The THWASPCO Takes A Hit-

Part of the reason for my being a little quiet here; we got nailed by severe thunderstorm winds a bit more than a week ago. Like really severe; at first we were wondering if it was a tornado that hit.

I was inside the Little House with Smidgen, watching it come; no warnings severe enough to send us down into the cellar. It was really, really, impressive. Saw some big trees bending- double. Then they broke.

We've been spending a lot of time cleaning up; all the paths and roads in the woods have major trees down on them. And it keeps raining too, have you noticed?

One of the major hits- a couple of big oak branches came down right on top of the THWASPCO (That's "Three Hole Wind And Sun Powered Composting Outhouse" for any uninitiated.) That's Smidgen, walking down into the tangle right after the storm, investigating the damage with me.

It got clobbered. There was a big (5" thick) oak branch poking right through the roof; and even a 2 foot long section of 4" thick branch right inside on the floor- after having made its own hole in the roof on the way in. There are these hazards to living right in the woods. We knew it. In 30+ years, though, this is the first time we've had a building damaged by trees.

A new roof for the outhouse was not on the list of chores we'd been looking at; and also not in the budget.

But it's on the "urgent" chores list now, and budget too, whether there's money or not ("not" would be a good bet.)

Why the Universe feels it has to constantly be testing our resilience, I do not know. But it sometimes seems to be the Universe's favorite pastime.

Before the storm, we were wealthy. We had a permanent place for our poo. No worries; it goes there, rain or shine or snow, and it works.

Then, suddenly we were without a pot.

Well, without a roof for our pot, anyway. The basic structure was not damaged; we'll need new translucent fiberglas roofing (which, at 30 years, actually needed replacing anyway) and I think a purlin or two got cracked, but that's all.

With all the "spring rush" going on- wet soils like everywhere else slowing it all down- I'm guessing we'll be looking like a blue-tarp refugee camp for a while; maybe until autumn. We'll have to scare up a few dollars- and harder, a few days worth of time to get it done.

I mean, really, Universe. Was that necessary?

sigh.

and then...

I'm finding it hard to write the next post.  Probably for all the reasons you can imagine.

It's an incredibly tangled mess out there- getting rapidly worse.  I'm afraid Sharon's worst imaginings may not be bad enough.  Which is definitely depressing.  Which is one of the reasons I'm having trouble writing.

But there is humor available- abundant, indeed.  While all the major economic indicators point down - the stock market keeps going up.  If I had 2¢ in the market, I'd sure get out.  And the illustration is here; in a spectacularly clueless article on the world oil supply in today's New York Times.  I read it with my jaw dropped.  Goldman Sachs just got worried??

Analysts at Barclays Capital said last week that non-OPEC supplies were “seemingly dead in the water.” Goldman Sachs raised similar concerns last month, saying that growth in non-OPEC supplies “can no longer be taken for granted.”

We can take comfort that our nations economic experts are so consistent!

Gallows humor, alas.

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I'm not quitting on the hunger speculation thing- but in the long run, I cannot be the front figure.  I've already got 4 of my own icebergs - one of them already having to do with hunger- that desperately need my attention.  We need some folks who are willing to take on long-term leadership in the fight to get food speculation halted.

We haven't achieved the critical mass here- most of the journalists in this country are still writing about the typical causes- all except speculation.

There is, at least, a reasonably broad effort at coverage this week in The Washington Post; Global Food Crisis is a substantial feature, running all week- lots of attention, lots of places to comment.  Even some good journalism.  Lots of very grim stories.

Your assignment- get your comments up in these venues- ask why speculation is not mentioned- and then do it again.  Send them to the Spiegel article- which is one of the best summaries available still.

Other actions that can be fruitful- your college alumni association is a great place to hit, aiming eventually at pushing for "divestment" by college endowment funds of the corporations involved in food speculation.

That was a  noisy, and somewhat successful, strategy in the fight to end Apartheid in South Africa.

Start making a list of those companies.  We're going to want it.  Send me the names.

Keep plugging.  I'm working on pulling my depressed self back into shape.

Life continues.  Whether you're angry, depressed, ready or not.  This morning- Spice and Smidgen went out to the THWASPCO, for the normal purposes- and the potty house was functioning in one of its less obvious modes- as a wildlife blind.

A doe, on the other side of the little valley- dropped hard to her knees as Spice was watching- and started to give birth.

No kidding.  They zoomed back to get me- and the binoculars.  Smidgen got to see a 30 second old fawn, through the noculars.

