Human Powered Fun

I've become involved in the human powered kinetic sculpture world. Many of the billions of people on Earth use their muscles to meet their everyday needs for water, food, and shelter. I get to use my muscles to make strange vehicles move upon the face of the Earth. Above, the Whittaker, a pedal powered paddlewheel water taxi, seen here at Rivertown Revival in Petaluma. Below, the SemiSide, the world's first side-by-side semi recumbent sociable tandem bicycle, as Dave Harris and I learn how to ride it.

I'm capturing some of this work over at Three Feet of Air.

Building a Floating Island

I've begun getting video.
http://vimeo.com/user7636532/building-a-floating-island

Sustainable Consumption Musings

I'm pondering galvanized pipes.

Oliver Cannell, a student currently studying environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., asked me for a definition of sustainable consumption. I gave him one, and in the writing of it realized that we have, in addition to a constant input of energy from the sun and time from the Universe, an ever-increasing resource in terms of human ingenuity.

We've been transporting water for all of recorded history, and along the way have discovered lead poisoning and hydraulics, created new methods of organizing people and making people pay for something that is inherently free, and other marvels. We've used materials science and social science to solve the problems we encounter.

A lead pipe is completely recyclable, but the side effects of water transported in lead are hard on folks. An steel pipe will rust; dipping it in zinc creates a material that when scratched will heal itself. Unfortunately, the zinc is a contaminant if you want to recycle the steel.

Recycling wasn't as important 150 years ago. Delivering clean water was. Now we believe recycling is important, too. With the power of human ingenuity we'll come up with another material that is "better" than hot-dipped galvanized pipe (or PVC pipe, or ABS, or any of the other non-recyclable materials) for delivering water.

The Saga of the Hot Water Heater.

Xena and Caitlan bought a water heater and brought it home in the tiny car. Gently. I heard all about shopping at Home Depot in high heels. Caitlan wondered, "Why was everyone calling me 'Dorothy?'"

A couple days later while unboxing it I saw the bottom was crumpled, as though the unit had been dropped from a great height. It had been purchased on Caitlan's debit card, so I called her away from spending the day with her boyfriend. She brought him and his van. The box fit much better in that vehicle than in our Geo Metro.

At the store I explained it was damaged. "Not a problem. Go find a replacement and we'll swap it out." We could only find a different model. They didn't have a replacement; this damaged one was the only unit. They couldn't swap it, and I didn't want a different model.

"When will you get the next shipment?' I asked.

They checked. "We can't tell. But there is an identical model at our store down the freeway. Here, let's credit you back this purchase." We drove to the other store, picked out the unit, talked our way into the same great price that Xena had gotten on the first water heater, and went to pay for it. The card got declined, since it takes 24 hours for the reimbursement to process. "Don't you have another way to pay for it?" Not then we didn't!

I dropped into a really crummy mood, but I made sure the kids knew I was very grateful for their help.

More time passed, without hot water in the kitchen.

Our tax refund came in. I rented a truck, drove to the hardware store (no project is complete until I've been at least three times) and bought the unit. I couldn't get them to give me the $90 discount that Xena and Caitlan had managed. On the same excursion I picked up a mattress and box spring from my friend Nika. "How's it going?" she asked.

"Well, I have a funny feeling about the water heater I'm installing tomorrow," I confessed.

The next day, rusted-solid pipe joints yielded to WD-40 and stern words from Xena. We got the old heater out and immediately drove it over to the scrap metal yard and then returned the truck. All day long my wonderful neighbors kept offering to help. "Is it time yet? Do you need help?" The project was so linear that I didn't, but it felt great knowing that if I needed something they would be there for me. I got the new unit in position. I went to hook up the gas and realized I'd left the connector in the other water heater. I drove back to the scrap yard and unscrewed it.

Back home, the cold water pipe (with the shut-off valve) couldn't quite align with the parts I had. I went back to Home Depot and got a longer flexible copper connector. There on the warehouse floor was the damaged unit I'd returned, with the box very definitely the worse for wear! They had also received new identical models! Oh, well.

Back home, everything all connected, I pressurized the system. A few minor leaks appeared. A quarter turn here and there and the pipes seated nicely.

I read the lighting instructions. Cool! It's got a piezo-electric igniter! I fired it up. Nothing. "Continue clicking the igniter until the pilot lights. Do not attempt to light by hand." Fine.

Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.

Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

"OH FOR PETE'S SAKE! XENA!" I roared. "IT'S YOUR TURN!"

"What's wrong?"

"THE DAMN THING WON'T LIGHT AND I NEED YOU TO TAKE OVER RIGHT NOW!"

