Discussion Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: rachel on February 06, 2017, 04:39:59 pm
Title: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on February 06, 2017, 04:39:59 pm
Hey y'all, let's talk about permaculture.
If you don't already know, here's some cool links on the topic:
https://wiki.wetfish.net/permaculture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
Anyway, for everyone else that already knows all about permaculture, check out this awesome DIY / small scale hydroelectric site (http://www.five-gallon-bucket-hydroelectric.org/) that snek showed me. It's complete with plans and a lot of information about how to generate hydro power at home.
Tomorrow is a bee meeting! After that I will buy my hive boxes and start building it out.
Nice! Can't wait to see pictures
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on February 21, 2017, 02:18:20 am
Food preservation is just as important as food creation: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/02/vietnams-low-tech-fermentation-food-system-takes-advantage-of-decay.html
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on March 13, 2017, 02:02:08 am
Check out this awesome Hobbit house!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix11VQ8f7uY
(also dat booty)
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on April 05, 2017, 04:15:22 pm
I have a farming playlist on youtube with videos about agroforestry, vertical aquaponics, and all sorts of garden experiments!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on April 15, 2017, 06:09:09 am
Man!! I just got all these tubes and connectors from the homo depo but then I noticed a couple of them had STATE OF CALIFORNIA warnings on them, so I decided to look into the materials used by each company.
Turns out those porous soaker hose things are made from recycled car tire rubber, which often have some amount of heavy metals. I can't find any information on the specific material composition or if any tests have been done to measure the lead levels in the rubber or what happens to water that flows through it, especially in the hot summer sun. I suppose I could call the company, but part of me just wants to avoid it altogether.
The connectors are Acetal plastic, aka Polyoxymethylene which in some cases has been approved for use with food and is used in K'Nex, buttttt...... it reacts with mineral acids and chlorine found in common tap water leading to degradation over time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyoxymethylene#Degradation Planned obsolescence?
Fortunately the plain irrigation tubing is made from Low Density Polyethylene which is commonly used in food safe applications, but it "contains a minimum of 2% concentrated carbon black resin antioxidant" ... whatever that is. They say it helps prevent thermal damage in the sun.
I think I'm going to use the LDPE irrigation tubing I have now but replace the connectors with HDPE connectors from a local medical supply company.
ldpe and hdpe (low density poly ethylene, and high density) are the shit. hard as fuck to glue, tho.
if someone made an hdpe 3d printer, i'd take 3d printers seriously.
The problem with HDPE is that it shrinks considerably while cooling and does not adhere to itself, making it pretty much impossible to use extrusion printing. Source: http://reprap.org/wiki/HDPE
It might be possible to 3d print HDPE parts using the same method as clay / metal printing where the material is powdered and mixed with a binder. A laser shoots the powder, making the glue binder melt, creating a fragile 3d object. After the print is finished you throw it in a kiln to melt everything together permanently.
Oh hey, actually it's already a thing if you have a state of the art machine: http://www.plastics.gl/processing-misc/new-hdpe-powder-for-the-laser-sintering-market/
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on April 28, 2017, 12:56:14 pm
That radical heron just posted this link on IRC - http://www.citypages.com/restaurants/a-plan-to-turn-hiawatha-golf-course-into-minneapolis-first-food-forest/416059773
Quote
Put simply, a food forest is a woodland that uses native trees, shrubs, and plants that are both edible and medicinal. The city would plant everything from raspberries and blackberries to maple trees and hazelnut trees, as well as shoreline plants like katniss (also known as duck potato) and medicinal herbs like echinacea.
Intended to be low-maintenance and self-maintaining once established, the plants are designed to not only build soil but to attract pollinators.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Black T Cat on April 28, 2017, 01:37:10 pm
putting the Perma in Cult since this guy https://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/the-cult-of-perma/
do any permies here do numbers?
Quote
Permies just don?t do numbers -Peter Harper The Big Rock Candy Mountain 2013
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: kayimbo on May 03, 2017, 12:49:16 am
putting the Perma in Cult since this guy https://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/the-cult-of-perma/
do any permies here do numbers?
Quote
Permies just don?t do numbers -Peter Harper The Big Rock Candy Mountain 2013
That article would be way more helpful if they did the numbers and showed it to us, instead of quoting one guy who said he didn't care about the numbers.
Also, i don't know any thing about hydroponic growing but i think its all about aquaponics. Red Claw Crayfish are an ideal source of protein.
Quote
Breeds easily, with no larval stage development. Potential for selective breeding; many wild population strains. Tolerates high stocking densities. Requires low protein diet, not reliant on fishmeal. Market position as a high value crustacean. Flesh texture and flavour compares favourably with other crustaceans. Meat recovery rate acceptable. Reaches commercial size in nine months grow-out. Survives well out of water for transport to market. Straightforward production technology. Tolerant of variations in water quality - low dissolved oxygen, wide daily pH changes, low alkalinity, temperature variations, high nutrient loads. Tolerates saline water up to 5 ? indefinitely and up to 15 ? for several days. This provides broad geographic potential and a means of enhancing flavour, purging and cleaning before sending to market. No destructive burrowing. Non aggressive ? cannibalism not regarded as an issue.
