Paradise Found: Islamic Architecture and Arts (1/10)

shakirshuvo | Mar 10, 2007

Part (2/10): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwj9IM...

Paradise Found: A Documentary on Islamic Architecture and Art

We imagine many things when we think of this word. However, we do not think about Islamic Architecture, which influenced the art of Europe so profoundly. This documentary tours through the Muslim world, in search of that "atmosphere of Paradise," hidden away in mosques and palaces.
Category:

Travel & Events
Tags:

* Islam
* Islamic
* architecture
* arts
* mosque
* masjid
* Muslim
* magnificent
* paradise
* Allah
* Taj
* Mahal
* Ottoman
* Asia
* Europe
* Africa

Ten part video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL4QpirJcYk&NR=1

Cities of the Sky: the Silk Road of the future

* Wall Street Journal: THE SATURDAY ESSAY
* FEBRUARY 26, 2011

From Dubai to Chongqing to Honduras, the Silk Road of the future is taking shape in urban developments based on airport hubs. Welcome to the world of the 'aerotropolis.'

Life & Culture »

By GREG LINDSAY
[aero2] Gale International

GLOBAL VILLAGES | South Korea's New Songdo City features vast 'instant neighborhoods' and art for viewing from the air.

To arrive at midnight at Terminal 3 of Dubai International Airport, as I did recently, is to glimpse the pulsing, non-stop flow of the new global economy. The airport, which runs full-tilt 24/7, is packed at all hours. Nigerian traders bound for Guangzhou mix with Chinese laborers needed in Khartoum, Indian merchants headed to clinch a deal in Nairobi, and United Nations staff en route to Kabul.

Dubai's recent financial woes have forced the tiny Gulf state to scrap or scale back some of its more outlandish development schemes, including The World, an artificial archipelago shaped roughly like a world map. But one project has not flagged: the new concourse for Terminal 3. With construction continuing around the clock, the annex to what is already the world's largest building is desperately needed to accommodate the fleet of 90 Airbus A380s ordered by Emirates, Dubai's government-owned airline.

Lighting a cigarette in his modest airport office during a meeting two weeks ago, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, the chairman of Emirates, laughed as he recalled the widespread doubts that Emirates could pay for—and fill—its superjumbo jets. But it can, and it has, and despite the downturn, Dubai has stuck to its plans to develop the world's largest airline from the world's busiest hub. In public statements, Sheikh Ahmed has equated the future of Dubai with the future of Emirates, calling his country's mammoth airport the center of a new Silk Road connecting China to the Middle East, India and Africa.

Thanks to the jet engine, Dubai has been able to transform itself from a backwater into a perfectly positioned hub for half of the planet's population. It now has more in common with Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangalore than with Saudi Arabia next door. It is a textbook example of an aerotropolis, which can be narrowly defined as a city planned around its airport or, more broadly, as a city less connected to its land-bound neighbors than to its peers thousands of miles away. The ideal aerotropolis is an amalgam of made-to-order office parks, convention hotels, cargo complexes and even factories, which in some cases line the runways. It is a pure node in a global network whose fast-moving packets are people and goods instead of data. And it is the future of the global city.

This may come as a surprise to Americans, many of whom have had it with both flying and globalization and would prefer a life that's slower and more local. In the wake of the financial crisis, the bywords for the future have often been caution and sustainability. But there is no resisting the relentless, ongoing expansion of the world economy, and the aerotropolis—fast, efficient, far-reaching and filled with generic "world-class" architecture—embodies it. In places like Dubai, China, India and parts of Africa, cities are being built from scratch around air travel, the better to plug into the global trade lanes overhead.

At present more than half of humanity lives in cities. The percentage is higher in the developed world—four in five Americans live in downtowns or suburbia. China's rate is half that, and India has not yet begun to urbanize in a serious way, with only 29% of its people in cities. Between now and 2030, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates, India must build a new Chicago every year to absorb the millions of villagers streaming from the countryside in search of work. While the number of city dwellers world-wide will nearly double in 40 years to more than six billion people, the size of cities' footprints is expected to increase twice as fast.

This hasn't been lost on Paul Romer, the Stanford University economist overseeing the development of an instant city in Honduras. He proposes building "charter cities" in impoverished states with new laws, new infrastructure and foreign investors—free trade zones elevated to the realm of social experiment. Mr. Romer sold Honduran President Porfirio Lobo on the idea in November and has stayed on as an adviser. Last month, the Honduran Congress voted to amend the country's constitution to allow the pilot project to proceed.

In making his case to the Honduran public, Mr. Romer pitched the city as an aerotropolis. "Honduras could be the hub that brings Central America and Latin America into the world-wide network of air traffic," he wrote. "Central America will eventually have a major hub. It's a question of where, not if." Without air connections to the outside world, his charter city will stagnate. "If you're going to take the next step from assembling garments to assembling iPads," he told me, "you've got to have a major airport, or you'll never beat Shenzhen."

Every aerotropolis is locked in competition with every other one, just as every financial center is jostling for position in the new multi-polar international order. The principle is the same: Everyone wants to be the hub; no one wants to be the spokes. This has made the aerotropolis ripe for experimentation when it comes to governance, whether it's simple tax-free zones, the charter cities Mr. Romer proposes, or the "state capitalism" practiced by Dubai or Singapore. (The word "aerotropolis," I should note, was coined by John Kasarda, a business professor at the University of North Carolina and my co-author on the forthcoming book of that title. He is currently working on projects in Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Panama, and has served as a consultant in the past in Detroit, Memphis, Tenn., Dubai, Chongqing and Hyderabad.)

The basic aim of an aerotropolis is to disrupt local incumbents and monopolies using the long arm of air travel. It allows Indian hospitals to entice American heart patients for top-notch surgery at rock-bottom prices. It lets factories move out to the far reaches of western China to manufacture the iPad for lower wages while absorbing millions of urban migrants. Detroit's leaders are even building an aerotropolis in a Hail Mary bid for Chinese investment.

Floating above it all, meanwhile, are the globe-trotting executives chasing emerging markets. They are the denizens not only of Dubai and Singapore but of new business districts such as the Zuidas on the southern edge of Amsterdam, which was designed to be eight minutes from the airport by train and is home to the Netherlands' biggest financial service firms.
The World in Flight

2.4 billion
Air travelers in 2010

3.3 billion
Projected air travelers in 2014

9.4%
Projected average annual growth in international passenger demand in the Middle East, 2010-2014

4.9%
Projected average annual growth in international passenger demand in North America, 2010-14

31 million
Metric tons of international cargo traffic in 2010

38 million
Projected metric tons of international cargo traffic in 201

View Full Image
C2 FPO
Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

NEW GEOGRAPHY New Songdo is a 20-minute drive from Incheon International Airport, over a 13-mile bridge. The airport is a 3½-hour flight from one-third of the world's population
C2 FPO
C2 FPO

The aerotropolis is the city that state capitalism built. In Dubai, Emirates is a wholly owned subsidiary of "Dubai Inc." An uncle of the country's ruler, Sheikh Ahmed is not only chairman of Emirates airline; he also oversees the airports, the civil aviation authority and the Supreme Fiscal Committee. From its beginning 25 years ago, the airline was seen as a strategic arm of the state, paying no taxes while importing the foreign labor that built the place.

Using its airline, Dubai feverishly assembled a population from elsewhere—Indian entrepreneurs, British bankers, Russians buying condos with suitcases of cash—thus creating the ethnic enclaves and gated communities that define the place. Americans outsource low-cost production to Chinese workers; in Dubai that labor (and the inequality it creates) is in-sourced. Emirates proved to be the enabler for Dubai Inc.'s competing developers, who wildly overbuilt at their ruler's behest.

