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Sunday Solar Fiesta: Passive Solar Heater Links Galore

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 …

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Sunday Solar Fiesta: Solar Ovens

Note: Stocking Up 101 will return next weekend. Blame the mowing!

I love my solar oven. I’ve had it since 2003 and have cooked countless meals in it. True, it’s a bit glitchy — I planned to use it today to to roast a nice buffalo chuck roast, but storms moved in last night and it’s too cloudy now. And it does require moving every few hours so that it catches the best rays.

Still, it does the trick, all the while saving on electricity and helping to keep the house cool on 95 degree days.

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Book Review: The Urban Homestead

The Urban Homestead: your guide to self-sufficient living in the heart of the city
by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
$11.53 from Amazon

I can’t recall where I first saw mention of this book, but the subtitle convinced me to check it out. Then I saw that they included a chapter on stealth backyard chickens, so how could I not buy it?

I hadn’t had a chance to read it until yesterday, which was spent chauffeuring to yet more doctor appointments and the associated waiting in various rooms for medical personnel to do their thing. I also carried a C J Sansom novel in case this one was too dry or uninteresting, but I needn’t have bothered.

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Build a Solar Food Dehydrator

Mother Earth News tells you how.

What do you plan to eat the rest of the year? Will you rely on industrial foods grown by strangers from all over the world and shipped thousands of miles? With increasing interest in healthy eating, sustainable local food supplies and self-reliance, many people are discovering the benefits of a solar food dehydrator.

Read the rest at the link.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum IV - Shorter Lambda than Microwaves

Obviously, it is not possible to touch every item that this vast subject holds, and I depend on readers to open up more frontiers. We barely scratched the surface about microwaves, but have to move to more energetic bands.

The infrared band lies just above the microwave, and just below the visible. Issac Newton discovered it by taking a thermometer and placing it in different spots on a projection of a spectrum of sunlight provided by a simple glass prism. He noted that there were area of higher temperature below the violet (now called ultraviolet) and above the red (now called infrared). These terms come from the natural distribution of a solar spectrum by a prism, the red being at the top of the graph.

So, here once again we go. Read more »

Water News May 08 Roundup

People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint of an individual, business or nation is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual, business or nation. Now you too can figure out your water footprint using the calculator at waterfootprint.org. Additionally, they have a gallery of commonly consumed products and how much water it takes to produce them and case studies of water footprints of specific countries like China and Israel.

Remember, water conservation is essential.

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18 Months to Save the World!

Who would have thought Prince Charles coming to the world’s rescue? Pic below is of a chameleon from Madagascar.

In one of his most out-spoken interventions in the climate change debate, he said a £15 billion annual program (roughly $25 billion) was required to halt deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire consequences. Read more »

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