They like to live in kiddy pools: (http://atlaspub.20m.com/gh1.jpg) (http://farmingcrawfish.com/crawfish_redclaw_crayfish/crawfish_pictures/p7ssm_img_1/fullsize/MVC-002S_fs.jpg)
Can anyone suggest a good fish to integrate with aquaponics?
once china kills all the fish in the world, the cornstone of nutrition is gonna be: a) crayfish b) algae c) ... i dunno some sort of plants
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Black T Cat on May 07, 2017, 08:33:02 pm
d) insects.
http://rmmr.co/index.php/about/
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: kayimbo on May 07, 2017, 11:59:16 pm
I'm very interested in insect farming! The downside is crickets are still not really economical, its something like 40$ a lb for cricket flour. Not cheap.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: what on May 09, 2017, 08:50:56 pm
There is a permanent culture growing on my ballsack is that the same thing? It doesn't go away even after years of showers
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 14, 2017, 07:34:44 am
Friends, the Los Cedros Biological Reserve is under serious threat.
The Ecuadorean government has secretly signed a mining agreement covering Los Cedros and other ?protected? areas with the Canadian company ?Cornerstone Capital Resources inc?, a large speculative fund which doesn?t do any mining itself but employs local small time operators until the big sell off to some real mining company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N26Qc1KAUU
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 14, 2017, 08:25:30 am
I found they have a fundraiser... and it's already over 100% funded!!
I'm very interested in insect farming! The downside is crickets are still not really economical, its something like 40$ a lb for cricket flour. Not cheap.
I don't know how to process them into flour, but crickets are stupidly easily to care for. You could have fucktons of them in a tank/tower and feed them scrap vegetables. Just gotta figure out how to remove them and grind them up or whatever.
I think it's expensive because there isn't a huge demand beyond the novelty of the concept; if some big company started putting out cricket flour, it would get cheaper since it could be made by more than just small time operations.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 18, 2017, 04:10:53 am
A greenhouse is used to filter waste water at a highway rest stop in Vermont.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 18, 2017, 06:10:01 am
And here's a lecture from a researcher that has been using plants for wastewater treatment at several facilities - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOAyMCN2k60
putting the Perma in Cult since this guy https://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/the-cult-of-perma/
do any permies here do numbers?
Quote
Permies just don?t do numbers -Peter Harper The Big Rock Candy Mountain 2013
Hey, I finally took the time to read this article and it makes some very interesting points. I think using the scientific method is incredibly important, and obviously the goal should be to grow as much food as possible, but at the same time we can't ignore the effects that chemical fertilizer runoff has on the ecosystem as a whole.
This woman, Dr Elaine Ingham, has spent decades studying soil ecosystems and the effects chemical fertilizer has on the microbes and fungi that form symbiotic relationships with plants - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag
I think it's shortsighted to say that contemporary industrial farming is the pinnacle of human achievement when despite the high yields, half of all food produced still gets wasted. It could be argued that because of all the waste in industrial farming, smaller scale gardening only needs to be 50% - 75% as efficient as industrial farming because we're cutting out transportation / consumer distribution losses.
If you want to see my numbers, check out the wetfish harvest page: https://wiki.wetfish.net/harvest
So far in 2017 our 0.01 acre garden has produced 0.15% of my annual food consumption. I'm shooting for 5% of my food consumption this year. Last year I produced roughly 1% of my annual food consumption. (Food consumption based on averages provided by http://www.nationalgeographic.com/what-the-world-eats/)
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 29, 2017, 04:04:20 pm
Also here's a pic of my baby strawberries <3
(https://lut.im/u9a3lf1c2a/FTKG73yQdNRPCBtA.jpg)
So far there's over 60 baby strawberries and over 20 flowers still waiting to be pollinated
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on June 28, 2017, 05:05:12 am
This guy has a food forest permaculture garden where he only does 2-4 days of maintenance work per year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MIx5q_zbko
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on June 28, 2017, 05:49:36 am
Oregon State University did a whole online permaculture course (FOR FREE)
http://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/
They already offered this course a couple times in 2016 and this spring in 2017. Maybe they'll do it again this fall or maybe next spring??
Either way, a lot of their course videos can be found on youtube:
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on July 18, 2017, 12:03:29 am
Now this is my kind of permaculture
"The tech-filled greenhouses can adjust growing conditions over and over again until they find the combination of light, humidity, and other factors that make the most delicious vegetables. "
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on August 30, 2017, 10:39:57 am
Large sections of Berlin have been converted into green spaces dubbed a "sponge city". Instead of using a conventional sewer system, they use vegetation filled ditches and green roofs which capture rain water and slowly release it back into the air, keeping the area significantly cooler than traditional concrete jungles.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on October 05, 2017, 02:45:15 am
Did you know that carrots get bendy due to a lack of moisture?
If you grow carrots at home or buy them at the store with green tops, be sure to remove the tops before storage. If you don't remove the tops, the leaves will use the root as a reserve water supply, making the carrot dry out faster. For best results, store your carrots in a sealed container in the refrigerator!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: ChrstphrR on November 06, 2018, 12:58:36 am
I'm going to try and convince my wife to put with buying a place out of town so we can do the greenhouse like that fellow in Nebraska did.
Along with a house, his 45 year old house is geothermal, run nearly the same way as the greenhouse is.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: ChrstphrR on November 08, 2018, 10:40:37 pm
Been digging deeper into this greenhouse thing, and it turns out, Russ, the 85 year old in that video, has a website that details a bit more about his geothermal setup, which well, is just running big ol' thin walled tubing in the ground, and blowing or sucking air through it.
