Mark Miner

Hey Matt,
Hope you are doing well! The Northspore kit (or similar) is a super easy entry level way to do it (for some $). I have found the Arizona Mushroom Growers Association to have helpful info, and you may have a Maine equivalent. Obsess over sterilization for culinary mushrooms, this is not the same as spore logs in the garden. But the pre-inoculated spawn kits are a great entry point. Expect that different parts of your kitchen perform differently, due to airflow. Maybe do this with a couple bought boxes, before you start autoclaving your own straw? Once you are confident in going from spore block to fruiting bodies, then maybe it is time to work upstream and start inoculating your own medium. If you are into biology, then maybe maintaining the strain is a good fit, otherwise, buying the syringe with the spore culture is easy enough (and cheaper than buying the pre-inoculated medium). If you are already super fermety in your kitchen, maybe find a place with less stray microbial load, but which you will still see regularly. We had fun with mushroom growing a few times, but it is too dry in AZ to make it an easy adjunct to regular kitchen work - it really needs a humidity tent here, but probably not a problem you have!
Happy fungi,
Mark

Hey Folks,
FYI that I have lowered the ask on the compressed earth block machine, and also found its spare hoses/hydraulic pump/water pump while cleaning out a conex. I'm happy to answer any questions about it, and the posting may be found on Craigslist.

We're working on a move, and it's not practical to take it. But maybe you have a dirt building project in AZ or nearby? Feel free to Moosage here or via the CL relay.

Happy homesteading,
Mark

Good on you, Jules!

It's a tightrope, that phone, too easy to go wobbly and overuse it. I do recommend a book I recently read, "Opt-out Family" by Erin Loechner. It's aimed mostly at young families, and is by Zondervan (evangelical Christian publishing house, so you know the perspective she has in general). I won't summarize the book, but it is a good argument both against tech overuse, and more importantly, for real and effective interpersonal engagement beginning in the family and extending out from there.

I did the flip-phone thing for a few years, and it was great as a phone. I found I still carried a smartphone to look up datasheets on jobsites and such, tethering with the flip hotspot. It seemed dumb and like two antennae instead of one. So I have a smartphone as my phone again. I'm also a fan of Cal Newport's flavor of digital minimalism, which is admittedly aimed at professionals in careers (which I am again, so it's aimed at me), but he has generally a good perspective on why to limit digital exposure, as well as details on how, which again, are aimed mostly at those in professions, but include things like leaving the phone on an end table (specifically, away from where you're spending your at-home time) - if it rings, go answer it like it was a landline. Don't read on the phone. Don't scroll feeds - ever (Permies forums? maybe even the forums), and replace the easy-shallow with the engaging-deep of things like real hobbies, books, etc.

Anyway, keeping tech in its place is an ongoing human challenge. There were Greeks opposed to writing because they said it would impair oral memory (it did). And I think of the pitiably-offensive character of Ted Sandyman in Tolkein, who sold out Hobbiton to work on the mechanical mill that could grind more flour than there was grain to grind... So, thanks for another good discussion of the technological tightrope!

Happy homesteading,
Mark

Hey PEP-Folks,

I did not see "Install a trailer hitch receiver" anywhere else in the BBs, so here it is. Total time spent ~1.5hrs.

Moby Dick is the 15-passenger Ford Econoline that fits the whole family. Great car, pretty low miles, and I was thrilled when I bought it to see that there was no tow hitch - meaning it had never towed. Great. I can change that, and I have a good sense for how hard I want to push the powerplant (this is the 3rd Ford 24V 5.4L engine with this same tranny that I have owned over the years). This model is rated to 6700lbs towing, less than the F350 I once had, but still quite respectable.

So, to etrailer for the light kit and receiver, to youtube for the helpful Uhaul lady showing how easy it is with a shop lift and a receiver jack (they do this a lot), then once parts were in hand, under the back of the van with the wrenches.

