"polar ice maximum"--that is the *date* of the thickest ice, end of winter ice forming season. Calendar dates are not thick (or thin). FWIW, they reckon mid march this past winter for the polar ice maximum at the north pole. If you mean extent, it was marginally larger than last year, but still way below average and most of it is "young" ice, and it is already melting rapidly. Old ice-ice that has survived past one season- has been steadily dropping for some time now. That's the thick heavy duty stuff that hangs in there and really helps with climate moderation and circulation, but there is less of it every year now. Once it is all young ice, it will be ice free every summer, more or less completely. If that happens, the next goi go is the tundra, and if the tundra goes all melty, 100 zillion cubic metric fucktons of methane start to be released-then all bets are off. The climate modelers gauges only go to 10;)
Not that I am a proponent of the 100% man made global climate change theory, I am not, and I am completely against the total scam carbon trading massive wealth skimming industry and huge government power grabs being pushed as the "war on carbon", when we all need and use carbon, no way around that. But I am a proponent of the climate change theory of man made simultaneously with naturally occurring cyclic and solar output variable. IMO, it is *all of the above*, all the time now, but I also support a real fast shutdown (within a decade or so) of the heavy pollution from coal and oil, a fast weaning off those sources, (I certainly think the big oil guys and big coal guys have made enough for now, time for the planets money to go elsewhere and to eliminate threat of war over those resources) and a global mega project to go to renewables and decentralized power and individual ownership as much as possible. I am against massive air and water pollution just to perpetuate global energy cartel vendor lockin. If such a switch helps to moderate climate change for the better, that's frosting.
You are welcome of course. Good luck with whichever technique you wind up using. Will you be building it yourself? Sweat equity is a great way to pay for a home. My (recently deceased) sis and ex brother in law built a house on a pay as you build idea, the entire thing was paid off free and clear in a few years that way, zero mortgage. The two largest immediate expenses were land purchase outright, around three acres, and the well and septic, they saved for that initial expense then the bro in laws folks chipped in a little as a wedding present. After that it was just whatever they could afford on a weekend by weekend deal. They rented nearby, had two jobs, one job paid the day to day bills, the other income went 100% to the new house and building supplies, etc. As soon as it was up and roughed in enough to live in they moved in, then finished it over the next year or so, including finishing the second story into rooms, at rough in stage is was just a partial floor with a ladder going to it for sleeping.. I helped a lot on that one as well, it was stilts on one side going right to the ground on the other, built on a hillside. Stick frame but I insisted and we used a ton of large woodscrews and tubes of industrial adhesive on the joints and flooring when we built it, along with the regular nails. It had a regular tin roof, I was lucky mountain climber to put that on.. We did every single bit of the work, wiring, plumbing, siding, framing, foundation, all of it except the waterwell and septic and the original grading that they hired out to some guy with a dozer, being a cheap to buy wooded hillside it needed some terraforming for parking spaces, small yard and garden area.. One hint, never store onsite that which you can't use up building that weekend, dang roving thieves will steal it every time.
The big one I helped work on with the cable suspended rooms and lofts was just beautiful. It had a huge central woodstove with the stack going straight up and kept that place toasty warm all winter. I only stayed there for awhile but friends were building it so I helped some, learned a lot too.
Nope, this was way back in yonder hippie corn-mune daze. The tech is better now though, just google around dome homes, monolithic domes, like that. Ferrocement is an interesting building technique, albeit a PITA because you should do it all at once, you need a lot of helpers and beer for the fast plastering, even if using a sprayer. It is concrete or your choice of mud applied over mesh reinforced with rebar. It doesn't need to be thick but once it cures well it is very strong, and it is unlike say building with blocks, it is all one piece. Domes can be built with a variety of methods, the simplest is just a ton of precision cutting of lumber, I think you can find that online. I think if you are going to attempt it, start out small like shed sized or one small cabin sized before attempting a decent house sized.
There are a lot of neat alternative building methods over stick frame, rammed earth, cordwood masonry(google for that, many good pics on the web, it is real pretty and strong, the walls are so thick nothing else is needed for insulation), using HUGE logs and only a few of them instead of many smaller ones for log construction (that is a Scandinavian technique, they are grooved to lock together and moss inserted, some are now up for hundreds of years), steel arch (pretty common for barns and etc, the old "quonset hut" is an example). I even heard, but have not done it myself yet, of using surplus weather balloons, inflating them, then spraying them with foam, then cutting the doors and windows out. Makes a nice backyard hangout or remote fast cabin thing, allegedly anyway. Let me see, I have also built laid stone and moss and mud "trappers" cabins, you need nothing more than an ax and your hands really. then there's your various earthbermed/semi underground, sort of popular in areas not prone to flooding but still prone to tornadoes, then there's post and beam with tenons and pegs, sort of amish country work, and so on. Humans been building things a long time now, a lot of techniques out there..
Heck, you can even make stick frame much stronger by not cheaping out on fasteners, using those new "hurriquake" nails (TM) googleable, might have to order them mailorder or something, and a lot of lag bolts and through bolts. Throw a few more hundred dollars with good fasteners at a quarter million dollar house and maybe two more days labor and it is *much* stronger than normal shoot a nail with a nailgun and go away building.
