Onoff

When you're saving the planet you have to be magnanimous about things like cost. Then again, given the timescales to which I work I may break even...

I hate waste with a vengeance by and large. I look at what we put out for recycling and can't help thinking the answer to our problems lies beneath our feet so to speak. Thus, in the best traditions of my Solar Thermal From Scrap project and after a couple of 🍻. It's no coincidence right that a beer can fits inside a chilli can like this? I mean it's like they're designed to go together. Then wtf are these things for in the pizza box (ok they make great stand offs for spraying flat panels)? However they do fit in the bottom of a beer can: Then there's all those lovely electrolytes we tip down the drain. (OK it's a drop of washing up liquid and bleach in some water): Let's put them all together shall we! That's a third of a volt FREE! Remember my name and the day one man solved the energy crisis single handedly! Before the black helicopters took me away on that trumped up indecent exposure charge... @pocsteryou can PW my ar$e!

Yes, I think so. One time I tried lifting a panel out and it wouldn't budge. Today, after dry weather, up she comes. Rotten as a pear along the bottom. I may be able to salvage something by fitting a concrete gravel board and cutting the bottom off. A bit to early to give it "I told you so!" to SWMBO. Making these was bloody labour intensive and what with the price of timber now etc. I'll let her get over the Covid first.

Bugger...counted 3 posts like this so far...only put in brand new in 2016. Not impressed.

That'll be the day that I die.

Flints nearly done in the second pillar. Needs a good clean when gone off a bit. Then concrete sealer sprayed on. Got to figure infill panels left and right. Probably a welded steel frame with more black stained scaffold boards like the gate. I might even think about powering it up...

Our frontage consists of concrete posts, put in using a tractor PTO and lashings of concrete. Then homemade panels, to SWMBO's design, o/of 2"x1" nailed together with a collated nailer on a jig. Two things didn't happen. There are no gravel boards as SWMBO was insistent on keeping access for "all the liccle animals" I knew that would come back to haunt me. The other thing is I never applied a waterproofer to the concrete posts. Did a 100' of fence elsewhere 30 years ago, painted the concrete with Thompson's, and they're still like new. Thus I've noticed a post here that has blown. I don't really want to dig it out and put a new one in tbh. I'm hoping that the fence frame has swollen and just snapped the return off but gut feel this will be water having gotten in and rusted the steel. Maybe shutter and recast a bit on? Any thoughts?

Surely at the ages we're talking about, any feeling there is good?

Probably to check nobody's living in it.

Down here in the valley it'll be like Z For Zachariah with the earth battery still churning out 0.8V.

You can at least hunker in the bunker...and bunk her....

Come in No.7, your time is up! 😂 Won't the nuclear winter make PV redundant? That and the EMP destroy all the clever electronics.

As in you know you want to / resistance is futile?

Well that's exciting...not. Rubbing blackfly off the bean stalks and leaves then spraying with a few drops of peppermint oil in a plant sprayer full of water. Seem to have cleared a lot though.

I don't believe I mocked you...well not about that anyway... 😉 PV, I'm sitting here thinking if I could I would. Then it progresses to can I afford not to? Some I guess take the peace of mind view. A big outlay on the face of it but a lot of satisfaction sticking it to the man and being reliant on nobody. That would be my philosophy I think.

If he wants all his spacers the same length he'll have say do one at each end of the ledger. Then string a line between the two to get the intermediate spacers at the same depth by careful drilling.

Read that too thanks. Sort of puts the mockers on netting the whole plot off! I'm going to try an artist's brush to knock them off then a few drops of peppermint essential oil in a plant sprayer full of water.

I wouldn't remove the render. That makes up part of your protective "rain screen" against the elements. To remove it you'd have to first screw your ledger on to the bumpy face. Then use a grinder to cut into the render using the ledger as a guide. Then hope you could bolster off the render and that it would separate cleanly from the block face. To make it "flat", for the ledger to sit against, you'd first have to remove the paint for any subsequent render to have a chance of sticking. Cup brush in a grinder for that. Messy. Eye protection, mask etc. As aforementioned, having some airflow behind the ledger is a good thing.

First off I'd sluice that drilled hole out with water from a plant spray bottle. Drilling dust may well be masking an obvious colour change between render and the underlying block.

There may come a time of grid shortages when we are grateful for any power. I'd rather have PV than not for a bit of security. How much is that worth?

Q: What did the UK have before candles? A: Electricity!

I was, 100%, genuinely about to commit a few grand to PV but didn't know where to start.

Sorcery!

Noticed tonight little black insects on the stalks of some of the 50 runners. Is this "black fly" I've about? The ants seem interested in them. Do I need to do something about them?

Yep, copied the same photo. Here's the one showing two pots in series with 1.6VDC. Constraints being surface area / available depth. I could try two zinc and two copper electrodes in the same pot... Last time I measured my own 4' long / 3/8" dia rod (TT) I got I think 47 Ohms from memory as an aside. For bigger battery fun I'm debating proper, copper clad rods for one electrode and zinc plated studding for the other. Maybe make a "pond" up, fed by the kitchen grey water to keep topping up the electrolytes? I'll get bored soon!