Category: Making

Projects that make or build something.

Post #1957: Recording an over-the-air TV program with Verizon FIOS TV

 

This post explains my setup for recording over-the-air (OTA) TV programs via Verizon FIOS TV.

Even though the solution is pretty obvious, it took me a while to figure it out, mostly for figuring out what won’t work.

It boils down to hooking up a DVR (or equivalent) directly to the FIOS TV coax cable, eliminating the FIOS set-top box.  (That is, hook the DVR (or equivalent) to the coax that feeds into the Verizon set-top box.)

Duh.  Or maybe, huh.  Depending on whether you knew you could do that, or not.

In my case, I didn’t know you could do that.  If nothing else, this will help you avoid going down the same rabbit holes I went down.

Edit:  In the end, we got two different devices to work as DVRs for OTA TV channels provided via Verizon FIOS.  One was  TV tuner for Windows computers by Hauppauge (Amazon reference), $80.  That was a little glitchy, so we also got a stand-alone Homeworx tuner/DRV via Amazon, $35.  That has the klunkiest interface of any device I’ve bought this century.   But it does, in fact, work, in the sense of letting me record a chosen OTA TV program straight off Verizon FIOS.

Continue reading Post #1957: Recording an over-the-air TV program with Verizon FIOS TV

Post G24-006: “My grandmother grew loofahs … once.”

 

The title of this post is my wife’s comment, when I announced last spring  that I was going to plant a few loofah/luffa/loofa gourds at the edge of my garden.

Her grandmother was a master gardener.  I have come to see the wisdom of her decision.

Planting them once produced all I will need for quite some time.  So I don’t see any reason to plant them again this year.

Loofah processing

You can find YouTube videos on this, so there’s little point in rehashing the basics.  You peel them, de-seed them, and (optionally) bleach them.  Or, if not bleach, give them a good soap and water wash.

Lesson 1:  You don’t need many loofah plants.  The yield above was from a couple of loofah plants that I pruned heavily over the course of the summer.  I pinched off flowers and fruit every time I walked past it.  I’m sure I could have had several multiples of this if I’d let the plants procreate at will.

Lesson 2:  De-seeding them completely is a game of diminishing returns.  I let these sit on my back porch over the winter, so all of those are light and dry.  On this rainy March day, the skins mostly came off fairly easily, in one piece, as shown below.  Peeling these took maybe a minute per gourd.

Beating the seeds out of all of them, by contrast, took the better part of half an hour.  I was determined to get as many whole, uncut, seed-free loofahs as I could.  Which meant a lot of beating on gourds that had just a few seeds left in them.  It might have gone faster if I had better technique, but basically I just beat a couple of gourds together until I stopped hearing seeds fall out into the box below.

The result is a small mixed pile of cut and uncut gourds, stuffed into a bucket, ready for bleaching.

 

The half-life of bleach.

The strength of household chlorine bleach falls over time.  Even if stored properly, the longer it is stored, the weaker it gets.  As a result, to know how much bleach to add to anything, you have to factor in how old your bleach is.

Clorox (r) helpfully tells you how to decode their manufacturing date codes, on this web page.  The Clorox bleach above was made on the 140th day of 2020, so it’s just under four years old now.  The no-name bleach in the second bottle likely follows the same Julian-date standard, so it was probably made on the 211th day of 2014.  It’s now close to ten years old.

Then you need a firm estimate of how quickly the bleach degrades.  Here, Clorox is less than helpful, and just says that you need to replace your bleach every year.  Almost as if their main concern were selling bleach, instead of your well-being.

Many seemingly-reputable internet sources quote “20% per year” degradation of the available chlorine in household bleach.  That is a reasonable match for more technical sources, which seem to show something over a two-year half-life for low-concentration sodium hypochlorite stored at room temperature.

That’s surely an approximation, because bleach degrades much faster when warm, among other things.  So “20% per year” embodies some assumption about the storage temperature for the bleach.  But it’s just about all I have to go on.  So that’ll have to do.

Based on that, my bottle of four-year-old Clorox is at roughly (0.8^4 =~) 40% strength, and my 10-year-old bleach should be around (0.8^10 =~) 10% strength.  But to a close approximation, all that means is that, for bleaching these loofahs, I need to use (e.g.) ten times the recommended concentration, if I’m using that ten-year-old bleach.

The most common recommendation that I find is to bleach badly stained loofahs for an hour, using a 1:10 solution of household bleach to water.  Judging from more technical work, that combination, done at room temperature, ought to get even the worst-stained loofahs white without significantly reducing their strength.

The recommended 1:10 bleach/water solution for loofah bleaching is VASTLY stronger than what you would use on laundry.  Household bleach varies modestly in original strength, but the directions suggest at most one cup bleach for a 16-gallon laundry load, or a 1:256 bleach/water solution for laundry.

The bottom line is that if I follow common internet advice and (apparently) approved industrial practice, I should just pour my 10-year-old bleach directly on the loofahs, then make up any difference with the four-year-old bleach diluted approximately 1:2.5.

Let that sit for an hour.  Then drain, rinse, and dry.

Results?  Well, they’re definitely better-looking than they were.  These are tan rather than white, and the remaining seeds show up as black blotches.  Some of the darkest patches didn’t bleach out.  But I’m not going to bother to redo, other than than to dig out the stray seeds.  They are usable as-is, which is all that I require.

