Kyle Covington

I'm looking forward to everything here.

I think I'm most excited about the infrastructure things like earthen walls, site prep, and building things like the door, RMH, dehydrator, etc.

Thanks for the bundle.

I am a known plant buying addict too. For some woman it is shoes for me it is plant. I tell my husband he is lucky at least my shopping addition is leaving to more food for us and not just draining the bank account. But I agree with you, to control it is so hard. Maybe we need a plant addiction help group.

The job of the breaker is protect the WIRE that it feeds. You can do a thought experiment about what might happen if you stubbed from a 60a AC circuit with 14ga wire, which has an ampacity of 25a for the expensive THHN, and you ran say 40a through it (a welder, a window ac, and some cook tops).

You can physically attach a lower guage wire and this might be within codes in certain situations. You should never create a situation where it is possible to pull more amperage than the wire can safely handle.

If you want to plan out the improvements yourself please look at an ampacity chart. Most wire companies have them posted on their websites.

C. Letellier wrote:I think you are under rating solar.

Aren't these passive heating and cooling techniques? I though I rated those as very good solutions for low cost energy. I put them slightly lower than the rocket heater approaches because I think they are more expensive, require more forethought to implement so more planning and possibly more engineering (although rocket stoves can be pretty complicated), and as far as I can tell only address one aspect of heat (room heating) while you can also cook, bake, boil water, dry clothes, etc. with a rocket stove. I think I hear you though, I'm open to entertaining different ratings for these.

But I do love solar, I have three kinds of solar ovens and cookers, and love using passive solar.

Nicolas Keeton wrote:One system that I'm looking at as a future project is heating with solar heaters that are made from recycled materials such as soda cans.

Ok so it generates some heat, maybe even a lot of heat depending on the scale. I like the low cost. What can you use these things for? The objective here is to lift people out of abject poverty, how would such a situated person use one of these?

This is interesting but if this is for you I'd have to ask how much power do you really need? The average single family detached home uses about 40kwh of energy per day, the bulk of which goes to heat and AC. I think if you make some other energy efficient changes like heating yourself not the room, using fans, etc, then the 10kw solar system might be fine for most people's needs.

I think for scoring this system from a permaculture perspective I give it (1 is bad, 10 is best):
Self reliance factor: 1 the temperatures and equipment involved seem very complicated so only large entities could operate it
Complexity factor: 2 not as complicated as nuclear but still a lot of components
Pollution factor: 5 the materials seem exotic and with the high temperature may break often (fact check me on this)
Cost factor: 3 extra equipment seems expensive and expensive to maintain and keep safe
Versatility factor: 10 it does involve electricity and heat so pretty versatile energy currency

I hear that low cost reliable access to energy is the "best" way to lift people out of abject poverty. I'm interested to know what you think the best energy sources and generation methods are. You can list any mechanism you want to allow energy access and I think we should grade them on the following scale:

Self reliance factor 1 = depends on somebody else, 10 = self reliant
Complexity scale 1 = very complex, 10 = very simple, almost neolithic
Pollution factor 1=lots of pollution
Cost factor 10 = basically free
Versatility factor 1=energy can only be used for 1 thing, 10= plug in almost anything

Add your own factors if you want.

Mine are
Passive heating and cooling: 10, 5, 8, 4, 2
Rocket stove/oven/heater: 9-10, 7, 7, 7, 4
Gasification: 7, 3, 6, 6, 9
Solar power: 7, 3, 6, 3, 9