Determined to prevent the world from connecting through Dubai, its oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi eventually followed suit, starting its own airline by royal decree in 2003 and eventually supplying it with $51 billion worth of aircraft. That was the precursor to its plan to lure franchise branches of the Guggenheim Museum, the Louvre and New York University, along with an entirely new section of the city in which to put them. Qatar's rulers have done much the same in Doha, bulking up Qatar Airways and building a new airport ahead of its winning bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

For its part, Saudi Arabia has gone so far as to build six "economic cities" from scratch in the empty desert. The aim is to house and create work for one-third of the 13 million Saudis under the age of 20—a largely uneducated work force. Each of these cities in the middle of nowhere will have its own air hub to recruit foreign investment. Like Mr. Romer's instant city, they are social experiments, filled with California-style communities where men and women, foreigners and Saudis will mix.

The ultimate state capitalist and player in this game is, of course, China. For all the attention paid to its high-speed railways, the Chinese state is spending as much if not more to build 100 new airports by 2020, with new cities to match.

In the western city of Chongqing, huge swaths of countryside have been paved in preparation for the arrival of China's electronics manufacturers, which are pulling up stakes along the coast. Led by Hewlett-Packard and Foxconn, the maker of Apple's iPhones and iPads, Chongqing aspires to produce nearly half the world's laptops by 2015, all of which will leave the city by air.

As a matter of policy, this strategy is a response to the millions of peasants leaving their farms for the city in search of work. China is building aerotropolises as a means to funnel growth away from the coast. It's even building them in strategic spots as far away as Angola, Zambia, Sudan and Pakistan in order to airlift the labor required for extracting natural resources.

The aerotropolis is also attracting private developers. In India, where the government hopes to fund a half trillion dollars' worth of infrastructure with public-private partnerships, airports are at the top of most companies' wish lists. GMR, one of India's largest industrial conglomerates, built a new airport in Hyderabad and a new international terminal in Delhi in exchange for land to develop around both. A private consortium—including the government of Singapore—is building new airports and cities near Ludhiana and Durgapur, in an attempt to create India's answers to the FedEx and UPS cargo hubs in Memphis and Louisville, Ky. Not so long ago, those cities were Southern Rust Belt towns. They have been saved by companies like Amazon and Zappos, which set up shop around the air hubs in exchange for vast swaths of land on which to locate their mammoth warehouses.

READY FOR TAKEOFF | Attendants on an Emirates Airbus 380 in Beijing. Dubai has positioned itself as a major airport hub.

Outside Seoul in South Korea, Songdo International Business District bills itself as the world's smartest, greenest city and the most expensive privately financed real-estate project in history, with a price tag of $35 billion. It was originally commissioned by South Korea's government to be a magnet for attracting foreign direct investment. The American developer Stan Gale was hired to a build an instant city the size of downtown Boston on a man-made island connected to Seoul's airport via a 13-mile-long bridge.

What was imagined as a hub for Western expatriates—not a Korean city, but a mini-Manhattan floating off the coast of South Korea, complete with a "Central Park"—has been settled instead by families from Seoul. The city won't be finished until 2015, at the earliest, but Mr. Gale is convinced that he's "cracked the code" of urbanism and aims to sell 20 more just like it to mayors across China. Chongqing and Changsha have already expressed an interest.

The aerotropolis arrives at a moment when urban centers seemingly have started to rule the world. Just 100 cities account for nearly one-third of the global economy. "If the 20th century was the era of nations," South Korean President Lee Myung-bak pronounced at New Songdo's christening in 2009, "the 21st century is the era of cities."

In places like China, India, and Dubai, the aerotropolis is the strategy being adopted to challenge the existing economic and political order. Rather than "machines for living" (in Le Corbusier's famously bloodless formulation), these cities are competitive engines, designed to lure talent and investment or simply to park a growing and restive population. The recent uprisings in the Middle East have driven home the need to create housing and jobs at all costs.

These fast-growing air-based cities are already shaking things up. Emirates' rise in Dubai has set off alarms in London, Paris and Frankfurt, where the chief executives of flagship air carriers worry that they are being cut out of new trade flows. Canada even triggered a nasty diplomatic spat with the United Arab Emirates over its refusal to let Emirates fly to Calgary and Vancouver.

The aerotropolis is tailor-made for today's world, in which no nation reliably dominates and every nation must fight for its place in the global economy. It is at once a new model of urbanism and the newest weapon in the widening competition for wealth and security.
—Greg Lindsay is co-author, with John Kasarda, of "Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next."Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page C1

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit

www.djreprints.com
More In Life & Culture: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703408604576164703521850100.html

The $200 Microhouse

House Proud
The $200 Microhouse
Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

The Gypsy Junker, one of four structures Derek Diedricksen built at his home in Stoughton, Mass. More Photos »

By JOYCE WADLER
Published: February 23, 2011
STOUGHTON, Mass.

Tiny Homes With Scavenged Charm

A HOUSE tour is the highlight of a visit with a proud homeowner, but when one drops in to see Derek Diedricksen, who makes playful micro-shelters out of junk, it is less so. Possibly because the temperature up here on a cold winter day is less so, possibly because his square footage is less so.

At about 24 square feet, the Gypsy Junker, made primarily out of shipping pallets, castoff storm windows and a neighbor’s discarded kitchen cabinets, is the largest of Mr. Diedricksen’s backyard structures. The Hickshaw, a sleeper built on a rolling cedar lounge chair (or as Mr. Diedricksen calls it, “a rickshaw for hicks”), is considerably smaller, at 2 1/2 feet wide by 6 1/2 feet deep. The Boxy Lady, two cubes on a long pallet, is the smallest: 4 feet tall at its highest point.

For ingenuity, thrift and charm, Mr. Diedricksen’s tiny structures are hard to beat. Made of scavenged materials, they cost on average less than $200 to build. They often have transparent roofing, which allows a fine view of the treetops, particularly in the smallest ones, where the most comfortable position is supine. They have loads of imaginative and decorative details: a porthole-like window salvaged from a front-loading washing machine, a flip-down metal counter taken from the same deceased washer. Mr. Diedricksen hates to throw anything away.

Still, the structures are neither warm nor commodious, and the reporter’s note-taking is hampered by blowing on her hands. It is so cold, in fact, that in deference to the reader, whose nose is no doubt starting to run, we shall go indoors for a spell, that one might consider Mr. Diedricksen’s accomplishments in comfort.

They are many. There is his self-published graphic instruction book, “Humble Homes Simple Shacks Cozy Cottages Ramshackle Retreats Funky Forts,” the first edition of which was “hand-assembled” and “locally printed” (in his living room); having sold 1,500 copies, it will be reissued by the Lyons Press next year. There is his YouTube series, “Tiny Yellow House,” which is shot whenever his brother-in-law, a videographer, has some free time, most recently in the auto-body shop of a fan because, as Mr. Diedricksen notes, when it is 10 degrees you don’t want to film outside.

Mr. Diedricksen makes a living doing carpentry and spends a lot of time as Mr. Mom to his two young children, but he has also been a comic book writer, a D.J. and a home inspector, and is a drummer in a Rage Against the Machine tribute band called Age Against the Machine. (The World Wrestling Entertainment theme song for the wrestler Jack Swagger, “Get on Your Knees”? His band wrote that.) Even the little structures he makes, with their multiple uses — fort-guest bedroom-festival sleeper-homeless shelter — are tough to categorize.

It’s hard to figure out how to describe him, Mr. Diedricksen is told.

“One reviewer called me ‘a mad scientist with too much lumber on his hands,’ ” Mr. Diedricksen says. “Another one called it, ‘This Old House Meets Wayne’s World.’ ”

That may be because of the “Harold and Kumar”-esque, moldy sleeping-bag vibe of the “Tiny Yellow House” series, one episode of which includes Mr. Diedricksen’s real-life neighbor yelling, “Diedricksen, when you gonna clean this mess up?”

Or because of Mr. Diedricksen’s ponytail, which he has since cut. Or because of the episode that ends with him picking his teeth for the camera. “Pizza mouth?” he asks.