Has to mean something.

Of course, our deer tick population is up about 400% this year, too.  Hard to know which way to jump.

A superabundance of plethoras

Sorry to be gone so long; a combination of barriers kept me from getting up the steam needed to write here.  Chief among them- A) This is getting to be a really busy time of year; we're planting stuff in the greenhouse, every day; which means the greenhouse needs tending, every day.  In case you ever thought about running a greenhouse business- it's as much work as milking 50 cows.  Crazy.  B) I had to head off an attack by barbarians on my business last week; exhausting; but the hearing at the state senate went in my favor.  C) Every time I'd think I was ready to do the next post here; I'd get distracted by another topic.

The news is just crammed full of great stuff to write about.  Over-crammed.  Plethorical.  It's been kind of hard to focus on a target, when so many float by.

Like this one: Still No Aliens? My own answer there is- if the aliens are INTELLIGENT - why, on Earth, would they want to talk to US???  No, really.  I could elaborate.  I'm seriously tempted.  But I won't.  Today.

Time, I think, for a "green living" post.  A few back there, Segwyne, who is working on a house someday, asked "What are some of the things that maybe wouldn't immediately come to mind to someone who has lived in apartments for the last 20 years? "

When I first read that, I pretty much grinned - thinking "sure, in my spare time... write another book...";  which is exactly what it would take.  And it wouldn't be enough.

The list of ways to screw up is pretty much endless; and wildly variable by latitude, longitude, taste, and microhabitat.

But- it made me think, and nagged away at me, for a long time.  What could I communicate that would be generally useful there; that wasn't just a list of "don'ts".  And, something finally occurred to me.  So, here we go-

A) I'm tremendously flattered, but I can't be your building consultant- too much time, too many unknowns, too many differences in my experiences and your needs.  It's really not possible for me to give you good specific advice.    Can't do it.  But- 

B)  I can give you a few specific examples of my own stupidities and regrets (not going to get encyclopedic about it, though), which might help point the way.  And-

C)  (We'll get to C after B.  C is the biggie.)

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So; some specific stupidities-  

Now, you'll probably think it's stupid that my solar panels are up on the top of the roof, and I have to climb up there periodically to sweep snow off.  (Incidentally, that's not smoke; it's steam coming out of the chimney; it's cold.)

But that's not the dumb part.  It's not fun, or easy; but it's not dumb.  You REALLY need to put your solar panels in THE place where they will provide you with the most power.  That means TWO major considerations; sun; and distance from the batteries.

All the neighbors thought we were crazy when we built the Little House - um, in the woods.  At the end of a 1/3 mile long sod road.  The local culture wants you to put your house as close to the blacktop as you can get it; then plant trees for windbreaks.

I WANTED the distance from the roads, as I've mentioned here; because I'm lazy...; and by putting the house 100 yards into the woods, we already had a great windbreak (that's a big deal out here on the edge of the prairie).  And I had other reasons for wanting the house where it is; it has a fabulous view in the winter of the nearby bluffs; I like trees; and, I wanted the house to have its footings on bedrock.  100 yards away, uphill and out of the woods- the bedrock is 20-30 feet down.  Long, expensive piles/footings.  Here on the edge of the bluff, in the woods, the bedrock is 2-4' down; easy to put piles down.  A log cabin without firm feet can settle and float and wander all over the place.

So the house is in the woods- and solar power was not an option, nor a thought, when it was built.   Could we put the panels out in a field; where there's better sun?  Yeah, but it's a hundred yards away.  12vDC power hates long distances like that; basically you'd rather not have to run 12v much further than about 15 feet.  And that's pushing it.  You can compensate by using bigger wires- gets expensive.  To cut the transmission losses over 100 yards, you're looking at copper cables about 2" thick.  :-)  Riiiiiight.  Thousands of dollars.   

Another real option- put the batteries out by the solar panels.  And, an inverter; so the wires going to the house are carrying 120vAC.  Possible.  But we'd have to build a freeze-proof battery box here; because sometimes your batteries are going to be discharged, yes?  Then they freeze, and burst, in good Minnesota winters.  And, running the wires through the woods- expensive, no matter what- aboveground- cheap, but branches will fall and take them out; belowground, way more expensive....

And on, and on.  Yeah, I thought about the options a LOT.  (There's a good rule, Segwyne...)

