John Hutter

I did a little 2 day miter saw exercise which was a single strut model with 6 and 8 inch pieces of 2x4".  I learned a few things;

A.) cutting 6-8 inch pieces of 2x4" at 60 and 54 x18 and 15.9 degrees with a compound miter saw is kind of a rush, due to trying not to lose a finger.  Just make sure your hand/finger is pressing straight down with an anchor, and will thus not be pulled more than an inch or so towards the blade if she catches.  In the process of this learning experience, I didn't almost lose a finger but I did nearly break a window with one ejection. Fortunately the piece hit a wood wall (cutting slowly helps.)

All that is kinda beside the point though XD

Dove tailing pieces at 144 degrees doesn't work very well.  Instead, half lap the foundation struts, and then drill and dowel the first level of struts into place.  A much better 4 way hub joint solution.

I cut 6 struts with a quick and dirty version of the previously diagrammed "flux capacitor" hub joint with a skill saw, which takes 10 cuts per strut or 5 per end (after the initial 4 compound miter saw cuts.)  It's not fast....

I was looking at my oh-so-fancy all-wood-joinery come together, and I realized

"it won't be as strong, but you could do the same thing by drilling two holes and putting a dowel there.  Good lord, that'll be 10x faster.  And the strength of each joint method is irrelevant compared to a load in the middle of the beam. You just need a means of getting those drill points exact."

which was followed by the realization a minute or so later after using a few screws to hold things in place:

"don't bother measuring and lining up exact dowel holes, instead drill and dowel the beams while they are set in the assembled position (and before the next strut is blocking your drill path.)  You're just gonna need, like a foot long bit for a largish structure.  And just use rebar as dowels.  It's cheaper, the holes to be drilled are much smaller, and you need like 130 feet to do a 2100 ft^2 structure.  Talk about a negligible cost..."

Pretty sure, the first one is just gonna be an open air roofed mat space, with the foundation and first level struts simply being shingled to protect from the rain.  I haven't yet calculated how big the B strut needs to be for me to step through that isosceles triangle without stooping, but that's likely to be the next scale of model : )

I especially enjoyed the laugh after "and then your mother tried to shame you into compliance!"  XD

ITS SO MESSY!  Let's get out of here and go golfing, and then order some chem ag lunch.

It's a joke, also depressing if I take it seriously.  

also the quote about "most people want a tidy 'compartmentalized?' experience of reality" and the healing land stewardship method (and whatnot) lies completely outside of that.

Shit, really?   Wow, we got a real number going on here...

Thanks and good luck!

given all the planning (2 year lead time?), 6x6+ beam size, and lack of concern for a smooth finished appearance, letting the bugs and rain do most of the peeling work is the way to go.  

Sepp would call them his employees! I also think Mike Oehler voiced something like this, but memory might not be serving.

It's hard to tell which thing made the biggest difference on this hectare.  There was an initial round of grading/earthworks on much of the property, but otherwise it has been no-till, chop and drop (or throw into a nearby pile) and hand managed - no burning save turning a limb pile into a half yard of charcoal.  These unnammended soils do look better than the former lawn, but 5+ years later and it's still not fertile enough to grow anything other than some hardy greens or trees.

The biggest difference is probably the mycelia feeder or "Super Duper Hugel Pooper" as I like to call it.

Like, 6" of strawish stuff, in a foot deep trench on a local elevation maxima, between a few foot+ diamater logs set on the ground (the walk n squat rails) which then gets filled with compressed humanure wood chip matrix (fresh septic trench compresses like a pile of woodchips if stepped on.)   In the first growing season after capping toilet sites with a few inches of poor topsoil, they were dominated by clovers, suggesting the C:N ratio is C heavy in a my "compressed poo- chip matrix."   Interesting how turning hot manure into a thin layer with nearly maximized surface area contact with wood, totally alters the decomposition process.  After the first year of clover and a few hardier plants, Super Duper hugel Pooper sites support high yield squash, tomatoes, and broccoli. I'm pretty sure they would support high yield anything, but root vegetables are not recommended XD

There's also like, 500 lbs of primo fertilizers, 12 yards of finished horse manure, 10 poultry worth of manure for 6 or so years, and something like 50 yards of wood from the site was returned to the soil.   Apart from the wood, none of this stuff was added to the toilets.

If a "long run" is 5 years, the super duper hugel pooper is definitely the biggest soil difference.  It makes significant calories now.  However, if "the long run" is more like 10 or 20 years, most of the other inputs that have been slowly added added over 7 years could be the bigger difference, but I won't be here to see the 55 seed started fruit and nut trees grow up.  There 15 or so that are 15' tall, otherwise the trees are still popping off 3 or 4 at a time each year.  They had a mostly rough start in some fresh hugels, or a rough life thus far;  9 of the trees are still knee high 5+ years later.  

