William Adams

Clark Harris wrote:

Satamax Antone wrote:
Since i do roofing for a living. Going through a roof is no big deal for me.
HTH.

Another option I am considering is using gas heaters fueled with biogas.  These would not need a chimney, I think.  Then my only question would be, "how far can heaters be from biogas source?"

 For example.... The most biogas you will get from a 1cubic meter (264 gallon) digester running near optimal output will be about enough gas to burn a cookstove for about 1.5 hours or a few mantle lamps. A electric generator could be ran if gas feed pressure is high enough for about 30 - 60 minutes per day on that too but pick 1 of the 3. Also, for IC engine electric generator, depending on your engine cylinder volume and power load, would require a gas scrubber setup to remove at least the Hydrogen sulfide from the gas before use in it, otherwise it could lead engine corrosion over the long run if what you're putting in your digester produces a lot of sulfides.

  It would be more labor intensive & waste of more space for less results to try to use biogas to heat a home on any scale unless you own a business scale farm with lots of waste & space for a massive digester. Better off sticking to a rocket stove mass heater or heat exchanging gassifier even with the need for chimney pipe.

A lot of good people are in prison for having wrong assumptions about gun laws and when to use a firearm against a person in any fashion. Wether to kill, stop or scare off. I'm not against firearms but handguns are only good for one purpose and that is to kill people. The first handgun was not made for hunting but to kill people. It has always been its primary purpose. People were doing just fine hunting and killing before the firearm though. A sherrif deputy in the county next to me is going to jail for discharging his firearm in the presence and direction of his own son even though he was trained and an officer of the law with no intention of shooting his son, i.e.- he was just showing off.

I support the advice of previous posters that if you are apprehensive about fireams not to own one. If you want one, get trained by a professional not your uncle Moe. A lot of people have been robbed in their home while owning a firearm simply because they had to pass through the area occupied by the intruder to get to the gun or the key to the lockbox. Most people will be so overcome by paralyzing fear with an intruder in their home at night that remembering a combination or loading a gun goes out the window.

The most important thing is that you shouldn't let anyone you don't implicitly trust or can't keep their mouth shut know you have a firearm on your person or in your home. When a person intent on doing you harm knows you are armed it only escalates a minor conflict to where deadly force is usually the only option a person thinks they have left.

Also, deterring an intruder wether in the city or in the country is easier and safer than getting them out of your home once they are in it. I don't mean putting up a "protected by Smith & Wesson" sticker in your window either because the kind of person who will break into your home knowing you have weapons is the kind of person who will kill you before you have time to react in most circumstances. A dog, an alarm sticker, an actual alarm or a locked door and window usually staves off burglaries because the theif just looks for an easier target.

As for using mace on a tresspasser, if all they are diong is passing through on your outside property it is still a jailable assault offense; wether the tresspasser decides to push the prosecution is another matter.

Having a long-gun on a homestead is a good idea though, not for defense but to make the hunting and putting down of animals easier. If you are not keen on guns there are other humane ways to do these things.

Even a whole town, armed to the teeth with legal to own firearms, will not help against a wayward Government though. The government has more resources, more men, airpower and more weapons that will kill you from a distance further away than your guns will reach. That being said, it is still noble to die for what you believe in if living for it isn't an option.

This has been a long post so I'm not quite sure if someone previously mentioned what I'm about to.

Two things:

1. Carbon Dioxide (the stuff we breathe out) is heavier than air. Any time we breathe in a closed space it settles to the bottom until stirred a bit. If you live in an airtight home that is underground or not without proper ventilation from and to your lowest point, CO2 can become lethal. I've seen families living in their "green, low energy" home that was so airtight they had to move out because the hamsters in their child's bedroom in the basement kept dying from too much CO2 in the air. If you insist on doing it without a good air exchange setup I would urge you to invest in hamsters or canaries.

2. Radon, anytime you'll have a house entierly underground you might want to have a radon test done before you build or it could be $10,000 down the tubes and a large medical bill for your family down the road.

