Via Afrigadget, a visual explanation of how to disinfect water with just a PET plastic bottle. The diagram, developed by Unicef, pretty much speaks for itself. Too much gunk in the water? Let it settle and filter through some cloth. At least six hours of sunlight will be enough UV to kill bad buggies. Using solar water disinfection, or “SODIS”, replaces the need to boil water, thus reducing deforestation to supply fire wood.

Obviously, this is not a long term solution. Drinking water out of heated plastic bottles can’t be a good thing. But in a pinch . . .

More info here.

There’s nothing like a utility outage to make one ponder the various Mad Max type scenarios that might play out when the power goes out for good and legions of zombified TiVo addicts stumble out onto the streets in search of the last remaining supplies of Doritos. Of all the utility outages we’ve experienced in our shabby 1920s bungalow, this weekend’s water outage was the most annoying. Other than the intenets, a couple of lights and our kitchen mixer, electricity is not something we’re big users of and, thanks to the many camping stoves we have, we’re prepared to go without natural gas for a while. But water is a different matter.

Late last Thursday night our water pressure began to drop. By Sunday night nothing more than a trickle of water would come out of any of our faucets. We checked the little spinning red triangle indicator on the water meter to see if water was flowing (and perhaps leaking somewhere) but the triangle was motionless. We checked the shutoff valve at the street, turning it off and on, also to no avail. One of the few sensible things the previous owners did was replace the galvanized pipe with copper so we knew that corrosion was not the problem. We asked our neighbors if they had a problem and they said no. Finally, we called the Department of Water and Power on Friday and it was Monday morning before anyone showed up. By that time, mysteriously, the water began flowing again. The DWP worker checked the pressure, said it was fine, and shrugged when we asked what the problem might have been. We welcome comments from readers who want to speculate on the cause of this outage as we like to know how things work or fail around here.

While we have a few gallons of water around in case of an earthquake this episode was a wake up call that we may need to keep more water than the couple of plastic tubs we have in the garage. We also don’t want to count on the water in the water heater and the back of the toilet. And when it takes three days to get service we can only imagine how long it would take in a large-scale disaster.

The whole notion of depending on our dysfunctional local government for anything in an emergency is foolish. Our friends at IlluminateLA helped run the emergency shelter at a local high school after the Griffith Park fire earlier this year. While it turned out that the emergency shelter was not needed, the Illuminaters discovered that the food supplies have to be trucked in from the San Fernando Valley, a not too promising scenario when you consider how bad the roads are here on an ordinary day not to mention when a couple of bridges come down in an earthquake.

This leaves us pondering keeping water in steel drums, which we first learned about in Aton Edward’s book Preparedness Now!, the first book in Process Media’s Self-Reliance series (our book the Urban Homesteader, due out in May, is the third in this series). It’s one of the more expensive options in water storage, with new drums costing several hundred dollars, but avoids the problem of an off taste that plastic can impart. But while there’s something to be said for avoiding all sources of potential crankiness when the shit cometh down, stainless steel drums are above our meager budget at this point. For now we’ll probably have to go with a new 55 gallon plastic drum, though if enough of you buy our book we’ll spring for the steel. Homegrown Revolution readers can hole up in the garage with us and share our water when those snack-crazed zombie hoards come stumbling down the street. Consider it a promise.

Unlike the Hollywood fat cats we live amongst here in LaLa land, Homegrown Revolution is more likely to find ourselves in possession of a Wag™ Bag rather than a Swag bag. What’s a Wag™ Bag you ask? Here’s the snappy copy from the Major Surplus & Survival catalog:

The Wag™ (waste alleviation and gelling) Bag Kit is the most complete, efficient and easy to use system we’ve ever offered. Each sealed kit contains: 1 waste bag with Pooh-Powder, 1 zip-close disposal bag, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and instructions. The amazing pooh-powder actually gels liquid in seconds, while it neutralizes the odor (no perfume cover-up) and the catalyst starts the decay process. The Black degradable poly bags are environmentally friendly and can be disposed of in trash containers. Can be used with any portable toilet or even in your standard home toilet when water flushing is unavailable. Can be used under or over (to keep sanitary) any toilet seat. After use, simply fold the Wag™ Bag into the zip-close bag and close. Dispose in trash container. An absolute must for your car, camper, boat, or plane (or those unsavory outhouses). Weighs 3 lbs. per kit.

The Wag™ and Pooh-Powder technology was developed by Phillips Environmental Products, a company that received a federal windfall after the weather and toilet disaster known as hurricane Katrina. FEMA soon became a huge customer as did the Pentagon which bought $1.3 million worth of bags to supply troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Major Surplus & Survival price of $39.95 for a pack of 12 Wag™ Bag kits works out to an expensive $3.32 a crap. So what are some cheaper alternatives when crap happens? Unfortunately, digging a “cat hole” is no longer politically correct. A study at Montana State University proved that human feces “remained alive with various disease-causing bacteria,” even after a year buried in the ground.

Our waste disposal preference is towards the humanure approach–turning your crap into useful compost. For the lowdown on how to humanure see Joseph Jenkin’s compelling and entertaining book which is available free online.

