Michael Bradford

dale farrow wrote:could water bladder maybe a water bed with insulating laid on pipes then bladder on top cover bladder then enclose in frame have water to adjust with valves in shut off to open circulate through pipes to solar collector and water heater.

The concern I would have is if the plastic bladder would be able to hold up to high temperatures.  The oly info
I could find suggests temperatures less than 100° (F) = 37.77° (C). Admittedly, this is likely for sleeping comfort
and safety. I didn't find info on the actual capability of the water bed bladder material itself. However;  GOOGLE says this:

WATER STORAGE bladders are generally capable of storing hot water in the range of 35° to 90° (C) = 95° to 194° (F) with
optimal, safe storage typically set around 60° (C) = 140° (F) to prevent bacterial growth. Specialized, high-temperature
industrial systems can operate with water approaching boiling, around 90° (C) to 95° (C) = 194° (F) to 203° (F)

And then there is the weight to consider. A king size waterbed can hold around 235 gallons of water which weighs around
1960 pounds. That is almost one ton of water you wouldn't want crushing anything beneath it or leaking all over.

An off topic aside:
I once upon a time got too tired of the maintenance of a water bed. Water beds were a fad that ended... nobody would buy
it, nobody wanted it, even for free. So I drained it, took it outside and filled it with air from a compressor. The neighborhood
kids had an absolute blast with that super sized beach ball thing all day long... until it got a hole too big to patch one last time
to keep it from deflating too fast. It was a hoot... and they got more bounce out of it than I ever did

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that pressure relief valves would only be a
neccessary thing if you are heating water to the boiling point or higher in a closed
system.

For trying to store heat higher than 212° (F) = 100° (C), it may be worth considering
a different type of mass for the storage of that heat other than plain water; (rocks,
sand, cob, soap stone or soil maybe ?)

There are other things  that may be considered, but some reach into more exotic
things like brine, glycol, oils and maybe other things I've not mentioned... some
are caustic, costly and/or are a fire or explosion risk.

It may take more of a thing (other than water... or even the "exotics") to get and
hold heat at temperatures above the boiling point of water because of its lower
heat holding capability and efficiency. But generally speaking, I think they are less
expensive, less risk and easier to be managed by the average DIY builder. On the
downside, there is the cost of sweat equity and the space taken by the volume of
material needed to do the job.

To keep water at same level across all barrels, each one would need to be connected to the next barrel, one after the other and
be located at the bottom. You could fill the whole system by just putting water into one barrel and it would flow from one barrel
to the next. And the water would rise mostly evenly and level out across all of them. (as long as flow is not too restricted between
any one of them)  

Same principle across the top (on the lid venting the head space of each barrel from one to the other) Any one of those barrels
could have a vent on it to release any over pressure to outside of the sytem but they all must be connected together otherwise.
You could just vent it outside to prevent excess humidity, or inside to increase humidity... whichever you may need at the time.

Having the barrels all conected together at the bottom allows for self leveling of your liquid mass. And being all connected together
at the top headspace allows for equalized venting pressure across the system with the a single vent for pressure exhaust.

Also, all of the barrels need to/should be at the same level at the top. Your liquid mass will overflow the top of the barrel whos top
is lower than the others. So if the top is same on all, then all can only fill that high before overflowing.

Lastly, for the sake of uniformity, it would be easiest for all those containers to be the same size. That is not an absolute neccessity.
BUT! the important thing is that the top level of each container be at the same level as all of the rest. Tall and shorter barrels still
need to be connected at the bottom to make use of the whole volume of each container. This all assumes the whole system is
being heated at the bottoms of all containers. (with some uniformity perhaps) For thermosyphon to work, there would also need to
be another set of connections like the fill and vent lines near the top but below the full level of your containers. This will allow the
heated liquid to flow across the top layer from barrel to barrel. (better stratification that way) And of course a line from the bottom
of the lowest reaching container for the cooler liquid to flow to the heating part of the system.

I have made many small batches at a time using basically soup cans filled and jammed together. Then they were put into the
woodstove after most of the heating fire had burned down. 1 can has the open end fluted with a HVAC like crimp tool and the
other paired can with a nail hole poked in the bottom for escaping gases. Some were filled with humanure. (poo, TP and fine
wood chip bedding and sometimes with added sprinkles of wood ash to help reduce smell) Some would get filled with bits of
wood sticks and some with cardboard shredded with a heavy duty paper shredder. I did that a couple years ago (garbage bag
full) but didn't get around to it this last heating season.

I figure the humanure type and wood stick types make chunks of char appropriate in size for use to be bio-charged and used
that way for gardening. But I'm not so sure how well the shredded cardboard will work for that because the cardboard char is
rather small, thin and light. But I'll tell you what!!! That cardboard char sure works great for sprinkling a coffee can full in the
chicken coops to knock down any stink.  I've not checked yet to see the results though using the cardboard char from the coop
cleanouts in the compost pile. I'm guessing it may just break apart too finely to be of lasting biochar utility. I'm still going to use
the shredded cardboard char in the coops anyway, regardless of composting results. Even some of the shredded cardboard not
put through pyrolysis may get used as nest bedding. That stuff should compost easily.

I don't know what may cause a rooster to attack like that, but it seems there must be something that triggers that kind of aggression.  
If one could come up with some plausible reasons for the why of it then they might also be able to come up with reasonable solutions
to address it.

We have a rooster here that will stalk my brother before attacking... He sometimes catches my brother unaware. My brother will chase
him and punt him like a soccer ball when he finally catches up to him. The rooster will make an approach to me, but never in a threatening
way and usually with a group of 2 or more hens in tow... more of a looking for a handout of some scratch or sunflower seeds kind of thing.

