Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

interesting debate, i haven't read it all through but i'll be joining in more from day to day, i like the idea and i would love to meet and work with ppl like this

now at us i calculated a year or two ago that i can live with 5$ per day, today that's 10$, that's eating really modestly

so that's 300$ minimal per month for one person, so growing our own food migh be good in the future, since the prices won't go down

the only thing that scares the shit out off me from time to time is the industry that is against us, but again, else they shoot me or put me with force somewhere, i will try harder every day to help achieve some sense among us ppl again

i know the life forces will not fail their path, and that's a pleasing thing to know for me, the only thing i trust 100%, even I am more doubtfull to me than life

let the positive vibes reach and teach you!

go janet, wednesday with the time difference is just too hard! i'll do it now good luck!

Dt, you can also just highlight what you want to quote and then just click on the "quote selected" button at the bottom of each page, it then appears as above (after you hit the "submit" button )


Janet, thinking of you, all the best today (Wednesday here)

+1

Hey everyone, I sent DT a PM straight after he asked the question

Yeah I got several PMs. I think I got it. Thanks all.

Hey Janet, how did you go on Wednesday?

Wednesday was exhausting. The developer liked 2 of the 4 properties we showed him, but he hated our favorite. Too many unknowns to clean up the property, and he wasn't going to touch it. We have to re-convene our Equity Members and discuss the feedback we got. It was a bit of a dose of hard cold reality, but better now than after we were in to things a bit deeper. On the plus side, we learned about land adjoining one of the 4 properties that might make that choice a better one than we thought. Much pondering to do now.

thanks for the update--always a learning thing....
you will get there P is in there too!!

We're in the news! The local rag just published the first of (we hope) a series of articles about us. They hope to do follow-up articles as we hit various milestones. The (Dec 27, 2007) article is here, on page 24 and 25:

<old link removed>

This link is from the archives, so it should be there for a while.

http://communitypub.com/WKLYART/12-27-07_HCN.pdf

Excellent Janet..... hope there are lots of follow ups.

Interesting to see the real estate page..... most of those homes (on the second page) would sell for $500,000 + on the eastern seabord of Australia and the upmarket "McMasions" (page 3) would be in the range of $1mill + easily

good luck janet!
i should not make suggestion about things i know little about but...
as for housing have you considered straw bale homes? bales are relitivly easy to work with so even children can be involved in building. they last as lon as your average house and are supper insulated so you wouldnt have to generate so much energy for heating. getting building codes approved for bale houses in PA would be a whole other battle though and extra percations would need to be taken in a humid area. just throwing that out thier. planning to biuld one myself down in AZ once i finish the whole shcool thing.

Hi Ace,
We haven't really talked about construction details yet other than to say we want passive solar. We don't even know if we will be building townhouses, duplexes or single-family homes. It depends on the land and the zoning. Since we will be going with a developer and builder, I don't know how willing they would be to do some of the less mainstream construction methods, although I would be interested in strawbale or rammed earth. I love massive walls.

Passive solar is great. Although our house isn't really designed specially for it, I did pay attention to aiming our back wall as close to S as we could and still have a decent view. Our house is aimed about SW. The back wall is almost all windows (french doors), and this time of year on sunny days the kitchen/nook/living room get very warm. I just turn on the furnace fan to distribute the heat to the rest of the house. In February around 3PM the sun will go all the way through the living room and hallway to the front door. We don't use petroleum for heating so we could potentially be more sustainable in the future with PV or solar water heating, and buying green cooperative electric like Green Mountain Energy.

Fun article about doing it the expensive or less expensive ways:
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la ... iddleright

Janet,
Funny you should talk about rammed earth and solar passive design.
I tried doing a straw bale building (3M square storage shed with concrete roof) That was fun and it is still standing 5 years later - I am watching it even though there are new owners.
When we sold that home (and SB shed) we bought a 25YO rammed earth home which was built using passive solar design on 3/5 Ac.
This is our home now and for the long term future.

Even after installing insulation in the ceiling, I still need to find many heat leaks in and out of the house which cause days like Today (42°C), Boxing day (44.7°C) uncomfortable without air conditioning. For the first hot day, the house manages to stay below 27°C, but the house doesn't cool down again overnight unless the minimum is lower than 20°C. The second 40+ day we would cook, so the air conditioner gets a workout. We have only used it twice this summer so far. In winter the heat leaks out and I have difficulty in maintaining 20°C even with the heating stove running at full pelt.
Just one more job to do.

Regards,
Tony