Making Planters from an old gas cylinder...

As a disclaimer to this post, strictly speaking even old and abandoned fuel gas cylinders still belong to the company that issued them - when you buy the gas, you're only renting the cylinder which is why there's usually a hefty deposit the first time around and then you swap like-for-like with full bottles when they're empty, and only pay for the contents.   Despite this, there's still a ready market for empty gas cylinders (just search on eBay, for instance) but perhaps their general sale may be outlawed in the future, as has happened with beer kegs.  However, there will still be damaged cylinders out there that would otherwise be condemned if they're beyond economic repair.

And on a safety note, never attempt to cut a cylinder unless you're 100% sure it's unpressurised, completely empty of gas and has been adequately purged !   Note that if you fully open the valve and leave it open with the cylinder upright, after an initial escape under pressure it will still remain full of gas at atmospheric pressure because these fuel gases are heavier than air and therefore can't escape upwards - the cylinder would need to be inverted to empty it of gas.  If in any doubt at all, unscrew and remove the valve adaptor altogether and then fill the cylinder to overflowing with water from a hose, leave it full for an hour, tip it up and empty it, and then leave it standing upside down for a few days.


Anyway, lecture over and back to the post....

We're always on the lookout for garden planters, and this autumn we'd bought two rhododendron bushes of varieties Rasputin and Golden Torch for which we wanted to find a permanent home before the cold weather really starts to bite.  These evergreen shrubs need acidic soil to thrive, which we don't have in the garden here, and so they're better off in pots filled with ericaceous compost.  The planters themselves must be large enough for the shrub roots to grow into over many years, and also heavy enough so they won't get blown over in the wind.

I regularly search on eBay to see what's available locally on a secondhand basis, using keywords such as barrels, urns, planters, drums, pots, tubs, bins, cauldrons etc, but it's difficult to find anything pleasing for a reasonable price, i.e. next to nothing !  

However, I remembered there was a damaged 47 kg propane gas cylinder lying behind the shed, just accumulating snails...  I'd tried to chuck it out in a skip once, but the driver said he couldn't take it.

So I heaved it out, measured it up and in spite of the damage (a crease in the centre), I decided I could still make two 40 litre planters from it.  It's around 375 mm in diameter, and I cut around the cylinder with an angle grinder in two places to remove the damaged section and make two half shells of around 400 mm in height.  

the cut cylinder...

Garden Review - in Pictures

I don't seem to have been out in the garden very often with the camera this year, but here's a brief review anyway :-

apricot blossom in late winter...

and a futile attempt to protect the apricot flowers from frost with fleece....
it's just too cold & windy here to set fruit outdoors on plants that make
blossom so early in the year, so the tree's now been cut down.

Yet more landscaping works ....

Our rabbits both died this year, within a few months of each other.  They were getting on for seven years old, so I suppose they had a decent enough innings in rabbit terms.

We'd already decided we won't be keeping any more animals, so we demolished their large roofed shelter, hutches & runs, and set about cleaning up the area they'd occupied with a view to re-integrating it back into the rear and side gardens.  

They'd had a very generous plot between them, around 30 square metres including the hedgerow behind, and so it's now freed up quite a large additional garden space.  

the rabbits and their enclosure, taken after we'd built it in early 2011

Should I continue to add to the Investment Pot ?

From the last few years of monitoring, I can see I've been saving around 50% of my income, most of which is now added to the pot on a monthly basis.

At current valuations, the pot has grown to the point where my monthly additions increase the pot value by only a fraction of a percent each time.    This is well within the expected volatility range of the combined investment pot, even in the most stable of market conditions.

So does it make any sense to continue to add to the pot, or should I put a stop to the monthly contributions and just accept the market return without adding fresh money ?

Now, I'm not about to start wild spending on things I don't need, so you might well ask what's the advantage here, since there's a monthly surplus anyway and therefore doesn't it count as savings if it's not being spent ?

A Grand Tour ...

I mentioned in a previous post that we intended to take our 'new' convertible on a driving tour of Europe.   Well, we've now returned from a great holiday, and here's brief diary of the trip.

the route, anticlockwise from Zeebrugge to Amsterdam

Investment Review - September 2016 ( the ton up, in more ways than one ! )

Here's the combined portfolio summary data as at the end of September :-

Safe Withdrawal Rates - with respect to inflation ...

The subject of Safe Withdrawal Rates is cropping up again regularly on the blogs, so I thought I'd take a quick look at it myself.

The general acceptance criterion seems to be a drawdown rate at which an initial capital sum would last for 30 years without becoming depleted, after the withdrawn amount is increased annually in line with inflation.

Instead of trying to predict any particular safe withdrawal rate, I decided to take a slightly different approach and examine what the annual investment growth rate would need to be to sustain a 4% rate of withdrawal, and with reference to the assumed inflation rate.  4% is the oft-quoted safe withdrawal 'rule'.

So I set up a simple spreadsheet based on a £100k pot from which an inflation-adjusted amount is withdrawn each year, and then I played around with various input values.