The vertical angle of the panel needs to change periodically to take advantage of maximum gain if this is to be a low buck simple easy first solar PV install. Ya, he can use one angle, probably a midwinter angle and get a lot of juice, but it isn't all that optimal either. Really, there is a reason they make adjustable mounts (and even active x and y trackers), it is a lot cheaper to add some cheap framing than to add more solar panels for the same amount of amps to the batteries. You really will notice it with just one panel. Active east west tracking along with it is even spiffier for efficiency gains, but that is still costly and usually only done on real high end installs, but manually adjusted vertical frameworks are by far the most common, because it just works and adds not that much to the total cost. I mean it's a little aluminum L or square bracket action and some bolts and wingnuts usually and a few minutes work once in awhile. And it really depends on where you live, too, how important this is, the further north the more critical (and it-geolocation- was not specified in original topic by submitter so I made a generic reply)
...is not a problem. Spray foam or ferrocement works just fine. I have helped build and lived in examples of each. As to subdividing for rooms, you can use cables and tensioners (turnbuckles) for the additional floor(s) supports, build from there, with nice drop down or spiral staircases. You can get a variety of living levels then in the same structure, plus suspended walkways and..you name it, use your imagination, it's slick. They make very nice living structures. They are *much* stronger than 90 degree flat square stick frame construction (which is actually about the weakest joints you can make, it is just easier, that is why it is done so much).
Plenty of folks here have solar PV experience, several guys run whole house systems.
Steps: Determine your mount, do you want a roof mount? Most likely. They make those you can buy, or you can fabricate your own, just starting out go ahead and get the mount from the same place you buy your panel. but make it accessible enough on the roof so that a few times a year you can access it and adjust the angle relative to the sun. This is determined by your latitude, you can find maps online that address this. Seat of the pants,this works just as good, once a season (solstices and equinoxes, 4 times a year in other words) go out exactly at noon, adjust the panel so that it perpendicular/flat to the sun.
The panel itself will have a metal frame with a grounding hole indicated. You need to install a grounding rod at the shed base, big fun, you'll develop manly man muscles hammering that bad boy in. Here's a hint, dig a hole where you want the rod to go (after first determining you are *not* going to hit a waterline or some other underground man made obstruction of course, common sense rules there), soak that hole with a bucket of water (that gives you an idea on the size of the hole to dig, something that can take a few gallons and sit there and soak in) periodically for a couple days before hammering in the rod. Man it makes it much easier. Where you buy the rod, they will have grounding wire and a connector clamp. You'll need a nice maul to get it going, a normal hammer would be possible but I don't recommend it. alternatively a fence post pounder, maybe you can borrow one. Lowes/ Home Despot have all of that. At the panel frame, just a good stout bolt with lockwashers and regular washers is adequate for the ground wire. For lead wire, welding cable you can buy off the roll by the foot is good enough for your shed needs, and your run won't be that long anyway most likely. Conversely you can use exterior grade house wiring, again, by the foot. that is more resistant to sunlight/water/whatever. If you want or need by code conduit, again, cheap plastic pipe at the store and glue and a hacksaw and some clamp mount action.
Next you need to run the raw output of your panel to a charge controller (those ship with wiring diagrams as well), then the feed from there will go to your battery. If you are using a smallish panel it will nominally output 0VDC at night with no visible moon to around 17 (maybe higher) or so VDC at high noon on high summer day. The charge controller adjusts this, better quality ones monitor the charge going to the battery and adjust as it is needed for optimum charging, which is a three stage process of voltage regulation. It will shut itself off when the battery is full, indicated by the colored lights on the controller (some have a little LCD panel with interesting little things to look at;)). If you find yourself with extra juice potential (I bet you do) by early afternoon, lucky you, you can add an additional battery in parallel if you want that juice. I am a big fan of having lager than what you think you might need battery action, more and bigger. Makes them last longer.
For battery or batteries, now your choices get varied depending on needs, but rule of thumb with batteries after all is said and done and all the marketing BS is out of the way is you are buying lead by the pound. that's it. More lead, more stored juice. Your cheapest solution is a normal 12 volt "trolling" motor battery they sell for boaters and fishermen. Those batteries are designed to run a trolling motor for hours, they should be sufficient for your modest lighting needs. You'll need ring connectors for your lead wires, attachment is straight up, positive and negative. Next step up would be two 6VDC batteries, or golf cart batteries. Those get wired in series to give you your 12, then in turn are wired from the controller output, on one battery it is the negative, on the other it is the positive. the two others are connected battery to battery, that is your series connection. To keep it sim
you are correct of course, and it outlines the absurdity of even inventing modern tech when it gets restricted so much. Society and business will have to evolve better to to come to terms with tech making artificial scarcity a thing of the past. I don't have an easy solution or answer, but these opening salvos with the political war on on star trek replicator technology does not bode well for the future when 3-d tangible objects will be able to be "printed on demand", along those lines. One can hope that this generation now growing up realizing that some things have gotten to be "too cheap to meter" will result in radical restructuring of copyright laws and patents, etc.
FWIW. I am in ag, and encourage people to use open source styled replicator tech and sharing to acquire their own content, ie, "open pollinated" seeds, grow your own gardens, have backyard flocks and breed your own replacements, share growing knowledge, share surplus food, etc. If it ever results in me needing a new "job", so be it, I'll do something else.