Next up

At least I had a practical purpose in mind for the loofahs.

I also planted a couple of birdhouse gourds.  As with the loofahs, after they’d set a few gourds, I started pinching off flowers and fruit whenever I spotted them.  I still ended up with more than I could plausibly use.  These are almost dry now, so doing something with them (or tossing them out) is on my agenda.

Post #1951: Replacing the battery in a cheap cylindrical dashcam.

 

 

This post walks through the process of replacing the “non-replaceable” battery inside a cheap cylindrical dashcam, like the one pictured above.

It’s not hard to do.  I did two identical cameras.  The second one took about 20 minutes.  Both repairs were successful.

You don’t even have to read this post to figure it out.  You can get the gist of the steps by scrolling through the pictures below.

If I learned anything from this, it’s that if I ever buy another dashcam, I’m going to be sure it’s the type that uses a capacitor instead of a battery.

Continue reading Post #1951: Replacing the battery in a cheap cylindrical dashcam.

Post #1938: Psychrophilic bacteria for winter composting, total failure

 

This is a quick followup to post #1921, where I dumped some winter pond maintenance bacteria into one side of my tumbling composter, to see what would happen.  The question was whether or not that would keep my composter working in the cold of winter.

Now, one month later, the short answer is, not.  There is no detectable difference in the level of (un-decomposed) compost, between the treated and un-treated sides.

The upshot is that the only way I’m going to be able to keep that composter working throughout the winter is to heat it.  A little passive-solar-heated shed didn’t do the trick.  These cold-loving bacteria didn’t do the trick.  And having an electrically-heated outdoor composter is a total non-starter, for me.

At this point, I give up.  I just won’t compost kitchen scraps over the winter.

Post #1931: Custom oil candle base for the Luminiser TEG lantern

 

This is the third (and, I hope, last) in a series of posts about the Luminiser thermo-electric-generator lantern.  This device makes light by converting the heat of a candle to electricity, then using that electricity to run some LEDs.

The claimed output of the Luminser is 200 lumens, or about one-quarter as bright as a “60 watt” light bulb.  It’s an impressive piece of technology for $20, and an impressive amount of light from the heat of a single tea-light-sized candle.

But it has a couple of problems.  It’s not very stable (sitting on four spindly plastic legs, as shown above), and it uses a disposable, proprietary oil candle as the preferred power source.

I happened to notice that the base of the Luminiser lantern is almost exactly the same size as a U.S. standard wide-mouth canning jar.  Which then immediately suggested a solution.

I’ve now fixed both of those issues by converting a standard wide-mouth mason jar into a custom oil candle, just the right size to be used to stabilize and power this lantern.  My Luminiser now rests securely on the mason jar, with the candle flame at the same height, and of the same size, to replace their proprietary disposable oil candle.

Here’s the final product, below, where I’ve removed the flimsy plastic legs, and used a low-profile pint (500 ml) canning jar as the base.  Plenty of light to work a crossword puzzle with no eyestrain.  All that, powered by a flame about the size of what you’d get from a tea light candle.

Directions in brief

Overview

Start with a wide-mouth canning jar (mason jar, Ball jar), pint or half-pint size.  Drill a little hole through the metal lid.  Stick a little piece of copper tubing through that.  Run a piece of cotton kitchen twine through that tube, to form the wick.  Fill the jar with lamp oil, screw on the lid, and that’s your oil candle.

(N.B., canning jars come in two formats in the in the U.S., regular and wide-mouth.  Wide-mouth is the right choice here, as that fits nicely into the base of the Luminiser.)

That’s the finished oil candle, shown above.  This now fits neatly against the bottom of the Luminiser, and replaces the proprietary oil candle.

NOTE:  You must also drill a small pressure-relief hole in the lid in order to use this safely.  That’s really the only part of this that isn’t obvious.  That little pressure-relief hole is a standard safety feature on oil lamps.  It is important that you include it in this oil lamp.  Even if you skip all the rest of the directions, read that part, in red, below.

Materials:
  • Pint or half-pint wide-mouth canning jar, with band and lid (a.k.a., two-piece metal lid).  If you’ve read this far, I probably don’t have to tell you, but don’t use a plastic lid.
  • 1/8″ rigid copper tubing (sold in 1′ pieces at ACE Hardware, $2, reference below).
  • A foot or so of cotton twine, ~2.5 mm diameter, sometimes sold as  “butcher twine” (the stuff you’d use to “truss a chicken”, see below for brief discussion).
  • For attaching the copper tubing to the lid:
    • A few drops of superglue  OR
    • Optional:  A small amount of two-part epoxy OR
    • Crazy optional:  Torch and solder.

Tools:

  • Razor-blade knife (Skil knife) or single-edge razor blade.
  • A bit of sandpaper.
  • Drill, with bits:
    • 1/8″ drill bit (to drill hole in lid for wick-holder tubing)
    • 1/32″ (or tiny) drill bit (to drill air relief hole in lid).
  • Metal paper clip (to push cotton twine wick through the copper tubing).

