rich cochran

Just wanted to chime in about the native varieties. I am in south central Mo and have 24-30" abh  pecan trees all around my house. They are really good and dont seem to be too hard to crack. Seedlings everywhere, and they grow fast. The neatest thing I have discovered about them is that they not only deliver a payload at harvest time, but also hold fruit nearly all winter, dropping it a little at a time. I did not realize this until a few years back when we had a big snow and then that got covered with a layer of ice. Every day there were new pecans on top of the ice and the wildlife was happy for it.

sure you can move the straw to plant things, but i dont believe I would mulch the poppies.  I grew some about 2 decades ago for several years, and my best results were planting them in loose soil with a thin topcoat of sand. I believe they were planted in february, (south missouri)  and started making in June, but it has been a long time. -R edit: soil topcoated with sand before planting, and seeds planted on surface. and like turnips or radished it is very easy to get them too close together!

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I see; well, I used to be a mason, a brick layer. What I can tell you about sealing things, is that it is great for about a minute, then the coating gets tiny fissures and allows moisture in, anyway, where it is trapped.  With masonry in particular, what that means is, when it freezes it pops all the faces off your bricks, and makes the wall crumble. Never paint masonry that is exposed to the weather! I can't imagine something that holds moisture against wood, would be any better, but hey the world of consumerism provides lots of things to us that we really dont need!

I have no chemical knowledge to speak of, but a question did come to mind: why seal your fence at all? isn't arizona dry enough that wood lasts practically forever, anyway? -Rich  

Hello all at permies, I have spent some time looking through threads here,  I have enjoyed it greatly! I decided to join and introduce my self and situation and ask for opinions on what the best way to move forward with building our generator.

At present I have done a little experimentation with a vortex tank on a smaller flow I have here on the farm. I made a little power, just enough to run a string of LED christmas lights, and even that draw really drug the machine down. I wanted to spend some time learning about efficiency before I dive headlong into building the "real"/ "big" power plant, as I would rather end up with something useful.

I have installed 3 40' sections of .30 wall steel pipe, and then concreted those in. I allowed for very little fall, maybe two inches in 120 feet or threabouts, so this pipe is relatively level.   On the intake side I still need to cut some flanges to adapt a large gate valve to the end of the pipe,  while on the outflow side I am at a time-out... this is what got me to testing the vortex on a small scale, I didn't want to end up with something that I have to be constantly fiddling with that doesn't really work but "looks cool".  Erego, after playing with this small setup I have started to think that possibly a wheel would be a wiser choice.

Flow:  Flow comes from a string of springs joining together into a small stream, which feeds my lake.  Additionally this lake has a 640 acre recharge area, a LOT of water comes down the valley after even a small rain. There are actually two levels of water in my lakes, the upper lake is spring fed, which then runs into the lower.  The upper lake is what I tested this little vortex generator on.  A few years ago we had a bad drought, I was still getting 5 gal/sec out of the culverts that keep the pond at the correct level; this is the worst ever case.   About 6 months out of the year I have 20 gal/ sec or so, this of course does fluctuate some, as the springs produce much better for several weeks after a rain.  

Head: 4 to 9 feet, depending on how this is built.  another 75 feet or so past where the end of my 12" tube currently is, there is a spring pond.  9' of head could be gotten by dropping a wheel over into this spring pond hole, but I would need 75 more feet of pipe, which is doable.

There is 5' of head FROM THE TOP of the pipe to the bottom of a hole that I was going to put an 8' rotation tank in....and then got cold feet.  I could dig this out a bit more and get 6', but thats about it.  Now I will go get some pictures, and add them shortly.  -Rich

A few more points, now that there are pictures...1) the "dock" at the intake (is actually a recycled ladder rack from a pickup) is actually a frame for 2x4" grid stock panel to keep beavers and trash out of the pipe.    2) if I elect to run the pipe 75 more feet out, it will be well up off the ground.  Maybe it can be part of a goat fence? Idk.  3)  routing the entire 12" pipe into the spring pond will create an opportunity for another drop coming out of the spring pond, can use it one more time before it leaves the property...