Bacteria need at least three things to thrive: proper food, proper environment, proper temperature.

It seems to me if you can't remove it's micronutrients from the water and if you operate at its "thrive" temperature then you need to attack its environment while sitting stagnant. There has been several articles I have read where hospitals have used and other research done that have proven that some metals, copper in particular, kills nasties of several sorts. Here's a link if you don't believe me - copper kills bacteria and viruses-
Wouldn't it be good to make the area of containment that could hold water stagnant and at the warned temperature from copper or inbed a copper mesh in a dark holding tank? Maybe someone could do a lab test on this specific bacteria. Anyways, after this thread I'm holding my breath in all solar showers..... If you use it I guess I will make millions from intellectual property rights! lol Not!

edited P.S.- Now that I think about it, as a child we had a room humidifier that blew air through a revolving wet mesh made of woven copper. Perhaps there was their secret legionella killer and they didn't even know it. I know you may think, "it can't be that simple but, can't it sometimes?"

If one were so keen on squatting to poop they were going to go through all the thought, planning and investment to make a platform for a toilet not designed to be squatted on it seems to me the more rapid and surefire approach to safely squat would be to just install a squat toilet that was designed for the purpose I suppose. That is unless people like doing things the hard, convoluted way.

If you have chosen your land wisely you might be able to do what I do here in West Virginia. I have hills all around me. Look for hill on your land that has a solid stone substrate close to the topsoil (my topsoil has a lot of clay in it) and is on the south facing slope, look for a lot of rock outcrops in the hillside as a guide. Find where the rock is closest to the topsoil at the base of the hill. When it rains it sometimes takes two weeks or more for the water to leech out into the soil at the base of the hill because it takes a while to get through the clay. Plant crops that don't like lots of water further away or raised from the base of the hill accordingly. I never have to water, ever. Mileage may vary according to geography and climate.

Given that some people thought this thread was about suicide and the balancing act contained within the thread conjoined with the design of western toilet seats it is probable that you actually can "eliminate" yourself while eliminating!

My wife and I would be interested if we had more information on your land resources and how they are allocated. I know how to grow a little but my areas that I know more and practice more are pottery, textiles, blacksmithing and making and repairing mechanical clocks. I also am a good astronomer that makes accurate astrolabes and sundials. I am also a good teacher when it comes to math and science. I will devote hours to getting a job done and so will my wife. We also have animal husbandry skills when it comes to small animals like rabbits and chinchillas.

If we were to move anywhere I would need clay, hay, sand, iron ore and/or copper ore, water and wood to make charcoal. We are somewhat in need of quieter living so we would also need to build our own hovel in order to be useful to your community with our present skills.

There would just be no place for us, no matter how tempting to come, if there were so little resources that we had to take full time outside jobs just to afford the materials to produce needed products and services for the community. We would want to devote our time to 100% within the community.

All that being said, we don't mind someone else having authority as long as some things would be agreed upon before moving.

I give it a 40% approval as currently presented.

An interesting video that has popped up time after time throughout the years. Although it is a good display of how to "begin" to survive it doesn't come close to thriving in an iron age setting.
I would be willing to wager that if iron age man did things they way they did them in the video that mankind never would have survived the iron age.

The internet has been bombarded with singular ideas of how to survive in those conditions. A good example is that most primitive living websites have been "wattle and daubed" and thatched to death! Lots of discussion about the same old ideas that have been around for years. The bottom line is that you do what is tried and tested and avoid a lot of costly mistakes and conjecture.

I feel that although the way people lived in this video is "do-able" to a certain degree it is quite telling that, although there is an instance of crude blacksmithing, there is not attempt to produce the very thing the "Iron Age" is named after. It is one thing to feel you can survive if all you have is an anvil and hammer but if you don't know how to identify iron ore in the ground and produce an iron bloom from it in a primitive fashoin it is all just window dressing.