DIY Thread - Let's see your "Inventions".

[PrimroseMom1]

Or then I could find the time to pick it apart and see what the problem is.

Don't fool around with that. Trash it.

 

[jdduck]

There is a band that is connected to the hand gard goes around the cluch and drive sprockit it is broke or just worn out. It is inside the cover u take off to change the chain the whole assembly is usually around 20 depending on the brand saw. It is very important to have this working as it will save your life if the saw kicks back on you.

 

[cabinchicky]

Hats off to the ladies who can use a chainsaw!!! My husband bought the smallest Stihl for me to use but nope not enough upper strength to keep it from bouncing. So now he and the son use it for trimming while I remove brush.

 

[cabinchicky]

Question!! What is the most used method of securing a tarp to your runs in winter?? I currently have small loop binges on mine, but are there better ideas??

 

[perchie.girl]

Question!! What is the most used method of securing a tarp to your runs in winter?? I currently have small loop binges on mine, but are there better ideas??

I have been known to lay the tarp down on the chainlink roof and criss cross it over with rope.... kind of a loose net. worked pretty good. My coop was sixteen by twelve so I use a tarp that covered the top and the six foot height on the back side. that was the sixteen foot direction so I bought a tarp that was about 25 by eighteen... appx.

The deal is if you ca lay something up there to give a slope to the canvas yOu will have less water pooling when it rains. Stretching the tarp is one way to do that. Tarps are constantly moving poofing up and down so stretching them tight keeps them from "wearing" in spots that they touch supports.

A friend of mine built her horse barn using billboard tarps. They are very heavy. What she used was tension springs and fastened them to the structure or to the ground. The springs were fastened to bars that were fastened to the tarps.... Her barn lasted a good three years....

Tension springs are like what go on a trampoline.

deb

 

[hennible]

I got sick of dumping my duck pool every three days so I made a duck pond filter.
It's a small pond pump, submersible, you can find them at Home Depot for $60 and up. The pump sits in the pool and it's outlet hose runs into the bottom of a 9 gallon bucket with a spout. The hose is held in place with 3-4 inches of pea gravel, followed by layer after layer of washable furnace filter cut to size and topped off with 3-4 inches more pea gravel. The bucket sits above the pool and is tilted so the clean water goes where I want it. The trick apparently is waiting for bacteria to take up residence in the media, and it will brake the organics down while the rocks etc filter large debris.
Ugly but seems to work, 3 days to build up bacteria colony apparently. Working well, one issue to solve is when the ducks get rowdy they sometimes bump the pump and I have to unplug it and start it up again, not a big deal.

These are the filter layers full of duck gunk. I hose these and the pea gravel out every 10 days or less and reassemble the filter. Another benefit of the fountain style of my filter are the oxygen and movement of the water which encourages more gunk to get into the filter.

Filtered pool

Unfiltered pool water in both pools is 3 days old. Happy to say it's been working well and I'd like to build a bigger one in the future for a bigger pond. I didn't dump the pond water for over a month, it took that long for the bottom to get sludgy. The little submersible pump sits on the bottom and sucks up sludge very well.
Once in a while when the filter gets overloaded, the pump stops running, or the flow of water is not enough to get the water back into the pool so it ends up emptying.... Should've made it bigger.

 

[PrimroseMom1]

Question!! What is the most used method of securing a tarp to your runs in winter?? I currently have small loop binges on mine, but are there better ideas??

I have three ways. On my bunny hutch, it fit the tarp to the back half and wrap it like a present securing it with zip ties. I leave the bottom open but use deep litter hay. Another way I do tarps is cover the top and make flaps out from the coop and secure with bungees. And the last way is to cover the top and secure the tap through the grommets with tent spikes. Sometimes I have to use a little rope to touch the ground then use tent

spikes. In this foto is the tight wrap style and also flaps with bungee.

 

[perchie.girl]

I got sick of dumping my duck pool every three days so I made a duck pond filter.
It's a small pond pump, submersible, you can find them at Home Depot for $60 and up. The pump sits in the pool and it's outlet hose runs into the bottom of a 9 gallon bucket with a spout. The hose is held in place with 3-4 inches of pea gravel, followed by layer after layer of washable furnace filter cut to size and topped off with 3-4 inches more pea gravel. The bucket sits above the pool and is tilted so the clean water goes where I want it. The trick apparently is waiting for bacteria to take up residence in the media, and it will brake the organics down while the rocks etc filter large debris.
Ugly but seems to work, 3 days to build up bacteria colony apparently. Working well, one issue to solve is when the ducks get rowdy they sometimes bump the pump and I have to unplug it and start it up again, not a big deal.




