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I’m a bit more sensitive because my dad has had to drill yet another well because the grapes are soaking up all the water.
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Dec 16, 2023 23:42
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MarcusSA posted:I’m a bit more sensitive because my dad has had to drill yet another well because the grapes are soaking up all the water. Yowch. Western water law is so hosed, and will remain so.  Sympathies to your dad.
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Dec 17, 2023 00:11
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Just want to acknowledge that we're getting way off topic here but QuarkJets posted:You won't starve you'll just be limited eating corn, wheat, or soy Yeah it's this There's some kind of legal hierarchy of water rights, senior water rights holders have the right to all the water for some water shed, and are allowed to lease/sell junior water rights downstream, and then artificial reservoirs have their own system (or something) Basically if you have land with water rights, you have the right to either (depending) 1) pump unlimited water out of the canal/s, mostly provided by one of three rivers/watersheds 2) drill any number* of wells and pump any amount of water out of the local aquifer(s) The end result is with your *California has recently changed the rules around drilling wells, the permitting process is a lot harder now and you basically can't drill a new well on any land smaller than, I forget exactly but 2-5 acres**, kind of surprised Marcus' Dad was allowed a new well permit **Most new construction in rural areas is on 10 acres because you need the land to site a leech field ++ meet well drilling rules I spent most of lockdown planning to buy a piece of 12 acres in gold country
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Dec 17, 2023 00:27
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Yeah it’s 40+ acres. His neighbor is a vineyard who have drastically dropped the water table over the last few years. Luckily he could afford it.
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Dec 17, 2023 00:38
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Pretty certain the US of A could find a way of producing all those crops some other place with more available water.
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Dec 17, 2023 09:40
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I vote we start with annexing the "golf" section
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Dec 17, 2023 09:54
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I like that Weyerhaeuser has its own category.
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Dec 17, 2023 14:31
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I don't like that one bit.
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Dec 17, 2023 17:10
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distortion park posted:Pretty certain the US of A could find a way of producing all those crops some other place with more available water. A writeup on growing celery in the garden. quote:It may be versatile in the kitchen, but celery is finicky in the garden. The first challenge is that you must live in a place that has a long, cool growing season when the soil will stay consistently moist. This can be during the spring or fall, but most varieties take around 140 days to reach maturity. That means you'll need to live in a place where you can provide these environmental conditions for almost five months. Celery will grow best between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and while it doesn't like hot weather, it is also damaged or killed when temperatures drop below freezing. In some regions, celery's requirements can be met by using some gardening tricks like frost cloth and starting seeds indoors.
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Dec 17, 2023 18:05
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Ok well let’s start with almonds and grapes. Everything else is ok.
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Dec 17, 2023 18:07
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MarcusSA posted:Ok well let’s start with almonds and grapes.
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Dec 17, 2023 19:05
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Few places in the US have the climate and soil to grow the grapes that make quality wine. I could make the argument that we are way over producing wine at this point. It’s not a necessity food. I love wine but we could definitely cut back and manage it better.
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Dec 17, 2023 19:30
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distortion park posted:Pretty certain the US of A could find a way of producing all those crops some other place with more available water. Man, really feeling the idle/fallow in my region right now.
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Dec 17, 2023 19:44
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MarcusSA posted:I could make the argument that we are way over producing wine at this point. It’s not a necessity food. Wine is also being grown all over OR and WA, but also the east coast, and a bunch of states inbetween; even Texas has a bunch of vineyards, they're all over the US. CA is far being being the only place where you can grow wine (except insofar as a wine person might say "every vineyard is unique").
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Dec 17, 2023 19:51
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They even have vineyards in Canada! That was actually a really cool wine tour and we had no idea it was even a thing there.
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Dec 17, 2023 19:57
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I've been to vineyards in Illinois and while I wouldn't call the wine there as good as more traditional ones, it was certainly fine as a red table wine as a meal with dinner sort of thing. I'm pretty sure I've seen wineries here in Wisconsin too (the fallow part of the map), but I couldn't tell you the quality since I don't drink anymore.
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Dec 17, 2023 20:17
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Hadlock posted:It's free money That does seem high. Is it possible that your garage is so well sealed to the outside that the combustion air for your appliances is mostly being replaced from the house's conditioned air? I know that the reason our mudroom (10'x9'x10') gets so cold when the furnace is running and the door to the rest of the house is closed is that the furnace is primarily pulling air from the (vented, cold) crawlspace.
