In article
,
Phaedrine Stonebridge wrote:

In article ,
(Pat Kiewicz) wrote:

Today we had a whopper of a storm here. Two trees down and a few of
our bean tripods. Hopefully the beans will survive. But the trees
will have to be removed. All the corn was flattened as well. I
hope it springs back up.

Corn won't spring back up unless it's tiny. Best get out there and
prop it up. (I have to do that sometimes.) If the corn is just
leaning, a strategically placed wad of compost might be enough to
keep it upright. Otherwise, put a stake at each end of a row and run
some twine between them, looping the twine around each cornstalk to
hold it upright. (This is a two-person job.) With blocks of corn
you can run twine in a criss-cross pattern to prop the corn up. Even
the twine-braced corn will appreciate some compost packed around the
bottom of the stalk.


I owe you bigtime! Thanks so much for that fabulous idea. We are on
our way outside right now to implement the stake & twine scenario.


Well, all the corn is once again standing--- the bigger stuff anyway.
Not fun doing that in the noonday sun but it worked very well. Again, I
thank you for the idea

What i'd like to know now is how to plant corn to minimize the risk of
that kind of wind damage. We use informal (no edging for the tiller),
not-too-deep raised beds of four foot widths (40-50 feet long). Our
garden is also on at least a 20° incline as well.

Phaedrine Stonebridge said:
I owe you bigtime! Thanks so much for that fabulous idea. We are on
our way outside right now to implement the stake & twine scenario.

You are welcome. I believe in paying forward. Other people have helped
me greatly in the past.

Well, all the corn is once again standing--- the bigger stuff anyway.
Not fun doing that in the noonday sun but it worked very well. Again, I
thank you for the idea

What i'd like to know now is how to plant corn to minimize the risk of
that kind of wind damage. We use informal (no edging for the tiller),
not-too-deep raised beds of four foot widths (40-50 feet long). Our
garden is also on at least a 20° incline as well.

Hope to avoid extreme weather, and try to hill up your corn with compost or
good soil from somewhere else before it gets more than thigh high.

I suffered a bad blowdown this year when the July 4 storms came through.
There was a spectacular wind-blast that came through ahead of the storms.
It looked like a wall coming through the neighborhood. I felt like a fly watching
a windshield bearing down on me. Didn't make it back to the house in time,
so I was pelted by debris.
--
Pat in Plymouth MI

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(attributed to Don Marti)

In article ,
(Pat Kiewicz) wrote:

Phaedrine Stonebridge said:
I owe you bigtime! Thanks so much for that fabulous idea. We are on
our way outside right now to implement the stake & twine scenario.

You are welcome. I believe in paying forward. Other people have helped
me greatly in the past.

Well, all the corn is once again standing--- the bigger stuff anyway.
Not fun doing that in the noonday sun but it worked very well. Again, I
thank you for the idea

What i'd like to know now is how to plant corn to minimize the risk of
that kind of wind damage. We use informal (no edging for the tiller),
not-too-deep raised beds of four foot widths (40-50 feet long). Our
garden is also on at least a 20° incline as well.

Hope to avoid extreme weather, and try to hill up your corn with compost or
good soil from somewhere else before it gets more than thigh high.

Oh! I did not realize you could hill up corn. We will definitely do
that in the future then. Thanks


I suffered a bad blowdown this year when the July 4 storms came through.
There was a spectacular wind-blast that came through ahead of the storms.
It looked like a wall coming through the neighborhood. I felt like a fly
watching
a windshield bearing down on me. Didn't make it back to the house in time,
so I was pelted by debris.