These are the filter layers full of duck gunk. I hose these and the pea gravel out every 10 days or less and reassemble the filter. Another benefit of the fountain style of my filter are the oxygen and movement of the water which encourages more gunk to get into the filter.

Filtered pool

Unfiltered pool water in both pools is 3 days old. Happy to say it's been working well and I'd like to build a bigger one in the future for a bigger pond. I didn't dump the pond water for over a month, it took that long for the bottom to get sludgy. The little submersible pump sits on the bottom and sucks up sludge very well.
Once in a while when the filter gets overloaded, the pump stops running, or the flow of water is not enough to get the water back into the pool so it ends up emptying.... Should've made it bigger.

Excellent job.

You can build it bigger several ways. What I want to do is use full on Garbage cans. from the bottom up.... put a layer of fiberous filter medium. this is just to make a kind of dead space under the filter for water flow. You can use those fiberous sheets for Swamp coolers. Then create a gravel filter When i used to set up aquariums in a past life it was a pound of gravel per gallon of tank.... a duck pond like yours looks to be a hundred or more gallons. The weight of the gravel may require you make a platform under neath.... I havent built one like that before.

then add filter medium on top to catch large particulates.... That can be pulled out and washed on occasion. the water dribbles down through the top and circulates either by gravity from the bottom or is removed by something like an ebb and flow mechanism.... Or removed by pumping the water out.

the deal is Aerobic bacteria set up residence in the gravel and actually digest the organic material in the water. Then the cleaned water goes out and can be run through a Bed of Carbon. The carbon takes care of minerals and stuff like amonia.... The carbon also develops aerobic bacteria... but it looses its effectivity after some time. You can recharge it by baking it in an oven... I have to look up the particulars on that.

Sounds complicated but I assure you its not. You can use a similar system to filter grey water as well.

Ducks are messy and their effluent is not particularly clean of nasty organisms. If you want to clean the water further run it through a Diatom filter. That will take out organisms around 2-4 microns. diatom filters are easy to make but dang cheap if you go to Walmart and get one for an above ground pool.

deb

 

[hennible]

Thanks Perchie.girl
Wish I'd known you could recharge charcoal When I was turtle sitting (for a year)
I will have to improve this filter next year,I like your ideas.
Ducks are messy but turtles ( though lovely ) are disgusting. smelly critters.

 

[perchie.girl]

Thanks Perchie.girl
Wish I'd known you could recharge charcoal When I was turtle sitting (for a year)
I will have to improve this filter next year,I like your ideas.
Ducks are messy but turtles ( though lovely ) are disgusting.

smelly critters.

Yep I raised turtles too. and OMG you are so right. I had a pair of Red Eared sliders in an 80 gallon Vivarium converted to turtle tank. While they were little they were sooo cute..... They are carniverous for quite some time... I fed them Ghost shrimp and crickets and small Guppies. It was soo funny watching the little guys chasing after "prey". Once they got old enough to prefer leafy greens thats when the tank started smelling. Due to their size and the fact that the pelleted food tended to disintegrate... I had a power filter on the tank but it wasnt enough.

I built them an outdoor pond that summer... They had gotten about six inches acrosss. Just cinder blocks and a pond liner and pond pump pumping through a basic filter sized right. They were quite happy... till the Raccoons found them.

With regard to recharging the Carbon. When I worked at a big fish store there was an Ichthyologist working there to manage the fish. Hes the one that set up the filtration systems. As well as managing sick tanks and medications. Mind you this was back when they first invented the all glass aquarium.... Before then Aquariums were glass with metal frames and a tar like substance as a sealant. It was him that talked about recharging the Activate carbon.


Here is a discussion about recharging Activated Carbon for fish tank filtration.

http://www.answers.com/Q/How_can_activated_charcoal_be_cleaned_and_reused

The deal is its still used carbon and wont have the same qualities as new....

deb