mtaratoot wrote: »

Our water consumption is averaged from December through April. They call it the Winter Quarter even though it's a third of the year. We pay wastewater fees for all water measured during Winter Quarter, then during the rest of the year we pay whatever is lower, actual use or winter quarter average. Wastewater is about twice as expensive as water, and the utility assumes any "extra" water I use when it's not winter is used outdoors. It is. Irrigation, pressure washing, dumping hot water....

Ottawa had metered water, billed quarterly with no averaging, and assumed all consumption ends up as waste water billed at the same rate as water... So watering the lawn ended up being twice as expensive. They also had "fixed charges" so even if you consumed zero water during a quarter, you got tagged regardless.

When I moved, getting onto a decent well and having septic was a goal... with enough land so I can garden etc..

mtaratoot wrote: »

My house is 75 years old, and it only has a 100 amp panel. I can't expand my electric system; that's one reason I don't have an electric car. No room on the panel. However, if I took the water heater off the panel, maybe there's enough amps to run a tankless unit.

This place was built in 1977 so it's only 45 years old. The previous owner added an attached garage with bonus room above it back in 2007. At that time, they upgraded the panel to 200amp. They also moved the laundry from the basement to the main floor but did not remove the old wiring and plumbing... so I have a 220v outlet robust enough to run a dryer next to hot and cold water supply... I'm thinking the hot water tank install will be easy-peasy.

mtaratoot wrote: »

Many years ago, a colleague asked me, "How long do you have to be on vacation before it saves energy to turn the water heater down or off?" I am surprised I had to think of it at all - it's the very first time that the element would have turned itself on to keep the stored water at temperature. Let it cool five degrees or 70 degrees - it still takes energy to raise it. It takes more energy to raise warm water by the same amount, so you're really better off letting it cool completely; just means it will take a while to heat back up. I can't do that on my water heater; the thermostats are inside, and they're kind of finicky.

Some of the new models are actually "smart" appliances so controllable to that granular level via smartphone. Imagine if your hot water tank cooperated with your phone so as soon as you were half a mile from the house, the tank automatically reduced it's thermostat by 10 degrees... and then comes up again when you come back to the house.

For some reason, that dirty feet comment made me laugh out loud!!

When I was in Texas last, I transplanted a number of cactus found in the wild into a planter on our property. I wonder if I have any pictures of that? Hmmm....

Found a picture of them before I transplanted...

UncleMac wrote: »

For some reason, that dirty feet comment made me laugh out loud!!

When I was in Texas last, I transplanted a number of cactus found in the wild into a planter on our property. I wonder if I have any pictures of that? Hmmm....

Found a picture of them before I transplanted...

Those look like the Hedgehog Cactus we saw in Grand Canyon when I was on a trip down there in March 2015. I've been in March and May; both were great. April would be off the hook if it was a good cactus bloom year.

In 2017 I saw something that I think is what the story of the Burning Bush could have come from. There was an Ocotillo up on a ridge above the shady place way up behind our camp we were hiding out from the heat in. The sun was below the rim, but it had an eerie effect that made this Ocotillo appear to be on fire. It lasted a long time.

d_thomas02 wrote: »

Nothing more beautiful than the desert after a rain. (I lived in El Paso, TX for a bit.)

Meeting my wife, who was born and lived most of her life in Texas, meant learning about Texas.

As a Canadian who has rarely seen cactus in the wild, my first trip to Texas was to the rural area outside of Dallas, it was fascinating to me to see cactus being used as landscaping in some places... and treated as an annoying pest elsewhere.

The biggest thing I found was how the Hollyweird depictions were shockingly inaccurate. They don't even get the accent right!! We built a house in Horseshoe Bay close to Marble Falls in the Hill Country... and yes, the Hill Country is very hilly... go figure!!

Our property slopes and backs onto a green space... a dry gulch which only gets wet when winter storms pours a big dump of rain on the area. There isn't much topsoil so very little place for the water to go... so it flows downhill, running through gulches like behind our place. Trees tend to gather around these gulches and gather as much moisture as they can get... In the shade of those trees, a proliferation of other plants...

Update on the mushroom farm.

Production is ramping up nicely. We currently have one non-paying customer. Non-paying simply because they'd like 5 lbs. a week and my business partner and I wanted to be sure we could supply a reliable 5 lbs. a week for at least two weeks in a row before we started charging them.

That means weighing the produce. I have a scale. Bought it new last year. Electronic. Runs on AC or on its own internal battery. Good for Farmer's markets and such. I set it up for the first time when I bought it, turned it on, hit the button to switch it from kg to lbs. and there it sat... turned off, until I turned it back on a month ago.