Part reference:  The only “exotic” piece of material here is the thin copper tubing.  My local ACE Hardware sells that, shelved with hobby supplies, for $2 each.  It’s “K&S 1/8 in. D X 1 ft. L Utility Copper Tubing“.  The metal does not make any difference — copper, brass, or aluminum would all be fine.  But the dimension is fairly critical.  Don’t go larger, you’ll get too big a flame.

Cotton twine:  The cotton twine needs to be small enough to fit through the copper tube, but must fit snugly inside the copper tube.  The theoretical internal diameter of that 1/8″ O.D. copper tube is .105″ or 2.667 mm.

You may have to eyeball this, as it’s hard to find twine marked as to diameter, or even as to twine gauge, in the hardware store. Ideally, the cotton twine would run about 3/32″ or 2.5 mm in diameter when lightly twisted.  The twine I used was not quite as thick as two U.S. dimes, as shown in the pictures below, thicknesses in millimeters.

What will work:  You want 2.5-ish mm cotton twine.  Of what I saw on the shelf at my local ACE Hardware recently, this product, labeled butcher’s twine, looked about right.

What might work, but I haven’t tried it:  In theory, purpose-made 2.6mm oil candle wicking on Amazon should work, but I can’t say that I’ve tried it, and it’s expensive.  If it works, it’ll be a tight squeeze.  Separately, a lot of cotton kitchen twine, package-wrapping twine, and general-purpose twine will be too small unless you double it or triple it up before feeding it through the copper pipe.

What won’t work:  Material sold as 1/8″ round oil lamp wicking is way too large for this use.  Any twine or wicking sold as 3 mm or larger is too large.  Wicking or twine sold as 2 mm or smaller would likely be too small.  Anything with a “twine gauge” or “size number” in the 10s or 20s (e.g., #12 twine) will be much too small unless you double it up or triple it up.

Finally, you can’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) use twine made of synthetic materials for this purpose,  Whether you could use other natural materials (e.g, jute), I have no idea.

Directions in some detail.

1:  Prepare the wick holder.

Cut 1.5″ off one end of the copper tube.  The simplest way to do this is to place it on a flat surface, place the Skil knife blade or single-edge razor blade on top, and roll it back and forth until the knife edge cuts through the thin copper tubing.  Remove the burr around the cut edge by sticking the paperclip in and working it around until you’ve opened cut end back up to the full diameter of the original copper tube.

2:  Prepare the wicking.

Cut a foot or two off the roll of cotton twine. 

Thread the cotton twine through the 1.5″ piece of copper tubing.  First, bind one end of the twine using superglue.  Hold the tightly-twisted cotton twine in one hand, put a few drops of superglue near the end, and let it set up.  Once set, snip off the little bit of twine past the super-glued part.  If you did it right, you end up with a nice, tight, rigid section of super-glued twine that you can then poke into the copper tubing.  (Same concept as an aglet, or shoelace-end.)  Once you have that started, use the paperclip to push it all the way through.

3:  Prepare the metal canning lid.

Sand the plastic coating off a square inch or so of the interior of the lid, right at the center.  This is to help whatever glue/solder you use to stick the wick holder to the lid.

Drill a 1/8″ hole in the center of the lid.  Wallow it out just a bit.  Sand it to remove any burrs.

Drill a tiny hole (1/32″ or so, smaller is better) well off-center, but not covered by the screw-on band that holds the lid in place, to provide air pressure relief.  You must provide this pressure-relief hole in order to operate this safely.  If you do not do this, and you screw the lid on tight, the oil candle will enter “runaway” mode when you use it.  Oil and air expand as they warm up.  If you do not provide a pressure relief hole, that will force oil up and out of the wick, resulting in an ever-increasing flame, and possible fuel spill beyond the top of the candle, and a fire.

This tiny vent hole is a standard safety feature on oil lamps, it’s just typically placed so that you don’t notice it on store-bought oil lamps.  You may see directions for mason-jar oil candles, or even commercially-offered mason-jar oil candles, that skip this step.  The resulting products are decorative objects, not working oil lamps.  If you actually want to burn this candle safely, include the air vent, just like a real oil lamp.  You may think to yourself, oh, I’ll always remember to leave the lid a bit loose, or some such.  But at some point, either you or somebody else will forget to do that.  Do your future self a favor and drill that pressure relief hole when you drill the main 1/8″ hole for the wick holder.

4:  Assemble.

Poke the copper tube through the lid, so that the long “tail” of wicking is on the under-side of the lid.

Adjust the copper tube until the top of the copper tube protrudes 15/16″ from the top of the lid.  This adjustment puts the flame in the correct position.  Take the time to get this right.

Super-glue the copper tube in place, front and back, and allow to set.  (This is not great technique, but it’s fast, and it mostly works.  A more secure method would apply a small amount of two-part epoxy to the back of the lid, around the tube.  Or would use a torch and solder to affix the copper tube to the metal jar lid).

Cut the bound end off the cotton twine/wicking, and adjust the cotton twine that that it barely protrudes beyond the end of the copper tube, about 1/16″ to 3/32″ or so.  Something under 1/8″.  This small amount of exposed wicking will generate a flame that’s the right size.  If you leave too much exposed, you will get an unusably large flame, and you’ll have to go back and adjust the wick once it’s wet with lamp oil.  You want just a tiny bit of exposed wick.

5:  Fill, light, test.

