Jay Angler

r ranson wrote:Cloaks were good

Really? Or is the real truth that tightly woven wool is good? Many of the things he says may be more about the "wool" than the shape it is.

It must be spring! Leigh's posting baby pictures! Sorry Leigh, mine are still at the "in the shell stage" . Four weeks to go assuming momma duck's successful.

Mary Combs wrote:Wouldn't this be a great application for a rocket mass heater? I seem to recall seeing a design for a dedicated water heater based on a rocket mass heater.

I believe Wheaton labs has been working on this concept and I believe I've seen designs on the web, but it does take a *lot* of energy to raise the temperature of water. I've also seen people using a claw style tub raised on blocks and a fire built underneath it. I think that would be both less efficient and much smokier than adapting an RMH.

I would think you would need to use chemicals to keep the water hygienic, or raise the temp to pasteurization temperature and let it cool to tolerable temperature before each use.

This is why it would be nice to keep the tub as small and efficient as possible. I would prefer to use the water in a green house and simply dump it every time, rather than have to treat it with chemicals myself. There are concerns about this issue if you try to use solar water heating, as things like Listeriosis which grow nicely at lower temperatures, that are particularly dangerous for seniors. However, I don't see why you can't pre-heat with solar, then get the tub up to pasteurization temperature (I'd have to research how long), then add safe cold water to bring it down to the temp you want. I don't know for sure if that would be safe enough - more research needed!

Sean Flip wrote:I was about to submit a BB in  https://permies.com/wiki/111644/pep-plumbing-hot-water/Fix-Leaky-Faucet-PEP-BB  but have a feeling because I fixed the pipe underneath the faucet which was leaking, and not the faucet element itself, someone might decide I didn't fix the faucet. So, does it go to that BB or to an ODDBALL job?

Are you saying you fixed the drain pipe, or fixed what I call the "shut off valve" that stops water from getting to the faucet?

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:I would be tempted to place a stool for seating in the barrel and fill it enough to cover my shoulders. Plumbing and cleaning a barrel like those blue barrels isn't hard, especially if you were to use it outside and could pressure wash it every once in a while.
If kept inside, I'd feel like I would have to hide the horror of a plastic barrel with perhaps some sort of a nice wood decking built around it perhaps a nice metal grab bar to help hoist myself out? or a rope ladder?

I think you've got a plan, Cécile! Yes, some sort of stool would likely make it more comfortable to actually soak and relax, but you may have to build one yourself/have it built to fit.

If you position it well, you can use the outflow for watering the garden. You still need energy to heat the water, but at least the water will have a second life.

Rope ladders are *really* wiggly to use - as a senior myself, despite having decent balance, I'd consider it much safer to look at rigid options that are light enough to lift into and out of the barrel, or something rigid but collapsing like this (although the price has me thinking I'd find an alternative!)
https://www.amazon.ca/Telescoping-Lightweight-Collapsible-Retractable-Extension/dp/B08979MZ8Y/?th=1

If anyone has pictures of goji berry cotyledons, please post!

I took some dried goji berries I was given, soaked them and gently pried out the seeds. I planted them, but since I want microbes in my seed starting soil, I accept that I may also end up with some weed seeds. Some "seem" to have germinated, and everything that has germinated looks more or less the same, but alas, many weed seeds look pretty much like what I'm seeing also.

That said, I would have expected my weed seeds to have put out some true leaves by now - these plants are pretty much just sitting doing nothing. I think they may like it warmer than my cold house!

I do have one goji berry shrub I bought, but it's not done much. It certainly hasn't thrived, the way Ted Abbey describes his thriving. I'm trying to improve the soil in that area, to see if that's an issue, but I was also hoping to give it some goji friends to cross-pollinate with, as I think that's why my goumi isn't producing fruit either. My climate doesn't usually get below 0C in the winter, but it also doesn't usually get very hot in the summer, and even when we get hot days, we cool off as soon as the sun drops below the trees due to the ocean. Many plants that one would think would be happy here, seem to struggle.

I can think of all sorts of creative things that could have started the pattern. The big thing I'd imagine is someone in your area likes tossing rocks into almost frozen ponds! It would shatter the thin ice and then the pond would re-freeze in that way. Similarly if you have small fish in the pond that come to the surface that are visible through the thin ice, I can imagine some of our birds deciding to try fish for dinner (particularly our local Ravens who are smart, curious, are frequently very hungry and have sharp, pokey beaks.)

Alas, these are just guesses, but you do have something interesting going on - and beautiful!

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:
The main problem I see is entering and exiting such a contraption.

I think there isn't one simple solution to this issue. I rejected the tubs with the doors because I tried getting in and out of one and there's not a lot of space to stand in to get out of the way of the swinging door, which on the model I tried, swings inward due to security under pressure physics.

However, on the plus side, the door tubs, like hot tubs, came with an integral seat. Having one's butt 8 to 10 inches off the bottom of the tub, can make a huge difference in being able to stand up. In fact in college I got a room with a family friend's father who was over 70 and the house had the old claw style high bathtub, and I had him make a sturdy wooden stool for some other purpose we needed it for, and he very quickly started using it to sit on to bathe. If you make it to fit the tub precisely, it should be possible to make it not tippy.

However, another advantage of the claw style tub is that the top edge was rolled over, thus a person could actually get a grip on the edge. Modern tubs are almost too smooth and there's nothing to grip. Grab bars in several locations are only helpful if those locations actually work! Definitely room for permies' innovation and outside the box thinking! That rolled edge has the disadvantage that it's not wide enough to sit on as an intermediate step in the exiting procedure.

I'm all in favor of a tub with a narrower footprint than a conventional bathtub for the simple reason that it could use less hot water. Also, it would make better use of space inside the house.

I have used the deep, but small, Japanese bathtubs. Less surface area helps to keep the water warmer, and having your whole body submerged easily, helped me stay warm even at cooler water or air temperatures. Wet skin cools so much faster than dry skin, that unless I've been in warm water a good long time, my skin will cool very quickly if I can't keep it covered.

I was given some Cotton fabric which I made into a "pirate shirt". For in-depth details, start with this post and follow down to the finished shirt:
https://permies.com/t/154258/sewing/fiber-arts/Clothing-patterns-based-rectangles#1217024

This picture shows the silk thread I used, along with a needle and some pins which was it except for scissors and an iron. This was all done by hand stitching.


This picture shows the beginning fabric with me pulling a thread to get the rectangles neatly cut:


There are lots more "in process" pictures in the thread above, but here is the finished product:

Nick Boutros wrote:Has anyone done this? Some varieties of duckweed seem like a nutritional dream, especially for vegetarians.

This thread,
https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Lemna+minor
suggests that the flavor isn't great, but variety may matter. My concern is that it's really small and mats together, so I would want to be very careful about how you were growing it to be sure you didn't end up with anything nasty. I have ducks, so I only get it second hand from the eggs. Thus I've never tried washing and cooking it. I have grown it just in 1/2 barrels and despite not adding any sort of "fertilizer", it just keep growing. That might not be the case if I were to harvest it aggressively.