I don't leave it on. Just when we harvest and then I turn it back off.

One thing that has bothered me for a while, the YouTubes I watched of other growers show them weighing flushes of three maybe three and a half pounds while my flushes, which look to be about the same size, weighed in about one to one and a half. Quite the frustrating head scratcher.

Yesterday my business partner and I were talking about the possibility of recycling spent fruiting blocks back into new blocks (similar to recycling paper). Plenty of nutrition left in those old blocks either in the half broken down sawdust or in the mycelium. The main reasons to retire fruiting blocks from the grow room are; the blocks have lost most of their moisture, or the blocks have become contaminated (bacteria, mold, or fungus gnats which can be a real problem in the summer). The question was, at what percentage can we recycle old blocks into the new block stream (50%, 25%, 10%) without affecting the quality or quantity of the flush.

So, we turned on the scale to weigh a few spent blocks. Wow, that was a lot of weight lost! Let's weigh a new fresh sterile 10 lbs. block waiting to be inoculated... Wait, what?... Less than 5 lbs.? That can't be right.


Come to find out that blasted scale reverts to kg every time it's turned off and the indicator that shows which mode it's in is microscopic. ALL my produce weights to this point have been low by a factor of 2.2 times, the conversion of kg to lbs.

Last week was the first time I thought we'd come close to what our customer wanted with 4.6 "lbs."... but that giveaway was actually over 10 lbs.!! We've been hitting or surpassing his order for the last three weeks! {facepalm}

Aggravating to say the least.


I've initiated a scale check protocol for each time it's turned on from now on. I'll check and record the weights of some SCUBA weights that have been in the back of my closet for decades unused (2, 3, 4, and 5 lbs.) before weighing produce. These aren't calibration weights per se (although they do weigh to within an ounce accuracy). This is more a check that units are in lbs. and the scale is giving consistent results over time.

d_thomas02 wrote: »

Update on the mushroom farm.

Production is ramping up nicely. We currently have one non-paying customer. Non-paying simply because they'd like 5 lbs. a week and my business partner and I wanted to be sure we could supply a reliable 5 lbs. a week for at least two weeks in a row before we started charging them.

I love mushrooms but I know that I could eat 5lbs per week. lol

My Wenonah Voyager is 17'6" and it handles quite well. I really love it. It actually maneuvers better than my 16'6" Wenonah Advantage. I had to sell the Advantage to make space for the Voyager. It's super fast, but just wants to go STRAIGHT. It also sheds wind better than the Voyager. The Advantage went to a good home - it is being shared by two friends and stays at one or the other's house from time to time. They said I can paddle it when I want to. They got a very nice deal on it.

The Voyager does almost everything the Advantage does and more. It hauls gear.

I have a 17' ultralight Encounter, and it's for sure a "lumpy water" boat that will haul a month's worth of gear. It's a very different boat than either the Voyager or the Advantage - and it's in between in length at 17' even.

The Voyager:




The Advantage:




The Encounter:

Farback wrote: »

I’ve been busy

I was gonna say... no wonder you didn't post much... too busy working!!

My retirement turned into volunteering for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). Although I have no tangible evidence in terms of production, we touch and impact people’s lives.

A recent study from Singapore found that older adults who exercise with their spouse achieve lower physical activity levels than older adults without their spouse.

Mutual motivation and support aside, maybe it's best to do your own workout.

The newest acquisition on the Mushroom Farm. A professional quality downdraft Laminar Flow Hood.


I've been working on this hood for several months now, but this last week has seen a big push to get it up and running in the mushroom lab. I still need to install Plexiglas side shields around the hood work area but, as of this morning, the lab is functional again.

Mycology requires aseptic technique to prevent contamination of the cultures that are grown in basically sugar water. Common contaminates are bacteria, yeast, and mold all of which are everywhere. The best defense against contamination is clean sterile air. For the past two years I've been using a 30"x30" (76x76 cm) box fan with a residential furnace HEPA filter taped onto it. Better than nothing but only just.

The filter on the new hood is 24"x48" and 12" deep (61x122x30 cm) with a filtration efficiency of 99.97% (< 0.3 microns). It also has a prefilter above it to remove most of the dust and debris to increase the life of the expensive HEPA. The squirrel cage blower in this thing runs on 240V. Total weight is over 150 lbs (68 kg) and it hangs from the overhead joists on chains with turnbuckles to level and adjust the height.


I had to raise the ceiling of the "tent" to accommodate the hood so now I won't be able to open the garage door more than four foot or so.


Overall, the build went fairly painlessly with an extra pair of hands when needed.