Axil sent me this report discussing the move to get a federal WPA style “green energy jobs” program going. The time is Nau!
– Clarke
Archive for December, 2008
Ipod / Iphone Entertainment Center
December 14th, 2008 by admin
This is a stereo system that uses either and IPod or IPhone as the music source. It’s by Bose. If you’ve never heard one of their systems, they are pretty amazing and are famous for creating full bass response in small packages. The cost is $300, which seems pretty good to me and will go down quickly since this is a new product. (The older version for IPod but not IPhone is selling for $220.)
I’m thinking that this unit in combination with a flat screen monitor with built-in DVD player would cover the “entertainment center” needs of a Nauhaus. I imagine a bay for this stereo, one for the monitor, and one for a laptop with a connection to the monitor. With a laptop remote like the one picture below, you could play web videos and internet radio from the lazi-ass comfort of your sofa. I’m not promoting a couch-potato lifestyle here, but am interested in equipment that will allow us to access web information as a replacement for corporate media info-tainment. You know, sitting down to watch Democracy Now! with your salad picked 15 feet away in the kitchen garden. That kind of thing.
– Clarke
PLAY PUMPS
December 11th, 2008 by admin
These kids are pumping water while playing. Here’s how it works:
While children have fun spinning on the PlayPump merry-go-round (1), clean water is pumped (2) from underground (3) into a 2,500-liter tank (4), standing seven meters above the ground.
A simple tap (5) makes it easy for adults and children to draw water. Excess water is diverted from the storage tank back down into the borehole (6).
The water storage tank (7) provides a rare opportunity to advertise in outlaying communities. All four sides of the tank are leased as billboards, with two sides for consumer advertising and the other two sides for health and educational messages. The revenue generated by this unique model pays for pump maintenance.
The design of the PlayPump water system makes it highly effective, easy to operate and very economical, keeping costs and maintenance to an absolute minimum.
Capable of producing up to 1,400 liters of water per hour at 16 rpm from a depth of 40 meters, it is effective up to a depth of 100 meters.
One of my students turned me on to this. I think this is so cool. We should keep this in mind when we do a community sized project with NDI. We might be able to use a pump like this to move surface water uphill from a holding pond to cistern, for example. We might be able to pump directly from the creek with one of these set in the easement between all the lots at Talmadge.
Embedded Energy in Water
December 8th, 2008 by SeldomAbout 8 percent of all electricity used in the United States is expended in the delivery and treatment of potable water, according to Benjamin Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Water at the EPA. In California, the most populous state in the nation, 19 percent of the electricity is used for delivering water, and a staggering 32 percent of the state’s natural gas consumption powers the treatment of water and wastewater.
Fog Testing for Air Leaks
December 7th, 2008 by Seldom
One fog-test fan is Marc Rosenbaum, an energy consultant and founder of Energysmiths in Meriden, New Hampshire. “My experience is that if you have a blower-door specification for new construction – so many cfm at 50 pascals – and the test comes in 10 percent more than the specification, the builder will usually ask, ‘Why isn’t that good enough?’ – especially if you are fairly far along in the construction process,” Rosenbaum recently told EDU. “But when you use a fog machine, and you have fog blowing out of a hole in the building, I’ve never had anyone point to it and say, ‘Why isn’t that good enough?’ ”
SunDrum Stealth Solar Collectors
December 5th, 2008 by SeldomIf we can figure out a way to justify buying some PV now instead of waiting for the price to come down we can hide solar hot water collectors under the PV panels.
SunDrum Solar
