People again!

Finally on Tuesday night everyone came back from the epic trip.  It is so nice to have people around again here at the house.  It defo was a relaxing week, but now I am glad to have company again.  That night we had another spa bath.  It is an awesome thing to be able to have it basically whenever as long as we plan ahead a bit and start the fire early.  Before everyone left we filled up the vat with water from the river and filled the fireplace with wood.

Then the first day everyone was back we finished up Jorge (the composting toilet).  Put up the door, added stairs, and varnished the inside.
Now we have our new
place to poo
with a view.
Shitty poetry, huh?  Below here is a picture of the finished product:

Then two days ago we tried out the earth oven for the first time.  I dug out the sand in the middle of it which was holding the shape while it was built.  Then I got a fire going in there for a couple hours.  Laura and Dani had spent most of the afternoon making pizza dough and bread to bake in our new earth oven.  And then when we go to bake... its barely hot at all.  I think that first fire was needed to dry everything out, and right now we've got another fire going that will hopefully heat up the oven this time.

Other than these couple projects its been a quiet few days here.  Today was a free day, and we went to the beach even though its been slowly getting cooler here.  I was the only one to get in the water.  I also went for a very light jog to test out my leg which has been feeling better.  I doubt it is back to 100% yet, but I might be able to stop worrying that I will strain it at any moment now.  Tonight is the end of daylight savings here and so tomorrow there will be 8 hrs difference to the east coast.

 Fijoas are my new favorite fruit.  And here's some to the left.  Yesterday Jon went over to the neighbor's house and got 2 huge bags of them.  I have eaten about 40 of these in the past 24 hours.  Yum.

Composting Toilet

Another major project we've been working on recently, with the brains of it coming from Nico and I, is a composting toilet for the house.  I have so far really enjoyed working on it, and there are only a couple more things to until it is totally complete.  I just felt like writing about it now, since I'd like to be working on it in my solitude here, but cant really do much with a bummed leg.  I put a couple photos in here, but you can see more on my picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/CompostingToilet#

So why make a composting toilet when we have a perfectly good one inside?  Good question.  One huge reason is to save on water.  With 8 people in the house, flushing the toilet takes up a large amount of water and since water is still scarce around here it will be good to use less.  Also we will be making less waste in general by using an outdoor toilet.  Sounds counterintuitive to leave your shit where it lies, but I'll explain in a moment.  Another good reason for this toilet is; with 8 people living here it'll be good to have another place to take a crap when someone jumps in ahead of you.  And yes, it will actually smell better than a conventional toilet!

This is it here to the left.  It could still use some stairs and a door, but we're almost there!

So how is this all possible? Less waste, and smell better?  Simple - let worms eat it up!  The way that a composting toilet works is by pooping into a bucket with some worms and mulch in it.  We use the half barrels which are about 3 feet in diameter and about 2-3 feet high.  After each poop, the "flush" is a handful of mulch to cover it all up.  This prevents the flies from coming and prevents it from smelling.  As the bucket fills up, the worms go to work breaking down all the worm goodness in the barrel.  There are actually 2 barrels in the system, and once one fills up, it gets put aside while the other is put into use.  During this time the worms break it all down more until it just looks like some nutrient rich dirt.  At this point you can feed the trees with it as it is great plant food.

So there you go, you can even turn your poop into something useful instead of using loads of energy by sending it to a waste water treatment plant.  Ewww...  city water that most of us drink, could have been flushed down the toilet with your poop...

Not only was this a fun project in getting to do carpentry and having the satisfaction of seeing the progress on a daily basis (instead of monthly or yearly as it often goes with conservation), but now I have written down plans and can reproduce this fairly easily some other time in my life.

I do know that this all works, because we have a composting toilet on the land that we've been using the entire time we've been here.  That is also where I got the plans from.  Jon has had very little to do with this project, so I've gone to the other one a few times to study it and take a whole bunch of pictures on how it was put together.  So who else wants to poop with a view?

The Creation of a Spa Bath

Hello everyone.  I am alive, no worries.  Just been busy recently doing many things here like constructing a composting toilet, making cornhole (yay games), clearing out storage in Thames to save some cash for the trust, weeding, mulching, planting, hiking, fishing, and bonfires.  But a lot of energy has been spent making a spa bath here which works in a totally unique way that I thought I'd like to highlight here.

First thing, we need a big ol' bath tub to have our spa bath in.  We chose a spot right by the gazeebo that is near my tent, and started digging a hole.  Next was to make a frame to hold the tub and also create a deck around it that joined up to the gazeebo.  I may have mentioned before, but it was interesting building a structure on non-level ground. Something I had never thought of before was to drive big posts into the ground (or even auger out holes to put in even bigger posts) and then attach the main supports to these posts so that it is all level.  Then we added joysts between the inner and outer frame which gave us a complete frame to put the decking wood onto.  Below is a picture of the tub and deck all completed (minus the bench seats that Nico and I added on later).

