Lawren Richards

J Watt wrote:Water and fuel seems to be the most problematic for many. [quote=]

I’ve lived on rainwater 20 years; even with just 600ft2 of roof my 2 square totes in the basement fill up with a couple days of rain, then I divert to a couple of exterior totes for summer watering needs. I’m in the BC Interior with temps +/-10d of freezing, so I get water in winter although I can go without collecting Dec-Apr and still not run out.

I use a course & fine sediment filter on house water, and an additional charcoal filter for drinking water.

Wrote a longer post and lost it ‘cause I wasn’t logged in, but in short: what’s so great about sunchokes? Mine were knobby, small, tasteless, and died off in a season or two. Why do sunchokes instead of, say, potatoes?

Still thinking about this.... how about stapling something grippy like open-weave burlap to scrap plywood pieces of the appropriate size, dampen with water, then apply a 1/8" coat of 50/50 lime/sand (fine sand, or ground glass)?  I believe you can mix the lime & sand prior but just keep it covered with water, and make it the right consistency in the beginning-- don't try to mix water in later.  Dip it out of the bucket just like you'd dip pickles out of a jar-- ignore the liquid at the top.

That would be easy to set up ahead of time, and no plaster of paris at all.

Highly recommend buying an EV, and as small a one as you can get. (Car dealers love to upsize more than McDonald’s!) Bought my Chevy Bolt last year, have driven it long distances & through a Canadian winter. Different handling but boy am I glad to not be tied to the gas companies anymore. Sometimes I charge at home, where it’s free (I’m off grid); mostly in town. Eventually I’ll charge at home most of the year but I’ve got to get a few more panels first— I only have 3.

Suggest you need fibre in the mix to help the finished product flex a bit without cracking. A really strong, smooth method would be to soak straw for a few days (or weeks) until it ferments and add a bit of that, or even just use the water from it as the water then contains long-chain polysaccharides that strengthen the plaster. A lesser but more accessible fibre is toilet paper.  (I don’t know how to mix the tp but I’m sure you can find it online; it’s a common additive for finish plaster.) Both method should yield smooth but less crack-prone results— with the caveat that I have just read this, not actually done it with lime. However I did do fermented straw with clay for my house and verify it’s smoothness & strength.

I perc mine for 8 minutes, but I've also developed a high tolerance for bad coffee.

I’ve been composting humanure for 23 years, most of that with the bucket method but more recently with a 2-story barrel composter I built in the straw bale house I’m building. The treatment area is near the hot water heater to help keep the temps above freezing in the winter, as my basement is unheated.  I live in the BC Interior.

Does anyone have experience with indoor composting? My cover material has always been whatever is on hand, so might be fir sawdust, woodchips I make from deciduous tree leavings, or chipped-up weeds like chicory. (Don’t use invasive weeds that you can’t control; I’ll burn any plants that survive the barrel.) I also shred all my paper and cardboard and use that, especially for visitors as they’re more comfortable with the familiarity of shredded paper.

I researched soldier flies as I’d like to feed the larvae to my chickens, but they generally like kitchen compost over the mostly/fibrous compost of humanure. When I worked for a septic company I did mycoremediation and found that Stropharia shrooms kill coliforms without absorbing toxins (so remain edible if clean, and I used a layer of sand as a barrier) but this year couldn’t find any so used oyster mushrooms (which do absorb toxins while killing coliforms).  I threw a single sawdust kit of mycelium on a 2/3 full barrel, a couple of flakes of wheat straw I had on hand over it(which I wouldn’t do again), and a screen over the top.

Second barrel will probably be full at the end of January and I’m going to throw a pound of my red  wiggler compost worms in there, as they love the fibrous cover materials, and I have read they lock up heavy metals and maybe some of the nastier common toxins. (We’re all toxic now, folks.)

I think 1year of composting will take 3 drums (55 gal), and I’m trying to figure out what to use for processing in the 3rd. The goal is to reduce the material significantly for easier handling, so after a year I can easily roll the barrels outside to a pallet bin for another year of processing. Or it might be enough to sequence them inside: 4mo shrooms to remove coliforms, 4 mo worms to remove other toxins & reduce volume, and 4 mo of ??  Ideas and questions welcome.

I know this is an old post but yes, I had an engineering student build one for me as a for/credit project. I was intending to use it for vermiculture but found that my worms like very wet soil, and wet soil doesn’t process well. So instead I used it for sifting clay and sand (for plaster) when building my straw bale house.

I will see if I can find the video link (here’s one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=le-Nmg0q9jE&list=PLgjAQtOWGENPUU6zETW0-hXkJnjNHWmsD&pp=iAQB ) that guided my student, but besides motor size an important consideration is being able to get wheelbarrows or garden carts under it and at the end of it, simultaneously and easily. Mine wasn’t quite high enough so is a bit awkward when running barrels of material a day though it.

Are either of the original posters still around? I would love to hear what you ended up building, and how it worked. I’m planning a greenhouse attachment for my strawbale house.

I live in the BC Interior and have kept it simple for the last 20 years: my greywater pipes drain into a small shallow mulch basin year-round, and many years ago when I found that the 2’ diameter was prone to overflow I changed it to a 2’x3’ oval mulch basin. No special plants but the local plants were Carboniferous-Age huge. The pipes that might freeze were kept unglued so I just popped them apart, knocked the ice out, and put them back together.