There is a set of plate & washer shims to level it, some of which have to hang in space during install, thus the tape, which was removed prior to torque, to keep the joint hard. Torque spec was 120ft*lbf, so I used the big wrench. The aft bolts were inaccessible on the nut side due to the shape of the receiver, but with the spare tire dropped, I could torque the heads (less good, but better than nothing). Dropping the spare was also a great opportunity to show the wife+kids how to use that mechanism, and let the 12y.o. learn by return demonstration (winching it back up).

The light kit taps the R and L taillights with a bypass, allowing the 4-pin plug to have brakelight/taillight, signal R, signal L, and Ground wires. This is fine for the surge-brake trailer I have, but I'd have to do more work to adapt for an electronically-braked trailer (if I ever get one).  The light kit fishes out through a grommet in the floor, and the more I work on this van, the more I am grateful for Ford leaving random holes with rubber plugs in them. The 4-pin is routed through the receiver cross bar to protect it, and pokes out right near the hitch receiver. I will (eventually) put a 7-pin-flat adapter on it, which is what my trailer has. The wiring between the lights conceals nicely under the rear scuff strip (which restrains the rear carpet edge).

Button it up, check that lights work, and ready to roll!

Happy hauling!
Mark

Hey PEP-folks,
At the beginning of this summer (before the brutal heat set in), I wanted to do something for my roof solar heat gain. I also didn't want to spend money, and had a lot of materials left over from my construction business, including a single bucket of roof-white elastomer, a single bucket of drywall primer, and a number of bags of natural hydraulic lime (Saint-Astier, the classy kind). So I thought back a gentleman I met long ago in central Phoenix, who had built his own adobe house in the '40s, and lived out his life as a school district cooling-plant engineer. He told me his secret sauce for his roof coating, which involved silver nitrate for better performance, but was basically a modified whitewash. (We considered, but didn't end up buying his house back then, he was 5'6", I am 6'7" - he built the house for him.)

So, I decided I'd give it a go to cut the elastomer fraction to about 20%, and make up the rest with lime and water to a whitewash recipe proportion, calling it a "polymer-modified whitewash". This is consistent with how I have done rammed earth, where a fraction of acrylic admix is put into the pile (Akkro 6T in that case) and then the wall is weatherproof.  All told, 10gal of acrylics, 100lbs of lime, making about 50gal of mix. The roof was black asphalt shingles (thanks Clayton Homes), about 1800sqft.

Side reactions abounded when the lime was added to the acrylics. There was a sort of "smoothie" on top of the liquid, which did eventually mix in, but it was an interesting exothermic reaction. I rolled it down and for a couple of days left about 20% of the roof undone.... for science... but also because work, and life, and so on. But it meant that I could get thermography of the different regions of the roof in full sun. There's about a 20degC difference between the coated and uncoated roofing. This was encouraging.  

The final test was surviving monsoons, which an ordinary whitewash would likely not have. There was no loss of coating during heavy rain, so the acrylic did its job (at least this year).

All told, this project took about 6-8hrs. Lugging full 5gal buckets up ladders is not my favorite thing, but all went well.

(PS - the last IR image is of a bare galvanized steel flue hat from our propane heater. It is included as an object lesson in knowing the emissivity of the object you're pointing your FLIR at - it's plenty hot, likely 65-70degC, but because bare metal emits infrared photons poorly, it "looks cool" to the IR camera. Shingles, the human body, plastics, all tend to act nearly like black bodies, with an emissivity near the max of 1, so they can be accurately compared in a basic IR camera shot. Metals, not so much. Ceramics, too, can be pretty different. Fun with physics!)
Happy homesteading!
Mark

Hi Luke,
Fun problems to solve! Going back to your question about crimping, it depends on how often you might do this. I have a $50 crimper from Amazon/China that has a rotary die at the tip, and can do from like 8awg to 0awg (but I have popped one at the high gauges, so really it tops out at 2awg or 4awg, and I use my hydraulic one above that).

I don't know how game you are to solder, but filling your crimped terminal will guarantee no relaxation over time, especially on battery terminals. Your heat gun may allow you to do this without new tooling, depending on how toasty it gets.