Wow, how weird! There has been a lot of weird weather lately. We've
only been in this home for a year and a month now and, in that short
time, have lost several 30-40 foot trees to storms. I wish we had a
Franklin stove though we do have an inefficient fireplace. Regards,

Phae

On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 12:34:52 -0500, Phaedrine Stonebridge
wrote:



Wow, how weird! There has been a lot of weird weather lately. We've
only been in this home for a year and a month now and, in that short
time, have lost several 30-40 foot trees to storms. I wish we had a
Franklin stove though we do have an inefficient fireplace. Regards,


One of the main effects of global warming is more erratic
weather: more frequent storms, more intense storms.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Meadows wrote:

On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 12:34:52 -0500, Phaedrine Stonebridge
wrote:



Wow, how weird! There has been a lot of weird weather lately. We've
only been in this home for a year and a month now and, in that short
time, have lost several 30-40 foot trees to storms. I wish we had a
Franklin stove though we do have an inefficient fireplace. Regards,


One of the main effects of global warming is more erratic
weather: more frequent storms, more intense storms.

Pat


Our government may say that there is no global warming but the insurance
industry knows better. I read that insurance companies are busy
excluding (or dramatically raising the rates for) such things as hail
damage, flooding, tornado damage, crop failure due to excess heat, and
all kinds of other things.

When we moved back to Missouri (Z 5b) last year after being gone nearly
five years, I noticed a big change in plantings and local nursery stock
with a huge increase in what used to be zone 6 plants. And it's not
just new, more tolerant cultivars either. It used to be that buxus was
fairly rare, something you had to really baby over the winter or seen
only at the botanical gardens. Now you see boxwoods everywhere,
flourishing--- the very same Korean (and other) boxwoods that would not
grow here ten years ago. The ones in our yard are just gorgeous with no
pampering at all.

But maybe it is just a normal cyclical variation. Yeah, that's the
ticket. Sure.

Phae

writes:

Wow, how weird! There has been a lot of weird weather lately. We've
only been in this home for a year and a month now and, in that short
time, have lost several 30-40 foot trees to storms. I wish we had a
Franklin stove though we do have an inefficient fireplace. Regards,

This is way off topic, but I'll risk being yelled out to pass this on
considering your circumstance (lots of wood and an inefficient fireplace).
There were passive heat exchangers on the market many years ago. I plan
to have one built when the muffler shop that was recommended to me
re-opens after being closed by a fire. I searched locally and on-line for
them but found nothing, only electric-powered heat exchangers of various
types (I gave up after viewing nearly 300 pages!). Of course, when you
really need the fireplace, the electricity is out which is why you need
it, making the electric heat exchangers worthless.

This unit is all free-standing within the fireplace. It consists of two
horizontal heavy bars slightly off the floor of the fireplace. To that
are welded several (3, 4, or 5) pipes which run parallel to the sides of
the fireplace and bent to roughly follow the "curve" (not really a curve,
of course, but the tubing/pipe is curved as it is bent at the "corners")
of the fireplace back. Basically the top and bottom sections of the
tubing/pipe are straight as is the back with the corners curved as
necessary (no sharp angles) for air flow. The pipe is very thick,
necessary with the extreme heat, with an outside diameter of possibly
1-1/2 inches.

The lower ends of the pipe/tubing must have some way of covering them to
stop the air intake to control the outtake of heated air. The pipe/tubing
pieces also have a bar welded at the top to hold them in place. The one I
saw in a house for sale also had a grated "bottom" on it to hold the wood
up off the fireplace floor for more efficient burning. If you are
interested in one, you'll have to find an old-timer that knows what they
are. I have a B&W copy of one I printed before my digital camera was
stolen (so don't have the photo). I don't know how well the copy will scan
or photograph, but I'll send it to you if you want it

The principal behind it is that the cold air is pulled into the
tubing/pipe, heated as it goes through the fireplace, and is forced out
the top of the tubing/pipe. I've not used one myself, but my boss who
died in 2000 had one in his vacation home at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort
and said they'd have to close off some of the tubes because it would get
so warm. I wish I could pass on personal experience as I had planned to
have one built a year ago but was delayed because of the muffler shop
going out of business for months. I was fortunate to have found a welder
who had seen them and knew what I was talking about; it was him who said
I'd need a muffler shop to build it because of the extremely high
temperatures involved.

