Nicolas Keeton

Bird being helpful depends on area and type of bird.  

When I was on the east coast birds and squirrels were a slight issue when it came to fruit and vegetables. The easiest solution for this is building an enclosed vegetable garden (mesh wire) around the specific fruit there are targeting. The next best solution, but the hardest/expensive would be to grow more than what they are consuming.


Now that I'm in the desert, rabbits and free-range cows are the issue. Almost impossible to out-grow a food source for them, so working on better fencing.

Usually with these type of batteries, you're buying from a company where they are buying from the another source, which is why they can't give you the exact reason on why you shouldn't connect more than 4 batteries in parallel.

Crinstam Camp wrote:
I'm still confused how I can get different readings on every damn meter I use and why it dropped from 13.5 to 13.2/13.3 just from hooking it up, but it's definitely holding charge better now than when I had the 6 batteries hooked up.

The issue is you're experiencing may be related to the built-in BMS and balancing.
Inside each battery is a set of 4 more batteries that are being balanced. These bms usually have a slight parasitic draw and will usually have what is considered 100% balanced at a level lower than the max voltage of the battery. This is to prevent batteries from getting damaged by overvoltage.

The 13.5 to 13.2 drop that you're experiencing is probably occurring while the bms is still balancing. If you search the internet, you'll find some people set their bms to consider their DIY solar pack at 100% when each cell is balanced at 3.3v. Which is close to the voltage range that you are seeing at 13.2/13.3 volts. Unfortunately, you will not be able to diagnose this without opening each pack, which I don't recommend since your batteries have a 5 year warranty.

However, the next best thing you can do is a lifepo4 capacity tester. This will allow you to check the overall capacity of each battery individual battery bank, help determine which battery is the weakest and by how much.

Is there more information on this? I keep seeing a lot of people claim their running engines on hydrogen, but usually anything video related is never documented or the old sites are never maintained.

I used to play around with creating hydrogen when I was younger, but stopped when I realized how dangerous it was when reading up on flashback arrestors.

I am really impressed with the ecoflow solar generators. I started off with the cheapest one and have been slowly upgrading. I was looking to upgrade to the delta 3 lineup, because I saw that I can run potentially run an inverter mig welder or high consumption power tools.

Glenn Herbert wrote:Nice construction work. Is this a 4" square system? The feed tube is much too tall relative to the riser, so that it may be difficult to establish strong draft in the right direction. I think a 16" or so long feed would be better. How tall exactly is the riser? A general rule of thumb for rocket mass heater J-tubes is 1:2:4 or 1:1.5:3 for feed tube, burn tunnel and heat riser. A 16" feed would give at least a 48" riser. You are missing the burn tunnel entirely as is typical with K-style rocket stoves.

A major factor in effective combustion is to keep the fire as hot as possible until it has finished burning, and only then allow the heat out to do work. If you let the whole combustion core shed heat to the air, the fire will never get really hot, especially in a small system like this. You need plenty of insulation to keep the flame hot all the way to the exhaust.

You mention a cap on the feed tube; I hope you have put a cap on the bottom leg, cleanout or air supply or whatever you intended it to be. Too much air can dilute the heat and reduce the effectiveness of combustion.

Three "T"s of combustion: time, temperature and turbulence. The fuel gases need to stay hot enough for long enough and have enough turbulence for good mixture. Insulation will help temperature. The "V" flame path is not likely to give the gases enough time to finish burning or turbulence for thorough mixing. If flame comes out the top, you are wasting fuel. Most of the fire is in the riser, with not much to make turbulence. If you must use the sloped feed, at least connect it to the bottom leg rather than the riser so there are direction changes in the flame path to give turbulence and more length for dwell time.

Thank you for the response! After reviewing more photos based on your comment about the slope connection being wrong, I see what you mean regarding the wrong connection point.  I'll look into ways to improve this based on the things you mentioned including fixing the lengths.

Jonathan Ezell wrote:i don't know if growing peas in a shadier spot would enable podding. maybe shade plus mulch & a sunken/depression bed* for cooler soil temps, all while not creating a drainage problem. etc micro-climate methods

good luck with your vegetative crew.

*the opposite of a raised bed.

Thanks, I'll look into a sunken bed for this grow season. The biggest issue is the intensity of the sun light between 11am-4pm.  Our local nursery advised must things that would be full sun in other regions is partial shade in our area except trees.

After seeing the prices of rocket stoves being $130-$800 on etsy, I decided to attempt at making a rocket stove from scrap metal.  The total cost in metal is roughly around $20-$30 depending on which metal shop you buy from.

I didn't follow any plans, kind of went based on a couple images of what I saw online.  Some things that I'm planning to change:
1) Adding top hinge door to the feed chute.
2) Considering shortening the feed chute
3) Grind down welds to give better look



Any feedback, critique or recommendations is highly appreciated.

It might help your post if you add photos of what is for sale and the price you want for each item.

I went with Santan solar panels. It $40/panel for used 240 watts. So far no regrets.


You can always upgrade in the future when from the amount of money you're saving.

If you can't pass a standard perc test, then you should check with the approved testers to see if they allow alternative systems.

I was having similar issue with first backhoe hitting rock. I was told that the alternative septic system is an option, but the price was $12k-$15k versus the $4k -$6k for regular septic.