Weeds in Pathways

Patrick has written an interesting post about keeping gravel pathways clear of weeds by using a weed-burner. I think this is an excellent idea! I use a small blowtorch for periodic debugging of the Chook House, preferring to scorch the inside surfaces and roosts rather than use noxious poisons. I confess it has never occurred to me to use it to get rid of weeds. I'm slow, I know...

And weeds, in the veggie-garden paths, have been a perennial bugbear forever.

A year or so ago I had an inspiration for "dealing" with the pathway weeds. A method that differs quite radically from Patrick's strategy, approaching the problem from an entirely different angle. But, in fairness, our circumstances and constraints are completely different. I am not working in a community garden, so I don't have to deal with common pathways, nor with rules about how I may run my garden! Nobody comes to give me dirty looks if I neglect the weeding of pathways!

Nor are my pathways gravelled. I shudder at the thought, since I am wont to wander about the place in my bare feet (and, frequently, barefoot in my head, too) and gravel is  - along with stone chips - one of the nastiest, most barefoot-unfriendly things you can do to the world. Don't.

I freely admit that I had not thought much of my solution to the weed-in-path problem, until Patrick's post made me re-look at it and realise that, perhaps, it is quite a novel idea for some people.

For years I fought the weeds. Sans gravel, this was mostly achieved with a conventional push-hoe, and took me about 15 minutes per pathway. But sometimes it got neglected, and then it ended up taking a bit longer. Especially in Winter, when the Winter grasses take hold with their strong, tough, bushy roots. Then it takes quite a lot more energy. Until my epiphany...

Pennyroyal clumps planted into newly-weeded
pathway. Clumps derive from the bits weeded
out of veggie beds. The whole process is a little
slow to start with, but that's the nature of all
exponential growth systems!

I realised that, outside of metalling the pathways - a concept I dislike - weeds were always going to infest the paths! Given that something always wants to grow in the bare-soil paths, perhaps I'd be better off planting something more manageable and less rampant than the usual motley collection of weeds.

So, for the past year or so, I've been planting and expanding Pennyroyal as my preferred Pathway Plant Of Choice. It mostly keeps the weeds out once established. It grows fairly slowly and is shallow-rooted, so the bits that do grow into the veggie beds themselves are easily sliced out with the spade. It smells great as you walk around the garden, and it's kind to bare feet!

The only downside of Pennyroyal Pathways that I've come across is that, when the Pennyroyal wants to flower, it grows loads of long tendrilly flower-stalks, and the leaf-mat tends to become a bit sparse and thin. This is not a big deal for me, since the rest of the year it presents a dense, and above all weed-resistant, pathway covering.

All win!

Water Tank Disaster

Well, we'd had a lovely bit of rain - over 35mm in the course of a day-and-a-half - and I just said to my wife, "That rain is good enough for Jehovah!" when, stone the crows, but I discover that the water tank that provides a supplementary backup feed to the bathroom is empty. Empty!

When last I checked the water levels of all the tanks - no more than 10 days or so ago - it was full. So clearly we have a leak somewhere. With a little luck it's just the pipeline between the water-tank and the bathroom that's been nicked by the lawnmower or something. (My guess. My fault for never burying the pipe properly.) Without luck it could be the tank itself or the pipework that supports the stopcock. Still, it couldn't come at a worse time. Spring. What looks like being another dry Summer - the third in a row. Just starting to transplant Tomatoes and Chiles, Beans and Squashes just emerging from the ground. Mind you, I did think the dam looked unjustifiably full, this morning, too full even for all this lovely, wonderful rain.

It's a funny thing... went into town for a bit of a change of scenery today, and all the locals are soooo cheerful and happy and friendly... and all because we've had a bit of decent rain. The first in 3 months, and more than we had in August and September put together.

Oh well... I guess the 5000litres is not totally lost; we'll use it in the veggie garden. And besides, all our other water tanks are full, fuller, fullest.

