Yurt Plans, Part 3: Water and Sanitation

The next question to consider once I decided on shelter and power was twofold: Where do I get water for bathing, cooking, and drinking and what do I do with it when I'm done? The first portion of that is relatively simple. I can get a used food-grade 50 gallon barrel for relatively cheap, so that will be my storage. But then what to do with wash water when I'm done?

That leads to another, more difficult question. What do I do with my, erm, gastric byproducts?

{disclaimer: from this point forward I will be discussing the composting of human excrement, that is to say, poop. There may be attempts at low-brow scatological humor. If this subject makes you uncomfortable, it's okay. I'm not extremely comfortable with it myself. Fecophobia is very common in western culture. Let's step right in, shall we?}

My first thought was, ewww, I really don't want to be up to my elbows in... hard work trying to dispose of my wastes. I was hoping to find some magic solution to just make it go away; but as my old boss used to say, you can wish in one hand and... Oh, never mind. What I ended up learning was that there are only a few ways to have an off grid toilet.

The first one most of us are familiar with- the latrine. Just a hole in the ground that you do your business in. Smelly, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and, as it turns out, horrible for the environment. Latrines don't actually treat the waste, they just wait for anaerobic decomposition to take place. In the meantime, pathogens are leaching into the surrounding soil and can travel up to 50 feet laterally. In addition, when it fills up, a new one needs to be dug or the old one scooped out. No thanks.

Another method is incineration. There are commercial toilets that use an electric element to incinerate your deposits. Periodically you remove a sort of dust from a tray below the toilet and discard that. This method works well, but requires an obscene amount of energy and can stink.

The third method is composting. I started looking at commercial composting toilets, and found that, while efficient and odorless, they cost around $2000 each. That's more than twice my yurt budget! I was starting to think I was up a creek and out of luck, but then I found The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins.


This self-published 250-page volume outlines a composting toilet system in which the actual composting takes place in an outdoor compost pile, and the toilet is simply a receptacle that gets emptied periodically. But that's not the interesting part of the book. Jenkins makes a carefully researched, well-supported case for large scale 'humanure' composting. He points out that all creatures in nature form a nutrient cycle with their environment and nothing leaves the system. He then contrasts that with our current nutrient cycle:



Interesting point, but what about smell and disease? Jenkins says that, done properly, this system has no odor and the composting temperature will kill all harmful pathogens to the point that the compost can be used to grow food. Cool.

Jenkins' book is available from Amazon or the publisher's website: www.jenkinspublishing.com. The first edition of the book is available for free on the website.

De-grime-ification System Update

I now have a shower! Picked up a fully enclosed fiberglass shower stall. It, of course, went on the Subie:




The drive home was, to say the least, interesting. It got a bit windy, thought I was going to blow off the road.

Insulation: Accomplished

Picked up a lot of ten concrete blankets for $100 at ReSource. Stacked all ten on top of my Subaru:



Got a lot of funny looks on the way home, for some reason.

W00t! Wood!

Sears Trostel was kind enough to donate some of their straightlining offcuts to the cause:







It's a mix of different hardwoods, mostly poplar and alder (I think). There were some pretty big pieces in there, some up to 2 1/2." This should be enough for the khana wall sections and possibly the rafters (with the bigger pieces). If it's not, they have lots more.

Cool thing about Sears Trostel: I thought that sawdust just gets thrown away, but they let me know that theirs gets sold as animal bedding. It's good to see industry repurposing their waste materials.

Yurt Plans, Part 2: The Juice

After people get used to the idea of a yurt, one of the first things they ask me is what I intend to do for electrical power. Usually followed by, "You will have electricity, right?" Oh, I shall have electricity. I will have my dual-core gaming computer and I will have my 720p DLP projection system with Dolby 5.1 surround sound. There are some things that I am simply not willing to give up. But how? That, dear reader, is where I have an idea. Wind power, but not in the way that most people think of it.