Decision was, can't afford the fancy stuff; put the panels up high on the roof; more sun there, and the wire run to the batteries is only about 12'.  (The batteries are inside the house- they can't freeze there, and the worry about hydrogen exploding from an array this small is WAY over rated- it's only a little hydrogen, and it dissipates very fast- pretty hard to ignite it even if you tried.  FAR more likely we'll burn the house down with a chimney fire.   :-) )

So.  Panels on the roof.  Kind of fun, in a warped way, to have to climb up there and sweep them - oh, 8 times a winter, or so.  Many days, the snow comes off on its own, anyway.  If it's VERY cold, the snow will blow or slip off; if it's sunny and warm, it'll melt off quickly.  It's only a few days when conditions are just wrong that I have to sweep.

Here's the problem:

In good cold weather, the snow brushed off the panels causes an avalanche on the roof; and clears the snow off the roof, too.

This is a problem?  Oh, yeah.  That lovely couple inches of snow on the roof almost doubles the insulation there.  It makes a HUGE difference in how much wood we're burning to keep warm, and how comfy it is inside at night.  (We put 8 inches of fiberglas batting in the roof, which was above standard at the time.  It's not really enough.)

I wish- I REALLY wish I'd built the roof at a much different angle; one that didn't shed the snow so easily.  It's cost me hours and hours of work to cut more firewood; and will cost more.  And many nights where it gets pretty darn cold inside.  In below zero weather, it's common for the cat's waterdish to freeze on the floor.  Unless there's snow on the roof.

How did I wind up with this very steep roof?  Partly chance; but partly conscious (and wrong) decisions.

The chance part is; when Spouse and I started building, we intended this to be a weekend retreat; strictly one story.  With a relatively low angle roof.  But as we got further into the process, we were also realizing we didn't really want those PhDs.  And we had to alter the house with much of the bottom already built.  We knew we were going to need more space, and the best way to go was up; so we added a sleeping loft to the picture.  Basically; we wound up plopping an "A-frame" cabin on top of our log cabin base.  Relatively inexpensive in terms of materials and time, relatively a lot of usable space.

And- I did think it would be a good idea here to have a roof that shed snow.

Talking to the old-timers here; yep, the snow gets deep in these parts.  And it does, too.

But- even in the early years here, there have been like 2 or 3 times when it was so deep that I might have wanted to go scrape some off the roof.  Over 30 odd (ha) years.  That means times when the snow on the roof might have been over 2 feet deep.  There have been far, far, far, far, far, far, far more times when a not-so-steep roof would have retained snow, and saved work.  Way far.

Basically, my grasp of the climate here was superficial.  I relied on hearsay (oh, yah, ve got deep snow most vinterss) - failed to discount the foibles of human memories (as Dylan Thomas put it "I can never remember whether if snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights, when I was six.")  People LOVE to exaggerate their winters, all around the world.  There ARE records on snow cover; I could have dug them out.  But I didn't.

It would have been considerably more expensive to build the second story with straight walls, and a flatter roof; quite a bit more material needed.  But I really wish I had.

Meanwhile; back at the THWASPCO - I made exactly the opposite mistake.

The potty house roof doesn't shed snow worth a darn, and I wish it did.  Thing is, it's clear fiberglas, and is supposed to help heat the thing with solar gain.  I have to stand behind it and try to sweep the snow off, all winter, if it's cold.  This year, we've had real winter; basically we haven't had more than a couple moments of thaw weather since November 15 or so.

It's not a huge deal; but it's annoying to know that the potty house would be uniformly more comfortable if I'd put a steeper roof on it.  That steeper roof would collect winter sunlight better, too.  And the glass roof is not nearly as strong as the house- deeper snow would need to be removed much more often.  (except we don't get it much anymore.)

This boo boo was mostly a matter of not thinking it all through.  Well, and kind of expecting the solar gain through the south wall to MELT the snow off the roof more often.  It doesn't.  Extra materials cost here would not have been much; benefits would have been considerable, including less damage to the fiberglas roof from dropping acorns and branches- which have punctured the roof occasionally.  A steeper roof would have bounced them off better, too.

I'm not sure anyone could have foreseen this one- this is such a unusual building, in such an unusual place- visitors mostly just goggle at it, and don't really understand how it works.  (It works great, for those not initiated.)

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I could go on.  Gosh, yeah, I've made more mistakes than these.  But a catalog won't really help you that much.

Which brings us, FINALLY to:

C.)  Ask the local folk; particularly the OLD-timers.  Get them to come, and look at your plans, walk over your ground with you, and ASK them- "how would this work?"

As an old friend of mine used to say, "you just put your nickel in, and they'll talk on and on..."  And they're priceless.  No book can ever come close.

