I have found over the years, my piles get the hottest if I spread the layers of green and brown in only 2-4" layers before starting the next layer. It seems the more thin layers the hotter my pile gets. Also, I have over the years started to use less and less water and it seems my piles break down better. Finally, glad to hear you pick up a thermometer. I think it helps quite a bit. A few years ago I tracked the life cycle of my pile and the results were interesting. The pile went from 80ish to 120-130 within 7 days of building. Then slowly decreased to 80-95 within another seven days. Stayed in that range for about a month and then settle around 60-75. When you build your next pile, track the temp in Excel daily or at least every 2-3 days and see the results. It really helped me learn how to get more out of my piles. Best of Luck...

Carol, I knew that if you were home, you'd be watching it. I watched it too. Early on, I thought it would pass to our southwest, but then it became apparent it wouldn't. So, I ran outside and dragged about 15 containers with plants (mostly peppers and tomatoes but also a few flowers and herbs) up underneath the patio cover. There were some I couldn't move because they were too heavy. Then I just made sure the pets all were inside and that the windows on the sunporch were closed. After that, all we could do was wait it out. The brunt of the storm hit about 2 minutes after I went inside. I was watching the radar like a possessed woman. One cell, which at one point had a tornado in it, was moving towards Granbury, and my cousin's family is south of Granbury, so I was watching it. Another severe thunderstorm was moving right straight at my mom's and brother's homes in Tarrant County, so I was watching it. Tim was on the way to work, so I was watching for storm development along his route, and then I was watching the storm that was headed for us. We got 6/10ths of an inch in the gauge, but a lot of the time the wind was blowing the rain sideways, so we may have had more than what made it into the rain gauge. Based on the large puddles, we might have had up to an inch. A storm spotter reported a tornado in the air near Thackerville, but no one else saw it and no one could see it on radar, etc. so most of us discounted the report as erroneous. There were tons of trees, tree limbs and power lines down in and around Thackerville so that community did take a real beating. Some power poles snapped in half. I'm inclined to think it was straight-line wind damage, and not the supposed tornado. After the main storm had passed, and all the cops and firefighters were out dealing with the damage, and the electric co-op guys were working to restore power, we started getting very, very strong outflow boundary type winds blowing back at us. Those winds did additional damage, especially in Marietta, which wasn't hit as hard by the earlier winds as the Thackerville area was. I think we sustained less damage than either of them since we're right in the middle. We only lost power because of trees in the Thackerville area that came down on poles/power lines. In our neighborhood, overall there was little damage. Even the pecan tree limbs that came down were dead wood with no foliage. The garden looks lovely after the rain storm. I think the moisture helped a lot since we'd gotten so very dry. I bet we have killer humidity today though. It seems like a good day to stay inside during the heat of the day. I am really concerned about how hot it will get, in terms of what the heat will do to the cool-season plants. Oh, and you know how sugar snap peas are in their growth habit--more leaners than twiners, so a lot of them were lying flat on the ground this morning when I went out to check the garden at daybreak. I picked up the vines off the ground and loosely zip-tied them to the trellis. For as strong as the winds were, I expected the corn to lodge and for at least some tomato plants/cages to be on the ground, but neither thing happened, so we were really lucky.

The hydrofarm mats I use indicate that if you want the root area to be 90+ leave the mat on 24x7. IF you want it less than that you need to unplug them for a certain number of hours each day. The easiest way to control it is with a single thermostat that shuts off the power when the ideal temp is reached. Alternately with a thermometer one can do as Rick suggests and place insulating layers between the mat and the flat. This slows the heat transfer and allows more time for heat to dissipate from the potting medium. It's more trial and error, but gets the job done. FWIW, I can't imagine pepper seeds having a germination issue with the mat left on 24x7. A mat intended for horticultural use simply shouldn't raise the temps in a flat too high for seeds, like peppers, that prefer warm soils. With the hydrofarm mats I use flats with dome covers on and often under HID lighting and it doesn't get so hot that germination doesn't occur in a reasonable timeframe.

The entire power in your house is fed from a large pole mounted transformer (usually at least 7,200 V on the primary side with a 240 V center tapped secondary). Just as with the power in your house, a load pulls power based on its impedance and the supplied voltage. The final rating of the pole transformer V-A is VERY large. It often is supplying multiple service drops at 100 to 200 amps EACH. Just as with your small wall wall wart transformer it supplies the current demanded while limiting the output voltage to a narrow range. Just like you wall wart the voltage does drop as the loan increases, but the POCO takes pains to make sure the transformers are large enough that the voltage you see at the drops stays within allowed limits (typically about +/- 10% of nominal). If you actually measure the voltage in your house a couple times during the day you can often see the variation as people use more power during the day than at night typically.