In an extremely reasonable voice she asked, "Isn't there a phone number you can call?"

But I was beyond reasonability. "PROBABLY, BUT IT'S UP TO YOU NOW. I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS EVEN ONE MORE SECOND!" I stormed away.

God bless her, she let me go. Betsy asked what was up. I felt so much better now that I wasn't in the same room as the water heater. "Oh, I've installed it and it won't light. So I've asked Xena to take over."

"That's pretty great, that she is doing that. Once, not too long ago, it would have been your job and she'd have told you, 'Just march yourself right back down there and take care of it!'"

I've got to agree, this was much better. I'd have burst an aorta if I'd been unable to hand off the project at that moment.

Xena and Nicholas fussed with it for a while and couldn't get it to light either. Xena came back upstairs and I went down to hang out with Nicholas as I was feeling much better. He and I fiddled with it for a few minutes, and it lit!

As far as I know, he and I didn't do anything unique or different. But it lit. Random elements at play, as they have been for some time, in my life and home and family.

So now we have hot water in the back half of the house again. There's been something of a rush on washing dishes. "Oh, it's so nice to wash dishes in warm water!" everyone keeps saying. I predict the novelty will wear off before i even finish typing this post, but it's fun to hear people excited to wash dishes instead of dragging themselves to do it.

A final footnote: Xena has found that the next model larger is now $10 cheaper.

Cold Water from a Hot Tap

One of the water heaters stopped functioning. The other one. Karl and I replaced the first of these some time ago; they were contemporaries and we knew this one would need replacing too. We asked it to wait until October. It did. We asked it to wait a little longer; it did. Finally a couple weeks ago it gently stopped.

If we actually get to short sell the house we are considering replacing it. If the house goes all the way to foreclosure then the bank can deal with it.

The impact of being down a water heater is we are boiling water in the kitchen to wash dishes. It's a bit like camping. Xena said, "After a few days, camping in your own kitchen isn't so much fun." Betsy and Jori are bathing over at the common house. Our bathroom still has plenty of hot water, thankfully. But neither kitchen does.

Hot tap water is such a given for people in developed countries. We've "solved" that hygiene issue so we can now focus on Pink's performance at the Grammy's. Or we can debate whether FoxNews is fair or balanced.

I'm sort of wondering what a "live simply" week would look like. Could I inspire people to live without electricity, heat, and potable water for a week? Or perhaps to live without relying on the infrastructure for a week?

In the Flow: Reuniting People and Restoring Landscape

My amazing friend Bonita held a reunion of sorts at Mariposa Grove. Friends, former neighbors and teachers flowed through the community from early afternoon until late at night, celebrating her and the connections we had with her and through her and with each other. I first met her when she lived here and I took the permaculture training class. She left to pursue her own goals more fully a few months after we moved in. She knows the space as it was, when fewer permie principles had manifested in the intentional community. She is... a priestess, an incarnation of the divine, a full and present participant in the dance of life. I grow and become a better person by simply being around her.

She and her partner are planning the water system for their homestead, so she was curious about ours.

"We've directed rain from my roof and the neighbor's into this trough," I said, indicating the french drain we built. "It flows to this catch basin filled with drain rock. The catch basin is about 3 feet deep. When it fills, there's an overflow channel to carry water below ground level to the edge of the property. In the dry season, we have a diverter valve at the laundry so we can drain our gray water into the basin."



"What's the purpose of the catch basin?" She asked.

"We want to recharge the ground water aquifer. The water table is pretty high here, but the bay is very close, too. Salination is probably not a problem, but it might be someday. We've identified that the back of this property used to be a shallow stream. Water flows downhill towards us not only from the immediate neighbor's roof, but the two properties beyond are hardscaped; we get a whole lot of water running over the ground. So by digging this french drain at the edge of our property, and directing the water towards its historic location I feel like I'm helping restore something that was lost. During a recent storm, I calculated that the entire drain system will catch and store at least 500 gallons before it overflows."

"Wow, that sounds like a lot of water!" she said. "What happens to water you don't capture?"

"Ha! This is where what you taught me really comes in: I spent a year watching the land, getting to know it. Come here, look at where the overflow leads." We walked to the other side of the yard. "In the heaviest storms, water bubbles up out of the drain and then under the fence. But see? This neighbor has hardscape too, and their sidewalk is sort of culvert shaped. The water flows down to the street instead of pooling around their foundation."

She said, "This sounds like a really great solution!" She smiled (I love her smile). "What I really appreciate is that you considered what was happening both upstream and downstream."

