a question for all.

What if?

     What if we had a stock car race where we asked all the stock car racers to build an alternative energy race car , and compete in a race to see who was most efficient and who could make their car finish the race with the least amount of energy invested. Where the mpg of whatever is used to fuel the car is the winner of one trophy and the other is the first one to cross the finish line. Design of the car could take in a variety of aerodynamic designs and the fuel used could vary from electricity to fuel cell to whatever, as long as it isn’t the standard gas fuel we use now.

     If we could arrange sponsors and use the best minds available and make it a yearly, or a circuit race using the race tracks the stock cars run on today. The reason is to push alternative energy friendly sources of fuel to the forefront of engineering much like the stock cars of today are much more radical in engineering than the basic counterparts of yesterday’s moonshine runners that dominated the Daytona beach. If we could achieve the milestones of engineering we achieved with alternate fuels that we did with the gasoline engine , only do it with a variety of fuels then how would it affect racing.

     How would it be if you had electric motors on all four wheels and these motors are running at different speeds maybe only by a fraction of the amount it would take to turn a wide oval and this speed was controlled by computer as it tracks itself around the oval, would this reduce tire wear when coupled with track adjustments to the frame. Would it reduce vibration in the whole car allowing you more flexibility in driving at higher speeds? Would technologies of quick charging allow batteries to be recharged in a very short time much like the pit stops of today? Or would it be possible to use a hybrid and couple a small generator to the batteries to charge while rolling along possibly using a fuel cell to power the generator, and be able to complete a 500 mile race on one tank of fuel without pitting for tires or anything? How would torque distributed among four wheels affect the performance and handling of a race vehicle, and how would all of his affect the development of our personal vehicles in the future?

    There are limitless possibilities and using the stock car concept would allow more interest in racing from a broader spectrum of folks, who are not only racing fans but also earth loving individuals who have a keen interest in saving the planet. It would still be a race and in the end we all would win from developing new technologies that would allow us to remain in our cars and enjoy the freedom of the open road long after our supply of gas fuel as we know it runs out. Who knows maybe we might come up with something cheaper and easier to use if given the right amount of research money and incentive in the form of public recognition that has fueled the race cars of today.

    So what if?

don't you just love when a plan doesn't work

Salesman, if They Only Knew

     Had to go to Lowes yesterday and buy a new screen door. Armed with the overall dimensions of the screen door I set off to find what I wasn’t looking for. That was more work than I needed to do. I have replaced screen doors before and although it could be simple, it seldom is. Asking and expecting quality help from the salesman at Lowes or any diy store is a lot like a trip to the dentist. You dread going to the dentist because the pain is so close to the brain it hurts more, and then you have to open your wallet and feel it again as they have student loans to pay for or at least they keep reminding us to the fact. In the big box department stores you get to stand around and watch the salesman go on and on talking to someone about a possible big sale they will probably never get so that you, the person who is going to actually buy something gets to stand around and wait patiently, a hard thing for us f-ing Ohioans to do, while he chit chats away with the couple who are just thinking about buying. This happened to me yesterday and I stood there ten minutes trying to get assurance I had the right product so I wouldn’t have to return it. Guess what it is going back, ripped up box and all.

     On the top of the box it showed an overall width of 32 inches, and I wanted assurance by the salesman there, I had the right screen door, assuming since it was his department and he should be knowledgeable in the subject , instead all I received was a hard time. As I said I stood and waited my turn patiently till the salesman walked away from the counter to show the couple more stuff to not buy, I then said to myself that apparently I was invisible all 6feet 4 inches and 250 lbs of me had suddenly been reduced to nothing and that my sale didn’t matter to this guy. So I figured if he wasn’t going to help me maybe someone else would. So I rang the little buzzer and guess what the sales man rushed right back to the counter looking worried that I somehow needed help, and didn’t apologize but instead seeing me looked pissed that I would pull such a stunt as to ask for help when he obviously could care less if I stood there all damn day. I asked him if I had the right door and armed with my measurements and both of us looking at the box and the diagram he hurriedly assured me I had the right door and hurriedly ran back to his non buyers. So I paid for the screen door and loaded it by myself into the expedition and headed home.

      Now the only way to find out if the screen door will surely fit in the opening is to check out the installation instructions in the big box you just bought, which requires you to open and find out where they stuffed them. Why they don’t laminate them on the outside of the box or offer the retailer a copy so the salesman can assure you have the right one is beyond me. Anyhow after I rip the box open and according to the directions on the outside of the box I find the installation directions in the very bottom under a pile of parts and finally open and assess my project only to find out I have to rip boards off the entrance to make it large enough to accommodate the new door. Don’t have to move them much, just a quarter inch but it might as well be a mile when you are talking 100 year old boards nailed in by my grandpa years ago. The diagram on the box on the outside was not a true representation of the products requirement to be installed.

