Tom Rockburn

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since Nov 24, 2012
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Recent posts by Tom Rockburn

Thank you for the thoughtful replies!

The lath house idea stemmed from reading a study done on how the San Diego Lath House managed to stave off frosts during some unusually cold winters. I was aiming for something similar in a subtropical climate, using the lath to direct the flow of cold air coming down the hillside and to slightly modify the microclimate. I had seen a number of examples of lath houses in use around China and didn’t realize they were a relatively rare strategy at the time.

In 2014 the site was commandeered by the government under eminent domain to develop an oil pipeline and high speed train line. We used the compensation to continue developing projects on other sites.
2 years ago
It turned out the topography to the south and west shaded the area too much to make this idea viable. This was back before we used satellite topography and software for our passive solar designs. With only 2-3 hours of sunshine a day it just wasn’t possible to grow through the winter. We later caved and setup a poly tunnel on the ridge for winter growing.

We have since designed and built many of the usual-variety passive solar structures with good success. I do still like the idea of lath houses for establishing microclimates but haven’t built one yet.

2 years ago
Greetings!

We are evaluating a move to the big island and are looking for the right neighborhood. We’ve practiced permaculture for 15 years in a variety of climates and are wanting to get back to the tropics. We taught permaculture in China for several years and now design & build sustainable homes in Central WA.

We’ll be on the big island later this month and would love to meet some folks and see examples of backyard permaculture around the island. Our interests are family-scale backyard permaculture, neighborhood scale social networks, and sustainable architecture.

We’ll expect to pay or trade for people’s time showing us around but aren’t interested in the professional ‘permaculture project’ or working farms this visit. We’d like to get a realistic idea of what systems people are managing with 10-30 minutes per day and to talk to people on the ground about the day to day of growing and living in their community.

Below is where we’re staying. We have a 4x4 and will be willing to travel an hour or so for meet-ups!
Jan 16-18 Mountain View
Jan 18-20 Captain Cook
Jan 20-22 Honokaa
Jan 22-23 Papaaloa

Please reply below, private message me, or find me on Facebook:
Facebook.com/PermacultureTom
2 years ago
Rebecca

Yes, it is always easier to stick with what we know rather than experimenting with new things, but I don't think that was the question. Is it worth trying? I'd vote YES.

The fact is that in some situations, Biochar is more valuable than compost. In my climate, compost is gone within a matter of months, while Biochar may stick around for millennia.

As for the drying of faeces, I don't think anyone would suggest drying it in the open sun to be hygienic or worth the time.

If humanure was used in a large scale Biochar operation, the excess heat from the pyrolysis would be used to fully dry the separated solids of the next batch, as it is with any Biochar feedstock.

For a single toilet application, using a solar or otherwise heated toilet that dries the humanure in the vessel itself is a common concept and is effective at preventing flies and smells alike.
9 years ago
I've thought about this as a village scale system, or an amendment to current waste systems where solids can be filtered out, dried and treated through pyrolysis. There have been experiments in Japan which have shown pyrolysis of such solid mixed waste can greatly reduce toxicity through the biochar's ability to absorb heavy metals and other toxic substances commonly put down the drain. Separating it at the source, however, is certainly a valid idea.

This would make sense to try with solar drying toilets installed in the early earth ships, adding on a urine diverting system.

From my experience making Biochar, I wouldn't want the process anywhere near any flammable structure. Have you considered being able to remove the container from the toilet before ignition?
9 years ago
Refugee permaculture = Awesome! Good for you!

Living, traveling and teaching permaculture in China for the past many years, I can say that the government subsidized humanure biogas digesters that everyone claims are so great here were a big flop. Farmers largely prefer to use raw humanure in their fields rather than to fuss over leaky, disgusting to clean, extremely low output energy systems. Do you have research showing the effluent is pathogen free and safe to use? I see the opposite.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1438463914000388

At the very most, only faeces should be added to a digester, as urine will only force more putrid liquid effluent out of the system without adding any carbon to be transformed into biogas. Please don't be like most NGOs, mindlessly promoting sustainable tech without trying it first! A single digester takes an incredible amount of investment, labor, energy and non-recyclable materials to build compared to what most people get out of them before abandonment. One fast hot shower for 10 people's poo, half a truck of bricks and cement... Save the energy from the brick kiln and cement processing for the hot water. Better yet, use solar hot water!