Plumbing Again

First it was the Header Tank.

The Header Tank lives in the roof of the house, and provides cold water to the kitchen and Geyser by gravity feed. Some gunk had found its way into the ball valve that regulates the water inlet. Oh Joy! An hour spent hacking about in the (cooking hot!) ceiling above the main bedroom, doubled over in the cramped, dark, hot and humid ceiling-space, gammy knee complaining all the while about the weird angles it is forced to whilst supporting the weight of Me, whilst simultaneously trying to avoid putting a foot through the ceiling-panels, dismantling and rebuilding fiddly gunky bits. Did I mention it was hot and foetid up there?

Two days later, upon awakening, I stumbled downstairs, mumbled my way to the kettle to start my accustomed Morning Herb Tea (fresh Yarrow, Rosemary and Spearmint, if you must know!) But... no blue light from the kettle! Ugh. A glance at the microwave clock confirmed: No power. Given current circumstances with the State Owned Electricity Kakistopoly I leapt to the obvious conclusion -- a power outage. But no! For once Eskom were off the hook; our Earth Leakage tripswitch had quite perfectly done its job.

Having some days previous noticed a tiny leak from the house water-pump, I immediately and correctly fingered the culprit. Clearly, some water had found its way into the pump electronics or motor. I had already investigated the various cost options for replacing the motor and/or pressure dome and or other associated bits and pieces. But, judging by the evidence, Herr Murphy's Famous Law had beaten me in our race to A Fix Or Bust.

Upon dismantling the various pressure switches, gauges, inlet, outlets and domes, I discovered that the problems were Multiple. First was the Pressure Dome. For mysterious reasons it fills up with water outsidethe rubber bladder that makes it all work. This is impossible. Actually, there is one way this can logicaly happen, and that's if the bladder has a leak. Then it is Bicycle (Puncture) Repair Man to the rescue. Only sometimes, there is no detectable leak. In which case the water, in defiance of all laws of Classical Physics, is somehow osmosing¹ itself through the very fabric of the rubber bladder. Must be something Quantum.

Easily fixed, at any rate. Take the bladder out of the dome, dry everything out. Replace. Repressurise the dome -- which is what makes the whole pressure-switch system work in the first place -- and we're done. Unfortunately, along the way, I discovered the source of the original -- tiny!very tiny! -- leak. The base-plate of the dome had corroded and developed a pinprick-sized hole. A quick trip into town to the farm-supply place confirmed my most jaded guess: Buying a replacement base-plate is not an option. One is forced to buy an entire new pressure dome (including bladder and base-plate) despite the fact that only one piece is faulty. All Hail the Kakistopoly at work!

Nothing daunted, I returned home and got to work with some epoxy resin, and patched the corrosion. Not for the first time, either.

Along the way of fixing the pump and its associated machinery, I decided to replace a couple of the fittings which were badly corroded. Not too surprising after 14 years, really, but I have to ask, who the hell makes water fitting with Steel instead of Brass? I mean, what were they thinking? Had their brains been surgically removed? Or had they simply never heard of Rust? (The lower-left picture tells the story...)

Put all back together, along with a couple of other minor fixes -- like replacing the electrical cable from the motor to the switch, which the manufacturers decided to supply just exactly 5mm too short to allow the entire structure to be assembled in such a way that makes it impossible for water to leak onto the pump electrics, no matter what. All Hail to the Kakistopoly! This involved dismantling the little box housing the electrics and then searching for some of those little round metal wire-connector goodies, which involved...

You get the idea. It is my belief that any single job, if allowed, is fractally composed of smaller jobs that need doing first, each of which is, in turn composed of yet smaller, but conceptually identical (but different in their details and implementation) jobs,... and so ad infinitum.

Stuck the whole business back together. "Throw the Switch, Igor!"

"Yeth, Marthter!"

Click.

