Sustainable Living « Larry D Gray

Category: Sustainable Living

Food Harvest Preservation

Filed under: Food and Nutrition, Homesteading, Sustainable Living — 2 Comments

May 21, 2012

Root Cellar
Pickling and Fermenting
Salt and Sugar curing
Smoking
Canning in Jars
Vacuum packing in Mylar and Canning Jars
Retort Vacuum packing and Canning
Refrigeration
Freezing
Drying or Dehydration (Jerky, Pemmican, Biltong etc. as well)
Freeze Drying

Root Cellars

I have heard of several methods for making ground temperature storage. Depending on where you live this ground temperature may vary from 70 degrees on the gulf of Mexico to 58 degrees F, in Arkansas where I live to 50 degrees in southern Canada. That’s quit a difference. None the less using the ground for its year round constant temperature is a great thing to do. Humidity plays some role as well. Some sections of underground storage you may want to be more humid or other sections dryer. Containers may affect humidity as well. For example you could remove oxygen and humidity and seal the container then store in a humid or not, underground location.

A root cellar may be a simple as a barrel that has been buried where any exposed parts such as a lid are well insulated. This might be buried horizontally, vertically or at some angle in between. Other types of cellars might be a house basement. Might be a storm cellar. Might be a bermed out building with earthen and insulated roof. One interesting potato cellar I saw while traveling in the Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon area was an A Frame structure with roofs sloped at about 45degrees with earthen cover. Its possible that on the inside it was not exactly A frame shape, and may have had vertical walls on the sides up some distance from the floor to the A shaped ceiling. All of these methods use some combination of earth, underground, insulation to keep the inside temperature near ground temperature year round.

Another method similar in root cellar concept is to store food items in water either stream or pond or lake. If pond or lake then deep enough to get down to the cold water. And could a root cellar be cooled artificially? Sure it could be cooled with typical A/C Unit. If so insulation may be required between inside space and the ground. Hey we could even make a highly efficient walk in freezer this way? Sure. Commercial freezers are above ground and are insulated to about R60 to R80 standards. As an example consider the typical house 2×4 walls at R11. Meaning you would need a wall about 7 times that thick for your freezer. Or around 28″ thick. But that’s using fiberglass batt insulation. With styrofoam at 5R per inch we would only need 16″. Or with papercrete at 3R per inch we would need 25 inches or so. The cheapest insulation here would be by far papercrete. Straw and sawdust could also be used as insulation. Though both would have to be carefully protected from moisture. I would suggest those two used as moveable insulation kept in some kind of sealed containment. As in most insulating efforts shiny polished metallic surfaces are good to add for heat reflection if possible.

By the way eggs may be pickled and raw eggs may be stored in a water and mineral oil or water and “water glass” or sodium silicate solutions for up to 6 months or longer in a cellar. They say if the big end is beginning to float the egg is near bad. And you may add ventilation for use in winter to achieve below ground temperatures in the root cellar. This would especially help keep eggs during winter months.

Pickling and Fermenting

Pickling is a procedure where food is preserved chemically by alcohol, salinity, alkalinity or acidity. Fermenting is usually an initial procedure before chemical pickling where bacterial action works on the food item until agiven alcohol content or acidity or alkalinity is reached. This is a matter of creating an life barrier for bad bacteria which would otherwise feed on the food item. Salt and vinegar (high acid) is usually used along with other possible spices which stunt bacterial growth.

Just about anything we can think of can be pickled. Meats may be pickled and in fact salt and sugar curing is a form of pickling. But plant matter is fermented not meats. Fermentation at different temperatures give different results. Vegetables and Fruits both are pickled. Once pickled a food may be left at room temperature, though I usually keep them in the frig after opening. Unlike canning pickled items are not completely sterilized, though they may be canned and sterilized as well. I’d have a difficult time with meat that was pickled but not canned properly. Though I do eat beef jerkey and it is not canned, only pickled and dried.

Salt and Sugar curing

From what I understand meat is buried all the way around in salt for salt curing, and in sugar curing salt is also used but not as heavily. This salt pack or salt sugar pack dries the meat out so that there is little moisture and also kills bacteria. I know little about this method though I think the FoxFire series books talk about how old timers did this.

Smoking

Smoking not only flavors meat’s it dries them out. Smoking is antibacterial but only protects the surface of the meat. Smoking should be used in combination with other methods of preservation. Liquid smoke while adding flavor does nothing for preservation. Smoking and drying or dehydrating in my opinion might go well together.

Canning in Jars

USDA Canning Guide PDF

The industry can’s in “cans”, bags, bottles and jars. But we at home can in glass jars mostly (I talk about retort bags below). Equipment for this is a large pot with sealing lid called a caner. Note that some you may see are only pressure cookers and not caners. A caner such as a “Presto” will come with a pressure gauge. In general 3.5, 7 and 15 psi are pressures needed. 20 is too high and will cause pressure to be released via a safety valve or else the pot might explode. The higher the pressure the higher the temperature that can be achieved when canning. PSI means pounds of pressure per square inch above atmospheric pressure. So 15 psi is really 30psi roughly, or double atmospheric pressure. The food boils in the jars within the caner at temperature above 212 degrees. At 15psi it will boil at 240 degrees or higher and kill all life period, not question about it. Meats are canned at 15psi. If meats are canned at lower pressures then lower temps will kill bacteria but not spores which are like bacteria seeds. Later if the meat is opened these seeds can cause the bacteria to grow again and become deadly fast. Lids for jars are made such that they sink in after cooled to show that a slight vacuum seal has been made and the food is indeed sealed and protected. If you set hot jars out and they begin to cool you would hear popping sounds as the lids sink in. As the contents cool they also shrink and reduce in volume slightly causing a slight vacuum. Canned items can literally be good for decades if kept in cool dark locations. Though as they age they do loose nutritional value over time. I would like to suggest the canning dates on store bought cans are set for this maximum nutritional drop off, not for spoilage. Though eat out dated canned items at your own risk, not because I told you it was OK.

Note on canning of fish or anything with small sharp bones. Pressure canning will soften bones and scales for that matter to the point where they may be safely chewed or eaten. Personally I wouldn’t want to can the scales though. One thing a person might do is first pressure cook the fish and then remove larger bones and scales. Can the remainder(mostly meat). I have read that one may cook up sausage patties the size of a jar, then fill the jar with patties finally fill the jar with melted lard which will solidify over the sausage. The lard actually protects the contents though If you throw on a lid it will vacuum seal as it cools. Other things to know is that wax poured on top is sometimes used to seal in some items such as jams and jelly’s. This is possibly as a secondary precaution in the case a jar seal is not made tight. Finally, not all canned items have to be pressure canned. There is also hot water bath canning. And there is simply pouring something boiling hot (212F) into a jar and throwing a lid on it.

Vacuum packing in Mylar and Canning Jars.

I feel that vacuum packing in Mylar is expensive. Mylar is special kind of plastic that does not breath as other plastics do. Its a bit tougher and not cheap. Mylar bags might be reused however if washed and trimmed. Though each re-use will reduce the volume of the packaging. Great advantage to vacuum packing this way is that you conserve space in storage.

I suppose “Food Saver” is a well known brand of home vacuum packing machines. Food Saver also sells an attachment so that a person may vacuum pack in a regular canning jar. I think this is a super idea. Jars may be re-used with ease. And its a good thing to do with dry goods and items you want to put under refrigeration for shorter term storage. Vacuum packing anything wet will help it to last longer simply by removing the oxygen. If it were something dry I think I’d also add a small bag of something that absorbs moisture or robs oxygen in the jar.

Retort Vacuum packing and canning

List of chamber sealers for sale. Note these chamber sealers are not cheap $600 to $2000. List of Retort pouches from the same site. Note these bags cost around $250 for 1000 depending on the volume.

A retort bag is a bag that was invented to contain food for the space program and for the military. Retort bags are now in use in your local grocery store. I have seen spam, tuna, salmon, sardines etc. canned in retort bags. Retort bags are a little more expensive than cans or bottles. Basically a special plastic is bonded to a given thickness of aluminum foil. This makes a tough bag that is puncture and tear resistant and keeps out light. You may buy a special machine for vacuum packing and sealing a retort bag. Then the canning process is identical to pressure canning in jars or cans. Food preserved in retort bags may be stored for decades. Though again may loose nutritional value over time. Retort bags may be washed and re-used. Though like the re-used Mylar bags become smaller in volume on each successive re-use. I think you may even re-use the bags from store bought retort bagged items.

Refrigeration

Keeping food items as far below ground temperature as you can and yet just above freezing will preserve them for weeks otherwise they would only last for hours and even days at ground temps or room temps. Air and light here play the most important roles. Air is most important. Depriving any refrigerated item of oxygen is key. Sealed containers help with this greatly by reducing air flow and spread of microbes from one item to another, though vacuum packing would be better. Dryer items last longer than wetter items. Pickled items last longer than unpreserved items.

Freezing

Freezing will preserve most anything but not indefinitely. Freezing only slows down greatly bacterial growth. Freezing does not kill bacteria. Colder is better in freezing. Quick freezing and quick deep freezing is better than slow freezing. If frozen quickly enough ice crystals will not form. This is what you may have seen in the grocery store as IQF or Individually Quick Frozen products. I used to work at a Tyson’s chicken processing plant. The meat industry first began using freezers that were made for quick freezing vegetables and fruits. These freezers have conveyers that circle through the freezer for 15 to 30 minutes at -60F. The only thing I’ve seen wrong with IQF products is that it seemed to me that they were frost bitten quickly. I think frost bite in food is something like a freeze drying effect on its surface. This toughens and disturbs the flavor of the food item as well as the cooking properties. Meat packaged in butchers wax paper seems to do well and not get freezer burnt quickly.

Blanching is a technique where you partially boil an item for a few seconds, then freeze. I think this works by coating the outside of the food item with a consistent layer of ice. Meaning no part of the food item is exposed directly to air. If food items are frozen in water then they are completely sealed off from air which prevents freezer burn and freezer taste from getting into the food item. Fish is normally frozen in water. Frozen items may last for a year or more.