(First link I found...) https://gardenculturemagazine.com/growing-environment/environmental-control/cost-efficient-geothermal-greenhouse/
And, well, apparently from my reading around, there's less than 20 of these greenhouses in the world. I'm more fixated on the geothermal-air system, since well I'm SPECTACULARILY cheap, AND it's energy efficient. The idea of having a house, a workshop/garage, and a greenhouse all heated and cooled off low-grade geothermal energy instead of the norm for Alberta, burning natural gas, or electric via coal-fired generator plants, I could use a tiny amount of electricity to heat/cool all the buildings, and eventually swap that to a small wind or solar setup.
I just have to find the right (building) site, because the wife-person is demanding that there be an existing house to start from :|
I just ordered up the "report" (an E-book of some sort) that details the greenhouse and the other aspects of the design, so I'll comment further on it when I get my copy and read it through.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on November 08, 2018, 10:47:49 pm
Been digging deeper into this greenhouse thing, and it turns out, Russ, the 85 year old in that video, has a website that details a bit more about his geothermal setup, which well, is just running big ol' thin walled tubing in the ground, and blowing or sucking air through it.
(First link I found...) https://gardenculturemagazine.com/growing-environment/environmental-control/cost-efficient-geothermal-greenhouse/
And, well, apparently from my reading around, there's less than 20 of these greenhouses in the world. I'm more fixated on the geothermal-air system, since well I'm SPECTACULARILY cheap, AND it's energy efficient. The idea of having a house, a workshop/garage, and a greenhouse all heated and cooled off low-grade geothermal energy instead of the norm for Alberta, burning natural gas, or electric via coal-fired generator plants, I could use a tiny amount of electricity to heat/cool all the buildings, and eventually swap that to a small wind or solar setup.
I just have to find the right (building) site, because the wife-person is demanding that there be an existing house to start from :|
I just ordered up the "report" (an E-book of some sort) that details the greenhouse and the other aspects of the design, so I'll comment further on it when I get my copy and read it through.
Can I come to Canada and help you? Permablitz (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/PermaBlitz)!!!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: ChrstphrR on November 08, 2018, 10:57:12 pm
You'll know when I get a place, I'll be spazzing out about building geothermal trenches and a greenhouse... OMG, I need to set aside one of my bouts of insomnia to go price out how much an old backhoe will cost off Kijiji... GAH!
But yeah, when there's a homestead of sorts to possibly call wetfish north, you'll know! :P :)
The wife has a day off in common with me for once, so I might take her around to a few potential places to gauge how she feels about one place vs another.
Countering all the wonderful things, will be ... internet. Internet outside the built up areas bites. I may have to balance against that, just as much as apparently a bathroom and kitchen and living room matter a lot to the wife-person.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: ChrstphrR on November 08, 2018, 11:00:00 pm
Also the permablitz sounds nifty.
I'm half thinking about hugels and berry bushes as a means of making a windbreak for a house if it's on semi-open land. Though... it'll be harder to get ahold of old logs. I might have to opt for a trailer and a hitch on my car, and go scrouging for "useless" timber.
There's too many things to consider. :o
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Joof on November 09, 2018, 12:31:20 am
I'm wondering what kind of insulation this guy uses for his actual home. I don't doubt that moving large volumes of warmer air would heat a home, but I'm not sure the warm air would stay warm at night. Are the tubes buried? The pressure difference between the warm and cold air could move it through a home, but it sounds like he uses fans.
Earthships use material with high specific heat (and I presume diffusivity? I need some basic thermodynamics knowledge.) Specifically, they fill tires with dirt and let them heat up during the day and it keeps it warm at night. I'd expect this would make it relatively simple to keep it about the average year-round temperature of whatever location. An 'underground' greenhouse is probably going to have a similar effect, but with a bit more variance between night and day.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: woodneko on November 09, 2018, 04:40:17 pm
join #permies on irc
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: ChrstphrR on November 10, 2018, 12:15:20 am
Did some reading, so I can reply with some knowledge imparted from the read.
I'm wondering what kind of insulation this guy uses for his actual home. I don't doubt that moving large volumes of warmer air would heat a home, but I'm not sure the warm air would stay warm at night. Are the tubes buried? The pressure difference between the warm and cold air could move it through a home, but it sounds like he uses fans.
The tubes are buried, below grade, below the frostline / permafrost if you're REALLY far north or south on the planet. In around 8 feet deep, where you reach a near constant 50-65F for a ground tempurature. The greenhouse uses a very simple system of pulling air out of a drainage tile loop buried to that depth. The tempurature differential between the greenhouse air temp and the loop's air temp (which gets moderated to in around 52F in Russ Finch's greenhouse location). So, it can heat or cool the air in the entire greenhouse, just by air exchange, pulling it out of the loop, and drawing greenhouse air into the loop and dumping heat into the ground in summer, and pulling heat out of the ground in winter.
What he uses in his house and workshop, is a two stage setup -- which he set up first, the greenhouse came later, apparently.
The same simple ground air tube loop exists, and dumps into an 8x8x8 ft room in the house. Inside that room, the air temp is moderated to ... somewhat close to 50F, near the 52F the air temp is in the ground after it's been sitting in the tube, in the ground as it gets pulled through.
