Medieval Castle in Arkansas!

Ozark Medieval Fortress

Pictures later. If I stop to do this now I'll never post it.

Bio Char Part I

So this is interesting. Charcoal buried in the ground increases fertility and captures carbon from the atmosphere, reversing the process of climate change - sort of? Some say it is the world's only hope besides oceanic algae? Or something?

I've got to read through all of this stuff to make sense of it. In the meantime, here's what I am reading if you want to read along:

BioEnergy Lists: BioChar

Joyful Living Article on Terra Preta

Re:Char

Someone begs to differ

More links from Treehugger

Modern Gasification Pioneer

Even USA Today has an article about this

DYI Home scale power plant

Economic Sustainability

I would love to be posting pictures of our new Bale wall, but the project is on hold due to financial issues. Unfortunately, because I work all the time just for the priveledge of having financial problems, this is the only time I could have realistically built the wall.

It wouldn't have cost that much, relatively speaking - but straw bales can be expensive here in the city, and enough for a wall would have been several hundred dollars. Clay, readily available if you have land with clay soil, would have cost money as well. Then there is sand, which in most circumstances is purchased. We are no exception to that.

More and more, I am coming around to the idea that sustainability is incompatible with money. As members of the cash economy, completely dependent on and, if you look at how we spend our time, dedicated to it, we are supporting the death spiral of ecological devastation and endless wars while we "contribute" to keeping the businesses that we buy things from in business, so that their employees in turn can "do their part" to keep the machine going.

At the end of the day, this is our ultimate contribution to the planet.

My parents and grandparents taught me that "getting a good job" was something akin to a patriotic duty - that I somehow owed a debt to something greater than myself that I would repay by working. To fail to "get a job" was an unthinkable social transgression. Those previous generations also thought it was very important for everyone to open a bank account - this was part and parcel of the patriotic package. Although it wasn't articulated quite that way, I got the message all the same. And you know what? They may have been right. Back then. But the world, and this country especially, have changed a lot since my grandparents were born.

I won't spend a lot of time here discussing the corporate capture of our political system and press. The Tea Party activist that drove the shuttle to the train station and I did a mutual double take when we agreed that corporatism (his word!) was the biggest danger we face. Voting is not enough anymore. We must find ways to reclaim our independence, keep our goods, resources, and currency local. We must extricate ourselves from our dependence on corporate employment, corporate products, banks, mortgages, and oil, and find a better way to live.

Once we do, our lives will no longer be for sale, and we will no longer be bought and sold.

I am going to teach my own children something very different than what my grandparents taught me. Contribute, yes. Dedicate yourself to your work and goals, yes. But don't be fooled into thinking that a job at Walmart, whether working at the register or in the corporate office, is some sort of contribution. Sure it is - to Walmart. But what sense is there in making that kind of contribution unless you have no choice? There is nothing wrong with doing what you have to do to survive. But to the greatest extent that you can, build your life outside of the cash economy so that you free yourself up to make real contributions to this world, not fake ones.

Cob Connection 2010 Kickoff Event

Cob Connection's 2010 Kickoff event was today at 407 N. Kedzie, which is a big vacant lot. It actually wasn't vacant today at all - in addition to tons of food and live music, the festivities included:

Cob Building Demonstration
Gardening Tour/Demonstration
Beekeeping Demonstration
Live Fence Making Demonstration
Chickens ("Feeding Zoo?")

The Cob Bench is incomplete - another two workdays will be necessary to complete it. Here are some pictures of the bench, and other pictures from the day:

Sustainable Heating and Cooking Technolgy Part 3 - Stoves for Cooking

In my previous post titles "Sustainable Heating and Cooking Technology Part 2," I discussed three innovations in sustainable stoves for cooking. The first was the Lorena Stove, developed in the 70's. The second was the addition of the "rocket elbow" combustion chamber, and the third is the idea of insulating the combustion chamber to increase efficiency and deliver maximum heat to the cooking surface.

