2-Day Biogas Workshop with a Working Biogas Digester June 2-3 Eugene, Oregon

Due to Popular Demand!

2-day intensive biogas workshop with a working biogas digester.

Participants will enjoy hands-on experience with a 600-gallon biogas digester. This is not a demonstration model, but a working digester that converts organic waste from approximately 25 people at Maitreya Ecovillage in Eugene, Oregon into clean-burning biogas for year round cooking fuel and high-quality fertilizer and soil amendment for gardening.

Home Power • Permaculture • Peak Oil • Gardeners • Farmers • Renewable Energy Contractors
Entrepreneurs • Public Officials • Wastewater Professionals • Educators • Students

Workshop will include everything needed to successfully build and operate a biogas digester, a basic introduction to the microbiology taking place during the anaerobic digestion process with an emphasis on troubleshooting problems.
Participants are GUARANTEED to come away with the skills needed to consistently produce flammable biogas wherever they are, day or night, rain or shine!

Workshop cost: $225

Includes: Copy of Warren Weisman’s full-color “Energy from Organic Waste: Vol. 1. Introduction to Biogas” booklet; complete building plans, material list and step-by-step instructions for building a heated, 600 gallon home biogas digester; organic, vegetarian meals provided.

Space is limited to maximize your educational experience! Reserve today!

Payments can be made by following the WePay link on the website…

https://sites.google.com/site/eugenebiogasworkshop/home

Or by clicking here…

https://www.wepay.com/events/2-day-biogas-workshop-with-a-working-biogas-digester

Workshop instructor Warren Weisman owner of HESTIA Home Biogas is an internationally-recognized expert on biogas and anaerobic digestion with over 20 years experience as a builder, heavy equipment mechanic and power plant operator. He has written articles for Renewable Energy World, Post-Carbon Institute Energy Bulletin and Permaculture Magazine.

Email: w.weisman@hestiahomebiogas.com or call +1 (541)337-5690 for more information

I'd attend if I lived nearby.

Warren, I bet a lot of people are interested in a near fool-proof system for generating biogas efficiently from grass clippings and food waste (primarily the former). Seriously, most homes in the U.S. have this in abundance. I would be very interested in a system designed specifically for this feedstock, and I would be more than willing to pay a reasonable price for it.

I find these posts highly suspect. First of all, they are charging almost $90 for plans that are widely available free on the internet. Secondly, they are charging for "workshops" based on information that is widely available for free or cheap around the net. Third, they are using the permies.com board for free advertising.

Folks, just google "biogas digester" and you'll find tons of great information all over the net. This is nothing new, folks have been doing it for decades.

Look up stuff from David House, Al Rutan, Chinese, Nepalese and Indian digesters.

As long as it does not violate forum rules to advertise it here I don't see a problem with it. Different people have different learning styles... and there is nothing in the education world that matches the retention of actual hands on experience.

I do a similar thing that Warren is doing in my own field. I make my living as a metal engraver and I run an engraving school here where I teach metal engraving. People pay me $2000 per week for private instruction or $900 per week long for a class with four other students. They come from all over the world to learn from me. Everything I teach is available online in one form or another. For a lot of people having someone actually show them how and help them do it is the way they learn best and many value the help enough to pay for the education.

I don't see anything that makes the seminars suspect just because the info is available elsewhere. I certainly don't see it as a sign that Warren is trying to rip people off.
I don't know the guy personally but as long as he doesn't have a record of illegitimate dealings I see no reason to not give him the benefit of the doubt.

fair enough, I just see 2 posts by the same member recently advertising their services, and it makes me wonder what is going on. If people don't have a problem with it, then it's fine.

Regarding the workshops they are also, what is this word... fun! Most people have never seen biogas, let alone had a chance to heat a cup of tea with it.

While there are plans for countless backyard DIY biogas projects all over the internet, you get what you pay for. Our customers don't have the time to waste and pay us for the years of development it took to perfect ours. You are welcome to Google and YouTube to your heart's content. You will not find an easier-to-use or more durable home biogas digester design than ours for continuous, maximum gas production.

Biogas is a paradigm-shifting process that uses microorganisms that are 3 billion years older than the Earth's oxygen atmosphere that has been underutilized in permaculture for too long.

You will not find an easier-to-use or more durable home biogas digester design than ours for continuous, maximum gas production.

for almost $90, I sure hope so...