I am gentlemanly with his hens that he protects, not ever teasing or chasing them and often (but not always) I will squat down and try to
keep myself positioned sideways to him when he comes near to me. I try not to present directly frontally which I presume may be regarded
as confrontational. It may just be my imagining that is why he doesn't attack me, but it seems to be what works. I think chickens are smarter
than some may give them credit for. At least I know from observation that they remember behaviors and react/respond (or not) accordingly.
Just my 2  cents

Any April Fools Day jokes, stories or any other April Fools Day sillyness to share?

OOH! OOH! OOH!   I've got one!
Here is an April Fools Day Limerick for you that I wrote a long time ago and I dust it off and bring it out every year.

Gorillas at monkey tech schools
Make their gas with monkey wrench tools
But the octane they make
for their cars is so fake
All they do is just "Ape real Fuels"

Like the OP, I was wondering if anyone had made char out of humanure. But I did it myself first anyway  (just did so today, Dec. 24, 2024) and then
went looking to see if any one else had.  So I found what I was looking for and found it here to add my experience.

My compost toilet buckets stack up a while (6 or 7 months usually) before they get dumped into the humanure specific compost pile. I dont use it
for gardening so the pile is basically unused so far. (just my brother and I here going on 4 years) so the pile is still nowhere near being full. Smell
was an occasional problem only if it managed to get wet from rain. (leaky tarp I guess)

I saw a YT video where a guy used soup cans to make char in his woodstove over the winter heating season; so that is the method I am using for
pyrolization. For the compost toilet, fine flaked pine used for horse bedding gets sprinkled over the poo. No effort is made to divert urine. When
full, the lid is closed tight on top and gets put outside. I mostly try to keep it in the shade. Any time of the year. None have busted when frozen yet.  
And remarkably so far, the smell was not nearly as bad as I expected for bucket contents that had been sitting for several months. This might be
different for "fresher" bucket loads, but I haven't gotten to them yet.

The finished product is light and finely flaked and the occasinal clump of more compacted char crumbles very easily. No crushing is needed. It will
be great for sprinkling as is into the deep bedding in the chicken coops to absorb smell of amonia and chicken poo or to mix into garden soil (after
it gets innoculated with compost tea or with it already mixed in with the coop bedding that gets composted) or to put some in an open jar or dish
as a deoderizer to absorb odors in the kitchen and in the bathroom.

BTW, the fine pine flakes surprized me when I first started using the composting toilet. (5 gallon bucket with a toilet seat on top... quite simple but
adequate and effective )

Some smell was noted, but not nearly as noxious when at first when trying to use straw. (big, big mistake) So I used a spray bottle mixed with some
freerange, purebred unicorn fart juice that was certified !00% organic, non GMO, unsulphered, no PFAS or glyphosates, herbacide free, fungicide
free, insecticide free, petrochemical free, no antibiotics, non-allergenic and mixed with osmosis filtered well water. The poo pile would get covered
with a judicious coating of pine flakes and spritzed with a few squirts of the unicorn fart juice concoction. Now I never had smelled unicorn fart juice
before, but to me it smelled suspiciously like several drops of vanilla extract had been mixed in with the osmosis filtered well water. Apparently the
spray can also be had in peppermint or lavender versions and maybe others as well but I didn't try any of those. Anyway, I later discontinued use of
the spray since generally unicorns are as hard to come by as unobtainium and their fart juice even moreso.  That, and I just became accustomed to  
the slight vestigial waft of poo.  (and that could probably be cured with a dish of the humanure char nearby to absorb those odors.)

I once retrieved from a dumpster a case box of ready to bake bisquits in those pop open cylinder containers... some had
already popped open and were past their "best if used by " dates. The intention was to bake them and give them to the dogs
and chickens as treats. Left on the back porch too long in the summer heat and more of them had popped open. Black soldier
flies  took advantage and turned it into a huge mass of BSF larvae.

Well the dogs missed out on any bisquits, but the chickens feasted like royalty on the larvae for quite a while. So yeah, go
ahead and mix the flour with some water (and/or with  some outdated milk like I did with some dumpster sourced milk) and
make dough out of it and put into a plastic tote put up out of reach of critters with a window screen to keep house flies out.
Add a few pieces of corrugated cardboard for the BSF to lay egs in.  (when the eggs hatch, the larvae are small enough to crawl
through  the screen and drop down to the food for them below.)

The fly larvae dispatched the dough pretty quickly so it never really got the chance to get stinky at all... which is what they can
do with just about anything  foodlike you toss in for them to consume ... like leftovers from butchering of any animals etc.

Well that would work where black soldier flies can be found anyway.

BTW, another method to be rid of rats involves a mixture of dry baking soda and cornmeal that is
non-poisonous/non-lethal/harmless to the dogs and chickens but so far has had limited success...
The rats seem to prefer the tender greens instead of the cornmeal bait.

Cats would do ok with mice... but rats, not so much. A dog would be a better hunter for rats. the 2 basset hounds here will actually pull logs
out of the firewood stacks to get at any rats. Rats are awfull and have eaten tops of seedling trees I've tried to grow. Eventually I had to set
seedlings up on a makeshift table with steel roofing panels laying on top extending out so that they could not reach around to access the
table top. I won't use poison because of  the dogs and chickens here and trapping has its issues too. Big black rat snakes are a welcome sight.

Also, raccoons have been an issue with the chickens. the dogs and a 22 rifle or the shotgun have been employed from time to time though I
would prefer not to. The coons apparently are smarter and more patient and persistant than I can always maintain... It's an ongoing conflict.