Scott.

what do I do? I’m sticking tons of insulation in my SF house and using ‘green’ materials as I renovate in preparation for selling. Here I raise some of my veggies and shop farmers markets for the rest, go to local farms for my meat once every 4 months or so. Of course that means I don’t often need to go to the supermarket at all.

When I sell and relocate to Michigan next year, I’ll be building Nebraska strawbale with earthen plasters. I look forward to putting in a tiny backyard orchard for my fruit needs, and an Elliot Coleman-style four season garden. My chickens and a couple of goats should round out the rest…

BUT: I still intend to travel in the winters, which is a carbon load from airplanes.

So I’m very empathetic with your efforts to find balance. As we are all priced out of making decisions like ice rinks and flights, we’ll learn to cope. In the meantime I think it’s important to recognize that we need a transition stage.

http://www.crest.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/Miranda/Ecostove/Ecostove.html

It is a rocket stove design which refers to how the fuel is burned efficiently. They were invented at U of Tennessee. Women and children in rural areas are killing themselves because they cook on open wood fires in their homes, they have no chimneys. They would really like an oven, now they can not bake a cake, cookies, or bread and they would love to do that.

These stoves burn hot on twigs (saving the forests), with almost no smoke. The insulation is perlite or vermiculite, either one will do, or volcanic rock (we use volcanic rock, it is what we have). In Nicaragua and Brazil they sell for about $100.00 US. The outside is sheet metal. We are building modified improved versions of the stove with the oven at our farm, for our local people.

They are state of the art rocket stoves, sustainable stoves. They do not pollute, they use twigs for fuel, are affordable (two – three weeks pay for a low level employee).

I know that this is getting away from strawbale construction, but I wanted to share another way to leave a smaller foot print while helping 3rd world people to live a better life. My neighobrs only have an open wood fire for cooking. This open fire is in their homes with no smoke stack.

These stoves can help many people in the first world to cut their costs and have a stove when electricity and propane are not available. You may be interested in building your own version.

Blessings,

Ginnee

Does the end goal and intent of the trip justify the patronage and monetary donation to the aviation industry?

Not sure- but I do recognize the smallest foot print would be living on or near the equator- the villagers we worked with had very little carbon foot print once cooking with renewables.

Good to see so many awake individuals out there doing the best they can with what they have when they have it.

Thanks again.

Jeff
Jeff@monadnockgreenbuilders.com

Ginnee, yes, the clays would work just like in straw bale building although the attachment to a sand bag would have to be augmented as there is no tooth like on a straw bale for the plaster to hang on. I am not sure how that works, but imagine some type of mesh will be needed to anchor the plaster in place.

We are doing our best to live a sustainable, organic, biodynamic life in Southern Costa Rica. We are starting to build Earthbag structures using tubes. Straw bales are out because we have no straw, but we have dirt and clay. With a good deal of effort we located the proper bag material and obtained it. We also have lots of rain in our part of the rainforest, about 300 inches of rain a year, so a very dry roof design is important for our living conditions and I designed our pod structures accordingly.

In an effort to use what we have, we would be interested in hearing more about lime plasters and using pigment from our clay in lime plaster. We have blue, silver, purple, green, ochre, and red clays. This would be basically the same technique that would be used for straw, I think. Is that correct?

All things are a trade off in life. We have 3 vehicles and live very rural, off the grid, we do our best to plan our trips to town, and take the correct vehicle that will do the job required for that mission. With gas at $4.00 a gallon, we can not afford to waste any. Fuel is important to us, we make some electricity for lights, and hope to charge electric vehicles in the future. We require 4 wheel drive vehicles because of where we live, the vehicle required to do the job is not the most efficient, so we try to use them the best we can.

In the future ice rinks may no longer be affordable and you will switch to in-line hockey. Affordability is always a deciding factor in life. If solar panels were more affordable and available affordably in my country, I would use them as part of our sustainability plan. I think most people want to reduce their costs where possible. We become more serious about how to when we must, or when our availability and money are no longer taking care of our needs. For now I trim my electrical needs where I can, and we continue to examine how to produce more affordable power so that I can have refrigeration, and a washing machine.

I enjoy your articles.

Thank you,

Ginnee

Ginnee y Felipe Hancock
Finca Quijote de Esperanza, SA
Costa Rica