Nick Williams

Ned Harr wrote:

John C Daley wrote: you are building an earthship, space should not be an issue.
When you think about we are talking about 4 or 6 inches across the building, its negligable!

Straw bale walls are what, 18” thick? 24”? Maybe more if you want them higher. That’s thicker than a conventional wall by at least 12.5”. There are a few ways to find out approximately how much square footage that eats up, but as a rough estimate you multiply the strawbale wall perimeter in linear feet times the thickness of the wall. If your equator-facing wall is 30 feet wide and sticks out 10 feet from the berm, that’s 50 linear feet. 50 x 12.5 is 625, so you’d lose approximately a Tiny House worth of space, or need to expand your footprint by that amount to keep it. (That’s if that wall is only like 8 feet tall, but I’ll bet you want it taller; strawbale has to be 5 and a half feet tall for every foot thick, according to what I’ve read.)

That math doesn't work out, you're multiplying feet by inches. 50*12.5/12=52 sq ft. Not nothing, but definitely not a whole tiny house.

I travel for my day job pretty regularly. Probably 60 flights last year? Last flight was about a week ago.

A lot of the indignities of air travel end up getting stripped away for frequent fliers. I get upgraded to first class pretty regularly, I get free checked luggage, I have precheck so security takes a couple minutes (usually, actually on my last flight something in my carryon lined up perfectly to look like a gun in the X ray and I got to meet the airport police). It is what it is, I probably will look for something with less travel for my next role...    

As a side note, Battleborn batteries have been popping up with some really shoddy manufacturing that they're passing off as a "safety feature." Would not recommend them.

Look at Will Prowse's page on youtube for teardowns of cheap LiFePo4 batteries.

Dumfume is a VERY cheap (<10 cents a wh on Amazon) LiFePo4 brand with really decent capacity and build quality. No heaters, but with low temp protection.

Christopher Weeks wrote:
What would happen if my septic tank cracked and just leaked straight into the ground? Or I designed a waste-treatment system that allowed a small amount of untreated effluent into the surrounding earth?

It seems like pathogens should get hung up in the sand at some point and then denature over time rather than completing the round trip to my well.

That's effectively a permeable cesspit, which has been a thing for a long time, and is (in some jurisdictions) able to be replaced in-kind, so it's not like it's the end of the world.

That said, the design of a septic system allows for solids and greases to be captured and separated from the leachate so they can be pumped out. In a permeable cesspit, the solids end up clogging the pores in the soil, and presenting a risk of either back-up, or overflow onto the surface, which IS a substantial health risk. Pumping doesn't help when you get there, only digging the whole thing out.  

Solar panels are getting cheap enough these days, you might think about another array if you have room for it. Vertical south facing panels do very well in winter here in Montana, as they don't collect snow, and the reflected light off the snow on the ground + the higher efficiency on cold days = a lot of power generation.

paul wheaton wrote:
Even more, I heard somebody say that for rural stuff, if you were to get fiber, they would have to bury the fiber line to your house - and that is gonna come with a price tag.  But with starlink, you don't need to do that.  And the speeds just get faster and faster.

Might be less than you'd think. I don't use it because I had a cheaper alternative that works for my needs through calyx, but the previous owner of my cabin had fiber trenched through many miles of limestone in the little belt mountains for a single dollar thanks to the rural connectivity program.

If you have T-mobile signal, calyx is a great option. They're a internet privacy non-profit that through some historical deal with Sprint is now granted unlimited data. I use their Sprout SIM with a GL X-3000 router from iNet and am able to get 120 MB down, 20 up at my cabin in the little belt mountains of Montana, 22 miles from the closest tower. Much cheaper option than Starlink if you have the signal for it, and a portion of the membership is tax deductable donation to charity.

https://calyxinstitute.org/membership/internet

Same, I'm about three years in, so no experience with older beds. I will say that I've added material every year and the mycelium has spread to the new media just fine, so I don't know why it wouldn't be infinitely sustainable.

Anne Miller wrote:Here is one that is all stainless steel:

https://www.amazon.com/Germany-Multifunctional-Stainless-Steel-Basin/dp/B0CLLTV22J

It is also a multifunction:

Salad Spinner; Fruit Vegetable Rice Washing; Strainer Basket Bowl, and Food Graters with Container

I might get one of those as I need a grater.

How does one go about spinning it? Just seems like a colander in a bowl.