Combining the three results in a vastly improved stove:

Improvement on the Lorena Stove

Note the detail of the difference: Insulative material inside the stove

Here is another explanation, combining insulation and Rocket technology to improve the original Lorena stove and arrive at the Justa Stove.

"Increasing Fuel Efficiency and Reducing Harmful Emissions in Traditional Cooking Stoves" (scroll down to see "the new Lorena Stove")

After finding many, many stove designs and considerations online, this is the one I am going to build.

Here is a picture of the stove with Dona Justa, the woman it is named for!

Justa stove info:

Justa Stoves

Guide to Building the Justa Stove

Justa Stove Slideshow from Trees Water People

Youtube video of Justa stove in Honduras

Here are instructions for building the stove. These are in Spanish:








Here's a commercial version:






Prolena Ecostove/Justa Stove









There are many other variations of ecological stove designs for developing countries. More examples can be found here:

More types of rocket stoves

and for stoves in use in Central Africa, here:

Rocket Stove Designs for Central and Southern Africa


If that isn't enough stove design for you, here are some sites that I found interesting.

An entire list of stoves made out of tin cans! Most of these don't appeal to me because they use fuel that has to be purchased. I'm more interested in burning what is available, probably wood/twigs.

Archive of Tin Can Stove Designs

Some info on "DYI" Solar cookers - but they are mostly DIY anyway - though you can buy them if you want:

DIY Solar cookers

And Max Edleson again, with his super awesome looking stove in Bali:

Max Edleson's Wood Fire Cookstove


For further reading on the vast complexity of developing and introducing stoves in a social, cultural, economic and ecologicla context, the following articles are enlightening:

Issue of "Boiling Point" dedicated to the deforestation crisis and sustainable cooking and heating technlogy

Primer on the social, economical and environmental complexity of cookstove design

Interesting manual from Aprovecho "Fuel Saving Cookstoves"

Treekeepers- 1st Class

This Saturday I started my Treekeepers certification class. One of our presenters from the Bureau of Forestry didn't show up, but we did learn about dangers facing trees and a little bit about identifying some of them.

Between damage from people (lawnmowers are a huge danger to trees) and diseases, urban trees are in a precarious situation.

Poor Trees!

Sustainable Heating and Cooking Technology Part 2 - Lorena and Rocket Stoves for Cooking

There is an enormous worldwide problem right now of scarcity of cooking fuel, combined with health problems associated with smoke from cookfires. I read somewhere that this is the number 1 killer of children under 5 worldwide!

In some places, deforestation is taking place due to the demand for wood to cook with. Haiti, before the quake, was well known as an extreme example of this phenomenon, but there are many other countries with similar problems.

Enter the Lorena Stove:



I first learned about Lorena Stoves from reading The Hand Sculpted House by Ianto Evans. When I visited Cob Cottage company I was able to get a zeroxed manual for building one. A description and explanation can be found here:

Lorena Stoves

I quickly learned, however, that much has happened in the last 30 years and there are stove projects all over the world, often directly connected to reforestation projects.

One group, Trees Water People, has done a lot of work on this and has a lot of information on their website. They have worked together with Aprovecho in designing more efficient cook stoves for people in developing countries who are caught in a trap of scarcity of cooking fuel/deforestation.

Enter the Rocket Stove!





These are little, portable stoves that anyone can rig outside. They also form the inside mechanism for larger stoves as we will see (and heating units for houses as we have seen).









The following links contain details on building one yourself, if you like:

Rocket Stove Design Guide

You tube video - building the Winiarski Rocket Stove Part 1

You tube video - building the Winiarski Rocket Stove Part 2

For even further reading, a detailed manual on building the Rocket Stove can be obtained here, along with other cooking technology such as solar cookers and hayboxes, which use no fuel and, combined with a stove, can drastically reduce the amount of cooking fuel needed even further:

Aprovecho Publications on Cooking Technology

One of the Aprovecho publications, "Capturing Heat," can be read online here:

Entire PDF of "Capturing Heat"

The great thing about these Rocket Stoves in their simplest form is just that - they are so simple! Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement, and insulating them improves them a great deal.