The next part of this spa bath is to have some way to hold and heat up a whole lot of hot water.  Here, there is an unexhaustable source of firewood, so we made a fire pit!  We also got a 1600 Liter vat to hold the water.  I learned a whole lot about concreting and brick laying in this part.  A hole was dug into the side of a little hill to make a flat area to have the firepit.  We mixed and poured concrete into the bottom to make a level ground to build the walls up from.  We then built walls on three sides to support the huge vat, and added a concrete pipe as a chimney in the back.  And vuallah! a cheap way to heat tons of water.  

The fireplace and vat are uphill of the tub so that when the water is hot and ready, we can open the valve to let water flow down.  We used 50mm alkathene piping (I dunno if it is called something else in the US, but it is a black barely flexible plastic tube).  There are valves both at the vat and at the tub so that we can have control at either end of the water flow.  Once you are in the bath sometimes it is good to top up with some more hot water without having to get out.  It was a bit of a puzzle to get all the fittings together and get it all connected, but once we did, we were ready to have a bath!

Since we've been a bit short on rain (and hence water at the house) we filled up a tank of water from the river on the land and pumped it into the vat.  It took about an hour and a half of having a fire in the new pit to get the water up to about 140 degrees F.  Then with the gravity feed and the 50mm (2") piping, it took only about 3 minutes to fill almost the whole tub!  We even had to mix in some cold water cause it was too hot!

Then finally, enjoy :)

There are some tarata leaves in there which is the New Zealand lemonwood.  It makes the bath smell all nice. Also in the background there are the benches in their finished state.  As far as I know we are the only people who have a spa bath (or hot tub) set up in this fashion, but it works great here and costs very little.

I've got some more pictures of the whole building process up on my picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/SpaBath#

New Abode

Recently I kinda moved out of the house and into a tent nearby.  This I think was actually a step up.  A double mattress fits in there and it is like I am just out there with nature, but without the bugs!  I actually get woken up from mosquitoes less now than when i was in the house!  And I still get to keep my stuff in the house (for now) and use all the amenities like a crapper and a kitchen.  Below here is a pic of the tent.

The other morning I randomly woke up at about 6am to look out and see the sun just rising over the horizon.  Amazing that I can just open my eyes to see this, and then promptly fall back asleep!

 

Oh yea, and I think i can hear kiwi birds there at night.  Here in Tuateawa is one of the only places where there are houses and kiwis still live there!

What's Earthwise all about?

Lots of great stuff has been happening here, and honestly I dont really like spending time on the computer which is why I dont update much.  But now it is 11:30 pm and everyone else has been in bed for a while, so i guess this is a good time...

When I first got here in Tuateawa, it was Jon (the guy who runs this whole thing) and two girls Bexie and Sadie helping out.  They had just moved into this house right before xmas, so a lot of work was going on to get it ready for the other volunteers that arrived on the 9th.  So anyone that I have mentioned Earthwise Valley to is probably wondering exactly what it was all about, and all that i knew was that it was some sort of sustainible living project.  Maybe about 18 months ago Jon bought this piece of land here which used to be grazing land for cattle.  He plans on turning it back into native forest with areas for people to live and learn and grow their own food and be sustainible.  This will take years, as the soil is really dry with no trees and a lot of cleaning up needs to be done.

This is the land!

Last summer about 1000 trees were planted on the land and we'll continue to nurture those and plant more.  One huge project which will help the land a lot is getting water there.  We'll need to lay about a mile of pipe up into the forest to get enough height to run a microhydro and also pump good water to the highest point on the land which will be used to water everything.  It is actually quite dry here in the summer (winter in the north) and so not much planting can happen right now.  And since there are no accomidations on the land we have a house nearby and so some work is going into making it a good home as well as reducing the ecological footprint of this place.

Here is another view for the house from a nearby hill.  I'm working on uploading some more shots around the house on picasa

Along with all the work that we do, there is a whole bunch of recreational trips that happen.  I have already been snorkeling and sea kayaking a couple times and there will also be lots of hiking, camping, rock climbing, and whatever else we all decide on.

I am actually taking on a more significant role than the rest of the volunteers.  I have been helping out with the overall logistics and planning and group orientations and all that good stuff too.  I think this will be better experience for the rest of my life than working in engineering... since i am thinking more and more that i probably dont want to sit in a cube and be an "engineer" for the rest of my life.  Permaculture and outdoor ed seem way better.

A few days ago now, the rest of the volunteers got here.  there are two from the US, two from the UK and one from Mexico.  So far everyone in the group has been awesome and I am really excited to live and work with these people.

The house

Holy crap, I now live here:

This is the view off the porch of the house.  It is still a bit of a work in progress... but it has come quite far since just before xmas, when they first started moving in here.  Right now most of our work is getting it set up for when the rest of the volunteers come.