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Post by Stealth on Oct 21, 2022 16:36:46 GMT 10
So in the theme of " Where have you been caught out" I thought I'd start a thread with things that you've seen or heard about that you could slap yourself for not thinking of because they're so obvious and so useful. Mine is "There's no such thing as an empty canning jar". I can't believe that's not a thought that's ever occurred to me and I'm actually a little embarrassed to admit it! That is, if you have jars being stored in between canning sessions they should always be filled with safe drinking water. You're storing them on a shelf or in boxes etc. no matter what, you should take advantage of that wasted space and use the jars to fill with drinking water. It seems so obvious and I'm sure to a lot of people it is but it never occurred to me to do that! In fairness I don't have a lot of jars in storage or otherwise. We don't have a lot of use for spare jars at the moment because we don't have any produce to can as the prices are never low enough to justify bulk buying fruit/veg etc. where we are currently. But I'm putting in an order for a few cases once we move so that we can use them to store delicate freeze dried herbs in etc. under vacuum, so when they don't have anything in them they'll be filled with water.
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Tim Horton
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Post by Tim Horton on Oct 22, 2022 4:26:28 GMT 10
That is, if you have jars being stored in between canning sessions they should always be filled with safe drinking water. --- Depending on product, jar size and how a canner is loaded... Sweetie will at times can a jar of our well water for stability of all the jars in the canner.. To use jars for large scale water storage is an admirable idea.. Location, location, location... Jars of water and there safe storage is a concern for us with our cold weather season...
This forum is so interesting to me from the stand point the same ideas are so profoundly affected by ...location...
Good luck..
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malewithatail
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Post by malewithatail on Oct 22, 2022 8:39:53 GMT 10
Water is not really an issue here as we have several hundred thousand liters stored in various rain water and header tanks, but we also have some bottled water just in case.
As a prepper we should try not to get caught out, but sometimes its not possible and something catches you out, like recently the water pump seal in the tractor spat its dummy. A kit was procured, but the shaft hole in the casing was so worn that the seal wasn't going to work, so I needed a complete replacement pump.
The pump failed due to routine maintenance. I flushed the cooling system out and replaced the coolant as recommended, but the new coolant cleaned out the rust that was sealing the old water pump, so it sprung a leak. Lesson, routine maintenance must be carried out routinely ! Not every 40 years !
I now have a spare seal and shaft kit for a David Brown 880 if anyone wants it.
Happiness is a choice.
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rastus
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Post by rastus on Oct 23, 2022 16:18:28 GMT 10
Didn't turn off the water at the header tank before digging around the poly pipe further down the hill. 150ft gives a lot of pressure...
The rotty tried to attack the spray and nearly ended up in New Zealand.
I follow all the precautions around electricity, but sometimes get careless with water.
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malewithatail
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Post by malewithatail on Oct 23, 2022 17:05:02 GMT 10
Theres lots of energy in stored water, look at dams and their failures on u tube.
Who controls the energy can control whole continents.
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frostbite
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Post by frostbite on Oct 23, 2022 17:24:28 GMT 10
Didn't turn off the water at the header tank before digging around the poly pipe further down the hill. 150ft gives a lot of pressure... The rotty tried to attack the spray and nearly ended up in New Zealand. I follow all the precautions around electricity, but sometimes get careless with water. A case of beer for you if you got that on camera.
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Post by Stealth on Oct 23, 2022 18:34:12 GMT 10
Didn't turn off the water at the header tank before digging around the poly pipe further down the hill. 150ft gives a lot of pressure... The rotty tried to attack the spray and nearly ended up in New Zealand. I follow all the precautions around electricity, but sometimes get careless with water. A case of beer for you if you got that on camera. Same here! The imagery 🤣😂😂
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bug
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Post by bug on Oct 23, 2022 19:34:08 GMT 10
Didn't turn off the water at the header tank before digging around the poly pipe further down the hill. 150ft gives a lot of pressure... The rotty tried to attack the spray and nearly ended up in New Zealand. I follow all the precautions around electricity, but sometimes get careless with water. 150ft, that's enough for a micro hydro installation.