Also inside the room is a more conventional heat pump, which pumps refrigerant, and it has a loop that circulates in the house. And that heats/cools the house. In a "normal" heat pump installation, it's mounted outside the house, in a climate like, Florida, where they don't have sub-freezing day/night air temperatures often. So you circulate the refrigerant/coolant loop in the house, and it dumps heat to the outside when it's hot inside, but the same loop also pulls heat from the outside and dumps it inside, when it's cold enough. So, there'll still be a bit of angry pixies, aka, electricity used to power the blower fan for the simple air loop, and to power the heat pump.
They'd both be thermostatically controlled, so you're not running them when they're not effective (when air temps are near the 50-55F mark for outside air temps). That would limit electricity use somewhat.
I didn't get a good feel about how insulated his home was, but he built it in the late 70s, using a few unconventional construction techniques, and the heating system too... I can make educated guesses, because post-Arab Oil Crisis in the mid 70s, there were a lot of efficient house designs that cropped up.
Up here in Canada, they had an R-2000 House "design" of sorts (pointing to the future, the year 2000). My parents designed a house with energy conservation in mind -- longer roof eaves that shaded the windows in summer, but let in sunlight/heat in winter, and radically thicker exterior walls than the norm, and IIRC, they had 10" nominal walls - 2x4 and 2x6 alternating studs, which I do recall *perfectly* were a total pain in the arse to fit insulation batts into.
But, in summer, during the day, at my parents house, there was an easy 8-15F temperature drop versus outside temperatures. They don't have A/C, nor a heat pump, nor a air-heat exchanger. Just well insulated walls/roof and good doors and windows.
Earthships use material with high specific heat (and I presume diffusivity? I need some basic thermodynamics knowledge.) Specifically, they fill tires with dirt and let them heat up during the day and it keeps it warm at night. I'd expect this would make it relatively simple to keep it about the average year-round temperature of whatever location. An 'underground' greenhouse is probably going to have a similar effect, but with a bit more variance between night and day.
Earthships rely on thermal mass and passive solar. The low grade geothermal is an active system, and isn't effective when the daytime temps are near the constant below-frost-line stable ground temperature (in around 50-65F or 8-15C at 8ft and deeper), as described above. The passive ideas of an earthship work, but they work less well in colder climates.
My bias against that, other than living at around 52?N of the equator, knowing that I'd be fighting against extreme cold for part of the year, and possibly lacking tree cover at many building sites here... is permitting in my jurisdiction. I'd consider a go of it otherwise, though then I'd run into resistance from the wife-person over building a house from scratch, from apparently scrap materials. It's a plus in my books, but i'd have to go through legal hoops to make it happen.
On the other hand, putting a pipe in the ground, Albertans know all about that already! ;)
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on November 10, 2018, 10:11:23 pm
These articles discuss techniques for storing solar energy chemically. Certain chemicals have been found change their molecular structure when exposed to light (Photoexcitation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoexcitation)). These chemicals can be stored for long periods of time and used to generate heat on demand using a catalyst.
Quote
The improved absorptivity of NBD1 (λmax@326[thin space (1/6-em)]nm = 1.3 ? 104 M−1 cm−1) coupled with factors such as a large spectral difference compared to the corresponding QC1, the high photoisomerization quantum yield (61%), the long half-life (t1/2 = 30 days at 25 ?C), and high solubility (cmax = 1.52 M for QC1 in toluene), makes this compound a promising candidate for future MOST applications. In addition, the robustness of a solution of NBD1 was assessed at 85 ?C and is capable of withstanding 43 storage and release cycles with little degradation (0.14% per cycle).
- Macroscopic heat release in a molecular solar thermal energy storage system (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2018/ee/c8ee01011k) - Liquid Norbornadiene Photoswitches for Solar Energy Storage (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/aenm.201703401?referrer_access_token=9YcTt6ojgAtlLzZWBO83pE4keas67K9QMdWULTWMo8O1PtCZnqbfJAW5Z9Srbybioc_8HGhBn2nQg-OzuOiG6LggdLsro6WgagK3AwoCxU2NB8NqJVkgoRrZHg7SNSS4)
I'm half thinking about hugels and berry bushes as a means of making a windbreak for a house if it's on semi-open land. Though... it'll be harder to get ahold of old logs. I might have to opt for a trailer and a hitch on my car, and go scrouging for "useless" timber.
There's too many things to consider. :o
Big ups on the hugels there. I've seen some at work and I can assume they are just even mightier now!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 05, 2019, 08:14:27 pm
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on June 22, 2019, 03:25:09 pm
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: ChrstphrR on June 22, 2019, 04:05:47 pm
Interesting take on plastic use on a greenhouse. Net sum, you'll be ahead vs transporting food from afar.
But, it'd aim you toward a greenhouse design that's more permanent, and has glass windows that would last decades. Places like Habitat for Humanity ReStores have relatively cheap windows, and scrounging just for old panes, over time, you could build a durable foundation and framework, and convert over piecewise from plastic to glass windows.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on December 31, 2019, 12:34:43 am
How to turn waste cardboard into 3d shapes
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on January 30, 2020, 10:36:18 pm
Use beetle larva to eat styrofoam instead of throwing it away :)
Title: HOLY SHIT THATS SO FREAKIN COOL
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on February 01, 2020, 07:07:36 pm
this is a real game changer! turning trash into protein! holy shit!
