FWIW, if you ever install or replace a water pump the biggest pump on the shelf may not be a smart upgrade for you. If your well has a 1/2hp pump and you install a 1.5hp pump, you'll find that it starts harder and runs shorter. Ideally you want a pump that runs and never shuts off as long as you are using water. You want a pressure tank to let the pump run about 60 seconds when it needs to touch up the pressure.

bigger is NOT always better.

If you in the market for a wellpump, you get what you pay for. I cannot recommend grundfoss enough.

1)soft start, all electronics are in the pump and cooled by water.
2)no pump seals. The motor is in a stainless tube and the magenet coils are on the other side of it. There is no seal since there is no need for a hole in the housing. Magnets do the work.
3)stainless steel impellers. 99% of other well pumps have plastic.
4)integrated low water switch.

SQ series runs on 120vac -240vac and soft starts.
SQ-flex series runs on 30vdc - 277vac. Got 3 solar panels? Good to go.

Buy once cry once.

One of the locals just texted me... his son shot a deer yesterday and while they were dressing it, they realized that one of their heiffers wasn't pregnant any more. They had to walk the property in the dark looking for a calf. Found him in a ditch. Mother and baby have been reunited. Freezer is topped up. Life is good.

I think sometimes we forget how useful some of these older, basic skills can be.

Grinding your own grain into flour is a good example. It's not something most of us need to do every day, but knowing how to do it gives us one more way to rely a little less on the systems around us.

Every skill we learn makes us a little more prepared and a little more self-reliant. And that can make a difference not only for ourselves, but for our families and even our communities.

I thought this was a skill worth sharing. I hope you find it useful.

https://preppingcommunities.com/grinding-grain-into-flour-turning-stored-grain-into-food/

Another nice thing with going with the metal siding is if you were wanting to have it colored you could do rhino spray on coloring that will last supposedly a very very long time.

Old water wheel mill from the 19th century

Hiking in Missouri seeing a old mill house

Part of the Chesapeake Ohio canal transporting coal, timber, grain until 1924

With mesh we need to be good stewards of the network. It is likely in the next 6 months the repeater owners will have to implement region scoping. This will stop all traffic that you guys send that is not earmarked for a specific region.

Consider that the red circle is South Carolina and outside is USA. Green area is Columbia region and red is Florence region. A,Band C repeaters will want to scope "us" "us-sc" and "cae". G H and I will want to scope "us" "us-sc" and "flo". D will only want "us" "us-sc" and E and F will want "us" "us-sc" "cae" and "flo".

Repeaters setup like this will not relay traffic for areas they don't support. So while packets from "flo" may reach the "cae" area, repeaters in the cae area will not relay them.

Packets earmarked for "us" will go everywhere. try not to use this day to day.

(continued).

For the users, you can specify a region for each individual chat. Any messages sent to this chat group will be earmarked as "flo" and only routed by repeaters that are programmed to relay flo area packets. In the example shown here, take note of the region:flo in the title bar.

You could have a chat that was for florence area, and other chat for the whole state. or the whole country.

The idea here is that these chats are encrypted and since non-users can't read them anywya, why allow them to escape our area? this will reduce network utilization going forward.

It is probably best to do this now and then when the repeater owners make the switch you'll be ahead of the game.

In case any of you want to know what a pitless adapter is... it connects your water line to your well pump under ground below the frost line. No more 100w light bulbs in the pump house. Just bury the coupler under ground.

Ran across this 3d printed house. Do they even realize how many nooks and crannies dust will get in? ugggghhhh..... algae growing in the grooves outside and dust collecting inside.