I considered three power generation methods as I was designing the electrical system: solar, wind, and hydroelectric. There aren't many sources of flowing water around here with enough of a drop to be effective, so hydro was out. Solar power is wonderful, but expensive. Major breakthroughs in solar panel manufacturing are being made by companies like Nanosolar and AVA Solar, but their solutions are years away from the consumer market. That leaves wind power. There's plenty of wind on the Colorado front range, and quality wind turbines can be built on the cheap by the determined DIYer.

I then got to thinking about the de facto power storage medium for off-grid residences: batteries. Batteries are expensive and full of toxic chemicals. They wear out after a few years, and must be repurchased. I decided that I don't like batteries. So I started searching for a better way to store energy.

Back to the basics: energy can be stored in several ways. This can include chemical (batteries), mechanical (reservoir for a hydroelectric dam), or thermal (geothermal plants). Utility companies in Huntorf, Germany and in McIntosh, Alabama have been storing energy mechanically in a process known as Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES). This is done on a massive scale, with excess grid electricity being used to run gigantic air compressors that pressurize an entire underground cavern. The compressed air is then used to run air-powered generators when demand is at its peak. This process is inherently inefficient, with electricity being converted to mechanical energy then back again with all sorts of heat losses in the process.

[image from Wikipedia]

What if the process of storing energy in compressed air was streamlined? I think a process that uses a windmill that converts mechanical wind energy to electricity that is used to run an air compressor to store compressed air that is then used to make electricity all over again (whew!) is perhaps a bit complex and wasteful.

My system will use a windmill that directly drives an air compressor instead of a generator. The air will be pumped into storage tanks. When electricity is required, the compressed air will run an air motor/generator and supply the needed current.



This will take a considerable investment of time, research, and testing to properly implement, so for the first year I will be using a gas generator (possibly converted to run on cheaper propane) to supply my electrical requirements. If anyone out there manages to beat me to it, let me know how it turns out. Until next time(water system).

Coming Full Circle, or: To Build a Yurt

In my composition class, we were required to write an essay describing a pivotal point in our lives. Following is the account of my decision to live off grid in a yurt:

My dog greeted me enthusiastically as I dragged myself through the front door of my house sore, dirty, and physically and mentally beaten. I paid her no attention. I flipped on the computer, grabbed a beer, and plopped down to shoot some zombies. I then paused for a moment to consider my life. My wife had left me for her now girlfriend. I was working a job that, while lucrative and challenging was unfulfilling and slowly destroying my body. Sure, I was going to school to become an engineer and finally do something that I liked, but that was far off and I had no way to pay for it. My plan to work while my wife went to school and then switch off when she graduated had a flaw or two in it now. I was stuck in a lease for a two bedroom house that was far too big, full of too much furniture and unnecessary possessions. I was living the wasteful, foreign energy dependent life that I had always been so vocal against. I was floating through life, simply existing, with no direction. My life was bloated and fat. Something had to change.

I needed a miracle diet for my life. So I contemplated my options. I considered moving to Alaska and repairing airplanes, moving to a big city and getting lost in the crowd, and moving to the mountains and being a hermit. There were problems with all of these, though. I despise repairing aircraft, I can't stand big cities or crowds, and I actually like most people. I realized that I couldn't simply run away. Anywhere I moved, my problems would remain.

This needed to be a lifestyle change, a slimming down of sorts- a going back to the basics. I didn't need that much space. I didn't need all those possessions. I thought perhaps I could get a small apartment or roommates. I then remembered that I hate apartments and am far too independent for roommates. I needed somewhere cheap, somewhere small, that I could have my workshop to build projects while I was in school. I suddenly remembered my best friend Fuzzy, a short bearded man who more than a little resembles Gimli from The Lord of The Rings. We were at the Sustainable Living Fair shortly after my divorce, wishing we could afford to live sustainably. "Hey, you could live in a yurt!," he told me, "Nothing holding you back now."