     So I debated all night long how I am going to go about this project and decided to hell with it I am not going to eat this door and move boards, instead I am going to pack it all in the tore up box and include the instructions and take back to Lowes and demand the right door, If they can’t provide it then will go somewhere else.

     This is what is wrong with our marketplace. Selling stuff and hoping we will not bring it back. I thought about using it on my house but I haven’t really needed a screen door that bad. And we would still have to buy another. I say screw it and Lowes for hiring inept salesmen who apparently have trouble seeing a real customer, when he comes in. I will shove all the parts and pieces minus the instruction sheet I intend to show the return person at the store, into the torn up box and tape it together haphazardly with some rip stop tape so they have to send the box and door back to the factory to repackage for sale again, and maybe then they will understand what it is to provide more information about their product before trying to sell it. I doubt it but oh well. I just want the right door and not a bunch of extra work. This kind of crap the stores want to shove down your throat is a load on everyone when it doesn’t work  and we all pay for it in higher prices or loss of jobs as companies are forced out of business by their own stupidity. All that blank cardboard space could have been used to provide more information about their product that was hidden in the details of their instruction sheet.  Way to go America.

if i could?

Could You Imagine?

      Well today I am back to underground houses and touting the benefits of them, as well the possibilities that may be available in design considerations.  The reason I am inserting this pic is that I fell in love with the stairs to the roof of the unit in the right of the picture. A hot summer night and a couple chaise lounges and low lights embedded around the roof edge would set the mood for a rooftop gazing of the stars. A telescope and some piped in music playing some, “Major Tom to Ground Control” by David Bowie, and you have the makings of space travel, with your partner  considering the fact you are on a piece of rock hurtling and spinning through space at 17500 mph. and no one is driving.

     Heck if I didn’t have anyone to share it with, I could get lost up there by myself just enjoying the view. This a dual purpose and as it appears a bedroom below I assume with a walkway to kitchen living room and dining area. I would love to just have the bedroom part sitting over an underground house. The bed would lower from concealment in that high ceiling and adjust to the perfect height. And in the morning if you choose to not make the bed simply push a button and away the bed rises into the loft area where no one can see it.

     This bedroom unit can be factory built also, and delivered by road to your underground house site. Design so the underground spiral stair case comes up into one corner of the bedroom / now slash living room area and you have the perfect utilization of space and able to conform to the 80 per cent mandate of housing below grade, to achieve maximum energy savings yet providing the homeowner with maximum utilization of living space. The perfect combination to alleviate the feeling of being buried as one would get in an underground house. As with any structure and with underground house in particular I would want a minimum of three entrances with no blind alleys in any underground structure. One entrance will never do.

     One entrance is too easy to block with fire and so you would need another and as I said before , I feel 3 would be best as you have little or no windows as an option so you need to have at last another minimum option  to exit in case of fire. It could be an air and light shaft as long as it fitted with a ladder to climb up and out of house in case of an emergency requiring little space and can be covered with a screen or Plexiglas to allow light to pass through and illuminate the area it services.  

     French doors leading out to a downstairs patio walk out would allow you access to the basement area where the kitchen would be handy for cook outs. Bathroom and another bedroom would round out this charming back to nature house that gets you up front and close to nature if landscaped and situated properly. It could easily be built in mass production style and delivered along with the bedroom by truck to the excavated sight. Allowing maximum efficiency and permanent long term usage and renovation as the house and its components will all be designed to last 100 years.

     Many houses now are lasting 100 years so this design requirement would not be out of line and to be expected. The particle board and plastic sided house of today may not be round in 100 years and feel these will have design flaws that will require replacement not long after you pay off mortgage if ever. Siding and other above ground expenses would be eliminated for the most part as you only have one exposed section which is 20 percent of your total square footage.

      I have plans in my head, scary place to keep those things I know, but sometimes it serves me well, anyhow of a light gathering solar tracking device, that by mirrors would reflect light into the underground areas by means of shafts that would extend upward through the earth. Computer tracking of suns path would allow maximum strength of natural light to reflect off mirrors and flood underground portions of house.