Add lamp oil.  To reduce the total amount of oil present, you may want to put some heavy inert filler in the jar, such as marbles, glass weights, clean rocks, or similar.  DO NOT OVERFILL.  As with any oil lamp, leave space at the top of the jar, to allow for easy expansion of the oil as it heats up.  A good rule-of-thumb from canning is, when in doubt, allow a 1″ headspace.  Don’t fill it closer than 1″ from the rim.

Insert the tail of the wick in the oil, put the lid on top of the jar, screw the band on to hold the lid into place.

Wait a few minutes for the lamp oil to saturate the wick.

Light and observe.  You want a flame that’s maybe 3/4″ tall.  Let it burn for 10 minutes to be sure that the flame height remains steady.

Note that the top of the tube is just shy of 1″ above the metal canning lid, and the flame is under 3/4″ tall.

Place the Luminiser over the mason-jar candle and observe another ten minutes to make sure the flame height remains steady.

Below is the final version, using a shorter jar, with the folding legs removed.  To remove the legs, take a Skil knife (utility knife) and slice the inside “rim” off the split plastic pegs that hold the legs on.  You can then pull those plastic pegs out of holes that hold them to the body of the lantern.  Toss the flimsy plastic legs, as they will no longer stay attached to the lantern after you do this.

Never leave the lit Luminiser unattended.

6:  Main drawback:  Awkward wick adjustment.

A simple oil candle like this lacks the “wick riser” mechanism of a real oil lamp.  (That’s the little wheel that you turn to raise or lower the flame.)  For this oil candle, you have to adjust the wick height by tugging on the wick and/or pushing on the wick.

As long as you don’t let the wick burn down to a nub, you should be able to grab it with pliers (or maybe even large tweezers) and give it a little tiny pull to lengthen it.

If you overdo that adjustment, you can either stuff the wick back down the tube, using a paperclip, or you can take the top off the jar and pull the wick back down.  If you let the wick it burn too far, so you can’t grab it from the top, you have to take the top off and use a paperclip to push the wick up.

It works, but it’s awkward.  Luckily, you don’t have to adjust the wick often, once you achieve the right flame height.

If it weren’t for the fact that a wide-mouth mason jar works so well as a stable base for the lantern, I’d probably have bought a commercial lamp mechanism for a mini-oil-lamp, and worked from there.  Just to get an easily-adjustable wick.  As it stands, the awkward wick adjustment is a minor annoyance I can live with.

7:  Eventually, deal with the lantern legs.

The pieces of perforated black plastic in the photo above are the flimsy lantern legs, folded up.  At some point, I’ll either remove them, or cut them so that they will fit over the final (likely, half-pint) container, and so hold the lantern firmly to the mason-jar base.

It works fine as-is.  Its mostly that those folded-up legs spoil view a bit.  Fixing that is optional.

Edit:  Done.

Conclusion

The end result is a heavy, solid base for the Luminiser lantern, along with an oil candle that could hold a several-week-supply of lamp oil.  This avoids the relative unsteadiness of the original design, and allows you to fuel the lantern cleanly without using the proprietary disposable oil candles sold by the manufacturer.

The fit between the standard wide-mouth mason jar and the Luminiser is so good that it almost looks as if this were made for it.   It’s like having an oil lamp with a chimney.  Except that the chimney puts out twenty times as much light as the oil lamp itself.

Replacing the pint wide-mouth mason jar with a half-pint would make this more stable, and more difficult to knock over.  (The only reason I made this with a pint is that I didn’t have a wide-mouth half-pint available.  I plan to replace my pint jar as soon as I can lay hands on a half-pint.) Edit:  I have now replaced it with an even better choice, a low-profile pint jar, as pictured near the start of the post).  If you desire stability beyond that, epoxy the mason jar to a suitable base, such as a piece of marble or wood.

Finally, let me emphasize the general safety precautions.  Don’t run this unattended.  Don’t run it with a flame bigger than about 3/4″.  (If the flame is too big, pull or push the wick down further into the tube.)  Drill that tiny pressure relief hole before you use this, to avoid a runaway lamp situation.  For indoor use, burn only lamp oil or kerosene (e.g.,”Klean Heat”).

That said, you do this at your own risk.  This is, after all, quite a bit of easily flammable material, all in one place.  As with any candle or oil lamp, you always need to keep in mind that you are playing with fire.  There is an inherent risk in doing that, and to do it safely, you need to acknowledge that, and take all reasonable precautions.

Post #1921: Psychrophilic bacteria for winter composting, setting up the experiment.

 

You might reasonably think that a post featuring my rotting kitchen scraps is a new low for this blog …

… though I’d bet there are some in the Town of Vienna who might disagree.  But that’s water over the dam.

In any case, you’d be wrong, because today I treated half that pile of rotting kitchen scraps with cold-water pond … eh … stuff.  That converts this pile of rotting (or, more precisely, non-rotting) garbage from a mere oddball gardening obsession into an exciting citizen-scientist experiment.

Anyway, as promised in Post #1917, I leveled up the two compartments in my tumbling composter and added cold-water pond treatment to one side.  This stuff:

The idea being that a big dose of psychrophilic (cold-loving) bacteria might jump-start my kitchen-scrap composting.

Composting activity has pretty much ground to a halt, due to the cold outdoor temperatures, despite my having built a little insulated solar shed for the tumbling composter.