One should also know that Mr. Diedricksen, 33, graduated from Northeastern University summa cum laude.

Is Mr. Diedricksen committed to building only tiny structures?

“I have only so much yard space and my wife is only so tolerant,” he says.

Mr. Diedricksen’s wife, Elizabeth, is a physical therapist. They live with their children and a large dog in a 950-square-foot house about 10 miles south of Boston, which they bought in 2002 for $190,000 — a fixer-upper, of course.

Stop by to visit with Mr. Diedricksen, and you’ll have to wait till the kids take their naps to talk. Having a tiny-house enthusiast for a dad would seem to be a great thing: Mr. Diedricksen made what looks like a large painting in the living room, but which can be pulled down to sprout orange flaps: an instant kid-size tent.

...more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/garden/24tiny.html?src=twrhp

Sunshine to Dollars FREE Solar Panels and FREE Solar Heat (Hot Air and Hot Water)

As Seen in Popular Science.
THE FREE SOLAR PANELS BOOK !

http://ush2.com/

As Seen in Popular Science.
THE FREE SOLAR PANELS BOOK !
Sunshine To Dollars
by Steven E. Harris
ISBN:76 pages 8.5x11 inches [size]

The FREE SOLAR PANELS BOOK. I got over 85 Solar PV Panels for Free and I wrote this book to show you how to do the same thing. The book covers Free solar panels Plus solar heating and cooking at your house. Plus explicit details on getting Free Solar Glass and Free 3000F Solar Concentrators for a solar furnace. One of the most unique books ever written on Solar Energy. This book will have you building solar heaters and solar ovens in one afternoon. This is the most hands-on book ever written in the field. Get it today. Also includes, at no extra charge, Surviving the Blackout of 2003.

The Handbook of Solar Air Heating Systems. DIY Home Solar Power Panels

http://www.ush2.com/where_to_start.htm How to heat your home with solar hot air. This is so simple, some wood, and glass, and you can get the glass for free, listen to the promo. This book has solar hot air heaters that will pay for themselves in weeks or a month or two. Step by Step, full illustrations and complete materials lists.

Comments:

Ever notice that any solar heater on the outside actually block sunrays and leaving a shadow behind it... It is far cheaper to put a aluminium foil reflector on the ground to reflect the sunlight that would otherwise hit the ground unused. Also put more reflectors in the area that can reflect sunlight back against the colder, damper northern side of your house.

more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iBBzTY11hw&feature=related

Closet door mirrors for solar heating

Comments:

@danie1murphy It appears that we are being fed red herrings by those who are protecting their energy businesses by being misled to believe that photovoltaics is the only way to go. This is utterly false! Photovoltaics just converts sunlight into electricity at very low efficiency, much sunlight get wasted! Mirrors reflects almost 100% of sunlight and heat to whatever you use it for, heatiing, lighting, cooking, even burning a hole through a steel plate!  I wonder about fiberoptics.
junkyardnut 1 month ago
#

@danie1murphy maybe they are assuming that we dont want solar energy simply because it rises and set everyday. It is not a question of wanting solar energy or not, it is a question of cutting down our dependence on fossil fuel, etc. We need it badly now! Or the rich will be the onlly one still able to afford fossiil fuel at skyrockiting prices..
junkyardnut 1 month ago
#

Not all homes have North sides, no matter what hemisphere we're on. Lots of homes are built side by side or stacked to apartment buildings. Anyhow I do like your idea, it can save people with North walls/windows energy. Or South walls on the southern hemisphere.
maggzzz10 9 months ago
#

@maggzzz10 The energy industry is practicing damage control through peddling those energy trinkets like LEDs, photovoltaics, etc to reduce revenue losses through energy conservation. The real 800 pound gorilla in energy conservation is direct sunlight by reflection to heat indoors that could smash the energy industry into a deep depression.

#

@maggzzz10 if you have no northern side, you can still use east or west sides anyhow. it all depends on the mountings of the reflectors. It can be done like TV satellites or on top of poles. If you can find a spot to mount at least 4 by 8 foot refector, it is going to be worth the investment. Heat generated by this humble dimension is really huge!! equivalent to your average wall heater. The closer the reflector is to your unit the more powerful it s.
junkyardnut 3 months ago

#

foxtrot I also fantasized about removing my entire roof and replace it with an entire sunroof or greenhouse top as a second floor with normal insulated floor to keep the hot sun out but let the winter sun in all around. This is the ulitmate !

more...

HOW I MADE A SOLAR POP CAN FURNACE / HEATER

THIS IS A 64 CAN , MY FIRST TRY AT MAKING ONE SO I MADE A VIDEO OF IT

Uses step bit to cut 3 holes, high heat mortar or aluminum gutter glue, set in a piece of gutter with styroform to keep cans straight, high heat paint
-----

Comments:

made one similar to this but larger so I could space the can rows apart about two inches and installed a mirror under them. The cans I painted flat black all around and used the foam insulation on the bottom and sides of the box. I used 10 stacked cans by 10 rows and this set up produced enough heat that it made my small home shop 95 degrees by noon. I live in an open area with no trees and it was a full sunny day with outside temp @ 35 the mirror helps to reflect heat to the back of cans
EIBBOR2654 3 days ago
Reply
o Share
o Remove
o Flag for spam
o Block User
o Unblock User
*

@EIBBOR2654 cool do you have any pics or videos would love to see
richallenmusic 3 days ago
*

Sorry, I dont understand why you would want this? If the sun was out and it's warm out, I dont get why you would need hot air indoors?
D0ct0rh4gg4rd 2 months ago
*

@D0ct0rh4gg4rd hi its for the winter when its cold
richallenmusic 2 months ago 15
*

is that just black paint or what?
ihaveaverybadcold 4 months ago
*

@ihaveaverybadcold just black high temp paint like for a grill you can get at lowes or wal mart
richallenmusic 4 months ago

Highest Rated Comments

*

Easier way.. get a sheet of Insulfoam from Home Depot. Measure you window and make a box out of the foam ONLY. Paint the inside black and cans. Put a ledge across the bottom. Make hole along top and bottom. Insert a small computer fan run by solar charger. Then place this unit into the windows from the INSIDE of the house. It is very lightweight and can be taken down when summer returns. Produces 120-150F heat.
sc00b3rt 1 year ago 5

see all
Video Responses

Cansolair Solar Panels - FREE Heating without the Pollution

Alicia, save 240 soda pop cans and we will make a solar panel for heat. See video. Thanks to Diane for sending this! CT

= Alicia, guardar 240 latas de refresco y vamos a hacer un panel solar para la calefacción. Ver video. Gracias a Diane para el envío de esto! CT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRZvAAqzXIw




Cansolair Solar Panels - FREE Heating without the Pollution
Cansolair Inc. has developed a forced convection solar heating unit called the Model RA 240 SOLAR MAX. A dwelling of 1000 square feet can have a complete ...
www.cansolair.com/

[PDF]
Comparison to Competition CANSOLAIR INC.
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
The Cansolair Model RA 240 SOLAR MAX has been on the market since 2001 with ...
www.cansolair.com/CansolairBrochure.pdf - Similar


[PDF]
CANSOLAIR INC.
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
CANSOLAIR INC. 4 Hill Road. Dildo, NL A0B 1P0. Phone: (709) 582-3744. Fax ...
www.cansolair.com/ModelRA240SOLAR_MAXSpecs.pdf
Show more results from cansolair.com


int | Cansolair Inc. - SolarServer
May 28, 2010 ... Cansolair Inc. manufactures the Model R.A. 240 SOLAR MAX hot air solar heating system. These durable solar panels can provide years of ...
www.solarserver.com/yellow-pages/companies/.../cansolair-inc.html -


---

http://list-company.com/company-info/4028809a13dd74c80113ddc3a94a33c3/Cansolair-Inc-Oil-Gas-Massachusetts-USA.shtml

Cansolair Inc.
43 Broad Street Suite A408, Box 8
Hudson, Massachusetts 01749
USA
Tel:
Fax:
Instant Messenger:

Industry: Oil & Gas
A small company, Cansolair has produced and sold only 100 solar heating panels in the past four years. Now the company is getting more aggressive and pushing into the New Brunswick market with a new distributor in Saint John and a demonstration unit of the RA 240 Solar Max mounted on the outside wall of the farmers market in Bathurst. Dan Cybulski, whose Saint John-based Dacon Energy Systems will now sell the RA 240 Solar Max throughout New Brunswick, said he expects to sell as many as 100 of the solar panels in 2005 alone. Mr. Meaney began installing a RA 240 Solar Max system on the farmers market in the downtown core Wednesday. The inventor of this particular solar heating panel was also expected to give a presentation on it Thursday at the Le Chateau hotel in downtown ( www.cansolair.com )

Brilliant Newfoundlander Invents the Solution!

