Mark Miner

We use pickling lime and water also, heavy on the lime (usually there is undissolved lime on the bottom of the 1/2 gallon mason jar). We have kept them this way for 2-3months, on the counter, in AZ (so low 80s in the house) with all the eggs remaining satisfactory when used.
Good luck!
Mark

[The Edit button was not on for the BB flagged as edge case, sorry about the new reply.]

Thanks for your concern, and I did not show the grade marking on the wire, but as you see below it is UL-listed RHW-2 / USE-2, and if you consult NFPA 70 Table 310.15(B)(6) Conductor Types and Sizes for 120/240-Volt, 3-Wire, Single-Phase Dwelling Services and Feeders, you will indeed find RHW-2 listed right along with THHN/TWHN (which is what most people will buy at Home Depot as single-conductor wire).

Your electrician friend can rest easy (and is indeed welcome to talk shop! I am a licensed electrician too, in AZ.)
Regards,
Mark

Hey Permies,

I'm not sure why I didn't think to mention this here before, but we recently moved out of central AZ and up to the PNW. Our house in AZ has friends renting, but soon we will need to sell. It's off-grid (shares a well, has solar+battery, solar hot water), and we spent 3 years doing as permie-ish of stuff to it as we could. Lots of mulch, lots of fruit trees, lots of animal enclosures. We'd be happy to see it go to someone who values it for what it is.

The very short form: 1.25ac property, 1800sqft 4br 2ba manufactured home (doublewide, 2021 Clayton, low trim level, I won't lie)
Property is low-desert with a nice wash running through it E-W, lots of mesquite and palo verde there, the wash is a resource concentrator
Off grid on solar, about 45kWh of LFP batteries, 16kW of Outback inverter, about 10kW of panels. Solar lives in an A/C'd conex by house. House has A/C and evap, choose depending on the season. 250gal Propane tank (owned) feeds house heat and stove.
Shared well fills 2500gal water tank feeding pump and 3000gal water tank for gravity irrigation. About 50 trees we put in are still going, including olives, citrus, fig, pomegranate, stone fruit.
Animal corral is central aisle with 4ea 24x24ft stalls, central roof gives half shade to each stall. Possibly the best part of the property.
Location is slightly south of Florence AZ.
We do want to sell for proper, not do owner-carry, so please bear that in mind. We would use a title company and do things plain vanilla.
If you look through my BBs, most of them were done at this property. I've included a few photos to give a general idea. The rainbow was just looking east of our property, standing on the corral roof in a monsoon. The aerial view is from when I was running a couple construction crews and had extra trucks & junk - it is tidier than that now.

I will be glad to give more details to legit inquiries in Purple Moosages.

Thanks, and happy homesteading!
Mark

Hello PEP-folks,
I have a 40ft conex with a small solar system I put in a while ago, and I wanted a power tool outlet (it was a ways away from the house). I am using the past tense because this was done back on our AZ property, with the outlet need driven by my desire to build out shelving in the 40ft and use it as our moving van to the PNW where we live now, so I needed a 20A outlet to run the compressor and other tools, as well as provide some interior lighting in the conex.

I'm aware that the BB asks for single 20A dedicated outlet with things like fridges in mind, but I do submit that a power-tools outlet is a reasonable single-point circuit, hoping you will agree.

The conex has a small HVAC unit on it, too, thus the 30A dual pole breaker next to the single-pole 20A for this outlet. Since it's a remote power system, and subject only to intermittent use, I judged the conex box to be a pretty adequate ground - there are a lot of electrons in 4 tons of steel (more, I suspect, than in most UFER systems...). At any rate, the outlet I put in is a GFCI, since it is near the door, and if operated open and in weather, could indeed be water-exposed.

The photos briefly walk through the installation, demonstration of function, and the system it draws from, which (of course) I put in without carefully documenting and thus can't submit for the power wall badge... sigh. But the outlet has been a huge help, both in AZ and up here in the PNW, as when I built the goat pen next to the conex, since it's such a good windbreak.

Happy homesteading,
Mark

Hey PEP-folks,

This is the wire-pulling that accompanied the 220V outlet installation documented in this BB. I spooled out and cut 4 strands of 10AWG at 70ft, and ended up trimming ~6ft off the ends after the pull. The linear wall space was about 50ft, with the up-and-down accounting for the rest. I ran it from the existing shop panel along two walls, through a couple studs, and mostly supported it using wire clips. As mentioned in the other BB, one of the goals was to spend no money and to use old stock. This goal was accomplished, I am glad to say. It did mean that some of the materials were a little nonstandard, like using the photovoltaic 10AWG wire.

Happy homesteading!
Mark

Hey PEP-folks,
At last, I again have room for my shop tablesaw. Alas, the shop didn't have 220V run to it. So, I am documenting the outlet installation task here, and will separately document the wire pulling BB.

Short summary: Tablesaw and blower are each rated 2hp, 12A, for a running-together current of 24A. This is 80% of a 30A circuit, so that's the breaker size I selected. The wire size appropriate to this circuit is 10AWG. The tools are both older, and are 3-wire 220V (L1, L2, GND), however, I chose to run 4 wires in case I ever want to swap things out for a newer 4-wire 220V layout (L1, L2, Neutral, GND). As the former owner did not choose to separately derive a ground for this building, it's a moot point anyway without adding ground rods and reviewing the connection to main panel (they probably pulled out L1/L2/GND), but adding wires to a run is a pain, so I laid in 4 conductors. The conductors chosen are solar-panel wire, rated for exposed outdoor use.

