Hot showers, clean clothes

As energy depletion takes hold, some things we have access to now such as cheap automobile travel will disappear. Other "luxuries" we take for granted such as warm showers, washing machines and modern soaps will be hard to get or not be available at all. However, these are no longer luxuries but necessities. These tools have proven their worth over time as they wash away disease, pests and parasites. Many people have found ways of "surviving" without a car. However, fewer people have given up the use of laundry services for extended periods. In fact, one person has made the case that the washing machine may even exceed the bicycle as the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution. Fortunately, washing machines generally don't take too much energy to operate as long as hot water is available. Washer boards work too. Clothes lines take even less energy. One person demonstrating how little energy a washing machine takes has made his human powered!

When it comes to renewable heat and hot water systems for washing machines be they washboards or bicycles, they should have hot water. Hot water is usually well below food and drinking water on the list of "must have" items any amateur survivalist says you should have. However, heat and water are very important. The fact is, hypothermia can kill in hours and poor hygiene can decline to disease carrying levels within days. An off grid hot water system is something to consider when prioritizing how to react to various disaster scenarios.

Green Drinks - Wall Street to Main Street

There were some interesting conversations at the last Green Drinks. One that really stood out was from one of our business leaders, Robert Ellis. He's the director of the Wells College business program. He liked the idea that the "occupy wallstreet" people now refer to themselves as the "99 percenters". Since he's worked with some of the wealthy 1%, he' s seen the enormous difference between them and the rest of us. He's also written about how hedge funds are taking advantage of churn in the equity markets to make enoromous profits from retirement funds by shorting securities held in IRAs. It truly was a revealing look into the stock market.

Another idea floated was the idea of a state declaring bankruptcy from their mandates. Alabama likely will be the first state to do this, followed closely by New York. When this happens, every obligation from pensions, bonds or worker contracts would be up for re-negotiation. It would be a huge disruption. Of course, one way of avoiding that fate might be to have a sales tax for transactions in the secondary market. The idea is simple. The only stock sales that could possibly create jobs for people are stocks issued by the company itself. Further price increases don't go to a company, only to speculators. Since such sales in the secondary market are just speculation, they should have a straight sales tax. By doing this, there would be more "buy and hold" investing rather than speculative investing.

Other conversations seemed more normal for the group, having to do with issues such as energy, food and health. Ideas were exchanged, contacts were made and a good time seemed to be had by all.

An unconventional threat to the homestead - Gentrification

Imagine that you've created your dream Doomstead which is practically a castle. Maybe it's built from stone with castle like features. It's got it's own water supply, electric, great garden and may even have anti-radiation features. All fine and good.

However, there are other threats to consider. Specifically, the assessor. You see, the nicer your home base is, the more the surrounding area will tax you. While YOU may have enough of everything, chances are, the poor Mayor in your town doesn't. To avoid a fire and pitchfork scenario from a populace that keeps him in power, he's going to need to tax and redistribute to stay in power. Same is true of county, state and federal politicians. It's a fact of life. Either be the head warlord (lots of work, crappy job security) or make sure you have a way to pay your taxes to whomever has conquered the area such as say, the U.S. Government.

Climate disruption will create massive migrations. However, the people coming to your area (or leaving) will not be just poor hobgoblin types. If your area still has a reasonable climate and some governance left, some wealthy people, may eye your location as a good place to run the remains of their business empire from. If they don't outright make an offer for your home, they may just build their home (or gated community) nearby. Then, they will likely demand services that they can pay for and you can't. The effect will be to increase the neighborhood property taxes since they can afford higher taxes to provide the things they want such as better schools, better roads and of course more police protection. This process is called gentrification.

So, how do you deal with the threat of gradually being priced out of your own neighborhood? An interesting question. Does one simply get better at participating in the "Great American Rat Race" or is there a better answer out there?

3d printing using only solar power.

If you have a big enough magnifying lens, you can melt sand into glass. If you have a computer controlling movement of the focal point, some interesting manufacturing possibilities emerge. Here is an example of such a device. The primary energy source for this device is solar. The energy takes the form of focused heat, provided by the Fresnel lens on top of the structure. The device also uses solar panels for powering the electronics that controls movement of the platform.



This device has the desirable feature that the products can be made exclusively from materials found in the immediate surroundings. For example, the bowl on the upper right was made with fused together sand. While it's clear this particular system isn't built for long term service, it does show that direct-solar manufacturing for some items could be possible.