Methods:  After leveling up the two sides of the composter, I added about a third of the bottle to one side of the composter,  in several small doses, tumbling the compost vigorously with each dose.  And added a packet of something advertised as enzymes to break down cellulose (though that seems more than a bit far-fetched to me, for reasons I won’t go into).  I’ll tumble it daily, maybe add another treatment in two weeks or so.

In a month, I’ll check to see whether or not the level of compost in the left (treatment) side has dropped materially below the level in the right (control) side.

This is my last-ditch effort to get my tumbling composter to continue working through the winter.  This pond treatment cost $30, so I figure I ought to try to get my money’s worth.  If the stuff doesn’t work for this use, at least I can affirmatively document that it doesn’t.  Hence running this as a controlled experiment, instead of just dousing the whole batch of compost at once.

I’ll be surprised if it works.  But that’s what experiments are for.

Results in a month.

Post #1917: Composter shed failure

 

Many of my readers have been breathlessly awaiting the results from my composter-shed experiment (e.g. Post 1899).

Unfortunately, that breathlessness is not explained by the stench of rotting kitchen scraps.

In the winter cold, my tumbling composter is not so much a composter as a mausoleum.  It’s the Lenin’s Tomb of potato peels.   Each time I visit it to dump in a new batch of scraps, I soberly reflect upon the perfectly preserved remains of ancient meals resting comfortably within.  I ponder what that means for the future.

Source for title photo, via Wikipedia:  By Russia, Lenin’s Mausoleum or more specifically image, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48098730

Background

Recall the issue here:  I toss my kitchen scraps in a tumbling composter.  Three seasons of the year, that works great, and the compost is really desirable for gardening.  But when the weather turns cold, the composter stops working, for all intents and purposes.  I then have to throw my scraps into the trash, where they eventually become trash-to-electricity “biofuel” when Fairfax County incinerates them.

I refuse to heat my composter with electricity.  And I’m not going to bring it inside for the winter.  So … how about trying a solar-heated “shed” for it?

Bottom line:  Passive solar through double-paned glass, plus insulation, and radiant barrier, together, provides nowhere near enough heat to keep this tumbling composter running during the winter.

I suspect that adding more insulation would be fruitless. 

First, the shed does, in fact, keep the temperature of the compost up, when the sun shines.  But with a fairly large ratio of surface area to volume, a string of cloudy days allows this to cool right down to ambient temperature.

Second, the resulting “cold snap” kill off any insects in the compost.  I like to think of a composter as a place for bacterial decomposition of kitchen scraps.  But in fact, I’ve never really known what fraction of decomposition was insect-drive, versus bacterial.  Typically, when I open this composter to add material during spring/summer/fall, I can see insects (larvae) working on the contents.  But all it took was a few freezing nights to stop all insect activity.

My take on it is that adding an inch of foam board to the existing shed isn’t going to fix that.

What are the other options?

Psychrophilic, qu’est-ce que c’es?

Source:  All pictures in this section are AI-generated with the prompt “cold, hungry bacteria”, using Gencraft.com.

Composting small volumes of organic material in cold weather is a common problem.  Near as I can tell, the suggested solutions are:

  1. Compost a large enough volume that the pile stays warm outdoors.
  2. Store your kitchen scraps over the winter, in some location.
  3. Move to indoor worm composting for the winter.
  4. Give up.

I don’t find any of these options particularly appealing.  I don’t generate a large enough volume of organic matter for 1) above, and the Virginia climate is not well-suited to 2) above.  I can’t depend on the kitchen scraps remaining frozen, outside, in a typical Virginia winter.  And I’m not too keen on having five-gallon buckets of garbage sitting around, even if they are sealed.  I’m guessing my neighbors wouldn’t be all that keen on my digging a garbage pit in my back yard.  At least, not if they knew what I was up to.  I don’t want to get into 3) indoor worm composting, though I am finally beginning to grasp the potential advantages of that over traditional outdoor composting.

Arguably, the smart option is 4) give up, per the recommendation on this website.

(Finally, I’ve already dismissed the idea of an indoor electric “composter”, that is, combination grinder and food dehydrator. Just not my cup of tea.

My last gasp at making this tumbling composter work in the winter is to track down some “psychrophilic bacteria”.  That’s the term, per this U. Mich. website, for the cold-loving bacteria that break down organic matter even in colder temperatures.  (The same website says that a cubic yard of organic matter is the smallest pile likely to continue to hot compost in a Michigan winter.)

First, the idea of cold-tolerant decomposing bacteria is a real thing.  You can find it in the scholarly literature (e.g., this reference, for psychrotrophic bacteria).

I have no clue if spiking my compost with psychrophilic/psychrotropic bacteria will work.  (As you have probably already guessed, the prefix “psychro”- means “cold”.)  Everyone says these cold-adapted bacteria work slowly, but they do continue to work, even in the cold where other bacteria would not.

And that doesn’t matter anyway, until I can figure out where I can buy the little buggers.   

I haven’t found anything specific to composting.  Apparently the approved solution to winter composting is to have a big enough compost pile.  That said, I seem to find two plausible sources.

Pond cold-weather bacteria.  The first thing I came across is cold-weather bacteria for (decorative) ponds.  Apparently, you spike your pond with these to keep decomposition going in colder weather.  Here’s an example.  Here’s another example.  Amazon offers dozens of choices.