Drying or Dehydration

Food dehydrators are commonly sold but are easy to make. Even an aluminum foil lined box with hot light bulbs can work. I’m sure you may see videos on Youtube for home made food dehydrators. Beef Jerky, Pemmican and Biltong are all basically the same thing’s, dried meats. They differ in cut’s and spices and processing procedures. Beef Jerky is well known here in the U.S.A and I have commonly seen deer jerky made by individuals. In stores beef is the main meat used however you might find chicken, turkey and pork as well. Even some smoked dried fish such as salmon. I would suggest that dried meats are also somewhat pickled but not usually fermented. However there is this notion of aged beef and venison. Aging is in essence fermentation of meat at cold temps and given moisture presence. Meats are usually dried from the raw state. However diced meats might be dried from a cooked state for addition into soup mixes.

Beef Jerky usually is somewhat sweet, whereas Biltong (African Jerky) is not. Pemmican is basically what was a nutrition bar for mountain men in the USA during the western migration period. Pemmican is pureed fruit, finely minced meat and solid animal fat such as lard (not liquid oils) combined and cooked into a bar form.

Vegetables and Fruits are commonly dried in ovens, dehydrators and even by sun drying. Sun drying would be more effective in cold and dry climates. Dried veggies make great soup mix material. Dried fruits mixed with nuts make energetic snacks.

Once dried food items again must be protected from the usual heat, air, light, water to be long lasting. I wouldn’t hesitate to vacuum pack and/or refrigerate or freeze dried items to even further increase their lifespan. Remember refrigeration can be as simple as storing in a root cellar. During the drying process anything that you may to to remove humidity will help as well. Refrigeration and Freezing usually remove humidity. A room dehumidifier might be a good idea as well. For example you put the room dehumidifier and the dehydrator in an enclosed space together. If you are under central heat and air or any a/c, then dehumidification is part of that process as well.

Rock salt and even powdered milk(I heard) (in coffee filters tied up) can be used as a moisture absorber. Both might have the moisture removed by cooking in oven.

Freeze Drying

It appears that to freeze dry on the commercial scale one might need to buy a large freeze drier which will cost $4000 plus and require 3 phase electrical connection probably 240 volts. This might be doable for a group, but is most likely not practical for common home freeze drying for most people. This is a 2 step process. First the product must be quickly frozen to somewhere between -60 and -120. This prevents ice crystals from forming. Next a vacuum is drawn and the product is slowly warmed back up. As it is warmed moisture under a vacuum will vaporize from frozen to gas immediately skipping the liquid state. This is what happens to liquid water in space, instead of forming a ball it quickly vaporizes or boils away.

I have heard of a method of freeze drying which will work for certain foods or foods prepared a given way. In this method you use a typical deep freeze to freeze items in canning jars. Next you take them out of the freezer and screw on canning lids which have an L shaped fitting to a 1/4″ vacuum hose. This line goes to a group of connections where other jars are connected into. A 6 millibar vacuum is kept on all the jars until complete. A vacuum can be purchased for $350 on Ebay which will do the job such as, “Robinair 15600 6 CFM 2 Stage Vacuum Pump” This is a 2 stage, 120v, 1/2 horse vacuum weighting 27lbs. Once put on vacuum the are simply left to warm back up to room temps. When they are warm they are usually done. Some foods (those that are very wet) may require a 2nd treatment.

One way to go might be in using a Savant Vapor Trap which cools down to -50c or even -105c These cost between $600 and $2500 at the time of this writing. They have 120 and 240v models. Different models probably have different volumes which they handle.

Remember

Light,moisture , temperature and oxygen are key components in food preservation. If something is kept in a clear or translucent container it must be kept in dark or near dark storage. When it comes to temperature colder is usually better, but freezing some things can cause problems in taste or break containers. Remember when liquids freeze they expand. Expanding ice can crack steel even.

Final not of caution.

Some preservation methods and chemicals can render food toxic if too much is eaten over time. Such as salt and high blood pressure as well as other illnesses that need low salt diets. It would be wise to research illnesses related to preservatives.

Tags: Food Preservation

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Blue Gold: Water Filtration, Purification, Flocculation, Sedimentation, Distillation, Condensation and more

Filed under: Homesteading, Sustainable Living — 15 Comments

September 2, 2011

build it solar.com

Lets talk about the bad things in water. All of these things in the list below have acceptable levels. For information on pathogens (bacteria, virus and protozoa) please do research for the area which you intend to visit. This is because there are simply too many. Also with good water treatment, all of them (from any location) will be deactivated, killed or eliminated. Since we are going to do a nuclear attack with residual disinfection, knowing which kind you are dealing with usually is not important at all.

Bacteria (Too many kinds here to count, mostly from rotting animal and plant matter or fecal matter and urine)
Virus (too many kinds to count)
Protozoa (larger than bacteria, kind of like microscopic worms)
Poisons (pesticides, herbicides, mining byproducts or products, chemicals)
Heavy Metals (lead, mercury etc.)
Radioactivity (radon gas, nuclear fallout)
Acid/Alkaline (from trees and rocks)
Minerals (iron, manganese, calcium)

Someone in live chat ask me what would I possibly do with all this clean water that I would produce. I have to reply that I don’t want chemicals in my garden soil. I don’t want high levels of bacteria or heavy metals fed to my barnyard animals. And my hot tubs, swimming pools or swimming ponds, water gardens and aquaponics, hydroponics and aquaculture use a lot of water.

This will be an article about how to make water more usable (safer form) for animal, plant and human consumption. I say “more usable” because no method purifies water 100% when it comes to the bad things in the above list. Some types of filtration remove some types of bacteria yet not other types. Distillation will get you water that is roughly 99.5% pure on the first run. This percentage may depend on the exact distillation process used. Double distillation will get you closer to 99.9% pure. Water that has been distilled or purified by other means, with no residual disinfectant, can still acquire bacteria and disease in the distribution system or storage system. Reverse Osmosis(RO) will remove near 100% of toxins and heavy metals but may let bacteria through imperfections in the membrane. Also bacteria may somehow get into the product water side. Boiling water kills all bacteria but not some spores (bacteria seeds). Only pressure cooking which will get temps up to 240F(115C) or better kills all life. This is what happens during the canning process. I need to mention that if you “can” water in bottles, packs (retort bags) or cans, residual disinfection is not needed because it is sealed then purified. However boiling or canning does not remove toxins and heavy metals. Filtering removes most toxins and heavy metals. And some forms of filtering remove bacteria and diseases as well. Water in distribution systems or water that is not used immediately after purification must have some form of residual disinfectant such as chlorine or chloramine added to it. Sodium Hypochlorite is house hold bleach and can be used for this purpose as well. My overall point in this is that you can’t completely 100% purify or sanitize or de-poison water. You simply get the bad stuff down to very minimal levels that your body and immune system can deal with or tolerate. Conversely it is good for our bodies to be exposed to some bacteria and disease in small doses because it helps us to build immunity. Immunity means your body can handle lager accidental doses without serious consequences. Point being that 100% clean water or anything could actually be harmful. (Read a book called “In Self Defense” about the immune system).

Its funny to me but water filtration and purification is the same or nearly the same for both production of potable water and treatment of raw sewage (black) water. This gives me an idea. Why not use filtering, concentration and sedimentation methods to make fertilizer from fish ponds. This is also the idea behind aquaponics (aquaculture(fish grown in tanks) and hydroponics).

There are varying scales of methods used when talking about acquiring clean potable water. I show the scales in the list below. In the material in this article any points may be discussing thoughts on any of these levels. Its up to the reader to decide how they apply in their own situation.

Survival water
Camping water
Homestead water for gardens, livestock, aquaculture, aquaponics and hydroponics.
Water for hot tubs, swimming pools/ponds, gold fish ponds and other water gardens
Municipal, industrial, military water

Barriers in water treatment systems are outlined below. Thinking of the system in barriers means being aware of where contamination can get into the water supply.

Source Water

rain, condensation, dew
springs and wells
lakes, ponds
rivers, streams
oceans, seas

Processing system

flocculation
filtration
purification

Distribution System (storage system)

pipes, connectors, valves
bottles, tanks, bladders

Water sources can not only become contaminated but can also be designed so that they aid in purification and clarification. For example terrain shape and type of plant life help. Deep water tends to lend to good settling. Terrain where the water runs slowly and circulates aids in clarification. Running water into falls and rapids oxidizes the water which helps with separation of dissolved solids as well as odor and taste removal. Winds and wave action affect turbidity. Certain plants and algae aid in bacterial and disease control. UV(sun light) on flowing water can kill algae and stop pathogens from reproducing. What we are looking at here is ways in which nature purifies water. The cleaner it is going into the processing system the less work, repair and maintenance is needed per given amount of water processed. Filters are not clogged as quickly.

On a side note water that is more turbid (polluted) after processing can be cleaner than clearer water that is processed. The reason for this is that the coagulation and flocculation used for more turbid waters actually make the filtering process work better. One more note on the water source would be that all watershed area at higher elevation above the source that enters the source should be monitored for new pollution or contamination from human activities. This area needs to be regulated as well. Probable sources of this pollution or contamination I’m guessing would be industrial and agricultural or municipal. Keep in mind that anything that changes runoff patterns might also introduce new pollutants via erosion or flooding.

The processing system itself can have contamination or become contaminated. Bacteria and diseases that have been removed or was never present can find their way in or begin to grow and multiply. As we are trying to remove organic pollutants from water we sometimes provide fresh breeding grounds for them. This is why residual (meaning it remains in the water and continues to work) disinfection is almost always necessary. Chlorination would be the main method for residual disinfection. Other chemicals can be used and I list towards the end of this article chemicals used in water processing. Inspecting, testing, repairing, replacing and cleaning help to combat these problems in the system itself.

The distribution and holding system can become damaged or breakdown and then contaminated. Water once cleaned needs to be used quickly or it needs to have residual purification chemicals added. Or it needs to be re-purified again just prior to use. Again the main means of dealing with problems in this area is residual disinfection. And as above inspecting, testing, repairing, replacing and cleaning.

Below is a huge list of topics in water treatment. I tried to place the list items in order of treatment.

