Mike Paulus

Robert Curris wrote:Wow we really DO need a jargon buster included. I saw Amps, Volts, Ohms and Watts in there and no idea what the difference is. For the website, though. Not here.
Wonderful idea. Wonderful generosity and already an offer of help with drafting. Don't you just love Permies?
Go for it guys. We need this.
Please remember though to include info for us who live in duller, rainier places. Not everyone has long hot summers!!

I have an electronics background and can help with explaining the electrical jargon in layman's terms.

Cj Verde wrote:
Perhaps someone on the Dailyish Email List who is registered at permies (with appropriate name), who has listened to 75% of the podcasts and has, say, 4 apples could have the application fee waived?

I believe the fee was put in as a filter and compensation because some people were planning to come and asking for lots of support from Paul and others as to getting to Base Camp, changing flights and so on. Your method might serve the purpose of a filter but it doesn't compensate for time spent on seeking info, emailing back and forth, trips to the airport. I Know I'm pretty self sufficient so I was surprised to hear about those sorts of issues, perhaps you're the same so it wouldn't occur to you that some people expect the Missoula permies to wait on them, act as travel agent, and chauffeur. Requiring $100 also requires little to no time or effort to verify.

I have been wanting to come down from Whitefish and help out with things and attend workshops, particularly for rocket mass heaters. My issue is money. With my low income it's hard to put money aside for such things even though my travel costs would be quite low compared to some.

I share the link to Paul's article whenever I find a chance to have it well received. My own lawn has all sorts of things growing which are not grass and I haven't put anything on it except it's own clippings for years. As long as it gets some water it is every bit as green as the neighbor's who have the truck come and spray everything with NPK and whatever else they use.

Very nice Damian. Are you wanting to keep the barn warm almost all the time, or do you mainly just want to have it warm when you want to use it? I can envision a possible mix of both. Things to keep in mind, the longer your duct work to draw the exhaust gasses through to store heat, the more velocity you will lose. If you want to to be very long you can counter this by having a higher than common heat riser. Some ideas, perhaps two smaller RMHs may meet your needs better than a single larger one. You may also build a mass heater to keep the temp a bit higher in the barn most of the time and then augment that with one or more pocket rockets. If you only want it warm when you are using the barn you may do well with just pocket rockets.

Laws, regulations, codes, etc are written to protect people from their own failures to think things through. If you're wiring or plumbing a house, you can save a lot of money by doing it yourself and you can save a lot more money by doing it in ways that are unsafe or will yield lousy function. If you take time to plan out what you are doing, account for the various pitfalls you could encounter, and apply appropriate controls in your design and execution, then you have effectively complied with the code for the reason it was written. That does not mean The Department Of Making You Sad will agree, but your construction will be safe.

Very nice. I just came here to ask if hugelkultur beds work well in Montana since it's so dry here. I may build some in Whitefish soon.

You lose significant velocity every time you go through a 90 degree bend.  Three 180 degree bends before you route the gasses out is a tall order.  You could probably just force it through by increasing the potential draw enough.  The easiest way would be to make a taller heat riser.  The thing is you still have a bottleneck in your mass with all those bends so the velocity is not likely to go up much.

Getting into CAD to work on gas flow is way beyond my pay grade, but you might be able to find someone who could help you with it since you live in a college town.  The easy bet is to reduce the bends in the bench.

paul wheaton wrote:
So ... kinda like this?

Very much so, I was thinking about simple windmill pumps to elevate water into a high tank with posible multiple stages since each of those will only lift so much water so high.  Although building an elevated pond is likely to be less work, more useful and more esthetically pleasing.  It could still be fed with wind pumping water as one of the sources.  I just know that land with suitable drop for microhydro is rare so I was looking at ways to get around that.

rockguy wrote:
Don't return water to your well, whatever else you do. Only in a completely sealed, geo-thermal heatpump is this a safe thing to do.

Thank you for that info.