Jim Meaney, owner of Cansolair Inc. displays how he converts pop cans into a powerful solar heating panel.
Category:

Science & Technology
Tags:

* Alternative
* energy
* reducing
* carbon
* footprints
* environmentally
* friendly
* products
* solar
* heating
* panels
* pop
* cans
* Newfies

Buddhist Temple Made of Beer Bottles

http://www.gamil.com/2009/02/19/buddhist-temple-made-of-beer-bottles/

I want to do this: build with green glass bottles (Heineken, anyone?). It's beautiful... I'd like to see the entire wall made of green glass with ceilings with clear glass. See attached photo and link. http://www.gamil.com/2009/02/19/buddhist-temple-made-of-beer-bottles/. CT

= Quiero hacer esto: construir con botellas de vidrio verde (Heineken, ¿alguien?). Es hermoso ... Me gustaría ver a toda la pared de cristal verde con techos de vidrio claro. Ver foto adjunta y enlace.

---

See more:

Pictured: The Buddhist temple built using 1.5 million recycled beer bottles

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:53 PM on 18th February 2009

* Comments (0)
* Add to My Stories

Built using more than a million beer bottles, this incredible temple in the north-east of Thailand is a novel way to recycle any empties.

The resident Buddhist monks at the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew complex encourage local authorities to deposit any used bottles at the temple which they then use to build new structures.

Having already built the a temple and even shelters, the monks who live in the town of Khun Han really have got into the spirit of recycling.
Enlarge The Temple of a Million Bottles

Glass houses: There are 20 buildings made of bottles in the complex

Sometimes known as Wat Lan Kuad, or Temple Of A Million Bottles, the temple uses the discarded bottles to construct everything from the crematorium to the toilets.

Altogether there are about 1.5million recycled bottles in the temple, and the monks at there are intending to recycling even more.

'The more bottles we get, the more buildings we make,' says Abbot San Kataboonyo.
Enlarge A monk stands outside the Temple Of A Million Bottles

A monk stands outside the Temple Of A Million Bottles which was built from used bottles donated by the local community

Recycling doesn't stop at building the temple's buildings - mosaics around the temple, predominantly of Buddha, are made out of bottle caps.

Besides being ego-friendly, the disused bottles don't fade, provide good lighting and are easy to clean.

'The monks at Wat Lan Kuad started collecting the bottles they needed to build their temple complex in 1984,' said one tourist at the site.
Enlarge The visitors' toilets made out of bottles

Room with an interior view: The visitors' toilets are a unique spectacle

'They kept this up until they had nearly one million recycled bottles ready to construct their pagodas and temple.

'Even though drinking is a sin in Buddhism, this still seems like a positive use of beer and lager bottles.'

Representing the cleansing of the human mind, the beer-bottle-temple is now on an approved list of eco-friendly sightseeing tours in South-East Asia.

Bottle caps were used to make this decoration inside the temple

Explore more: Places: Thailand


More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1148758/Pictured-The-Buddhist-temple-built-using-1-5million-recycled-beer-bottles.html#ixzz1EvXWsEW3

Use a 2-Liter Bottle as a Light Bulb - RATED AT 50 WATTS

Use a 2-Liter Bottle as a 50 Watt Light Bulb lightbulb hack
posted by KAWUNEARTH

YouTube Category:

Howto & Style
Tags:

* light
* bulb
* lightbulb
* hack
* save
* energy
* green
* cheap
* water
* bottle
* fixture
* renewable
* reusage
* floodlight
* ceiling
* lights
* roof
* alternative
* environment
* environmental

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zMAWztZ6TI&feature=player_embedded

---

http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/4054-2-liter-bottle-50-watt-light-bulb-hack.html

More discussion about this:

Old 04-06-2009, 08:55 PM
cody cody is offline
Senior Member

Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 374
This is an awesome simple idea. Im wondering if the bottle were extended into a tube and bent if it would behave as a cheap simple fiber optic line. Im also wondering how long the bottle will hold up in the sun as plastic likes to degrade. There is possibly lots of room for improvement on this great idea.

Seth,
These should not continue to glow after the sun goes down. However, your question brings up a great idea. You could add some phospho Luminescence or other glow in the dark chemicals to the water to get it to stay lit when the sun goes down. Great idea!
Last edited by cody : 04-06-2009 at 09:02 PM.

---

Reply With Quote
seth
View Public Profile
Find all posts by seth
#9 (permalink)
Old 04-06-2009, 08:55 PM
cody cody is offline
Senior Member

Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 374
This is an awesome simple idea. Im wondering if the bottle were extended into a tube and bent if it would behave as a cheap simple fiber optic line. Im also wondering how long the bottle will hold up in the sun as plastic likes to degrade. There is possibly lots of room for improvement on this great idea.

Seth,
These should not continue to glow after the sun goes down. However, your question brings up a great idea. You could add some phospho Luminescence or other glow in the dark chemicals to the water to get it to stay lit when the sun goes down. Great idea!

more: http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/4054-2-liter-bottle-50-watt-light-bulb-hack.html

Garbage Warrior [documentary], architect Michael Reynolds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1cUa4yWQp4

YouTube: brokendave | December 27, 2010

Shot over three years in the USA, India and Mexico, Garbage Warrior is a feature-length documentary film telling the epic story of maverick architect Michael Reynolds and his fight to introduce radically sustainable housing. An inspirational tale of triumph over bureaucracy, Garbage Warrior is above all an intimate portrait of an extraordinary individual and his dream of changing the world.

17 U.S.C. § 107

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Category:

Nonprofits & Activism
Tags:

* Garbage
* Warrior
* Mike
* Reynolds
* earth
* ship
* thermal
* mass
* sustainable
* architecture
* India
* tsunami
* relief

GreenerPro.com ~ biodiesel

GreenerPro offers you all the products and services needed “from the soil into the tank”. We believe you have to grow your own oil if you want to be a successful biodiesel producer. We consult you in selecting the right crop for your specific conditions; provide you with seeds, the oil extraction machinery, a meal bagging system and biodiesel equipment. Some of our products include:

Biodiesel Solutions
Hybrid Castor seed
Filter Press 25 tons per day
Oil Refinery 100 tons per day
Oil Solvent Extraction Plant 150 tons per day or more
Project Management Services
Used Cooking Oil Melting Plant

©2009 GreenerPro. All Rights Reserved. |

SiteMap-GreenerPro
Green Web Hosting! This site hosted by DreamHost.


GreenerPro

* Contact
* Services
* Products
* Biodiesel
* Background
* Home

http://www.greenerpro.com/Products.html

Easy Latrine Handbook

Excerpt from 18 page construction manual



Easy latrine handbook

Email Feb 3, 2011

from benjamin clouet
to catherinetodd2@gmail.com
date Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 4:30 AM
subject Easy latrine handbook


Dear Catherine,

I aw on a blog that you were looking for construction manual for easy latrine. Here it is, printable both side in a A5 booklet.