Back to composting toilets:

Our team has some valuable experience designing and using group composting toilets in poor and developing regions. From our experience, a group use urine diverting composting toilet using sawdust will need about one large 360L (95 gallon) wheelie bin per month per 15 adults, and will fill a 5 gallon bucket of urine at least once per day.

It is my opinion that a non-removable container would mean building an unimaginable amount of separate toilet systems, even per 100 people. If I'm calculating correctly, that's roughly one cubic meter of waste storage, or one double chamber latrine per 3-4 people on a yearly cycle, not accounting for extra sawdust added to soak up urine. And although neither material is ideal, I just can't see how a cement box is an improvement over a HDPE bin in terms of Eco-friendly materials or safe waste handling practices. Surely a sturdy 360L bin has a higher reuse, resale or recycling value than a pile of broken cement blocks!

I suggest urine diversion, collection and use for everyone, at every deposit. Any urine included in sawdust composting system will require huge amounts of sawdust to soak up and equalize, where urine diversion can be easily utilized for planting crops, trees, etc. We use a simple urine diverting squat toilet already on the market here in China, and add a one way valve to the urine drain line to effectively seal the collection reservoir. We use a large urine storage reservoir, usually a 200L plastic barrel, to collect the urine and have it ready for mixing via a tap in the bottom of the barrel connected to an in-line irrigation source for convenient fertigation via hose. For men, a urinal connected directly to the barrel with the same one way valve reduces wait times on the toilet considerably. If tapeworm is a concern (typically the only urine-transmitted pathogen) a sealed barrel can be left for 30 days at >20C for sterilization, or longer at lower temperatures. If used by the same family to grow their personal plot, sterilization is typically irrelevant. When kept in a sealed container, smell is not an issue and the urine will keep ideal ratios of plant nutrients to grow almost anything, even a year later, and apparently contains nearly 80% of the plant nutrients in our waste stream. In that case, shouldn't it be considered a permaculture taboo to simply soak this stuff into the ground water, clearly a pollution concern, or to keep it in a latrine bin or straw bale, where much of the nutrient value can volatilize into the air?

We usually drill a small hole 10cm from the bottom of the rollie-bin for any needed drainage and added aeration and put bins in a shady spot to the side of the toilet for composting, then cover with old cloth to prevent sun damage and overheating in our subtropical climate. The actual contact with the waste is a bare minimum, and I usually feel comfortable removing bins without gloves, a vast improvement to the often disgusting composting toilet designs we have used in the past. Because we still add a healthy helping of sawdust after each use and exclude the urine, the process often starts with black soldier fly thoroughly breaking down and mixing the materials (1/3 reduction in volume in less than a month) and ends up as a fungal rich compost at six months to one year. We also suggest adding worms after the initial breakdown period to help with sterilization and improve compost quality. If bins are limited, they could be dumped after two or three months and left to finish composting near the garden or orchard for the additionally needed time. This could mean as little as a single toilet and 3 bins per 15 people for a permanent system. (As compared to 3 to 5 complete double chamber composting toilets for the same amount of people). Full 360L bins, composed mostly of sawdust, are not particularly difficult to move; an average 20 year old female is able to roll them across smooth, flat land without a problem. DO buy sturdy bins with large repairable wheels and a strong axel.

I can understand an emergency pit latrine, but if people are expected to be around for even two months, a urine diverting toilet will make it possible to sustainably grow many greens, etc. Plus, what an amazing opportunity to teach a group of people in need how to lose dependence on purchased fertilizers for sustenance agriculture, rather than how to effectively waste nutrients and pollute their new environment.
9 years ago
Hey Lawrence

Our team is working on several projects right now in China.

Our main project is our own 10 acre mountain homestead, now two years old. This is our Permaculture education center and testing grounds outside of Hangzhou. We practice natural building, earthworks, greywater cycling, alleycropping, forest gardening, coppice forestry, hugelculture, heavy mulching etc. We offer weekend classes, weeklong hand-on workshops, formal PDCs and longer term internships. We do profit sharing with project managers, which we are always on the lookout for. We mostly speak Mandarin, but people are usually happy to translate, if they can.