No, they're not always right; they gave me misleading advice on the house roof; but I really count that as my fault; I wasn't thinking about what they were saying; nor WHO was saying it.

Some of my other mistakes have to do with drainage from rainstorms.  Any good thoughtful local builder would have seen those coming immediately.  I didn't (I would now.)

My best example is a local practice I've never seen discussed anywhere.  When the Little House was partly built, the word got out that "a couple hippies from the city are building a log cabin in the woods!" (no, we weren't ever hippies; we were grad students- but the locals hadn't ever seen either) - and, a couple REAL old-timers came to see.  They'd built log buildings when they were young, and were feeling nostalgic.  The only information available at the time on how to build was in the Foxfire Books- not exactly Minnesota.

These two old Norwegian bachelor farmers hung around, and looked, and commented.  It was delightful, really.  And eventually, out popped 3 pieces of information that were priceless.

"How ya gonna chink it?"  "Well, haven't really decided.  Some kind of mortar I think.  Don't know much about it.  How'd you do it?"

And we got a) their recipe for log cabin chinking mortar (mason's mortar with a quarter-to-third of the mason's cement replaced by portland cement; makes it sticky.)  b) the information that the oldtimers would hammer bent junk nails into the cracks- where the mortar would hide them- as anchors for the chinking.  

And c) the information that "oh, they'd never chink inside and outside the first year.  Soon's you get heat in there, them logs'll shrink.  What they always useta do was chink just the OUTSIDE the first year.  Let the building dry and settle over the winter.  Then if ya can, chink the inside - and repair the outside - long about freeze-up the next fall, after you've been heating for another month or so.  Cuts the work way down."

Totally true; I've really never had to patch the inside chinking; and rarely the outside after the first year.  (The chinking does NOT go all the way through; there's an airspace in the middle, packed with loose fiberglas insulation- to cut heat conduction.  Not an oldtime practice; but a good one.)

The minutia of construction are absolutely critical.  And so is the local expertise.  So, seriously- ask the local oldtimers to come to your site, and talk about it; at length.

And DO make an effort to find the SMART and experienced oldtimers.  There ARE dumb ones out there, too.  :-)

UPDATE:

A couple days after the post, this showed up in the NYT: Roofs Collapse-

So, I wasn't SO silly to worry about too much snow.  Still!  Some middle ground would be great.

sigh. Mel Brooks found out, too.

Mel made his first movie, The Producers; won an Oscar for Best Screenplay, and earned a little money at it.  Everybody's heard of that one these days, particularly since it was beautifully recycled into a wildly successful Broadway play version a few years ago.

What did he do with his earnings?  He made his next movie, of course.  Which flopped; totally.  Nobody I know has ever heard of it (until I tell them.)  It's quite possibly my absolute favorite movie (and I don't DO "favorites").  Brilliant.  Beautiful.  Chaplinesque humor, mixed with hard social commentary and primal human pathos.  Intelligent.  Moving.  Mel himself has a minor role as well as directs (spectacularly well) - and his line "Master?..." - gets me every time.  He can act.

This was The Twelve Chairs, easily available now on DVD from NetFlix etc.; but a few years ago, almost the only way you could get a copy was by begging- Mel, himself, to run you off a VHS copy.  He'd do it.  He knew how good it was, and was delighted when someone else knew.  But you DO have to have a measurable IQ to enjoy it.  Ergo - commercial flop.  Watch it if you possibly can- nobody I've ever talked into it has been disappointed.

Then (I imagine) Mel said to himself, "Ok, you don't want class, you want cheap commercial humor??  Fine, it's fart jokes and potty humor for you!"   And Blazing Saddles was born - and Mel made LOTS of money.  Bless him.

So, having given you my brilliant, original, and highly intelligent analysis of why we as a species cannot afford to design and build our world for perfect constant comfort- the primary response so far is a) silence, or b) a request for the "prurient" details of frigid potty function!  (apart from BillyM and Heather- bless you).

Ok.  As Milton Berle (or someone) always said - "If you're losing your audience; just drop your pants.  Works every time."  (or something like that).

Ok, you want prurient details?  Fine, I'll drop my pants.

:-)

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Rule 1 - WAIT, until you REALLY have to go, onesies or twosies.  This will make the process faster, a good idea.

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For #1, as in, pee.  In Farbelowzero weather, we still try to pee outside, when reasonable.  Usually that depends on the wind, more than the temperature.  15mph winds at -20 can lead to serious discomfort, pretty quick; when the mere air temperature would be unnoticeable otherwise.

