Sustainable Living. Any other freaks here?

[zealyouthguy]

It's not something that I have accomplished... but something that I agree with and try to do...

Anyone into sustainable living/gardening/farming here?

We raise chickens, turkeys, pigs, rabbits, goats. We don't use growth hormones, we grow organically with no chemicals and we can our excess.

Still have a long way to go, but I can't help but feel a lot better about our food when I hear about antifreeze in chinese toothpaste, food recall after food recall, etc.

[Will]

It's not something that I have accomplished... but something that I agree with and try to do...

Anyone into sustainable living/gardening/farming here?

We raise chickens, turkeys, pigs, rabbits, goats. We don't use growth hormones, we grow organically with no chemicals and we can our excess.

Still have a long way to go, but I can't help but feel a lot better about our food when I hear about antifreeze in chinese toothpaste, food recall after food recall, etc.

I'm interested in doing so. I used to hang out with Amish and Mennonites, my family growing up would plant our own gardens and do canning. I also read magazines on hobby farming and such. I used to work for Tractor Supply too, so I have a little knowledge of this and that.

[pneu-engine]

It's not something that I have accomplished... but something that I agree with and try to do...

Anyone into sustainable living/gardening/farming here?

We raise chickens, turkeys, pigs, rabbits, goats. We don't use growth hormones, we grow organically with no chemicals and we can our excess.

Still have a long way to go, but I can't help but feel a lot better about our food when I hear about antifreeze in chinese toothpaste, food recall after food recall, etc.

We did when I was a kid. We ate out of the garden from late March / early April all the way thru to to the following February.

We had:::::::

***A ground cellar dug into the side of a hill wherein we stored all manner of root veggies, apples, cabbages, a cider barrel, and oodles of other things.

***Canned fruits and veggies by the hundreds to feed a family of mom, pop and us seven kids.

***A freezer full of meat that we grew ourselves. (pork, chicken, beef, and an occasional ground-hog. ) We had others do the butchering.

Did you know you can keep carrots right in the ground under hay/straw bales if they are piled 2 or 3 high. Even in the dead-cold of January, you can pull the bales aside and the carrots are right there in soft earth just above freezing.

We would eat what we can and can what we can't.

Presently I am only growing small fruits:::::: strawberries, black raspberries, grapes and blueberries.

Are you interested in producing your own electric power???? If you are, I have an idea for you how to be totally self-sufficient in that regard, and even get a check from the electric company instead of a bill every month.

I read of a homesteader in one of my trade journals that developed a system to extract as much fuel value as possible from ordinary fire wood. He has his own woodlot and manages it intelligently so that there will always be an ample supply.

***He built his own buzz-saw and hydraulic log-splitter.

***He cuts the wood into chunks the size of softballs.

***He bakes the wood-chunks in an O2 starved chamber, and draws off the VOCs (volatile organic compounds) which....

***...fuel a Steam generator / hot H2O boiler.

(((These VOCs are violently flammable.)))

***The steam powers a reciprocating steam engine.

***The hot H2O is for domestic hot water and to heat the house, shops, and garage.

***The engine drives a huge alternator.

***The alternator produces electricity that supplies all of his own needs.

***The alternator is connected to the grid thru a high-speed switch that senses when the normal domestic load of his operation is not drawing enough to use all of the power that is produced.

***He sells the excess power back to the electric utility company. (The extra power makes the meter-wheel spin backwards, which subtracts from his total KWH used. When that value crosses zero and goes negative it indicates that he has a credit, and a check, coming his way.)

***The residual from the wood that was baked is a high-grade of charcoal which he uses in his metal-working shop as fuel for his blacksmith forge, and in his aluminum casting operations.

***When a sufficient excess of charcoal is produced he uses it to fuel the hot H2O boiler and steam generator, also.

[5dumplings@home]

I am not sure I could go all out, but I would certainly like to have some chickens, a milk cow, a nice place for a garden.

