Ben de Leiris

I just personally like the aesthetics and the process of straw-clay better than straw bale. I know everyone loves straw bales, and rightly so, but for various reasons I think they are a pain in the butt. I've also seen lots of widely ranging values for straw-bale R-value, and I'm not sold on the fact that it's a slam dunk over straw clay. For the small, tight, solar house I'll be building, it doesn't have to be "super insulated," just reasonably well insulated.

I often see 12" quoted as the maximum thickness for light straw-clay construction, and R-1.6/in as an insulation value. That leads to about R-19 for the whole wall. Not terrible, but I'd like a little more!

My understanding is that if you go thicker, the wall will mold inside before it can dry out, but 12" seems to be thrown around as a universal limit with no consideration of climate. I wonder if a sunny, dry, breezy site would allow a thicker wall. I might do some sample walls and experiment with cutting them open to see if mold formed.

But my real question is about stuffing dry material in the middle of the wall to bulk it up. Say 6" of straw-clay, then 6" of dry straw, then another 6" of straw-clay. It would all be packed into the cavity at the same time, just substituting dry straw in the middle third, and more clay slip towards the surface. Can anyone see any issues with this? Would it hold together well enough? It could add significantly to the insulation, with proportionally less work since all that extra straw doesn't need to be mixed with slip.

Yes, mine also seem to have gotten a little second wind right now. One seems to have died off completely but the rest are showing a little new growth. I was wondering if the initial growth might come from energy/nutrients stored in the rootstock, but then further growth has to wait until new roots actually form in the soil, so that there is a delay. I gave one to my dad which we planted in his yard right away, and he says it has a few inches of new growth since then. I gave mine a little compost, and also moved them into a sunnier area.

I think my plan is to put my trees in the greenhouse, but in the north corner and fully shaded by burlap over the winter once hard freezes arrive. And I will probably prune off my "stubs" in late winter.

Good info in here. I'd like to know more about caring for young trees further on. I grafted 10 trees this spring; 9 of them took and have been living outside in 1 gallon pots in part shade. They all produced about 6-12 inches of new growth. Now they seem to have stalled out a bit, with some of the shoots not looking as vigorous as before. Do they need (a) more sun, (b) bigger pots, (c) some compost? Anything else? What kind of care do they need until they go in the ground, probably next year?

Also, what should I do with them over winter? It gets pretty cold here in Vermont. I have an unheated greenhouse I could put them in, but will the temperature swings on sunny days mess with the dormancy period? Maybe a cool corner with some shade?

Calculate the head from the surface of the pond. Any water that's not in a pipe is at atmospheric pressure (0 PSI) at its surface. If you had water in a pipe from the waterfall, that didn't surface at the pond, that would be a different story. What's your head and flow rate? Year round?

A rough estimate of power output from hydro is head (ft) x flow (gpm) / 10, which accounts for an efficiency of about 50%. 5 ft x 10 gpm/10 is 5 Watts at best. That would hardly be worth it, and I also know of no commercially available turbine that would operate at those numbers. The LH100 from Energy Systems and Design, probably the most common low-head turbine, needs hundreds of gallons per minute. Bummer!

I'm pretty new to ducks and have 11 (Welsh Harlequins and Cayugas) which are about 3 months old at this point. I know that ducklings need more niacin than chicks. but I can't find anything conclusive on whether that is the same for adult ducks. When they were young I would add niacin tablets to their water. Now they are mostly free range and hang out in the stream all the time. I tried brewer's yeast with their feed but it seemed so powdery that they didn't actually consume much of it. Anyway, do they even need extra niacin at this age? Maybe they get what they need from foraging...

A couple more...

Well until I get that figured out, I'll just attach the images.

Are photos showing up? They are in Google photos but it doesn't look like the links are working. Any ideas?