Main-line drain maintainer.  It also occurs to me that I can buy stuff at Home Depot that advertises that it spurs decomposition within your main sewer line.  Those lines sit at around 55F in this area (although the incoming materials may be warmer).  So it’s plausible that dumping that stuff, in my tumbling composter, might aid decomposition.

Of the two, I think the pond bacteria would be the better choice.  All of those products appear engineered to break down cellulose.  The drain cleaner, by contrast, is advertised to break down “grease, hair, paper, oil, soap scum”.  The pond bacterial additives appear to be directly targeting the type of organic matter I’m dealing with, the drain cleaners are not.

The proposed experiment.

As it turns out, I’m going to have to shell out something like $30 to buy some fall/winter pond treatment.  And my composter conveniently has two compartments.  So I might as well set this up as a proper experiment.  I’m going to mix up and level out the materials currently in the two sides of the composter.  Add fall/winter pond bacteria to once side.  And see if I notice any difference in the remaining volume of materials, one month from now.

I can’t find winter pond bacteria locally, so I’ve ordered some from Amazon.  This stuff.  Several comments attest to the fact that it works in cold weather.  And stinks.  And that’s, eh, more-or-less what I’m after.

Results in a month.

Post #1914: Pneumatic tires for wheelchair use, no good solution to the problem of flat tires.

 

This is a brief followup to the just prior post, on the use of non-pneumatic (e.g., solid rubber) tires on wheelchairs.

I’m trying to work out what I should recommend if asked to replace more wheelchair tires.  Traditional tires with air-filled inner tubes are much easier from the standpoint of the installer.  The question is dealing with the drawbacks of those from the wheelchair user’s perspective.

The only way to guarantee that a wheelchair tire won’t go flat is to use a non-pneumatic tire.  That includes solid rubber tires, and solid rubber inserts taking the place of an inner tube inside regular tires.

What I discovered in this post is that many anti-flat products available for bicyclists will not work for most wheelchairs, owing to the wheelchair’s use of narrow, high-pressure tires.

When all is said and done, between the past post and this post, I think I now have a fairly firm set of recommendations.

If you cannot tolerate a flat tire on-the-go, then opt for solid rubber tires (and not solid inserts in regular bike tires).  But mount them using the $35 steel bolt-to-the-workbench device sold specifically for mounting such tires on wheelchair rims.  Mounting them with simple hand tools is just too hard and too iffy.

If you can tolerate the occasional flat, the best option seems to be puncture-resistant tires and tubes.  All the rest of the anti-flat products available for bicycle use — chemical sealants, anti-puncture tire liners, tire “wipers, and the like — either won’t work with typical wheelchair tires, or are not available off-the-shelf in the right size or configuration for that use.

Background

Solid rubber tires and solid rubber tire inserts definitely will not go flat.  There’s no air in them in the first place.

But those tires have some drawbacks.  Per the just-prior post, both of those non-pneumatic options are difficult to install using ordinary hand tools.  In addition, solid inserts are difficult to purchase as they must match the tire fairly exactly.

Both types of non-pneumatic tires offer a harsher ride and higher rolling resistance than high-pressure pneumatic (air-filled) tires.  And there are relatively few options available in the correct size for typical wheelchair rims.

By contrast, traditional pneumatic bike tires (tire plus inner tube) are easier to purchase and install, but they have two big drawbacks.  They require frequent, routine re-inflation to maintain the correct pressure.  Otherwise they go soft, and that raises rolling resistance.  And they can go flat, unexpectedly, while you are out-and-about.

The latter is not just a problem for the high rolling resistance you get with a flat.  It’s all too easy to roll a flat bike tire right off the rim, or to damage both the rim and the tire if you keep going on a flat tire.

This post is my research into minimizing the hassle from both of those drawbacks:  routine periodic inflation, and flat tires.

Caveat 1:  In the particular case I’m looking at, my options are  24″ x 1″ or 24″ x 1-3/8″ tires.  This puts a lot of limits on the types of bike-tire solutions that can be adopted for wheelchair use.  You might have other options available if your rims can accept wider tires.

Caveat 2:  My only qualification for writing about this topic is that I’ve changed a lot of bike tires in my life.  And I happen to be friends with someone who uses a manual wheelchair.

Routine inflation:  An electric air pump can solve this problem.

Source:  https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-120-Volt-Inflator-H120N/325096203

Best guess, $20 and a trip to Home Depot gives an adequate way to maintain tire air pressure up to 100 PSI.

I don’t think it’s worth belaboring this.  All pneumatic bike tires lose air over time.  It’s not a leak, per se.  It’s that air diffuses through the rubber.  (The same thing happens to rubber balloons and car tires, just much faster and much slower, respectively).  The higher the tire pressure, and the thinner the tire/inner tube, the faster the tire goes soft.  There’s no way to stop it that I have ever heard of.

This means that pneumatic tires have to be topped up on a routine basis.  And in the modern world, the obvious solution for routine tire inflation is an electric air pump.

