The Dream of Owning a Tree Farm

About three years ago I was inspired to start a tree farm.   Why would I want to do this?  It seemed like a good way to make some money.   It would allow me to have an income other than my full time job.  I have always felt the need to have some form of income other than my job because it will eventually go away.  Whether its through a lay off or retirement, eventually I will not be working as an engineer.

Its a good idea to have some sort of income when retired.  Passive income is the holy grail.   You know the income that just keeps flowing in with out any effort.  With this kind of income there are no worries about out living your savings and there is the extra benefit of having something left to give to your loved ones.

When studying the tree farm idea, the financials seemed interesting.   Here was an investment that appreciated with time.  Every foot that the tree grew meant it was worth more.   What makes a tree have value?  The reason is because people desire mature trees to make their yards look beautiful but do not want to wait the amount of time it takes them to grow. 

Its a good idea to grow trees that grow well in your area.   Since I'm in Florida, palm trees grow well and this is what I started with.   There are so many palm trees in my area that it is fairly easy to take a walk and find a tree to collect seeds from. Here are a few pictures of the palm trees that I collected seeds from to start growing.  From left to right (Alexander, Queen, Bismark, Date)

 

I thought about selling the seeds I found on eBay but I realized there may be some legal issues.  Sending seeds across state lines may be problematic due to the agricultural department regulations.  I know that they don't like citrus to cross state lines due to diseases like canker.   Also in the state of Florida they want you to become a seed dealer and get a license.  Anyway, because the red tape I was discouraged and didn't not pursue this.

I pursued the tree farm idea instead and started looking for larger parcels of land that were inexpensive.   Large parcels nearby were few and far between and cost millions.  However 10 acres could be found in my price range about an hour away.  But the distance made me wonder how often I would have to take this drive.  Really if you have a farm you want to live on the farm to tend to it.

Nevertheless I was still excited about the tree farm idea and decided to start growing the palms on my property.  I purchased some used black plastic pots and filled them with cow manure and top soil and planted the seeds.  Some websites suggest that you take the fruit off the seed but this takes a long time so I just planted the seeds as mother nature provided them to me.  I planted about 15 seeds per pot.  It wasn't long before I had 150 palm trees growing.  I must have had 10 different varieties.  For a video on how to grow palm trees see this one.

I was excited about how much these trees could sell for.  For example consider 10 year old date palm which sells for $650 at this link.  That one tree earned $65 per year.  Imagine having 1500 trees on a farm, the farm would grow in value by 100,000 dollars per year.  In ten years it would be worth 1 million dollars.   Wow! Only 10 years to become a millionaire!  The tree farm of course is a lot of work.  Not only is there tending to the trees but then there is also finding a buyer.  There are risks too.  What if a hurricane comes or a disease strikes and they all die.  I'm no expert on what it takes to operate a tree farm but maybe some day I'll talk to one.

Anyway back to my seedlings, I felt the need to water them even though palm tress seem to do fine with the rain water that god provides.  I realized I may not be available to water them every day so to solve this I added some sprinklers tied to my automatic timer.  I no longer had to perform the watering task.  I also came up with a method to keep the weeds from growing around the plants by putting the pots on top of landscape fabric.  See my setup below:

 

Early on I found I needed to separate the seedlings into their own pots and after a year I found that I needed to replenish the dirt in the pots.  I encountered many night crawlers that had taken up residence in the pots.  Maybe I should have opened up a bait store.

I did have trouble with squirrels.  They dug up the seeds and ate them.  I tried capturing them in a trap I purchased from Lowes.  It was fun trapping these critters and even though I have eaten squirrel before I decided to relocate it to another area.  But then another squirrel took up residence in the yard and I was back to where I started.  Below you can see the troublesome critter in his jail cell.

The task of tending to the seedlings and starting a tree farm, got sidelined by my next new interest, remodeling my house.  I have been remodeling the house now for about 2 years and have finished, converting a single car garage into a two car garage, building a cedar covered porch and a boat house with a lift.  All that is left to finish the permits is to put in a paver driveway which I am working on now.