As mentioned in the previous Potty House Posts, (and pics) pee is one of the biggest problems in composting toilet design- there's a lot of it, too much for a PDORS (poop digester of reasonable size) to hold.  You have to do something to evaporate it; like heat everything and run a fan.  Lots of energy used there.  Or- just don't pee much in the composting toilet.

The world would use far far less water, pipe, and energy if we could just get everyone to pee on a tree, whenever possible.  The trees love it, and then you don't have to flush, or pipe, or process, or dispose of.  Granted, this is not a reasonable option inside a city.  Alas.  But it's pretty reasonable for us.

#1 outside is easy for me, pretty much regardless of the conditions.  Just don't pee into the wind.  It's more trouble for ladies, of course.  We do go so far as to keep an area away from the house swept clear of snow, so ladies in residence can squat without dipping their nether regions into snowbanks.  It can be done.  If it's REALLY cold and windy, then ladies are welcome to pee in the THWASPCO; a little pee is no problem.

And it's probably good to remind visitors that "don't eat the yellow snow" is not a joke.

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To go, or not to go?  (hike out, that is)

It's a relative question.  The thing is, a chamber pot of any kind is extra work.  And stinky, and messy.  So far, the people living here have quickly come to the conclusion that they can stand a LOT of cold, before it's so cold they want a chamber pot.  Personally, the only time I've used one is when I'm really ill.  Otherwise- in Minus 40; I'll still walk out to the Potty House.

If you read the comments on the original posts, Spice left this: "I was pregnant in the winter, delivered Smidgen in Feburary. I had to troop out to the potty house on average of 10 times a day in January. It can be done, and it wasn't all that bad. In fact it kept me in better shape for labor!"  It's not that bad. 

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re: #2, as in poop-

I don't drop my pants all the way down.  Now you know, Chrunch, for your visualization pleasure.  (I do figure I owe you there, for all my own fun visualizing your well described gyrations...)

If it's a mere 20 below, I'll just drop trou, sit on the cherry seat, get well situated, then pull the pants back up to cover whatever can be covered.  Yes, I'm wearing a jacket, and a hat.  Bare hands, for dexterity, tucked inside the pants legs while waiting for critical operations.  I know, this sounds clumsy for folks used to doing these operations virtually unclothed- but it's not a big deal, and way more comfy to stay warm.  It can be surprisingly comfy; the THWASPCO is well supplied with good reading material, and even below zero, I can find myself so involved in some reading that I quit paying attention to the cold.  Until it reminds me.

On sunny days in late winter, when the potty house may be quite warm inside, we may indeed just skip putting on the coat- it's cozy in there.

If it's colder than that; like 30 below (coldest I've been here is -42°F, not including wind chill- coldest including wind was -102°F) - I'll probably lift the lid, and sit on the seat with my pants ON for about 30 seconds- to warm the seat- then proceed to drop.

It's really true, you just don't feel the cold in your behinder parts.  Good thing.  Likewise, however, gentlemen; your winky does not have extensive cold sensing capabilities.  I've never had this problem myself, but I had a friend in grad school who reported minor frostbite there when he was peeing outside during some really extreme weather- windchill of -60 or so.  He didn't realize it was happening- it's not sensitive.  To cold.  So be aware.  There's no windchill inside the Potty House, of course.

When it's time for the TP - (water is SO not going to work here) the pants go all the way down again, for easy access.  No big deal.

Typical follow-up on re-entering the actual Little House- jacket comes off, and you spend a minute or two backed up close to the woodstove, re-warming the fanny area, and hands.  Nice.

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There is another inobvious aspect to winter outhouse technique- coping with the poopsicle.

See- if it's really cold, the pit freezes.  So successive depositions of "material" will result in an ever-growing poop stalagmite, known here as the poopsicle.  Some foresight is required- if you wait too long, it can grow right up to... where you don't want it to be.

Hence, we have an old broken axhandle handy; and once every 2 weeks or so, I'll take that, reach it down the hole, and gently whack the frozen poopsicle sideways.  It'll crack off pretty easily (not a lot of tensile strength there) and just fall over, alleviating the problem for another couple weeks, or more, if the weather warms.  But you don't want to forget.