A standard full-sized manual bike tire pump doesn’t do the average wheelchair user much good for routine use.  Not only are they designed to be used while standing up, they are designed to be fast, that is, to move a lot of air with each stroke.  They do that by using a piston with a relatively large surface area.  But wheelchair users often prefer high-pressure (e.g., 140 PSI) tires, for the low rolling resistance such tires provide.  Even if a full-sized manual pump can achieve pressures like that, it takes a lot of force, owing to the large piston area.

The typical manual mini-bike-pump — the kind you take with you on a bike ride — is both slow and awkward to use.  They are slow because they have tiny little pistons, suitable for pumping tires to high pressures using only your arm muscles.  And they are awkward because they either clamp directly to the valve stem, or have just a short attaching hose, either of which essentially dictates exactly where the pump must be held, relative to the tire.  In essence, those pumps are made for emergency on-the-road use.  You can use them for routine tire maintenance, but I sure don’t.   

Compressed C02 cartridge pumps are expensive for use in keeping tires routinely inflated.  The poorly-designed ones appear hard to use, based on Amazon comments.  But even for the well-designed ones, depending on the pump and the tire, you’d be spending $1.50 and tossing away a metal C02 cartridge every time you topped off your tires.  Plus, based on what I read, C02-filled tires deflate more rapidly than air-filled tires, owing to something-something-something about the ability of C02 to diffuse through butyl rubber.  You’d turn your routine tire maintenance into a $100-a-year habit, for no particular reason.

The efficient solution is an electric tire pump. 

These days, you have your choice of 120 volt plug-in, 12 volt plug in, and rechargeable battery-operated pumps.  You only have to check a few things:

  • How loud are they?
  • Can they do high pressures?
  • How awkward are they to use?
  • How long will they last in routine use?
  • Is the battery replaceable?

And, of course, how much do they cost?  Because, near as I can tell from reading Amazon comments, the cheaper pumps tend to fail several of the checks outlined above.

I have no specific recommendation to make, other than the Home Depot offering shown above.  All I can suggest is (e.g.) reading the comments on pumps offered on Amazon.  In particular, a lot of cheaper battery-operated pumps cannot produce high pressures despite what the Amazon listing might say.  When in doubt, get one that plugs into the wall.

Avoiding flats:  Nothing is bulletproof

If you absolutely, positively must not have a flat tire, the only real option is solid, non-pneumatic tires.  In this section, I’m shooting for two things:

  1. A tire and tube setup that minimizes the risk of catastrophic flats.
  2. A simple, no-maintenance pump that can be kept on the wheelchair for emergency use as needed.

The pump is easy.  Any C02-cartridge inflator that fits comfortably in the hand should be adequate, as would a standard bicycle mini-pump with the addition of an extension hose.  Either would be small enough to be stored long-term on the wheelchair itself.

But finding a combination to minimize the chance of a wheelchair flat is hard, owing in part to the small size and high pressure of the typical wheelchair pneumatic tire.  Puncture sealants (e.g., Slime (r)) do not appear to work at high pressure.  Puncture proof tire liners do not appear to be available in the narrow widths required for wheelchair tires.  The only options that work for typical wheelchair rims combine relatively expensive “puncture-resistant” tires with relatively expensive “thorn-resistant” inner tubes.  Even with that, neither of those is likely to stand up to an ill-placed tack, nail, or screw.

So the bottom line is that there is no good anti-flat solution for pneumatic wheelchair tires. The best you can hope for is that any puncture is small enough that you can inflate the tire, on the go, enough to get you someplace where you can swap out the wheel.

Tire and tube setup.

An important restriction is that the only tires that I know will fit the rims I’ve been working with are 24″ x 1″, and 24″ x 1-3/8″ tires, designed for use with inner tubes.  These are narrow by bicycle standards, and that limits choices quite a bit.

Puncture-resistant tire liner:  No off-the-shelf option in this size. 

Source:  Amazon.com

These are (typically) just a tough piece of flexible plastic, designed to turn aside (e.g.) thorns.  Note what the original Mr. Tuffy tire liners don’t say:  Nails, tacks, screws, staples, and similar.  Given that I’ve had nails go right through the tread of a steel-belted radial car tire, I’m pretty sure a piece of plastic isn’t going to stop them in a bike tire.

But it’s moot anyway.  Near as I can tell, all the ones made for bicycles are too large for 1-3/8″ tires, and are certainly too large for 1″ tires.  For the Mr. Tuffy brand, 24″ wheel sizing starts at 1.95″ and goes up from there.

At best, I could cut them down and use them.  But I’d have to sand down the edges to be sure that the tire liners themselves didn’t cut the tube.

Tire sealants:  Dubious in higher-pressure tires.

Slime (r) does not make ready-made self-sealing inner tubes sized for a 1-3/8 tire.  That said, the original Slime (r) sealant was sold in bottles, to be squeezed into a bike inner tube after removing the valve core.  So it’s easy enough to make self-sealing 1″ or 1-3/8″ tubes from standard tubes and a bottle of Slime (r).  By reputation, this will stop (or greatly slow) leaks from small punctures for about two years.  After which, I think you have to remove and replace the old tubes.

So that’s an option.  Based on what I read on the internet, Slime works, somewhat.  Won’t stop a rip or tear in the tire.  May not seal fully.  But gives you enough sealant to get home on a tire with a small puncture.

This seemingly-knowledgeable user provides a major caveat:

Tire pressures above 45 psi are less effective at sealing, and above 60 psi, don’t expect any effectiveness at all.

