Tag Archives: 100 Years


What You Perhaps Do Not Know About Heirloom Vegetables

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An heirloom plant is one that has been in cultivation for at the bare minimum a century, but may also refer to much more recent non-hybrid varieties formulated from heirloom stock. The term is applicable to vegetables, natural herbs, flowers, and many fruits. Most types of produce offered commercially are heirlooms, but much more commonly what is offered in the grocery store or in seed catalogs are hybrids which are challenging for the home gardener to grow. Heirlooms are not any more tough to grow than hybrids, and in most situations are less complicated to grow due to the fact of their adaptation to a certain area’s climate. There are literally thousands of types of apples, potatoes, squash, you title. Many of those types can’t stand up to the rigors of commercialization, or they have some quality that helps make them unmarketable. In heirloom varieties, you can find different flavors and exciting physical features.  

If a certain seed was passed down for 100 years, there is a beneficial explanation for that. Heirloom vegetation are time-tested and started before the use of chemicals and fertilizers. Not like state of the art genetically modified types bred to tolerate large quantities of chemicals, these humble old types were bred to be far more resilient. Likewise, heirlooms only exist by virtue of their capacity to develop seed products. With heirlooms, you hypothetically would only have to invest in seeds once and can save your own indefinitely after that. Most many fruits and veggies developed commercially nowadays are essentially genetically identical. Due to this management , if one is susceptible to some new disease or pest, they all are. Heirlooms, by the genetic diversity, guarantee that there will be genetic stock to adapt to altering conditions or sudden diseases. The home gardener by deciding on to grow heirlooms, is assistinga secure  future of that unique crop. Heirlooms crops additionally protect history as they link us with the past like you are developing a small bit of history in your garden as these seeds were handed down through the generations.

Batteries and Solar Energy Systems: Battery Care

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The Lead-Acid battery is the most common in solar energy systems because, while it is the oldest (100+ years), it is still the cheapest and most reliable for the purpose of saving solar-generated electricity.

When these batteries fail, usually one of two things has happened:

A. Lead sulfate has built up on the plates inside the battery. In 80% of all cases of lead-acid battery failures, this is the cause.

B. You have run them down too low too many times.

Sulfation

The biggest cause for failure is the buildup of lead sulfate, called “sulfation”. There are five main reasons why sulfation occurs:

1. You have not been recharging the battery after use

2. The battery charge stays below 75% for an extended period of time

3. When you recharge the battery, you are not fully charging it

4. Your battery is overheating (usually over 100 degrees F) for too long

5. The liquid inside the battery (electrolyte – a combination of sulfuric acid and water) becomes low because of evaporation. This exposes the lead plates to the air and the sulfate crystals start to build up.

Fortunately, there are ways you can fix this. 

The first approach is the easiest … if you have a high-quality 4-state battery charger. The first three stages or sections of the battery charger have to do with normal charging situations. The so-called fourth stage is specifically to help with the problem of sulfation by using something called “battery equalization”.

Equalization is a means of overcharging a battery in a highly controlled way to dissolve the lead sulfate crystals. Since sulfation is the main reason why big storage batteries die, it makes sense to get a charger (or charge controller) that can do this.

The second way is essentially a manual way to do the same thing and would be used if you don’t have one of these sophisticated four-stage charge controllers. You apply an exact charging voltage for certain period of time while watching the temperature of the battery fluid. The process is detailed in an article entitled: Care and Feeding of Your Solar Power Batteries This article gives an even more aggressive procedure if these methods fail. 

Unless sulfation becomes very severe, it is usually fixable. 

Too Many Deep Cycles

The second main reason for battery failure is becoming too discharged too many times. 

For the most part, the less a battery’s reserves are used, the longer it will last. The warning on this is that if you don’t occasionally “deep cycle” it (discharge it enough), it will build up sulfate deposits. However, assuming you are using it down to about 40 or 50% of its total capacity roughly once per month, this shouldn’t be a problem.

The more you deeply drain the battery, the shorter its life. Most lead-acid batteries only want to be drained by 40 or 50%. If you drain it down to, say 20% or less of its total reserve, you may be seriously shortening the battery life. 

So the solution is: DON’T DO IT. 

The article on Solar Power System Battery Basics gives some good guidelines on this subject.

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For anyone building their own home solar power system, this is important information since the storage batteries are the most delicate part of the entire system. There is also good, beginner information on this topic in this Basics of Solar Energy Systems.

What is a Hydro Powered Car?

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hydrogen car
Bill Mann asked:


What do you think of when you see the term “hydro powered car?” Do you picture the high-tech hydrogen powered cars being developed by companies like BMW? Or do you think of a car that somehow uses water instead of gasoline as fuel? Or perhaps one of those old steam-powered monsters that inventors tinkered with 100 years ago? When I think of a hydro powered car, I think of something slightly different, a cross between an all-hydrogen car and one that somehow uses water as fuel. You can call it a hydrogen-gasoline hybrid. Many people just call it a car that runs on water.

The idea of using water directly as fuel is still science fiction. On the face of it, the idea seems absurd. Yet today you can buy hydro powered car kits that use the hydrogen in water as fuel (to supplement the gasoline) in standard automobiles, resulting in much higher mileage.

Why Should You Care?

This kind of hydro powered car certainly isn’t the futuristic all-hydrogen vehicle you may have heard about, or the seemingly magical vehicle that runs on just tap water that we would all love to have. So why should you care about this kind of hydrogen-gasoline hydro powered car? There are lots of good reasons:

If you’ve bought gasoline recently, you know that the price is high and looks to be heading still higher. A hydro powered car can get much higher mileage than an all-gasoline car, which means big savings on gas.

Gasoline comes with lots of baggage. The West’s dependence on foreign oil makes it dependent on countries like Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia for energy. External hostility to the West, along with internal instability and unrest, make it scary to rely on many oil-producing countries. Anything that reduces Western dependence on their oil reduces the risks.

The sad fact is that Americans have a tremendous reliance on gas and the steady supply of it. Most simply don’t live in areas where alternative fuels are readily available. Many Americans must endure lengthy commutes to work, traffic jams and rush hour, not to mention routine errands that can’t be accomplished on foot. Public transportation is an option, however many areas of America don’t offer such services.

Don’t forget pollution. Burning gasoline for fuel pollutes the air. A hydro powered car gets better mileage and so reduces that pollution.

Last but certainly not least, you can convert your own car into a hydro powered car today using readily available parts. You don’t need to wait for the ideal hydro powered car to come out of the auto company labs. You can turn your own car into one and start getting the benefits right away.

How Does This Kind of Hydro Powered Car Work?

How can water, the same substance that comes from your kitchen faucet, be used to fuel your car engine? The key is hydrogen. What is water when you go down to the molecular structure? Two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Get the hydrogen out of the water and mix it with your car’s gasoline and voila! a hydrogen-gasoline hybrid car.

Hydrogen is a highly desirable source of fuel because it delivers lots of energy and burns with virtually no pollutants. But cars that run solely on hydrogen aren’t ready yet and won’t be practical for a while. Using hydrogen as a supplemental fuel is a safe and effective alternative that’s available right now.

Hydro powered car kits available today use electricity to convert common water into hydrogen and oxygen in your car as needed. The hydrogen is immediately mixed with the car’s gasoline and burned, delivering better fuel efficiency and cleaner exhaust. It is an ideal solution for today’s world, and thousands of people around the world have purchased these kits to convert their own vehicle into a hydro powered car.



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