These ones are almost certainly stuck in a hardpan bowl.  Transplant or no, there was never going to be a taproot there  XD

That is, until something happens.  Swales which changed water flows and then caused ~50 to 100 ft^2 sections of hillside to moves a few inches, and then a tree pops off, or some perennial broccoli rabe plants are growing off irrigation and surviving a summer without rain...big difference!

What if,

the interior of the structure is completely sealed off from the unpeeled framing (cob doesn't need bark to stay in place) and

there is no bark anywhere there is wood on wood contact in the frame - or the only contact points are the cut ends of logs.

the next bit; promotes rot and insect damage.

I'm wondering, given the log is not going to see any more water or ground contact after cutting, how much insect damage is generally being promoted beyond the thin layer of cambium some larvae manage to eat before it dries out?  
Termites and beetles around here aren't seen in dried wood that is isolated from any water flow.  It might be that there so much wood on and in the ground out here, they don't stray from their preferred habitat.  

I understand that when a roof leak does occur, rot occurs faster if the bark is still there.  Any precise idea how much faster?

Does it matter that it rots faster if leaks are easily detectable, fixable, and dryable, when you compare it to a peeled log you can't see getting damp?

What are the reasons for pealing a log at this point? hrmmmm

This one time I got a hot tip for popcorn seasoning:

dehydrated kimchi, ground into a fine powder.

dang, that's good.

I make a 2 gallon bucket of miso every few years.  Maybe miso would be like good like that also...  

Yep!

I landed on the following a few years back, roughly equal parts

kimchi
miso
spirulina
nutritional yeast

This stuff will make cardboard pretty darned tasty XD

Popcorn? FORGET ABOUT IT

I've learned one bit in about 2 hours of internet searching, which I want in the design;

"self actuating" which means, the on/off switch is a thermal mechanical function and doesn't require electrical power.

So I want a 2-way, 3-inch, self actuating (closes as the temperature goes above about 40 F) thermovalve  

It seems such a thing would be a somewhat common cold storage construction component, but I didn't see any larger diameter, "common outdoor air temperature" stuff anywhere.  Looking in the wrong place?

I've got a small ~8'x8' earth integrated root cellar that's almost done.  It's got a small thermal well, or a 3" polypipe that comes in at floor level, goes straight into the ground about 40", and then "U" right back up to the floor.  There's then a vent pipe in the roof.   When it was warmer the cold air flowing out at floor level was obvious to a hand held in front of the external pipe opening.  I wasn't sure with the length of 3" pipe and temperature difference but there's some decent air flow in the set up.

I was thinking I'd manually open the floor pipe when it gets colder and leave it closed otherwise, but having an actual valve is going to cool the earth much more effectively without my time.

Anybody know where one can find such a thermovalve?

Jay Angler wrote:
And our local hospital is raising money to buy a robotic surgeon. I think it will be guided by a human, but health care has been changed hugely

That's kinda scary for reasons.  Imagine you're dying, and the nurses stick a tube down your nose and into your stomach, to treat you for constipation.  And, 16 hours later, you tell the nurses for the 12th or so time, it's not getting better (apart from the initial IV painkiller).  The nurses change shift again, you tell the new nurse the new news; your breathing is getting shallower and more painful.  The nurse confirms you don't ever suffer from indigestion and have no healthcare history, and she puts a call in for a PA.  The PA runs through the same details.  A surgeon is going to come look at you and your CT scans.  

In spite of the clear CT scans, the surgeon makes the call: we're going to stick a camera in your gut and look. It takes them about 5 minutes to spot a fatal birth defect that up and decided to kick up shit at age 38🤣

A robot, going by the book, probably won't work out there...

Yikes. Good luck.  Maybe keep the eggs in both baskets!

I'd say, it depends.

Do you like building stuff, are you about fresh outta highschool, and can get an applied math or mechanical engineering degree at a community college without acquiring much debt?

Do it.

Also, recently heard there's probably gonna be a shortage of surgeons by 2030. As someone who is still alive because I got an emergency bowel resection surgery within 2 days of symptom onset, I wouldn't try to talk anyone out of that...but maybe go abroad where the bureaucracy isn't skimming quite so hard, and make the connections to shadow a successful one for a decade.  One stands a decent chance of dodging medschool debt...  There's a few occupations where meritocracy outside of certificates will dominate, as a matter of life and death😂

Also, I had a fantastic experience in college.  Learned lots by reading and writing fucktons, an esoteric amount I never, ever would have done without having paid for deadlines to be enforced.

I don't think there's "one right answer" here.  Try and keep an open mind👍