...they could admit reality that the net is international, that they have content that is universally admired and sought after, and just use the technology that allows the best dispersal of content with the most shared bandwith, bit torrent. Heck, it would probably cost them *less* money if they offered torrents. It would also help with net neutrality, hard to argue with a lot of customers who want to receive some content that comes from the BBC. Shoot, stick it up on goobtoob, cost them zero then.
In other words, there are immediate and practical work arounds for the "cost" excuse. It costs the people who pay the tax in the UK the same money if one person views the content inside their own nation, or 999,999 others around the world with near free digital copies, as long as they don't have to tote the note on all the bandwith for the other copies.
How do those seekrit sh-h-h-h-h don't tell nobody! NDAs work with OSS? The "O" part starts for "open". "..and now here we show you these open source new goodies, but you can't tell anyone about them, no details, nor show them, but they are really open, honest!"
Good luck with that. Apple makes some good stuff, but let us not confuse them with being some sort of "open" champions, because they are *not*.
Whether drunk guys with boards strapped to their feet or alien wheat benders sending secret messages, some of the aerial shots of the more elaborate crop circles are just darn spiffy and show some good math.
Funny this question comes up, just went to a tractor dealer the other day. In the waiting area for service they have a row of old *barber chairs*. They are real comfy and adjustable, and they look sort of retro cool as well and I was thinking what a spiffy computer desk chair they could be.
They don't need to suspend elections with black box hacked voting and high level media manipulation, ie. picking the globalist approved candidates to give coverage to, and instantly labeling all the others as "fringe" right off the bat. Advertising/propaganda *works*, at least to a large enough extent that they can do whatever they want to do all the time, and real laws and the real constitution gets ignored. And even if they get found out in lies or illegalities, again, nothing happens, because we have a paper tiger toothless congress that is mostly compromised and an executive branch that just issues orders at random through EOs and "signing statements" and so on, and has all the official guns and "no questions asked" order followers to back those orders and edicts up.
Just FYI, the current tax advantages for ethanol production in the US are twice as high for cellulosic as for corn. And they did that because they aren't stupid, they know corn isn't sustainable forever. they know this, the farmers know it, the refinery guys know it., the business people know it.
Corn is being used in a transition stage with ethanol because it is what we have and what the farmers are setup for, so that we can get going and have some sort of useful fuel now, not 20 years more "studies", like fusion power or "hydrogen fuel cells".
Your current choices are, keep working on biofuels and support what we have now and try to get more energy independent using renewable fuels, or keep shoving buckets of cash to the major oil guys and loyal to no one speculators and keep getting raped in the wallet and be in peril of one major middle east event blowing out of control and be staring at $300 buck/barrel with rationing on top of that-which could happen quite easily given the amount of loon leaders involved in the middle east and the usa/uk.
And that's it. We don't have mass quantities of affordable electric vehicles out there yet, you are stuck between mid range expensive on a waiting list, the same it has been for the past 5 years or so, to high end sportscar expensive, extreme limited quantities with the same waiting lists or build a kit (google for them, you can do this for around ten grand now and your donor car/truck and choice of batteries) if you want electrics (I do, eventually it will be a home made though, not going to wait for them to get on the market in cheap quantities, this will take years and years now given the reluctance of any of the majors to actually do anything but build prototypes and yak about it)
so you either support your own farmers and the "corn lobby" and domestic production and domestic research into cellulosic production, or you keep supporting with your fuel cash the exxon/opec/oil dudes "lobby" like you have been. Choices. Me, personally, I am in farming, but not corn, but I would much rather my fuel buck went to another farmer than to some greed based wall street pirate and dictator oil despot some place overseas, because they all *suck*. I've been paying that "lobby" for decades now, I think they have received enough of my loot.
I have a gnome applet for weather called Weather Report 2.22.1, works just fine, just checked it a minute ago. You can set location covered and how often it updates and how you want the numbers read out (miles or kilometers and etc.). It has current conditions, forecast for today and the rest of the week, and the radar image.
What's wrong with telling the offending roommate to stop being a hog? That's why I titled my reply man up!, because that is what is needed the most. Sounds more like they are afraid of the room mate, if so, they have bigger issues than some internet connection. And bit torrent clients have settings where you can adjust speeds, plus number of torrents being downloaded at the same time. There's the simplest technical solution, just tell them to use the settings that are there and drop the demand side down a little so that others can use the net as well, there's no need to jump through exotic home router traffic shaping when the actual application the hog room mate is using can do it and the room mates should be able to discuss being a hog about things. What's next, the room mate drinks all the milk and rarely buys any, so you need to work out a milk delivery restriction schedule at the supermarket?
Sorry, I'll pass on the rube goldberg methods. And it is an ask slashdot, the person wanted opinions on how to solve the problem, so there ya go, this problem is a mountain out of a molehill with several easy solutions available.
Good points, valid points, granted, and what exactly do the computer makers think people actually *do* with hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive space, type up school reports and recipes? And look at the freekin ads for the big ISPs, smiling happy people and advertising "blazing download speeds, enjoy movies" and etc. So? Where's the beef when people really try to do that? Why does unlimited really mean limited in the fine print?