Diminishing returns of complexity

One task I have is to make sure a computer room stays below a correct temperature. The room has a history of overheating due to air-conditioner failure. So, I need an alarm for when this happens. The alarm system already exists. I just need to replace the old thermostat simply closes a contact if the temperature rises above a set point. Since I only need the feature of closing a contact if the temperature rises above a set point, I purchased the cheapest and most basic thermostat model I could find.

Silly me. I thought this would be a rather basic product. It turns out that some enterprising engineer decided that an electronic means of measuring temperature was the way to go. The result is an overly complex circuit board made in a large overseas factory, with lots of tin & lead solder runs, lots of individual parts and powered by a non-renewable button cell battery. Apparently, the environmental cost of engineering, assembling, packaging, marketing and shipping all this made sense to someone.

So, I'm returning it and searching for a purely mechanical thermostat. Not because it doesn't work. It's because I don't want to encourage the use of overly complex solutions for solving simple problems.

May meetup - Green Drinks

The last meetup had a small turnout. However, as always, there's always something new to learn. There are many ways people can make our economy more sustainable than it is right now.

For example, in the image on the right is a gentleman who's holding up a blacktop substitute made of recycled tires! Not only does it save waste material from going into our landfills, the roadway surface itself has some rather unique properties.

Since the material is made of former rubber tires, it retains it's shape well. That means vehicle indents due to being set in a parking area are self-repairing. It also is a material that is less susceptible to freeze damage. If water freezes, asphalt is damaged. However, the crevices in that material can allow for ice expansion without being damaged. Also, due to being porous, it passes water through to the underlying ground. This eliminates the need to build water runoff evaporation areas for parking lots. As for cost, it's a bit more per foot than average blacktop. However, areas covered in this surface need less maintenance.

Anyway, it demonstrates that it's sometimes possible to re-purpose former waste materials into something useful. Not only is it sometimes possible, but it's sometimes even profitable!

Media Politics 101. If too many turnout, repeat forum.

There may be some local media bias when it comes to the decision to allow hydrofracking in the area. For example, here's a photo of what appears to be a presentation by our mayor Quill with our former mayor in a place somewhat resembling a city hall like building. However, it wasn't city hall at all! It was at Willard Memorial Chapel. The photo showing empty pews suggests that nobody is interested in the issue. However, the turnout at the last city hall meeting suggests otherwise.

The recent public forums may be related to governor Patterson's final legislative act before he left office to have the DEC investigate hydrofracking and issue permits no earlier than June 2011. So, politicians all around New York are testing public tolerance to the idea of trading renewable water for a short term budget boost.

The fact is, even if pure distilled water were used, the hydrofracking idea is inherently dangerous. No matter what liquid is used, there are going to be nasty things forced up along with the gas. Substances that currently are in an inert state will be disturbed and be introduced into the groundwater. There is no safe way. Doing so is simply a trade of long-term groundwater for short-term money.

Not that the local economy would get much of that. An assumption by politicians is that operations such as this will at least be a temporary a boom to the local economy. However, former oil towns, coal towns and gas towns suggest resource extraction rarely benefits the community. In town after town, the money goes away but the pollution stays. Put it this way. If only your neighbor were to get rich from a hydrofrack lease and you only got potholes in your roads, polluted water and a property tax increase to fix it all, would you still be in favor of it?

Hydrofacking and city hall

In an ideal world, one would take turns governing and being governed. So, I decided to take a trip down to City Hall to see how things were going. Rumor had it that hydrofracking was on the table for discussion.

The first issue was a presentation of a petition to the council to stop accepting tanker trucks full of hydrofrack water into the municipal water treatment system. The woman presenter spoke of the dangers of hydrofracking. They include brackish water (salt), suspended metals and in some cases radio nucleotides. For evidence, she urged the council members to view the movie "Gasland." She also submitted a petition to the council.

Then an opportunity for comment was offered. After the mayor asked again if anyone wanted to speak to the whole council, this was the only time to do so. So, seizing the opportunity, I decided to do an impromptu comment on the matter of energy depletion. I stated I didn't know all the issues behind hydrofracking but from what little I did know, it sounded like a really bad thing. (I also offered to add my name to that petition). However, I wanted to state how it was important to let people know that there are alternatives to home heating. I suggested that heat pumps might be a reasonable alternative to burning natural gas and incentives (or at least lack of penalties) should be in place to encourage their use. They would reduce the need for energy and also potentially stimulate the local economy due to a local company selling them plus there would be a need for local labor to install them. To the mayor's credit, he did point out that some government buildings were heated in this way.

