Forrest Little

Rufus Laggren wrote:I don't know about grounding, but I wonder if those boots will last long enough for anything like that to matter. They're good for keeping  your feet dry-ish for a few hours now and then and not really designed for continuous rough duty.   Seems like if you tore  up leather boots in a normal day, the rubber ones will probably follow on to the recycle bin pretty quick. Not real nice to your feet, either - a day in those, you take them off around people and you might end up magically alone... Dogs could start sniffing around you, though. <g>


Cheers,
Rufus

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll try them this week and see how it goes.

There's always the frequent sock change option.

So many of the workers around here are in rubber boots all day. Perhaps they have the same issue.

The quest for the perfect footwear continues!

Hey All,

I've got an emf earthing question/idea, plus boot troubleshooting.

I get a lot out of grounding for health-- I sleep on a grounding blanket from earthing dot com, wear earth runner sandals, go barefoot, and make/wear leather boots with grounding copper rivet on the sole.

Plus I need to wear zero drop minimalist soles cause it makes my knee issues basically go away.

Recently my leather boots got torn up on a new job landscaping full time, mostly weedeating on hills and pushing a honda mower fast, and I'm wearing my rubber boots starting tuesday.

I got 8-9 foot of zinc coated steel chain, made a loop midfoot and around my heel, the from the heel connected chain up the back to dangle against my calves.

Chain is used in electical industry to ground carts and components.

My goal is to achieve almost 24/7 grounding and to avoid the boot foot rot from sweat, which is up until this point why I almost never wear rubber boots.

I also just got a bunch of new xl wool socks that go up above the top of the boot, and plan on changing 2-3 times per day and see if it helps.

Some theorize sweat is attempt of body to find ground, though I imagine that rubber boot on a hot day doesnt help.

Anyway, there's my idea.

Please let me know if you've got any suggestions.

PS

I dont want to put a rivet through the sole cause they're nice waterproof boots.

Another option is screwing a plate to the sole and running a wire up the back and connecting to something that is more skin comfortable, but the chain seems like possibly a more elegant solution and actually isnt causing chafing issues dangling against my calves.

PPS

My real goal is to design new footwear that is basically a covered minimalist sandal that would count as closed toe for work insurance purposes.

I think about starting with an earth runner sandal base and possibly incorporating a foot wrap furoshiki vibram type foot cover, but for now I had the boots and the chain was inexpensive.

Anyway, cheers.

Forrest Little of Wet Spun Building dot wordpress dot com

We're Moving!

Across the yard!

Hey All,

Wanted to share a few updates.

We're midway through the roof of our new barn for the lumber mills, shingling with Solexx,  a corrugated plastic material.

We got turkeys and I made a new gate/fence to enclose them..

The cyllindrical rolling scaffolding served their purpose, and I've been converting them to round compost bins.

And over the last couple of days I've been enclosing some grapes, black berries and thimble berries with a new lattice structure, (not pictured).

Hope you're all well.

Forrest

Hi All,

Happy Spring. We're pausing with the mill house construction to get some more garden beds in. Amoeba shape, egg shaped and round. They're pretty quick to do, and this is the first time so we bet they'll get even quicker. More at wetspunbuilding.wordpress.com.

Forrest

Hi Lito,

That sounds great. I look forward to it.

Best,

Forrest



Hi Nancy

Thank you for the recommendation. I will look into Azby brown. Speaking of hempcrete, I'm also very curious about nettlecrete.

Best,

Forrest

Hi Josephine,

You're so welcome. Judging from what you said, vitamin c to bowel tolerance http://www.doctoryourself.com/titration.html and sleeping on a grounding mat from earthing.com would be likely useful in responding to the oxidative damage associated with a lung situation. I've got my parents, a grandparent, and myself using these tools for very positive results for chronic pain and immune system stuff. At the very least worth looking into. Its part of what we're doing with the buildings too, trying to mitigate oxidative damage by having grounded floors.

Cheers,

Forrest

Hi Josephine,

Thank you for your question.  

First thing that comes to mind is maybe it would be best to use the shed space for things that do not need to be heated and leave it separate, because then you wouldnt have to mess with permits.

