Kimi Iszikala

Hi Rico,

Thank you for your kind words!

The blog posts on the worm septic are linked at the bottom of the plumbing post. There is also worm septic info in our site's FAQ and Resources pages.
That's all we have so far.

3 months after our final inspection we will take our first effluent sample in for testing; that is probably when we will update.

We did peek in the other (warm) day before our first flush to find the worms happy and wiggling about just under the surface. The timing should be good for them, since we are slowly starting up as the weather slowly warms!

I just posted another update on our tire bale house build.
This one is on plumbing... which we have been working on for years. We still aren't done, but we have running water in the house now, so I figured it was time to pull the trigger and post!

https://www.brownkawa.com/post/plumb-tuckered-out

We will be trying to live off of rainwater catchment in our 10-inches-per-year dryland environment. The post shows our whole-house utility & filtration, embedding waste pipe in a road base subfloor, splitting greywater and rainwater, using point-of-use mini tank heaters with thermostatic valves, running hose bibs through 6' thick tire bale walls...

It has not been a joy. But it is progress, and THAT is always a joy!

Not yet covered in the blog is that we are having initial challenges with our filtration system throttling our pressure. So I will probably be digging around elsewhere on this forum as we work through that...

Anyway, I hope the post is useful to someone.

We bought our solar components from AltE in 2020.
I was eager to get it installed so we could get the higher tax rebate before it was phased out.
The materials   sat in our storage container for years because building has taken way longer than we anticipated.
AltE went out of business.
The tax rebate was reinstated higher than before.
New Mexico changed its regs so that homeowners can no longer get a permit to install their own solar. (!!?!!)

Our solar installation was completed and approved last December.

Here is our blog post about the solar and electrical installation on our off-grid tire-bale house:
https://www.brownkawa.com/post/electrifying

If you have a cubic meter enclosure full of bedding, and if you feed them & keep them moist enough, worms should do fine in your area through the winter. I don't have a ton of experience (yet), but we are counting on that for our worm septic system. We are in zone 6, and worm septic systems like ours have been successful in colder temps. Our design was prototyped in Massachusetts and thrived for at least 20 years; not sure if it is still going.

Here's an article discussing worm farming in the winter; it is what we are banking on!

Happy Worms All Winter Long!

We got our knit aluminet 70% shade cloth from Gothic Arch Greenhouses four years ago but from a quick glance at their website it looks like maybe they don't carry it any more...?

We couldn't survive in the greenhouse without it, and neither could our trees...

I think a new card deck is a great idea. I am curious whether you are envisioning this as an "upgrade" (revision with maybe a couple swap-outs) or a new version (with mostly new material, even if some of the history characters remain the same). Don't know which of those I'd vote for, but just curious.

My vote:
1. Green
2. Gold
3. Cream

Please don't make them plastic. Playing cards were around for a thousand years before they were ever made in plastic. Permaculture cards in plastic? No, no, no. Besides, if they wear out, they can still be repurposed as info cards, or composted, or burnt for fuel, and then a new set can be purchased.... $

I am way too lazy to turn compost, and live in a very dry area.

I use worms for food waste and Johnson-Su bioreactor for farm waste.

We are building our house and have a lime plaster scratch coat over earthbags filled with scoria. We can get occupancy permit with just the scratch coat done (after we finish the rest of the house, that is).

Problem is, a northern flicker is trying to nest in those scoria walls. By the time we realized it, it had broken through the lime plaster, and removed over a gallon of scoria, almost all the way through the earthbag.

We repaired that hole, and the next day it had tried to start two others -- luckily in an area reinforced with wire mesh where the bags connect to the roof, so it didnt get far. For now we strung some old CDs in the area as a scarewoodpecker, and it seems to be working OK to keep them away, but it isn't a long-term fix.

So then we were wondering if we have to wire mesh the whole wall before the final plaster coats... super expensive, a pain in the neck, and not effective since they still damage the plaster before hitting the wire.

A quick Google search indicated there is a paint-on coating used to deter woodpeckers from the new synthetic stucco, using similar chemicals to nail-biting deterrents for kids.

We don't want a paint-on coating, but thought maybe we could find a similar non-toxic additive to incorporate into our finish coat.

We will keep looking into this, but I thought I'd give a quick shout here in case anyone has done this? Anyone know what material to use and availability? Have any of you done this with a final plaster coat to good effect?

Thank you!

We probably can't put this right over the shower (nor on both sides) unless we manage to find a true wet-rated one. And we for sure won't  be building a wood fire in our shower! I assume the panels don't work through walls or we could put it on the other side of the shower wall to get our backside.

Hm. Maybe we will need to go with an old-school heat lamp for those times when we feel the need... Once we close the sun room on the exterior wall, hopefully we won't need supplemental hear too often...

Steve Flynn wrote:with these you only need 6 watts per square foot of heater capacity.  [...]   So if you have 500 square feet of space you should have about 3000 square feet or 6 of these panels to cover the space.  That is still significantly better than what electric baseboard offers.

Thank you for this, Steve!

I would like to understand your numbers... when you say square feet for the room, does that assume an 8' high ceiling? And I am guessing you meant 3000 watts for the panels instead of sq ft? So like 7 or 8 of the 400 watt panels for a 500 sq ft room? Or did I interpret that completely wrong?

A different question -- can these be used for short-term immediate heat, or do you need to keep them on for hours to "charge" the mass like under-floor radiant heat?

We have a 40 sq foot room with a shower, with 7' high ceilings. We were hoping to use a 400 watt panel to heat that when showering. We were hoping we could turn it on like 15 minutes before a shower. Is that realistic, or no?

Our camper is so tiny... the space where we were trying to keep our legs warm is only about 18 sq ft, and our feet and legs were a foot from the heater which sat on the floor. The camper is a popup so the walls are canvas above our sitting waist height, so it might not be a fair test... but I thought that was what these heaters should be good for; heating the objects in the room (our legs) rather than trying to heat up the air in a drafty space...

Any further insights would be so appreciated! Thanks again for your response.