I preened a little inside. "Well, you all taught me 'There is no away.'"

If It Gets Easier, Am I Still Doing It Right?

When I wonder if I'm still following my calling (as it becomes easier, and familiar, I have to find a compass other than "is this the most uncomfortable, growth-filled thing I can be doing right now?"), I'll catalog activities over a couple of days and assess them.

Karl made an amazing barbecue over the fire pit for dinner. Much of the food was local. Then we had our weekly community meeting, but outside, around the fire. Hank took notes on his laptop, and we had illumination from fire, solar-power lights and regular electric-grid tied lights. Urban permaculture rating: people care, earth care, fair share, stacked functions, integrate, small slow solutions, use edges and margins, observe and interact, produce no waste... yeah, that one ranked pretty high.

At work I tried to explain PG&E's TOU (Time of Use) E7 rate to a client, and I measured how much sun shine falls on his roof. I quoted a 4kW system to another client. As much as Right Livelihood fits into urban permaculture, this activity fits: especially as I consider fair share, observing and interacting, planning to obtain a yield, catch and store energy, design from pattern to details, use edges (specifically, the "edge" of a roof and the sky, a place currently barren on most dwellings).

I helped Ingrid Severson install a rain catchment system at her cute cottage. She gave me coconut oil from the barrels we were converting and fed me. Earth care, people care, fair share, catch and store energy, apply self-regulation and accept feedback, small slow solutions, obtain a yield, use edges and value the marginal, creatively adapt to change... another multi-point score!

In no particular order: I also had a sauerkraut party. Not as much fun as the last, but it was spread over both Saturday and Sunday as people dropped in and out. I got invited to two presentations, but I already had plans. I also played, with family and housemates, a version of Sorry!® in which you hold 5 cards and plan your strategy. I comforted a child who was feeling hurt, chauffeured parents to collect their child from the YMCA, and shared our one car back and forth with my wife.

I courageously called a friend when I was feeling down and shared my sorrow, and she listened and I felt better and no longer stewed in my juices.

Well, how about that. So many delicious, delightful activities in my life in the last few days, and all of them supporting and supported by the dense interconnected web that is urban permaculture.

I suppose I'm still on the right path.

California's Water "Crisis."

The Governator wants cities to reduce water usage 20%? It took some sleuthing, but I finally found information that is (possibly) undiluted by the powerful agricultural lobby regarding California's water usage. Many websites (wateraware.org for one) don't even mention agricultural use! On the heavily pro-agriculture DWR website:

Most of this production would not be possible without irrigation. In average year [sic] California agriculture irrigates 9.6 million acres using roughly 34 million acre-feet of water of the 43 million acre-feet diverted from surface waters or pumped from groundwater.

The math here is 34/43=79%. Nearly four-fifths of the "diverted" water in California goes to agriculture.

The above figure of 79% does not include water already flowing on arable land (therefore, the true consumption by agriculture is still hidden from me) , but it's sufficient for the point I wish to make. Agriculture is using about 4/5ths of the water that is being diverted. Cities, industrial and other commercial applications use the other fifth. Shall I guess that urban use accounts for the whole 21%? I'm guessing it's 2/3 of that at most, so urban consumption is perhaps (perhaps!) 15% of all diverted water. If urban usage is reduced 20%, overall usage drops 3%.

36 million people are being asked to make a rather large shift in their behavior for a net savings system wide of 3%. I'm all for people using resources more wisely. I wonder if this is the best place to apply ourselves?

Surely, surely, a far better use of our willpower and effort would be to understand how to use less water agriculturally?

Playing in the Rain

I just saw a wonderful picture on a old friend's blog of her rain collection barrel. It's raining quite a bit today. I just took the two little girls on a puddle run around the block. They were driving all of us a bit crazy with their cabin-fever, but a few minutes out in the rain set us all back to rights.

Our grey-water and ground water recharge system is in full swing. We've got gallons and gallons going in. The wood chips are absorbing some of the bounty to release it slowly over the comiung months.

Yay, rain!

Fun in a House with No Water

We live in a house with no water (we're sort of practicing our habits of how life could be if a massive earthquake severed the water supply) but that didn't stop Liz from throwing an amazing birthday party for her daughter over at the common house! Phil, Liz and Betsy cooked. I thought, where else in the world could I take a break from installing some fresh plumbing and a water heater to feast upon freshly fried shrimp, homemade pesto pasta, and baked onion rings?

Steve is absolutely right: I am wealthy beyond any measure Midas ever knew. And even beyond that particular beyond, I feel the draw of even greater wealth, inexorably bearing down upon me.