I believe it only works with styrofoam, not all plastic. But still there is a lot of styrofoam in the world
Title: DIY water heater & pressurizer for taking showers on the road
Post by: rachel on March 26, 2020, 06:28:35 pm
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on April 07, 2020, 11:05:00 pm
https://blue-freedom.net/store/
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on April 25, 2020, 09:39:44 am
i like some of their products but they don't have spec sheets or model information, no information for engineering. they want pictures of the potential installation site just to give quotes?
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: redheron on May 07, 2020, 12:09:55 am
Yo this is dope. Wrath of Gnon posts some really interesting stuff. It's like half self-sufficiency, half "go to church, you are a bad person" lol
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Ozmiander on May 07, 2020, 06:24:38 am
Yet another example of lost techniques.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 07, 2020, 06:58:15 am
This isn't what I was looking for but it ended up being better anyway.
Why use fence posts when you can just use trees?
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Fenceposts have always baffled me. Why would anyone take a perfectly good tree, cut it down, dig a hole to set it in, and then spend the next 20 years watching it decay? In my early days of agroforestry work in the tropics, it was assumed that all fenceposts should be living as a hedge against termites and decay.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on May 08, 2020, 09:48:05 am
i don't want to hurt the trees! like, poison them with nails or something. Plus if the tree grows around the nail, it makes a point that will cause kickback and can hurt people when it's cut down or sawmilled.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 09, 2020, 12:43:18 am
i don't want to hurt the trees! like, poison them with nails or something. Plus if the tree grows around the nail, it makes a point that will cause kickback and can hurt people when it's cut down or sawmilled.
Use aluminum nails.
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The #1 thing you don’t want is for a nail or screw in your tree to rust over time. That’s why it’s best to choose stainless steel, aluminum or any other rust-proof nails and screws for your project.
some of the timber companies up here use a method of measureing trees called continuous forest inventory or CFI. they measure the same circle in the woods every x number of years. anyways they have to mark the center of the circle. they use aluminum nails. soft enough a saw of any kind will go right through them but still get the job done.
I don't see how a nail in a tree would hurt it any more than cutting it down to make a post. Plenty of people get their ears pierced. Trees often lose branches in storms or get holes pecked in them by birds.
Personally, I really like the idea of living structures. I want my fence posts to be alive just like I want the walls of my house to be alive. Imagine if you made a house by planting walls of bamboo and you could just keep adding more floors as it kept growing.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: redheron on May 09, 2020, 11:54:53 am
i don't want to hurt the trees! like, poison them with nails or something. Plus if the tree grows around the nail, it makes a point that will cause kickback and can hurt people when it's cut down or sawmilled.
Use aluminum nails.
Quote
The #1 thing you don’t want is for a nail or screw in your tree to rust over time. That’s why it’s best to choose stainless steel, aluminum or any other rust-proof nails and screws for your project.
some of the timber companies up here use a method of measureing trees called continuous forest inventory or CFI. they measure the same circle in the woods every x number of years. anyways they have to mark the center of the circle. they use aluminum nails. soft enough a saw of any kind will go right through them but still get the job done.
I don't see how a nail in a tree would hurt it any more than cutting it down to make a post. Plenty of people get their ears pierced. Trees often lose branches in storms or get holes pecked in them by birds.
Personally, I really like the idea of living structures. I want my fence posts to be alive just like I want the walls of my house to be alive. Imagine if you made a house by planting walls of bamboo and you could just keep adding more floors as it kept growing.
"While it may look like the work of an enormous bird, the human-sized nests below were actually made by artist Patrick Dougherty. The experienced branchbender weaves the human-sized nest houses out of living, growing trees. His works come in all shapes and sizes from houses, cocoons, pagodas, huts, giant water pitchers and even people." (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/living-art-nest-houses-ma_n_821311) (https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/02/patrick-dougherty-art-made-of-living-trees-12.jpg) (https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5bb177992200003501db5314.jpeg?ops=scalefit_960_noupscale)
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on May 09, 2020, 01:15:06 pm
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on August 17, 2020, 09:07:56 am
this guy makes wild projects and a lot of them would fit into permaculture, like a water pumps that use the energy in a stream to pump water further
but he also makes some crazy cool stuff, like an exoskeleton that is pretty much steampunk, using winches and cables and kind of looks like a death trap, i think he put a steam engine in a pickup truck? he turned his septic drain field into a capacitor bank. his projects range from "why would you even do that" to "how did you get that to work?" to "please don't die". he's like the terry a. davis of backyard projects
anyway i only found this while looking for info on Trompe air compressors which are passive, have no moving parts, and use a falling stream to compress (and cool!) air.
Title: making cordage out of soda bottles
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on October 17, 2020, 09:07:39 pm
i think you could do some pretty long lengths if you wove them in 3-line braids
Title: Re: making cordage out of soda bottles
Post by: rachel on October 20, 2020, 06:45:29 am
i think you could do some pretty long lengths if you wove them in 3-line braids
Interesting technique! I like how at the end you are left with a little shotglass
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Mozai on November 21, 2020, 09:17:17 am
vertical farming, claims to do 350x the food output per acre, with 5% of the water consumption for the same yield. Public website https://plenty.ag/ looks ridiculous tho. (https://www.plenty.ag/static/d87f451b3ecaa4b5a068ca4a73baf648/b0751/plenty-tigris-growroom-center.webp)
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on November 21, 2020, 11:34:07 am
vertical farming, claims to do 350x the food output per acre, with 5% of the water consumption for the same yield. Public website https://plenty.ag/ looks ridiculous tho. (https://www.plenty.ag/static/d87f451b3ecaa4b5a068ca4a73baf648/b0751/plenty-tigris-growroom-center.webp)
yeah a $140m san francisco tech startup doing farming. that sure sounds sustainable! and permanent!!!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on November 21, 2020, 05:55:43 pm
vertical farming, claims to do 350x the food output per acre, with 5% of the water consumption for the same yield. Public website https://plenty.ag/ looks ridiculous tho. (https://www.plenty.ag/static/d87f451b3ecaa4b5a068ca4a73baf648/b0751/plenty-tigris-growroom-center.webp)
What is the cost of electricity to run all those lightbulbs though?
