Thank you for your Low Tech research, Scott! After listening to many back episodes (audio only), I recently became a supporter. Why isn't the whole world watching your videos? They should! Solar doesn't work for everybody. My property is full of tall mature trees that cool us with their shade and transpiration, so we don't want to clear them. What little sunny clearing we have grows food. There are several different ways that solar might be inadequate. In the extreme latitudes, there aren't enough daylight hours for almost half the year. Some places, like San Francisco, are chronically socked in by fog. Any place susceptible to major storms may have many days with little sunlight, and adaptations to keep the house from blowing away might involve cliff-dwelling. Have you or anyone you're aware of researched harnessing other sources of heat for cooking, hot water, and some space heating? (Yes, heat the body not the space, but sometimes you need to heat at least a small space for a little while, like while bathing.) Could the bio-digester heat an oven or a water tank, or is that either dangerous, unsanitary, or otherwise impractical? Is there some way to capture and harness the itsy bitsy waste heat from chopping vegetables, grinding flour, or making yarn on a spinning wheel? There is more waste heat from woodworking, such as a drill or saw, but those may not get used daily. Might we need to resort to the Medieval practice of using the ground floor as a barn?
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Thank you for your Low Tech research, Scott! After listening to many back episodes (audio only), I recently became a supporter. Why isn't the whole world watching your videos? They should!
Solar doesn't work for everybody. My property is full of tall mature trees that cool us with their shade and transpiration, so we don't want to clear them. What little sunny clearing we have grows food. There are several different ways that solar might be inadequate. In the extreme latitudes, there aren't enough daylight hours for almost half the year. Some places, like San Francisco, are chronically socked in by fog. Any place susceptible to major storms may have many days with little sunlight, and adaptations to keep the house from blowing away might involve cliff-dwelling.
Have you or anyone you're aware of researched harnessing other sources of heat for cooking, hot water, and some space heating? (Yes, heat the body not the space, but sometimes you need to heat at least a small space for a little while, like while bathing.) Could the bio-digester heat an oven or a water tank, or is that either dangerous, unsanitary, or otherwise impractical? Is there some way to capture and harness the itsy bitsy waste heat from chopping vegetables, grinding flour, or making yarn on a spinning wheel? There is more waste heat from woodworking, such as a drill or saw, but those may not get used daily. Might we need to resort to the Medieval practice of using the ground floor as a barn?