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Ryan
Ryan
13 years ago

Buying with cash has its rewards. Last year the A/C in my wife’s van went out. It was the start of summer in Memphis, so it wasn’t too bad, but we got a couple of quotes and started saving cash. Finally we are close to what we need (estimate plus some extra since there was going to be some diagnostic tests done to see if anything else failed). I took the van to a small, “mom & pop” shop that was recommended to me. 2 days later when I was called to say the van was ready I headed to the bank to the get the cash, arrived at the garage (thanks to a co-worker) and got the total and started counting $100.00’s. The bill was $1180.00, when I got to $1k in cash the owner of the garage asked “is that 10 of those?” When I said “yes”, he replied “that’s good, your paid up, here’s your keys.”
So, I saved $180 on a repair bill by using cash! yes I still use that garage for car stuff I can’t do, and I still pay in cash and still get discounts.

Viktor
Viktor
13 years ago

No Jack it’s more like $145 us 😉

Great stories today people.

CPH
CPH
13 years ago

Jack,
I wonder if the reason so many people are returning unwanted prep item is that they were charged on their close-to-the-limit credit cards.

bigbear
bigbear
13 years ago

That’s one of my favorite SNL skits! Thanks for the laugh!

KAM
KAM
13 years ago

@Jack,

These dolts with “buyers” remorse are just low key mobs, acting without any thought in their heads. They’re mindless when they do nothing, they’re mindless when they buy a generator.

These are the Hoarders, emptying shelves ahead of any weather event.

On the flip-side, I was listening to a report about a Home Depot in Florida that had filled its aisles with storm-prep stuff, but that people were “holding off.” These people are just as insane as those who rush out to buy. Why the heck don’t you people in common Hurricane zones not have things ON-HAND to deal with your weather?

It is very scary to realize that the common sense of our Grandparents has so quickly been bred out of the majority of the populace.

Insidious
Insidious
13 years ago

you think cash is hard to let go of.. try aocs rounds!

thinking about parting with my precious metals turns me into a downright miser

Frogger
Frogger
13 years ago

I’m surprised the guy who returned his generator to Home Depot was a supposed contractor. I do handyman work on the side and wouldn’t be without a generator for that reason, let alone a disaster.

Russell Davis
13 years ago

The Onion (a fake news site) put out this a little while ago…. So funny… the SNL clip reminded me of it.

Visa Exposed As Massive Credit Card Scam
http://www.theonion.com/articles/visa-exposed-as-massive-credit-card-scam,21136/

Evan Young
Evan Young
13 years ago

Hi from Australia. RE: KEYPOINT DAMS. I think you got this in reverse when you were talking about Keypoint dams. Because of their location they have a very efficient amount of water storage vs the amount of material used in the dam wall, the opposite of what you said 🙂 This is one of the key benefits of these dams. Here is a link to Permaculture Master Darren Doherty explaining Keyine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWKyv9Hbak

Evan Young
Evan Young
13 years ago
Reply to  Evan Young

We might be agreeing here and I am just being technical, if so I apologise.
The contour line of the keypoint is used as the water level for a keypoint dam, or pond as you guys would call it. Given that the ridges on either side of a keypoint get further apart as you move downslope, the further you go down the more material you will have to move to impound the water as the wall will have to be much wider.
Adding swales will increase the catchment of a dam as will adding v-drains or roads which can serve the same function.

Travis
Travis
13 years ago

If anyone’s paying down/off their credit card, take a moment to look at the statements (I’m sure most of us do). My wife and I just paid off a bank of america card in order to cancel it. We received their statement yesterday stating we owed $4.61. I looked at the itemized stuff towards the bottom and it showed our balance as $0.00 on Aug 22. Three days later on Aug 25 it showed a $4.61 interest charge.

Unless I read it wrong, bank of america charges a hell of a lot of interest to keep a zero dollar balance for three days.

My wife phoned them immediately and politely asked them to waive the charge and they did so right away.

Keep your eyes peeled when you mess with these entities please.

JimK
JimK
13 years ago

@Jack – just now listening to this podcast and heard you talking about getting a 20KW generator for the property. Before buying one please do some DD on “wet stacking”. I’m not an electric wizz but I think you would be better off with a mep-003a 10kw if your draws are going to be close to mine.

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago

I kind of wish you would get off the Colorado water “oppression” thing. Denver gets around 12″ of rain a year, at this rate you’d fill the 2×96 gallon stealth rain barrels in maybe 10 years? Rain barrels are just not worth the effort here. Better to do as you suggest – store the rainfall (which can be torrential at times) in the ground. My swales here have done me well so far, but it’s now entering another hot and very dry spell for me. Interestingly, the water laws came about as a protection for the “little guy”, as “first in time, first in right” prevented a big mine owner from coming along after the homesteader and diverting their stream.

