Sunday Solar Fiesta: Passive Solar Heater Links Galore
Written by biscuit on July 13, 2008 – 9:35 am -Note: Stocking Up 101 will return next weekend.
And, boy oh boy, is there ever a wealth of information on passive solar heaters.
In my less busy days, I bought the plans for this: Mother’s Heat Grabber. Unfortunately, though, I never got around to making it, in part because my neighbors had made me so self-conscious about doing anything. Long story, but …
… this was about the time I was planting trees out front at my old place. Mind you, I lived on pure rock, or so it seemed, and digging a hole deep enough for a tree required I use a hammer and stake. Now, just try sitting on the ground out front pounding away with a hammer and stake without attracting the attention of cowboys and bubbas and lay-abouts everywhere determined to stop you in your tracks. If it wasn’t “You shouldn’t be doing that, let me help you!,” it was the piling on of totally useless tools and advice, the worst being the post hole digger. Oh, yea, right, a 5′2″ female is going to bore right through a boulder with a post hole digger.
I swear, they about drove me crazy.
So perhaps it isn’t my lack of engineering expertise — more likely it was my fear of cowboy and bubba interference, and their determination to get me to stop doing whatever I was doing as quickly as possible because otherwise someone might expect them to do something.
But here: I have a privacy fence! Even better, I have relatively industrious neighbors!
Which means that, here, I can finally build my passive solar heater, unless, of course, I really am an engineering doofus!
In any case, there are plans for sale here. They were a mere $10 a few years ago and, hopefully, they still are reasonably priced.
Posted in Alternative Energy, Economy, Environment, Frugality |
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I’ve helped dig an outhouse in Alaska. Dig about 4″into the permafrost, light a fire in the hole, next day dig another 4″, light a fire, rinse and repeat to 6 feet. Takes all summer!
Oh god, you *know* then! When you’re digging a hole for a tree in a boulderesque landscape, it takes a mere 2 or so hours.
Of course, one hour of that is dealing with bubbas bringing you post hole diggers and bad advice (yes, yes, the post hole digger is so helpful now please go away so I can hide it again and get back to something that actually works!).
You got it, sweetie. I think the “boys” where you live are not gentlemen or they would offer to dig for you. Aren’t you in the South????
South-ish, but also Cherokee Nation - although I’m in Muscogee Creek Nation now.
Someday, I’ll get into this, too. For now, in terms of Cherokee Nation, think internal colonization. Not so much for Creek Nation, but definitely for Cherokee Nation.
I could really go on a rant about that, about how poorly the Cherokee Nation and thus the people of the Cherokee Nation take care of their own. But suffice it to say yesterday when I ran into a friend at a store there (both of us having had lengthy and detailed conversations about how problematic it is there), there was righteous agreement on all sides when I burst out with FUCKING CHEROKEE NATION!
The bubbas are all at least part Cherokee.
And not to get into stereotypes, but as one woman (Cherokee) put it to me some years ago “You gotta catch ‘em before they’ve had their first beer.” Um, yea. Sad but true.