If the Lord has given you the wherewithal to do that, then, honor Him in that way, for sure!

[sarcrew]

I'm currently an Rv'er in AZ but I am pricing land in the WA, ID and MT so I can go totally self sufficient. I've designed and am building an electrical system sorta like the one described here earlier except mine uses solar energy amplified by parablic reflectors, mirrors, and fresnel lenses. Being an Rv'er my "garden" is a group of 5 gallon buckets - 'maters, strawberries, and cukes. I was a hardcore, backwoods, dirt poor country boy growing up - loved it.

Wayne

[pneu-engine]

I'm currently an Rv'er in AZ but I am pricing land in the WA, ID and MT so I can go totally self sufficient. I've designed and am building an electrical system sorta like the one described here earlier except mine uses solar energy amplified by parablic reflectors, mirrors, and fresnel lenses. Being an Rv'er my "garden" is a group of 5 gallon buckets - 'maters, strawberries, and cukes. I was a hardcore, backwoods, dirt poor country boy growing up - loved it.

Wayne

Hi Wayne, :lol

What type prime-mover are you going to use to drive your alternator/generator?

I belong to TEBA (Tesla Engine Builders Association)

What meaneth::: Rv???? "Re-inventer of the wheel"? "Revolutionary Thinker"? "Reactionary Critical thinker"?

[IM4given]

RV = Recreational Vehicle

[pneu-engine]

Oh ok. :lol:

[IM4given]

We get the Northern Invasion down here every year right after the first snowfall!! :lol:

[sarcrew]

The system is set up to heat water that in turn drives a small steam turbine that in turn drives (belt drive) a generator that has had the gasoline engine removed. The spent steam is vented to a heat exchanger - the heat used is drawn off to heat water for the hot water tank and the condensed steam - now water - is returned to the water tank to be reheated. It's designed so that I can uses other sources of heat to make the steam if I needed to but I intend to have a battery bank large enough to prevent this being needed. I mainly designed in that option so I could purposely fire it up if I am going to be using high amp draws like welding, etc. That way I don't deplete or stress the battery bank.

I've actually considered patenting the device if it works as well as my experiments indicate it should. It will only be as big as an average refrigerator and will be roof mounted except for the main water prehaeat/storage tank.

Wayne

[pneu-engine]

Wayne,

What type turbine??? Bladed or bladeless.

I'm currently developing a B.L.D.T. system to operate a power plant for my own use. The BLDTs have been around since Nikola Tesla invented it by developing the concept way back in 1910 - 1911.

BLDT = Boundary Layer Drag Turbine (aka smooth disk turbine). It has no blades or "cross-buckets" as they are sometimes called.

[pneu-engine]

TEBA:::: Tesla Engine Builders Association:::

http://www.teslaengine.org/main.html

An exerpt::::

Introduction
From the New York Herald Tribune Oct. 15, 1911


Tesla?s New Monarch of Machines
Suppose some one should discover a new mechanical principle--something as fundamental as James Watt?s discovery of the expansive power of steam?by the use of which it became possible to build a motor that would give ten horse power for every pound of the engine?s weight, a motor so simple that the veriest novice in mechanics could construct it and so elemental that it could not possibly get out of repair. Then suppose that this motor could be run forward or backward at will, that it could be used as either an engine or a pump, that it cost almost nothing to build as compared with any other known form of engine, that it utilized a larger percentage of the available power than any existing machine, and, finally, that it would operate with gas, steam, compressed air or water, any one of them, as its driving power.
It does not take a mechanical expert to imagine the limitless possibilities of such an engine. It takes very little effort to conjure up a picture of a new world of industry and transportation made possible by the invention of such a device. ?Revolutionary? seems a mild term to apply to it. That, however, is the word the inventor uses in describing it?Nikola Tesla, the scientist whose electrical discoveries underlie all modern electrical power development, whose experiments and deductions made the wireless telegraph possible, and who now, in the mechanical field, has achieved a triumph even more far reaching than anything he accomplished in electricity.

