Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture

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Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #30 on: February 23, 2018, 07:24:12 am »
"no homo" I whisper as I look at my garden of pea plants. The progeny had expressed a 1:2:1 ratio of phenotypes. I am Gregor Mendel.

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Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture (thanks ChrstphrR)
« Reply #31 on: November 05, 2018, 09:15:43 pm »
This guy in Nebraska grows fruit like oranges and grapes year round in his underground grenhouse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk

*spork*

Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #32 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.

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Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #33 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/

(Russ Finch's site)
http://www.citrusinthesnow.com/index.html

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.

Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #34 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/

(Russ Finch's site)
http://www.citrusinthesnow.com/index.html

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!!!
*spork*

Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #35 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.

Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #36 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

Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #37 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.

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Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #38 on: November 09, 2018, 04:40:17 pm »
join #permies on irc

Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #39 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! ;)

Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #40 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). 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
 - Liquid Norbornadiene Photoswitches for Solar Energy Storage

*spork*

Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #41 on: January 14, 2019, 05:07:55 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

Big ups on the hugels there. I've seen some at work and I can assume they are just even mightier now!
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Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #42 on: May 05, 2019, 08:14:27 pm »
lil seedlings for the garden (week 2)

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Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #43 on: June 22, 2019, 03:25:09 pm »

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Re: Permaculture, a permanent sustainable culture
« Reply #44 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.

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