This is like the wink wink nod nod industry. The big pipe providers (in the US) though already got paid 200 billion dollars to roll out true high speed internet all over and did about bupkis with it except squabble over the low hanging profitable fruit in some select areas. The bulk of the nation gets grade C alleged broadband or not even that. Cry me a river of crocodile tears, like the auto industry in the US saying they can't make high MPG cars when they *sell* high MPG cars in Europe. In short, always read between the lines when big corporations bitch about stuff. It's just *cheaper* for them to do "throttling, packet shaping, and simply capping the bandwidth." than it is to actually, you know, improve the infrastructure from end to end. The fatcats Cxx whatevers and big pirate wallstreet "investors" ain't happy being millionaires anymore, nope, that ain't enough, they all got to be *billionaires* now and the only way to do that is to screw their customers over and bribe off government so they can get away with it.
Frankly, being on dialup and being told directly by the lineman when they ran out new phone wire when I moved in here that they would *never* install anything good enough for DSL unless ordered to by the government (that is an exact quote when I asked him him if I could now get dsl and he was a smug and condescending ass about it too, BTW, near giggling over being able to screw a customer by charging for tissue paper phone lines with constant buzz and noise and crappy connections), I have little sympathy for the monopoly broadband folks and the entrenched telco cartels. I also have little sympathy for that roomate who was hogging what was available, and offered two fast solutions to that exact problem, because I have been in that situation with roomates and that is what we did, multiple lines, problem solved. If that crap-geting full seasons of the simpsons dubbed in japanese-is so important to someone, that they have to leech 24/7, let them get their own freeking line, that's what an adult would do anyway (loosely used term for anyone who would actually do that of course..seems rather silly to me, and the other roomate who I guess the net connections name is in is leaving him or herself open to getting *popped* by the the MAFIAA some day, another boneheaded decision). But if the telco folks would have their feet held to the fire by the government and the FCC the US could be on top and not like number 16 in the developed world for decent net connectivity, and then everyone might have some decent throughput and bandwith.
Most places, if its cable, they've been there for years and have been milking a granted local monopoly with zero competition (and I remember before they even started, sat through a county commission hearing when they promised "no commercials, really, trust us!"). If it is the phone company, they've been mostly milking the same wires they strung up when alex bell was running things. I grew up with the "one" phone company and their pure asshattery corporate mindset, and I can tell you, it never went away even after they were allegedly "broken up", it's just a cartel now instead of one company. All that money they got went someplace, but a whole heaping pile of that 200 billion did not go into the last mile solution very many places except at the bare minimum possible level they could claim was "broadband".
Tell this person to stop being a hog and to drop upload and download speeds so that other people can use the net. This is a social problem that doesn't need a techno fix. Either that or tell them to get their own connection, stop sharing it with them.
We are getting hit with an additional fuel surcharge for every feed delivery now, that is recent over the past few months. Along with an increases in the feed itself (and propane, offroad diesel, electricity, local taxes, water, machinery repair parts, etc..all up over last year). Prices paid by the packers have remained constant. Hmmm This is the poultry biz, only a handful of packers to choose from and they all have basically the same contract they offer the growers so the point is moot there.
Now my analysis isn't so much the oil producers (the gulf nations are barely maintaining parity with what they were getting before the recent cash infusions diluting the dollar's worth, they are complaining about it *loud*) or the other farmers (grains) who start the feed stack making more, the big increases seem to be coming from the big investment places and traders speculating on commodities now that they screwed mortgage lending so bad combined with the Fed bailing out those big investment banks and them taking that new cash and gambling with it.
In short, rapid inflation, with the inflationary dollars going to commodities speculation driving up prices.
Your truckers aren't complaining yet about fuel costs? You use independents or have your own fleet and hired drivers? A lot of the independents are on the razor's edge right now from what I hear.
And I am not referring to Briggs & Stratton either.
Them boys at moodys need to open a farm, they sure got a lot of fertilizer on hand!
coding error..hehehehehehe...I think this story comes from the Jon Lovitz school of excuses...."ya...that's the ticket! It was a coding error!" uh huh
I don't think their story is going to fly with investors and lawyers around the world who are the proud recipients of all the creative "write downs" and other sorts of negative profits this year from all those wall street loons trying to push worthless junk paper on each other and actually *believing* their own fantasies that they can just keep coming up with different names for IOUs and keep reselling them back and forth to each other. You can't printing press your way to wealth creation, whether what you are printing up is called "money" or a "collaterlized debt obligation" or whatever other fancy crap term they think up. Not for very long anyway.
the entire project needs to be forked away from laptop.org, both hardware and software. Then it could just be an "anyone who wants one" little machine, like through a co-op for bulk hardware purchases. Most of the design specs are available and near as I can see the really expensive bits involve the display. which might be fixable. It needs to be reintroduced with the original idea of onboard power generation (or at least a foot pedal), and just use a low bloat normal linux distro for the software and dump sugar as reinventing the wheel..