There is something of the romantic in this discovery of the famous explorer of the hidden realms of knowledge. The pursuit of an ideal is always romantic, and it was in the pursuit of an ideal which he has been seeking twenty years that Dr. Tesla made his great discovery. That ideal is the power to fly?to fly with certainty and absolute safety?not merely to go up in an aeroplane and take chances on weather conditions, ?holes in the air,? tornadoes, lightning and the thousand other perils the aviator of today faces, but to fly with the speed and certainty of a cannon ball, with power to overcome any of nature?s aerial forces, to start when one pleases, go whither one pleases and alight where one pleases. That has been the aim of Dr. Tesla?s life for nearly a quarter of a century. He believes that with the discovery of the principle of his new motor he has solved this problem and that incidentally he has laid the foundations for the most startling new achievements in other mechanical lines.


There was a time when men of science were skeptical?a time when they ridiculed the announcement of revolutionary discoveries. Those were the days when Nikola Tesla, the young scientist from the Balkans, was laughed at when he urged his theories on the engineering world. Times have changed since then, and the ?practical? engineer is not so incredulous about ?scientific? discoveries.
The change came about when young Tesla showed the way by which the power of Niagara Falls could be utilized. The right to divert a portion of the waters of Niagara had been granted; then arose the question of how best to utilize the tremendous power thus made available?how to transmit it to the points where it could be commercially utilized. An international commission sat in London and listened to theories and practical plans for months.

Up to that time the only means of utilizing electric power was the direct current motor, and direct current dynamos big enough to be of practical utility for such a gigantic power development were not feasible.

Then came the announcement of young Tesla?s discovery of the principle of the alternating current motor. Practical tests showed that it could be built?that it would work.

That discovery, at that opportune time, decided the commission. Electricity was determined upon as the means for the transmission of Niagara?s power to industry and commerce. Today a million horse power is developed on the brink of the great cataract, turning the wheels of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and the intervening cities and villages operating close at hand the great new electro-chemical industries that the existence of this immense source of power has made possible, while all around the world a thousand waterfalls are working in the service of mankind, sending the power of their ?white coal? into remote and almost inaccessible corners of the globe, all because of Nikola Tesla?s first great epoch making discovery.


Today the engineering world listens respectfully when Dr. Tesla speaks. The first announcement of the discovery of his new mechanical principle was made in a technical periodical in mid-September, 1911. Immediately it became the principal topic of discussions wherever engineers met.
?It is the greatest invention in a century,? wrote one of the foremost American engineers, a man whose name stands close to the top of the list of those who have achieved scientific fame and greatness.

?No invention of such importance in the automobile trade has yet been made,? declared the editor of one of the leading engineering publications. Experts in other engineering lines pointed out other applications of the new principle and letters asking for further information poured in on Dr. Tesla from the four quarters of the globe.

?Oh, I've had too much publicity,? he said, when I telephoned to him to ask for an interview in order to explain his new discovery to the non-technical public. It took a good deal of persuasion before he reluctantly fixed an hour when he would see me, and a good bit more after that before he talked at all freely. When he did speak, however, he opened up vistas of possible applications of the new engine that staggered the imagination of the interviewer.

Looking out over the city from the windows of his office, on the twentieth floor of the Metropolitan Tower, his face lit up as he told of his life dream and its approaching realization, and the listener?s fancy could almost see the air full of strange flying craft, while huge steamships propelled at unheard of speeds ploughed the waters of the North River, automobiles climbed the very face of the Palisades, locomotives of incredible power whisked wheeled palaces many miles a minute and all the discomforts of summer heat vanished as marvelous refrigerating plants reduced the temperature of the whole city to a comfortable maximum?for these were only a few of the suggestions of the limitless possibilities of the latest Tesla discovery.

?Just what is your new invention?? I asked.

