Open Source Ecology Blog

Ecotech Infrastructure

We are planning some serious infrastructure building this year. Our technology goals for 2008 are: We are optimizing our hydraulic Compressed Earth Block press prototype , and building a swing-blade sawmill . We need good equipment so we can begin building....

Life with Stuff

We all have stuff hiding in closets, in the attic, and in the basement. Stuff fills the kitchen, the bedrooms, and the garage. Stuff lurks at work, in the car, and even in the backyard. Where does it all come from and where will it end up? The answer...

Farewell

It was great. I learned a lot. Thanks for everything. I hope we will see each other again.

An Outsider’s Visit

Well it’s taken me a while to get around to this, but here it goes. On December 26th, I had the great opportunity to finally visit the Factor E Farm. I had heard great things from my friend Richard, and knew right away that it was something I wanted...

Cordwood Addition Complete

I always imagined that when I am going to be in my mid sixties, i’ll retire to the woods and live in a small wood shack out in nature. Well, why wait? Here is my lovely little shack: You can view more pictures and more information by clicking below.

CEB Collaboration

One of the goals of our CEB development is to neo-commercialize it: provide an open source business model for producing the machines, where all enabling information is in the public domain. No strings attached. To do this, we’ll be performing thorough...

Turbine Update

Our team is working with Dan Granett on the boundary layer turbine (see former blog entry). This will be a profound improvement over the Lister for electrical generation. It will be fired by a Babington burner with a flash steam generator. Here are simplified...

CEB Press Prototype 1 Completed

It is interesting to see the progress on the Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press from prior art:   to our own conceptual and design drawings:   to raw metal as shown at https://www.opensourceecology.org/?p=36 and to reality: Now we take a mound...

CEB Day 35

A quick update on the CEB. Most of the automated hopper assembly is finished. I connected and tested the second cylinder for the hopper, and it moves nicely back and forth. I spent time yesterday, with the ice storm past, digging some soil for testing...

From 12-11-07: Yesterday a stove; Today firewood.

The cord wood room was coming to completion and we were still without a stove to heat it with. Craigslist, ebay, and local newspapers only had dead ends; the stoves listed were either too expensive, too far away, too big or already sold. I had asked a...