I hope it will provide you the information you need, and don't hesitate to contact me if you need further details.

Best,

Ben
Hanbook printable.pdf Hanbook printable.pdf
5329K View Download

----

From: Catherine S. Todd
to Dr, Genevieve, benjamin

show details Feb 3 (1 day ago)

Dear Ben,

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I am returning to Guatemala in Feb or March and will bring this with me. I am also sending it to LongWayHomeInc.org in case they haven't seen it. Are you working with a group on sustainable living? Do you plan on visiting Guatemala, if you aren't here already?

See all my contacts and links below. Yours truly, Catherine Todd

---

Found more info at: http://groups.google.com/group/watsan-sector-kh/topics?start=0&sa=N

Dear wat-san member,

We would like to share with you the khmer version of the low-cost latrine
handbook that IDE and GRET developed.
Any further question you have, please contact me at

benjamin clouet

Wish you all a good day,

ben

or http://groups.google.com/group/watsan-sector-kh/msg/395dbd7766e9646e

---

Note: I just uploaded the 18 page A4 letter size pdf file to http://www.docstoc.com/mydocuments/ (a free pdf file transfer service). Here is the link to download. If this doesn't work, email benclouet8@hotmail.com or email me at CatherineTodd2@gmail.com and one of us will send it to you. Thank you Ben!


IDE Latrine Hanbook printable A4 -

(click to download)

Harvard and Montessori meet at Lake Atitlan

From Dragoness' Utterances, by diane e. dreyfus: http://didreyfus.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/harvard-and-montessori-meet-at-lake-atitlan/#comment-165

Excerpt:

"Two nights ago, I met an art historian and a psychologist, here, who generously shared about their work in several communities around Lake Atitlan. They are both proponents of Harvard’s Project Zero http://www.pz.harvard.edu/. The art historian, Maribel Rivero Socarras had worked with the concepts of David Perkins in fostering “visual thinking” in children before she joined the team of four others, working with Guatamala’s Fundosistemas. (http://www.transformacionlocal.org/) Maria Jose Matheu, the psychologist, facilitates parent training and teacher evaluations. Together, this group is positively impacting about 4,000 indigenous (K-12) students."

More: http://didreyfus.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/harvard-and-montessori-meet-at-lake-atitlan/


I want to build a school on some of my (very small) building lots, and am interested in finding out more. I was thinking classes for art, music, dance, beading, computers and construction using recycled building materials. I hope to be working with LongWayHomeInc.org using used tires, rammed earth, plastic bottles filled with dirt, sand or adobe.

Could Harvard and Montessori help here?

Diane's response: "Harvard Project Zero and Montesorri are pedagogical methods so you can USE or ADAPT them as you please."

Husk Power for India

The New York Times


January 4, 2009
Bright Ideas | Environment
Husk Power for India
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Many of India’s cities have become bustling centers for high technology and heavy industry, but hundreds of millions of people in the countryside remain off the grid. Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. So after earning an electrical engineering degree at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and working for the Intel Corporation, he began exploring ways to turn farm waste into electricity, with the dream of building village-scale generators.

Last year at the University of Virginia, where he is studying for a master’s at the Darden School of Business, he and a fellow student, Charles Ransler, teamed up with another engineer from Bihar, Gyanesh Pandey, and Husk Power Systems was born.

The Indian engineers, both 31, had initially planned on raising money to build small generators for simply a few villages. But the company now has a proprietary generator that runs on a methane-like gas released by heating rice husks a certain way. A waste product of rice milling, husks are plentiful in villages. While agricultural waste is common for generating heat, it is not often used for generating electricity, and there is nothing remotely like this system in the villages of developing countries. The system produces enough electricity to supply 300 to 500 households for 8 to 10 hours a day. A byproduct is silica, a valuable ingredient in making cement.

The long-term plan is to profit from the global market in credits — earned by avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions, which result from burning fossil fuels like coal — and to sell the benefit.

Husk Power Systems won first place in 2008 in the University of Virginia business plan competition and the social innovation competition at the University of Texas, Austin. The students are headquartered at the Darden School of Business incubator, where they get space and advice.

There are generators in five villages now, with the hope of expanding to 100 within a few years, Mr. Ransler says. Eventually, these communities could shift to other electricity sources as the Indian economy matures. But Mr. Ransler, 30, predicts there will be a market for many years to come for small-scale power systems burning renewable farm waste.

Business leaders must realize that the world’s poor need investments more than handouts, he says, adding, “These are customers, not victims.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/education/edlife/ideas-huskpower-t.html

rechargeable battery service, rechargable lantern, Burrobrand.biz

burrobrand.biz

Welcome to Burro

Burro is a new kind of company dedicated to delivering high-quality, affordable goods and services to low-income families in the developing world. Our for-profit business model will allow us to sustainably serve consumers who are largely ignored by the marketplace but who are eager and able to spend on innovations that improve their productivity.

The world's poorest people spend some $5 trillion annually on goods and services, but few businesses pay careful attention to meeting the particular needs of those who earn a dollar or two a day. Much of what is offered to them is overpriced, poorly made, and sold at inconvenient locations. But Burro puts its clients first. Like the hardworking pack animal that inspired our name, we are truly out there—in the fields and on the trails, helping our clients live more comfortably and work more productively.

More Power

Burro's first offering is a rechargeable battery service that our clients use predominantly for flashlights, radios, and cell phone charging. It costs less than available throwaway batteries while delivering more power and eliminating potentially hazardous waste. Roughly half of Ghana's 23 million people live without electricity, including the vast majority of rural communities. For these people, little things can mean a lot—a Ghanaian family can spend half a day's income on a pair of poor-quality, throwaway batteries just so a child can do a few hours' homework at night. Burro's better battery offering is already helping such families to do more with their lives.

We are conducting our pilot in Koforidua, the capital of the Eastern Region of Ghana, a peaceful, democratic nation in West Africa.

---

See NY Times article "When Microcredit Won't Do" & comment (below):

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/when-microcredit-wont-do/



Max Alexander
South Thomaston, Maine
February 1st, 2011
11:35 am
This is very similar to what my brother, Whit Alexander, is doing now in Ghana with Burro (www.burrobrand.biz) and the subject of my next book, The Gong-Gong Man, due out early next year from Hyperion. His model is also creating a sustainable for-profit business that recruits local villagers as salespeople in a consignment model. His core offering is a rechargeable (NiMH) AA battery that he essentially rents to off-grid villagers, who exchange for fresh at far less than the cost of the throwaway batteries most Ghanaians use. The batteries are charged by Burro at a central grid location. They are used in flashlights, radios and proprietary cell phone chargers that Burro also sells. Unlike solar devices, which are expensive and don't work optimally during the rainy season, Burro's batteries are extremely versatile and always provide plenty of power. His latest product is a battery-powered lantern he developed in partnership with Greenlight Planet that provides as much light as kerosene hurricane lamps at one-fifth the cost, without the danger and odor. You can learn more at Burro's website or my own blog related to my upcoming book (maxalexander.info).


Burro. Do More.