Oddly, Slime (r) itself does not mention this limitation.  But now that I Google Slime (r) and tire pressure, I see warnings in multiple locations that Slime (r) and similar sealants will not work well in high-pressure tube tires.  I’m not entirely sure how accurate that is, but until proven otherwise, that’s a caveat for tires in the 100 to 140 PSI range.

FWIW, a competing product in this segment — Flat Out — specifically says “fat tire bikes” (reference).  The implication there is that this sealant would not work in (e.g.) road bikes with high-pressure tires.

Beyond that, Slime has a reputation for sometimes causing problems such as blocked valve stems.  All things considered, Slime (r) may be reasonable for low-pressure (“fat”) bike tires, but whether or not it will work well and without issues for thin, high-pressure wheelchair tires is an open question.

A final issue is the use of Slime (r) in mounted tires that might be stored, unused, for a considerable length of time.  Rumor has it that Slime (r) can “pile up” in the low section of the tire.  If you’re getting close to the point where the Slime loses its ability to flow, you may end up picking up a replacement wheelchair tire only to find that the low section of the tire (as stored) is now solidified Slime.

Puncture-resistant tire:  Expensive and somewhat effective.

As with tire liners, these aren’t a bulletproof solution.  It’s puncture-resistant, not puncture proof.  Near as I can tell, the only puncture-resistant tire marketed in the 24″ x 1-3/8″ size in the U.S. is marketed as a wheelchair tire.  Hence it costs two or three times as much as a regular tire.

Puncture-resistant tube:  Expensive, effectiveness unknown.

There are a handful of “thorn-resistant” (that is, extra-thick) inner tubes marketed in the 24″ x 1-3/8″ size.  These appear to cost about two to four times as much as a regular inner tube.  As with puncture-resistant tires, these are unlikely to stop a tack, nail, or screw.  Whether they provide any additional resistance to punctures from man-made objects, I don’t know.

Run flat tire:  No option in this size.

There are now foam inserts for bike tires that provide some degree of run-flat capability.  These are oriented toward tubeless tires typically used by (e.g.) bike racers.  Near as I can tell, there is no run-flat tire option available for something as small as 24″ x 1-3/8.

Tire wipers:  Maybe, but requires D-I-Y mounting.

A final offering for minimizing punctures goes by various names, but probably “tire wipers” is sufficiently descriptive.  These are typically wires that ride lightly on the tire, and knock off any solid debris that has stuck to the tire, including tacks, nails, and thorns.  The idea is that it typically takes several tire revolutions for such debris to penetrate the tire, and if you can knock it away, it won’t puncture the tire.  These typically mount (e.g.) the same place as the brake calipers on a bike, which means that you’d have to device a custom mounting for use in a wheelchair.

Emergency pump:  C02 inflator or Standard bike mini-pump plus long adapter hose.

Based on what I read on the internet, plenty of wheelchair users adopt standard bike mini-pumps for tire inflation.  These pumps are capable of reaching the (e.g.) 140 PSI required for high-pressure tires, but tend to be slow to inflate a tire, because of that.

The main drawback that I see, for on-the-go use, is that most of these pumps require direct attachment to the valve stem. That means that the user would have to hold the pump to the side, stabilize it on the wheel, and pump up the tire in that awkward position.

I think it’s far easier just to add a two-foot air hose, readily available from Amazon.  That would allow a person seated in a wheelchair to inflate the wheel by holding the pump comfortably in the lap, rather than leaning over to manipulate a pump directly attached to a valve stem.

But by far the most obvious solution is a C02 inflator.  These are compact enough to be held in one hand, and so should be readily usable by a seated wheelchair user to inflate a low tire on-the-go.  A single small (16 gram) C02 cartridge should be adequate to bring a 24″ x 1-3/8 tire up to a reasonable working pressure.

A battery-operated rechargeable tire pump is a distant runner-up.  Most of these are relatively bulky.  Many of the less expensive ones cannot generate high pressures.  And even with that, the batteries would slowly self-discharge, meaning that the user would have to remember to charge the pump periodically.  That’s just begging to find that the battery is dead, just when you need it the most.

Conclusion

For pneumatic wheelchair tires, periodic maintenance of tire pressure isn’t much of an issue.  Reliable plug-in electric inflator pumps capable of 100 PSI are readily available.  These can be had with reasonably long air hoses, allowing the user considerable leeway in hooking the pump up to the valve stem.  All that is required is remembering to use it on a regular basis.

The big problem is flat tires while out-and-about.  There, many of the off-the-shelf solutions available to bicyclists — in-tire sealants, puncture-resistant liners, run-flat tires, and “tire wipers” — are not available (off-the-shelf) for narrow, high-pressure pneumatic tires typically used on wheelchairs.

That only leaves puncture-resistant tires and tubes.  Those may slow down the rate at which flats occur, but neither of those will stop sharp metal objects such as tacks, nails, or screws.

I guess my bottom line is this.  If you can tolerate the occasional flat tire, then go with high-end “puncture resistant” tires and tubes.  Forget Slime (r), tire liners, tire wipers, and similar makeshift solutions.  If not, I’d go with solid-rubber tires (not inserts), along with the steel bench-mounted tool used to install those tires safely on wheel rims.