Michael makes a good point about your cold overvoltage case, but just do the math with the datasheet, and remember that panels can get many degrees cooler than air temperature if the sky is clear, due to radiative loss to space, so leave margin.

Depending on the motor, surge can indeed be large as Michael also noted. A good inverter (with adequate internal inductance & capacitance) will act like a soft starter and be ok. A cheap one will trip and you will never start your tool. I would consider whether you can parallelize the inverters you have, or go a bit bigger. Running 240v tools is actually much kinder to a solar system than 120v, because of the balanced load and lower running and surge amperage, but that may not be an option. I like to have 240v available for many tools, but you know your needs.

Good luck!
Mark

Hello PEP-folks,
[EDITED to add the deposit sheet from my bank, which shows the payment less the Quickbooks cut. It also shows payment timelines in self-employment...sigh.]
I believe this qualifies, though the work was done a little while ago. I'm a licensed PE in Arizona, and this client brought me a novel house design to perform a structural-engineering check on the original Mexico City structural engineers at key points on the design. I worked this completely remotely, and prepared a report for him to submit to our county as a sort of cover letter for the Mexico City work product (as their credentials are not recognized in the US). The work has been redacted for privacy, but was prepared for public records, so I believe everything is on the up-and-up to share it. Did not have to leave home, earned $1500 practicing my profession. I hope I have captured the intent of the badge, moreover, the structure itself uses some interesting alternative materials, though really cement-heavy.
(St Innocent Construction is/was my construction LLC - still exists, but not active. You can see my name on the PE stamp.)
Happy homestead-engineering!
Mark

Carla makes a good note. There may be a variety of reasons why one might avoid alcohol in tinctures, and I am surprised to not see glycerin yet mentioned. It's another non-polar molecule (like alcohol) and will thus permit diffusion of oils and other non-polar bits of the plant. It's pretty shelf-stable, though not self-sterilizing like alcohol. It has a different solubility with the plant molecules than alcohol, may have different steepage times, but many tinctures can be made with it. Major downside is that you are buying an industrial pharmaceutical-grade chemical and kinda broken on the "natural" thing (though you can get it certified organic, FWIW).

Significant caveat to glycerin purchases: Ensure it is from a solid US or EU or other reputable chemical company, and obtain (and read) the certificate of analysis. I happen to like JEdwards (bulknaturaloils.com - not the Aussie pop duo) for a lot of this kind of stuff, because they always furnish the assay. The reason for this is a despicable practice in certain Communist countries of diethylene glycol being used to cut higher-value chemicals, including glycerin and propylene glycol. DEG is a toxin for real, like killing kids with a couple doses of cough syrup kind of real, and has a delayed mechanism of action that makes it (in my book) particularly insidious. So as always, let the buyer beware, and read the certs!

That said, glycerin can be a good option. I happen to strongly dislike its taste, but some enjoy that kind of "sweet".

Hey PEP-folks,

I hope this post will correct the deficiencies in my prior submission, all in one place, succinctly. (If wondering why it has taken a long time to get back around to this, I can only ask "Where is the 'deliver a baby unassisted at home badge'?" - life has been busy.)

Hit list:
- a picture of the fresh herb being harvested
- a picture of your herbs drying (hanging, in a dehydrator, in a bag, etc.)
- a picture of your herbs in a sealed and labelled container, with the label indicating where the herbs came from, the method of drying, and the date

Further dandelions were harvested from behind the front yard behind the big water tank, roots were cleaned, sun+screen-dried, and put in a labelled glass jar, as shown below.

Happy harvesting!
Mark

Hey Permies,
For a variety of reasons, we are not going to move forward with an earth block house build in AZ, and I am ready to send my Chinese diesel-powered CEB machine on to another home. It's up on Craigslist here. I am happy to answer any questions on it, and have had fun making demo runs of blocks, but it's not the path forward right now.

Additionally, if you are interested in earthbags, I also have some bales of those - white, drawstring, UV-stabilized to 1600hrs if I recall correctly. PM me here or through the CL links, whatever you may prefer, thanks!

Happy homesteading,
Mark