height you have to lift to and increase safety. It's also nice to have large strong blocks to toss under things as you lift them, so if they do fall they don't have far to go which can help save you and whatever you are working on. I've even scraped the ground for gravel to pile up under wheels or tossed spare tires under vehicles as a way to minimize danger. I saved a bunch of LVL (Laminated Veneer Lumber) cut-offs from when I framed houses and they stay flat and are much stronger than a similar sized hunk of 2" x 12". I have made jack and jackstand bases with them, so you could also make one for a high lift jack if you need something to spread the load on soft ground. LVL is pound-for-pound stronger than steel and the cut-offs usually get thrown away, so you can generally get them from construction sites for free if you ask.

Back in the late 1990's to early 2000's there was an ad from Toyota, often on the back of some of the off road magazines that read, "Scars are tattoos with better stories." No tattoos, but plenty of scars. I have matching scars on the ends of my eyebrows. One from going down with heat stroke, the other from falling and breaking my face, rib, and leg. Apparently my friend found me on the ground and got me up, and I was walking around. I have no memory of anything from 5 hours before to 3 hours after hitting my head. The scars are from pushing the hinge of my glasses into my eyebrow on either side. My best stories aren't related to my scars.

It didn't do it when I purposely tried giving two apples earlier today (in the name of science!), so I was thinking maybe it had something to do with a combination of the saved login, plus the computer being up for several hours and over a dozen tabs going. I believe I can only give out one a day? I'm not completely certain. I just remember hitting it once and it not seeming to register, which had happened with the like button in the past on rare occasion, but I had never seen it jump from none to two like that before. I really don't know much of anything about the web/programming side of things. Plus I've heard of lots of YouTubers recently having login tokens hacked and people fighting against that, so I wasn't sure if recent changes under the hood in Firefox or on websites might be related to the recent slowdowns.

I use Firefox on Linux and have it set to save my tabs, so if I start to notice slowdowns I will finish what I'm doing and shut down Firefox, and if it looks like I still have high RAM usage I will reboot my computer. I've been noticing more slowdowns from the internet in general, so I've been rebooting more frequently to avoid problems.

I'm digging back through stuff and it says I gave out 2 apples on March 7th on this thread:

DIY Steel melting foundry

I have a bit of brain damage, so I was confused when it happened, more confused when I saw this thread, and infinitely confused now! If I'm only supposed to be able to give one apple a day then that thread might be something to look in to.