I hold faith for this greater wealth, with trust, and a hope that Life is very, very long.

More Flooding

I gave myself the evening off from everything to go to a party. I went to dinner first, and about 8 o'clock I glanced at my phone.

I had missed calls from Betsy, Nicholas, Karl, and Xena, and received one phone message. I checked the message.

"Bob! Where's the water main! I'm standing in 2" of water! Please call! Call right away!"

I called home. Panic embodied reached through the phone, clutching at me as though straw before a drowning man. "We still can't find it! Where's the main!"

"You traced the line back towards the street?"

"Yes! Yes! There's nothing! We're standing in water, the valve shuts down the house but not the heater, there's water spraying out the bottom of the tank I've ruined all the towels and I hate this! Where's the main valve!? Here, talk with Betsy!"

"Hi Bob, this is quite a situation. Where's the main valve?"

"I don't know, I've never had to turn it. Where are you right now? What valve did you turn?"

"There's a valve above the heater, but it doesn't shut off the water to the heater. Okay, I'm out front, looking for the valve. Here's Jori."

"Hi Bob, where's the main valve?"

"Hi Jori, Go look between the sidewalk and the street."

"We're all out here, but we don't see anything."

"Go look near the walk-in gate."

"I don't see anything."

"It could be buried."

"Oh, okay, wait a minute... I found it! Hey guys, here it is! Get me something to open the top."

"Jori... Jori! Hello?"

"We found it."

"Good. You don't need a tool to open it. Just use your fingers."

"Got it. Hey, Betsy, I don't need a pry bar! Wow, it's full of dirt. I'm digging it out, now. Wow, this is good dirt. Hey, I need a wrench or something. Karl's got a wrench, he's turning it off now. Do you want to talk to Xena? Here's Xena."

"Bob, I called East Bay Mud an hour ago to come turn off the main, so now I'm going to call them back and tell them not to come. I'm getting off the phone now."

The line went dead.

Shall I stay at the party? I wondered. I sent a text: Shall I come home and clean, or leave early so I can wake up and start on this first thing in the morning? I ddidn't get an answer so I decided I'd put it out of my head and stay to party. I managed pretty well to stay present in the party atmosphere. It helped that I knew there were a bunch of people already handling the emergency part and that my part, of fixing the problem, would necessarily wait until the stores opened the next day.

First Rain of the 2008/2009 Season

We've worked out why Karl and Nini's bedroom floods. We can chalk it up to the previous owners, again, just like all the other inanities we've found so far. In this case, they installed a french drain... right up against the foundation.

Roof run-off, channeled through downspouts, emptied into the french drain, which would quickly fill and slowly release water into the joint between the footing and the slab. A high-water mark on the footing, outside, showed quite clearly where the top of the slab was, inside. The low point of the drain was at the corner of the house (the sump pump, 10 feet away, was uphill by about a foot). This was hiding under a 12" cap of good Bay Clay, making the problem invisible.

Karl and I started, and then Jori continued, digging it all out. It goes down a good 3 feet. We'll pour a little concrete skirt to drive the water lens well below the foundation, and then replace the french drain to be between the two houses and slope towards the sump pump.

I also rerouted the downspouts. We clearly haven't finished this project, yet the nearly 2" of rain that just dumped on us didn't get into Karl and Nini's space, so we've already made an improvement.

Sustainable parts of this job are we'll be reusing the drain rock, so the embodied energy is very low, and we're working by hand, and we're preserving the habitability of an existing asset. We will have a concrete pour, so that's not as good, but I am sure any CO2 release from the manufacture of the concrete is offset handsomely by not having to run heating fans on a wet carpet three or four times a year.

Big, furry towel

I love drying off after my low-flow 3/4 gallon per minute shower with a big, soft towel, fresh out of the closet.

Why is the towel shedding? This brown towel is shedding white fur.

Ah, clearly someone lovingly folded up the cat's bed and put it away. Now I am covered in cat hair. Shall I take another shower?

Red eyes and a runny nose. Because allergies and unclean towels.

EBMUD intiates water rationing

The news came down today that our municipal water agency, EBMUD, has initiated water rationing. At the same time, I see an article from a San Diego newsfeed that those officials aren't issuing any gray water system permits, in spite of a huge demand and tight water supplies there, too.

At our house, we just installed an outdoor sink. We'll use it for washing after working in the garden. The water and dirt drains in to a small wood chip field. There's really low possibility for spreading any contaminants because this isn't a bathroom sink. The water is going to soak in right at the roots of one of our raised beds, so we're getting two-for-one by recycling the water on site.