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malewithatail
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Post by malewithatail on Oct 24, 2022 8:07:11 GMT 10
We had a micro hydro at our other farm. If you have enough water, they work well, and give 24/7 power.
The formula is Power (Watts) = head (M) X Flow (L/second), assuming 100% efficiency.
So to get say 200 watts, about the same as a fairly large solar panel, you would need 200/40 or 5 liters/second. Thats about 1 gallon per second at a head of 150 feet. Then you have to get rid of that much water. Over a 24 hour period, you would get around 4.8 kwh, but more realistically, about 1/2 that accounting for efficiency in the turbine, alternator, nozzle etc.
Our turbine ran at a head of 120 meters and about 6 liters/second. For efficiency, I used an induction alternator, which is basically a 3 phase AC motor, with some capacitors to give field excitation. That then ran through a heavy duty home made battery charger, with a dump load consisting of the hot water system, and when it was hot, a large resistor on the wall to dissipate the excess energy as heat.
To be honest, with the price of solar as it is, its almost not worth doing a hydro with the cost of pipe, the turbine, maintenance, and you still need battery's and an inverter, although I have done some direct 240 volt systems that use the power directly. That needs LOTS of water, 200 meters at 30 or more liters per second. Very site dependent.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
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rastus
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Post by rastus on Oct 24, 2022 16:55:22 GMT 10
We lived on a ridge growing up, with a spring fed damn down the valley floor. It was just a shade under 100m difference. Everything in between the ridge top and the dam below was rainforest, too steep for machinery. That was fun putting the water on, thankfully it was Dad's problem back then to work out the details. All I remember was that the Grundfos pump was pretty special, ordered in from Germany and he had to use three grades of poly pipe to cope with the different pressures. The bottom section of poly was real hard to work with because it was so thick walled. We once did a gravity discharge test, immediately blew garden grade fittings off into the distance. If a dog had tried to bite that it would take it would have done serious damage to the dog. The other thing I remember is digging in nearly 2k of poly pipe by hand... as a teen I thought it was slavery Pity he got rid of that property after all the work we put in, but the Ross River Fever kicked our asses. I got Barmah Forest Virus too. Rainforest living is hard on the body.
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norseman
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Post by norseman on Oct 25, 2022 5:52:11 GMT 10
We lived on a ridge growing up, with a spring fed damn down the valley floor. It was just a shade under 100m difference. Everything in between the ridge top and the dam below was rainforest, too steep for machinery. That was fun putting the water on, thankfully it was Dad's problem back then to work out the details. All I remember was that the Grundfos pump was pretty special, ordered in from Germany and he had to use three grades of poly pipe to cope with the different pressures. The bottom section of poly was real hard to work with because it was so thick walled. We once did a gravity discharge test, immediately blew garden grade fittings off into the distance. If a dog had tried to bite that it would take it would have done serious damage to the dog. The other thing I remember is digging in nearly 2k of poly pipe by hand... as a teen I thought it was slavery Pity he got rid of that property after all the work we put in, but the Ross River Fever kicked our asses. I got Barmah Forest Virus too. Rainforest living is hard on the body. I have a Gravity fed system from 200mts elevation on the hill and 500mts down the property that is like a fire hydrant, now needs repair due to our previous big rain event that washed the dam wall away. Interesting I've tested positive for both Ross River and Barmah Virus. It totally destroyed me for several years. I have rainforest pockets on my property that the pipe line run through.
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malewithatail
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Post by malewithatail on Oct 25, 2022 11:13:31 GMT 10
Just checking the cache ammo....After 50 mm rain, some of it is damp, not badly, just the boxes damp. Airing it all, then looking at the cache location and thinking how to make it a bit more weatherproof. Unfortunately, there are about 10,000 stingy things involved as well. Maybe placing a box under them might bring the humidity down a bit.
Sometimes you need to stop seeing the good in people and start seeing what they are showing you.
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frostbite
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Post by frostbite on Oct 25, 2022 12:45:33 GMT 10
I really hope your ammunition is stored in accordance with the legal guidelines. In a locked, sturdy box, separate from any firearms.
You don't want any alphabet Boyz paying you a visit, do you?
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malewithatail
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Post by malewithatail on Oct 25, 2022 14:49:22 GMT 10
Sure is.
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