Ian Martin

Deb Rebel wrote:As for a regular clothes dryer, wash a load of white teeshirts and clean out the lint trap. That just came off all your clothes, wearing them out further. At least if you hang/line dry or use a clothes rack, you boost your interior humidity in the winter, and you don't shed all that off your clothes. Line dried stuff doesn't lint.

My line dried stuff has the same amount of lint, only instead of it being in a lint trap, it's all over my clothes and I either just don't care and wear with lint all over them or I use a lint brush on them, so I think it's a myth that the dryer creates the lint. My clothes definitely get thin and holey much faster by line drying. I don't know why others are having a different experience :/

Tobias Ber wrote:use natural building techniques even inside your flat. like: lime-paint, lime-stucco, clay-paint, clay-stucco
use pallet-wood
use natural finishes (linseed-oil ...)
make a paperbag-floor

I need to do something with floors in my living room and kitchen (about 400 sqft total). I looked at people doing these paper bag floors, which is nice, but the finished floor is mainly whatever sealant they use over the paper, such as a polyurethane. Any ideas for something that will last on floors that take heavy traffic from people, dogs, spills etc? Seems all these things have drawbacks. Especially regarding scratches and liquid.

paul wheaton wrote:Dry our clothes with a drying rack. It saves an incredible amount of energy and your clothes last about 10 times longer.

Hm. You're not the first person I've seen say this about the clothes lasting much longer yet I'm having the exact opposite experience. My dryer broke several years ago and it was low on the priority list of the million and one things I need to do/fix and once I saw that my natural gas bill was $25-$30 less each month and it wasn't that difficult to hang the clothes up to dry I decided to not bother with fixing it or getting a new one.

But over these years I've noticed my clothes wear out a lot quicker and I have to buy new clothes far more often. I think the heat from the dryer would tighten up the fibers and line drying just can't match that unless it happens to be a very dry, hot, windy day in the summer and we don't get many of those where I live. So the fibers in my clothes stay stretched out and get holes in them far faster than when I was using the dryer. Most of my clothes are 100% cotton, I specifically bought natural fibers because I couldn't stand using any kind of dryer crap (aka "fabric softener") to keep them from being clingy or static. Natural fibers won't get that problem in the dryer and they need no "softening" chemicals added.

Anyway, what do you do that makes them last so much longer with line drying? I'm guessing that possibly natural/synthetic blends might last longer? Seems the few clothes I have that are blends do last longer, is that the trick here? Another annoying thing is that my bath towels (also cotton, wouldn't want a blend with those) wear out faster and they are so stiff and rough from line drying. I don't think I'm going to be going back to dryer drying any time soon, if at all, but would like to know if there are ways to make these problems/annoyances better.

Most people on reddit are very young and haven't made bigger picture connections. Many of them may not have homes/property where they could do things like rocket mass heaters or growing a big garden. Many voices tend to get drowned out on reddit, really don't fret over it. Personally the two biggest things I want to do more of are food and heat. But I find all this very overwhelming and I think I'm like most people I don't like being overwhelmed for too long so I give up frequently. It may seem simple to you but most of us are ignorant because these aren't the kind of things we learned in school or from our parents or anything like that, so it's a whole new world to us. I didn't even know what composting was up until a few years ago. I had to google how do I make a compost pile? I didn't know anything! Now I have a lot of compost and it seems so simple but in the beginning it seemed really complicated and I was so amazed that all those banana peels and apple cores turned to dirt and there were so many worms that seemed to come out of nowhere. I'm still amazed by compost! Just try to see it from our perspective, we're like blank slates on this stuff and it's a ton of information to try to take in in addition to all the other information that's coming in all the time. It might help to prioritize things from easiest to hardest, and to describe the steps as condensed as possible, to make it easier for people. The easier you ("you" being general you, whoever) make it, the more likely people will try it.

Hi. I haven't read through all responses so I don't know if this is suggested already, but after checking if anything is ruptured or broken I would highly recommend seeing a physical therapist (not chiropractor but physical therapist). I've had such great experiences with them, they are so well educated on the human body and what to do in situations like this to alleviate pain and restore function. In some states you can refer yourself, in others you need a referral from your doctor. I really recommend it highly. I would also second some of the suggestions I saw for magnesium. I've been helped by magnesium for muscle spasms although pinched nerve might be a different animal altogether. Either way a 500mg tablet daily probably won't hurt you (I'm not a doctor and other standard disclaimers...)

Were the plans ever made? I would like to build this. Does it weigh a lot? Would I need to shore up the floor? My house is old on a dirt crawl space without a lot of good support under. I have a chimney outside my house with a hole into the wall can this work for exhaust? The hole's about 6.5ft up from the floor. I guess it's a 6" hole meant for a woodstove but it has plaster over it now. How far from the wall do you need to put this heater? It's a wood and drywall wall. What size is your barrel it looks smaller than a 55gal. Is there other insulation to use besides vermiculite? I don't trust it because of possible asbestos contamination. Thank you.