We’re working with a newly forming Buddhist ecovillage near the Thousand Island Lake, helping them with some design and management issues. They currently welcome anyone with previous permaculture or related experience for work exchanges. Hopefully we’ll get some more permaculture principles at work there over the next few months.

We’re also setting up an eco-farm and restaurant outside of Nan’tong, Jiangsu. Some major activity will start there in the spring. We’ll be looking for people who want to learn natural building, garden design, aquaculture and animal husbandry while we run a few hands-on courses in the first half of next year. Ideally, we could find a project manager or two with experience to take the lead on the production front while the owners get the restaurant up and running.

I should mention you can look out for the occasional permaculture teacher coming over from Taiwan or other places. Sites that host their courses (Beijing, Fu’zhou, Cheng’du) might have a few demonstration projects, but I’m not sure if they are kept up or have any ongoing activities.

As far as I know, there isn’t much else going on project wise. We’ll be touring southern China this winter, giving lectures, teaching workshops and interviewing practitioners, trying to find any and all permaculture related projects. What part of China are you in?

Thomas
Hangzhou Permaculture
Contact@HZPumen.com
10 years ago
Thanks Kim, Dan and Erica for the good info.

We'll be experimenting with rust, soot and chalk in our current projects. I've looked into growing turmeric as a perennial before but found our climate to be much too cold. If we could grow it as an annual it might be worth looking into as a pigment.

Does anyone use other plant based dyes for coloring plaster or paint? We have lots of pokeberry growing on the mountain and I have been reading about fermenting the berries for fade resistant brown colored ink. Has anyone tried this as a plaster pigment, or should we experiment next fall and reply with the results?

10 years ago
Hi Dan, and all natural builders

We're in rural China and don't have regular access to pigments used for coloring cement. The mineral pigments we have found are very much out of our price range. Could you recommend other sources of natural pigments?

I'm aware adding lime or different colored clays can influence the resultant color, but what about plant based pigments usually used in natural dye?

Thanks
Thomas
10 years ago
Hey Justin

I'm co-founding a permaculture education project, Hangzhou Permaculture, about 3 hours from Shanghai. We're just getting started here too, but I think we could help eachother out. You could translate.google our webpage, HZPumen.com, for more info. We plan on translating lots of information about permaculture, organic gardening, ecosans, biochar and many related topics by the end of the year.

There was recently a Permaculture Course in Cheng'du. Have you met up with any of the students? I'm sure they would be VERY interested in helping. Otherwise, find a way to advertise for volunteers. We have had some come all the way from Chengdu, a 12 hour train ride. Volunteer opportunities here are sparse and the resources are abundant. I wish we had more housing available!

Like you, we struggle with locals using protected forest resources at very unsustainable rates, without giving anything back. Nothing has seemed to work yet, but the local government has sponsored us to buy a big sign that says "Permaculture in Progress. Stay out. These are protected experimental grounds. Enter without permission and the police will deal with you accordingly." Not very socially sustainable, but hopefully that will do something. Despite the negativity of it all, many people DO respect us for trying to heal the land rather than pouring chemicals on it. People often tell us it's impossible and we're wasting our time, but they keep coming back to check on our progress.

As for plastic burning, as you mentioned in your other thread (why two threads?), we found it was mostly the people responsible for trucking the garbage away that were burning the plastic. There are strict laws against it, so we just filmed them then told them we will go straight to the authorities if we see them doing it again. That was months ago and we haven't had a problem since. We do still have a problem with the elementary school next to us burning their garbage. I've talked to the guards and the people who usually hang around the outside, but it still happens once a month or so. The teachers come around the project often, I've just forgotten to mention it to them.

Traditional varieties are around, but they are quickly disappearing. We go to surrounding villages, make friends with the oldest people we can understand, then start asking about seeds. If they don't have them, they can probably get them for you. We've found a bit of local corn and squash and have some sichuan giant green onions. If they are successful, I'd be willing to trade some seeds for what you can find.

Take care
Thomas
11 years ago