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on December 11, 2020, 02:09:13 pm
Cody from Cody's Lab tests the different effects varying amounts of biochar has on growing plants
The biochar is basically just charcoal that was used as a filter in his aquarium for a few months.
Filter out all the bacteria and crap from a bunch of fish, and then use it as fertilizer for plants!
And those plants could sustain a population of insects which then get fed to the fish
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on December 15, 2020, 12:45:28 am
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher
Quote
A windcatcher (wind tower, wind scoop) is a traditional architectural element used to create natural ventilation and passive cooling in buildings.[1] Windcatchers come in various designs: unidirectional, bidirectional, and multidirectional. Windcatchers are widely used in North Africa and in the West Asian countries around the Persian Gulf, and have been for the past three thousand years.[2]
Now that's what I call permanent, sustainable culture
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on December 29, 2020, 04:43:58 pm
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sustainable labor (harnessing Horny Power)
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on December 30, 2020, 11:34:00 pm
Are liquid metal batteries the answer to solve our energy storage needs?
Lithium ion batteries require rare materials that are mined using child labor. Liquid metal batteries are made out of calcium and antimony, two extremely abundant materials.
Unlike lithium ion batteries which can only be charged and discharged a couple thousand times at best, liquid metal batteries can be charged and discharged almost indefinitely. The estimated losses after 20 years of continuous deep cycling are only about 5%
The biggest downside to liquid metal batteries is that they are a novel technology being developed by a single company. They don't have the economy of scale that decades of lithium ion production has behind it.
An off-grid datacenter with geothermal and solar panels is partnering with the battery company, hopefully giving them the funding they need to bring some awesome new sustainable batteries to market!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Ozmiander on December 31, 2020, 07:39:46 am
It's a shame about lead acid's lack of density, because you can disulfate and revive the vast majority of "dead" lead acid batteries indefinitely.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on January 02, 2021, 09:35:26 am
Are liquid metal batteries the answer to solve our energy storage needs?
Lithium ion batteries require rare materials that are mined using child labor. Liquid metal batteries are made out of calcium and antimony, two extremely abundant materials.
Unlike lithium ion batteries which can only be charged and discharged a couple thousand times at best, liquid metal batteries can be charged and discharged almost indefinitely. The estimated losses after 20 years of continuous deep cycling are only about 5%
The biggest downside to liquid metal batteries is that they are a novel technology being developed by a single company. They don't have the economy of scale that decades of lithium ion production has behind it.
An off-grid datacenter with geothermal and solar panels is partnering with the battery company, hopefully giving them the funding they need to bring some awesome new sustainable batteries to market!
how far are they out from having these for sale, i want one for my house
altho a generator is more cost effective i don't like fuel dependence
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on January 03, 2021, 01:27:37 pm
how far are they out from having these for sale, i want one for my house
altho a generator is more cost effective i don't like fuel dependence
Unfortunately consumer versions are still years away from market. According to the timeline on their website, they are going to be demonstrating small scale commercial installations this year and ramping up production to 250 megawatt hours of batteries produced by 2023
So unless you work at a datacenter or a power utility company, you probably won't be able to get your hands on these for a while
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on February 13, 2021, 04:31:19 am
This guy makes a big compost pile and runs a pipe through it, hooked up to a standard baseboard radiator
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on February 14, 2021, 07:38:13 pm
Looking at the big picture and numbers of how many people will need to start growing their own food at home and for their local communities.
Do you think it's possible to move 30% of our food production to people's homes, another 30% to medium scale local farmers, in order to reduce our reliance on large scale industrialized food production?
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: kiiada on February 15, 2021, 11:12:00 am
Looking at the big picture and numbers of how many people will need to start growing their own food at home and for their local communities.
Do you think it's possible to move 30% of our food production to people's homes, another 30% to medium scale local farmers, in order to reduce our reliance on large scale industrialized food production?
I really hope that when cultured meat is a widely accepted thing the technology will exist to do it at home. The meat industry is such a huge sustainability problem right now for the entire world.
Imagine being able to grow everything you would eat in an average diet at home
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Mozai on February 16, 2021, 05:46:31 pm
The meat industry is such a huge sustainability problem right now for the entire world.
Side effect of the USA-vs-USSR fight. They fought on many fronts: proxy wars, puppet governments, the "space race," modernist art, and a "farm war" was one of the ways to undermine faith in the other. America heavily subsidized farming and claimed it was "capitalism and free-market" that produced so much more than Russia. Supermarkets were the display case for the excessive production. These supermarkets wanted to have simple supply chains, so they supported single large producers more than a broader (and more resilient) swathe of small-to-medium producers. Easier paperwork to get 120,000 tomatoes from one government-subsidized farm than from 4-6 self-sufficient farms.
