Farcebook

Author: james

  • Plumbing water butts together

    Plumbing water butts together

    My garden has three water butts in it, for some reason I keep writing about them on this blog. To make use of the water I used to own a mains powered pump but due to a minor electric shock issue that’s now on its way to my nearest e-waste pile.

    Does your water butt also store electricity? Mine did. Getting a bit of a zing while trying to make the pump’s float switch activate was a bit too much excitement this morning.

    Here’s my multimeter with one lead dangling in the water and the other poked in the ground. 97v AC is quite tingly.

    It wasn’t bad enough to trip my house circuit breaker though, but now that pump is an ex-pump.

    So I have three water butts, one contained a pump and it was pretty good being able to water the garden using rainwater. However once the water butt ran dry, it was awkward moving the pump into the next butt. So my plan was to plumb them all together and then the water can just level itself out between them.

    After emptying the butts of all their suspiciously stinky water I noticed my shed was looking a bit sun beaten, and since I stained it dark brown it suffers from getting cooked in the sun. On a recent visit to my sister I obtained some white masonry paint. So now the shed is white.

    My plan for linking the butts was to use 15mm PEX piping and plastic fittings. It’s the same stuff they used in my house, and after poking a hole in the hot water line in my house and seeing how easy it was to repair, I went shopping in Wickes and bought a bunch of taps and connectors. I already had some pipe from an attempt at using it on the allotment.

    Plumbing it up was so easy, it just suffers from that plastic piping thing of being quite bulky so I will need to avoid banging into the pipework when mowing. Although there’s no glue used anywhere, so if I break it, it’ll be easy to repair. And being plastic it’s quite bendy.

    Coming out of each butt is one of those isolation valves used on taps and toilets so I can shut off each butt if I need to do anything, without needing to drain the whole system. At the end of the run is a tap so I can fill a watering can easily. The original taps are still on to completely drain each butt if needed.

    My plan is to isolate each water butt in the winter and drain the joining pipe so it doesn’t freeze. Otherwise it’ll stay open so the water levels equalise, although I will need to shut off the third one as it sits higher and will never fill up fully without making the others overflow.

    Since I’d emptied the water onto my garden (which wasn’t a waste, it’s been dry and sunny for the past month, everything needed a good soaking) I leak tested the system using the hose. And it works! nothing leaks! Each butt has some water in now to stop them blowing away if it gets windy.

    And that’s it. I just need some rain now. And a new water pump that won’t try to electrocute me.

  • What Lurks in the Long Grass?

    What Lurks in the Long Grass?

    Now the intense mowing has got the grass under control, and the strimming has temporarily put the brambles in their place, I can get on with removing the long grass that’s growing amongst the fruit bushes.

    There’s bushes in here somewhere
    Where there’s grass, there’s bindweed
    After…
    Now the light can get to the plants

    This grass is a pest, it smothers the smaller plants and since it grows right amongst the bushes I can’t stick my strimmer in there otherwise it’ll damage the plants I want to keep.

    The solution I’ve found is to use more traditional grass removal tools. I have what Amazon calls a “Japanese Weeding Hoe”. It’s sharp – well it was sharp, dragging it through the ground and stabbing at stubborn weeds has given it a less sharp edge now. I need a file. Since it’s hand held I can get right amongst the bushes and rip out the grass with it.

    I’m a bit fearful of the brambles and nettles though, the grass has a habit of whipping back on itself as you try to cut it, and goes right where my hands are. This is fine with grass, but being whacked on the hand with some nettles doesn’t seem like fun.

    A giant thorny triffid
    Yeah this thing is sharp

    The bit between the fruit trees is too long to strim, and since I can’t see where the trees are amongst the grass it’s not safe to just stick the strimmer in and wave it around. I might cut my own leg off or damage the trees.

    I can’t even get in there
    Chickens are a good way to remove grass

    This part contains three rhubarb plants, can you see them? No? Me neither, I thought they’d died.

    There’s also a lot of rubbish in here. I’m sure I’ll find that in the winter.

    With some careful weeding it turns out the rhubarb are still there! Next year they should produce enough that I can harvest their stems.

    To get in amongst the longer grass I need a bigger tool.

    Something like this will work. Not sure how you get a large sharp object through the mail, but it’ll be fun finding out!

  • Using a non-Tesla EV on a Super Charger

    Using a non-Tesla EV on a Super Charger

    No, there’s no drama, no weird thing. It just works, just like any other CCS charger. Elon doesn’t come out and give a free hand-job while you wait or anything. About the only piece of excitement is the mildly confused looks from actual Tesla owners when you roll up.

    Also the charging leads are really really short, if your charging port isn’t on a side it’s unlikely to reach. And if your port is on the “other” side to a Tesla it might be hard to park up if they’re nearly full as you might need to go into the wrong bay for the unit that’s free.

  • More Artificial Idiocy

    More Artificial Idiocy

    Gmail has a cool feature where it can understand important emails and put things in your calendar.

    Except it also does it with spam too…

    Although I think this is a mistyped email address, or it’s a very elaborate scam… It’s hard to tell, I’ve had this email address for so long now I can no longer tell the scams, spam and other Internet Herpes from the idiots who can’t spell. I keep getting mail from some church in Australia, I’ve been getting that mail for the past 10 years. I could have said “sorry but you have the wrong person” but it’s a bit late now.

    This airline one though, seems legitimate somehow.

    There was a “manage booking” button on the email too, but it needs a login.

    The Internet is a fucking weird place, isn’t it!

  • The Greenhouse…

    The Greenhouse…

    Standing in the back of my plot is The Greenhouse. It’s actually two stuck together like some sort of human centipede arrangement. We gained one greenhouse free from another plot, and then an ex-colleague of mine gave me his for free too, and they just happened to be identical.

    Putting it up was a bit of a mission with no instructions, half the bolts missing and it not being very square. Also it went dark…

    They had the usual free greenhouse condition of requiring glass, but that was solved by a trip to a local glass merchant who sold greenhouse glass for a sensible price.

    Then, over time the door fell off, wind helped remove some of the glass and then between my own clumsiness and some local thieving bastards the rest of the glass just disappeared. And then the weeds and neck high grass took over.

    After much procrastination I decided I really should sort the mess out. Also I had some tomato plants that needed planting properly if I was to get anything out of them this year. Last year’s tomatoes in grow bags were a bit sad looking by the end.

    This is where I’m supposed to say it wasn’t as bad as I thought, and that it just needed a bit of strimming. Nah, it was worse than I thought and needed more than a bit of a strim. If you strim long grass it either binds up the strimmer, or lays flat over grass you’ve not yet done and it’s hard to tell which grass needs cutting.

    I managed to clear a path towards the back, finding lots of lost and covered rubbish (a visit to the tip is a future problem). All round the thing were pieces of wrist-slashingly sharp glass just poking out the grass waiting for an unwary hand.

    Once the outside was “done” I ventured inside. Since the soil was so dry I found a rake and a lot of manual labour was the way to clear things. Except the ants, they seem to live in the corner now. Also I discovered the strimmer’s metal blade is quite sharp.

    Finally though, after much sweating, a bit of a sit down out the sun to recover and three bananas later I had my tomatoes planted in what looked to be soil.

    A job for the future is to get some new glass to replace the missing panels. Amazon sell plastic sheets the correct size for a reasonable price. Being plastic I should be able to glue them in to deter thieving bastards.

    I don’t understand why someone stole the glass out my greenhouse, but didn’t nick my mower when the shed blew over. It’s very odd. Might write my plot number across the plastic panels when I get them.

    The original shed hasn’t yet magically disappeared. I’ll get around to it one day.