Slashdot Mirror
"polar ice maximum"--that is the *date* of the thickest ice, end of winter ice forming season. Calendar dates are not thick (or thin). FWIW, they reckon mid march this past winter for the polar ice maximum at the north pole. If you mean extent, it was marginally larger than last year, but still way below average and most of it is "young" ice, and it is already melting rapidly. Old ice-ice that has survived past one season- has been steadily dropping for some time now. That's the thick heavy duty stuff that hangs in there and really helps with climate moderation and circulation, but there is less of it every year now. Once it is all young ice, it will be ice free every summer, more or less completely. If that happens, the next goi go is the tundra, and if the tundra goes all melty, 100 zillion cubic metric fucktons of methane start to be released-then all bets are off. The climate modelers gauges only go to 10 ;)
Not that I am a proponent of the 100% man made global climate change theory, I am not, and I am completely against the total scam carbon trading massive wealth skimming industry and huge government power grabs being pushed as the "war on carbon", when we all need and use carbon, no way around that. But I am a proponent of the climate change theory of man made simultaneously with naturally occurring cyclic and solar output variable. IMO, it is *all of the above*, all the time now, but I also support a real fast shutdown (within a decade or so) of the heavy pollution from coal and oil, a fast weaning off those sources, (I certainly think the big oil guys and big coal guys have made enough for now, time for the planets money to go elsewhere and to eliminate threat of war over those resources) and a global mega project to go to renewables and decentralized power and individual ownership as much as possible. I am against massive air and water pollution just to perpetuate global energy cartel vendor lockin. If such a switch helps to moderate climate change for the better, that's frosting.
You are welcome of course. Good luck with whichever technique you wind up using. Will you be building it yourself? Sweat equity is a great way to pay for a home. My (recently deceased) sis and ex brother in law built a house on a pay as you build idea, the entire thing was paid off free and clear in a few years that way, zero mortgage. The two largest immediate expenses were land purchase outright, around three acres, and the well and septic, they saved for that initial expense then the bro in laws folks chipped in a little as a wedding present. After that it was just whatever they could afford on a weekend by weekend deal. They rented nearby, had two jobs, one job paid the day to day bills, the other income went 100% to the new house and building supplies, etc. As soon as it was up and roughed in enough to live in they moved in, then finished it over the next year or so, including finishing the second story into rooms, at rough in stage is was just a partial floor with a ladder going to it for sleeping.. I helped a lot on that one as well, it was stilts on one side going right to the ground on the other, built on a hillside. Stick frame but I insisted and we used a ton of large woodscrews and tubes of industrial adhesive on the joints and flooring when we built it, along with the regular nails. It had a regular tin roof, I was lucky mountain climber to put that on.. We did every single bit of the work, wiring, plumbing, siding, framing, foundation, all of it except the waterwell and septic and the original grading that they hired out to some guy with a dozer, being a cheap to buy wooded hillside it needed some terraforming for parking spaces, small yard and garden area.. One hint, never store onsite that which you can't use up building that weekend, dang roving thieves will steal it every time.
The big one I helped work on with the cable suspended rooms and lofts was just beautiful. It had a huge central woodstove with the stack going straight up and kept that place toasty warm all winter. I only stayed there for awhile but friends were building it so I helped some, learned a lot too.
Nope, this was way back in yonder hippie corn-mune daze. The tech is better now though, just google around dome homes, monolithic domes, like that. Ferrocement is an interesting building technique, albeit a PITA because you should do it all at once, you need a lot of helpers and beer for the fast plastering, even if using a sprayer. It is concrete or your choice of mud applied over mesh reinforced with rebar. It doesn't need to be thick but once it cures well it is very strong, and it is unlike say building with blocks, it is all one piece. Domes can be built with a variety of methods, the simplest is just a ton of precision cutting of lumber, I think you can find that online. I think if you are going to attempt it, start out small like shed sized or one small cabin sized before attempting a decent house sized.
There are a lot of neat alternative building methods over stick frame, rammed earth, cordwood masonry(google for that, many good pics on the web, it is real pretty and strong, the walls are so thick nothing else is needed for insulation), using HUGE logs and only a few of them instead of many smaller ones for log construction (that is a Scandinavian technique, they are grooved to lock together and moss inserted, some are now up for hundreds of years), steel arch (pretty common for barns and etc, the old "quonset hut" is an example). I even heard, but have not done it myself yet, of using surplus weather balloons, inflating them, then spraying them with foam, then cutting the doors and windows out. Makes a nice backyard hangout or remote fast cabin thing, allegedly anyway. Let me see, I have also built laid stone and moss and mud "trappers" cabins, you need nothing more than an ax and your hands really. then there's your various earthbermed/semi underground, sort of popular in areas not prone to flooding but still prone to tornadoes, then there's post and beam with tenons and pegs, sort of amish country work, and so on. Humans been building things a long time now, a lot of techniques out there..
Heck, you can even make stick frame much stronger by not cheaping out on fasteners, using those new "hurriquake" nails (TM) googleable, might have to order them mailorder or something, and a lot of lag bolts and through bolts. Throw a few more hundred dollars with good fasteners at a quarter million dollar house and maybe two more days labor and it is *much* stronger than normal shoot a nail with a nailgun and go away building.