If folks follow the various manuals put out by David House and Al Rutan, they won't have an issue. There are thousands of these units in China and India, so I expect that a few handy Americans can make them work...

Like I said, if you can build a better biogas digester less expensively, by all means do so. The problem with backyard do-it-yourself projects is biogas digesters will produce gas, recycle nutrients and safely manage waste and odors indefinitely. As long as it is fed, it could potentially produce gas 1,000's of years from now. That means being easy to use and seamless integration into a daily routine are far more important than what is spent to build it.

Ours could not be simpler to load, no different than dumping buckets into a trash can. The inflatable top tells you exactly how much gas is available for cooking without gauges. The steel battens are held down with 18 anchor bolts for an extremely airtight seal yet allows the top to be changed out in minutes if punctured or torn.

For a system that makes more energy than a $20,000 PV array anytime day or night, rain or shine from completely ordinary household and kitchen scraps, while producing higher quality fertilizer than compost, most people would agree home biogas is a worthwhile investment to always have a reliable source of energy for themselves and their families. Our digesters are $2,500 if we build them. The plans are $89 and will require about $1,000 in materials----depending where one lives and how good of a scavenger one is. We stand behind our plans and will help during the building process and getting your digester operating at peak production.

And Dr. House is a colleague of mine who also lives in Oregon. Like everybody else in biogas he is going to tell you there is only so much we can learn from the microbiology, there is no substitute for actually working with the gas and learning from experience.

Here's an article about biogas I wrote for Renewable Energy World.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/01/gas-from-the-past-biogas-101

Warren Weisman wrote:
For a system that makes more energy than a $20,000 PV array anytime day or night, rain or shine from completely ordinary household and kitchen scraps,

can we get some sort of verification of that? how much energy is produced by both systems?

Warren Weisman wrote:
while producing higher quality fertilizer than compost, most people would agree home biogas is a worthwhile investment to always have a reliable source of energy for themselves and their families. Our digesters are $2,500 if we build them. The plans are $89 and will require about $1,000 in materials----depending where one lives and how good of a scavenger one is. We stand behind our plans and will help during the building process and getting your digester operating at peak production.

I currently buy propane to cook with, it runs me about $90 every six months. So, it would take 5.5 years for your system to pay for itself (if I build it), and almost 14 years if you build it for me, not including converting things for methane.

My solar system paid for itself the first year.

Congratulations, Abe.

(Races in from activity X, swapping straw number for moderators' hat...)
Be nice folks!
Paul is cool with, in fact very keen for, people to use permies as a way of getting their permaculture info out there.
People have different financial constraints, priorities and ways of learning. If we have the information to make the right choices for us, we're well on our way.

2-day intensive biogas workshop with a working biogas digester.

Participants will enjoy hands-on experience with a 600-gallon biogas digester. This is not a demonstration model, but a working digester that converts organic waste from approximately 25 people at Maitreya Ecovillage in Eugene, Oregon into clean-burning biogas for year round cooking fuel and high-quality fertilizer and soil amendment for gardening.

Home Power • Permaculture • Peak Oil • Gardeners • Farmers • Renewable Energy Contractors
Entrepreneurs • Public Officials • Wastewater Professionals • Educators • Students

Workshop will include everything needed to successfully build and operate a biogas digester, a basic introduction to the microbiology taking place during the anaerobic digestion process with an emphasis on troubleshooting problems.
Participants are GUARANTEED to come away with the skills needed to consistently produce flammable biogas wherever they are, day or night, rain or shine!

Workshop cost: $225

Includes: Copy of Warren Weisman’s full-color “Energy from Organic Waste: Vol. 1. Introduction to Biogas” booklet; complete building plans, material list and step-by-step instructions for building a heated, 600 gallon home biogas digester; organic, vegetarian meals provided.

Space is limited to maximize your educational experience! Reserve today!

Payments can be made by following the WePay link on the website…

https://sites.google.com/site/eugenebiogasworkshop/home

Or by clicking here…

https://www.wepay.com/events/2-day-biogas-workshop...with-a-working-biogas-digester

Workshop instructor Warren Weisman owner of HESTIA Home Biogas is an internationally-recognized expert on biogas and anaerobic digestion with over 20 years experience as a builder, heavy equipment mechanic and power plant operator. He has written articles for Renewable Energy World, Post-Carbon Institute Energy Bulletin and Permaculture Magazine.

Email: w.weisman@hestiahomebiogas.com or call +1 (541)337-5690 for more information