Tripped the damn Earth Leakage again, didn't I?

Choices. Life is full of choices. I could move back to Cape Town, get a well-paid job as a software designer or architect, live in a little flat in Kloof Nek or Bantry Bay, and be able to afford hiring Someone Else to take care of this sort of shit, or... I could spend the next couple of hours dismantling the motor to see whether I can dry it out and make it work again, with no assurance that this will work, nor any experience of doing anything vaguely like it before.

Anyway, a solid tap with the hammer got the motor into pieces, and 10 minutes with a hair-dryer had it all nicely dried out. Would it ever work again?

"Throw the Switch, Igor!"

"Yeth, Marthter!"

Click. Hummmmmmmm...

R1200 -- the cost of a new pump -- saved. And only a morning spent. Until the next time.

---

[1] Is there actually such a word?

Plan Be Unplugged

Fit the First

Unless you're living in South Africa, you're probably unaware that the country is in the midst of an Energy Crisis. Rolling blackouts are the order of the day; even the mines -- traditionally the mainstay of the economy^[1] -- are having to deal with major power-cuts.  Stories abound of commuter trains stranded, traffic snarl-ups due to non-funtioning traffic lights, hospital patients dependent on breathing machines having to be "breathed" by manual labour, telephones and network connections that stop working because the local telephone exchange exhausts its backup power. Nobody is untouched. Every one of us has a story of somebody we know being affected in a life- or income-threatening way.

My youngest brother, Richard, owns a factory that produces sugar sticks -- great lumps of crystalised sugar at the end of a stick, for stirring into coffee (or even -- ugh, gods forbid! -- tea!) Signpost to the pointymost peak of Peak Everything Civilisation, I suppose, but there it is. Trouble is, the process of producing a sugar stick takes 3 days. Three days of pernickity temperature differentials, maddeningly-critical evaporation rates and inexplicably unstable solution-flow rates. Three days. Unless the power fails. Then you get to throw away an entire batch -- 5 tonnes -- of sugar solution, and start again, hoping against hope that the power stays up long enough to make a living. It would be one thing if the business were a well-established one, with a stable, understanding and patient customer base, but it's not. They're still a startup. They produce the best quality sugar sticks in the world, at one third the price of their closest competitors, but they're The New Kids on the Block. They've signed some great customers. But those customers will evaporate if they can't deliver the goods. The fact of power-cuts every second day will produce sympathy from the individuals involved who understand the whys and wherefores; but the fact remains... the customers will go away.

The "current" energy problems are totally the responsibility of the government. Despite the public anger at Eskom, the state-owned-and-run electricity monopoly. More than ten years ago (in 1998, to be exact,) Eskom was warning government that, given government's economic growth targets, Eskom would need to build several more baseload power stations to meet the demand. Given that it takes about ten years to build a significant baseload power-station -- not to mention the getting through all the Environmental Impact Assessments and Community Consultation and Planning requirements. At the time, it was Not Politically Convenient to hear this message, so Mbeki's cabinet ignored it. So we sit with Economically Significant Power Cuts.

Recently some government schmuck tried to suggest that the power shortage was a result of Apartheid-Era Planning -- The Usual Scapegoat. Oh how we laugh! (I'll bet it was my "friend" Arshole Alec, the Arithmetically Challenged Minister Who Has Shot His Bolt. Whilst the apartheid regime certainly left us with lots of horrible legacy, this particular clusterfuck came about on the ANC's watch. The Old Nats (may they rot in hell) would never have permitted such sloppy planning! (whatever else they may have turned a blind-eye to...)

Premonition of the Great Unwinding. We South Africans are the Pathfinders. We are the first to glimpse the course of Energy Descent. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, we go.