Pre-treatment

Design of water shed
Straining or sieving
Settling (without flocculation)

Flocculation and Settling
Filtration and Sieving

Centrifugal
Slow sand
Sand
Activated charcoal/carbon
Ceramic coloidal silver
Reverse osmosis membrane
Anthracite (similar to activated charcoal by from a coal product)
Coke (cooked coal, works like activated charcoal)

Purification

chemical
UV
Ozone
Boiling

Distillation
Condensation
Airiation (mainly for iron, magnesium and odor/taste control)

Bubbling (diffusing through bubbling stones or other means)
Falling (through holes in a grate)
Paddling (stirring vertically)

De-ionization

Pre-treatment is basically any cheap thing that can be done to semi-purify or semi-clarify the water before sending it through your system. This can be in the design of the water source as well, such as man made reservoirs and ponds. Might be use of plants and fish for pre-cleaning. UV, airiation, settling and straining or sieving would be methods of pre-treatment.

Coagulation and Flocculation is where they add some chemical or fine solid such as clay. This adds turbidity to the water so that it almost looks muddy. Very small suspended solids cling to the larger solids which were added. To aid in this clinging process the water is stirred slowly in either a passive manner or an active manner to make it more turbulent (this process is flocculation). Most of the coagulant then settles (precipitates or rains) out in settling tanks to produce sludge on the bottom of the tanks. It also aids filters in filtering by making particles larger which means the filter can block their passage more easily. Water that is flocculated, settled and then filtered is likely to be cleaner than clearer water that is not flocculated and yet filtered. Also coagulation and flocculation remove much of the organic stuff from water such as algae and bacteria etc.

Sieving is merely straining through anything you can come up with such as cloths, metal grates with holes, screens. An example of a sieve might be a kitchen colander, flower sieve, tea leaf strainer or coffee filter. Sieves have a single thin layer and stop up rapidly. You would use a sieve to remove larger debris and particles in water that contains little of this material. Monitoring of the sieve and cleaning routinely or when needed would be necessary.

The subject of filtering is huge. A filter has multiple layers and is thick or deep. Filters are classified based on micron size of particles they will filter out and by the surface area of given types of filter material. Filters stop up sometimes and must bee cleaned, but they do not stop up nearly as quickly as sieves. Filters do block some bacteria etc. Sometimes filters can become breeding grounds for pathogens. Airiation helps filters to grab dissolved solids by separating these solids from water so that the filters can catch them. Types of filters include activated carbon or similar activated materials. Also included are ceramics, reverse osmosis membranes, sand both forced and slow (gravity fed). In filtering, water can be pressurized or gravity flow. They can be up flow or down flow which makes some difference because of how gravity acts on the filter material and debris and particles being filtered. One thing to remember when buying filters is that marketing strategies will advertise what they will filter, they will not tell you what they won’t filter.

Making Charcoal This site has a good design for a charcoal making kiln. Basically you cook wood at 600 to 900 degrees in an oven absent of oxygen. Wood gives off H2O, CO, and H when cooked or heated. CO (Carbon Monoxide) and H (Hydrogen) are combustible but as long as they are in the oven without oxygen they will not ignite. No flames or ash develop. The idea is that the wood in the oven surrounded by gasses other than oxygen will simply turn to a form of carbon, not ash. You may later burn the charcoal with oxygen as a fuel and it will burn hot and then turn to ash. Or you may filter water or alcohol( ethanol) with it.

Making Activated Charcoal This site has good info on making Activated Charcoal. It looks to me that you soak charcoal in calcium chloride or zink chloride for 24 hours. You then wash it with pure water. After this you cook it again in an oven at 215 to 230 degrees for 3 hours. What remains is activated charcoal with a surface area of near 500m2 per gram. Calcium Chloride is commonly used as roadway de-icer.It can be produced directly from limestone, probably by crushing. Another interesting note is that it is used as a dehumidification chemical and in water hardening. Zink Chloride is used in smoke grenades or fireworks. Zink Chloride looks to me to be harder to make at home than Calcium Chloride.

Ceramic filters are made by taking some material such as plastic sponge and saturating it with liquid ceramic or porcelain and then firing it once to dry it on lower heat. Then its fired on higher heat to really solidify it and burn out the sponge material. This sponge can be rice hulls or saw dust or anything that would make it porous after it is fired. I would guess that air must be forced through it during this firing process to push out this sponge matter that is vaporized. Colloidal silver may be added to the liquid ceramic mix to produce a filter that is anti-bacterial as well. Apparently silver is toxic to bacteria, viruses and protozoa. The silver does not leach into the water. There is an organization called “Potters for Peace” that teaches third world communities how to make these filters from cheap locally available materials.

Sand for sand filters needs to be between #17 and #50 sieves (see chart below). Minerox is a web site that sells sieves of varying sizes that you could use to get your correct sand size from any locally available sands. In forced sand filter, the sand is in a bottle or tank and is enclosed, where water is forced under normal pressures through the sand. Slow sand filters are more like pools or ponds. This is layered with larger gavel particles on bottom working upwards with smaller and smaller gravel gradients to the sand layer. Sand should be added with water in the pool so that particle size is evenly distributed in the sand layer. You don’t want size gradients in the sand layer. Water is fed into this pool very slowly by gravity flow. The very top of the sand forms a bacteria which eats away at the other pathogens and organics in the incoming water. Water coming out the bottom of the filter will be 99.9% pure and pathogen or organics free. If done properly this methods is almost as good as distillation. Periodically the top of the sand becomes clogged and must be removed. Gravel and rock can be uses in a similar manner for filtration of sludge from raw sewage. Sometimes these types of filters need to be cleaned with backwashing and scouring. Backwashing is where water is pumped backwards through the filter. Scouring is where the surface of filter is pressure sprayed with water.

Centrifugal filtration is more of a separation which uses inertial forces to separate matter of varying weight and density. This can be used to get sand out of a system that happens to be pumping sand with the water. Sand can damage valves and pipes. This can be as simple as a vertical cylinder that is spun horizontally. This was proposed as a method and I think was used for cleaning up the gulf oil spill in 2010.

Reverse Osmosis (RO) filtering is where a membrane made of some kind of polymer or cellulose is used at almost the molecular level to allow only water under pressure to pass through it. Membranes are made through various techniques and new methods and types of membranes are being developed all the time. This is a changing technology. In one method hot near molten material is extruded then stretched. The stretching process forms evenly spaced holes which only water may pass through. Another method involves bombarding a membrane material with some kind of radiation. This alters the molecular structure so that holes can be developed. Some kind of reactive agent is passed over the membrane and eats evenly spaced holes in the membrane. One of the agents used in this process is cancer causing and you might see a warning label on your RO filter package because of this. They don’t know how many gallons of water might be needed to wash all of this agent out of the membrane. Except for imperfections in the membrane and imperfections where membranes are connected to the container, they do a perfect job. Small RO filters spiral the membrane in a canister, and probably resemble a rolled up carpet. RO also removes salts and nuclear and biological and chemical contaminants. Military is using RO very successfully to filter contaminated water or sea water at 1000′s of gallons per hour. In reality the RO membrane is more like a sieve than a filter. On the raw water side water is pushed into contact with the RO membrane in which only a percentage of the water passes through the membrane. The rest if flushed out with concentrated contaminants in what is called the reagent stream. This reagent stream is usually sent to house hold black water drains. However depending on what is in it, it might be used as grey water. You could also distill this reagent water. DIY Reverse Osmosis dot com has a systems for home use that produce 50 or 100 gallons per day. They say pressure needs to be roughly 50 to 80 psi. They claim that for every gallon of water you pass through you get half gallon of pure water and half gallon of reagent water. I am guessing it is probably not that good and if that is true then it would have to be at 80psi. The higher the pressure in the RO system the more efficient it is. I think for commercial and military applications the pressures need to be up between 200 to 300 psi to be feasible. To filter sea water you need 600 to 1200 psi.

The industry recognizes that there is a problem in RO filtration where bacteria can build up on the product (clean water side) of the process. This may be because some small amount of certain types of bacteria make it through imperfections in the membrane and where the membranes attach to the housing of the filter body. For this reason I suggest chlorination after RO filtration. I also suggest at the very least a post filtering with activated carbon and colloidal silver ceramic filter. Also note that pre-filtration is needed to lengthen the life of the RO filter and to make that process more efficient. pre-filtration is for prevention of fouling and clogging the RO filter. RO filtration is slow, so a small holding tank for clean water is needed. With all its problems RO filtering is about as close as you can get to the quality of water double distillation will produce. And as slow as it is it is faster than distillation.

Purification by chemicals has its drawbacks, but is necessary none the less. Each type of chemical has its own pro’s and con’s. Some methods develop neurotoxins if done improperly. Disinfection of water requires 4 elements, (time duration of application, concentration, PH, temperature) Chlorination would be the most well known. At the end of this article I list chemicals used in water treatment (research any you intend to use before use.) Iodine is another well known method and has been used by military and everyone in the bush for many many years. Iodine’s only problem is that you can get too much of it. It is bad for pregnant women and very young children. Some people have a medical condition where they can not tolerate it. Water purification tabs are usually iodine based water purification. Though I’m seeing chlorine dioxide tabs now. Walmart sells scented bleach tablets. Pool supplies sell chlorine tabs and powder. Walmart also sells in their camping and hunting section water purification tabs.

UV purification is perfect right? Hardly. If for example you put a bottle of near clear water in the sun for 2 to 6 hours it is purified because of photo deactivation. Meaning the bacteria and disease can’t reproduce. They are made dormant. You can drink the water and your body will finish killing them. But if that bottle of water sits in indirect sunlight something called photo reactivation may occur. This means the live things will go back to reproducing. For this reason you need to use UV purified water immediately or it must be purified again just prior to use.

Ozone may be generated and bubble through water to purify water. I don’t really know much about this type. But I assume its used in combination with other methods.

Boiling water is a well known common method for purification and sterilization. However 212F(100C) will not kill spores which are like bacteria seeds. For this you need canning which is boiling under pressure. Botulism in meats is a well known pathogen that canning kills. The pressure allows the water to heat to above 240F(115C) degrees which will kill all life. Note that heating to 140F(60C) or 160F(71C) will also kill most pathogens. Compost piles achieve temps of 140F(60C) to 160F(71C) through bacterial action which generates heat in the decaying process. Like other purification methods that have no residual disinfection boiled water needs to be used soon after treatment.