Welcome

About Us

Who We Are

Our Products

Our Services

Our Resellers

Our Clients

FAQ

Contact Us

Contact Us

Burro, LLC
Seattle, Washington
Whit Alexander, Founder
whit@burrobrand.biz

Burro Brand Ghana Ltd.
PO Box KF721
Hospital Road (near Market Street, green office)
Koforidua, Eastern Region, Ghana
+233.3420.222.05
Posted by catherine todd at 2/02/2011 01:12:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: burrobrand.biz, rechargable lantern, rechargeable battery service

Corn as charcoal substitute

Here is a brilliant TED talk on corn as charcoal substitute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwFkb1x7FJQ


TEDtalksDirector | January 16, 2007

http://www.ted.com Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world. MIT engineer Amy Smith details an exciting but simple solution: a tool for turning farm waste into clean-burning charcoal.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10
Category:

Science & Technology
Tags:

* TEDTalks
* engineering
* engineers
* MIT
* genius
* grant
* design
* inspiring
* third
* world
* developing
* Amy
* Smith
* TED
* Talks

Husk Power Systems: turning rice husks into energy

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/a-light-in-india/?partner=rss&emc=rss


Links:

1.
Husk Power Systems (“HPS”) lighted the first village from its first 100% biomass based power plant that uses discarded rice husks to generate electricity in ...
www.huskpowersystems.com/ - Cached - Similar
►
2.
Acumen Fund | Husk Power Systems
Husk Power Systems (HPS) generates clean, safe and efficient electricity at affordable rates in some of India's most remote communities. ...
www.acumenfund.org/investment/husk-power-systems.html - Cached
3.
Husk Power Systems: Rice-Fired Electricity | Fast Company
Dec 1, 2008 ... We continue our look at Fast Company's Social Enterprises of the Year with Husk Power Systems.
www.fastcompany.com/.../husk-power-systems-rice-fired-electricity.html - Cached - Similar
4.
Husk Power Systems Wants to Lead "a Revolution in Electricity ...
The Indian for-profit social enterprise is making gains in all areas of ...
vox.fastcompany.com/.../husk-power-systems-from-power-to-empowered - Cached
Show more results from fastcompany.com
5.
News for Husk Power Systems

6.
Fixes: A Light in India
12 hours ago
This is why I'm writing today about a small but fast-growing off-grid electricity company based in Bihar called Husk Power Systems. It has created a system ...
New York Times (blog) - 6 related articles
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/a-light-in-india/?partner=rss&emc=rss

7.
Husk Power Systems | Facebook
Sign UpHusk Power Systems is on FacebookSign up for Facebook to connect with ... Husk Power Systems. Lighting over 150 villages through 50 de-centralized ...
www.facebook.com/.../Husk-Power-Systems/34694426057

---

One Man, One Hammer, A 64 Square Foot Solar Home

tumbleweed-tiny-xs-house:

One Man, One Hammer, A 64 Square Foot Solar Home
Story by Michael Janzen on February 6, 2009 and filed in Projects
12 Comments

Jeff has been living in this tiny house about 100 days out of the year, with his wife and dog, while building their larger 1,400 square foot home. Their property, which they bought in 2003, is in the western mountains of North Carolina. Jeff figured that they could camp out while building the larger house but soon discovered that their new property was in a temperate rain forest, which meant regular rain and very uncomfortable camping. This tiny house was born out of the desire to stay dry and warm.

“Every time I went up there to work it rained. Maybe not for long, but it seemed like every day! Tents were getting soaked and had to be dried out during the week. It was miserable!”

jeffs-tiny-house

He prefabricated the tiny house at his shop two hours away and brought it up in pieces. It’s built from a lot of reclaimed building materials which kept the cost low, probably in the neighborhood of $1,500. He suspects that with labor costs a house like this could be professionally built for less that $9,500.

The passive solar design keeps the interior about 20 degrees warmer than the temperature outside, even with snow on the ground. It measure 8′ by 8′ has a marine toilet and queen bed. It has no running water or permanent connection to the power grid. But it does have a nice little outdoor kitchen on one side with a Corian countertop and handy water spigot. Eventually it will serve as a garden shed but today it’s a comfy place to rest on work weekends.

One weekend he arrived and found a note on the door from the county saying he had built the shed in a floodplain. As a former building inspector himself Jeff had figured that the tiny house wouldn’t attract attention because it didn’t fall into the definition of a habitable room, which in his neck of the woods is 70 square feet. He was partially right, the location of the house in the flood plain is what raised eyebrows. Luckily there was no bed or TV in the room either when the inspector visited. This seems like a good lesson to learn, the more a tiny house looks like a garden shed the less attention it attracts. Hide in plain sight in other words.

“I was a building inspector for a while and figured that if I built it under their definition of a habitable room which is 70 sq. ft., I would be OK. The answer, Yes and No. No it wasn’t considered habitable, mainly because when the “Revenuers” found it, it was empty (unlike now with a queen size bed and TV). Although it was in their floodplain. I figured it would be in my best interest to move it voluntarily, out of the goodness of my heart!”

So Jeff picked the house up with a forklift and put it on a tall concrete block foundation to satisfy the counties concerns and avoid further inquiry. It’s surprising to me that the building inspectors cared at all about a ‘shed’ that didn’t need a permit to be built in the first place, but you never know what red-tape you’ll run into. Every community is different and every building inspector will have a slightly different take on interpreting the rules, it’s just an unfortunate reality.

house-on-forklift

The photo above also shows the detail of the front of the house well. Notice the pyramidal roof, the low walls to the sides of the door, the large windows and the curved portal roof. These design features are what give this simple box house so much character. The interior walls must be fairly low but I suspect the interior ceiling height is generous under the pitched roof. The over-sized windows also provide the excellent solar gain without making the house look too much like a solar house.

jeffs-garden

Outside they’ve planted a garden for fresh veggies on their weekend work trips. Jeff has also begun to use several different passive and active solar techniques on the larger home and tiny house. Eventually he wants to have a photovoltaic solar array and a wind turbine for electricity.

The biggest passive solar recommendation he has for those of us interested in building our own solar tiny houses is to make it as air tight as possible. He went to great lengths to make both houses air tight and it makes all the difference.

“The main thing that anyone can do is to stop air infiltration. All the “Green” bells and whistles don’t mean a thing if you can’t keep the conditioned air in the building. I went to great lengths on both the “shanty” and the main house. A small 6″ quartz heater will overheat the Building when it is in the 20′s outside.”

Below is the river (and dog) you’ll find in their backyard. The nearby river is the reason this tiny house, and larger house, are built so high in the air. Photo credit to Jeff & family. Be sure to check out his photos on flickr. This is a wonderful tiny house design success story! Thanks for all the great information Jeff!

http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/2009/02/06/one-man-one-hammer-a-64-square-foot-solar-home/

How to Build a Tiny House

When she sold a three-bedroom home and moved into this 84-square-foot house in Olympia, Washington, Dee Williams found freedom.
Photo by Betty Udesen

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/sustainable-happiness/how-to-build-a-tiny-house

How to Build a Tiny House
by Dee Williams
posted Mar 10, 2009


Three years ago, I decided to downsize. I sold my big house (which I loved!), got rid of all my stuff, and built an itty-bitty eco-friendly cottage. When I finished building, I slid my little house into a friend’s backyard. This isn’t as odd as it sounds. My house actually “fits” in the backyard. It looks like a tiny cabin, or a tree house. It’s also super-small and built on wheels.

My house offers 84 square-feet of living space and cost about $10,000 to build. It was built for the highway, but—honestly—it isn’t anything like a travel trailer. It doesn’t contain any space-age plastics or fake wood. Instead, it’s the real deal: knotty pine, cedar, and fir.

I made the house to be as simple and natural as possible. I minimized my construction footprint by using a bunch of “green” building techniques, including:

* Recycled and Salvaged Wood—The house took shape based on the materials that were offered to me or “found.” For example, I decided to install skylights after I found two huge windows at the salvage yard. I installed knotty pine siding on the interior walls and ceiling, and used cedar planks for the loft floor after the wood became available at the local reuse store. I installed exterior cedar siding after my neighbor offered me a bundle. He had originally purchased the wood in the 1940s, and had been storing it in his garage since that time. It was beautiful old-growth cedar—the kind you can’t find anymore.

* Insulated Windows—The house has nice, wood-clad windows that are low-emission (which reflects sunlight to keep the house cooler in the summer) and argon-insulated. They cost a mint, but have proven to work great! They cut noise and heat loss, and look fabulous.

