The Truly Passive Greenhouse movie Kickstarter (July 2020)

As we explained in the Q&A yesterday, one of the main reasons we are doing this is to get enough coin to get a proper well on the lab.  So the extra coin is going to the well.  

Next, if we add three things to further the experiments, we find no change in the amount of people signing up.  Nor do we find existing backers raising their pledges.   But if we add things to the $100 level, we not only find existing backers raising their pledges, but we also find an increase in the number of people backing the kickstarter.  

So, we are making the best out of what we have learned.

Shawn Klassen-Koop wrote:Looks like not on Linux.

Ouch.  That's a deal breaker for me.

paul wheaton wrote:As we explained in the Q&A yesterday, one of the main reasons we are doing this is to get enough coin to get a proper well on the lab.  So the extra coin is going to the well.  

Next, if we add three things to further the experiments, we find no change in the amount of people signing up.  Nor do we find existing backers raising their pledges.   But if we add things to the $100 level, we not only find existing backers raising their pledges, but we also find an increase in the number of people backing the kickstarter.  

So, we are making the best out of what we have learned.

Aha!! Genius expertise at work -and as is evident I missed the q&a yesterday. Thanks for the clarification.

Hi Conrad, I suspect that they are already working at max capacity so further experiments are going to be a challenge.  But if they can add stretch goals that entice people to increase their donation, or entice new people to get on board, the kickstarter generates even more money.  And more people get more things.  So I believe added funding gets applied to other work at Wheaton Labs and the benefit to the donor is to get an ever increasing pile of goodies.

Doh, the page changed on me and I didn't see the last three responses.  Luckily it doesn't sound like I put my foot in my mouth :)

To get to the kickstarter ...




        click here!

I'm thinking that we can set the $100,000 goal to be to double the interior size and add two more experimental wells with different sizes of destratification pipes.  

Another good one would be the better measuring gear.   Of course, I would like to get a clear idea of what that would mean, and, of course, the expense.  

For a moment I thought it would be good to have some more discussion about stretch goals, but the kickstarter seems to have stalled ...

I'm guessing you've gotten a pledge from many of the people on the monthlyish that are likely to pledge (due to the early bird offer).  Now it's up to the general public to catch wind of it and jump on board.  How to do that?  Beats me...

If getting the total to keep increasing is part of making it more visible on kickstarter to the general permies, then maybe stretch goals focused on getting $1 people to bump to $10, or $10 dollar people to $25 would do the trick?  Maybe put a couple new things at the $10 level and see if 100 people jump.  Then put a few at the $25 and see if 200 jump.  Or don't do any of it because I don't know anything about the subject

I got this question in my email:

If I remember correctly, the previous kickstarter made more than $1000 a day? This time it seems to be going much slower after $45,000. Around $200 per day?

And here is a great way to measure that:

https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/paulwheaton/better-world-book/#chart-daily

https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/paulwheaton/greenhouse-1/#chart-daily

1500 backers!

$47,103!

$48,024!

Just a few hundred bucks to go to get to $50k....just looking for a reminder.  If someone were to want to increase their pledge to the next reward level do you just select the new reward level and it switches you, or do you just increase your pledge?  My memory from the BWB KS was that you just select the higher reward level, but I only trust memory so far.

Just nudged my pledge up....you can do it through the "manage my pledge" button.  

Thank you Paul et al. for taking this project on.  The output of this work will drive real world important change.  The trajectory of that change will be related to how this project gets supported as the more the team can do, the better the starting point that gets transmitted to all the follow up work.

$50,846!



We hit the first stretch goal!   Greg put us over the top!  

Here is Shawn's info from last year for showing how to raise your pledge AND select the new reward:



Shawn shows the problem and how to fix it.  

Does the problem in kickstarter still exist?

So here is the stretch goal story right now:

Here is the dailyish I just now sent out:

the greenhouse kickstarter hit $50,000!


We did it!   We hit our first stretch goal!  Now everybody supporting the kickstarter at $100 or higher is getting the eBook version of Mike Oehler's "Earth Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book"!