Distillation is a well known method for getting survival water. If you have a piece of clear plastic you can place a rock in the middle of it and suspend the corners above a water source. Put a cup just underneath the inverted cone for collection of dripping condensation. This must be implemented using some container or hole with the water in it. A similar method places a bag over a tree limb where the bag is tied off to cause moisture from the tree limb and leaves or needles to condensate and drop to the bottom of the bag. If you leave it on the same limb too long you can kill that limb so its good to move the bag around limb to limb. Survivorman Less Stroud (A TV Series) made a urine still in the sand in a desert using the inverted cone method above. He urinated in the sand around the collection cup.

At the top of this article I have a link to an image of a super simple design for a table still. At I make my gas dot com you can buy a kitchen top still for around $240 that will allow you to home distill water, as well as moonshine and ethanol. In a book called “Fire Fox”, the first in a 12 book series, 3 different methods are shown for moon shine stills. There is no reason you couldn’t use these methods for distillation of water on a larger scale. I have seen table top solar stills for $500, that will distill 3/4 to 1.5 gallons of water per day, for sale on the web. As I said in the beginning of this article distilled water is 99.5% pure and after double distillation is 99.9% pure.

Condensation is where some type of gas is compressed, heat is driven off with fans, and then decompressed in radiator type coils such that in becomes very cold on the surface of the coils. When air is cooled by passing it through the coils or radiator water condenses out of the air. This is because the dew point of the air is changed. Air can only hold so much evaporated water which is the dew point. This dew point is based on the temperature of the air. So cooling the air is like squeezing a sponge or ringing a cloth. Its literally rain making. You can get condensers that produce clean drinking water from Eco Blue. Other side benefits of this process is “cooler air with air conditioning” and “dehumidification”. Condensation water from a/c units, refrigeration and freezing units is considered to be grey water, but not pure water. If you were to collect water from these sources the water would need to be further filtered and purified before use.

Airiation is adding of oxygen to water through bubbling action, falling action or stirring/whipping action. Adding air to water causes dissolved solids to separate from water so that they may be easily filtered. Airiation also improves taste and odor. Its good for removing iron, manganese and hydrogen sulfide. This is why you smell stink when passing water treatment facilities. And some wells contain hydrogen sulfide. Airiation can be accomplished with a number of methods. One is forcing air through air stones which disperse the air as small bubbles. Another is letting air fall through a series of colanders. These are flat not spherical. Gravel is a few inches deep in the colander. A few inches of head (depth) is maintained to evenly distribute the water over the whole surface of the colander. In a closed system air can be forced upward through the colanders to cause airiation as well. Forcing air through the falling water with fans from the sides also helps in the airiation process. The water must fall a couple of feet between colanders. Another method uses a paddle wheel to stir and whip water which also causes falling water. Yet another method uses spraying or fountain water. Airiation or Carbon filtering removes radon gas from water.

De-ionization is something I don’t know much about yet. But it removes some minerals from the water. Similar to a de-ionizing air filters i guess.

Home Water Production

Filed under: Sustainable Living — 25 Comments

March 2, 2011

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recommended books in comments. Comment with negative or positive comments.

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After reading this article you may also want to read my post on Blue Gold: Water Filtration, Purification, Flocculation, Sedimentation, Distillation, Condensation and more

Water seems cheap for now right? City water at only a penny per gallon in some of the cheapest locations. But have you seen the price of bottled water? More expensive than gasoline and about the same cost as any soft drink? Of course people are paying for convenience. I will look up some stats sometime and update this article as to how much fresh water we have on earth and salt water. Are we running out of water? We are running out of cheaper sources for quality fresh water at an alarming rate. Our fresh water is replenished all the time though. Remember that the earth is a large distillation plant. We always have about the same amount of fresh water resupplied annually by precipitation. The problem is that we have more people than ever to share this water with and more every day. And this precipitation has fewer areas to collect which are not polluted year after year. Obtaining clean unpolluted fresh water could become a problem. It is a problem for some, especially those in 3rd world countries. However this is not the greatest reason in America for producing or reusing your own water. The greatest reason is that it is for those who do not have access to city water or who don’t want city water.

You may want to read as a prerequisite Green? my blog post on the green building trend and green living. You may also want to read my post Home Sewage Treatment where I talk about gray water. One of filtered (sand filter) grey water’s greatest reuses might be as toilet water. Why should you use city water or home produced water for toilet water if you don’t have to? We are talking about filtered grey water here. The trick might be setting this up so that when you don’t have the grey water other water is supplemented. This might be achieved by having grey water diverted to a tank which would then be diverted into the toilet tank. This intermediate tank would have a float valve so that if its level dropped to a minimum amount other water sources would add to it until it reached a given level. This might add just enough water to flush a few times for example.

For those who produce their own water, they may need to use power in the pumping, filtering and purification. For this reason alone a green home should produce and reuse as much water as it can. The reason is for power conservation.

Sources

Drilled Water Well
Hand Dug Well
Hand Drilled Well
Sand Driven Point Well
Water Jet Water Drilled well
Rain Cistern
Rain Barrel
Pond
Swale (swamp, ditch)
Stream
Springs
Artesian wells.
City Water
Filtered Grey Water
Distillation
De-humidification

Water wells can be drilled for around $8K to $12K at the time of this writing in Arkansas. This depends on the depth of course. I’d like to give digging a well by hand a go sometime. I’d make it 5 foot wide if I could. Explosives would be nice for this. But a good Air powered jack hammer or air hammer might be just as good. I guess in many locations 50 feet would be a good depth for a hand dug well. I’ve seen some that were shallower. My grandmother talks of a hand dug well near where I grew up in Yell county Arkansas, where the diggers had to quit because of gas seeping into the bottom while they were trying to dig. They were almost unable to breathe. In fact near where that well was dug a drilled well had been made. You could hear gas bubbling from the water in that well and if you struck a match above the hole it would flare up due to natural gas rising from the well.

In some locations a person might find mud, clay or sand near the top which would cave in if not stabilized with some kind of retaining wall. If it were me I’d use small diameter rebar. I’d make spikes to be hammered into the wall which would attach to rebar rings and verticals. This would make a mesh along side the cylindrical walls. Might attach chicken wire to this. Then plaster it. At the time of this writing this might cost you between $2 and $4 per square foot. And as an example 10 foot of wall area in a 5 foot diameter well would be 314 square feet. Might need tubing for weep holes here and there so that ground water can drain down into the well. Though only the weak areas would need this plaster wall. Once you hit shale or rock this would not be necessary. Personally I’d use rock climbing gear for getting in and out of the well hole. Though rope ladders can be easily made, or cable ladders. I would suggest an industrial full body harness and good rope with someone at the top belaying the climber. Any kind of sturdy ring can be used for belaying. Nylon rope is best, but no reason that fiber ropes couldn’t be used. Two lanyards with clips would work well. Just move one side or the other up the ladder as you go.

As an example lets say you have a well that is 5 foot in diameter and it has 10 foot of water in the bottom, this is around 5000 gallons. If you could widen that 10 foot depth at the bottom to 10 foot of diameter it would then contain around 23,000 gallons. Of course water will fill it as you draw water from it. In drier seasons it might not fill as fast as you draw it. Other times it could fill as fast as you draw water from it. The point being the potential water storage vs usage. For example a typical non conserving family in the city might use 10,000 gallons of water per month. This does not include water for garden irrigation or barnyard animals. It might include water for pets and lawns and shrubs.

For self drilling wells I have seen 3 point hitch PTO or hydraulic driven devices. There are also hand drilling equipment available. Mother Earth News list some in their advertisements. I have seen some at www.lemans.com. Some are driven into mud, sand, small gravel, clay and possibly shale in the same way that you might hand drive steel fence post. It wouldn’t be hard to make a pile driver for this purpose if you encountered something which was a bit to difficult and need a little extra power. Even by hand you could rig up a tripod with a pulley at the top, rope could lift a pile (heavy metal or wooden cylinder) to then be dropped onto the pipe being driven. It wouldn’t even be difficult to setup a mechanical lifting device, just look on youtube at a thing called “power hammer’ used in blacksmithing. Same thing could be used in pile driving.

You will also see some on YouTube drills that use water pressure pumped into the bits and drilling device which also push material back up. I suppose these hand type drills are good for 50 foot in softer earth. I can’t see them working in any stone or rock. Pressure sprayers or jet sprayers might also make this system more efficient by boosting the water pressure from normal water faucet pressure of around 50 psi to 100′s or 1000′s of psi. The point is that there are many options for making wells of different sizes and depths.

I showed you above an illustration of a hand operated water pump. I now give you an illustration of a torpedo bucket. This bucket is smaller in diameter than a well casing. For example lets say you have a 6″ diameter well then your bucket is 5″ in diameter. If it were 1 foot tall or long it would contain approximately one gallon of water. 2 feet 2 gallons etc. This bucket is a perfect cylinder shape and has a check valve in the bottom so that when it hits the water and as it sinks it fills up with water. When you lift it by pulling up on the rope, the weight of the check valve and force of water will push the check valve down and close it. A T-handle is attached to the shaft of the check valve so that once it is drawn back up above the well opening all that is needed for it to be dumped is to lift that check valve by its handle at the bottom. The water then flows out the bottom of the torpedo bucket into another container or trough.

A “swale” is a ditch or swamp or marsh type of water storage. This is mainly an easy way to prevent runoff water from either running off or to slow it down. If a person were cleaver they could build a tank, fill it with gravel and let it collect water like a pond, then pump from it as if pumping from a water well. What advantage might this have? Well in areas where rain water collection is prohibited this wouldn’t exactly be illegal, especially if no one knows its really an underground tank. Technically its not an underground tank. Also water stored this way won’t evaporate like open ponds. Plants just above the water storage area can drop roots down into it. Hugelkultur is a type of swale where rotting wood is used to store water like a sponge. I’m sure we can think of other good advantages and uses if we try.