?I have accomplished what mechanical engineers have been dreaming about ever since the invention of steam power,? replied Dr. Tesla. ?That is the perfect rotary engine. It happens that I have also produced an engine which will give at least twenty-five times as much power to a pound of weight as the lightest weight engine of any kind that has yet been produced.

?In doing this I have made use of two properties which have always been known to be possessed by all fluids, but which have not heretofore been utilized. These properties are adhesion and viscosity.

?Put a drop of water on a metal plate. The drop will roll off, but a certain amount of the water will remain on the plate until it evaporates or is removed by some absorptive means. The metal does not absorb any of the water, but the water adheres to it.

?The drop of water may change its shape, but until its particles are separated by some external power it remains intact. This tendency of all fluids to resist molecular separation is viscosity. It is especially noticeable in the heavier oils.

?It is these properties of adhesion and viscosity that cause the ?skin friction? that impedes a ship in its progress through the water or an aeroplane in going through the air. All fluids have these qualities?and you must keep in mind that air is a fluid, all gases are fluids, steam is fluid. Every known means of transmitting or developing mechanical power is through a fluid medium.

?Now, suppose we make this metal plate that I have spoken of circular in shape and mount it at its centre on a shaft so that it can be revolved. Apply power to rotate the shaft and what happens? Why, whatever fluid the disk happens to be revolving in is agitated and dragged along in the direction of rotation, because the fluid tends to adhere to the disk and the viscosity causes the motion given to the adhering particles of the fluid to be transmitted to the whole mass. Here, I can show you better than tell you.?
Dr. Tesla led the way into an adjoining room. On a desk was a small electric motor and mounted on the shaft were half a dozen flat disks, separated by perhaps a sixteenth of an inch from one another, each disk being less than that in thickness. He turned a switch and the motor began to buzz. A wave of cool air was immediately felt.

?There we have a disk, or rather a series of disks, revolving in a fluid?the air,? said the inventor. ?You need no proof to tell you that the air is being agitated and propelled violently. If you will hold your hand over the centre of these disks?you see the centres have been cut away?you will feel the suction as air is drawn in to be expelled from the peripheries of the disks.

?Now, suppose these revolving disks were enclosed in an air tight case, so constructed that the air could enter only at one point and be expelled only at another?what would we have?"

?You'd have an air pump,? I suggested.

?Exactly--an air pump or blower,? said Dr. Tesla.

?There is one now in operation delivering ten thousand cubic feet of air a minute. ?Now, come over here.?

He stepped across the hall and into another room, where three or four draughtsmen were at work and various mechanical and electrical contrivances were scattered about. At one side of the room was what appeared to be a zinc or aluminum tank, divided into two sections, one above the other, while a pipe that ran along the wall above the upper division of the tank was connected with a little aluminum case about the size and shape of a small alarm clock. A tiny electric motor was attached to a shaft that protruded from one side of the aluminum case. The lower division of the tank was filled with water.

?Inside of this aluminum case are several disks mounted on a shaft and immersed in a fluid, water,? said Dr. Tesla. ?From this lower tank the water has free access to the case enclosing the disks. This pipe leads from the periphery of the case. I turn the current on, the motor turns the disks and as I open this valve in the pipe the water flows.?

He turned the valve and the water certainly did flow. Instantly a stream that would have filled a barrel in a very few minutes began to run out of the pipe into the upper part of the tank and thence into the lower tank.

?This is only a toy,? said Dr. Tesla. ?There are only half a dozen disks? ?runners,? I call them?each less than three inches in diameter, inside of that case. They are just like the disks you saw on the first motor?no vanes, blades or attachments of any kind. Just perfectly smooth, flat disks revolving in their own planes and pumping water because of the viscosity and adhesion of the fluid. One such pump now in operation, with eight disks, eighteen inches in diameter, pumps four thousand gallons a minute to a height of 360 feet.?

We went back into the big, well lighted office. I was beginning to grasp the new Tesla principle.