      If this house was sitting in the mountains of Colorado, I could easily stop off at my local herb supplier and roll me a fat one and head up to my chaise lounge to watch nature. Back to reality I live in a trailer that is morphed to an old concrete block house, with a round Sears and Roebuck 1940’s era chicken coop on top. May I add it was never used for that purpose as far as I know? One roof I would roll off of and the other I would fall through if I tried to get on them. Reality sucks. But it is what it is. But I can imagine. 

so a cut tree is better ?

Are Real Christmas Trees Necessary?

 Tree-Incarnation: Christmas Trees Return To Nature (A Poem) : NPR

        I am not trying to bah humbug Christmas but as a grower of trees and Christmas trees or pines as I refer to them, I take offense to the wasting of trees for the purposes of Christmas. I am not a big fan of artificial trees either but when our environment is heating up and we need to plant more trees to buffer the effects of global warming. Can we justify continuing to use real cut trees at Christmas for celebrating the event. I used a real tree this year and will plant or sell it to whomever but eventually it will end up being reused as a real tree and continue its life outside doing what it does best. Capturing solar energy and transforming it into fuel. Locking up carbon for 30 to 60 years and providing habitat for small animals. If I kill it the best purpose it has is to release carbon dioxide to the air as well as methane as it decays, and possibly serve as habitat for fish and seashore protection as it rots.

     The average price of a Christmas tree is going for around twenty five a tree and is used primarily for Christmas decoration and is usually destroyed shortly after as it serves no real purpose but to symbolize Christmas. But the destruction starts as soon as you cut the tree. I noticed in an article the other day how different trees symbolize different things in our culture. Oaks represent one thing as well other trees have a purpose of symbolizing their importance. Ten trees were listed and all lived but the Christmas tree or pine that was cut in its infancy to fit into our living rooms and provide no real purpose but to shelter our materialistic need to have a spending holiday, as if we can afford to cut down millions of trees to just have Christmas. It was the number one tree in symbolism, though showing how ignorant we can all be when it comes to giving. What did we give the living thing called a tree but an axe to cut its life short? Hmmmmmm. Food for thought.

       Then to quantify our need for live trees to kill, NPR or national public radio comes out with an article applauding all the uses for cut, spent Christmas trees after we have opened the presents and tore down the trees and hardly retrieved all the tinsel. We now take this to the seashore and use it to help make more sand dunes for the rich and wealthy so that they can rebuild their coastal homes and forbid the common man from sharing it. Sounds like a plan. So we all pay homeowner insurance for them to rebuild after a hurricane and provide them with spent Christmas trees so they can dance along the seashore on sand beaches with their toes in the sand without being bothered by commoners.

     I am not against rich people but instead stupid thinking, as it seems to be rampant today. Most of the time I read NPR and agree with them but this should be a story I felt they should have distanced themselves from. Beach erosion is a natural event and if we lose beach then so be it , we are probably gaining one somewhere else. The trouble is most of us won’t have access to it. Yet we pay for protecting it and if someone loses a beachfront house we couldn’t afford, our homeowners insurance is raised to cover their loss. So why should I care if trees that were intentionally cut down saves anyone’s beach front property. The same goes with all the other uses for a Christmas tree after it is cut. Allowed to grow it would have replaced all the wood lost when the hurricane rolled through. But then again I don’t think we should be paying for any damage to our coasts and that it should be free to tread on by all without any cost to anyone as it should all be public land. No beachfront mansions for anyone.  And if you want to live close enough to an area prone to flooding do so at your own risk and let nature take its course.

     As for Christmas trees, we should look at making artificial trees more realistic and reusable. Maybe install little pine scent tubes in the tips of the branches to get that fresh pine scent and slap some waxy ear substance on them to get that sticky feeling we have come to accept as part of the process. But in the end, to really hold a tree in esteem no matter the variety as we move along on the uncertain path of global warming as if saving a tree's life might be worth saving ours. 

not a bit good.

Well One Resolution Gone to Bust

    And for some stupid reason which I never understand, and as I have done before, is to resolve to write every day in my blog and after the first day I received some information that made me pause and stutter in my writing duties so quickly. It wasn’t bad news but instead information I needed to digest before proceeding along life’s path. Not wanting to say or do the wrong thing but instead find a way to reach out and help someone in need. Still haven’t found that way to help them. Or even know if I should try.

       Instead I just reflected on the time we spent together and what it meant to me. It meant a lot and it is with remorse that I don’t know what to do and figure time will tell me the answer. So that is why there is a delay in writing and frankly I am struggling to come up with topics besides my past dreams to write about.

     I could write about my sexual exploits and how in my drunken days I cavorted around with wild women and did strange drugs , and generally made an ass out of myself and at times not much different than today but you as a reader don’t really want to hear about that. Course when I tell you about my tragedies it does have the highest reading rates. Self-deprecating humor based on agonizing reappraisal of ones self. Well it may be good reading for all of you but tends to leave me a little depressed at times. Thinking of all those good years wasted.