Because of the construction the automatic sprinklers for the palms were off due to the damage to the sprinkler system when tearing up the drive way.   And so its been two years that those seedling have gone without water except rain water.   Out of the 150 seedlings I had, I ended up with about 40 left.  Some died because they were completely covered over with banana tree leaves and had no light. The 40 seedlings are doing well and have grown despite the very little dirt left in the pot.  See picture below of the Alexander palms.

 

Due to my getting sidelined on the dream of owning a tree farm, I thought that I would never use the seedling palm trees I grew because I had nowhere to plant them.  However, my attention has turned to landscaping my yard and I have realized that there are many places for these trees in my very own yard.  What this amounts to is about $650 worth of palm trees to choose from for the yard.  They were not exactly free since I paid money for the pots, manure, fabric, sprinklers and topsoil but that was probably about $150.  This means that I have enjoyed a savings of 77% just for the plants and additional savings by taking care of the landscaping myself..

Cue the cash register sound.

Happy Building

The Dr.

 

Deciding when your old HVAC unit should be canned.

When hurricane Mathew passed through, my HVAC was fried from surges in electricity as I outlined in a previous blog.  I should have shut off the main breaker to protect my electronics but I didn't.  The fix was simple, it just needed a new switch on the access door which shuts the air handler off when the door is open.

However, this unit was a  12 year old Rheem and the natural gas heater didn't work.  It was really rusty and usually every year it had to be hit with a hammer on the rusty burners to get it to work.  But last year hammering didn't work and I busted a sensor fiddling around with it. But that's ok this is Florida and the heater is only needed once or twice a year anyway and I made it all last winter with out a heater.

But there was another problem, the Freon leaked.  It seemed to get worse with the Hurricane.  I called the insurance company out but then I realized that $5000 deductible would have to be paid by me and they were in no way going to pay because they thought the damage was less then the deductible.

The type of Freon used in the unit was the old Freon known as R-22.  R-22 has been mostly phased out in new equipment in the United States and has been replaced by other refrigerants with lower ozone depletion potential.  For more info on R-22 see this Wikipedia link.  Currently R-22 is about 500 dollars for 30 lb on eBay.  To use that stuff you need a license to handle Freon, which I don't have so I rely on the AC guy to come and add some every two years at a cost of  $300 for 3 lbs.  At $100 per pound if you have 4 ton system that uses R-22 you may have to pay $1200 to put 12 pounds back in.  Since the Freon leaked the AC would get more an more inefficient and the energy bill would sky rocket.

The new Freon which is R-410A costs about $140 for 30 lbs on ebay.  Usually when the whole amount of the R-22 Freon needs to be put back in the system, the AC guys tries to sell you a new $15000  top of the line 20 seer variable compressor HVAC unit.

My HVAC was fixable.  At least it didn't look like the picture below which is the result of a copper thieves:  See link.

 

Before I decided on getting a new system I wanted to know if the indoor coil or the outdoor coil was leaking.  If it was the indoor coil  then I could save some money and not replace the outdoor unit.  To get a leak test you can pay $75 for an AC guy to come out.  However for less than $75 dollars you can buy one of these and do a leak test your self.

I bought one and took the cover off my outdoor unit and pretty quickly found the leak.....keep in mind that there all kind of shock hazards in the outdoor unit and a pretty hefty cap that can shock you even when the breaker is off.  Do it your selfer beware!  The leak was in the main outdoor unit coil.  It is possible to repair the coil but an AC guy usually wants to replace it for 1 to 3 thousand dollars.  That's when they try to sell you a brand new AC unit and introduce you to a new ball and chain to strap on your ankle called a $15000 loan.  There really is no choice is there?  What live without AC in Florida?  That's crazy talk!

Now it is possible to legally put in your own AC unit without a license because they come filled with Freon.  Check out this site for example where you can get some really good prices on a Rheem.  To do so you have to braze the Freon pipes when their empty and then pull a vacuum and test them for leaks.  Once the system has proven to be leak free the valve is opened on the compressor which allows the Freon to get into the rest of the system.  This should be enough Freon to run on but if there is not enough Freon you can get the AC guy to put in the right amount.  Don't forget you have to get the Freon out of the old unit in an environmentally friendly way with a collection system.  Without a license you can call a AC guy to collect it for you.  Other skills include navigating the permit process, electrical skills and duct work skills.