A further goal of this project was to not spend money and use up old inventory that I still have in my electrical totes. Thus, I think it looks kinda like garbage, compared to a project where a client is paying to have things look nice. The upshot, however, is that I did indeed spend zero new dollars to make this happen. Moreover, the only particularly ugly bit is the box extension, because the box was a bit crowded; this would go to a galvanized steel square box. I ganged it on the aluminum box that I had. And then put a plastic in-use cover on it, because it's in the shop, and is a dusty environment.

However, the saw and dust collector are happy now, and I have been able to do better joinery (I like tongue-and-grooves with a dado blade). It's been about 5 years since I've had this saw set up, and I am happy to have it back in business. This short video demonstrates that yes, both tools start and run satisfactorily on the circuit.

Happy Homesteading!
Mark

Hello PEP-guardians!

I believe I have completed the sand badge requirements in plumbing!

6 from Tiny list:
1) Install an Instant Bidet
2) Repair a hose
3) Perform a water quality test
4) Repair a P-trap
5) Unclog a drain with a zip tool
6) Put collected water through a Berkey filter

1 from Big list:
Install a hydrant

Thank you for your consideration, and happy homesteading,
Mark

Hey PEP-folks,

Part 3 of a drain saga here, following https://permies.com/p/2856463 and https://permies.com/p/2856467.

This is a kitchen sink drain, and had a handful of weird issues, like a non-standard vent hole (drilled in the pipe) and some intermittent leaking when heavily loaded with lots of water all at once. The troubleshooting began with examining the cross-drilled holes at the top of the drain stack, but the pipes felt very, very wiggly. Then I opened up the P-trap, so I had more freedom of motion, and lo and behold, the whole DWV assembly, from a coupling below the sani-tee, lifted off in my hand.

What the...

Upon examination, the pipes were lightly adhered with a silicone caulk. Jeepers. This had, of course, failed to maintain a watertight bond. The pieces were all the correct lengths, so in order to avoid spending money, I chose to scrub all the gooped joints thoroughly and rebuild the stack using real ABS glue. This dried overnight before testing, and the first test produced.... water coming up the vent.

So I opened it back up and snaked down the pipe to clear the deeper blockage (see "Unclog" BB). Then I reassembled, tested again with a basin full of water (I was confident), and yea verily, glug glug.

Happy homesteading,
Mark

Hey PEP-folks,
This is a companion post to my drain saga partly detailed here: https://permies.com/p/2856463

This aspect of the saga is using the snake to clean clogs out of the deeper drain. The P-trap was disassembled and repaired in the above post, but when reassembled the first time, the drain still backed up. Gunk further down. Yeesh.

While browsing on Amazon and not wanting to spend money on a drain snake, I recalled an auspicious tool left hanging on the wall in the garage by the former owners. It had looked like a drain snake at first blush, but upon inspection, it was a flex-shaft power take off with a hand wheel. I squinted pretty hard at it, and it looked like a drain snake again, so I figured it was worth a try, being free.

I had to modify the end into a tight hook that would allow both forward and backward motion through the pipe joints, since I had no interest in getting this thing stuck down my pipes. However, a little pliers work, and a nice hook with tucked tip was formed and ready to go. Down she went, a couple times, hauling up nasty sludge each go. After a few back-and-forths, I decided to try the drain again, buttoned it up, and thankfully, it flowed freely. Previously, it had made a "filling up" noise as water went down, which is not a sound I like to hear from drain pipes. Now, just a healthy gurgle.

This house does have pretty long drains, so a powered snake is probably somewhere in the future, but at least the heat is off for now, and the sink is usable. More fun on the DWV stack in another BB.

Happy homesteading,
Mark

Hey PEP-folks,

It's often the case with this kind of BB that I hope I don't have do one, but then it happens in its own time.
The second sink was slow, then it leaked (like down the wall in the downstairs, prompting blowers, etc.) - dumping a canning kettle is a lot at once. Looking under the sink, lo & behold, the former owners (or their plumber) did not like the under-counter vent, and drilled a through-hole across the pipe. Yeesh.

So I got together materials to plug those holes, and as I handled the pipe it seemed extremely loose. Yep. The ABS drain pipe was silicone-caulked together. No joke. Pulled apart very easily, and showed me that the leak was actually down at an ABS coupling that was being "held together" by silicone caulk/sealant. So I knew I had to rebuild the DWV pipes under the sink, and began to disassemble them.

I pulled apart the P-trap, and it was almost totally occluded with nasty gunk. One thing after another. So I blasted it out with water, and cleaned the P-trap (the burden of this BB submission).  You'll see the disassembled drain pipe in the sink, this was pretty nutty. I scraped off the silicone as well as I could, and rebuilt with the old (correct size) pieces, but with real ABS cement - but that's a story for another BB, I believe. The reassembled drain still moved slowly and backed up, so I put an improvised drain snake down it to clear that clog (refer to other BB), and this, finally, led to success and speedy draining. This sink was a piece of work.

After the trifecta of: disassemble & clean out P-trap, snake drain down ~10ft, and rebuild DWV pipe stack under the counter with proper ABS cement, it is running leak-free, even when a basin was filled and then the plug pulled. Hurrah. And now I have several fewer problems than I did before.

Happy homesteading,
Mark