Reading into how much infrastructure was built for winning the farm war is kinda nuts. Like, federal promotion of state roadworks because the show-off supermarkets needed those supply chains.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: kayimbo on February 17, 2021, 08:01:15 am
crayfish and tilapia are considered the goto for meat generation at home. black solider fly larva is supposed to be viable too.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on February 26, 2021, 10:12:01 pm
India wants to build a global power grid to transfer solar energy. That way even when it's dark it'll still be sunny somewhere else! But that's going to take a ton of money to build, and it potentially creates huge interdependent bottlenecks that could fail in a natural disaster or be a target for hacking. Wouldn't it be better to just have small scale, autonomous grids which interconnect organically?
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on March 06, 2021, 01:30:03 pm
India wants to build a global power grid to transfer solar energy. That way even when it's dark it'll still be sunny somewhere else! But that's going to take a ton of money to build, and it potentially creates huge interdependent bottlenecks that could fail in a natural disaster or be a target for hacking. Wouldn't it be better to just have small scale, autonomous grids which interconnect organically?
if there were a way to shove heat into the earths core and save it for later, then suck it out in other places, that would be really cool. but then people would definitely just keep sucking heat out and in 100 years we'd have a crisis of the earths core cooling down
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on March 06, 2021, 01:34:14 pm
also if u like reading about global energy stuff, this guys got a 00's style wordpress blog with tons of self published articles.. with sources! http://energyskeptic.com/2020/building-a-national-grid-in-america/ (http://energyskeptic.com/2020/building-a-national-grid-in-america/)
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 01, 2021, 01:29:23 pm
https://wearetheark.org/
Quote
ARK = ACTS OF RESTORATIVE KINDNESS
Weaving a patchwork of safe havens for Nature globally, in our gardens, schools, public spaces and beyond.
Step 1. Give at least half of your garden or land back to nature. If not half, as much as you can manage. Try to grow as much of your own organic food as possible in the other half. Protect and guide your Ark to re-wild through natures natural processes and it will become a more and more complex ecosystem over time. All land is welcome, even a window box full of local soil that allows the native weed seeds to flourish and provide food and reproductive partners for the insects is great!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: here cums the fuck truck on May 16, 2021, 06:21:32 pm
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Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 16, 2021, 06:24:08 pm
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Lol, I like all the flamingos in the hugel. Also it's fascinating to see how much more green and lush the hugel is compared to the surrounding grassland. I wonder if they irrigate it
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Ozmiander on May 16, 2021, 06:31:01 pm
.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 16, 2021, 06:37:29 pm
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Lol, I like all the flamingos in the hugel. Also it's fascinating to see how much more green and lush the hugel is compared to the surrounding grassland. I wonder if they irrigate it
The hugel is designed to absorb and retain water better than flat ground!
Yes, exactly. I want to know if that difference in vegetation is solely due to the existence of a hugel or if it's also being irrigated.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on May 17, 2021, 09:51:14 pm
Quote from: Just Have a Think
Agrophotovoltaics, agrivoltaics, or APV. Just like the name suggests, it's a way of combining photovoltaic solar panels with agriculture. In many parts of the world where fertile land is scarce, agriculture and solar developers have fought over available space. What each party might have been missing all along is that it could be more profitable for both of them if they work together instead. And that may also just be the answer to the existential crisis being faced by so many farms across the United States and around the world.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on June 23, 2021, 11:36:16 pm
The Poo Princess explains how we can turn a desert into an oasis by using plants to treat wastewater
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on July 09, 2021, 04:14:54 am
25-30 years ago a few hippies pooled their money together to buy 100 acres of degraded farmland in Wisconsin. By following permaculture design principles they've been able to grow enough food to pay off the mortgage, taxes, construction materials for their house, and raise two kids.
They started by planting rows of trees and perennial shrubs to create terraces down the hillside, with annual cash crops growing between the rows of trees. For the first several years they relied on income from the annual cash crops while they waited for the larger fruit and nut trees became established.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on September 20, 2021, 01:43:15 pm
How to design roads that naturally make people want to slow down instead of just posting a sign and calling it good
It's time to end stroads. We should have streets and roads instead!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on October 16, 2021, 07:22:36 pm
So I guess we should start buying cheap land in the desert 🤔
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on November 07, 2021, 08:19:01 pm
Grow plants with your pee and poo
Educational Overview of Wastewater Treatment Using Plants
Hour long documentary about an apartment complex that got bought out and turned into a permaculture paradise
Jump to 13 minutes 7 seconds for this banger quote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCGXVk-cBVk&t=787s
Quote
"So, we recycle pee in bottles. So, I'm gonna show you how we do it. So, these are our urine tanks, and this is 1000 litres or one cubic liter of urine right here."
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: rachel on March 13, 2022, 11:22:18 pm
If you're going to live in a city, at least plant some trees!
Look at the striking contrast between this building and all of the others around it!
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Mozai on May 19, 2022, 05:59:30 am
Potable water is important. ------ Solar-powered desalination device wins MIT $100K competition Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight of a case of bottled water and is powered by a small solar panel. The traditional approach for water desalination relies on a power-intensive process called reverse osmosis. In contrast, Nona uses a technology developed in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics that removes salt and bacteria from seawater using an electrical current. The company has already developed a small prototype that produces clean drinking water. With its winnings, Nona will build more prototypes to give to early customers. The company plans to sell its first units to sailors before moving into the emergency preparedness space in the U.S., which it estimates to be a $5 billion industry. From there, it hopes to scale globally to help with disaster relief. The technology could also possibly be used for hydrogen production, oil and gas separation, and more.
