Andrew Welser

Nina Surya wrote:

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:Run the plumbing in such a way that hot water going down the drain gives back at least part of its heat before it really leaves the house (not sure I'm phrasing that the right way).

Ellendra, I'm trying to come up with some kind of practical solution to what you said "Run the plumbing in such a way that hot water going down the drain gives back at least part of its heat before it really leaves the house ". I think you're phrasing it right but can you give an example of what, how...?

One way to do what Ellendra is referring to is by using some kind of "Drain Water Heat Recovery System"  (see diagram/picture below)
Basically some kind of heat exchanger to use heat from the (shower) drain line to preheat the incoming cold water.

I saw a youtube recently of how to DIY radiant/infrared cooling paint

that paint could then be used in a north-sky-facing "window solar heater" (similar to pictured below)

to make a cooler.

6 foot down the temperature of the earth will vary seasonally, around 20' down it will stabilize (close) to the average annual air temperature of your area, normally very similar to the ground water temperature:


Notice on the graphs how the temperature stabilizes and lags behind surface temperature as the depth increases and the "wave of heat" slowly travels through the earth:


(all photos found online searching "underground temperature chart")).

Something mentioned I believe by John Hait in his book "Passive Annual Heat Storage" (currently available for download on archive.org) is that rain water soaking through the ground can greatly affect the temperature underground: if you're depending on the thermal mass of the ground, or the ground temperature then he recommends creating a water impermeable layer (usually plastic sheeting/pond liner) near the surface to prevent rain from cooling the earth or moving heat out of the thermal mass.

Edit to add: Also discussed by John in his book, if you put insulation along with the water barrier, and extend that out 20' or so in all directions, you get the temperature equivalent of 20' of covering earth without having to go down that far, since the heat in effect has to go 20' to the side because of the insulation under the water barrier.

Anne Miller wrote:Since we are talking older vehicles, I hope this is not too off-topic.  Has anyone had problems with windshield wiper blades?  The rubber just dies after a few uses.

The windshield wiper on both vehicles are shot though we decided not to replace them just to use them one time.

Has anyone found a trick to replacing them?

I know it's been a while since this thread's been posted in so I hope I'm not guilty of thread necromancy (older vehicles, older thread ), but I saw Anne's question hadn't been answered and wanted to chime in:

Get full silicone wipers. I can't speak to longevity of other brands, but in 2017 I put PIAA Super Silicone blades on my wife's car, and they were still working well when we traded it in earlier this year; and we're in north Texas where we're doing good to get more than a year or 2 out of the rubber ones because of the sun (car was never garaged and only parked under cover for a couple of those years). At the time PIAA were the only full silicone wipers I could find, but it looks like they may be more common now. In addition to the longevity, another benefit is they make the water bead up on your windshield, just like Rain-X.

Beau Davidson wrote:
fri nov 25 - wood box day (half day)

- try to replace plastic bins with wooden crates and boxes
- maybe try to make a box that will almost hold water
- maybe even try to make some dovetail joints
- some boxes will be quick and some will be very nice
- unlike wooden spoon day - wood boxes will remain with the bootcamp

Isn’t Boxing Day usually the day after Christmas? ;)

From my folder of funny fotos downloaded from the four corners of the interwebs.

I was just listening through these podcasts and Ash's mention of wanting towns without cars that feed themselves reminded me of a website and book I'd read in depth a long while back. While the design probably doesn't take permaculture into mind, and I don't recall how close it comes to feeding itself, the ideas and plans at Carfree Cities are probably a lot closer to his goals than almost any current towns or cites, and might be a good rough draft in that direction.

Howdy all,

Newbie to Permies in south DFW. Wanting to get a garden started (and see what else is possible) in my suburban backyard.

I'm in the suburbs of a large city with pretty decent internet; it's not fiber, but it's no dialup either. My wife was streaming tv last night when I tried, but it's doing the same thing this morning with no other traffic on our end. The download of the 10k file completes after only a second or so, almost instantaneously, like it thinks it got the whole file; not after a min or so like the 10k was all it was able to get before it timed out.

I thought the download offer from the daily-ish was only good for 48hrs, but I guess it's just the link in the email that expires? I'll keep trying then. Thanks for getting back to me so fast!

Got the link as the freebee in the daily-ish, but something is failing when I try to download. It appears the file downloads successfully, but the file that downloads is only 10-12 Kb and won't open as a valid pdf; tried 4-5 times, got the same result with slight variance in file size. I've previously been able to successfully download other files linked from the daily-ish so I'm assuming it's not an issue on my end. I attached one of the files that downloaded in case it helps in troubleshooting the issue. Thanks!