The vertical angle of the panel needs to change periodically to take advantage of maximum gain if this is to be a low buck simple easy first solar PV install. Ya, he can use one angle, probably a midwinter angle and get a lot of juice, but it isn't all that optimal either. Really, there is a reason they make adjustable mounts (and even active x and y trackers), it is a lot cheaper to add some cheap framing than to add more solar panels for the same amount of amps to the batteries. You really will notice it with just one panel. Active east west tracking along with it is even spiffier for efficiency gains, but that is still costly and usually only done on real high end installs, but manually adjusted vertical frameworks are by far the most common, because it just works and adds not that much to the total cost. I mean it's a little aluminum L or square bracket action and some bolts and wingnuts usually and a few minutes work once in awhile. And it really depends on where you live, too, how important this is, the further north the more critical (and it-geolocation- was not specified in original topic by submitter so I made a generic reply)
...is not a problem. Spray foam or ferrocement works just fine. I have helped build and lived in examples of each. As to subdividing for rooms, you can use cables and tensioners (turnbuckles) for the additional floor(s) supports, build from there, with nice drop down or spiral staircases. You can get a variety of living levels then in the same structure, plus suspended walkways and..you name it, use your imagination, it's slick. They make very nice living structures. They are *much* stronger than 90 degree flat square stick frame construction (which is actually about the weakest joints you can make, it is just easier, that is why it is done so much).
Plenty of folks here have solar PV experience, several guys run whole house systems.
Steps: Determine your mount, do you want a roof mount? Most likely. They make those you can buy, or you can fabricate your own, just starting out go ahead and get the mount from the same place you buy your panel. but make it accessible enough on the roof so that a few times a year you can access it and adjust the angle relative to the sun. This is determined by your latitude, you can find maps online that address this. Seat of the pants,this works just as good, once a season (solstices and equinoxes, 4 times a year in other words) go out exactly at noon, adjust the panel so that it perpendicular/flat to the sun.
The panel itself will have a metal frame with a grounding hole indicated. You need to install a grounding rod at the shed base, big fun, you'll develop manly man muscles hammering that bad boy in. Here's a hint, dig a hole where you want the rod to go (after first determining you are *not* going to hit a waterline or some other underground man made obstruction of course, common sense rules there), soak that hole with a bucket of water (that gives you an idea on the size of the hole to dig, something that can take a few gallons and sit there and soak in) periodically for a couple days before hammering in the rod. Man it makes it much easier. Where you buy the rod, they will have grounding wire and a connector clamp. You'll need a nice maul to get it going, a normal hammer would be possible but I don't recommend it. alternatively a fence post pounder, maybe you can borrow one. Lowes/ Home Despot have all of that. At the panel frame, just a good stout bolt with lockwashers and regular washers is adequate for the ground wire. For lead wire, welding cable you can buy off the roll by the foot is good enough for your shed needs, and your run won't be that long anyway most likely. Conversely you can use exterior grade house wiring, again, by the foot. that is more resistant to sunlight/water/whatever. If you want or need by code conduit, again, cheap plastic pipe at the store and glue and a hacksaw and some clamp mount action.
Next you need to run the raw output of your panel to a charge controller (those ship with wiring diagrams as well), then the feed from there will go to your battery. If you are using a smallish panel it will nominally output 0VDC at night with no visible moon to around 17 (maybe higher) or so VDC at high noon on high summer day. The charge controller adjusts this, better quality ones monitor the charge going to the battery and adjust as it is needed for optimum charging, which is a three stage process of voltage regulation. It will shut itself off when the battery is full, indicated by the colored lights on the controller (some have a little LCD panel with interesting little things to look at ;)). If you find yourself with extra juice potential (I bet you do) by early afternoon, lucky you, you can add an additional battery in parallel if you want that juice. I am a big fan of having lager than what you think you might need battery action, more and bigger. Makes them last longer.
For battery or batteries, now your choices get varied depending on needs, but rule of thumb with batteries after all is said and done and all the marketing BS is out of the way is you are buying lead by the pound. that's it. More lead, more stored juice. Your cheapest solution is a normal 12 volt "trolling" motor battery they sell for boaters and fishermen. Those batteries are designed to run a trolling motor for hours, they should be sufficient for your modest lighting needs. You'll need ring connectors for your lead wires, attachment is straight up, positive and negative. Next step up would be two 6VDC batteries, or golf cart batteries. Those get wired in series to give you your 12, then in turn are wired from the controller output, on one battery it is the negative, on the other it is the positive. the two others are connected battery to battery, that is your series connection. To keep it sim
you are correct of course, and it outlines the absurdity of even inventing modern tech when it gets restricted so much. Society and business will have to evolve better to to come to terms with tech making artificial scarcity a thing of the past. I don't have an easy solution or answer, but these opening salvos with the political war on on star trek replicator technology does not bode well for the future when 3-d tangible objects will be able to be "printed on demand", along those lines. One can hope that this generation now growing up realizing that some things have gotten to be "too cheap to meter" will result in radical restructuring of copyright laws and patents, etc.
FWIW. I am in ag, and encourage people to use open source styled replicator tech and sharing to acquire their own content, ie, "open pollinated" seeds, grow your own gardens, have backyard flocks and breed your own replacements, share growing knowledge, share surplus food, etc. If it ever results in me needing a new "job", so be it, I'll do something else.
