“Trying to sell permits to California graywater users is like trying to sell a $100 search engine that you have to register for to people who use google. Any standard that can’t compete with “free” and “zero time for compliance” is doomed to irrelevance.
The only way government agencies can compete is to offer “free”, “zero time for compliance” legal systems that are better, and can be installed by professionals instead of having to do it yourself.
This involves surrendering the illusion of control, in trade for actually making things better on the ground.”
Water and Power
Rain- The Best Gift of All
The small 55 gallon barrels I have are great, but they fill up very quickly even in a light rain. You would be amazed at how much water you can collect. There are many cistern options out there. They just tend to be very large and expensive. But I recently saw a display from Bushman Tanks who offer water harvesting and storage tanks suitable for the average homeowner. I thought the prices were reasonable and I love the slim line tanks that are designed to store a lot of water in a small footprint. I know what I want for Christmas next year…..
[Mr. Homegrown here–hopefully Santa will bring us a Bushman Tank too–in the meantime, see our rain barrel here.]
Another Panel Solar Cooker
There’s no one size fits all solution when it comes to the world of solar panel cookers. All have their advantages and disadvantages. I got an email from author Joanne Poyourow, leader of the amazing Los Angeles Environmental Change Makers, with a simple and effective design she came up with.
Pouyourow’s cooker comes together much faster than the CooKit design that I blogged about earlier this week. There’s hardly any cuts to make and no glue needed. Her design makes use of a car sunshade which can be picked up cheap at your local 99¢ store. The sunshade is more durable than aluminum foil glued to cardboard. While you can also fashion a sunshade alone into a solar panel cooker, I’ve found that they don’t stand up well in even a moderate wind.
Plans for Poyourow’s cooker can be found here (pdf).
She also has a list of solar cooking resources here.
And yes, for most North Americans this is the wrong time of year to be blogging on this topic since, as the sun gets lower in the horizon, solar panel cooking season is almost over. But I’ve got a backlog of summer R&D to share. Stay tuned for the ups and downs of our summer gardening, a bike accident story and a taste test of beer made with our homegrown hops . . .
CooKit Solar Panel Cooker
I’ve been experimenting with a nice panel solar cooker for the past week and, so far, the results are impressive. Called the CooKit, it was developed in 1994 by a group of engineers and solar cooking enthusiasts associated with Solar Cookers International and based on a design by Roger Bernard.
It has a couple of nice features:
- It produces ample heat to cook rice and simple casseroles.
- When you fold it up it takes up no more space than an album (do I have to explain what an album is for the youngsters out there?).
- A flat area on the base of the CooKit makes weighting it down with rocks easy. This is really important in windy places.
- All you need to build it is a knife, cardboard, aluminum foil and glue.
As with all panel solar cookers you need an black enamelware pot wrapped in a turkey roasting bag to hold in the heat. You ain’t gonna deep fry things with a panel cooker, but they are great for slow-cooked crock pot type dishes. The only disadvantage to this design is having to cut curves, but with a sharp knife it wasn’t difficult. The other improvement would be a stand to lift the pot off the aluminum foil for more efficiency and to keep the cooker un-scuffed. When panel cooker season returns to LA in the springtime, you can bet I’ll be making a lot of rice with this thing.
Detailed instructions for how to build a CooKit can be found here.
Also, Mrs. Homegrown and I are writing a new book and we’d like to include some plans for solar cookers (any kind). If you’ve got a favorite DIY model, leave a comment with a link.
Another view with curious Doberman in the foreground:
Homegrown Evolution Podcast Episode #1
Subscribe to the Homegrown Evolution podcast in itunes here.
Download the mp3 on archive.org.
On this first episode of the Homegrown Evolution podcast we talk food preservation with author Ashley English who blogs at small-measure.blogspot.com. English will have two books out next year on food preservation and chickens, part of a series entitled “Homemade Living,” (Lark Books). She also has a weekly column every Friday on Design*Sponge at www.designspongeonline.com/category/small-measures.
In the second part of the show we talk to Wing Tam, assistant division manager for the Watershed Protection Program in the City of Los Angeles’ Bureau of Sanitation about a new rainwater harvesting pilot project. You can find out more about the program at www.larainwaterharvesting.org. We conclude with a reaction to this new program from river activist Joe Linton, author of Down by the Los Angeles River and one of the bloggers behind lacreekfreak.wordpress.com.
As we say on the podcast, we prefer gardening to staring at computer screens and putting a podcast together involves a hell of a lot of the latter. Don’t look for frequent updates, but we’ll probably put out another one in the fall. Please excuse the mike popping and other technical flaws, as we’re still working out the technical side. We hope you’ll enjoy the podcast while, say, gardening or prepping food for canning. We’re all about open source, so feel free to redistribute or rebroadcast.
Music on the program is from archive.org:
A bluegrass cover of DEVO’s Mongoloid by the Hotfoot Quartet. Bob Frank, guitar and lead vocal, Jim Blum, upright bass and vocals; Paul Kovac, banjo and vocals; Bob Smakula, mandolin and vocals. Available here.
Also from archive.org, a collection of surf music.