Posted on

So Much I Don’t Know About

No, this isn’t an existential post.  Well, maybe a little.  So Liz wanted a tiered strawberry bed.  That wasn’t a priority project, but something she had been keeping in mind.  Recently, we had a kid-free day, and she suggested a couple options to fill that opportunity: Dayton’s 2nd Street Market, and Mendelsons liquidation outlet.  The former didn’t sound very interesting to me as I had envisioned food and hippies peddling art (we went there later anyway, and my prediction wasn’t far off).  But Mendelsons sounded just odd enough that I became intrigued.  And so, off to Mendelsons we went.

“Liquidation outlet” didn’t do this place justice.  It was somewhere between hoarder’s opus and nerd’s paradise, if that means anything.  It occupied 3 stories of a downtown Dayton manufacturing compound, and was filled with surplus/deprecated products, ranging from plastic restaurant containers to decommissioned business electronics.  One day I’ll have a server rack, and I now know where to acquire one to refurbish.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Liz found some nice wooden boxes on the ground floor, which we would go back to.  A sign, however, informed us of electronics being on the 3rd floor (the 2nd was off-limits for an unknown reason).  Following these signs, we were led down a hallway to a choice: elevator or stairs.

Context often gives words more meaning than the words themselves–looking at this elevator, the notice that it could hurt me was taken VERY seriously

A service elevator with a dubious last-maintenance date?  We took the stairs.

It was on floor 3 that I realized there is so much in this world I just don’t know anything about.  There were piles of circuits and various mechanical components.  Alarm systems, telecommunication systems, closed-circuit surveillance systems, row upon row of capacitors and resistors.  There was a section filled with ball-bearing rotation devices.  There were things I was afraid to even touch–what appeared to be high-pressure sodium light bulbs.  How is this place allowed to exist?  I don’t know, but I’m glad it does.

A room dedicated to the era predating transistors

There were many, many ideas for future projects.  But, back to the strawberries.  Downstairs, we picked up the two boxes we had set aside earlier.  They were labeled as NCR boxes–a company I had to research as I am a non-native to these parts.  Once I did, however, I remembered the logo.  Sadly, it was another big company that had abandoned Dayton with the recession.  The meaning behind those numbers, written upon the wood, will be forever lost to time as the sun physically erases them from existence.

But the wood is solid and looks nice.  One placed inside the other, raised on bricks, created the tiered strawberry garden Liz wanted.

They just don’t make ’em like they used to.

–Simon

Posted on

Barrel of…Water

Amusingly, it was shortly after writing this post that I received a bourbon barrel from Liz as my anniversary gift.  That isn’t as weird as it sounds.  The traditional year-5 gift is wood-themed, I like bourbon, the last barrel was a nice rustic decoration, and of course it’s been an effective rain barrel and we’ve discussed wanting another one.  And so, she arrived home late one day with this barrel in her back seat, suffering another round of tears to the leather of her car’s interior.  Dry, they weigh about a hundred pounds, although they are very oddly shaped to maneuver solo, but as before I managed to muscle the thing out of the car.  I also had some time off work, so the following day I began my project, leveraging the prior barrel’s lessons to make the second a little better.

This time around, I had a reciprocating saw, so I didn’t break any drill bits.  Also, the wood of this barrel wasn’t as dense, so it was easier to cut.  Still, I think I’ll just go buy a large wood bore bit should I ever do this again.  That would be way easier and would yield a rounder opening.

For the spigot, however, I didn’t want to deviate from the proven method.  Last time, I drilled a 3/8″ hole and gradually whittled it down with a knife until it accommodated a 1/2″ brass spigot.  Manually cutting away slivers of oak is exhausting, but I didn’t want to risk drilling too much and ruining the seal.  It took an hour, and I was thoroughly baked from the summer heat, and I had a bloody knuckle, but eventually I was able to grind away an appropriate hole and forced the spigot in with vice grips.

I also had the same materials available for the screen, which is still working a year later on the other barrel, so I didn’t feel the need to try anything different.  I constructed the same square frame, secured with staples, two layers of nylon screen, and nailed it to the barrel with finishing nails.

