!!!! SEPP to Boot: Stephen's Experience (BEL)

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:

Hans Quistorff wrote:I seriously recommend tying the cross poles to the uprights with wire.  screws are brittle and snap at the threads when flexed between round wood.

Thanks for the suggestions, Hans! We ended up using nails to secure things: the two horizontal poles to one another, and then both of those to several of the vertical "pickets."

Shane's a big fan of bushcraft, and he's mentioned the subject a number of times. We've successfully grown a nice patch of stinging nettle, and may end up making cordage out of that when the time comes. It's likely Shane will be heading that project, should it come to pass. I think natural cordage would be a good fit for the prototype/temporary design I cobbled together last week, which uses two horizontal supports coupled with a pair of "leaning walls" of junk poles. I may end up using that kind of design in the future at the acre I'm stewarding.

I am looking forward to the nettle-string junk-pole fence!

BEL #714

Brisk and frosty all day today. Shane and I headed up the mountain to retrieve some large, rotted rounds.



I continued to coach Shane on his chainsaw technique. Today's was a tricky task, with large diameter logs that required them to be cut from both sides (as the chainsaw bar was shorter than the diameter of the log).



We loaded them into the back of Roy, our daily hauler pickup truck, then back down the mountain. These three logs are staged next to the House, and are destined to be new steps leading up the side of one of the extra-large hugel berms.



Shane took a break for the second half of the day, and I stopped by Fred's plot up at the Lab to assist with his roof construction.



I was also introduced to old skool Boot alumnus Jaqi, who also stopped by to help Fred with his building project. It was a breath of fresh air to hear about the projects she'd worked on during her time here: Allerton Abbey, lots of junk pole harvesting, the front gate of the Lab, and more. She's currently a farm manager at an organic market garden and orchard, and it was very interesting to hear about other local farming efforts (and how they're affected by a different microclimate, thanks to some unique topography where they're located).



Meanwhile... Oh, I feel so spoiled by Rocket Mass Heaters. It's so easy to start fires in them, and here I was at Fred's plot struggling to make this campfire do more than just sputter with teeny-tiny flames. Fred and Jaqi consoled me and assured me that the icy ground melting underneath the fire was the cause of such a pathetic blaze, but I'm not so sure...



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BEL #715

The weather these days has three phases. At night, it's bitter cold and startlingly clear. All the stars can be seen up there. Morning comes, and while it's still bitter cold, fog shrouds everything. In the afternoon, there might be a bit of blue peeking through the fog and the temperature has risen perhaps five degrees F. Repeat.

So we started the Boot day today indoors. Today I coached Shawn through sharpening hatchets as we made sure the Library was nice and warm.



Later on in the morning, we visited the Red Cabin, bucket of cob in hand. There's a smoky leak somewhere between the riser and the manifold that leads to the rest of the exhaust. Here's what it looked like beforehand:



Here's what it looked like after I did some cob patching. Not much of an improvement as far as looks are concerned, if you ask me. However it seemed to have plugged-up the leak! This was the goal. I'll come back with some of the finish cob that Fred had prepared for the rest of the Red Cabin's heater, and make it pretty.



We tested the integrity of my repairs, and it seems like I sorted it out with my first go. Smoke wasn't escaping anymore, and we didn't have the smoke-puffing "competing chimney" issue that had cropped up recently. The carbon monoxide detector consistently read a big fat zero the entirety of the hour we were burning in there. This is all a huge relief for me to see. Best yet: I saw plenty of steam pealing off the new cob I applied, which is quite a sight:



And finally, the most pleasant news of the task: the temperature in that cabin rose about 10 degrees F in less than an hour. Not bad for starting well below freezing.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

Stephen, maybe you can explain.
Being educated with degrees Celsius for all of my life I feel like it's easy to understand that 0 is at the freezing point and 100 when water boils. I do not understand why Fahrenheit has its 0-point below freezing ... Do you know?

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Stephen, maybe you can explain.
Being educated with degrees Celsius for all of my life I feel like it's easy to understand that 0 is at the freezing point and 100 when water boils. I do not understand why Fahrenheit has its 0-point below freezing ... Do you know?

I've always wondered about that myself. So I did an Internet search this morning to settle it to my satisfaction. Here's an explanation from this link at chemeurope.com :

There are a few competing versions of the story of how Fahrenheit came to devise his temperature scale. According to Fahrenheit himself in an article he wrote in 1724 [1] he determined three fixed points of temperature. The zero point is determined by placing the thermometer in a mixture of ice, water, and sodium chloride (or sea salt). This is a type of frigorific mixture. The mixture automatically stabilizes its temperature at 0 degrees F. He then put an alcohol or mercury thermometer into the mixture and let the liquid in the thermometer descend to its lowest point. The second point is the 32nd degree found by mixing ice and water without the salt. His third point, the 96th degree, was the level of the liquid in the thermometer when held in the mouth or under the armpit. Fahrenheit noted that, using this scale, mercury boils at around 600 degrees.  

That's good enough for me. At least I learned that "frigorific" is an actual word.

Another interesting blurb from that same article:

His measurements were not entirely accurate; by his original scale, the actual melting and boiling points would have been noticeably different from 32 °F and 212 °F. Some time after his death, it was decided to recalibrate the scale with 32 °F and 212 °F as the exact melting and boiling points of plain water. That change was made to easily convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa, with a simple formula. This change also explains why the body temperature once taken as 96 °F by Fahrenheit is today taken by many as 98.6 °F (it is a direct conversion of 37 °C), although giving the value as 98 °F would be more accurate