Rain barrels. In any building of which the entire roof is not used for collection gutters might direct water into rain barrels which simply overflow when full. This water can easily be used then for watering yard plants or garden plants which are nearby the barrel. A cistern is a bit larger. One cubic foot is a little over 7 gallons of water. A cistern that is 10 feet by 10 feet by 12 feet deep would hold near 10,000 gallons of water. If I were going to look into cistern making I’d look into pool making as a source of information on how to construct them properly. For pool construction a person might look for books on gunite and shot crete, which are forms of sprayed concrete. You would even want a nice pool ladder maybe going down into the cistern for maintenance. A cistern where light is kept from it of course would not grow algae. If I made one I’d want to put pool lights in the bottom of it so that I could turn them on for inspection of the water. I have yet to find good books in regards to pool construction. If any reader knows of any please leave a comment. For collection you need to remember that a 1000 square foot area will collect about 600 gallons in a 1 inch rain. In Arkansas we get about 50 inches a year of rain. So we could collect on that 1000 feet almost 30,000 gallons in one year. The math is not difficult.

For collected drinking and food prep water one might consider a “first flush” system, where the first few gallons that wash bird poo off the roof is simply discarded. However I’d say it would be better redirected to a barrel where it could be used for watering lawn plants.

Another good idea would be to put the cistern inside the house at or above floor level for use as extra thermal mass. Of course if the cistern is not full then it is functioning only partly for thermal mass purpose. And when fresh water enters the cistern this would affect the temperature of the house.

Ok so there will be some amount of bird and squirrel shit in the water! Big deal.. For filtering and chlorination I’ll refer you to the “Solar Living Source book”. Have you thought about how in city water many municipalities take lake water which is full of fish shit, bird shit, small critter shit, dead animals and fish, possibly human waste, maybe gasoline and oil and other particulate matter. They put this in settling tanks, filter it, get the parts per million in particulate matter down to a level where you can’t see or smell anything. They add chlorine and fluoride. Then they pipe it too you. Also in the Solar Living Source Book you will see an advertisement for pond liners. These advertise to be rodent proof. You can get them up to 40 mil thick, which is about 7 times thicker than the thickest rolls of plastic you buy at the hardware store. It would be a good idea to make a bowl shaped pond near the roof of a shed, barn, house, whatever for collection and have the rainwater run off directly into this pond before touches dirt. Have the pond lined with the rubber liner and I’d suggest white limestone gravel as a cover over the pond liner. Have the gravel at least a few inches thick. Keep the livestock out of it and you could easily have 50,000 or 100,000 gallons of very pure rain water at hand. Wouldn’t be a bad idea for a swimming pond aye?

Of course this pond will get some leaf debris and other blown in debris in it. All ponds get fish in them because birds carry fish eggs on their feet from pond to pond. I would suggest planning some way to drain this pond easily with the turn of a valve. Or pump it out every now and then, clean it and let it refill with fresh rain water.

If you are lucky enough to have a good stream on your property by all means use it. Damming it may be a good idea. The book “Producing your own Power” shows how to make some log crib dams in its hydro power section. Springs and Artesian wells are a prise indeed. A spring might be made from drilling a horizontal bore hole into a hillside. I have never seen this done but it is an idea to consider.

If you have a gray water system in your house then you are filtering the gray water in a sand filter of some kind. This water can be reused inside on plants or outside for plants and animals if it is purified. Purification can be chlorination or exposing it to ultraviolet light. See the Solar Living Source book for more info on devises for this.

There are distillation units for the stove top which can be bought. Solar distillation units can be easily made. The “Earthship” books speaks of solar distillation and might have some plans for a unit. Ecoblue makes a dehumidifier which produces pure clean drinking water. Other types of dehumidifiers produce gray water which can be sent to the sand filter. In Arkansas we should be able to get all our drinking water from dehumidification as we have a very humid climate.

Pumps, Collection

Hand Pump
Well Bucket
Ram Pump
Piston Pump
Submersible Pump
Wind Mill Pump

I have found source for the old fashioned hand pumps. LehMan’s .com sells some, along with repair kits containing leather and rubber parts needed to fix them. “Mother Earth News” may list some for sale. And I hear that “Tractor Supply” may sell them. If you search YouTube you may find many video’s on how to produce from hardware store parts your own piston style hand pumps using pvc pipes and simple parts. This is the same kind of pump that wind mill pumps use. They work in similar fashion as the old hand operated tire inner tube pumps which pump air not water. I intend to draw up some plans for a couple of different designs for hand operated water pumps and post the images here soon.

These hand pumps might be good on a hand dug well, a drilled well or for use in getting water from cisterns, at least as backup pumps to electric pumps. I will mention a ram pump which several of the books I recommend have talked about. A ram pump is where you use the force of water moving downhill to actually pump a small percentage, say 10% up hill and into a tank or pond. This works without any power at all other than the power of moving water and gravity. I do suspect very few people would happen to have a situation where they could take advantage of this. This kind of pump can be bought or even easily constructed. The book “Producing your own power” shows how to construct one. I saw something similar to a ram pump on a YouTube video which uses air bubbles to raise water to almost any level. Similarly to ram pumps this only pumps a percentage of the downward water flow upward.

I am sure wind mill pumps can be purchased. These are used widely in the USA. Search the web for windmill pumps.

Rain Collection

Roof Tops
Pond Liners
Tarps

For collection of rain water just about any roof will do. I do not like the idea of collecting rainwater from roofs that have tar or asphalt shingles for anything but garden use. However rubber roll roofing would be fine. Remember 1000 foot square means 600 gallons in a 1 inch rain. That’s nothing to sneeze at. In some cases if you just don’t have the roof space then string up a tarp. In other cases it would be a simple matter to cover an area of sloped ground with a pond liner and a bit of gravel over this to keep the sun from damaging the liner. This could be drained into a cistern or another pond. The pond liner would merely be to keep the water more pure.

The one thing I have not really talked about in this article is pressure tanks. These are well known and there is plenty of information on them. Consider this though for a makeshift pressure tank. Use a coil of plastic pipe. A percentage of the pipe would need to be air for this to work.

It might be nice to monitor water production with flow meters. Water Meters Here is one web site that sells some water meters. If any reader knows of any other good sources for economical home water meters both as gauges and as digital devices that can be read by computer please leave a comment.

I can see now that I need to add sections or other post on water purification and filtration which I do not really cover in this post. I would think that a person might find some good army or military manual on this topic. I recently read where you could put near clear water in clear glass or plastic bottles, and lay it in direct sun for 2 to 6 hours to kill bacteria with UV sun rays. I’ve also heard that water flowing in a shallow stream for a distance of 100 feet in bright direct sun will be purified. Anyone have info about that?

Recommended Books

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Tags: Cistern, Home Water, Rain Water, Water Production, Water Pump, Water Storage, Water Well

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Home Sewage Treatment

Filed under: Sustainable Living — 2 Comments

March 2, 2011

Please feel free to rate my articles, submit comments, submit links, video’s and recommended books in comments. Comment with negative or positive comments. Ask questions with a comment.

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We have two types..

Black Water
Gray Water

Black water is of course water with urine and fecal matter in it. However health departments may consider bath water, shower water and bathroom sink water to be black water as well. I’ll list some possible options and then talk about them.

Septic Tanks
City Sewage System
Low Flush Toilets
Flushless Urinals
Sludge Ponds
Composting Toilets
Cleavus
Incinerating Toilets
Solar Toilets
Out Houses
Chemical Closets (In modern times these are RV toilets or Comercial Portable Potties)

You may want to read as a prerequisite Green? my blog post on the green building trend and green living.

I live in Arkansas and our health department has a PDF which I would like to share. Onsite Waste Water Systems I am sure that other states may have similar documents posted by their health departments. Counties or Parishes may have their own regulations as well. Cities of course will have their own regulations.

In Arkansas if you are in my area, Pope County, you will not be regulated by the county if you have more than 10 acres and are in the county not in city limits. You would still be regulated by the state however. Arkansas state health department amazingly allows composting toilets and suggest two models or brands on their web site. Remember the wonderful outhouses? Well, a composting toilet is an outhouse inside your house! Sounds wonderful huh? This toilet actually vents gasses well, it may also heat to increase aerobic digestion. It does have to be cleaned out manually. The compost may be buried near trees, shrubs and flowering plants, but must be completely buried and not merely sprinkled on top of the ground. You may have to add saw dust, shredded paper, grain straw or grass clippings to the compost to aid in the process. These toilets require no expensive or harsh chemicals at all and require no water.

Now you might ask why would anyone in their right mind want a composting toilet?
It may be cheaper than septic as a way to start out. It reduces your water demand dramatically because it requires no water for flushing as far as I know. It produces valuable fertilizer. The orientals have been using human waste to fertilize their botanical gardens for 1000′s of years.

Personally I would not have this as the only toilet in my home. I would have a low flush toilet and a flushless urinal for men as well as soon as I could afford the addition. Low flush means it uses a very low volume of water on each flush because it has a better design in the bowl for the ejection and circulation of the water. The first models didn’t really work well and had to be flushed twice or more sometimes defeating the purpose. Pay attention to the design of the toilet you buy and make sure its one that has been properly designed. It may seem odd to have a urinal in a home bathroom for men, but a flushless urinal can greatly reduce the water needed for male urination. They use no water at all. These are widely available now and I see no reason why they should not be used in the home.

A cleavus is a composting system in a multi story home with a basement. The composter is in the basement. A toilet on each floor is nearly directly above the composter. This uses flushing toilets as far as I know.

A sludge pond is a regular symmetrically shaped pond with a liner. On top of the liner you would have so much gravel and so much sand and about a foot or so of water. Sand could be piled near the surface in areas and grasses could be planted here and there. A duel pond system could be incorporated so that once one pond is full of sludge it could be allowed to dry up. The dry sludge could then actually be take to a city sewage plant where they may add it to landfill compost. Or it could be converted into methane and fertilizer. The fertilizer is called Humanure and is used on trees, shrubs and flowering plants.