Fit the Second

For the couple of years I've had DSL internet service, it has been great. In the face of country-wide complaints (verging on rioting, mayhem and life-threats to Telkom's management) about the Totally Fucking Useless National Telco I have been a lone voice in the wilderness saying what a great DSL service I get. Well bite my shiny metal ass blow me down. A major service outage about ten days ago. Two days of frustration and stress and hours (literally!) on hold. "Thank You For Your Patience. Your Call ''Will'' Be Answered As Soon As A Customer Service Agent Is Available." It wears a little thin after an hour, I'll tell you! This, right at the time when the small flow of money I'm earning is totally dependent on that thin strand of copper I call "The Internet." It all came right in the end, only to be followed by another failure last Friday. The line is still down.

Fit the Future

So this is the face of the powerdown. Not in a cataclysmic implosion, does our civilization die, but little piece by little piece. Some things will undoubtedly get better even as other parts of the technological iceberg disintegrate. Not a single all-in-one unravelling of the Jersey of Warm Fuzziness, but one loose thread at a time.

Even as cellphone service improves and prices fall, fixed-line service goes down the toilet. Even as our air-force's latest toys scream by overhead, petrol prices are at an all-time high, and people are wondering why food prices seem to have skyrocketted, too. Can there really be such a disconnect in peoples' understanding?

'Tis the season for Growing Corn in Rheenendal, and never before have I seen as much acreage^[2] dedicated to growing Maize. Most of it, I am guessing, contracted to American biofuel companies. Why do I not feel Warm and Fuzzy like this is a reasonable and sustainable way to provide the energy needs of 6 or 10 or 12 billion people striving to live a first-world lifestyle, driving their Hummers to collect the kids from school^[4], annual holidays in another hemisphere and fresh Canadian Salmon for Summer Snacks?

The Unterste Schürer^[5]

In a low-energy future -- and we're going to have one, whether we like it or not -- the planet cannot sustainably support so many of us. I realise that I risk the wrath of feminists everywhere (and The Pope^[7]) but we face simple choice: reduce our numbers in a managed way, or have Gaia reduce them in an unmanaged way.

What's your choice?

----
[1] South Africa still produces something like 50% of the world's gold each year, not to mention a host of rare and obscure minerals that turn out to be totally essential to modern industry. Stuff like Cadmium and Tantalum, Vanadium, Ytterbium^[3]. In recent years, though, tourism has generated more jobs and revenue to than even gold mining.


[2] Somehow "hectarage" just doesn't sound the same.


[3] http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html


[4] I couldn't make it up if I tried. Not to mention that home and school are the daunting distance of some 800m apart! I sure that Little Darling's legs would break if they walked that far.


[5] Yiddish^[6]. "The Bottom Line".


[6] Spelling optional.


[7] Not noted for his Feminist sympathies, I'll note^[8].


[8] "A note? A-Flat^[9], I'm sure.  My Mother gave the gift of perfect pitch, you know!"


[9] ...or, given the state of the electrically-disconnected South African gold mines, A-Flat-Minor!

Pump Action

We have two water pumps around the place: one providing irrigation water from the small Earth-dam next to the house, the other pumping our household water from the main storage tanks to a header-tank in the roof of the house.  Having installed our own plumbing, and water being a bit important, keeps us very tuned to the behaviour of the machinery we rely upon.  Let the water pump cycle even a fraction of a second too short, and I am instantly aware that there's a problem.

Over several weeks the house-pump has been cycling in ever shortening durations, and I'm well familiar with what that means...

Digression: The Inner Life of Pumps and Pressure Switches

The pump is controlled by a pressure-switch, which in turn relies on a rubber-bladder inside the pressure-dome. I've also heard it called a surge tank.  The rubber bladder gets filled with water, compressing the bubble of air between the bladder and pressure-dome, until there is sufficient back-pressure to overcome the spring in the pressure switch.  There are more modern electronic versions of pressure switches that do away with the need for pressure-domes, and I am told they're very reliable, but they were not around when we built and plumbed our house, and I see no real need for another expense to replace a perfectly serviceable setup.