For hiking or temporary water outages you can simply pack your crap up for later disposal in a toilet. This is how Homegrown Revolution managed during an arduous snow camping experience last year, with one unfortunate member of our party tasked with carrying a five gallon bucket full of crap through the high Sierras. A more egalitarian approach would have been to make everyone carry a “poop tube“. You make a poop tube with 4-inch PVC pipe. Cap one end of the pipe and stick a threaded fitting on the other end. Crap in a paper bag or coffee filter, throw in some kitty litter to absorb the liquids and shove it all into your poop tube. You can then empty the tube when you get to the nearest toilet. You’ll have to size the tube based on how much you think you’ll be needing to use it.

Lastly an admission. Call us juvenile, but as some of you may suspect this missive was written in part with the purpose of exploiting the comedic potential of the expression “Pooh Powder”. Our apologies.

Rocket stoves are a highly efficient way to cook using just small branches rather than large pieces of wood and are twice as efficient as conventional open wood burning methods. They usually consist of a heavily insulated L shaped metal pipe, at the bottom of which you put small pieces of wood. You size the pipe to fit a pot, which fits down into the pipe. Efficiency is gained by the fact that the pot is heated on the sides as well as the bottom.

Homegrown Evolution was delighted to find a how to build a rocket stove video (with a Euro disco soundtrack!) hosted by a goth dude named “vavrek”:


Other Rocket Stove Designs

The Aprovecho Research Center, a non-profit organization devoted to improving conditions in third world countries through the development of low cost, simple cooking and heating technologies have developed a number of rocket stoves that you can build for your urban homestead. They have a simple model called the VITA Stove made with sheet metal (note the better soundtrack music on the video) and an institutional model made with a 50 gallon drum.

We think we’ve found a use for all those fallen palm fronds . . . rocket stove cooking!

Cheese doodles sandwiched by two images from a Qatar Airlines ad

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that the price of corn has got so high due to its use for ethanol, that farmers are resorting to feeding livestock, “cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups.”

GARLAND, N.C.–When Alfred Smith’s hogs eat trail mix, they usually shun the Brazil nuts.

“Pigs can be picky eaters,” Mr. Smith says, scooping a handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews from one of the 12 one-ton boxes in his shed. Generally, he says, “they like the sweet stuff.”

Mr. Smith is just happy his pigs aren’t eating him out of house and home. Growing demand for corn based ethanol, a biofuel that has surged in popularity over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn, Mr. Smith’s main feed, to near-record levels. Because feed represents farms’ biggest single cost in raising animals, farmers are serving them a lot of people food, since it can be cheaper.

Connecting the stories and ads in the WSJ is our favorite game to play in the morning over our coffee. We’re not alone in playing this game. Richard Jackson, Director of the CDC National Center for Environmental Health connected the dots with stories in the WSJ during a brilliant lecture we heard earlier this month at a public health conference (read one of Dr. Jackson’s papers on our screwed up built environment here). Jackson held up the morning’s paper and pointed out that separate stories on childhood obesity, air pollution and suburbanization are all related.

Today’s WSJ is a reminder of how this associational game increasingly paints a picture of a mad and dystopic science fiction reality. Along with the story on feeding livestock junk food, we have a story on Fermat Capital Management L.L.C., a money management firm led by a biophysicist that sells bonds, “linked to natural catastrophes, such as hurricanes”. So called “catastrophe bonds” are a method for insurance companies to ease the danger of losses on an uncertain future of global warming related natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina. On another page we find an ad for “America’s newest stars” Qatar Airway’s direct service between Washington D.C., New York and Doha. Together these stories and ads indicate a country so hooked on driving that our business and government power elites jet off to Qatar to cut deals with corrupt and homicidal oil interests while simultaneously sacrificing our agriculture to our gas tanks, all the while covering the environmental consequences with increasingly exotic financial instruments.

Madness! We fear comrades, that it’s time to prepare,.

This month’s issue of Backwoods Home Magazine, what Homegrown Revolution reads when we’re in a foul Unabomber type mood, has a handy article inspired by this winter’s Kim family tragedy. As you may recall the Kim family got lost on a seldom travelled road in Oregon and spent 10 days without supplies before James Kim finally made a fatal attempt to hike out through the cold. Playing armchair quarterback, the gun-toting off-griders at Backwoods Home have come up with an inexpensive survival pack and the best thing is the article is free and online!

Backwoods Home’s $25 survival pack makes extensive use of the sort of highly prepared ready-to-eat crap food easily found in America’s bloated supermarkets. Normally we wouldn’t touch this stuff, what the French call malbouffe, but its long shelf life and ease of preparation make certain items, such as Knorr chicken and pasta dinner and Maruchan ramen noodle soup ideal foods for emergency kits. These convenience foods are also great for backpacking as they are much cheaper and often tastier than freeze dried camping foods. And Homegrown Revolution can’t resist the irony here, that if and when the “shit comes down” we’ll be using the very products that let to our own destruction.

Of course, the Backwoods Home survival pack is designed for the typical SUV drivin’ American so you’ll have to pimp it out with some lighter weight items to make your “escape from LA” on a bike (trust us, a delightful form of transport in gridlocked traffic). For some lighter options check out the new topics list you’ll see on the right, particularly the preparedness section.