Without insulation, much of the heat generated is absorbed by the mass of the stove. This takes more fuel, and sends less of the fuel directly into the cooking of the food. When all of the heat generated is directed into cooking, and as little as possible is absorbed by the rest of the stove or leaks out, less fuel is used and the stove is more efficient. Fuel can also burn more cleanly, putting less smoke and pollution into the air, or it can burn "dirty." I don't understand this aspect enough to explain it more than that.

The following link contains design specifications, and clear pictures of the process of building an insulated rocket stove:

Insulated Rocket Stoves

More technical info on the reasons to insulate your stove can be found here:

Technical Specs for insulated stoves

So now we have three innovations, the Lorena stove, the Rocket stove (with its "elbow" shaped combustion chamber), and the idea of insulating the combustion chamber.

This results in an improved stove that I'll elaborate on in great detail next time.

Sustainable Heating and Cooking Technology Part 1 - Stoves for Heating Homes

Besides building igloos in the snow, winter is a great time for thinking about heat!

Sustainability takes many forms. The question of sustainable heating technology is a serious one, especially (obviously) for cold climates.

Good insulation will make the most of the heat we have, but we must still generate heat somehow. Heaters that function with the greatest efficiency and the least amount of fuel may provide us with the ability to use fuel at a rate of consumption that is manageable from an ecological standpoint.

First, a book about rocket stoves:


Rocket Mass Heaters

This book explains the prinicples and construction of Rocket stoves for heating houses. They work well in buildings made of material that can heat up and convert the walls themselves into a mass, radiant heater. Of course, these walls must be fireproof. Stone would probably work, but these heaters have been used to good effect in cob buildings.



Here is a video of some rocket stoves in action. I visited Dancing Rabbit a year and a half ago, and I was really impressed with the second stove in the video. It heats the bench that runs along the wall. It heats the upstairs too. It is super, super neat!

Dancing Rabbit Rocket Stoves on You Tube (DRTV)

Of course, sometimes rocket stoves don't work to good effect, and since we can learn from our failures (and even more comfortably from a distance, from the failures of others) here is an explanation of a rocket stove that isn't working as it should:

Rocket Stove Heater for Cob House is Failing

And a later post, in which the stove is declared a failure:

Rocket Stove Heater for Cob House has Failed

Many people have chimed in with suggestions, and I learned something from this:

Bloggers try to help Ziggy fix his Rocket Stove

The next link is to a very interesting heating stove from Max Edleson of Firespeaking.com

There used to be more photos, including a finished photo of this mass heater and some other examples, but he is changing his site around so quickly I can't keep up with him. I actually suspect that he is, at this very moment, changing everything around as I sit here trying to link to his site.

Mass Heater, Staricase, Oven, Water Heater, Fireplace



What does any of this have to do with my apartment in Chicago?



It reinforces just how ridiculously unsustainable this conventional structure is. For one thing, I understand that our floor joists are just about an inch narrower than standard - 3 instead of four inches, or something like that. That means I have to consider the weight of a massive mass heater like the one in the above link

As for a rocket stove - I don't see how this would work. My building is flammable - very much so.

I could put in a wood stove - but I don't have information to suggest that this is any better than our current setup in terms of efficiency or ecological impact.

And as a testiment to how little thought the builders of this house put into this type of thing, our apartment isn't insulated. Insulating it would be a massive cash outlay that we just don't have right now, even with the Obama tax credit. It would basically be a rehab - tearing out and replacing all the walls. This I do not see happening.

Igloo/Snow Fort Update

Here's the "igloo" in front of the house. We'll finish it tomorrow I think.

Natural Building: Use what you've got

And since we are about to get snow, snow, and more snow ("snowmaggedon," says Obama), there's no time like the present to learn about building igloos.