...they could admit reality that the net is international, that they have content that is universally admired and sought after, and just use the technology that allows the best dispersal of content with the most shared bandwith, bit torrent. Heck, it would probably cost them *less* money if they offered torrents. It would also help with net neutrality, hard to argue with a lot of customers who want to receive some content that comes from the BBC. Shoot, stick it up on goobtoob, cost them zero then.
In other words, there are immediate and practical work arounds for the "cost" excuse. It costs the people who pay the tax in the UK the same money if one person views the content inside their own nation, or 999,999 others around the world with near free digital copies, as long as they don't have to tote the note on all the bandwith for the other copies.
How do those seekrit sh-h-h-h-h don't tell nobody! NDAs work with OSS? The "O" part starts for "open". "..and now here we show you these open source new goodies, but you can't tell anyone about them, no details, nor show them, but they are really open, honest!"
Good luck with that. Apple makes some good stuff, but let us not confuse them with being some sort of "open" champions, because they are *not*.
Whether drunk guys with boards strapped to their feet or alien wheat benders sending secret messages, some of the aerial shots of the more elaborate crop circles are just darn spiffy and show some good math.
Funny this question comes up, just went to a tractor dealer the other day. In the waiting area for service they have a row of old *barber chairs*. They are real comfy and adjustable, and they look sort of retro cool as well and I was thinking what a spiffy computer desk chair they could be.
They don't need to suspend elections with black box hacked voting and high level media manipulation, ie. picking the globalist approved candidates to give coverage to, and instantly labeling all the others as "fringe" right off the bat. Advertising/propaganda *works*, at least to a large enough extent that they can do whatever they want to do all the time, and real laws and the real constitution gets ignored. And even if they get found out in lies or illegalities, again, nothing happens, because we have a paper tiger toothless congress that is mostly compromised and an executive branch that just issues orders at random through EOs and "signing statements" and so on, and has all the official guns and "no questions asked" order followers to back those orders and edicts up.
Just FYI, the current tax advantages for ethanol production in the US are twice as high for cellulosic as for corn. And they did that because they aren't stupid, they know corn isn't sustainable forever. they know this, the farmers know it, the refinery guys know it., the business people know it.
Corn is being used in a transition stage with ethanol because it is what we have and what the farmers are setup for, so that we can get going and have some sort of useful fuel now, not 20 years more "studies", like fusion power or "hydrogen fuel cells".
Your current choices are, keep working on biofuels and support what we have now and try to get more energy independent using renewable fuels, or keep shoving buckets of cash to the major oil guys and loyal to no one speculators and keep getting raped in the wallet and be in peril of one major middle east event blowing out of control and be staring at $300 buck/barrel with rationing on top of that-which could happen quite easily given the amount of loon leaders involved in the middle east and the usa/uk.
And that's it. We don't have mass quantities of affordable electric vehicles out there yet, you are stuck between mid range expensive on a waiting list, the same it has been for the past 5 years or so, to high end sportscar expensive, extreme limited quantities with the same waiting lists or build a kit (google for them, you can do this for around ten grand now and your donor car/truck and choice of batteries) if you want electrics (I do, eventually it will be a home made though, not going to wait for them to get on the market in cheap quantities, this will take years and years now given the reluctance of any of the majors to actually do anything but build prototypes and yak about it)
so you either support your own farmers and the "corn lobby" and domestic production and domestic research into cellulosic production, or you keep supporting with your fuel cash the exxon/opec/oil dudes "lobby" like you have been. Choices. Me, personally, I am in farming, but not corn, but I would much rather my fuel buck went to another farmer than to some greed based wall street pirate and dictator oil despot some place overseas, because they all *suck*. I've been paying that "lobby" for decades now, I think they have received enough of my loot.
I have a gnome applet for weather called Weather Report 2.22.1, works just fine, just checked it a minute ago. You can set location covered and how often it updates and how you want the numbers read out (miles or kilometers and etc.). It has current conditions, forecast for today and the rest of the week, and the radar image.
I wonder if they do have a lighter/flash drive combo unit? I know you can get a swiss army knife usb drive combo now.
What's wrong with telling the offending roommate to stop being a hog? That's why I titled my reply man up!, because that is what is needed the most. Sounds more like they are afraid of the room mate, if so, they have bigger issues than some internet connection. And bit torrent clients have settings where you can adjust speeds, plus number of torrents being downloaded at the same time. There's the simplest technical solution, just tell them to use the settings that are there and drop the demand side down a little so that others can use the net as well, there's no need to jump through exotic home router traffic shaping when the actual application the hog room mate is using can do it and the room mates should be able to discuss being a hog about things. What's next, the room mate drinks all the milk and rarely buys any, so you need to work out a milk delivery restriction schedule at the supermarket?
Sorry, I'll pass on the rube goldberg methods. And it is an ask slashdot, the person wanted opinions on how to solve the problem, so there ya go, this problem is a mountain out of a molehill with several easy solutions available.
Good points, valid points, granted, and what exactly do the computer makers think people actually *do* with hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive space, type up school reports and recipes? And look at the freekin ads for the big ISPs, smiling happy people and advertising "blazing download speeds, enjoy movies" and etc. So? Where's the beef when people really try to do that? Why does unlimited really mean limited in the fine print?
