Life Goes on - Summer 2024

I am buying some microgrees trays this week, hopefully that will help with much healthier nutritions, grow indoors all winter long with grow lights, today I was thinking ,how long would a 10 horse Genset run on 35 gallon charcoal to run grow lights 6-8 hours a day.?

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GOT my dodge dakot burning smoke yesterday for its first time, though it don’t have enough vacuum to keep reaction flowing, I may have too open my burn tube port to the heat exchanger, since I did not follow the book on that one plumming port, I got room to open port if I pull the gasifier out or the truck, though I got a tone on leaks to fix, I forgot to weld the pipe going to the heat x changer, less than half way around, leaks like a seive, are cleaner needs silicon on base, hopper lid need grease or more or tar to seal it better, and nearly a dozen pin holes too pop some hot mig at it.THE old reverse pusher blower works great finding leaks and burning up some too small tight charbed.

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I think @d100f could answer that question better

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If you just want sprouts you don’t need any lights at all for them. I have that setup somewhere it takes tons of seeds but you get seeds for a decent price. The system i had was a plastic housing with a water tray and a fan that would blow air over the water based on a timer to get a certain humidity in the case. But the humidity wasn’t to critical a 12 volt battery would run it for a very long time if you where off grid.
When i raised them i had them in a room with very poor light and they did great all winter.

I bought seeds there years ago now. I should get that out this winter it is nice to have the fresh sprouts in the winter.

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Hi Cody,i am growing some tomatoes from seed right now under grow lights i have 3 types of lights and they are all LED so use next to no power what so ever, i run 2 lamps day and night and the combined electric in 24 hours the whole of sep was 2 or 3 lights 24 hours and total power usage was 7.4kwh ,not sure how many or the wattage of your lights but i can run 13 hp inverter generator pulling all it can power wise maybe 5 kw once you factor in power loss from wood gas .on around your 35 gallon mark it would last me maybe 2 hours before it started getting hot and losing power .
if you cant use grid power for that then solar pannels an a couple of batteries will work fine i think .
Dave

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What frequencies are you using?

I was going to say use led lights because they use far less power and you can run them off a battery bank. If you go that route then you only need to run the generator for 1-2 hours. Plus the lifetime of the bulbs is insanely long which is good for SHTF. Unless it is emf, then all bets are off, but the strips of lights are really cheap and easy to tuck away in a faraday cage.

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THANKS for info on char usage, I like the idea of solar panels with batteries too NOT GOT ANY YET. I might charcoal power my old Pontiac vibe, just to get my feet wet in charcoal gasifiers learned though. PROBLEY burn less at a slow idle just for led grow light or two? I am buying two about 14" flat square led boards for grow lights for 49.00, is that a good type grow lights. THANKS.

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Hi Sean i have no idea on frequencies to be honest , they were gifted to me by Brian who just bought them on line a few years ago but he never used them , so they came my way , the seedlings seem to be growing at a good rate so that’s all i know
Dave

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I replied about this on your other post on Thrive off grid about running on batteries but about grow lights. These are the ones I’ve been using for several years now. They work well.

Since I’ve been buying cheap 7000 Lumen shop lights for back up preps. As long as they are at least 5500 K they work just as well. Full spectrum doesn’t really matter according to my research.

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THAT looks like better deal than the flat plate type THANKS TOM,I have not bought the flat ones so I will buy these instead.

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We had another night of hard Frost now.
So the garden is now mostly stopped; gone, or going.

The Wife made a clean-up the garden beef-vegetable stew yesterday:


Me and the three dogs think it is wonderful. Eating it down to find her magic soup nail.

Our foreign exchange student teenager thinks it is another trick American food dish to get her to eat more vegetables.
Yep.
S.U.

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Sounds like the story of Stone Soup from the Napoleonic era.

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The mountains looking forward to the west side were all covered in a heave snowing frost this morning. Dark rain clouds moved over them and then the snowy white was gone in minutes. Winter is approaching us too Steve. That soup looks wonderful and tasty. Soup and stew season is upon us.

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Yeah. Yeah.
Cold rain began just an hour ago.
Time now for some wet dog drying woodstoving:


Many many woodgasifing lessons in this now evolved-down, settled-in fire.
The lower edge showing just above the door glass has a full cut now charred piece of DF 2x6 showing the growth grain pattern.
BobMac it is outgassed pulsating just like you and I have observed and talked about. Seeing is believing.
Just to the left of that is a hot char pocket making combusting blue flames.
Blue flames too off the top of the 2x6 cut off piece now surface char converted.
Orange translucent flaming mid-level on the left and right hand sides.
Dense whitish luminescent flaming top center being heated air fed by the across top secondary burn air tubes.

Hurump. Be burning the last of the old rot weakened decking wood; and very mixed speceies discarded old wooden furniture for all of this month, maybe into November. Glass smoking stuff.
Hard to wait to get to the actual real fire wood in the tree felled wood. It has familiar in its consisntnecy.
Regards
Steve Unruh

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About to kick up first fire of winter here as well, cold driving rains falling

Really puts a damper on production of outdoor projects. The warm stove makes for comfy sitting and reading instead of cold wet working

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And now a fully evolved in-place all char heating burn:


Very enjoyable, boring.
Enjoy, but do not stir disturb this fragile DF softwood char. Time it down to ~20% remains before the next new woods add to maximize radiant glow heating to the other side of the room.

Odd the computer screen reflection in the door glass??
S.U.

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NOOooooooo

You Washington guys keep your winter to yourselves! 69F and sunny in Idaho, and we’re hoping it holds for a little while longer. Nights have been frosty, but for most of those nights we were able to run sprinklers and buy a bit more garden time. A little more from the garden, and a little more wood under cover, and we’ll be happy to enjoy the fire. Truth to tell, I’ll almost surely fail to get everything done that should be done before the snow flies. It’s been that way for the eight winters we’ve been here. But it’s also true that we’ve been fine (or better) each of those years. God is good. I’m thankful, if borderline incompetent :slightly_smiling_face:.

Warming your back while reading DOW? Excellent use of time!

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Same here guy’s, cold mornings and evenings in Sweden too.


Maybe the second best use for wood :blush:

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In north central North Carolina about 80 F degrees today. Still running AC part-time. No heat needed yet. Supposed to turn fall-like next week.

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That’s wild after the hurricane

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