Every so often, though, the bladder wears out and develops a pucture, and water seeps through to the wrong side of the bladder.  This means that there's less air to make everything work, and the pump trends towards switching in ever-shorter cycles, which, if neglected, will have the pump destroy itself.  So everything has to come apart, as pictured here, the bladder replaced, then put back together again.  Only this time, I was feeling a bit miffed at a bladder that has lasted a bare 18 months.  I should check inside the pressure-dome and check that there's not a rough spot sandpapering through the rubber.  The bladders are also getting quite expensive!

Invent Another Way

Out came an old bicycle puncture-repair kit.  Puncture located. Patch applied.  Whan, bang and we're back in action.  If it works.

After all, the whole thing is under about 4 bar of pressure.  And being flexed and bent all the time.  Neither of which is normal for a bicycle tube.

Only way to find out is to put it all back together; suck it and see.

Putting the bladder and pressure-dome back together, bolting the baseplate on securely, and threading the whole thing back onto the 4-way joint that ties everything together without causing any leaks is only part of the story, though.  The pressure-dome still needs to have air pumped into it through a tyre-valve on the top.  Normally about 1.5 to 2 bar of air pressure is plenty -- this is all about just having the air in place, rather than creating any tremendous pressure.  I have tried using a small 12-volt pressure pump such as you might carry in the pickup for emergency tyre pumping, but, to be honest, it takes so long to fill the pressure-dome that I'm better off using an ordinary handraulic tyre-pump.

There's Always Another Job Along the Way

Out comes the tyre-pump, only to find that the hose has perished and broken.  It's Saturday afternoon, and the hardware shops are all closed for the weekend.  Close examination reveals that most of the length of hose is still OK -- only one end was badly perished.  So, a little action with knife and a hose-clamp, and we're back in action.

Now we know why the shed is filled with a rich and varied assortment of plumbing bits, glues, wire, spare parts and piping of various descriptions.

Happily my patch-job seems to be holding well, though it remains to be seen how long it will last.  The saving of a couple of hundred bucks was a good win, but more importantly, the feeling that comes of having dealt with the problem, having refused to accept defeat in the face of niggling problems and difficulties -- that's the big win.

Post Script

I do plan to install a hand- or wind-driven backup pump for the house water.  That's partly the reason that the plumbing system was designed as a gravity-feed setup in the first place.  Right now we have water sufficient for about 3 or 4 days without power to pump water up to refill the header tank.  And it has happened a couple of times that we've been without power for that long as a result of storm damage.  In these situations we're still able to use inside water, bath, etc. where our much more modern and clever neighbours are forced to do without.

The catch is that I expressly do not want a manufactured pump, but something I can totally build myself from scratch, so that I am not at all reliant on any factory-engineered bits and pieces that would instantly become unobtainable should "everything go Pear-shaped."

I'm Afraid You Have Cows, Mr Brown

Apologies to Gary Larsen.

A neighbour's cows broke free yesterday, and were most attracted by my luscious little Tomatoes and Chillis - or more likely by the lush Kikuyu growth. (Doesn't it sound like a great movie title? "When The Cows Broke Free." Directed by Hitchcock. Or perhaps Woody Allen.)

Eight cows of various ages and sizes wandering around a veggie garden is a fast recipe for disaster. Fortunately OB The PhD was wide awake and alerted us almost immediately, so we were able to chase them off without too much catastrophe. The neighbour who they belong to is very ummmm.... insular? Keep to themselves. Their families have lived here for generations, and, even after eleven years and sundry attempts to "make contact" we are still considered "uitlanders" (foreigners.)

We do have a gate to close our entrance, but it seldom gets used since there is (normally) no threat. I am pretty sure that a farm worker left their gate improperly secured, and, for cows, grass is always greener elsewhere! Especially in veggie gardens.

We lost a few plants that got trampled - unfortunately one of the just-starting-to-flower Cherokee Purple Tomato bushes among them :-( but otherwise got off quite lightly.

