William Bronson

Today I went to the Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub

https://www.cincinnatirecyclingandreusehub.org
Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub

It one of my favorite places to shop, the prices are free and the cool and dedicated staff know me by name.

I have been shopping their free store for a few years now.
It's a clean and organized version of my own reuse obsession.
Lately, due to weather, I've been curating the basement portion of my horde.
I was up tol the wee hours , sorting, condensing, scrapping and emotionally letting go of  mountains of  tools and materials.

As a result, I was able to bring them a load of vintage hand tools that I simply did not need
I'm talking half a dozen handsaws and just as many pruning shears, plus crazy bits of hardware like garage door springs.
Even though this is a place that has things like an entire bin of bread bag wire ties, I was still nervous about offering them my treasures.
I know their wares and their policies, but I am weird old Gob-Father(Father of Goblins), and I'm often the only one who sees the value in a given bit of detritus.
So I made them promise to correct me if that was warranted, picked out a few containers to take home with me, and spent more than an hour talking to an archival librarian about poetry, reuse/upcycling/curb crawling, aging parents  and the years he spent WOOFing  in his 20's.
We exchanged numbers.

I am envisioning a future where my hoard can serve it's intended purpose as fuel for creativity instead of being a burden.
The old tools that I kept can be restored or remade, the potting bench can foster new life, and I'll be able to cast parts for stoves.
The hope is to have a fully functioning workshop to enjoy and leave to my kids, instead of an indoor dumpster that mostly makes me sad.


Thanks for letting me share my emotional unhoarding story.
What is your relationship with your hoard?
Does it enable your creativity or hold you back ?

I wonder if steam juicing would extract more sugars than mechanical juicing?

Pear trees seem immune to black walnut juglone.
They are in my experience more robust than apple trees.
The wood seems to be valued as highly as that of the apple for smoking and woodworking.
My bunnies have always preferred it to all other healthy treats.

A woodlot with pear trees, sea berry and black walnuts could be a great place to raise pork.
A wood lot with pears trees, sea berry and arborvitae could be a great minimal intervention maximum profit set up.
Stump culture the arborvitae for Christmas trees, harvest sea berries by cutting their branches off and freezing them, releasing lots of nitrogen,market the pear prunings for smoking, and eventually harvest the pear trees for lumber.

We are often told to prune trees in the winter , but if you are trying to grow strait lumber, is that the best time of year?

I just remembered, corny kegs!
5 gallons, stainless steel ,liquid/air tight and available used for around 50 bucks.

https://wineandhop.com/cdn/shop/products/keg-and-draft-supplies-used-5-gallon-pin-lock-keg-corny-1_1024x1024.jpg?v=1515701449

I was thinking about another way we could adept to settling and also eliminate the retaining wall.
I propose  chain link fencing.
Suppose we take 10 foot lengths of fence and hang them from one end,side by side, affixed about 8 inches down the face of the aluminum clad insulation wall.
After you knit these together with wire, measure about halfway down and wire a slotted pipe horizontally across the face of the fencing.
As the fencing lays on the slope, we place the stones above the slotted pipe, stopping every foot to tie a short length of wire to the fencing.
We keep pile stones right up to the aluminum wall,then we fold the rest of the fencing up over the stones, securing with the wires every foot.
This is kinda like a gabion, but it is flexible, like a pillow or mattress.
Because it's flexible, it could ride the settling earth of the berm.
My only hesitation is protecting the poly from the chain link.
Boron treated cardboard is my tentative answer for that issue.

The gabion mattress could potentially go right under the eaves, and have the insulation board under it.
The poly would go under that board and be protected from the gabion mattress.
This would be for more of the umbrella insulation effect.
It might be something that could be added onto as more money becomes available.

I'm gonna suggest stainless steel stock pots with thrifted lids.
Thrifted lids because the cheap stock pods come with thin,light,loose fitting lids.
Buying glass or substantial stainless steel lids and sealing them with  food safe silicone should be air tight.
You could even vacuum can it, but you would need a big chamber or add a port/valve to the pot.

That makes me think, you could use a glass drink dispenser, which has a built in valve and silicone lid seal.
Glass cookie jars, likewise have silicone lid seals.

I have comfrey in my front yard, but my front yard was already terraced and planted with other things before I started planting comfrey.
If you get winter dieback, wall to wall comfrey could mean a muddy mess.
They compost well and easily but they do not contribute much bulk.
During summer I can cut it down and lay it around my vegetables and it will kinda disappear into the soil in a week or so.
When dried, they reduce down to very little, much like cooking greens do.
For bulk, consider planting clumps of  non-invasive ornamental grass, maybe with Comfrey around the base.
Ornament grasses are suburbia friendly and should be cut back once a year for plant health.
I have had good luck with alfalfa, but that is all fed to the rabbit.

Cody, I took one look at your diagrams and got excited, then I noticed how you titled them and got positively giddy😆
I had to show my wife, it really thrilled me!

The bed/closet/counter top/bench idea has me imagining a shop or greenhouse with built in living quarters.
I've always thought a tiny house would be fine, as long as I also  had a huge barn, but this could encompass both.

That aluminum flashing is also a nice detail, protective and reasonably priced.

If you have plenty of PEX, I would just use that, but build a manifold that sends it through parallel runs.
At 30' it will have a long time to pick up heat.
Since your cabin design is 400 square feet, I'm guessing the bell is along the entire wall.

What do you plan on putting above the bell?
It's pretty high and narrow for sleeping on.
A row of windows perhaps?
It could be good place for the pressure tank.

Since you seem familiar with plumbing, consider sourcing old water heaters.
If they are not leaky, then they can become your storage.
Stripped of insulation, they could go right inside the bell.
Most are bigger than 4' , so they would need to be installed horizontally.
That would reduce the length of pipe you need by a bit.
They are also kind big , so they will reduce the space inside the bell, but if the bench is not a bell (uses ducts instead of a big hollow space) that could be another advantage.
4-5 tanks with 40 gallons each would be a great amount of water storage.


For summer time, a southern facing solar thermal water heater makes a lot of sense.
You can build them to work  in the winter as well,but given your space  heating plans, I would skip that extra compilation.

Actually, if the temperature remains consistent, your well water could be used for cooling the house during the summer, by running it through a fan coupled heat exchanger.
A heat pump water heater would do the same thing, but much slicker and probably more efficiently.

I know, right?
Given his love of old tools, I take his use of it as a serious endorsement.
That tool could really get a lot done, even if one were using the demonstrably weak branches.