Then, on to scheduled business. The next gentleman named Terry Cuddy got more specific on what he wanted the council to do. He wanted, with the support of a long winded petition, to stop the practice of the city accepting hydrofracking water for processing. Reaction by the council members was to have a closed door session. No resolution was introduced nor voted upon but it did show the council was taking the matter seriously. I also found a major mystery to me was solved. Turns out the Green Drinks I host is at the same time this organization meets. Not that it's a bad thing. However, it might mean Green Drinks may go to another time.

Other issues were brought up and voted upon that probably would qualify as "regular business". Among them, initiatives to encourage tourism. Also, a new program to put "Trisha" on the road to sell businesses the idea of having their activities in Auburn.

After the meeting, I met with Gilda from the city council. She seemed very bright and very responsible which was refreshing to see. Apparently she felt really strongly against the Iraq war. That alone scored major points with me! I think she feels as I do, that the best way to affect government change is from within. So, we started talking about the issues.

I learned a few things. Potentially the most interesting finding was how much money the gas companies offer the city to truck in their water! In some cases, hundreds of thousands. So, the temptation is understandably great to process some waste water to make the city budget balance a bit better. However, what was more interesting was finding out sampling is only taken from specific locations at specific times for what goes in the processing plant. No monitoring, specific to hydrofracking contamination, is done on the output. Very interesting that they have that restriction. Other issues are that the Owasco lake outlet is used both for releasing treated water and also for clean water. I suggested that rules, being what they were, may not sit well with the public. Although the city needs to comply with DEC and EPA rules, it might also be wise that the city verify water quality using an independent source such as a university since there are many people (myself included) that don't totally trust the influences of government. Even if not official, it would probably lend credibility to monitoring. The GIS program at CCC also has access to satellite remote sensing data. I suggested that data could be gathered now to used to monitor environmental changes. Right now, we could establish a baseline.

I also talked a bit about my renewable experiments (of course). She also listed some renewable activities Auburn is doing such as using digesters for methane and experimenting with using dried sewer sludge pellets as a possible power source rather than being trucked to another landfill as is currently the practice. She sensed that I might have some good ideas so she told me of an organization called "Ignite". This organization (or maybe another one) is helping the city review under used properties that could be cleaned up with the assistance of grants (perhaps for brownfield locations). If so, it sounds like a very good organization to be involved with. So, on her advice, I'll probably be checking it out.

Sustainable Skill Share visit

One of the newest buildings in Syracuse was the location of an event called Sustainable Skill Share. This event was sponsored by ESF of Syracuse. One thing that is rather unique about this building is that it's roof is covered with vegetation! Since it was early spring, the plants were still dormant. However, it won't take long before the roof is totally covered in vegetation!

Inside, there were 12 sessions so it unfortunately wasn't possible to go to all of them. However, here's a sampling of some of them.

Mycology (study of mushrooms). Lots of talk and lots of images. There are apparently lots of tasty mushrooms in the area along with some deadly ones!

Riki relaxation, if delivered by a trained Riki person, seems to work. It's truly amazing!

A Spirituality session is a good way to appreciate how fortunate we are when it comes to having the gift of life.

The highlight of the day was...composting! First, gathering compost from kitchen scraps need not be a smelly exercise. There are kitchen vessels of stainless steel that have carbon filters built right into the top cover!However, these containers look quite expensive. So, for those who are value shopping, it's also possible to construct a "worm box" out of peg board. Just load up with food scraps, newspaper and some "red wiggler" worms. Of course there's more than one way to process scraps into nutrients. The favored way is simply to make a big pile in a yard and it will usually attract bacteria, molds and other creepy-crawly creatures to break down the pile. Then, it's VITAL that these finished components are separated and sit for about a month before being used anywhere else. Ideally, in a dry well ventilated location. That way the Bugs/worms/bugs/weeds eventually starve and don't infect plants where the compost will eventually go.

The last exhibit was a static display. While there was no presenter for this, there was some literature that gave some clues to what this device did. It looks like it uses small water cooled elements at the focal point of several Fresnel lenses that track the sun. Together, an array of these looks like they could absorb both water and PV energy with a minimum of rare earth materials. The photo on the left shows what appears to be a test set of these. A much larger array of these units are mounted to the side of the building. Maybe this approach will be basis of energy technology of tomorrow or it might be a boondoggle. Time will tell. Either way, it shows that smart people are giving alternative energy some serious thought!