Archive for December, 2007
Saturday, December 29th, 2007
Cordwood Addition Complete
I always imagined that when I am going to be in my mid sixties, i’ll retire to the woods and live in a small wood shack out in nature. Well, why wait?
Here is my lovely little shack:
You can view more pictures and more information by clicking below.
This is the first day of …
No Comments » - Posted in Accomplishments,Challenges,Construction,Infrastructure,Volunteers by Ronny
Friday, December 28th, 2007
CEB Collaboration
One of the goals of our CEB development is to neo-commercialize it: provide an open source business model for producing the machines, where all enabling information is in the public domain. No strings attached.
To do this, we’ll be performing thorough testing of the machine in January. Then we’ll build a second prototype for analyzing …
No Comments » - Posted in Collaborators,Compressed Earth Block Press by Marcin
Thursday, December 27th, 2007
Turbine Update
Our team is working with Dan Granett on the boundary layer turbine (see former blog entry). This will be a profound improvement over the Lister for electrical generation. It will be fired by a Babington burner with a flash steam generator. Here are simplified designs from Dan:
Note that the design is scaleable and DfD …
3 Comments » - Posted in Open Source Technology,Solar Turbine by Marcin
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
CEB Phase 1 Done
It is interesting to see the progress on the Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press from prior art:
to our own conceptual and design drawings:
to raw metal as shown at http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=36
and to reality:
Now we take a mound of dirt and get to work:
Here’s the prototype in action – the very first and raw run – working …
48 Comments » - Posted in Compressed Earth Block Press,Flexible Fabrication,Infrastructure by Marcin
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
CEB Day 35
A quick update on the CEB. Most of the automated hopper assembly is finished. I connected and tested the second cylinder for the hopper, and it moves nicely back and forth. I spent time yesterday, with the ice storm past, digging some soil for testing the CEB machine. I did this with the tractor …
4 Comments » - Posted in Compressed Earth Block Press by Marcin
Monday, December 17th, 2007
From 12-11-07: Yesterday a stove; Today firewood.
The cord wood room was coming to completion and we were still without a stove to heat it with. Craigslist, ebay, and local newspapers only had dead ends; the stoves listed were either too expensive, too far away, too big or already sold. I had asked a few people locally if they knew anyone …
2 Comments » - Posted in Challenges,Infrastructure,Open Source Economic Development by Brittany
Monday, December 17th, 2007
Internetless Ice storm
We have been out of touch for over a week now; an ice storm struck and while we still had power (unlike our neighbors, who do not have off-grid power systems) our internet receiver was covered in ice. As it is located on top of a tree, also ladden with ice, we could not …
2 Comments » - Posted in Challenges,Computer by Brittany
Sunday, December 9th, 2007
CEB Day 27
This past week we put on the roof for the cordwood building addition:
Yesterday I returned to the CEB. On November 26, we produced the first brick. I got right back into it – beginning work on the automated hopper assembly – which will allow 3-5 bricks to be made each …
No Comments » - Posted in Compressed Earth Block Press,Greenhouse by Marcin
Friday, December 7th, 2007
Winter Reflections
If winter was without snow, I would not have learned to love winter. But, I grew up with snow-filled winters and the great anticipation of cross-country skiing at the local golf course, snow angels, sledding, and hot chocolate and a fire to warm up to.
Last year, we had no more than a scattering …
No Comments » - Posted in Construction by Brittany
Thursday, December 6th, 2007
Three Days in the Life of a Factor E Farm Guest
I had met with Marcin several times and Brittany once before and I consider them as friends. Knowing the effort they were putting forward and the common values we shared, I thought it was important to commit myself to visit their Factor E Farm and take a look at what they have been doing …
