[Gasification] Off grid living

[Jason]

Good comments Kermit.

Only proviso I would add, from my Architecture training, is the
phychological and physiological aspects of our built environment. We are
very sensitive to light and sound, just as we are heat and humidity. Yes
apartments have a better surface to volume ratio that gives benefits for
space heating, but at what cost?

Apartments can be designed well, but you need light from two sides of every
room. They should be no taller than four levels, living or working higher
than that comes with an increased risk of mental illness with each level
higher. There are more guidelines, a good read is "A Timeless Way of
Building" by Christopher Alexander.


For someone that has been living sustainably for decades, check out this
friend of mine from Dunedin, New Zealand.
https://powerdownkiwi.wordpress.com/ Murray is a fridgy by trade, yet his
reputation sees him guest lecture on the topic at Otago University. He
isn't one to mince his words.

Cheers all.

Jason

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Kermit Schlansker <kssustain at gmail.com>
wrote:

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>                                          Off grid living
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>     Because of age I have no physical connection with off grid living but
> have been studying the Sustainability problem for a long time. I feel this
> issue relates directly to gasification because biomass and gasification
> would be a major strategy for getting local power and possibly making
> liquid fuel. Off grid living fights Global Warming, destruction of natural
> resources, pollution, and can make jobs. Reducing energy consumption is a
> universal way of reducing all pollution.
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>            Two of the tactics are reducing essential travel and reducing
> heating costs. Walking to work saves the earth. Travel costs are reduced by
> building towns perhaps 1 square mile in area that are densely packed with
> human activities such as apartments, factories, and general purpose stores.
> Cities are composed of distinct towns. This means that most of business
> travel can be done by foot, bicycle, horse, or low speed public
> transportation thus saving large amounts of energy.
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>         It can easily be shown that apartments in comparison to houses
> reduce heating costs by a factor of at least two for geometrical reasons
> only. With good insulation this cost may also be reduced by a factor of
> two. Add in solar heat from green houses around the building, heat pumping
> by windmills, and solar heat from reflectors and it would take almost no
> biomass to heat the building. Apartments are the best way of lowering
> consumption because we need them anyhow and they last a long time.
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>          Solar mirrors are far more important than solar voltaics because
> they are cheaper in light gathering and because they deal with heat as well
> with electricity. The same mirrors can be used with steam engines for
> making power. These steam engines can be used with biomass for cogeneration
> when the sun doesn’t shine. Mirrors can increase solar panel power, make
> hot water, dry crops, fuel, and food, and can power air conditioning.
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>           Tactics used to create and save biomass energy are engine
> driven  heat and power, engine driven heat pumps, solar mirror energy,
> biodigestion, use of manufacturing waste heat, gasification, small scale
> manufacture of liquid fuels, and in dwelling manufacturing,
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>            Fertilizer would come from sewage, manure, biomass ashes, and
> later from the sea. It has to be carefully used close to buildings because
> later the mines will be exhausted. Agriculture and food preservation must
> be close to cities. Energy crops will be an important method of making
> sewage into food fertilizer because combustion may destroy medicines and
> other organic pollutants in sewage.
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>            Jobs must be created by multiple product local factories that
> specialize in commodities that we really need. Workers must have skills
> that enable them to shift from one product to another. Factories that have
> office space, a machine and welding shop, and heat can make special tooling
> for many products. Some of that tooling such as robots would be adaptable
> for anything.    Kermit Schlansker        kssustain at gmail.com
>
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