This is like the wink wink nod nod industry. The big pipe providers (in the US) though already got paid 200 billion dollars to roll out true high speed internet all over and did about bupkis with it except squabble over the low hanging profitable fruit in some select areas. The bulk of the nation gets grade C alleged broadband or not even that. Cry me a river of crocodile tears, like the auto industry in the US saying they can't make high MPG cars when they *sell* high MPG cars in Europe. In short, always read between the lines when big corporations bitch about stuff. It's just *cheaper* for them to do "throttling, packet shaping, and simply capping the bandwidth." than it is to actually, you know, improve the infrastructure from end to end. The fatcats Cxx whatevers and big pirate wallstreet "investors" ain't happy being millionaires anymore, nope, that ain't enough, they all got to be *billionaires* now and the only way to do that is to screw their customers over and bribe off government so they can get away with it.
Frankly, being on dialup and being told directly by the lineman when they ran out new phone wire when I moved in here that they would *never* install anything good enough for DSL unless ordered to by the government (that is an exact quote when I asked him him if I could now get dsl and he was a smug and condescending ass about it too, BTW, near giggling over being able to screw a customer by charging for tissue paper phone lines with constant buzz and noise and crappy connections), I have little sympathy for the monopoly broadband folks and the entrenched telco cartels. I also have little sympathy for that roomate who was hogging what was available, and offered two fast solutions to that exact problem, because I have been in that situation with roomates and that is what we did, multiple lines, problem solved. If that crap-geting full seasons of the simpsons dubbed in japanese-is so important to someone, that they have to leech 24/7, let them get their own freeking line, that's what an adult would do anyway (loosely used term for anyone who would actually do that of course..seems rather silly to me, and the other roomate who I guess the net connections name is in is leaving him or herself open to getting *popped* by the the MAFIAA some day, another boneheaded decision). But if the telco folks would have their feet held to the fire by the government and the FCC the US could be on top and not like number 16 in the developed world for decent net connectivity, and then everyone might have some decent throughput and bandwith.
Most places, if its cable, they've been there for years and have been milking a granted local monopoly with zero competition (and I remember before they even started, sat through a county commission hearing when they promised "no commercials, really, trust us!"). If it is the phone company, they've been mostly milking the same wires they strung up when alex bell was running things. I grew up with the "one" phone company and their pure asshattery corporate mindset, and I can tell you, it never went away even after they were allegedly "broken up", it's just a cartel now instead of one company. All that money they got went someplace, but a whole heaping pile of that 200 billion did not go into the last mile solution very many places except at the bare minimum possible level they could claim was "broadband".
Tell this person to stop being a hog and to drop upload and download speeds so that other people can use the net. This is a social problem that doesn't need a techno fix. Either that or tell them to get their own connection, stop sharing it with them.
thanks for the info! I'm on dialup, and between land line charge and ISP I am at 60 bucks + right now as it is. I need to look into this...
On the sprint deal, do they give you any hassle on hours of usage (total) or any download caps?
We are getting hit with an additional fuel surcharge for every feed delivery now, that is recent over the past few months. Along with an increases in the feed itself (and propane, offroad diesel, electricity, local taxes, water, machinery repair parts, etc..all up over last year). Prices paid by the packers have remained constant. Hmmm This is the poultry biz, only a handful of packers to choose from and they all have basically the same contract they offer the growers so the point is moot there.
Now my analysis isn't so much the oil producers (the gulf nations are barely maintaining parity with what they were getting before the recent cash infusions diluting the dollar's worth, they are complaining about it *loud*) or the other farmers (grains) who start the feed stack making more, the big increases seem to be coming from the big investment places and traders speculating on commodities now that they screwed mortgage lending so bad combined with the Fed bailing out those big investment banks and them taking that new cash and gambling with it.
In short, rapid inflation, with the inflationary dollars going to commodities speculation driving up prices.
Your truckers aren't complaining yet about fuel costs? You use independents or have your own fleet and hired drivers? A lot of the independents are on the razor's edge right now from what I hear.
And I am not referring to Briggs & Stratton either.
Them boys at moodys need to open a farm, they sure got a lot of fertilizer on hand!
coding error..hehehehehehe...I think this story comes from the Jon Lovitz school of excuses...."ya...that's the ticket! It was a coding error!" uh huh
I don't think their story is going to fly with investors and lawyers around the world who are the proud recipients of all the creative "write downs" and other sorts of negative profits this year from all those wall street loons trying to push worthless junk paper on each other and actually *believing* their own fantasies that they can just keep coming up with different names for IOUs and keep reselling them back and forth to each other. You can't printing press your way to wealth creation, whether what you are printing up is called "money" or a "collaterlized debt obligation" or whatever other fancy crap term they think up. Not for very long anyway.
the entire project needs to be forked away from laptop.org, both hardware and software. Then it could just be an "anyone who wants one" little machine, like through a co-op for bulk hardware purchases. Most of the design specs are available and near as I can see the really expensive bits involve the display. which might be fixable. It needs to be reintroduced with the original idea of onboard power generation (or at least a foot pedal), and just use a low bloat normal linux distro for the software and dump sugar as reinventing the wheel..
...do work on linux now? Any of them?