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The path to the Potty House we keep open not by shoveling, but by sweeping with a push-broom.  It's not a matter of removing the snow, but collapsing its structure- in a matter of 6 hours or so, its structure rearranges after being disturbed and it freezes very hard, and makes a good, non-slippery path.  In spring, the hard snow stays longer than the adjacent unpacked snow, and provides us a clean path through the spring mud- until it's too far gone, then the adjacent areas are usually past the mud phase, and can be walked on just fine until the main path is dry.

In case of very heavy snowfall, we'll likely walk to the potty house with snowshoes on a couple times, before sweeping.  That'll pack it down and firm the snow.  No shoveling.

So.  What else do you want to know?  :-)

The THWASPCO/Potty House in Winter-

That's "Three-Hole Wind And Solar Powered Composting Outhouse", in case you missed that earlier.

Some time ago, I made a comment over at NoImpactMan, to the effect that "everybody going back to mud huts" IS indeed an "option".  

It took me quite a while to realize some of the participants there did not understand what I meant by that.  It's not that universal mud huts is an option we would CHOOSE, as a society.

It's that we could all to easily find ourselves living that way- if we don't fix some of the problems facing us.  The potential for societal collapse is that big.  We won't choose it- the universe will enforce it, if we continue to ignore physics.

Seemed obvious to me- pretty dumb (of ME), huh?

Wherever humans live, there are seasons; either cold/warm, or wet/dry, or light/dark, or calm/windy - etc.

One of the factors contributing to planetary overload is the increasing assumption that whatever dwelling/city you build; it should be built to serve your needs perfectly - 100% of the time.

I think we probably cannot afford it.  And I can tell you from long personal experience- it won't kill you to be hot, cold, wet, or dry, some of the time.

We look, for example, at the country farmer housing/village in China/India/Brazil- and the more sheltered among us are appalled.  My gosh, the houses are made out of... mud.  (Literally; or adobe, or rammed earth, or thatch...)  The streets aren't paved.  They use outhouses.  Each house has one lightbulb.  It's horrifying that humans should be forced to live this way!  We think.

They frequently don't think so, until they get a satellite tv link, and start watching re-runs of Dallas.

Then, since this is what the whole world tells them, they start to "need" paving, highways, indoor plumbing, refrigerators, and prefab plywood houses.  It's a disaster.  They have no recognizable "cash-flow" to pay for all this, of course; so they tend to abandon their 8,000 year old sustainable agriculture/polyculture pathways, and plant a "cash-crop" - like cotton, or opium.  So they can buy Spam, bagged rice from California...  etc.  One crop failure of the new cash crop and - they starve.

Sitting cosy in our Chicago condo, it's hard to realize- about HALF of all the humans on the planet still live this way.   World Bank data.

As far as I can decipher the bureaucratese, a mere 25% or so of the world lives on $1US (one dollar) per day; or less.  What's a little harder to discover is that another 25% or so lives on - TWICE that.  That is - $2US/day (two dollars) - or less.  Rich folks.

Life in the mud-hut world is far from bucolic; it entails occasional hunger, frequent lack of basic medicine, total lack of advanced medicine; short lives and too much hard work.  

Here's what I'm trying to get around to- the capital investment in our "modern" city/suburb infrastructure is utterly incomprehensible to anyone living on $2/day.  And a disproportionately large chunk of it goes to make our modern world "100%" functional, 100% of the year.

Highways are not a really good example to work with here; since a lot of the "frills" associated with fancy highways are also for safety - hard to argue against.  But the numbers are more easily accessible than most; and for most of us- the costs are surprising.  From GAO - (slide 16)

WSDOT found:
– Reported costs ranged from about $1 million to $8.5 million
per lane mile.
– The median reported cost was about $1.6 million per lane
mile.
– Five states reported costs significantly higher than other
states—ranging between about $3.1 million and $8.5 million
per lane mile. (See fig. 1.)

So- when your town builds one mile of 2 lane road- it tends to cost around $3.2 Million.  More if it's mountainous, or swampy.

You have any idea what a mud village could do with $3.2M?  Build a hospital?  (mud would be fine)  Educate 3 doctors?

Are all the roads in your neighborhood NECESSARY?  How many are there so people can get to work 10 minutes faster?  Or because there's one house way at the end of the road?

Staggering amounts of money are spent by us on infrastructure that is useful - for a small percentage of time; or a few people.  This is mostly unnoticed- and I think is not being discussed as a possible source of "saved" energy and resources.  Of COURSE it's my right to have an all weather road to my door!