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago
Reply to  anotherkevin

Don’t know how to reply to that. I’ve put out buckets, barrows, and plastic trailers to collect rain, and got at most 1″ of water during the heavier (infrequent) storms. Who do I believe – the web site, or my lying eyes? I agree strongly in the value of water in this semi-arid environment, I just don’t believe that a rain barrel is the be all and end all, especially when Marjorie, in her video, states that no matter what, it will not provide your water needs.

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago
Reply to  anotherkevin

Let me correct myself, when I used to put 5 gallon buckets under all my gutter downspouts, I would get typically a third to half a bucket, for 4 buckets. So that’s up to 2 gallons in a storm that I have actually collected, yet the web site you use says I will AVERAGE 54 gallons a day? I don’t believe it.

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago
Reply to  anotherkevin

I apologize for spamming the thread! But I just had an AHA moment. I realized where they get these (IMHO) phony numbers from – they include snowfall, which really bumps up the water volume over the year. Of course, it’s of no use to any gardener for watering in the winter – but what about accumulating it and then using it in the short growing season? I was trying to think why I’d given up with rain catch, other than that the amounts in the summer were not worth it, and then I remembered – every rain catchment container I’d used had filled up with snowmelt, and then re-froze and split, sometimes in half! I stand by my assertion that rain barrels in Colorado are unworkable.

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago

I put 5 gallon buckets under each of my 4 gutter downspouts, and just didn’t get that much. The rain here is very sporadic, but I think there’s more than I’ve been able to catch due to lack of a true catchment system. I do think the 54 gallon/day average is laughably untrue. When I say 1″, I mean measured depth, in a container – similar to what you’d get with a regular rain gauge. Our rain often comes down sideways in the heavier storms. I think I need to revisit this, because there’s obviously some middle ground between my experience, and your research (and experience), but I don’t see any way around the freezing water issue. FYI, where I am, south of Denver (rural) we can go from drought, to above seasonal average precipitation, in one day, with a blizzard or severe thunderstorm.

Evan Young
Evan Young
13 years ago

Your math is dead right Jack. Here in Australia we are much more familiar with using rain water from our rooftops. My cousins live in an area of Australia that averages about 12″ of rain a year and they catch all their water in a metal tank. This is enough water for a family of five and their house is not very big. Most houses in the USA are much bigger than Australian houses too.
@anotherkevin, in order to get around the freezing issue you will need metal or concrete vessels to hold your water 44 gallon drums for example. Also you might have leaking gutter somewhere or another downspout that you aren’t aware of, because there is no way that you could be getting that little runoff from your roof unless your house is tiny!

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago

I concede that my math is wrong, and that my anecdotal information is of little use. Here’s my issue – lets say that the 2 x 96 gallon trash cans are in place and collecting. Denver got 3.4 inches of rain in July (it was very wet here, in fact to saturation point). The stealth barrels are full, but you can’t catch any more because it’s so wet you can’t empty out at all. This is definitely normal for our precipitation patterns. Come August and it dries out. You use up your nearly 200 gallons, but it hasn’t rained since. It’s also set to not rain in September either. If you can’t be sure of a regular refill, then how does a rain barrel really make much of a difference? And if the only way to catch water correctly is in a cistern then why bother with a barrel? It’s not that I disagree with rain catching (I came from England to here), it’s that the rain is torrential and then there’s none, so the potential 20,000 figure really ignores the impracticality of catching roof run off here.

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago
Reply to  anotherkevin

I should also note that July’s rainfall came almost entirely from 2 separate storms: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/bou/include/showProduct.php?product=summary.txt
I’m pretty sure I didn’t need to water my garden at all during July.

Evan Young
Evan Young
13 years ago

Rain Barrels are never adequate water storage. We laugh over hear when we hear you guys in the US talking about using them. The mininmum water storage I would have would be 1000 Gallons and this is not enough. The house I am renting now has a 5500 gallon tank made of concrete. I live in a area that gets severe frost and occasional snow. A body of water that large is less likely to freeze than a smaller barrel as well. My advice is that the USA needs to follow Australia’s lead in adopting rain water tanks or cisterns as the norm.
These cisterns don’t have to be big round things either. We have designs that run along fence lines or the side of the house, others that are inflatable bladders that can sit under the house, etc.
You are right about the limited use of rain barrels, areas that don’t have regular rain need much larger storage than this to be of any use

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago
Reply to  Evan Young

This is my problem with Jack’s argument. When you can get your entire months rainfall in one day a pond or cistern will help, a rain barrel will not. I get more mileage out of my swales than I ever will out of a 96 gallon garbage can. This year we had next to no snowmelt, and almost all of our years precipitation in a handful of storms during June and July. Since then, nothing. I’ve been gardening and weather watching here for five years, so I may not be good at math, but I do have hands on experience with the Colorado climate and precipitation patterns.