Unfortunately, even a blizzard isn't going to give us the kind of hard frozen ice blocks we need for this kind of building unless you are near the arctic. And I'm glad I'm not-

But maybe this can be adapted? I could see a cob building type method with snow - it's pre-mixed and the right kind of snow is sticky.

Of course - that's a snow fort.

With a form, I bet a dome roof could be easily built. If we get enough snow, I'll build it. Why not, the neighbors already think I'm crazy.

The above image (and article link) is from Igloo Building: In the path of the elders

There is an article about building snowforts in the backyard ("family fun for kids!") here at about.com

"Earth Sheltered" or Underground building

I have been planning an underground greenhouse/chicken coop in the backyard this spring, but I am running into the hard reality that it may take up an amount of space so significant as to displace everything else I have been planning for that yard - including a cob oven and Lorena stove, more wildflowers to attract butterflies and bats, a beehive, and of course most important of all, recreational space.

In the meantime, I am still thinking of ways to make this work- even if it isn't exactly in this particular backyard- and continuing research into Underground building methods.

Several books and resources - including Mike Oehler's books which I have read carefully and some pictures of an inspiring earth sheltered house in Wales (the one above) are included on the following website:

Wofati Eco Building

Another fascinating resource for underground greenhouses can be found here:

Directory: Walipini Underground Greenhouses

I know that reading about this is easier than doing it, but what we are doing now is so difficult!

I just heard a story this morning about the Pentagon "pouring billions of dollars" into remote controlled robot armies! Seriously? We would all do much better to focus on growing vegetables.

TreeKeepers?

Openlands, the Bureau of Forestry, and the Chicago Park District are training volunteer citizen arborists to assist with the care and maintenance of Chicago's 4 million city trees.

28 hours of training on caring for trees? Why not! I'm totally doing it.

First session is Feb 27th.

You can do it too! It's $80.00 for 7 weeks - but it sounds like they can waive it. I called the director and he didn't answer (so he didn't say the class was full) - so I'm sending my form in.

As soon as I can figure out where I put it...

Explanation of my links

So, there are a number of links on the right hand side of the page. Some of these are websites of people or organizations that I have met, visited, bought vegetables from, taken classes from, or connected with in some way. These include Cob Connection, Center for Sustainable Community, Chicago Biodiesel, The Rainbow Gathering, Dancing Rabbit, Year of Mud (Ziggy lives at Dancing Rabbit), Cob Cottage Company, and Firespeaking (Max was a teacher at the Cob Cottage workshop I attended with Sagan). The Garden Hive is operated by my mom's cousin, who makes backyard beehives!

Others are organizations that I haven't visited or worked with but would like to if I get the chance. These include Aprovecho (founded by the same person who founded Cob Cottage Company, Ianto Evans), Path to Sustainability, Spontaneous Vegetation, and Jonah House (THESE people are living the word of Christ - and I think they may be the only people I have ever seen in my life that actually do - but check out the sustainability connection - a Dominican Convent in a cemetary in Baltimore! Complete with Llamas!).

Other sites are informational sites, book publishers, etc. These include Apropedia, Dirt Cheap Builder, Chelsea Green, Intentional Communities Directory, and Underground Housing (I hear Mike Oehler is a bit of a curmudgeon and best appreciated from a distance).

I may post some more extensive info about individual people or organizations, but not right this minute.

Welcome!

It's time to stop sending all of my students over to Facebook, and get serious about keeping up to date with sustainability projects in Chicago. It is February 1st - so not a lot is going on around here, but there are many plans in the works for Spring. For now, these include:

Construction of an underground greenhouse

Construction of a straw bale garden wall (and ongoing film series projected onto it once it is built!)

Ongoing composting and gardening projects

Beekeeping IF I can talk everyone else into tolerating the idea (talking everyone into moving the cars was monumental)

All must wait until the ground unfreezes. Until then, I'll be...grading!