This time, I wanted the barrel higher to allow easier access to the spigot.  I already had a couple cinder blocks from a previous abandoned project, and the height was good.  But the base wasn’t wide enough that the barrel’s frame was being supported by the sides, so I extended it with leftover pressure-treated 2x4s.

I worry, when I make these, that I’ll go through all that trouble only to end up with a barrel that doesn’t hold water.  Fortunately, this was not a problem.  I filled it to test, and it held just fine.  Hooray!  I cut the boards and pounded in the spillover–leftover brass piping from the last barrel.  Here’s a final shot with it working as intended with the following rain:

Of course I had to trim the downspout, and I laid a brick spillway, but that’s not really interesting or difficult so I won’t go through that.

Now, I can save about $34 a year.  Ha!  And fear not–I am not a hippie.  I still use chemical fertilizers.

–Simon

Posted on

It’s Not Illegal in Ohio

…but it is illegal in some states.  No, I’m not talking about marijuana (which still isn’t legal here).  I’m referring to capturing rainwater.  For the most part, this law correlates to the abundance of natural rainwater and by definition–how its variations will effect the local ecology*.  Here, no one cares if I capture a 55-gallon barrel of rain because the average annual precipitation for my city is 41.1 inches (according to weatherbase.com), and since 1 inch of rain per acre is 27,154 gallons (according to water.usgs.gov), and since I have 0.48 acres, if I do the math right (27154*0.48*41.1) then I receive an average of 535,694.1 gallons of precipitation per year on my property alone.  Excluding precipitation from the winter months, I have roughly 88.1 days with rain.  Every time it rains, I inevitably capture a full barrel, so 88.1*55 would be 4,845.5 gallons of captured rainwater per year (assuming I capture a full barrel every time–which I don’t because I don’t always use it up before it rains again, and the spigot is necessarily located where I can’t access all the water anyway), which is 0.9% of the total precipitation for that land mass.  Yeah, who cares?

*Except Texas.  Last I checked, they still don’t have revised water laws, despite the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer.  And of course, there’s the Las Vegas area….

Therein lies the background, but why would I want to bother with this?  Firstly, it’s a free resource that saves me money.  4,845.5 gallons = 647.7 cf, at $26.9 per 1000 cf, that’s… $17.42 saved for the year.  Okay I suppose that isn’t much for an entire year, but still, it’s free.  Secondly, there’s the smug factor.  I’m doing my part for the environment.  Nevermind that I use twice that per shower…. Thirdly, we had the barrel sitting around as a souvenir from our trip to Kentucky, and it wasn’t serving any purpose, and besides–a project!  These reasons were as good as any.

The barrel had sat on the patio for several years at the townhouse, and a lot of water had leached into it in that time.  It was a two person effort to move the thing, so before I did anything else with it I needed to drain it.  Choosing the widest board–the one with the plug–I drilled a hole near the bottom to both drain it and to place a spigot.  The resultant bilge smelled wonderfully of residual Wild Turkey and was perfectly clear with a slight amber color, and having filtered through carbon and infused with ethanol, was probably okay to drink.  Still, I erred on the side of caution and refrained.

While it drained I needed to figure out a screen system for the input.  So I simply cut a board, assembled a square, fastened it together with a staple gun, then attached nylon screen to both sides.

If it can stop a mosquito, we’re safe

Next, I needed to drill a hole in the top.  I admit, this sounded simpler than it was.  I did not fully appreciate the strength of American White Oak, hardened by fire and essentially pressure-treated with bourbon.  Nor did I posses the appropriate tools for the job.  The process claimed four drill bits.

The wood must have been harvested during The Little Ice Age, like the Stradivarius

I wanted the frame removable yet secure, so I opted for 4 wood finishing nails.

It will NOT be a mosquito nursery

Then I had to find a way to attach a spigot.  I went to Lowe’s a perused the plumbing.  My first thought was to attach a bulkhead, but the wood was rather thick for that.  I stood with the parts in had, staring at the barrel, but then I considered that I might be overthinking it.  After all, the beauty of the wood was that it was solid yet flexible, and it’s water-tightness was because it swelled when saturated.  Perhaps the wood alone would make a seal around the brass.  I widened the hole just enough to get the first threads in, then with brute strength and a set of vice grips, forcefully cranked the spigot in.  Then to test it, I positioned the barrel upon a couple beams so it was high enough to access the spigot, filled it partially with water, and waited.  Initially, it leaked, as was expected.  But after several hours, the leak stopped.  Satisfied, I cut the downspout to accommodate the barrel.