Quite a few thinkers believe that one of the "answers" in the coming centuries to humanity's problems has to include a more even access to resources - water, fuel, money.  Besides the airy-fairy nonsense about fairness or justice - it's just practical.  Those damn poor people eventually get cranky, when they have nothing left to lose- and start banding together, and burning cities, and stuff.  (take a look at history, please)

3 billion people now live on less than $2/day.  How much more do they have to lose?

Analysis will show, I am quite confident, that the cost of providing services  "100%/24/7/52" -is usually about TWICE the cost of providing services "92%/23/7/46".  That's huge; and those resources are desperately needed elsewhere.

Would you be willing to put on a sweater for a couple weeks - so a village in India could have a doctor?  That's what it could come down to, in the centuries ahead.

SO - where the heck is the THWASPCO in all this blather?

Well.  It's a sanitation service that makes many people recoil in horror.  "I COULDN'T live like that!"  they'll say- and the most astonishing part to me; they believe it.  Never mind that a) all your great grandparents lived this way, and b) more than half the people on the planet still do.  Yes, you COULD.  You just don't know it.

Why do we have one?  

A) we couldn't afford a "normal" sanitation system- which would have cost about 6-8 times more. (Freeing resources for much more critical needs.) 

 B) once we got into the needs and design aspects- this system actually does an environmentally superior job of handling waste- by a long shot.

Oh, yah, and C)  luckily for us all, your tushy just doesn't have many "cold" sensors in it.  Sitting on a below-zero seat is like jumping into 50°F water- seems chilly for a couple moments, then you're used to it.  NO BIGGIE.

Basically, the THWASPCO provides perfectly comfortable services about 8 months of the year.  It's got substantial solar heat gain when the leaves are off- making spring and autumn pretty cozy.  It MAY get too hot for a few days in mid summer.  In midwinter- yeah, you notice it's not cozy.

So?  Cope.

And how, precisely does one use an outhouse in -20° weather?

Very, very quickly.

More tomorrow.  :-)

Potty House Design

RC made a request for drawings/diagrams. I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm going to pass on that. For one thing, I don't have any already made up- and making them would be quite a lot of work. For another- I'm a little bit opposed to the idea of "recipes" for this kind of thing. I think they can stop people from thinking for themselves, and a Potty House is exactly the kind of project where you MUST do a lot of thinking- about your specific site, specific climates, and specific needs. (RC, it's not you I'm worried about- but other folks who will read this blog and get ideas. If you need evidence, you can take a look at some of the advice Colin is getting on "refrigeration" - cold milk?. Wow.)

So; I'd rather stick with design principles here. There are still a couple we haven't touched on, though most design stuff is outlined in the two previous posts basics and the one with pics, more, and Pics.

Looking at the pics, I can quickly see a couple aspects of our potty house you might well want to NOT copy- not because they don't work, but because they're pretty specific for our situation.

One is- all the glass on the south of the building. It's "frosted" glass, so you can't see through it (privacy being important to some people). It's certainly more work to install, and more expensive, than just putting in a wall. We need it here, for winter sun/heat. We're far enough north that the sun's angle changes hugely from winter to summer; RC, who lives in PR, has got very different sunlight parameters to deal with. Our Potty House is also IN the woods; under a couple big oak trees. Lots of shade in the summer- which is good for not frying anyone who needs to use it in the middle of the day- but you do need SOME solar heat gain in order to dry the pits. Finding the balance can be tricky.

For this particular building, probably 90% of our solar heat in the winter comes in through the south wall windows. Partly because of the low angle of the sun- but also because of the snow. Most of the time in winter there will be snow on the roof- plenty enough to prevent much light getting through that way. Luckily- when there is snow on the ground- we get a LOT more heat in through the south wall- from sun bouncing off the snow field. It's quite significant, and yes, I did figure on that before building.

2nd design aspect you may not want- you can see the roof is made of 2 different materials- part of it is asphalt shingle; part of it is corrugated translucent fiberglas. The junction is a pain in the neck; and prone to leaking, particularly during snow melt. We mostly wound up with it this way because I wanted the "turbine" "powered" air vent to go straight up, and out- and fitting an 18" pipe through the fiberglas would have been beyond my construction skills at the time. I find myself calling this air-duct/pipe the "stack", as in smokestack.

Other considerations about that roof- I wanted a substantial overhang over the entry door, because people have to use it in the rain; nicer to have a little cover while you negotiate the wet, slippery stones walkway, etc. So I opted for a frame roof there.