More information about the book here:

  https://permies.com/w/23444

And you can get both books plus the 6 hours of workshop video here:

  https://permies.com/w/48625



The next stretch goal, at $55,000, is the movie "Living the Change" by Happen Films.  A full movie about people living a permaculture life.  Many flavors of Gert!  Gardening, zero waste,  food forest gardening, permaculture gardening, kids gardening, regenerative agriculture, gardening, carbon sequestration, reversing desertification, creating a more beautiful world, and gardening!   See the trailer and more here:

  https://permies.com/t/142640



If we get to $60,000 people will get David The Good's magnificent book "Compost Everything".   A beautiful writing style makes it easy to get your head wrapped around all of the things that are compostable and a very long list of benefits to broadening your composting horizons!  More about this lovely book here:

  https://permies.com/t/142750



Drum roll goes here!

Davin Hoyt has offered his rocket oven plans as a stretch goal!  Davin was here for the build and he did all the drawings for the Rocket Ovens movie.   His plans turned out great!  You can see a magnificent 3-D model and some samples of the plans here:

  https://permies.com/w/rocket-oven-plans

and the movie here:

  https://permies.com/t/rocket-ovens



The race continues!  Now with spiffy prizes!

Jennifer and I are doing brainstorming for this kickstarter every day!   And yesterday we came up with this idea of giving something awesome to the kickback champions:

- 42 seeds of Sepp Holzer grain (we got it established here
  at Wheaton Labs with only 42 grains!) (you must be located
  in the US)

- $50 in bitcoin

- A huckleberry pie (you must be located in the US)

- A gift code for the PDC & ATC footage

- A "message in a bottle" with lots of podcasts and videos (you must be located in the US)

You can see the full details here:

  https://permies.com/p/1121839

and the current champions here (Yury is now in first place!).

  https://permies.com/p/1121890



Taller?  Wider?  How hot is it?


There is a lot of discussion about the overall design, and there was so much discussion about the temperature monitoring equipment we started a new thread for that.   See here and here for more info.

  https://permies.com/t/141902/wofati-greenhouse-design

  https://permies.com/t/142933/Greenhouse-Kickstarter-Data-Collection

$51,142!

Wahoo !!

1601 backers and $51,778 in fulfilling the dream : )

Maybe we will never reach this, so it might have been a waste of time to set this up, but we have now made arrangements for two more stretch goals:

$70,000: The High Art and Sublt Scienc of Scrounging by James Juczak

$75,000: Sepp Holzer's 3-in-1 Permaculture documentaries (Farming, Terraces, and Aquaculture)

paul wheaton wrote:Maybe we will never reach this, so it might have been a waste of time to set this up, but we have now made arrangements for two more stretch goals:

$70,000: The High Art and Sublt Scienc of Scrounging by James Juczak

$75,000: Sepp Holzer's 3-in-1 Permaculture documentaries (Farming, Terraces, and Aquaculture)

Looking at the Kicktraq charts linked above, it looks like it's following, more-or-less, the same long "U" pattern as the previous book kickstarter. There's a higher initial surge for this kickstarter and a steeper trailing off, but it's within a few thousand dollars and 100 backers as the book was at the same point in the timeline. If anything, the average pledge is lower, which means the potential for people to increase to a higher package toward the end is greater, especially if we start clearing a few more of $100 and up stretch goals.

Granted, it's only based on a sample size of one, but if it follows approximately the same pattern, $100,000 should be well within reach.

Edit: Because apparently I don't have anything better to do on my lunch break, I went back and looked at the data from the kickstarters going back to the Rocket Mass Heater kickstarter. In short, the trend holds across the past 5 kickstarters. I'm probably not telling Paul and Co. anything they don't already know, but I thought other people might find it interesting.

As the limited times goodies have been offered in the first few days during the more recent kickstarters, the spike at the beginning has become more pronounced, as has the spike in the last 3 to 5 days of the kickstarter. Presumably because once more goodies are unlocked at the higher tiers levels through stretch goals, a portion of people who already backed bump up to that tier to get them, which supplements the large amount of people who watch a project but don't back until close the end.

Generally speaking, the trend is the last five days are approximately double what the first five days are. Assuming it holds true this time, I'd estimate we finish somewhere in the $120,000 to $130,000 range.

$53,120!

Sorry for some other idea: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Structure-of-the-traditional-Chinese-solar-greenhouse-1-concrete-north-wall-2-the_fig1_232010209

Structure of the traditional Chinese solar greenhouse: 1, concrete north wall; 2, the back roof; 3, the heat insulation mattress; 4, the frame of the front roof; 5, the ditch for preventing greenhouse heat loss through horizontal soil heat conduction.

