Hello from Norway! Right now we are looking for a method to clean our lines from the last season to reuse them. Does anyone have an idea what the best method is to get the lines clean without creating a lot of microplastic? Cheers Mats
@mats_heitzmann Hi Mats! I know several farmers who have had luck pressure washing lines to clean them. The trick -- I hear -- is not to use too much pressure so that you break down the fiber. (And release those microplastics as you suggested.) Anyone else have an alternative method for cleaning growlines?
@mats_heitzmann Hi Mats! We are experimenting with using a mechanical cleaner to pull of the holdfasts, and then rinsing it at the end. The trick is to use a lot of love on the lines.
@mats_heitzmann a quick tactic is to secure a length of chain to something, wrap the chain around the rope and pull the rope through the chain loop using a winch. If done right, the chain should pull tight on the rope and pull off any old holdfasts. But I can see this shedding some microplastics if done to brittle (UV damaged) ropes, or if particularly bad clumps of fouling are forced through rusted chain. Alternatively, if you have the time, space and no one to complain about the smell. Leaving the lines in a wet and shaded environment for a couple of months will allow the fouling to breakdown into a mush that can be more gently washed off the lines. I am not entirely sure how much better for the lines this is, but I've worked under the assumption that so long as no grit gets into the lines during this storage it is better than anything you would have to do to get hard stuck holdfasts and fouling off.
@iskander_bond Hi Iskander! Interesting move! Curious, does the chain ever tangle on the seed string? Do you make a second pass with a knife to remove the seed string?
@Lindsay_olsen Hi, I do not recall having done this with twine seeded string. Last few times we harvested twine seeded string we did not have ready access to a winch, so it was just someone with a hand scraper / putty knife / spatula. Assuming it could get entangled, the twine our hatchery provides can be pulled apart by hand, so the force being exerted by a winch should be enough to get through a couple of loops in a basic knot. The only foreseen concern I have over doing this on our twine seeded lines is the process of picking through the debris for any fragments of twine before disposal. Assuming it does not get entangled or it still leaves some twine on the lines, I would envisage having to make a second pass with a knife. I've heard good things about knives with small hooks in the end for this job, and I've been shown that many frequent cuts are better than few big cuts.
@iskander_bond I was thinking about something similar but I never tried: Put the end of a the line through a PVC tube, and fill with sand, then close the tube. Winch it through... just a brain fart but could work.
@andreas_juchli thinking through your sand filled tube idea, I am unsure if you'd have an easy time getting the right sized components, a means to secure the tube correctly, a solid enough seal on the end of the tube to prevent it popping off or avoiding the sand being carried out of the tube.
There could well be solutions to these foreseen issues, but you would end up trying harder to achieve them than simply finding the right sized chain.
Perhaps a pvc tube that is just larger than the diameter of the rope could work in a similar way, but I'd be unsure of being able to secure that to anything as easily as a chain.
seaweed breaks down in water so if you have a few old IBC 1000L containers you could submerge your ropes in there for 1month or so and the residual holdfasts should dicintegrate.
@mats_heitzmann
Hi Mats!
I know several farmers who have had luck pressure washing lines to clean them. The trick -- I hear -- is not to use too much pressure so that you break down the fiber. (And release those microplastics as you suggested.)
Anyone else have an alternative method for cleaning growlines?
@mats_heitzmann Hi Mats! We are experimenting with using a mechanical cleaner to pull of the holdfasts, and then rinsing it at the end.
The trick is to use a lot of love on the lines.
@mats_heitzmann a quick tactic is to secure a length of chain to something, wrap the chain around the rope and pull the rope through the chain loop using a winch. If done right, the chain should pull tight on the rope and pull off any old holdfasts. But I can see this shedding some microplastics if done to brittle (UV damaged) ropes, or if particularly bad clumps of fouling are forced through rusted chain.
Alternatively, if you have the time, space and no one to complain about the smell. Leaving the lines in a wet and shaded environment for a couple of months will allow the fouling to breakdown into a mush that can be more gently washed off the lines. I am not entirely sure how much better for the lines this is, but I've worked under the assumption that so long as no grit gets into the lines during this storage it is better than anything you would have to do to get hard stuck holdfasts and fouling off.
@iskander_bond Hi Iskander! Interesting move! Curious, does the chain ever tangle on the seed string? Do you make a second pass with a knife to remove the seed string?
@Lindsay_olsen Hi, I do not recall having done this with twine seeded string. Last few times we harvested twine seeded string we did not have ready access to a winch, so it was just someone with a hand scraper / putty knife / spatula. Assuming it could get entangled, the twine our hatchery provides can be pulled apart by hand, so the force being exerted by a winch should be enough to get through a couple of loops in a basic knot. The only foreseen concern I have over doing this on our twine seeded lines is the process of picking through the debris for any fragments of twine before disposal.
Assuming it does not get entangled or it still leaves some twine on the lines, I would envisage having to make a second pass with a knife. I've heard good things about knives with small hooks in the end for this job, and I've been shown that many frequent cuts are better than few big cuts.
@iskander_bond I was thinking about something similar but I never tried: Put the end of a the line through a PVC tube, and fill with sand, then close the tube. Winch it through... just a brain fart but could work.
@iskander_bond Hi Iskander! Interesting move! Curious, does the chain ever tangle on the seed string? Do you make a second pass with a knife to remove the seed string?
@Lindsay_olsen Hi, I do not recall having done this with twine seeded string. Last few times we harvested twine seeded string we did not have ready access to a winch, so it was just someone with a hand scraper / putty knife / spatula. Assuming it could get entangled, the twine our hatchery provides can be pulled apart by hand, so the force being exerted by a winch should be enough to get through a couple of loops in a basic knot. The only foreseen concern I have over doing this on our twine seeded lines is the process of picking through the debris for any fragments of twine before disposal.
Assuming it does not get entangled or it still leaves some twine on the lines, I would envisage having to make a second pass with a knife. I've heard good things about knives with small hooks in the end for this job, and I've been shown that many frequent cuts are better than few big cuts.
@iskander_bond I was thinking about something similar but I never tried: Put the end of a the line through a PVC tube, and fill with sand, then close the tube. Winch it through... just a brain fart but could work.
@andreas_juchli thinking through your sand filled tube idea, I am unsure if you'd have an easy time getting the right sized components, a means to secure the tube correctly, a solid enough seal on the end of the tube to prevent it popping off or avoiding the sand being carried out of the tube.
There could well be solutions to these foreseen issues, but you would end up trying harder to achieve them than simply finding the right sized chain.
Perhaps a pvc tube that is just larger than the diameter of the rope could work in a similar way, but I'd be unsure of being able to secure that to anything as easily as a chain.
seaweed breaks down in water so if you have a few old IBC 1000L containers you could submerge your ropes in there for 1month or so and the residual holdfasts should dicintegrate.
seaweed breaks down in water so if you have a few old IBC 1000L containers you could submerge your ropes in there for 1month or so and the residual holdfasts should dicintegrate.