David O.
David O.
13 years ago

If you like historical beer. Check out the Stuff You Missed in History Podcast. They did two shows on historical spirts. The first show has a lot of good info on the beer with antibiotics. Dogfish Brewery is working on a lot of the historical beers. Here is the link to the shows on ITunes.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-you-missed-in-history/id283605519

anotherkevin
anotherkevin
13 years ago

I feel that my comments to date in this thread have painted me in a poor light, and not really contributed much to the discussion. If you’ll indulge me one more time I believe I can make some sense of my postings, provide a little humor for the readers who are eye-rolling at the direction this has gone, and impart some useful information as back story for your presentation, Jack.

Let me tell a story, the Scotsman and the rain barrel.

Jock McSprocko was a Scotsman who moved to Colorado. He didn’t know Colorado, but he knew rain capture like nobodies business. He arrived in April and quickly purchased 3 x 96 gallon garbage cans and fittings and hooked them up. A heavy, wet spring snowstorm gave him plenty of snow melt to start his planting season and filled his “barrels” significantly. He planted seed on an 80F sunny day, while the ground was still moist and warm. Two weeks later two foot of snow landed and covered his garden for over a week. The wet conditions rotted all his seed.

Lesson #1: no-one plants in Colorado until Memorial Day. Those who risk it, almost always lose out.

Jock re-plants and is rewarded with warm sunny days and the forecast of rain. His ground is drying out and he looks forward to a rain storm. One comes, but he receives less than 1/10th of an inch. His co-workers report some more substantial rain, and the Denver metro area rain average is normal. It’s raining, he’s just not getting any.

Lesson #2: Because of its altitude, Colorado has extensive micro-climates that make very localized weather. Conditions vary massively 10 miles from each other.

Jock has used up nearly all his snow melt and it’s getting warm. It’s now June and he looks forward to the monsoon season beginning. Until now each rain shower has produced little to no rain catch. Soon he is rewarded with a monster storm and his rain barrel is filled 2/3rds. A couple of days later it’s filled completely with another storm. And another. The storms come every 4 days or so, but his barrels are full, the ground is soaked, and he can’t store any more. This goes on until July when it finally stops. By the end of July the ground is nearly dry and he starts watering. He waters all through August and it never rains again. He is surprised at how much water he uses and the barrel is empty by September 1.

Lesson #3: Colorado is 20% humidity all the time. In August the chinooks winds appear and it is hot, dry, and very desiccating. No matter how much mulch you use, it will dry out.

All through September there is no rain. Jock is now watering exclusively by hose. Rain showers that occur produce less than 1/10th of an inch of rain. If anything, it is hotter now than in July, but the evenings are cooler. On Halloween the garden abruptly ends with a killing frost.

Lesson #4: That’s the growing season.

Jock waits for the winter snow to replenish his rain barrels. These come in November and December. Heavy snow, followed by warm sunshine. He thinks he will get plenty of water but is astonished to see the snow not melt, but sublimate! If he hadn’t seen it, he wouldn’t believe it.

Lesson #5: Hey, I didn’t believe it till I saw it.

This soon passes and Jock is rewarded in January and February with heavy, wet snows that replenish his barrels. After one particularly wet storm in February, a cold front moves in. It doesn’t get above 20F for over a week. When Jock finally checks his barrels each one has a hogshead of ice, and an 18” split along the bottom. He replaces the barrels.

Lesson #6: It’s almost impossible to store water outside in February. I lost a pool to this.

Jock continues on, insulates his barrels and disguises them to thwart the Colorado rain nazis. By July things are looking good. On July 5th, a hail storm destroys his roof, truck and garden.

Lesson #7: Most people don’t garden in Colorado. Because they can’t.

I do not believe that water barrels offer any benefit here other than during 1 month of the year. However, I do believe that swales truly work in this climate. My initial point was that yes, there are unenforced restrictions on rain capture (they do look for illegal ponds btw), but that barrels make a negligible difference in your overall water pattern. I think I’ll try one for my chicken house roof to fill the duck pond, and maybe as a tertiary source of water, but that’s it. I hope this helps, and I apologize for wasting time earlier, I just struggle to make my point in a web form. This was composed offline.

Rorschach
Rorschach
13 years ago