Why did I want a straight stack? Because bends in very low air-pressure ducts REALLY cut down on the air flow. And- the stack, you recall, is connected down into the pits, to pull wet stinky air out of the building. Using ambient wind- which is known to be uncertain. I really wanted to do everything I could to make the air flow easier- for example, the stack outside of the house is painted flat black- to absorb more solar heat, and heat the air in the stack further, making it "draw" better. (The paint is 20 years old; still looks black when it's wet, anyway.)

I'll toss out a general "sustainable -green" design principle here, which I have not seen formulated anywhere, but which I have come to completely believe in. If you are incorporating some feature which relies on a "passive" process- i.e.. it relies on physics or meteorology to work, not an electric motor- get the best advice you can on "how big" that passive feature should be- then build it twice that big. Three times bigger, if you can afford it.

"Passive" is great- and free. IF it works. And it's just in the nature of passive phenomena; like warm but not hot air rising up a chimney; that a LOT of the time, they WON'T work, if the least little thing goes wrong. Like a stray wind gust blowing down the stack, and stopping a slight air flow. Making passive features bigger gives the physics that's supposed to drive them much better odds of actually grabbing hold.

Ok, I expect to see that cited as "Greenpa's Aggressive Passive Design Principle" from now on.

Anyway- rather than build that complex roof, it might be easier/cheaper to just lead the stack out through a wall, and put a bend in it. It might also be smart to go with "active" design in a warm climate; like investing in a little solar powered fan, to really pull the air through and out. A little pricey, but nice; and the turbine, incidentally, does NOT pull air nearly as well as they like you to think; testing shows it works about as well as a ... hole in the roof. But it does keep the rain out.

AND-

Here is a major design concern we haven't touched on yet- bugs- and spiders- WILL get into the building, and into the stack. You need to design the stack so it's easy to clean out, once a year anyway- otherwise spider webs (and other webs) will build up in it to the point where you have no air flow; and everything will quit working.

It's not that you can't clean a stack with bends in it; but it sure is more difficult, and the bends invite webs.

Bugs. You need to build your potty house with bugs in mind- every step of the way. (And mice; etc.)

Big piles of poop attract lots of bugs/critters, and you really would rather not have them in the potty house with you.

So-

A) Build the building TIGHT. Remember that a mouse can squeeze through a 1/8" crack; and little bugs through cracks smaller than that. Don't leave cracks- allow for shrinkage and movement- and caulk whatever you can't close.

B) Build everything so it can be CLEANED. No matter how tight you make it; bugs/critters WILL get in (just not so freely). They'll come in the door, with you; even mice, who will sneak in past your feet at night. (Really.) So just keep muttering "I didn't want to be the only species on the planet, anyway.", and put things together so they can also be taken apart and cleaned out from time to time.

For example- the stack not only needs to be opened and "swept" once a year- I also put in an insect screen, to keep flies from just zooming down into the pits. The screen gets dirty/webby much faster than the stack as a whole; so make life easier on yourself and design it for easy access.

Now. Here we get into a difficult area for me. I have to confess something.

I didn't INTEND to tell you all a fib- but I did. I just forgot. My "green practices" list brags "no pesticides; EVER..." My confession- I do use some "fly spray" in the outhouse; probably about 5 times a year. Flies love poop. They will get in. You have to do something about them, or you'll got completely crazy. Ick. And while I'm confessing- we do use some of the same fly spray in the greenhouse, to control fungus gnats, which are lethal for us. The spray we use we buy at the farm store- it's designed and sold to control flies in "the milk room" and around dairy cows; pyrethrin based stuff.

I'd rather not use it- but so far it's the only realistic solution. If you're going to have a composting toilet, you've got to control flies. A couple of sprays of pyrethrin down into the pit when they appear inside usually stops them for a good month. It's not easy for them to get in; due to construction- but it will happen if people insist on opening doors.

Which gets us to the last point for today- the windows do NOT open- any of them. You DO need some ventilation options, however. No matter how well you balance things, you'll find yourself with days when it's just darn hot inside, and you wish it weren't. I made our windows unopenable mostly to simplify construction- and it also makes it easier to make the building fly-tight. And it's better for SEEING , and easier to clean- you don't have big insect screen areas constantly in front of your glass, and getting dirty. What we have instead are two screened "portholes" right up in the peak of the building, under the eaves. A much better place for ventilation, since that's where the hot air goes, and glass would be pointless, since nobody is tall enough to see out right there. The portholes have hinged wooden shutters that work from the inside; so if it's too hot, or two chilly, you can just reach up and change the amount of heat that's escaping or being retained in the main room.

We'll have a summing up post next; then on to the next subject. What have I left out?