* Solar Electricity—A 240-watt photovoltaic (solar) system powers my lights and other electric gadgets. It was sized to meet my needs, based on Olympia’s cloudy weather.

* Non-toxic Stains and Sealants—I used a water-based stain on the outside of the house, and a water-based sealant on the kitchen counter. I didn’t coat the floors, walls, or ceiling. As a result, the house carries a subtle, natural cedar and pine smell. I love the woodsy, peaceful smell of my house.

* Primitive Water/Sewer—I don’t have running water in my house. I pull water from a nearby garden spigot, and jug it into the house. I use a composting toilet, and I shower elsewhere. This “primitive” set-up has presented some of the greatest challenges for me. But I’ve gotten used to things, and I recognize that (on a world scale) any sort of toilet or shower is a blessing. Millions of people live without running water or a sanitary sewer. My situation is gifted by comparison.

* Other Good Ideas—I used shredded cotton insulation in the walls and ceiling, and Marmoleum (a natural linseed product) on the floor. I placed the house in the backyard with consideration for wind, sun and shade. Most importantly, I simply minimized the size of the house while creating a sense of space, utility and natural beauty (smaller really is better for the environment).

I’ve been in the backyard for over two years. I didn’t intend to find myself stumbling down a “greener” path, but the house has worked on me. I buy less stuff (there’s no place to store it). I re-think leaving lights on, and mull over better ways to manage my compost. I take fewer and shorter showers because I’m imposing on someone else. My ecological footprint has definitely gotten smaller by living in my little house.

I’ve saved a lot of money (my utility bills don’t really exist, and I don’t have a mortgage). I also spend less time fixing things and cleaning. Now, I have more of the “stuff” that I always wanted: time and resources.

I’ve tried to explain my house to other people. It’s a bit awkward. For example, a few weeks ago, a group of 5th-graders visited my house. I was trying to explain how my house works, and what makes it “green.” And ultimately, we spent less time talking about the house (itself), and more time talking about how the house has connected me to the community.

I’m less autonomous. I rely on the sun to power my lights. I trust the rain on the roof to keep me company. I love that the wind cools my house in summer (it works!). I depend on the library and food co-op, and the generosity of friends and neighbors. I have to ask for water every day, and that has changed me!

I find myself wanting (more than ever) to give something back. And that is at the root of all sorts of new ways to live more simply and in-step with my world. Downsizing just keeps getting better!


Dee Williams' tiny house was featured in Sustainable Happiness, the Winter 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Dee is an inspector with the Washington State Department of Ecology.
Reprinted with kind permission from South Sound Green Pages.

More: www.yesmagazine.org/issues/sustainable-happiness/how-to-build-a-tiny-house

Interested?
Dream House: Tour Dee Williams’ house
See the houseplan at www.tumbleweedhouses.com

How to Move Yourself Off-The-Grid

8x20-cabin-with-porch

How to Move Yourself Off-The-Grid
Story by Michael Janzen on July 27, 2010 and filed in How To

http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/2010/07/27/how-to-move-yourself-off-the-grid/

It’s easy to take flush toilets, grid-power, and fresh water on tap for granted. I can’t blame any of us for thinking that all these modern conveniences are normal… it’s the only normal we’ve known. Due to this most folks have a hard time imagining an off-the-grid life because it’s not clear what’s needed to make the leap.

So here’s a crash course in practical and sustainable solutions for moving yourself off-the-grid.

Photo of The Urban Rancher and his off-grid cabin.

Pee and Poop

Flush toilets are really insane when you stop to think about what they do. They begin by taking several gallons of perfectly good drinking water and mix it with a little pee and poop to produce sewage. Sewage is a mess and really hard to turn back into safe drinking water; but it is easy to transport to treatment plants through enormous networks of pipes, an infrastructure that need regular maintenance. To clean it up, chemicals are used to treat the water which in-turn keeps everyone in the chemical business very happy. Isn’t there a better way!?

Compost it! – Poop loves to decompose and if given a little time and the right conditions it breaks down into rich compost, yes even human poop. Remember we’re just critters just like the our furry friends and our poop will actually decompose into a safe compost, under the right conditions.

Humanure Handbook – A fellow by the name of Joseph Jenkins has actually written an book on the topic called the Humanure Handbook. He’s also designed a toilet nicknamed, The Lovable Loo, which is essentially a 5 gallon plastic bucket in a plywood box. You might also hear these toilets referred to as sawdust toilets because sawdust is literally used to cover the deposits between visits.

The other component you need with this system is a dedicated compost pile out in the backyard with enough space to cook your poop for two years. The stink stays buried in the compost pile under a layer of straw. When you need to add a bucket load you simply pull back the straw, add the fresh material, and cover it back up. So there is some stinky work involved but the the chore is a simple one. This may also be the most sustainable, low-tech, and safe way to turn our waste into something useable.

Commercial Composting Toilets – If the virtually free sawdust toilet seems far too gross, consider spending around $1,000 for a commercially produced composting toilet. These units work swiftly to decompose the material making them more palatable by most folks. If you move your tiny house around a lot this kind of system would be much more practical than a Lovable Loo too, because it’s self-contained and required no backyard compost pile.
Greywater

Another somewhat tricky waste material to dispose-of is the runoff from sinks, showers, and laundry. This is referred to as greywater which will still have traces of human waste in it, so it can’t just be left to run down the street. In a normal house this water is mixed with sewage to make more sewage. Seems kind of silly doesn’t it?

The solution is to reuse and/or treat the water right there on-site instead of funneling it down a sewer line to a treatment plant miles away. There are many different high-tech and low-tech ways of dealing with greywater but if you choose to build a tiny house be sure to consider handling the plumbing for your sewage separately from your greywater. The people at Earthship Biotecture have an incredible greywater system that is built right into homes and could serve as a model for any home’s future greywater system.
Fresh Water

Instead of drilling a well or tapping into municipal water sources, consider collecting rainwater and storing it in tanks for year-round use. Rainwater harvesting is becoming more and more popular because it’s so simple and low-cost. It can also be perfectly healthy to drink with a little filtration. I wrote-up a detailed post on some ideas for rainwater harvesting which you might find useful.
Electricity

The power grid is an incredibly complex network that requires constant maintenance and monitoring. The entire system is actually incredibly inefficient. For example, line loss, literally the resistance in the wires, sucks electricity from the system before it reaches its destination in your home. To compensate the utility company has to produce more just to defeat the inefficiencies of the system.

Imagine a world where people made their own clean electricity at their point of use. For such a system to remain low-cost we’d need to learn to use less power and move way from using the energy hogging appliances that grew-up dependent on fossil fuel sourced grid power. We’d also need to invest in our own off-grid systems up-front. The good news is that alternative power options are coming down in cost.

Photovoltaic (PV) Solar Panel – Most folks these days are familiar with this technology, panels that produce electricity when exposed to direct sunlight. For a tiny house and a frugal occupant a few solar panels, batteries, and some simple electronic control equipment may be all that’s needed for an off-grid electric system.

Wind Turbine – If you tend to stay put and live in an area with ample wind, a small wind turbine can be a great addition to an off-grid system because it increases the diversity of you power sources. Many off-grid systems also include a backup generator that is used to charge up the batteries when the sun is not shining. By adding other renewable sources of electricity, like wind and hydro, you can reduce your dependency on fossil fuel burning generators.

Micro-Hydro – If your land has water running crossing it, and you have water rights to it, you may be able to tap a small portion of it and spin a small turbine. This can be one of the most reliable and steady ways to produce electricity because as long as the water flows you have water.

All that is needed is a drop in elevation between the inlet and the turbine, some pipe, and a way to get a small portion of the water out of the stream and delivered to the tiny turbine. The inlet can simply be a submerged bucket with a pipe connected that brings the debris-free water downhill to the turbine.
Heating & Cooking Fuels

In most modern homes natural gas, propane, and heating oil are the common fuels burned. But we’re really beginning to see the true cost of using these limited natural resources. If we moved from being dependent on fossil fuels to using renewable energy sources we’d significantly reduce the risk of rising energy costs and continued environmental impacts.