Potable water is important. ------ Solar-powered desalination device wins MIT $100K competition Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight of a case of bottled water and is powered by a small solar panel. The traditional approach for water desalination relies on a power-intensive process called reverse osmosis. In contrast, Nona uses a technology developed in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics that removes salt and bacteria from seawater using an electrical current. The company has already developed a small prototype that produces clean drinking water. With its winnings, Nona will build more prototypes to give to early customers. The company plans to sell its first units to sailors before moving into the emergency preparedness space in the U.S., which it estimates to be a $5 billion industry. From there, it hopes to scale globally to help with disaster relief. The technology could also possibly be used for hydrogen production, oil and gas separation, and more.
woah, portable low-energy electric salt & bacteria filters? that sounds way better than having to constantly replace carbon filters! or heating up water to the boiling point (distillation) or pumping the water to really high pressures (reverse osmosis)
Quote
The resulting water exceeded World Health Organization quality guidelines, and the unit reduced the amount of suspended solids by at least a factor of 10. Their prototype generates drinking water at a rate of 0.3 liters per hour, and requires only 20 watt-hours per liter.
WOW! only 20 watts for a litre of clean water and you can get water from anywhere. it removes turbidity and salts
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Mozai on October 22, 2022, 09:07:44 am
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A renewable energy plant in Oregon that combines solar power, wind power and massive batteries to store the energy generated there officially opened Wednesday as the first utility-scale plant of its kind in North America.
The project, which can generate enough electricity to power a small city at maximum output, addresses a key challenge facing the utility industry as the U.S. transitions away from fossil fuels and increasingly turns to solar and wind farms for power. Wind and solar are clean sources of power, but utilities have been forced to fill in gaps when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining with fossil fuels like coal or natural gas.
At the Oregon plant, massive lithium batteries store up to 120 megawatt-hours of power generated by the 300-megawatt wind farms and 50-megawatt solar farm so it can be released to the electric grid on demand. At maximum output, the facility can produce more than half of the power that was generated by Oregon’s last coal plant, which was demolished earlier this month.
On-site battery storage isn’t new, and interest in solar-plus-battery projects in particular has soared in the U.S. in recent years due to robust tax credits and incentives and the falling price of batteries. The Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility in Lexington, Oregon, however, is the first in the U.S. to combine integrated wind, solar and battery storage at such a large scale in one location, giving it even more flexibility to generate continuous output without relying on fossil fuels to fill in the gaps.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Mozai on February 13, 2023, 11:53:14 am
"Sheep living among rows of solar panels spend more time grazing, benefit from more nutritious food, rest more and appear to experience less heat stress, compared with nearby sheep in empty fields. Earlier research suggested that agrivoltaic farms – which combine grazing animals with solar panels – offer more efficient renewable energy at lower overhead costs, as well as reducing wildfire risks. " article is behind a paywall at NewScientist, but they did manage to leak out a link to https://solargrazing.org/ (https://wiki.wetfish.net/upload/d0a28c2d-7d24-35f8-218e-c1d83abc34ee.jpeg)
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: Mozai on April 01, 2024, 07:56:01 am
Dr Natusch, from Macquarie University's School of Natural Sciences, said the reptiles were an efficient source of protein because of the way they processed food. "Warm-blooded animals waste about 80 to 90 per cent of the energy they get from their food in heat production," he said. "Cold-blooded animals such as pythons don't have that constraint — they're able to allocate far more of the energy they get from their food into things like growth."
Diminishing natural resources and increasing climatic volatility are impacting agri-food systems, prompting the need for sustainable and resilient alternatives. Python farming is well established in Asia but has received little attention from mainstream agricultural scientists. We measured growth rates in two species of large pythons (Malayopython reticulatus and Python bivittatus) in farms in Thailand and Vietnam and conducted feeding experiments to examine production efficiencies. Pythons grew rapidly over a 12-month period, and females grew faster than males. Food intake and growth rates early in life were strong predictors of total lifetime growth, with daily mass increments ranging from 0.24 to 19.7 g/day for M. reticulatus and 0.24 to 42.6 g/day for P. bivittatus, depending on food intake. Pythons that fasted for up to 4.2 months lost an average of 0.004% of their body mass per day, and resumed rapid growth as soon as feeding recommenced. Mean food conversion rate for dressed carcasses was 4.1%, with useable products (dressed carcass, skin, fat, gall bladder) comprising 82% of the mass of live animals. In terms of food and protein conversion ratios, pythons outperform all mainstream agricultural species studied to date. The ability of fasting pythons to regulate metabolic processes and maintain body condition enhances food security in volatile environments, suggesting that python farming may offer a flexible and efficient response to global food insecurity.
Title: Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
Post by: ChrstphrR on April 02, 2024, 03:09:29 pm
Dr Natusch, from Macquarie University's School of Natural Sciences, said the reptiles were an efficient source of protein because of the way they processed food. "Warm-blooded animals waste about 80 to 90 per cent of the energy they get from their food in heat production," he said. "Cold-blooded animals such as pythons don't have that constraint — they're able to allocate far more of the energy they get from their food into things like growth."
Kinda odd, but *STILL* a big leg up on laboratory vat grown meat! :D