In Arkansas and as I suspect in most states this is not allowed except as an experimental on site treatment situation. Paper work would need to be filled out with complete design documentation and drawings. If approved it would be monitored by the health department routinely. They always reserve the right to shut it down. They probably would not approve any open system. They are too worried about mosquitoes and small animals such as rodents spreading disease about. I would think you might have a chance of getting permission for something that was fully covered by a glass green house or glass geodesic agri dome. Agri-dome kits can be bought for $5000 to $12,000 depending on size. Also it would take time to get approval for such a project.

If you get the “Solar Living Source Book”, it will cover sewer and septic. It also list some products for composting toilets and incinerating toilets. And in the “Earthship” books, one will cover a solar incinerating toilet with description and design images and photos. Commercial incinerating toilets use gas and cook the human waste at about 400 to 500 degrees. They are automated I suppose to deal with ash collection. I would think that the ash could be spread anywhere as it would be completely sanitary. The solar toilet works on the same principle however as the solar oven. A solar oven can be made which in bright summer sun will heat to about 400 degrees for hours throughout the middle of the day. Now imagine a 400 degree oven with a toilet seat above! Well you may not want to sit on it during the oven operation hours. A tumbler may be added to turn the waste material as it is being incinerated. Waste is completely turned to ash and is safe to be handled when cool by hand. As far as I know no solar incinerating toilet is commercially available at this time.

I hear that some cities are charging residents for sewer based on their gallons of water used on the city water system and are charging twice as much for the sewer per gallon as for the city water per gallon. A great reason to go Green I’d say. Septic tanks are usually required to be much larger than would be needed for a green home that is highly water conservative with a gray water system. That would be my only gripe about septic. This would make them overly expensive. Septic tanks at the time of this writing might cost you $2500 in the Arkansas area to have installed.

If you put one in be wary of flat terrain which can become highly saturated in rainy periods and cause your septic to backup the lines. Put a cleanout tube between the house and the tank that extends near or to the surface. Don’t bury them too deep, not more than a foot as many septic cleanout services will not dig at all or more than a foot. If you want to buy a house with a septic tank then force the seller to have it inspected first which requires a cleanout. And make sure the locations are marked. Use Ridex bactera once per week to aid in waste digestion. Soaps kill bacteria when put down drains. Powdered detergents I hear might be a problem, use liquids instead. Fats from foods can be a problem because they can solidify and stop up leach lines. At the time of this writing a pump out service in the Arkansas area might charge $200 to $300 for a cleanout or more. If you were to build on a site that didn’t pass a perk test, then you would have a tank which would require a service contract for pumpouts. It might need to be pumped out once a week once a month depending on use. For this reason most people would never build on a site that didn’t perk, who wants to spend $100 a week or more on cleanouts? A green home with grey water system would be the only way to go when doing this option.

They can repair eroded baffle walls too, as well as leech lines that have caved in and root damage. Some septic’s and most now days have a junction box for the leech lines which is separate from the septic tanks but nearby it. These pumping services can use a water jet to clean out your entire system. If you have a lot of solid matter in the tank which might require liquefying for pumping then an extra charge may be incurred. They basically flush it with surface water pulled out of the tank at the beginning of the process. And of course they charge by the gallon for clean out. Code requires tanks sized on occupancy meaning number of bed rooms in the home. 500 gallon may be the smallest size. 1000 gallon is typical. Code also requires 300 feet of leech line. It is best to use multiple lines coming off of a junction box. Schedule 40 pvc pipe should be used.

In the Earthship books the author shows how to construct some small outlaw septic tanks. There are many older dwelling sites that have tanks which would not meed code standards. And there are still people who run their sewage into a field, in a location where its not highly visible even in Arkansas and get away with it. State department would not like it if they knew about it. The main thing to consider is health. Just love your neighbor as yourself, keep things healthy, out of site and out of smell and out of mind.

I read on a forum post recently a recommendation to make an outhouse and disguise it as a tool shed. Keep a tool box sitting on top of the toilet seat lid. Personally I’d construct a concrete container for the composting area beneath. I’d also bury any compost that I removed from it as health department requires for composted human waste.

Chemical toilets use alkaline based chemical such as caustic soda, which is commercial lye. There may be other chemicals in use as well. I however think this is a bad idea on the homestead. However our RV’s use such chemicals and the portable plastic toilets you see in use on construction sites and now in the military also use chemicals. When I learn more I’ll post more info here on this issue.

Gray water comes from these sources

De-humidification
Kitchen Sinks
Dish washer
Utility Sinks
Bath Sinks
Shower
Bath tubs
Cloths Washing

Health Departments may argue that shower, bath water, and bathroom sink water is also black water. However if properly filtered in a sand filter or planter filter, and if properly sanitized with chlorination or ultraviolet light, they may let you get away with returning this water to the environment. This water can certainly be reused to water house hold, green house and garden plants, as well as the lawns,flowers, shrubs and trees. And how about reusing this water in toilets vs. using city water or cleaner water home produced water. Matter of fact I’d use all gray water for toilets in place of city water or purer home produced water in toilets when possible. Of course it would have to be filtered first with a sand/plant filter. A plant filter is inside a greenhouse where you have a lined tank. Gravel is in the bottom of the tank, then deep sand, then soil, then plants on top. Filtered water can be pumped from the bottom gravel area. Again to use this water outside it must be purified first. There is not much more to say about gray water except to say that this reuse would mean a lower electric bill or city water bill.

Recommended Books

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Tags: Black Water, Chemical Closet, Composting Toilet, Gray Water, Grey Water, Home Septic, Humanure, Methane Digestion, Out House, Sewage, Sewer, Sludge Pond

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Home Energy Production-Fuel

Filed under: Sustainable Living — 16 Comments

February 28, 2011

Please feel free to rate my articles, submit comments, submit links, video’s and recommended books in comments. Comment with negative or positive comments. Ask questions with a comment.

The Survival Pod Cast
Off Grid Net

You may want to read as a prerequisite Green? my blog post on the green building trend and green living.

Fuel around the home comes in 3 types of course.

Solid
Liquid
Gas

Of the Solid fuels we have..

Cord Wood
Wood Chips or Saw Dust
Wood Pellets
Coal
Coke (A coal product)
Charcoal
Carbide (For lamps only)
Bio-Brickets (Made from weeds, yard waste, rice hulls, trash etc.)
Bio-Pellets

The above almost needs no explanation. However I must ask my readers, where in or around Arkansas can one get Coal or Coke? We have several charcoal plants in Arkansas. We do have some coal mines on the western side of Arkansas. A friend of mine bought 3 50 gallon drums of coal from a mine in Oklahoma, but I never learned its location or contact info. As a trucker I picked up a load of insulation once at a coke plant in Alabama. From what I understand about coke, it is coal that has been cooked so that it is more condensed. It burns much hotter than coal. It is used in the foundry business. I have not yet looked to see if maybe it can be ordered by the 50 or 100lb bags from any source on the net. Also EPA has outlawed some forms of coal from being burned unless it is burned cleanly. The burning of coal and wood produces some useful byproducts. The ash from burned coal (fly ash) can be mixed with lime and then be used like cement. The white powdery ash from burnt wood can be used to make lye soap. Lye soap is a very alkaline soap, which means its a great degreaser.

Bio-Brickets and Pellets are made from common plant materials, trash, wood etc. This can be made at home by compressing in molds this material with some binder added such as paper pulp. The guy on a forum that told us of this drives his car over his press to compress the brickets. These brickets and pellets could be gasified in a wood gasifier.

I don’t know much about fuel oils or lamp oils. I have used carbide in caving. It looks like small light weight rocks. You add water to it and the rocks produce acetylene gas and heat. I hear that its harder to get carbide today than it was a few years back.

Of the Liquid Fuels we have..

Diesel
Bio-Diesel
Gasoline
Kerosene (Aviation or Jet Fuel)
Alcohol (PGA from liquor stores)
Ethanol (corn whiskey)
Wood Alcohol (made from wood gas)
Fuel Oil for lamps or heating.

Diesel, Gasoline, Kerosene, Alcohol, Fuel and Lamp oils must be purchased.

How do you produce your own Bio-diesel? First you find some oil or fat, such as veggie oil or animal lard. Then you somehow chemically combine some kind of alcohol with it. First you must from what I hear combine the alcohol with lye. On one of my other articles I stated that lye is sodium hydroxide(commercial) or potassium hydroxide(drippings from flowing water through pot ash). Mix the treated alcohol with the oil. Some of it will settle to the bottom, pour off the top and add some kind of acid back to it to get the PH back to normal. There will be more sedimentation and you again pour off the top. After this you rinse the fuel with water. Yes, you heard me right, rinse it with water. This is where you mix it with water, and water removes some of the non fuel particles. You pour the fuel off the top of the water. Wikipedia has decent article about this, but doesn’t layout any recipe’s. I’d say a first home attempt at this might be to simply save all used cooking oils, filter them, then make some ethanol and with a stove top still. Find a cheap used diesel engine for testing, such as a really old well used tractor. Mix the ethanol and oil and give it a try. I suppose that if you do not want to go to the trouble of making your own alcohol you could buy some PGA like Everclear from the liquor store and give that a try.

Ethanol however is an easy one. I make my gas dot com Or just look on the web for the many types of stills that people have posted. Also Fox Fire book shows how old timers distilled moonshine. Though note that local laws may prohibit the production due to it being illegal to drink it. Its more highly illegal to transport it. I at one time heard that it was legal for any farmer to produce up to 300 gallons a year for use in his farm tractor. I have no idea if this is true or not. To mix ethanol with gasoline completely the ethanol needs to be 190 Proof or better. So it will have to be triple distilled as the first batch is only about 100 proof. Home made ethanol can be used in Coleman stoves and probably kerosene lamps. You can make your own ethanol at home for around 50 cents to $1 per gallon using the electric still at I make my gas dot com. That still cost just under $250. There are other expenses than the still.

I’ll talk about Wood alcohol in the next section under Wood gas.

Of the gas (non liquid) fuels we have..

Propane
Natural Gas (Methane from gas wells)
Methane
Hydrogen (Taken from the electrolysis of water)
Acetylene (For cutting and welding metals only)
Wood Gas (made by cooking wood)

Propane, Natural Gas (natural gas is the more economical choice), Acetylene must be purchased.