I was quite puzzled as to why they aren't readily available on the market
now but finally figured that it might be because of mis-use. It might be
easy to not have one sized/built correctly for a particular fireplace
resulting in potential carbon monoxide problems because of the positioning
of the unit in relation to the fireplace causing them to be taken off the
market. That is pure speculation on my part but is the only reason I
could imagine since it makes such a great passive heat exchanger and were,
at one time, very popular.

You might be lucky enough to find one at an estate sale. I couldn't talk
the owner of the house in which I saw one into selling it. He had never
lived in the house and didn't intend to, only bought it to fix it up and
re-sell it. Apparently, he figured if someone wanted it, it had to have
value. Likely what happened was the house's buyer tossed it. :-(

Glenna

In article fc.003d094101a01ee73b9aca0084ba6208.1a01f60@pmug. org,
(Glenna Rose) wrote:

writes:

Wow, how weird! There has been a lot of weird weather lately. We've
only been in this home for a year and a month now and, in that short
time, have lost several 30-40 foot trees to storms. I wish we had a
Franklin stove though we do have an inefficient fireplace. Regards,

This is way off topic, but I'll risk being yelled out to pass this on
considering your circumstance (lots of wood and an inefficient fireplace).
There were passive heat exchangers on the market many years ago. I plan
to have one built when the muffler shop that was recommended to me
re-opens after being closed by a fire. I searched locally and on-line for
them but found nothing, only electric-powered heat exchangers of various
types (I gave up after viewing nearly 300 pages!). Of course, when you
really need the fireplace, the electricity is out which is why you need
it, making the electric heat exchangers worthless.

This unit is all free-standing within the fireplace. It consists of two
horizontal heavy bars slightly off the floor of the fireplace. To that
are welded several (3, 4, or 5) pipes which run parallel to the sides of
the fireplace and bent to roughly follow the "curve" (not really a curve,
of course, but the tubing/pipe is curved as it is bent at the "corners")
of the fireplace back. Basically the top and bottom sections of the
tubing/pipe are straight as is the back with the corners curved as
necessary (no sharp angles) for air flow. The pipe is very thick,
necessary with the extreme heat, with an outside diameter of possibly
1-1/2 inches.

The lower ends of the pipe/tubing must have some way of covering them to
stop the air intake to control the outtake of heated air. The pipe/tubing
pieces also have a bar welded at the top to hold them in place. The one I
saw in a house for sale also had a grated "bottom" on it to hold the wood
up off the fireplace floor for more efficient burning. If you are
interested in one, you'll have to find an old-timer that knows what they
are. I have a B&W copy of one I printed before my digital camera was
stolen (so don't have the photo). I don't know how well the copy will scan
or photograph, but I'll send it to you if you want it

The principal behind it is that the cold air is pulled into the
tubing/pipe, heated as it goes through the fireplace, and is forced out
the top of the tubing/pipe. I've not used one myself, but my boss who
died in 2000 had one in his vacation home at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort
and said they'd have to close off some of the tubes because it would get
so warm. I wish I could pass on personal experience as I had planned to
have one built a year ago but was delayed because of the muffler shop
going out of business for months. I was fortunate to have found a welder
who had seen them and knew what I was talking about; it was him who said
I'd need a muffler shop to build it because of the extremely high
temperatures involved.

I was quite puzzled as to why they aren't readily available on the market
now but finally figured that it might be because of mis-use. It might be
easy to not have one sized/built correctly for a particular fireplace
resulting in potential carbon monoxide problems because of the positioning
of the unit in relation to the fireplace causing them to be taken off the
market. That is pure speculation on my part but is the only reason I
could imagine since it makes such a great passive heat exchanger and were,
at one time, very popular.

You might be lucky enough to find one at an estate sale. I couldn't talk
the owner of the house in which I saw one into selling it. He had never
lived in the house and didn't intend to, only bought it to fix it up and
re-sell it. Apparently, he figured if someone wanted it, it had to have
value. Likely what happened was the house's buyer tossed it. :-(

Glenna


Wow, that sounds very interesting! Thanks for taking the time to write
all that out. I will ask my DH if he has ever heard about anything like
that and look for a picture.

Phae