A monolithic dome "ecoshell" is a small shed available on monolithicmarketplace.com, but its a kit that is essentially an inflatable bag they spray with concrete to get the dome, and still needs fasteners and foundation. Its also vastly smaller than the shed you've got, 8×10, so doesnt really go far to solving the issue. Maybe contact them also to see if they have some ideas.

Our method could work, the block would be that you'd have to find people to do it and currently no one is trained and we dont travel. We've attached to wooden walls with a curved wall as an interface to the round building. Basically we nailed a board the thickness of the wall we wanted to a stud on the corner of the house, then attached our woodcrete forms to that and poured woodcrete right up against the stud on the house, between house and the round building we built next to the house. There are some pictures on our site. Then the round roof needs to be interfaced in some way with your current roof, and the correct flashing for waterproofing will be a must. Once things are attached you'd need to cut away the existing wall betwen the two buildings, likely at one end or the other of your home.  Our woodcrete requires extensive curing time so it needs to be fully cured before the wall is cut away. We are currently in the process of doing this, with a work in progress building connected to the house but the wall to be cut out is still there. You would possibly want to reinforce whatever wall you attached to, with extra framing.

It would be unlikely you'd find a carpenter to do something like this, as its way outside the box, as they say. Plus a significant labor cost would be involved, even if you had a local saw mill cut the lumber like we do in thin strips and cutting out the blocks for the roof, the shingles, etc.. We havent done something like that but a mid range estimate might be 35k if we were doing that for a customer. Who knows what a miraculously open minded builder would charge for something similar. Currently we arent really connected with other round builders, but it would be worth it to contact others even if they're not in your area to see if they know of people who are in your area. If you've got any interested adult people around, it would probably be cheaper to send them to a 5 quarter trade school and then have them come back and do it for ya to save labor costs.

Regarding health stuff. Please disregard any of this if its outside your worldview, simply my shotgun approach I share with everyone who mentions health. Wanted to make sure you were aware of doctoryourself.com, a great source for diy megavitamin therapy including high doses of vitamin c; fasting with Dr Jason Fung, a Canadian kidney specialist curing people's insulin resistance with intermittent and continuous fasting; Earthing.com, source for electromagnetic grounding info, anti-inflamatory practice; and ketogenic diet, specifically the book Primal Body Primal Mind, all about the importance of dietary fat from animals and the risks associated with sugar. Also Psych-K, brain hemisphere synchronization, similar to the effect of prayer or meditation. I mention these whenever anyone brings up health stuff. I totally get it if any of that might be outside of your worldview, but if any of that happens to be useful I wanted to share, as health is my other main interest.

Thank you again for your message.

Cheers

Forrest

Hi Gordon,

We've been talking about some of the issues you raised with water tanks. Thank you for your comments.

Regarding the woodcrete tanks being porous for potable water. We're thinking a food grade potable water liner inside the tank would be the best bet.

Regarding a tank for non potable water, or approaching a potable water solution, we could use our forms for concrete, remove the forms and then possibly add a bio sand filter component for extra safety. Anything we would be doing with woodcrete would have that commercial plastic potable liner.

We're not really working with with epoxy so we havent achieved it either. But we are interested in doing epoxy doors.

Thanks again for your comments.

Forrest

Hi Kate,

Re woodcrete ingredients:

That article, http://www.themoldstore.info/concrete_formulas.html, references perlite but is a general formula for any light weight concrete, just switch out perlite for the sawdust or chips.

That article was the one Eric read to figure out what to use. For us, using doug fir sawdust from the bandsaw, we're doing half the recipe: 8 gallons of water, 47 lb bag of cement and 18 gallons of sawdust, (three and a half 5 gallon buckets of sawdust). Fresh or dry sawdust. The really old sawdust which is more like dirt on the ground, thats going to need less water.. With drier sawdust you might need a bit more water.

For clarity, we're using half the concrete in the above recipe on that perlite link, arrived at by experimentation. Also we're not adding sand. If we added sand, it would be able to be finished, but our sandless stuff is impossible to finish, ie, grind down or smooth out while wet. The way we do it its great for wall fill and subfloor.  Keep in mind it takes an extended drying period. If you use twice the concrete like they say, much speedier process.

Now this is all for sawdust. For yardwaste chippings like fir branches, it might need less water. We dont mind the fir needles either. Also we use other yardwaste chippings, which behave differently, needing more or less water.

Hope that helps

Forrest