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From: Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: energy in UK
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2025 03:10:06 -0700
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On 4/22/2025 1:01 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> On 2025-04-21 23:54, Don Y wrote:
>> On 4/21/2025 9:48 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
>>> The 5-to-1 is installation only, but it's hard for decreased
>>> maintenance and repair to make enough difference to tilt the balance.
>>
>> Hmmm, I would have thought damage from storms (branches falling on
>> overhead lines), "accidents" (drivers skidding in snow; drunks)
>> and the inevitable "road widening" operations would be very costly.
> 
> Floods can kill underground service, too.

Major cities seem to deal with it, OK.

>> Here, we are plagued with /caliche/ making digging very difficult
> 
> new word to me.

Yeah, it was to me, too, when I moved here!  I rented a jack-hammer
to remove some concrete, early on.  The salesperson asked me if I wanted
the shovel attachment, too?  (I just looked at him, dumbfounded).

When I dug the holes for the citrus trees (with a regular shovel and
a "caliche bar" -- a large, 20 pound iron "spear" with a chisel point)
I understood the reference!

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliche
> 
> Caliche (/kəˈliːtʃiː/) (unrelated to the street-slang "Caliche" spoken in El 
> Salvador) is a soil accumulation of soluble calcium carbonate at depth, where 
> it precipitates and binds other materials—such as gravel, sand, clay, and silt. 
> It occurs worldwide, in aridisol and mollisol soil orders—generally in arid or 
> semiarid regions, including in central and western Australia, in the Kalahari 
> Desert, in the High Plains of the western United States, in the Sonoran Desert, 
> Chihuahuan Desert and Mojave Desert of North America, and in eastern Saudi 
> Arabia at Al-Hasa. Caliche is also known as calcrete or kankar (in India). It 
> belongs to the duricrusts. The term caliche is borrowed from Spanish and is 
> originally from the Latin word calx, meaning lime.[1]

Caliche is largely impervious to liquid water.  You can fill a hole with
a caliche layer at the bottom and it won't drain for DAYS.  So, a caliche
layer under a planting is effectively a barrier to root penetration -- there's
nothing "wet" drawing the roots through the layer(s).

As I stated, when I dug the holes for the trees, I was advised that I
was making a giant flower pot (think: terra cota) for each tree and
sizing that pot to accommodate the future needs of the tree.  So,
4 ft deep and 4 ft diameter to give the trees a good start (it would
have been better to make them 15 feet diameter -- the eventual
driplines for the trees -- but that would be an insane amount of soil
to remove and discard!)