Does it sound hard and like a lot of insurmountable work?  Not really.  My dad actually put in the AC unit that was being replaced in my house and he is not an AC installation professional.  It worked great for many years.

Anyway, I wanted to have AC for my boat house completion party and felt I would not be able to complete it on time.  So I called the pro in..  And he installed it in about three days of part time work.  It is interesting to note that he had such trouble getting the old unit out it caused the AC guy to say, "your dad over engineered it and it would probably survive a cat 5 hurricane" and it also caused him  to rupture the Freon lines causing it to all leak out into the atmosphere.   Since it was an accident it wasn't illegal said the AC guy.

Anyway, the drain on my AC unit was directed into an old washer drain.  The problem with this is that sewer gas could go into the HVAC drain and into the air handler and into house.  There was no trap on the drain.  Then you got stinky sewer gas smell in your house.  I never really noticed a smell.  It was not to code so it had to be fixed.

I knew the perfect way to get the drain from inside the garage to the yard which would fix the drain issue.  The AC guy was not up to the task and a plumber would have to be called.  Instead I took on the task myself.   In a previous blog I had fished some electrical conduit into the garage which held the boat house wiring.  My plan was to fish the drain along the same route as the conduit which was under about 10' of patio slab.  Once again I used the walkway tunnel kit from Lowe's and it worked like a charm.

Below is picture of the drain on the inside of the Garage.  In the picture on the right the drain is not yet connected to air handle.  On the left the drain is visible coming out of  the air handler and is  completed

Notice the big hole I had to tear in the Garage floor with my harbor freight jack hammer.  It is about 2 feet deep so that the pipe that was jetted under the slab could pass under the house footer.  The hole was actually still there from the boat house project....so glad I hadn't filled it up with cement yet.

There was one problem though.  Typically a drain from the AC sits above the ground.  In my case it would be a tripping hazard since it would come out right in a high traffic area.  I decided to make a below ground drain.   To do this I used  the drain grate from home depot at this link and some 6" pvc I found at Lowes.  The 6 inch PVC is not to common in this area as Home Depot didn't have it and Lowes only stocked 2' sections.  But 2' is all I needed.

The 3/4" pvc drain resides in a cavity created by the drain gate and the 6" PVC pipe and comes up vertically and then makes two 90 degree turns so that the water drops directly down to the ground in side the 6" PVC pipe.

Remember once the water comes out of the air handler it relies on gravity to find its way to the outside drain.  So the air handler drain outlet has to be higher than the outside drain.  If for some reason the drain gets clogged then water will back up into the air handler.  Luckily the AC guy but a shut off switch on the drain for the AC similar to this one so that a backup will not cause any problems.

The outside drain is shown below,

In the end the AC guy did a very good job installing the unit and I'm very happy with the installation. 
Funny thing is there was such a nice breeze for the party that I left the doors open and turned the AC off.  I didn't really need it.

I did save money by doing the leak test myself and not calling a plumber for the drain.  But the great savings to be had by installing the AC myself was not had as I let the AC guy do the job.

I did save money by getting more than one estimate.  I had estimates from $14000 to $6000.  Some the high estimates were for AC units with all the bells and whistles but I went with a lower end model.  For the lower end models there was about $3000 variation in installation price.  I went with a Trane 16 seer model which was 2 seer better then my old unit.  Trane units have good reputation of being one of the best HVAC units and I got it for the lowest quoted price.  I have already noticed lower electrical bills.

Some other savings that can be had, is Florida gives a $500 rebate for installing a natural gas appliance (since my heater uses natural gas) and since the unit is an energy star rated a tax credit can be obtained when filing the federal income taxes.

Also worth mentioning,  there is a product used on HVACs that is often used on boats to prevent electrolysis damage.  Its a zinc anode and on the HVAC system it is known as corrosion grenade.  Since I'm near the beach I decided to get the AC guy to put one on.  It can be found at this link.

That's all I got for now. 

Happy Building

The Dr.

Hanging Christmas Tree Lights the Easy Way.