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Dec 17, 2023 20:29
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QuarkJets posted:Wine is also being grown all over OR and WA, but also the east coast, and a bunch of states inbetween; even Texas has a bunch of vineyards, they're all over the US. CA is far being being the only place where you can grow wine (except insofar as a wine person might say "every vineyard is unique"). Whoops, I was being a California snob. 
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Dec 17, 2023 21:02
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QuarkJets posted:Wine is also being grown all over OR and WA, but also the east coast, and a bunch of states inbetween; even Texas has a bunch of vineyards, they're all over the US. CA is far being being the only place where you can grow wine (except insofar as a wine person might say "every vineyard is unique"). If you're growing wine in California, no you're not. You're just biding time through agricultural subsidies until some developer buys your land.  I forget who exactly it was (maybe one of the Franzia folks?) at a winemakers' conference in Napa who basically called that out. Their line was something like "Real winemakers go to Oregon. The rest of us are land developers with tax incentives" or something to that effect.
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Dec 17, 2023 21:59
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Douche4Sale posted:I've been to vineyards in Illinois and while I wouldn't call the wine there as good as more traditional ones, it was certainly fine as a red table wine as a meal with dinner sort of thing. Yeah there's fruit wineries up north, they make some good stuff
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Dec 17, 2023 22:23
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My dad and his brother put in a bunch of white grapes about a decade ago on their land in SW Wisconsin. The soil in the Coulee region is actually pretty good for grapes I guess. He doesn't produce wine, just sells the grapes to wineries. But they've had trouble finding buyers the last few years and are scaling back now. Which is fine, it was all mostly a tax dodge to keep his income low and provide an excuse to buy a bunch of new Anyways there's vineyards and wineries pretty much everywhere.
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Dec 18, 2023 07:16
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Realized a little while ago that my hot water heater is old enough to drink. Going to replace it some time this winter to avoid tempting fate. It's just a standard vent gas water heater. Any reason to not just replace it with the same size Rheem from home depot? Don't really want a tankless.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:10
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FISHMANPET posted:My dad and his brother put in a bunch of white grapes about a decade ago on their land in SW Wisconsin. The soil in the Coulee region is actually pretty good for grapes I guess. He doesn't produce wine, just sells the grapes to wineries. But they've had trouble finding buyers the last few years and are scaling back now. Which is fine, it was all mostly a tax dodge to keep his income low and provide an excuse to buy a bunch of new There’s at least one in every US state, I’m pretty sure.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:12
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Lawnie posted:There’s at least one in every US state, I’m pretty sure. Undoubtedly. And everyone who's in the wine industry knows you can grow wine grapes anywhere. It's why they are selling stories and affinity as much as product.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:18
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I was looking for low effort crops that would be good to grow in the lovely sandy swamp sands of far eastern north Carolina. Grapes actually grow great in poor quality sand. Apparently. The issue is the very high swamp humidity causes leaf rot (supposedly). Except for the trash super sweet wine grapes (muscadine) they use to make that disgusting, literal bottom-shelf super sweet headache inducing wine. That said I was able to find a couple of vineyards in eastern NC who were growing very limited amounts of pinot and syrah. Maybe an acre between two vineyards total. Agree you can grow white wine grapes pretty much anywhere Red wines, you want a region with little to no rain August-October to stress the plants slightly and add more acid to the grape. OR you can just buy grapes that have the right qualities from somewhere else and blend them together with your grapes
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Dec 18, 2023 18:36
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stealie72 posted:Realized a little while ago that my hot water heater is old enough to drink. I'm in this same boat, though mine is merely old enough to drive. My plan is to replace it when my FIL visits this coming spring. Something I'm curious about with this old water heater. I haven't done any scientific measuring, but my wife and I get the sense that for the first shower in the morning, there's not as much hot water as subsequent showers. My instinct is telling me that the water is cooling off a bit and the heater isn't keeping it quite to temp overnight, but then once it fires up and refreshes the tank it gets it to my set temperature. Is my intuition correct here, and would a new water heater be better about keeping the tank at temperature?
