Lucas Harrison-Zdenek

This is awesome. Thanks for sharing! My girls have been extremely vocal the last few days with the weather being so nice. I plan to go home and take some recordings today after work!

This is very sad news indeed. After reading the $50 underground house I started plans for my own semi-underground home. Much of the inspiration for my design comes directly from Mike's book and his videos. He was truly an innovative man who knew how to infect minds with good information. I'll be eternally grateful for his work and experience and I'm glad that I learned about him through my wonderful Permies community.

I remember not too long ago I signed up for updates about a Bitcoin backed project called permacredits. It was a project intended to mirror timebank using hours and Bitcoin money as credits I think. It must have bombed because I haven't had any updates in over a year.

I belong to my local timebank, which is a great idea but doesn't get a lot of traction locally because of the lack of participation. Folks are so busy with their own business and projects that they don't volunteer to help others. I'm included in that group. I need to learn to ask for help more often!!

Anyway, the permacredits idea seemed like a promising one to me. Being able to get lodging and other accommodation when traveling by working or storing up credits with Bitcoin on one big network would be very helpful to a lot of people in this community. Maybe the Permies forum could have its own system for this, considering the size and spread of the site...

I feel like I heard about using legumes as nitrogen fixers from my PDC with Geoff Lawton. Don't hold me to this, as it has been a couple of years now, but I feel like it was expressed to us that legumes hold Nitrogen on the ends of tiny root fibers until the plant fruits. Then the plant takes up that Nitrogen to produce fruit.

Therefore, if you cut the plant at half flower, the nitrogen it is holding underground remains there to be moved and delivered by the microorganisms in the soil to adjacent plants.

I've heard a lot recently about Nitrogen release from fresh hugel mounds because of the green wood used to build them. I'm not sure if there is much science in that though.

Feidhlim Harty wrote:

"The  principal  reasons  people  usually  have  for  seeking  to  avoid  using using flush toilets are typically summarised as follows:
They  are  very  wasteful  of  clean  water  resources;
They  are  typically  polluting  of  fresh  water  in  the  receiving  environment;
They  waste  nutrient  rich  organic  matter  and  high-­fertiliser  value  urine,  which  could  otherwise  be  reintroduced  into  the  soil."

I love the points you have just made, thank you! I recently read an article on the Permaculture News site that had similar sentiments. The idea that we take clean water and flush our waste away with it makes little sense and, even worse, is terribly wasteful when you think about developing nations where people are dying from a lack of clean, potable water. And, of course using the stuff that comes out of our bodies and cycling it back into the system is of high priority to return nutrients to the soil.

Thanks again!

We have been looking into the humanure method instead of a septic system for a little while now. My father likes to tell me that septic is totally safe, and there is no reason to go any other way. I have read about humanure and the many benefits of using that method and I disagree with my dad that septic is better, but I'm not entirely sure why I disagree. I mean, the septic is a waste of material that could otherwise be cycled back into a well designed system, but there is a lot more maintenance involved, as well as the labor of removing the catchment regularly and making sure everything gets up to temp so it is no longer harmful. Am I crazy for arguing for the more sustainable humanure system over septic without a lot of reason? I just feel like, growing up with a septic tank and leech field, septic is a waste of space, waste of water and unnatural due to the giant plastic tank being buried in the ground. Please someone tell me I haven't lost my marbles! Give me some extra reasons to be on the compost toilet side of the argument. Or tell me why septic may actually be better! Thanks!

I'm jumping on board for this one too. The reed bed system is what I have in mind for our greywater setup, but I'm not sure I can make it work with a frost line at 18+ inches deep. Maybe a greenhouse will be a better option, but I won't know until I get the site established. Any info would be great! Thanks!

My wife has been having issues with the whole greywater/compost toilet/no fridge setup I'm working on as well. I have been moderately successful in convincing her and getting her over the eww factor by showing her videos of systems in use where people are handling the waste and it isn't so bad. I guess you could call it "wearing her down" because I'm constantly pushing the idea and finding articles and videos about it that contradict the "eww" reaction. Good luck to you!

I too live in an urban environment. I would love to build a gasifier for extra security. I also have questions about the possibility of combining a biochar retort with other elements to capture and use the gasses that are released from the charcoal production. Is this possible? What are the safety concerns we urbanites would be facing in building a gasifier and living in such close quarters? Thanks so much!!

I nominate "Wicked Burn! Super efficient, low cost heat."