Never truer, the saying, "Good fences make good neighbours."  (Unless the fence in question is 2.5m high and highly electrified and reinforced with multiple layers of mesh of various gauges.  But that's another story for another day.)

Shit Happens

One of the joys of self-sufficiency is dealing with your own shit.  After considering all (and I do mean all!) alternatives, we installed a septic-tank system, followed by a reed-bed system for secondary and tertiary treatment of our blackwater.

Invaluable in our research and design were the book "Sewage Solutions: Answering the Call of Nature", the Centre for Alternative Technology's pamphlets "Constructed Wetlands and Reed Beds" and "Making Use of Grey Water in the Garden".  I see that these last two are now available from CAT as PDF downloads!  If ever you have the chance to visit CAT (in Wales) it is very well worth spending a day.  I would love to go there again, since there were many new developments still in the works when J and I visited in about 2000.

Septic-tank systems do have a significant downside, though.  A septic tank is, after all is said and done, nothing more than a settling tank.  About 4% of what goes into them is insoluble, and cannot be washed out or broken down by bacteria, so after some years of usage the septic tank tends to silt-up.  More fastidious waste-system designers recommend pumping the tank out every year - probably simply to avoid running foul of local waste-management regulations.  Actual mean-time-between-pumping depends totally on the number of people using the system, size of the septic tank and frequency of toilet flushing.

It has now been about 6 years since last we had our septic tank emptied, and it has reached the point where the inlet tends to easily block, particularly if we have guests staying, as we have had for the past several weeks.  Eventually I have the delightful job of opening the tank and prodding the errrr...  mass?... with a stick until the inlet unblocks and everything runs normally again for a while.

Ultimately I have to face the fact that we need to get the "sucking Suzie" up here to pump the contents out.  The very real problem, though, is that the municipality charge R1200 (at last enquiry, some years ago) for this service, and this is, not to put too fine a point on it, more than we can presently afford.

Of course it is possible to empty the tank "by hand" - using a bucket, but one is still faced with the problem of disposing of the contents whilst keeping the peace with one's neighbours, and avoiding polluting downslope water.

I will have to toss the entire problem into the laps of the municipal bureaucracy.  Can't wait!

If a Tree Falls...

If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

We are not able to answer that question definitively (though some claim to.)  However, we can definitely state that if a tree falls across the road, and there's no one there to hear it, you're sure to get an early-morning phone call from irate neighbours who are going to be late for work and school.

A tree at the bottom-end of our property has been leaning further and further for months, now, ever since the heavy rains softened the soil.  Really there are about four of these trees, stacked like dominoes waiting to be knocked over.  They are a formidable challenge to bring down, since any disturbance would set off a chain reaction.  Dangerous stuff.

An early phone call from our next-door neighbour let us know that one of the trees had finally made it down to ground-level, blocking all traffic on the road.  Off I went, chainsaw and slasher in hand, to clear the road.  A good, energetic start to the day, and we'll have plenty of firewood when I finish clearing the mess.

It's incidents like this that highlight the differences between our community of relatively-self-reliant people, and townies.  In a town or city people would be less inclined to jump in and sort out the problem; more likely to wait for the Council to send a team to sort things out.  Really the problem was quite a minor one, and it took us no more than 15 minutes to clear enough of the fallen tree that vehicles can pass normally.  If we'd waited for the Council to send someone, we'd probably still be waiting 6 hours later.

Similarly, when the road was being washed away by heavy rains, we were all out there, sodden, helping to clear a drainage ditch.  Or when potholes appear in the (dirt) road, someone eventually gets sufficiently irritated to dig some gravel from the roadside and fill the hole.  Much healthier for our own state of mind; much healthier for our relationships with our neighbours; much healither for community-building.

As soon as the rain stops I'll get out there and clear things a bit better and collect my firewood.