Wood – Burning wood is actually a carbon neutral way of heating a home. When a tree grows it absorbs carbon. When we burn it it releases that same carbon. If we use a highly efficient wood stove in a small living space we can actually get through the winters with little environmental impact and effort. The problem with burning wood for heating a large home is that it would take acres of trees to make it sustainable. Heating a small home requires less energy input which in turn reduces the cost, impact, and effort needed to stay warm in winter.

Methane – Some inventive folks have actually built systems that produce mathane gas from their waste, both human and vegetable. It’s rare to come across this kind of a setup, and they are reportedly a bit tricky to operate, but they can provide a renewable natural gas for cooking and heating.

Alcohol – I’ve not seen this done a great deal but the idea of having a small still for distilling alcohol for burning in an alcohol stove may be a viable alternative on a small scale. I plan to use an alcohol stove in my extreme tiny house experiment, Nine Tiny Feet.
Wrapping Up

In this modern world it’s hard to imagine life without fossil fuels, flush toilets, and fresh tap water. Actually I think it’s perfectly logical to say that without these things our lives would be very different.

Tiny houses are much easier to maintain in good or tough times. Every time we take-on one more square foot, we increase the effort required to maintain our living space. Living more simply and sustainably lowers risk and can increase our opportunities to prosper.

Changing the way we think about the basics is the first step in changing the way we live. Imagining downsizing to a smaller home and owning fewer possessions is a giant step. But it’s a giant leap for most to learn to live without the reliance of modern conveniences. Most of us are still on the way there too, living with a foot in both worlds, testing the water and exploring. I hope this little introduction to alternative utilities helped move you forward.

My Tiny, Free House

Planet | Families & Homes | Simple Living

My Tiny, Free House
Michael Janzen had a big house and a big mortgage. Then the financial crisis hit, and he wondered just how small, and how cheap, a house could be.

by Michael Janzen
posted Aug 10, 2010

In 2008, as the value of my big house was evaporating and layoffs seemed to loom in the distance, I came to my senses.

I began to question the true value of a home—and the real risk of a mortgaged home. I was making a huge financial commitment but not buying the things that really matter, like security and more time with the people I love. A mortgage can buy a lot of instant luxury, but at a significant cost in time, money, and financial risk.

In short, I woke up to the reality that I had taken on too much risk during good times and was totally unprepared for tough times.
I had taken on too much risk during good times and was totally unprepared for tough times.

Armed with this better understanding of the financial risks I’d already committed to, I started looking for answers and found the tiny house movement, which offers a different way of thinking about housing.

The core values of the tiny house movement are that living simply in small spaces empowers us. Committing to a tiny house removes many of the burdens we accepted when we bought into the idea of a "normal" American lifestyle. Instead of focusing on how much we can afford, the tiny space forces us to consider how little we really need.
Building Tiny, for Free

mj1.jpg I wouldn’t have believed this scale of housing was possible until I was introduced to Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny Houses. Jay has spent years living in tiny houses smaller than 100 square feet. As I learned more about the tiny house movement and began blogging about tiny house design, I met many more people who are carving out fulfilling and happy lives through extreme downsizing.

mj3.jpg I decided to take this minimalist approach even further: to build a tiny house without it costing me anything but time and energy. I use mostly recycled materials I can get for free; any money I spend on building supplies will be recaptured by selling the free stuff I find.

mj4.jpg The house is built on a small trailer that measures about seven feet wide by 12 feet long, making the total interior space about 80 square feet. It will sleep three people, two in a loft and one on a handmade flip-out bench/bed. A small kitchen and bathroom with a composting toilet will also be included.

Most of the framing wood has come from used shipping pallets I’ve salvaged from dumpsters. Pallets aren’t very easy to build with, but it seems like poetic justice for a house that questions consumerism to be made from the very things that carried so many consumer products to market.

I’ve scored some used plywood for the sheathing and a pile of scavenged felt for the roof. I thought about collecting and flattening 200 #10 tin cans for shingles, but a stormy summer has convinced me to hold out for some scrap corrugated roofing.

Construction of my tiny house been slow going, but I couldn’t be more convinced that it’s worth it.

An Education in Independence

You can apply this kind of thinking to any size living space—it really begins with downsizing possessions, debt, and other external burdens.

With a family of three, I don’t plan to live full-time in the tiny house—it’s more of an experiment to find out if a totally free house is possible. I’m convinced, though, that the biggest impact of a tiny house is the way it changes your thinking about what you really need. You can apply this kind of thinking to any size living space—it really begins with downsizing possessions, debt, and other external burdens.

How House Size Balloned - The Righteous Small House

An architect asks, at what point does size cancel out sustainability?

When we choose to live with less, we also choose a lifestyle that requires fewer inputs and increases our immunity to outside forces, like economic turmoil.

Building the tiny house has definitely changed the way I think about my “normal-sized” house: Its upkeep and expenses keep getting in the way of things I want to do (including building the tiny house!), and it feels enormous. I look forward to the day when we’re free to make our own downsizing move—I’ve learned that a home’s value should be measured by the happiness and security it brings instead of its size and cost.

Now I feel like I’m on a path toward a more sustainable, lower-risk, and more fulfilling lifestyle. I still have a long way to go but I take comfort in the knowledge that I’m moving forward.

---

Janzen wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Michael is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. While he makes his living as a professional web designer, he shows others what it takes to make their own tiny house dreams come true through his blog TinyHouseDesign.com. His education is in the arts and he lived as a studio potter for several years.

YesMagazine.org

Interested?

* Living Large in a Tiny House
Dee Williams doesn't need a big house to be happy. Instead she found happiness in a 84-square foot house on wheels.
* How To Build A Tiny House
How Dee Williams built her Tumbleweed tiny house.
* 10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy
Scientists can tell us how to be happy. Really. Here are 10 ways, with the research to prove it.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/my-tiny-free-house?utm_source=wkly20101231&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleTinyFreeHouse

Dilapidated 18th Century Church Transformed Into a Private Home

http://inhabitat.com/dilapidated-18th-century-church-transformed-into-a-private-home/

Dilapidated 18th Century Church Transformed Into a Private Home
by Jamie Hall, 12/23/10
filed under: Architecture

st nicholas church, kyloe northumberland england, church renovations, adaptive reuse, green renovation, green architecture, church houses, green homes, sustainable design

Adaptive reuse projects generally call to mind industrial warehouses and factories turned into trendy studios, or shabby-chic restaurants and bars, but the transformation of the St. Nicholas Church in Kyloe, Northumberland, England has taken this concept of renewal and grounded it much closer to home. The church was purchased not too long ago by Sally Onions and Ian Bottomley, who went the unconventional route when scouting for their newest digs. Far from a Norman Foster style box, or even a classic and quaint Victorian house, the duo instead opted to transform an 18th century basilica into the sanctuary they now call “home.”


The church was originally built in 1792, so the couple wanted to maintain as much of the building’s classic architecture as possible. Rather than undertaking a full-on renovation — which actually would have been cheaper — they opted to restore the key elements of the church, such as the vaulted ceilings and original stained glass windows.

While sofas and beds have replaced pews, the integrity of the architecture remains – you can even find the old cemetery within the churchyard. But don’t think the two are reading by candlelight once the sun sets — the former house of worship has evolved to accommodate contemporary living with modern appliances, fixtures, electricity, and other creature comforts.


More at Inhabit.com: http://inhabitat.com/dilapidated-18th-century-church-transformed-into-a-private-home/

st nicholas church, kyloe northumberland england, church renovations, adaptive reuse, green renovation, green architecture, church houses, green homes, sustainable design