Why would I want to live in a portable Mongolian hut? The thought was both jarring and absurd. Where did that come from? I glared accusingly at my beer, half empty, and checked the alcohol content. I considered other things, and each time, I came back to the yurt. Each time it made even more sense. A yurt is small, but round, so there is no wasted space in corners. Well insulated and built to withstand Siberian winters, it would be more than cozy in the winter. It would be a perfect test bed for my chemical-free wind power system that I was developing. I could get wireless internet service and stay connected. Not only would this be a cheap way to live while going to college, but it could also be entirely sustainable! I had already done the research. I already had the skills to build it. I was going to live off grid in a yurt! I then got a grip on myself. This was insanity. I tried to convince myself that the idea was purely a knee-jerk reaction to the divorce. Finally, I dispelled the notion, drank the rest of my beer, and shot my zombies.

In spite of this, I found myself daydreaming more and more about the yurt over the next several weeks. Each time I thought of it, I jumped one more obstacle, solved one more problem. Eventually, I had a fully-formed and workable plan. The idea had persisted long enough that I knew that it could not simply be a knee-jerk reaction. I had to tell someone, to see if I was crazy or if it really was a good idea. So I ran it by my dog, Cider. She listened intently, one ear perked up and head cocked to the side, while I spelled out my plan. She paused for a moment when I was done, then ran out of the room and brought back her tennis ball as if ready to move in that instant. The rest of my friends were not as easy. I got reactions ranging from enthusiastic agreement and offers of help to quizzical silence, as if they were waiting for the punchline. All eventually came around and supported and assisted me as I worked out problems, drafted plans, and researched building and health codes.

It is now four months ETY(Estimated Time to Yurt) and counting. I get home from work, still tired, but no longer beaten. I still grab a beer but this time settle down with a building code book, Walden, or a tongue-in-cheek volume about composting gastric byproducts. I reach down to pet Cider, patiently waiting with tennis ball in mouth, and reflect on the changes of the last few months. From an outside point of view, my situation has actually gotten worse. I have even less money, only a part-time job that's even worse that the last, and yet somehow I feel at peace. No longer do I drift through life aimlessly and unaware. I'm focused, driven, and conscious of how I affect my world. I look forward to my next busy day, whether I'm going to school, working, or scrounging for materials. I view each day not as simply another day, but as a potentially better one. I now have a plan, and am going to be all right.

The next several posts will detail my plans for the yurt, system by sytem. I'll start with the main structure, then move on to the internal bits(electrical, plumbing, etc.). Till next time...

Introduction

Hello, world! Welcome to my first ever blog post. I've started this blog to chronicle my progress while I build and live in an off-grid yurt. The yurt is a portable dwelling consisting of a circular wooden structure typically covered in felt. Here's a picture of a traditional Mongolian design:



My yurt will be made with more readily available materials(I don't have an entire flock of sheep on hand to make a yurt cover, for example), but I'll get into that later.

I hope, over the course of the next several years, to provide a viable alternative to the traditional Western idea of a home. One that is as comfortable and convenient as tradition dictates, yet places less strain on its surrounding environment, and is much less dependent on fossil fuels.

I believe that we as human beings possess the intelligence and ability to either destroy or preserve the earth we live on. I also believe that, as creatures with a limited life span, we cannot own the earth. Sure, we may stake our claim and hold it close, but the simple fact is that when we're long gone that piece of earth will still be there. We're all just stewards, when it comes down to it. And for my part, I think that it is our solemn responsibility to be good stewards.

Part of that is planning for those who will take over when we're gone. It is irresponsible and an example of bad stewardship to base an entire civilization upon a finite fuel source(fossil fuels). Whether we're running out now, or will in a couple hundred years, it does not matter. The simple fact is that we will run out, and when we do, we need to be prepared as a matter of necessity. I understand that the technology simply does not exist to fully transition today. Or tomorrow. Or in a decade. That's why(in part) I am doing this.

It is possible to live sustainably in today's culture without being wealthy. It is possible to greatly reduce your need on fossil fuels without being a hermit, or crazy. These are the things that I intend to demonstrate over the next few years. I hope that you, dear reader, will follow along and share in my triumphs(and failures) over the next several years.