The book I mentioned above “Producing your own power” covers methane production. It has some good general information and drawings. It doesn’t have detailed drawings or plans for methane digester equipment. Search the web, I’m sure you will find some and there are some video’s on youtube for this. Methane is produced during the part of digestions that is absent of oxygen. So when you first load a digester, the first stage of the digestion is the oxygen loving bacterial action. This produces CO2. Same thing that is in your soft drinks. Same thing that is produced from fermentation for wine, beer and other alcohols. As the oxygen is being consumed nutrients for the oxygen hating bacteria are being made and left behind in the mix. Those types of bacteria get started and produce the methane and hydrogen sulfide. This is what you smell when you drive by a paper mill, cattle feed lot, and its what is added to natural gas which has no smell. Its also what you smell when you pass gas or defecate. The gas you get from the digestion is a mix of methane, co2 and hydrogen sulfide. The co2 would cause a flame to be a bit yellow and sooty. The co2 can be filtered to produce a hotter more pure methane flame would be blue in color. Methane will work in a diesel engine by mixing it with 5% or so diesel as it is fed in.

FEMA has produced a FEMA Wood Gasifier PDF that can be found on the web. It shows us how to turn wood chips into a gas. This gas can be used in any gasoline or propane powered engine. This will work in a diesel engine by mixing it with 5% or so diesel as it is fed in. 20 to 30 lbs of wood or similar material will be equivalent in energy to 1 gallon of gasoline. If powering an automobile roughly 1 to 1.5 lbs of wood per mile would be required. The material has to be shredded, chipped, pelletized, bricked or cubed to be used in a wood gasifier. What kind of gasses are in wood gas? Wood gas contains hydrogen, carbon monoxide (which is combustible), tars and possibly some methane.

I have heard that if this gas is passed through an automotive catalytic converter it is turned into what is called wood alcohol(methanol). I’ve also heard that if you cool the gas by piping it through a copper tube coil, which is within a barrel of cool water that it will condense into wood alcohol yet with tars and other impurities which must be filtered. Tars need to be filtered or engines must be cleaned routinely. This can then be stored like gasoline and run in any gasoline powered engine except 2 stroke engines. It doesn’t mix with oil well. However could it be chemically combined with lye and then oils to make bio-diesel.

For hydrogen production you might look on youtube for some demonstrations. Its pretty simple to get hydrogen from water. However it does consume electricity. Hydrogen gas only liquefies at a very high pressure(1000′s of psi). This means it takes high pressure to store much of it. Storing of hydrogen is similar to the storing of methane or natural gas. Whereas propane liquefies at pressures of around 350 psi. Hydrogen flames are colorless and can not be seen. This makes hydrogen dangerous to use. Hydrogen causes metals to become brittle and crack. It also dissolves metals. And because it is the smallest atom, it leaks through just about anything. These problems mean that hydrogen is best used as it is produced. For example it can be used as it is produced in cutting and welding of metals. The water needs to have a bit of salt added to it in order for electrolysis to make the most efficient use of the electricity. When you make hydrogen the hydrogen and oxygen can be separated or it can be left in a mixed (hydrogen-oxygen) state until burned. When burned the exhaust produced is H2O, yes water only. The main engines of the space shuttle use hydrogen. If you notice under the engines you see no flame, just a slight blueish color.

The storage of solid and liquid fuels is a pretty simple matter. But the storage of gas is a whole other ball game. I have heard of one good solution where you store gas in tractor tire inner tubes. You might stack these tubes 6 high so that they stand about 10 feet high. When you want gas back out of them you simply throw up a piece of plywood and then some concrete blocks on top. The weight will pressurize the gas and push it back out of into your gas lines. One inner tube holds about 8 cubic feet of gas. 6 would hold about 50 cubic feet of gas. 4 stacks then would hold about 200 cubic feet of gas. If you could use an air compressor to say put this in a propane tank and for simplicity I’ll use rectangular dimensions. Lets say the tank is 3 feet by 3 feet by 10 feet long. This is about 90 cubic feet. Lets make it 100 cubic feet to keep it simple. Using a standard air compressor you can put gas in this tank up to 150 PSI. Gas is produced at 14.6 PSI which is atmospheric pressure at sea level. So divide 150 PSI by 14.6 and then multiply that by 100 cubic feet. That would be about 10 times 100 or 1000 cubic feet of gas. I have read that 127 cubic feet of methane is approximately equivalent to 1 gallon of gasoline in energy. This is equal to about 7 gallons of gasoline. At any rate, it is enough gas to do something with. As a ballpark estimate about one pound of barnyard manure will produce about 1 cubic foot of methane. You would need 1000 lbs of manure in this example or half a ton to fill this tank. 1 cubic yard of manure is about 1 ton of manure. So you can see for yourself the possibilities.

Recommended Books
	Producing your own Power-Has info about wood as fuel and methane production from manures.

Also see my web sites larrydgray.net and arksoft.org

Please Visit Christian Forums

Tags: Bio Brickets, Bio Diesel, Bio Gas, Bio Pellets, Coal, Coke, Diesel, Ethanol, Fuel, Gasoline, Kerosene, Propane, Wood, Wood Alcohol, Wood Chips, Wood Gas, Wood Pellets

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Home Energy Production-Electricity

Filed under: Sustainable Living — 30 Comments

February 27, 2011

Please feel free to rate my articles, submit comments, submit links, video’s and recommended books in comments. Comment with negative or positive comments. Ask questions with a comment.

The Survival Pod Cast
Off Grid Net

Can a home be self powered? We know the answer is yes, but at what cost? This is a question of which the answer is a moving target. From what I have read thus far a compromise must be made by the home owner in order for it to be economically feasible. The home owner must reduce his power requirements to a bare minimum. Sure anyone can throw $150,000 in solar panels on most any home and it will power that modern home completely day in and day out depending on the location of the home. Cloudier locations will need additional help by combining wind or hydro with solar. However any location would benefit from a combined system in that when one type is not producing the other probably is. I will list some options the home owner has in producing his own power.

You may want to read as a prerequisite Green? my blog post on the green building trend and green living. Also my Home Water Production post might reduce your electric demand which will make home electrical production more feasable.

Solar Panels
Wind Generator
Hydro Generator
Hydrogen Fuel Cell
Gas Engine powered Generator (All types of gasses or liquid fuels)
Steam Engine Generator (At least a possibility that could be run on solid fuels)
Thermo Electric Generation (Thermocouple principle)

Solar Panels come in several types, and they are working on solar shingles. I will refer you to the Solar Living Sourcebook . This book goes into very good detail describing all the current types of solar cells and panels and the entire science. It also covers wind and hydro a bit. A much better book for wind and hydro would be a 1970′s book called “Producing your own power”.

Many locations wouldn’t benefit from wind power much, if at all. Do some research first to see if there is enough wind in your location. There are two types of wind mills, rotor type that is horizontal, and vertical wind turbines. For wind I personally like the looks and idea of the vertical wind turbines. You can find videos on youtube on DIY vertical wind turbines. For the Rotor type I will note that they usually come in 2 or 3 blade rotors. The mills with many blades which you see on farms are for pumping water. Rotors look like air plane propeller blades but are shaped very differently. The leading edge on air plane props is thin, but thick on the wind rotors. Some wind generators have transmissions for keeping the generator within a certain rpm range even at slow wind speeds. Others have brakes which actually resemble brake shoes in shape, except that they brake using air flow resistance. These brakes have springs which stretch under centrifugal force to allow the brakes to open up causing drag. This keeps the wind from tearing up your wind mill under high winds. Some mills might have a wind vane which may be turned 90 degrees to the wind so that it keeps the wind mill in a position where wind is hitting it from the side. This has the effect of turning the wind mill off, and it keeps high winds from damaging the mill. Some rotors may be locked as well. Some mills have more than one generator where they are turned at the same time by gears or sprockets. In general a wind mill should be 500 feet from any man made structure, and should be 30 feet above the higher tree tops.

For hydro power I would have to say that most locations could not benefit from this. Also hydro power may fall under the regulation of the EPA and Corp of engineers. However I would like to say that there may be many locations that could benefit from hydro power if carefully considered. One problem with hydro electricity is that it usually must be transmitted some distance to the dwelling site. This can be a problem if transmitting A/C because it might be against the law. Matter of fact I have read that it may be against the law to even produce A/C directly with hydro without permits and regulations and oversight. You are free however to produce D/C with hydro. Hydro power would be a good choice for out buildings such as mills, shops or barns or animal shelters.

Hydrogen fuel cells? These work like a battery in a sense. You have hydrogen on one side and oxygen on the other side of a membrane. As the hydrogen tries to pass through the membrane to combine with oxygen into water oxygen gives off electrons that the hydrogen side needs. This causes current to flow in any circuit from the negative side back to the positive side. I suppose when you run out of hydrogen and oxygen its like having a dead battery. It must be refueled with fresh hydrogen and oxygen to continue. This concludes my overly simplistic description. For now this technology is not really feasible or available for home use. The military is beginning to make use of this. It is used in some commercial applications on fairly large scales.

I guess we all know about small gasoline powered generators. And we have seen larger diesel generators. Farms around the USA use tractor PTO powered diesel generators. As a matter of fact trains are run by large diesel generators. So are larger ships. Yes that is correct, trains and larger ships are really electrically powered! Well aside from gasoline and diesel the home owner might have access to other fuels which would work just as well. Next is a list of fuels that might power your combustion engine powered generators.

Bio-diesel (cooking oil or vegetable oils with some alcohol based additive)
Ethanol (corn whiskey, or anything that can be fermented and distilled)
Methane (you guessed it, farts, from manure or other organic garden waste and possibly even algae) (The Natural Gas that we get from a gas well is methane gas.)
Hydrogen (water without the oxygen, taken using electrolysis )(though the industry gets this mostly from fossil fuels)
Wood gas (the part that we see as a flame when burning wood, only it doesn’t ignite, made by the cooking of wood chips)
Wood alcohol (“Methanol” wood gas that has been run through an automotive catalytic converter or by simply cooling the gas so that it condenses or condensed in the same way that moon shine stills condense ethanol)

I explain the fuel production in the post on Home Energy Production-Fuels. In this I talk about methane production and wood gas and wood alcohol production.