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Dec 18, 2023 18:54
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We have the same behavior on our water heater. I usually run the sink on hot water for 5 min before stepping in the shower. I wonder if that's an energy star thing? No need to keep the water temp at 150F from 9pm-6am, people are sleeping, maintain it at 115F which uses probably half the energy, then from 9am-5pm maintain it at 115F when people are (probably, pre covid) at work all day. You only need 150F water for about 90 minutes two times a day (for an "average" family) the rest of the time you'd save a lot of energy keeping the water temp borderline hot. I don't think it has a clock but based on the thermostat alone it can probably tell when it's in active heating vs maintain temp mode and can switch between the two pretty reliably. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 19:28
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FISHMANPET posted:I'm in this same boat, though mine is merely old enough to drive. My plan is to replace it when my FIL visits this coming spring. I doubt it's anything beyond the energy loss to warm up the piping in your home. What do you have it set to? Have you measured the temp of the water?
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Dec 18, 2023 20:19
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Hadlock posted:We have the same behavior on our water heater. I usually run the sink on hot water for 5 min before stepping in the shower. Wouldn't this be the use case for tankless pretty much? On demand hot water and the rest of the time its whatever
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Dec 18, 2023 20:37
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StormDrain posted:I doubt it's anything beyond the energy loss to warm up the piping in your home. What do you have it set to? Have you measured the temp of the water? Like I said I haven't gone as far as testing any temperatures or anything, it's all just vibes right now. I've got the heater up pretty high, I think around 140, and then the shower has a mixing valve in it so the water won't come out at that temperature even at the max. We've noticed it even if we wait like 30-45 minutes to take the second shower which seems like it should be enough time for the copper piping to cool back down. It's a relatively short run, 10-12 feet from the water heater to the main plumbing cavity, then up from the basement past the 1st floor into the second floor, over about 4 or 5 feet, then it's coming out of the shower.
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Dec 18, 2023 20:43
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I've had similar behavior in water heaters and I always assumed that it was the result of the top element running, creating a situation where at least some of the water coming out of the tank is actually above the setpoint even though the temperature as measured by the thermostat hasn't picked up enough to turn the element back off. Could be entirely bullshit, though.
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Dec 18, 2023 20:59
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stealie72 posted:Realized a little while ago that my hot water heater is old enough to drink. You could consider getting a heat pump water heater, they're a lot more efficient if you have the amperage to spare
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Dec 18, 2023 21:37
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Lawnie posted:There’s at least one in every US state, I’m pretty sure. They're are a bunch of vineyards in Virginia. Virginia wine is best described as "potable."
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Dec 18, 2023 23:16
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stealie72 posted:Realized a little while ago that my hot water heater is old enough to drink. You know you don't have to wait for years to drink out of them, right? The water is good when they're new too.
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Dec 18, 2023 23:29
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I am pretty sure our backwater valve saved us from having poo poo back up into the house today. We got like 2+ inches of rain in 8 hrs or so... this morning the toilet was acting strange, like it wasn't fully draining. As the ground dried out it started working better and better, and now it's fine. With the timing of the rain and the malfunction, I can't see what else would have possibly done that... if true, it was worth every dollar getting it put in (even though the guys doing the CIPP said "you won't need it after we're done"). We don't have combined sewer/stormwater here, but the sewage pipes are all ancient. They recently camera'd a bunch of the mains, and did spot repairs with CIPP.
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Dec 19, 2023 01:04
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Sundae posted:You know you don't have to wait for years to drink out of them, right? The water is good when they're new too.
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Dec 19, 2023 02:37
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stealie72 posted:This seems the most appropriate thread for dad jokes... I mean, there's always the parenting thread, except we'd all break down crying if we heard even one more of them.
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Dec 19, 2023 05:22
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Our septic guy says he thinks it's highly unlikely we'll lose the house, so there's that. I spent the weekend genuinely worried that the house would become legally uninhabitable. He doesn't think so. Local authorities are unlikely to say "sucks to be you, move it."
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Dec 19, 2023 06:09
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Homeowners thread: Our septic guy says he thinks it's highly unlikely we'll lose the house
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Dec 19, 2023 16:56
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Apparently having a well means that losing power means losing water. That should have been obvious if I ever thought about it but I didnt. It is less than ideal. Not being able to flush for a day and a half is a real bummer during what is otherwise one of my favorite things. Anyone know anything about getting a backup system installed? Because I dont even know where to start or how much I should be expected to pay for it. Can you attaching a camping genny to a house?
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Dec 19, 2023 17:42
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