Michael Bushman

My brother owns a small hipster pizza place and I wanted to make him a fancy pizza peel and here is what he is getting for Christmas.   The center is made from maple with very intense curly figure, then there is a strip of wenge, an African hardwood followed by Honduran mahogany, then a bookmatched piece of poplar partly because it is pretty, partly because it is fairly light, then cherry with a bit of curly figure in it.   I wanted the handle to be more graceful and the center boss just came out clunky so I am going to cut it off and just have a flowing curve to the handle.

Came out rather nice.   Its almost 21" wide about 3 1/2' long.

As someone who has done the community garden thing in a number of places,  you are unlikely to be able to feed yourself out of the typical community garden plot.   Even in California where I live despite being able to harvest tomatoes and peppers into November and even sometimes December the growing season in most places just isn't long enough and the size of the typical plot is too small to allow you real succession planting.  

What most of us shoot for is some combination of better tasting veggies and or ones that growing at home either reduced the worst pesticide crops or ones that growing in real soil will increase their nutritional value.

Okay, we just beat the $1 threshold.   We are offering German manufactured Qcell 275s along with APS microinverters, all brand new equipment AND racking for $.95 a kilowatt.   That is an amazing price and won't last too long.   Anyone who buys through here I will donate my commission to Permies as I didn't start this thread to make money but anyone in solar will tell you that this deal is amazing and I wanted to pass it on.  

frank li wrote:Poor men cant afford cheap utility infrastructure and power elecrtonics!

Once you have installed and owned solarworld, outback, sma, magnum, fronius etc, you get spoiled, and in a good way. By comparison the cheapies are... well cheap, you cannot beat spending a few cents per watt more for good quality from companies with 30-plus year history of transferrable warranty that almost never needs to be replaced under warranty! Cheers.

I agree, which is why we only sell 1st quality Tier 1 equipment and you in fact mention some of the stuff we carry like SolarWorld, SMA, Fronius, etc.

I didn't post this to troll for customers but if you want to send me a purple mossage me, I am happy to tell you more.   With us, you don't have to spend $250k to get good pricing.   For example we offer to our customers our design service with is $100 for a turnkey residential grid tie system, that isn't just a line drawing, that is a complete permit package.

Oh, and we don't sell blemished or damaged goods, we donate them to places like Habitat for Humanity.   We recently had some panels with broken glass and we donated them to a local tech school for use in various projects.

There are lots of suppliers out there who can and should be able to do this.   You can find cheaper panels but currently we have German made and US made panels in the $.55 to $.70 per watt on the panel end and with a string inverter you are well under $1 a watt.  I won't list my company as I am not advertising but other major wholesalers like Soligent, CED, and others should be able to match our prices.  Online resellers and places like Ebay will probably remain high so I just wanted to pass this info on so people can get the most solar for the money.

China told everyone they were going to install gigawatts this year, everyone ramped up inventory then they cancelled.  You can call this government stupidity or a move to crush foreign competitors but regardless, it means there is a glut of panels on the market for at least the next two quarters.  Prices will probably rise a bit toward the end of the second quarter next year.

Pallets are FREE...oh boy!  They are useful intact, making a three bay compost bin with full pallets is the best use of them well, that and big bonfires.   Taking pallets apart takes a fair amount of work and yields relatively little useful wood.   It looks good on Pinterest but you don't see the labor involved or how much cheating was done.

Best way to get free wood is look for large construction sites, the sheer volume of great material they throw away will shock you.   I once got 400 board feet of clear vertical grain old growth redwood interior trim that would have cost easily $1,000.  

The other source for good cheap wood is fence boards, both new and used.   Fencing companies remove old wood fencing in blocks of 4 feet usually, throw legs on one and you have a rustic table.  They will actually come apart using a lot of usable wood for relatively little effort.   Play your cards right and the fencers will sometimes drop them off for you to save the cost of going to the dump.

Buying new fence boards is pretty cheap, its what I build my raised beds out of.   They are less than $3 at most box stores.

Another tip is ask if they have any rejected wood.  I just got 200 redwood fence boards from Lows for $200, rejected because they had gotten wet and mildewed a bit...LOL!

You might try bringing one of the many versions of a pocket warmer, the hunting section of any walmart (evil incorporated) will have them.

If you can green Barstow, you can green ANYTHING!  

So, a couple of thoughts.   Mimosa trees are fairly drought tolerant and have deep tap roots, they produce a LOT of biomass, feed bees like crazy and fix nitrogen.  They seed prolifically so they have that going for themselves as well.

Also, since you are in Barstow, Fresno is a long drive but the there are underground gardens there that were built for a similar climate and might yield some interesting ideas

FORESTIERE Underground GARDENS

William Bronson wrote:
But last year's average monthly bill in my area was $80 or so, and ours was roughly $250!

My first question would be why is your bill three times the average?   Is there an underground leak?   Defective meter?   Or some behavior that is using larger than average water?  Teenagers?

Brett Hammond wrote:

What is the downside to using the center pith and sap wood? Just that it is a lighter color, or is it weaker or split because of the different moisture content before drying?

That seems like such a simple question but it beggars the the whole requisite knowledge of how to go from firewood to furniture.   If you are going to mill for slabs you need to learn the difference between quarter and plain sawn wood, what part of the tree is the bole and how grain affects the movement of wood.   As for the pith, it has no strength, and it is very movement/warp prone.