Steam engine? I have seen some nice looking small scale steam engines on the web for sale. Yes I would consider this in a home situation, powered by wood or coal fire. But remember steam is dangerous. Its the kind of thing you power up, keep everyone away while its running, and don’t go near it again until its powered down and cool. Though modern steam engines may be more well designed with safer better more reliable release valves and designed to implode rather than explode. If they implode the water simply falls downward and puts out the fire. Steam is still used in industry a lot. I hear for power production steam engines are inefficient. In other words using the wood for wood gas powered generator would be far better use of the wood. Though steam is still something to consider for locomotion as in boats or rail. Steam can be used for some industrial purposes where a long rod with pulleys along it turn belts which power industrial machines.

Steam itself is also used much in the food industry for cooking. Steam kettles. Some kettles produce the steam at the kettle from electric heat. Other large kitchens still have gas fired boilers in a basement and pipe the steam to the kitchen. From what little I have read using concentrated solar rays to power a home steam engine is not feasible at this time. Though I hear Europeans are beginning to successfully use this technique on the small scale.

But if you are really interested in steam engines just take a look at the numerous YoutTube video’s demonstrating small home made steam engines. Steam power is definitely something to think about.

For home electrical storage you have about two main choices. Lead acid batteries is one. The power grid is another. Well nickel iron batteries would be another but they are very expensive, however they take a lot of abuse and last 20 years easily. On a side note these batteries use potassium hydroxide as an electrolyte. Potassium hydroxide you may know as pot ash which is used to make home made lye soap. You make lye by pouring water over pot ash (white fluffy ash from the burning of wood) and the drippings from this is lye. This means it is alkaline the opposite of acid. Lead acid batteries seem to be the only good choice for off grid storage and has been used since we began using electricity. Lead acid batteries use sulfuric acid and lead plates. This acid of course is dangerous outside the battery cases. So be careful. It will burn skin and make holes in clothing and shoes or boots. Fumes might not be good either.

Battery makers have come up with special ways to make the lead plates as to increase the surface area. This means you can store more electrons in a smaller volume which means lighter batteries. A person could make his own batteries but they would not compare in performance and size to the commercially available ones. Lead will coat anything that solder would stick to. Making your own plates would not be difficult. A person could roll his own plates or foil with what is called a Jewelers Roller Mill. With this mill you could also make waffle patterns or other patterns in the plates to increase surface area. I would guess you could make plates from silver, copper, aluminum, lead, nickle and zink for this purpose. Brass and bronze maybe as well. I doubt that you will wan to make gold or platinum plates or foils, but you could with this mill. A quick web search will reveal web sites that sell all or some of these various metals. It only makes foils or plates 5″ in width though.

Lead foil could also be rolled with nylon cloth in a roll or coil shape. Sulfuric acid is difficult to get in any size larger than a liter. The EPA, DEA, ATF and homeland security will be watching purchases of Sulfuric acid. It would be best to recycle the acid from used batteries. A person could use gallon size glass jugs for a battery case or even make his own ceramic cases. Still this is dangerous business. It would be better just to buy the expensive batteries. A deep cycle battery means that is specially built for many many charge/discharge cycles and will have longer life span. A home would need enough battery power in amp hours to last 3 or 4 days without sun, wind or any form of energy production. The ” Solar Living Source Book” covers batteries in detail.

The marketing hype is that you can use the grid for 100% efficiency battery. This is not exactly the case because there is a power inversion loss of about 6% or more. However batteries are only about 80% efficient. So this still means that the grid is a better choice than batteries in many cases. The feds has mandated that the power companies pay you for any power you supply to the grid. This has the effect of running your meter backwards. I hear some only run your meter backwards to the 0 point, meaning after this you are giving the grid free power. Check with the electric company in your area to get exact details on this, and make sure they are clear. This is called “Net Metering”. Its a great option that makes solar power much more attractive. I have heard that some companies will not give you full credit for the power you put back into the grid however. For example if they charge you 10 cents per kilowatt hour, they may only pay you 6 cents per kilowatt hour for what you put back into the grid. They may only pay you what it supposedly cost them to produce the electricity, but not their profit margin. Make sure you find out how much you will be given credit for. The book “Solar Living Source Book” covers everything you need for hooking up to the grid.

Oh and have you considered that you must provide security, maintenance and replacement for your home power production equipment? This is a service you get when you pay for grid power.

I spoke above about the fact that some compromises will need to be made in order to self power a home. Lets talk about those compromises.

Live in a passive solar home if possible. (This home is the most energy efficient design)

South facing oriented windows (most of the windows are on the south side if not all).
Highly Insulated Roof.
Berming on north/east/west ends.
Use breeze ways or mud closets for entry ways
Use evergreen trees on the north side and coniferous trees on the south side
Seal up house with caucking and other measures (but ventilate well)
Use vapor barriers properly
Ventilate roofing properly
Use thermal barriers properly(i.e. metalic foil coatings on insulation, or even aluminum foil)
Design for natural ventilation and take advantage of natural air flow across nearby landscape and for area.

Upgrade your home to be as energy efficient as possible (This is more than simply adding lots of insulation)
Use gas for anything that you could possibly use gas for in place of electricity including lighting, a/c, refrigeration and freezing. Or at least have this alternative available.
Use heat exchangers on your ventilation and outside air intake.
Use LED and Compact fluorescent lighting instead of incandescent.
Use sky lighting as much as possible.
Use window lighting as much as possible (without overdoing it, too much window space means too much heat loss).
Solar heat water first with backup on demand gas heating of water.
Have on/off switches on all power outlets (vampire repellant)
Use only 120 volt for a/c appliances (no 240, usually for electric a/c, heat, stoves and ovens, washer/dryer, arc welder) Actually 240 is more efficient than 120, but I was indicating overall reduction of power consumption and simplicity. If you want one 240 outlet I see no problem. Do some calculation to see what might work best.
Minimize your use of water if power is required for running/pumped water. (see my post on Home Water production and storage).
Watch out for vampires! These are home appliances that constantly use power even when turned off.

Wind mills and Hydro turbines are fairly easy to make as a DIY project and you can use automotive alternators as the generators. Just search the web for plans. On a side note an automotive generator could be used as an inverter, they produce a/c and then rectify it to DC. You have to bypass this rectification and turn it with a dc motor. Its not efficient but it could be a good makeshift inverter. These are called rotary inverters, widely used by the military at one time. They are not nearly as efficient as solid state inverters but may last longer and be more reliable. Fire Fighters and Electrical companies like using Rotary inverters. They are also far more expensive than solid state inverters. You would only be able to power a half dozen compact fluorescent lights on this however. 3 amps is about all it would supply.

Power Meter Store is a web site that sells watt meters for keeping track of how much power appliances or lights are using. It would be nice one day if a smart home would send power usage stats from all outlets and lights to your PC for review on a spreadsheet. Also before you consider a green home you may want to run a weather station on your home site for a year or two before you build. This station could give you information on an hour by hour, day by day, month by month basis for temperature, barometric pressure, wind direction and velocity, rainfall and humidity. Ice and Snow fall might have to be recorded manually. Also some of the sensors for these now are wireless for easy installation. Weather Shack is a web site that sells such weather stations equipment.

Lastly, my main gripes about the grid are…

In most location there is no competition so you are dealing with a monopoly.
Meter installation charge.
Connect Fee
Disconnect Fee
Base rates

I would like to see a situation with competition everywhere and none of the above. Meaning you simply pay for the electricity you use. If you stop using it, you don’t pay. If you can’t pay, they simply remotely and electronically shut off your access. When you have paid for what you have used, they simply get on a keyboard and turn it back on or better yet, the system does it for them as soon as your balance is no longer in the red. But to be fair I see good reason for the initial new service setup fee and deposit.

Recommended Books
	Producing your own Power-Great info on hydro and wind power.
	Solar Living Sourcebook has really great into on Solar and Grid Tie, as well as some on wind and hydro. Solar heated water as well.

Also see my web sites larrydgray.net and arksoft.org

Tags: Batteries, Generator, Grid Tie, Hydro Power, Lead Acid, Micro Hydro Power, Nickle Iron, Solar Cells, Steam Power, Wind Power

Comment

*Mesh*	*inches*	mm	*Microns*
1 in.	1.00	25.4	25400
7/8 in.	0.875	22.6	22600
3/4 in.	0.750	19.0	19000
5/8 in.	0.625	16.0	16000
0.530 in.	0.530	13.5	13500
1/2 in.	0.500	12.7	12700
7/16 in.	0.438	11.2	11200
3/8 in.	0.375	9.51	9510
5/16 in.	0.312	8.00	8000
0.265 in.	0.265	6.73	6730
1/4 in.	0.250	6.35	6350
No.3 1/2	0.223	5.66	5660
No. 4	0.187	4.76	4760
No. 5	0.157	4.00	4000
No. 6	0.132	3.36	3360
No. 7	0.111	2.83	2830
No. 8	0.0937	2.38	2380
No. 10	0.0787	2.00	2000
No. 12	0.0661	1.68	1680
No. 14	0.0555	1.41	1410
No. 16	0.0469	1.19	1190
No. 18	0.0394	1.00	1000
No. 20	0.0331	0.841	841
No. 25	0.0278	0.707	707
No. 30	0.0234	0.595	595
No. 35	0.0197	0.500	500
No. 40	0.0165	0.420	420
No. 45	0.0139	0.354	354
No. 50	0.0117	0.297	297
No. 60	0.0098	0.250	250
No. 70	0.0083	0.210	210
No. 80	0.0070	0.177	177
No. 100	0.0059	0.149	149
No. 120	0.0049	0.125	125
No. 140	0.0041	0.105	105
No. 170	0.0035	0.088	88
No. 200	0.0029	0.074	74
No. 230	0.0025	0.063	63
No. 270	0.0021	0.053	53
No. 325	0.0017	0.044	44
No. 400	0.0015	0.037	37

Larry D Gray

Category: Sustainable Living

Food Harvest Preservation

Blue Gold: Water Filtration, Purification, Flocculation, Sedimentation, Distillation, Condensation and more

Home Water Production

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Home Energy Production-Fuel

Home Energy Production-Electricity

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