I was really distressed by the tone of the news from San Diego. City officials clearly have an agenda to centralize the resource. I suppose I have a fundamentally different view of what government is for. I want government that regulates infrastructure and preserves or encourages opportunities for growth and increased social equity. I do not want government that is in the role of delivering a product or commodity to me.

The primary learning that our civilization is faced with now is this: how much centralization/decentralization do we want? Centralization works really well for concentrating wealth and power into the hands of a very few. Guess what? Those very few are very much in power right now, and of course aren't at all interested in decentralization.

This issue is so poorly understood. Take for example, the "debate" about biofuels. The goal is to engage in relocalization and foster local economies, but instead the centralizing powers export biofuel production to the tropics where horrible choices get made: slashing old-growth rain forests, displacing women farmers, damming water sources for massive irrigation projects and so forth.

Try this as a guide, a measure, for discerning whether an idea is truly a solution, or if it adds to the coming woe: does it promote relocalization?

• Hydrogen economy: Fail.
• Biofuels: Perhaps.
• NAFTA: Fail.
• Global produce market: Fail.
• Community gardens and agriculture: Pass.
• Municipal toilet-to-tap water reclamation: Maybe.
• Any form of protectionism: Fail.
• Any form of open trade: Pass.
• Permaculture: Pass! Great solution for promoting relocalization.

In less than a generation, our economies will be constrained to our respective bioregions, our watersheds. Clearly many of us will be making money selling ideas over whatever the internet evolves into, but many more will be making it or breaking it using whatever is available at hand. Get a jump on this. Earn and spend within your community. Demand fair prices for yourself, and for your neighbors. Don't let your dollars escape overseas, or even over the next ridge line.

Relocalization. It's here, it's the future, and it's how we can all keep feeding and sheltering ourselves as centralized control continues its collapse.

Zone 5: Utah's Escalante

Zone 5 is where a permaculturist doesn't make any changes to nature, but rather is inspired by Her ways. The slot canyons of southern Utah are a great spot to get inspired, and specifically for me, I recalled much of the water vortex work done by Viktor Schauberger.

Carrying 40 to 50 pound packs, with water shoes, through snow-melt streams filled with submerged rocks and holes we might step into up past our waists was as much adventure as I could handle. Note the backpacking shoes getting a free ride!


Our last day, we did a quick hike through a dry canyon. I took a little time here. I tried to slow down enough that I could "hear" the rock, like I do when I stand on a granite dome in the Sierras. I really couldn't do it. I did sense, though, echoes of the water that flows here.

This is a short post; I'm still working on re-integrating with the hectic lifestyle we live here in zones 1 through 3. I have so much to write about, and hopefully you can wait a bit!

Inverted Hugelkultur

We're getting most of our ideas for the garden out of Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-scale Permaculture. Aaron, Kevin and I were standing around looking at the nearly 2 yards of fill dirt Aaron got delivered (free).

Aaron said, "I ordered mulch, too, but the arborists put us on a two-week waiting list. What should we do? Should we use this dirt to just fill all the bed a few inches?"

"Let me get the book, and see what Toby says," I said. I found this: Hugelkultur is a central European technique of piling up dead wood and brush, stomping it down, adding some compostibles on top, and then topping it off with a bit of compost and an inch of soil. The stuff on the bottom decomposes slowly and acts like a sponge, releasing nutrients as well as providing water.

When I trimmed the willow, much of the wood was already rotten and spongy. We decided we'd use the dirt we had so far to make a sort of bathtub shape in one of the lobes of the raised bed, then we broke up and soaked down a fair amount of decomposing willow woood, and buried it under some more dirt. We've now got a bed that's a couple of feet high, with a reservior of water and nutrients sequestered within.

"Wow," Aaron said, "all that dirt didn't make much of a bed. I think I'd better get 10 more yards."

Precious, precious water

My friend David Sylvester sells Nikken products. He came over with a loaner water purifier and tank, which I'm using to try to wean my family off bottled water.

There is a spring, near the foot of Half Dome, somewhere around mile 7. I remember drinking the most refreshing water of my life from that spring. The water from this Nikken tank tastes remarkably similar. One of the cool things is there are rocks (yes, rocks!) in the bottom of the tank, slowly leaching minerals into the water. This mineral rich water is healthier for you; water is an alchemical "universal solvent," and drinking water that is too pure will take minerals out of your body!

Call David at (925) 895-7330 for your loaner, trial run filter system, and see if this water isn't just the best you've ever tasted. And stop buying plastic bottles full of water shipped in from some other watershed.