As someone who works in public relations for a permaculture guild, I often hear from people wanting to know what permaculture is all about. In a nutshell, permaculture is a set of design principles aimed at addressing human needs sustainably. Sustainable means ecologically, economically, and socially. We can divide human needs into five broad categories: food, water, shelter, energy, and community.
Windows, even double and triple pane are still one of the weakest parts of a building envelope. A typical wall may be R13 while a good double pane window is only R-4. Adding good insulation to your windows can greatly improve your over all insulation.
These instructions are for DIY insulating roman shades.
Happy Holidays 2010
This year we have held true to our principals of 2009 and exchanged just a few second hand gifts of things that were needed plus a few new toys for our son from the grandparents. I ended up needing a few new things myself while we were traveling by train in the week leading up to our holiday so I put the empty packages under the tree so I could remember to be thankful for receiving the things I needed when I needed them.
The Prologue: I have long been reluctant to add a clothesline to our basement.
We blogged about molten-salt plants a few months ago here on greenknowe.org, and now we have some good news to go along with that. California has approved a molten-salt solar plant, and construction is expected to begin sometime late in 2011. Hopefully the cost and efficiency will play out as expected, and more of these plants will be built in the future.
What to do with the accursed Tetra Pak?
By this point in the project we were running about a month behind schedule and with bad weather just around the corner, we couldnt afford any delays. Just before our insulation was scheduled to go in, disaster struck. Our local insulator's equipment broke down, it wasn't going to be repaired in time, and there were no other local providers for AirKrete. What could we
Our home renovation project also included replacing the old flat tar and gravel roof with a new, sloped metal roof. A sloped roof is of course much better for mounting the solar panels, and we selected a single-plane south-facing roof that faces south so that we would get good panel-placement options. We selected a metal roof because this style is best for recl
Since we already needed to open up all of the walls in the house and take off the roof as well, this was also the perfect time to revisit the electrical system. The house, being sixty-plus years old, still had a lot of knob-and-tube wiring, and only 60 amps of service. Since we have been planning for some time to get an electric car (when available), that just wouldn't cut it. Additionally, we wanted to put in enough solar panels to run the car, and that also demanded revisions to the house's electrical.
Its now well into September and the north and south walls have been re-framed. So far we have done exceedingly well using almost entirely reclaimed lumber (once more I would like to extend our gratitude to the ReUsable Lumber Company.)
Once the foundation was beginning to cure, it was time to think about reframing the walls. We do not kid. Probably about half the timber in the south wall had to be replaced.
Our contractors (Marc & Jacob Salmon) came up with a clever idea to use the taller timbers from the back corner of the house and cut them down to use in the front corner where the downstairs wall is shorter because the foundation comes up higher. That still left us in need of longer timbers for the back half of the wall.
So it begins. The big To-Do. We knew when we bought this house that it was going to be a lot of work. My attempts to repair the bathroom wall when we moved in showed me how much rot there was behind the beautifully painted sheetrock.
The roof has leaked for years, the foundation was below grade and crumbling in on area, we had a terrible time finding insurance because of the knob & tube and the fact that we only had 60 amps of service to the house. Last summer our bedroom was full of flying termites.
An article in inhabitat.com describes the world's first molten salt solar plant, which just went online in Italy. The plant uses molten salt to store heat from the sun; the heat is used to produce steam to drive a turbine that generates power much in the same way a hydro-electric plant does. Because the molten salt has such high inertial heat, the plant can generate power around the clock.
The Back-to-School ritual that happens ever fall is one of those tides of consumption that periodically sweeps over us in our lives. We can easily avoid the pit fall of clothing right now as our son is still young and having new trendy things is not important to him. We are very proud of our little guy who gladly accepts cast-offs and thrift store clothes. This may ch
Well, since my husband and I signed up to Riot 4 Austerity this year, we have been taking a close look at the 7 basic areas and their relationship to our life style. We passed with flying colors in 4 areas. The areas we found that we could really reduce our impact was driving, natural gas and food.
Recently an article on incinerators came into my lap.
www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
We are under 20 gallons per day per person and some months we are as low as 12 gallons per person per day. Most months we come in around 16 gallons per person per day. The Riot4Austerity goal is 10 gallons per person per day. The 16 gallons we use includes some outdoor watering and some for my work as a costumer. Textiles is a water intensive profession and we grow most of our own produce so we are proud to be as close as we are. Before joining Riot4Austerity our water usage averaged 25 gallons per person per day.
Earlier we talked about how to make your own rain barrel. The rain barrel project was easy to do, and it was very exciting to see how quickly the barrels filled up when it rained. Unfortunately, it was also a bit disappointing to see how quickly those sixty-five gallons of water were used up watering the
Recently we set up a TerraCycle collection program for my son's school. We collect certain items and for each item TerraCycle donates 2 cents to the school. Its a little money and great big feeling of happiness that our world is going to be a cleaner place.