Over the last month I have not done much towards finishing the permits on my house.  I did get the boat house inspected for the electrical.  And it passed!  The blog in which I discuss the electrical installation for the boat house is at this link.

To finish the electrical on the boat house, I deviated from the original electrical drawing.  In the plans which I came up with, I required a GFI outlet at the boat house.   But that's before I realized how GFIs worked.  See my previous blog on how they work.

Instead I put a GFI breaker in the house.   This in effect covered the whole boat house electrical circuit.

When the inspector came, I told him what I had done and he was ok with the changes.   But then he looked at my panel and said, "that's not a GFI breaker" and then claimed it was an arc fault breaker.

In this area arc fault breakers are now required.  They are supposed to prevent fires when there is arcing between wires and what ever else they are arcing with.   Here is a link on what they are and why they are used.  They are much more expensive than the old style breakers at about $40 a piece at at this link.  (Lowe's).

If I had been doing construction under the new building rules (and I wasn't because my plans were grandfathered in)   I would have had to put in a  GFI ARC fault breaker.  In any case I had put in a GFI breaker and I assured the inspector it was GFI.  He was not convinced.  Luckily he had a tester and he plugged it in the boat house receptacle and caused the breaker to trip.  This convinced him that it was indeed a GFI breaker.

One reason there has been so little progress is that I felt that once the boat house was done it was time to party.  I think it is very important to celebrate the accomplishments in ones life and this was no exception.  I invited all my friend's over.  We ate 30 lbs of brisket which I smoked with hickory and apple wood chips and my friends brought over some wonderful dishes of their own.  And of course there was plenty of alcohol.   I do believe I gained 5 pounds in just that day alone.  The party morphed from a boat house completion celebration to a football game watching party and then when it was dark we took boat ride to see the ruins of statue known as Annie the dragon.

Another reason there has been little progress is that it was Thanksgiving and my birthday   I took a trip to Wyoming to visit my sister and parents.  It was a real good time and I got to enjoy cutting down 50' dead trees in the national Forrest (we had a permit).  I had never cut down a tree before and was using this experience to practice since I have two 50' palm trees in the back yard that have died and needed cutting down.  Unfortunately, the two trees I did cut down in the forest didn't fall the right way.  Here are some action shots of a tree that my dad cut down:

 

Since the cedar porch, house, boat house, new AC unit and both my neighbors properties are potential targets for the trees in my backyard to fall on, I have decided that the best way to cut the trees down is to scale it with tree spikes and top it off.

I ain't going to do that.  For $150 I can get a professional to take a tree down.

So here I am back in Florida, and Christmas is right around the corner.  I will be working on installing a paver driveway soon.

Since it is nearing Christmas, I thought I would put a Christmas tip in the blog.   For Christmas I hang lights on the house.   I have used the hooks that use adhesive to stick to the drip edge in the past.   This process takes along time and is expensive.  About $8 dollars for 10 hooks.  It is possible t reuse the hooks for next year but then you have to buy new adhesive strips.  Kind of a subscription plan for 3M.  These hooks are at this link.  After doing this for a couple years, this year I thought to myself there must be an easier way.

Since I had installed the roof on my projects (for example see my previous blogs on roofing at this link and this link) I realized that the drip edge I installed has a lip on it that is spaced out from Fascia about 3/4".  I though to myself this would be an ideal place to hang a hook on for the lights.  The hook just has to grab on the edge of the drip edge somehow.  After searching for hooks that would do the job the nearest I could find is shown at this link.  That's a 500 pack for $17.

However, after a couple days of inaction an idea just popped into my mind out of nowhere.  It is shown below:

 

Yep that's a clothespin. Clothespins are cheap and I bought 100 of them at Walmart for $1.88.  I put up 150' of lights by climbing up on the roof and fastening them with clothespins.  It only took me an hour and I almost used all 100 of them.  Now it is true that clothespins don't look as nice as the other hooks, but it is possible to paint them with Christmas colors or maybe even buy colored clothespins.  I think they are fine the way they are.  Besides who's going to see those clothespins at night anyway.

And that ends this blog,

Merry Christmas,

The Dr.