     Another topic might be how I feel. But what I feel is nothing compared to some of stuff others have been through. My grandma when asked how she was doing would always answer, “Not a bit good”, and in fact if she didn’t answer that way I always figured there was something wrong with her as for the last 40 years of her 94 years she lived, she never had a good day. She had plenty but she never let on as everyday was a struggle for her and she never saw the positive in so much, but was always quick to point out the negative.

    Being a recession child and seeing hard times in Monroe County, Ohio, she had it bad and never forgot a thing only until Alzheimer’s had fogged her brain and truly made the last four years of her life “not a bit good”.  In her pre –Alzheimer days she could pick up the Times Reporter newspaper and show me a headline almost daily where another factory closed and was laying off people, she would show it to me as proof that we were in peril. While on the same front page information about a larger company hiring more people than the one laying off would also appear but she would focus on the bad news. It was always if the depression was looming in the background and the bottom was going to fall out.

    You can always find bad news if you are looking for it and as you get older you can always find something that hurts  or doesn’t work as good as it used to. But like autos , when they are new they smell good and run good but put some miles on them and things start going wrong under the hood. Too bad we can’t trade our bodies in and get new ones. Instead we have to live with what we were gave and hope for the best, and try to avoid the worse. This is life.

     Well today we find the farm coated with a fresh snow and during the night which seems to be all the time now, buddy , moms dog, and babe and I made a winter trip to the greenhouse to fuel the wood burner and those cold winds a howling almost took my breath away . I am thankful that I am still able to make the trip but in retrospect and planning decided that next time I buy a greenhouse to attach it to the side of my house if and when I ever do that again. But then like grandma it is adversity or the trek through life that makes us stronger if only in our minds. I have made it through that train wreck, so I can survive anything. You can and you will as long as you keep thinking that way. 

plans?

Plans for 2014

Happy New Year to All

    As we move into this new year it is time of reflection and planning, setting new goals based on your last year’s performance and other factors you may have not have planned on. Some things work and some things don’t. So it is the time to sit and reflect on those things that do and quit wasting time on things that don’t. You can basically apply this to all aspects of your life, including your personal relationships with those you care about and focus on those that care and support your endeavors. More specifically, I am looking at expanding and concentrating on the landscape and nursery business here on the family farm.

    I will be raising plants to sit out. Will have a variety of tomato and pepper plants, as well as other garden varieties to a limited extent for sale this year, and I would much rather you contact me via my email or follow the leads on the blog or my website and now I have added a another Facebook page I think you can leave me messages in the form of posts or regular messages telling me what you want raised to plant. Rather than waste time and resources overplanting trying to guess what everyone wants it is much more efficient preparing what you need.  Look through you seed catalogs and tree information and request plants you would like to buy for 2014. I am looking to have an open house on mother’s day again this year and will try to have food music and a chance to pick up your plants and hanging baskets for the next season. I am hoping to be better organized although I didn’t do too badly for my first year.

    I intend to advertise and market better as it was all I could do to keep up with everything last year. I plan on using help more readily come spring and increase my ability to offer more goods and services. My hours outside of mother’s day when I plan on having my open house will be by apt. it is impossible to make much money having someone sit around and wait for customers to come and visit at will. Call ahead and I will schedule either myself or one of my regular help to be available for your visit.

     I have trees and trees, this year and in a wider variety already potted and ready to plant at cheap prices. From arbor vitae to pines to maples to oaks and will be looking into getting for this year. Weeping willows, giant sequoia, weeping cherry, and apples, but I am always open to new varieties you may want to buy on the cheap. Have some shrubs and perennials but intend to add to what I have establishing perennial garden beds for fresh cut flowers, and bulbs for propagation. The overall emphasis will be on reestablishing working relationship between your wants and growing out the plants you would like to see in your landscape plans.  

      This year I plan on changing the landscaping here on the farm around the yard, creating walking paths and along these paths will install new flower beds and carvings in settings I think they should be in. Will try to get my topsoil screener up and operating and be able to offer topsoil mixed with compost and sand to make an ideal soil for your potting or garden needs , all natural and screened with manure added is composted a minimum of 3 times to assure a complete pathogen kill and complete disintegration of organic compost . I won’t produce nothing I wouldn’t use myself and I am picky. I will be able to load your pickup or bin here at the farm, or deliver with my truck to your residence.