?Suppose now we reversed the operation,? continued the inventor. ?You have seen the disks acting as a pump. Suppose we had water, or air under pressure, or steam under pressure, or gas under pressure, and let it run into the case in which the disks are contained?what would happen?"

?The disks would revolve and any machinery attached to the shaft would be operated?you would convert the pump into an engine,? I suggested.

?That is exactly what would happen?what does happen,? replied Dr. Tesla. ?It is an engine that does all that engineers have ever dreamed of an engine doing, and more. Down at the Waterside power station of the New York Edison Company, through their courtesy, I have had a number of such engines in operation. In one of them the disks are only nine inches in diameter and the whole working part is two inches thick. With steam as the propulsive fluid it develops 110-horse power, and could do twice as much.?

?You have got what Professor Langley was trying to evolve for his flying machine?an engine that will give a horse power for a pound of weight,? I suggested.


Ten Horse Power to the Pound.
?I have got more than that,? replied Dr. Tesla. ?I have an engine that will give ten horse power to the pound of weight. That is twenty-five times as powerful as the lightest weight engine in use today. The lightest gas engine used on aeroplanes weighs two and one-half pounds to the horse power. With two and one-half pounds of weight I can develop twenty-five horse power.?

?That means the solution of the problem of flying,? I suggested.

?Yes, and many more,? was the reply. ?The applications of this principle, both for imparting power to fluids, as in pumps, and for deriving power from fluids, as in turbine, are boundless. It costs almost nothing to make, there is nothing about it to get out of order, it is reversible?simply have two ports for the gas or steam, to enter by, one on each side, and let it into one side or other. There are no blades or vanes to get out of order?the steam turbine is a delicate thing.?

I remembered the bushels of broken blades that were gathered out of the turbine casings of the first turbine equipped steamship to cross the ocean, and realized the importance of this phase of the new engine.

?Then, too,? Dr. Tesla went on, ?there are no delicate adjustments to be made. The distance between the disks is not a matter of microscopic accuracy and there is no necessity for minute clearances between the disks and the case. All one needs is some disks mounted on a shaft, spaced a little distance apart and cased so that a fluid can enter at one point and go out at another. If the fluid enters at the centre and goes out at the periphery it is a pump. If it enters at the periphery and goes out at the center it is a motor.

?Coupling these engines in series, one can do away with gearing in machinery. Factories can be equipped without shafting. The motor is especially adapted to automobiles, for it will run on gas explosions as well as on steam. The gas or steam can be let into a dozen ports all around the rim of the case if desired. It is possible to run it as a gas engine with a continuous flow of gas, gasoline and air being mixed and the continuous combustion causing expansion and pressure to operate the motor. The expansive power of steam, as well as its propulsive power, can be utilized as in a turbine or a reciprocating engine. By permitting the propelling fluid to move along the lines of least resistance a considerably larger proportion of the available power is utilized.

?As an air compressor it is highly efficient. There is a large engine of this type now in practical operation as an air compressor and giving remarkable service. Refrigeration on a scale hitherto never attempted will be practical, through the use of this engine in compressing air, and the manufacture of liquid air commercially is now entirely feasible.

[sarcrew]

Due to the cost of steam turbines that is the only major part I have yet buy. I like the idea of the bladeless. Do you know of any places I could check out to get one or better yet any plans I could get to make my own?

Wayne

PS - We have a local group here that's big time into Stirling engines. Wish I had the money to play with'em - I love the simplicity of these "old" technologies.

[pneu-engine]

Due to the cost of steam turbines that is the only major part I have yet buy. I like the idea of the bladeless. Do you know of any places I could check out to get one or better yet any plans I could get to make my own?

Wayne

PS - We have a local group here that's big time into Stirling engines. Wish I had the money to play with'em - I love the simplicity of these "old" technologies.

Click on the link in my previous post.

[matie-k]

For some reason, I had a feeling PE would be all over this topic! :wink