And the rain rain rain came down down down
…Non-potable

A year later and it’s still working just fine.  I’ve since drilled an overflow, although in downpours it just spills everywhere anyway.  But I’ve also installed the rain garden since so all the excess flows away.  I’m thinking we could use another one of these for the front yard.  With two, I could save $34.84 a year–enough for a bottle of bourbon.

With overflow, rain garden, brick spillway, and hopeful basil patch to the side

Added to my vegetable garden, it’s one more incremental step towards self-sufficiency.

–Simon

Posted on

Weekend Warrior

I think I shortened my lifespan this weekend.  There were certainly moments when I wanted to lay down and expire.  But rather than make individual posts and cloud the feed, I’ll make a multi-purpose single post instead to feed the cloud (heh, nerd jokes):

You Say Tomato

Yes, I removed more sod.  And I think I’ve finally had it with that.  There will be no more garden installation this year.  Seriously, I hate removing sod.

Grass is kind of just wasted space

Note that old cable box from a defunct cable company.  I’m going to have to rip that off the wall one day.  Anyway, when the house’s seller (the son of the former owner) haphazardly threw down mulch to gain a +10 curb appeal, for some reason he made this side organically-shaped.  It’s the only “garden” that wasn’t rectangular.  Maybe he got creative.  Maybe he ran out of mulch.  Who knows?  But, this is the SW side of the house, and the ideal location for a vegetable garden.  So I had to widen it anyway.

A more efficient design

We argued over the tomato-securing system.  I wanted to use trellis netting and just have a row of tomatoes.  Apparently Liz had experienced that before with her parents and the results were not as expected.  But the peculiarities of any garden are unique to their specific circumstances, so this will be an experiment anyway.  This year, we’ll try the bamboo poles.  Planting to come this weekend.

Mobile Foodies

I admit–food is not my drug.  Therefore, the many joys of food novelty are lost on me.  Among these is the influx of food trucks.  It isn’t really much cheaper, I have to yell over the sound of generators to place my order, and as the customer I’m tasked with finding my own improvised seating arrangements.

It’s hard to smile with a mouth full of hotdog

But, it is an opportunity to quickly try a variety of food options.  And those spicy Caribbean tacos I had were pretty darn good.  And it was a fun new experience for the kid, so win.

…Comes Tumblin’ Down

Look at this pine tree:

It appears unimportant to me, priority-wise.  It isn’t dying, nor is it leaning dangerously.  But my neighbor hated it, and my wife hated it.  As I spent my childhood on the Great Plains, it’s still fascinating to me that trees can grow naturally, and not have to be attended to constantly.  I like trees, but native Ohioans seem to revel in deforestation for some reason.  Ultimately, I conceded to having this one tree removed, were we to need to remove a tree to satisfy the boiling desire of my Ohioan wife to kill a tree.

My neighbor, in his excitement upon hearing word of my concession, and apparently having recently gotten his chainsaw in working order, ran over to greet us with said chainsaw, and expressed his willingness to cut the tree down at that moment–to which my wife readily agreed.

It may be just a tree, but I still have trouble with needlessly extinguishing a life

I also have many a memory of the trees in Lubbock dying, and needing to be chopped down.  And while my youthful memory likely exaggerates the negatives, I recall dad borrowing a chainsaw to fell the trees, followed by me spending hours with the pruners and bow saw, chopping and cutting, chopping and cutting…

This tree was no exception.  3-4 hours later, and we had grown the firewood supply.  And for whatever reason, the women of the neighborhood found it hilarious that I was butchering the tree with a reciprocating saw.  I guess, compared to the chainsaw, there was a penis joke in there somewhere.

What the Duck?

Ending on a happy note, a duck and her ducklings wandered down the gutter.

I wonder where she was leading them.  I’m not aware of any nearby ponds.  But last year I almost hit a duck with the mower in my front yard, so apparently we’re good duck territory despite the lack of ponds…and mechanical chopping machines.

–Simon