Rhys Firth

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since Mar 16, 2015
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Biography
Grew up on 12 acres just outside of town,

Can grow fruit and veges.
Knows how to bottle/can fruit and veges.
Knows how to turn a rabbit into a meal through the application of a rifle, a knife and fire.
Knows hoe to turn a sheep into a meal through the application of a rifle, a knife and an oven.
C an build sheds, fences, gates, doors, walls and roofs.
Welds, nails, glues and bodges own car repairs.

Generally pretty handy around a farm, which is useful on Mothers 740 acres of mountain.
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Recent posts by Rhys Firth

Common farming saying: "Everywhere you have livestock, you have deadstock"
8 years ago
Storing energy in compressed air sounds nice, but I really do not see it as being safe on a homeowners scale, not for useful capacities of stored energy anyway.

On a commercial scale, with regular required maintenance checks and controlled access in a remote location, yes.... possible.... but not near as effective in a small scale as pimping water to store as an energy source.


With compressed air, you are storing the air as a mechanical storage with the potential expressed as a function of expansion. With low water pumped to a high point, you are storing the energy with the energy expressed as gravitational potential.
8 years ago

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:how much energy would be stored in a SCUBA tank? 300 bar is what I read, and that seems to be about 300 atmospheres...but the size of the tank is much smaller than the bedroom.



300 BAR would be a HP Steel tank. The "Standard" SCUBA tank is commonly an AL80, Aluminum 80 cubic foot at 3000psi, or 11 litres water capacity at 200BAR (imperial measures like 80 cubic foot is the uncompressed volume of the contained air, Metric uses the volume of the tank and the pressure it can hold), Very few HP rigs use Alu, it's too prone to fatigue embrittlement, an Alu tank has a finite life, but steel, being elastic in a way Aluminum isn't is effectively immortal so long as it is not exposed to corrosion.

There are MANY different tanks around, I have a pair of Steel LP72's, Low Pressure 72 cubic foot, I would love to have a pair of HP120 steels, 120 cubic foot capacity at 4300psi/300BAR through that would mean changing my Yoke type regs for DIN type. as a matter of fact, the googled maths a few posts upwards mentions at the end 2x 10L at 300BAR... sounds like a twin HP120 steel setup to me, a pretty common deep/tech dive rig.


8 years ago
Ah, I had to re-read that. I read it as Sunday 8th March and was staring at my calendar and wondering why it took so long and wasn't the 8th a Tuesday?
One effect I saw in an online magazine earlier this year (it may be in one of the links, I didn't read them) was that with wolves being reintroduced, the river bottoms got a lot more growth and the rivers flow a lot different.

The deer quit feeding on the river flats constantly and started living in more secluded, shaded and less visible places, meaning the rivers had less silting due to short grass being unable to hold back the soil in rains.
As well as some other conclusions I forget. for me the change in the rivers due to the reintroduction of wolves was the interesting bit. You don't think of deer, land dwelling grass and brushy browse eaters, having an effect on the river flows. But they actually do.



As to areas where predators such as wolves have been removed, leaving no natural check on population limits, there is an ethical requirement there for human hunting, culling by another name, to keep the populations under control and low enough the do not eat their food supply into non-existence due to overbreeding, causing a slow cruel death from starvation for a large proportion of the population as feeders outstrip feed.

Like it or not, Humans are a predator, Opportunistic rather than obligate, but still a successful predator with a prey drive.
8 years ago
I'm a SCUBA diver... I've handled SCUBA bottles, each 11 litre capacity bottle at 3000psi/200 Bar, has the explosive force of two hand grenades strapped to your back. You are simply exchanging Chemical (explosive) for Mechanical (compression).

NOT something I would be very comfortable with having in the back shed, 11 litre SCUBA bottles are fine 8000 litre (2M x 2M x 2M, bedroom sized) tanks? No thanks! ! SCUBA bottles need regular checks to ensure they maintain their integrity. Steel corrodes, Aluminum embrittles and cracks, Carbon is fearfully sensitive to structural integrity breaches, DON"T let your cat sharpen it's claws on your big azz tank!


If you have a property with a high point and water at a low point, FAR better would be a big tank or swimming pool on the high point and a 1/2" pipe up there from a solar driven pump and a 3" pipe down to a water turbine.
8 years ago
In some situations I can be somewhat of a Jerry myself.

I am deaf, and have poor short and mid term memory. I have evolved ways around that but it involves lists of tasks, like the earlier little role play where:

PAUL:
"Sure, that sounds great, we all like to have a good time, but we have a mission here and there's work to be done. We need someone to pick up where you left off when you went to Missoula all day today. Everyone here is pitching in but you are not and we're getting pretty fed up with that. We want you to be successful. Tell me what would make that happen".

JERRY:
"I'M F*****G TIRED, OKAY? THIS PLACE SUCKS! YOU ARE ALWAYS MICROMANAGING BUT YOU NEVER TELL ME WHAT TO DO! YOU'RE AN F*****G P***K!"

PAUL:
"So you want less hands on management from me, but more precise instructions. Got it. Jerry, why don't you tell me exactly what you need to succeed here and maybe we can figure it out together, okay?"

Jerry can either be extreme or be reasonable.



For me, if in a group situation where some leader is verbally assigning tasks: Jocelyn you're in the kitchen doing this, that and the other, Evan, you're in Ant Village doing this that and the other, Josh, Basecamp, fix this, do that, then go fetch Todd Parr from the airport, Rhys, you do this that ad this other thing...

Say that I get 5 tasks... I'm deaf enough I may only hear three tasks, so if I don't pipe up and confirm exactly what I have to do, then come the end of the day and debrief, I may think I have finished my three tasks and am having a well earned break, while others my think I am slacking off and only done three of my five tasks.
An Expectation/Perception gap exists.

Plus with my memory gapping out on me, By the time I'm into task two, I may have forgotten that task four exists... I think at the end of the day, yep, all done. Head Honcho checking up on everyones completion has a different idea of whether everything is finished! It's pretty common to look in the pantry before a trip to the supermarket, figure I need this product, go shopping, come back and start unpacking, and there is this reproachful hole staring at me which should have a new box of whatever filling it, I just forgot it, Again.




I for one am much more comfortable with a list of tasks, say a whiteboard somewhere with what jobs are due to be done so I can A) know what I have to do, B) Can check when I have finished what I remember having to do to make sure I haven't overlooked a task. and C) see that someone I know is not good at some task that I am comfortable with, has that task assigned to them, so I may if I have time wander over and lend a hand.



It is all a case of knowing your limitations, and engineering ways to sidestep obstacles.
8 years ago