     Like everyone else I made plans for last year, some worked and others didn’t. And in some ways I have come to the conclusion that life is a series of getting it right and getting it wrong. You would always like everything to work out, but then you would just change the game plan come next year till you have it right , and then when you get it right , you wonder what to do next. Not trying to down play the importance of plans but somewhere in all this we have to get something out of all this and that is enjoying what I do. I strongly urge you to plant and seed, reap the harvest, but when the fancy strikes you, sit and smell the roses. Life is always to short. Have a blessed New Year. kev

just a pounding away at this thing.

Problems to Solutions

Part 3

   

     Sometimes when I go off on these rants or about the environment and other forms of society or a society I think I would be envious of or have a desire to possibly live in a situation like I describe, I tend to lose readers. If I tell everyone I screwed up or said the wrong thing and apologize on my blog I am amazed at all the visitors who suddenly come out of the woodwork to view my train wreck. Doesn’t make any sense.

      What does make sense is telling and writing down my ideas even if no one ever reads them. At least they will be there to share with the world in the event they ever show any merit or could possibly make someone else’s life easier or in the worst case offer the world a possible solution someone else can take credit for. I could give a shit one way or the other because it will probably never be of use to me in my lifetime. Seeds are needed to plant for things to live and that is what I am doing seeding ideas to become a reality hopefully someday for someone or for all to enjoy.

      I wish I had the money to begin construction of the first couple of units as I would move in the first one and then offer the second up to sell. Just to get things rolling. If I was building for myself I might go a little on the modest side but would hope to eventually finish the inside and landscape as I wanted eventually. And of course instead of a drive would insist on a tunnel instead to a public parking area from my front door step.

    I would in our area select old strip mine land to use as the sites for my first underground houses. Typically old strip mine scars around the edges of the hill in Ohio would lend themselves to underground house construction as the house being pre-fabricated in a plant would be trucked to the site on a carrier and assembled in the open. This would require a sizable cut or excavation which is in some cases is already done in old strip mine lands. Also typically this land is cheap and plentiful. Also when the construction and all the fill is placed around the house and tunnel area it would in effect work towards reclaiming the land where previous coal and mining operations had scarred the earth. Topsoil and landscaping materials would come in and transform these old strip mines into a modern subdivision and this would eventually become part of the city.

    Also another advantage of using the old strip mines beside the reclamation of unusable land is the fact that  if the land was not stripped; it still would be unsuitable for a level field as it is usually hill side where these properties are located. This is important in terms of reducing water runoff. That you have proper drainage on these slopes to slow the rainfall and reduce erosion as well as provide a source of water for irrigation.

     The house would be constructed in the bottom of a pit and then by means of an excavator or dozer buried till the top 20 percent of the house sticks out of the ground. The soil would be placed in lifts and compacted as the fill area grows till one would reach final grade then landscaping mounds and water ponds would be built to recycle on site water. Mindful all the time that your house is directly below you buried for the most part. I would bring in top soil as that is what I do best. I have organics I would blend with natural topsoil and sand till I get this manufactured topsoil that is far superior to anything that was there before.

    I would work on the last house furthest away on the street I intended to develop and then work my way back to the other end. As you finish one section start another. The reason for this is due to logistics as if you are moving pre-fabricated concrete housing sections down a street you need no obstructions to work around so in your best interest to start furthest away and work back to your point of origin.

       Around the base of these houses I would specify that there exists a bed of stone and drainage pipes looped with cleanouts to a drainage system direct to day light or by means of a sump to assure the dryness of the foundation. Also all buried portions of the house be wrapped in a drainage shield and then sealed in with roof coating to assure the prevention of water entering into the living quarters.

     Once the concrete shell of the house is buried and attached to the tunnel then installation of interior plumbing systems could commence as well as installing solar panels and connecting to the power supply. Run wires and plumbing then finish the interior with different floor and wall applications.

     The sewer or waste system would have a different type of toilet designed to use less water. This system would push the slurry under pressure to the processing facility for methane extraction. Other wastes would include shredded paper and garbage which would be liquefied and pumped through the ram pump through a back flow valve into the tunnel underground to the processing facility. It is important to consider only products that are environmentally safe into the housing development to assure compliance with sewer needs.

     You will have to excuse me as I have no typewritten notes and although I edit I tire easily when writing as my work or especially this subject at times can make me yawn also. And it may be the fact it is almost midnight and I may be getting tired. Preferring the latter explanation over the prior, it is in most cases I am doing this ad-lib though trying to be consistent and heading to a point.  But this one still seems a distance away so will have to end her for the day and pick up again tomorrow.