This would be an other great idea to use only natural energy. The extra job you have when the sun goes down is to roll down the straw insulation over the plastic insulation and in the morning when it is light to put the insulation it back up. This way in winter at China -10 degrees C day time and -40 degrees C ( concinous a lot of degrees below freezing point of water... The sun heats a 1 meter thick wall 3 foot thick, black dirt. And 4 meters high 13 feet, keeping the plants inside always above freezing point. I have seen hundreds in the north east of China.  
They copy the best working system so that they have food!

Best Regards
Gert-Jan Jonkman From Holland, service engineer, formerly world wide job...

That’s funny, I was just reading this article last night- https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-greenhouse.html
Looks like the cover is automated now, and has gone from straw to synthetic so it doesn’t get heavier when it’s wet.
A couple interesting quotes-
“The correlation between inside temperature and sunlight is almost four times greater than the correlation between inside temperature and outside temperature.”
It seems the wofati should negate that with an earth mass instead of just a thick rear wall.

“From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, urban farmers grew Mediterranean fruits and vegetables as far north as England and the Netherlands, using only renewable energy. These crops were grown surrounded by massive "fruit walls", which stored the heat from the sun and released it at night, creating a microclimate that could increase the temperature by more than 10°C (18°F).
Later, greenhouses built against the fruit walls further improved yields from solar energy alone. It was only at the very end of the nineteenth century that the greenhouse turned into a fully glazed and artificially heated building where heat is lost almost instantaneously -- the complete opposite of the technology it evolved from.“  Ironic huh??

So here we are with this wofati project, coming full circle to the past!

Lowtechmagazine is a great website to explore, by the way!

$54,115!

We're only $465 away from the next stretch goal!!  I'm looking forward to watching that movie :)

Now $405 away ....   it's going a lot slower now!

Now just $204 away...the $55,000 stretch goal prize will be ours soon!!

Maybe this is arrogant, since things are so slow with the Kickstarter right now . . . but here it is: our current stretch goal lineup!

We are less than $200 from hitting our second stretch goal!

$54,956!!!

Only $44 from the stretch goal!!!

You know you wanna be the one to bump it to $55,000! :D

First off,

$56,141
we've met our second stretch goal!

Yay!!

Secondly, I had some questions sent via PM, so I thought I'd answer them here, in case someone else had the same questions

1-i am so sick of seeing all these videos etc
because i cant buy them!
You dont want to sell them to me ...
I suggest you would have a wider market if you sell stuff to world wide audiences.
I am certain if the brains trust put their mind to it a solution can be found.
I would be happy to purchase from alternative suppliers- Amazon for example .
Please ,try to work this out .

I'm guessing this person lives outside of the USA. Sadly, we cannot sell our videos online because of VAT. From what I gather,  VAT laws shut down a website called Scrubbly that used to sell podcasts and videos, and Paul doesn't want to end up shut down like them. (He actually used to sell a bunch of stuff of Scrubbly, but then it shut down. Which is actually why he started the digital market here on permies!)

I think there might be a loophole where someone in the USA could buy access as a "gift" for someone outside of the USA, after conveniently being given the same amount of money. But, I think VAT--or some other random government agency of sad--might not like that...

Paul started a thread about VAT here: https://permies.com/t/137817/VAT-digital-market

Aside from that, some of the videos we have here on permies are also for sale by Green Planet Films. For example, here's the Sepp 3-in-1 documentaries for sale on Green Planet Films. We're really happy to work with Green Planet and are super excited by the awesome videos they are selling here on permies!

Also, Paul has been really awesome to offer a crazy amount of freebies through our dailyish freebies. Basically, you sign up for the dailyish, and every few days you get a link to a new freebie! If you click that link within 48 hours, you get the freebie! And, since we're not SELLING the goodies, VAT doesn't care, and we're able to offer these freebies in thanks to those who are a part of our community. (The dailyish email newsletter is written by permies for permies, about the threads you permies have made!)

You can sign up for the dailyish freebies (and pick your first freebie) [urkl=HERE!

2-how do i upgrade to $US 101.00 to get the extra stuff  from the present kickstarterplease ?

Here's an instructional video made for our last kickstarter. It should apply to this kickstarter as well!



And, all the stretch goal and other goodies offered through the kickstarter will come to you regardless of where you live. I think VAT and Kickstarter have already figured out this whole mess.

People outside the US can get all this stuff via kickstarter.

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