[pelblog] Happy Fun Seacoast Day!

[fraterrisus]

so, my birthday party was excellent. there was a mod rock / classic rock dance party in the staff rec room, where we have a bar and a dart board and a ping-pong table. i stayed up too late, drank too much, and then had to work at 8am the following morning :)

saturday was Seacoast Day...

Comments

[dancingwolfgrrl]

Hooray, permaculture island!

[fraterrisus]

it's an interesting thing, because it's clearly being motivated first and foremost by cost savings. we have to haul all of our own garbage off the island, so composting reduces the amount of outgoing trash. we're also looking into feeding table scraps to pigs.

our primary energy source right now is diesel fuel, which is pushing $5/gal these days. so any sort of alternate power generation we can do will save us tons of money in the long run.

whatever the motivation though, it seems like a good idea to brush up on the alternatives that people are working on. and i know folks who read this will be able to point me in the right directions :)

[dancingwolfgrrl]

Yeah, money is a powerful motivator for a lot of places, even with less powerful social motives than Star doubtless also has. Don't you guys also bring in potable water? That's another area where there are doubtless opportunities if you use it for anything besides drinking and cooking.

A meta-comment: there are basically two genres of approach to stuff, high-tech and low-tech. Both totally have their place, but experts in one are not terribly likely to tell you about the other, and my guess is that ultimately, you'll want both.

Also, in the case of power, don't forget to look at reducing consumption. Everyone loves a CF bulb! Or at least, they should :)

[coraline]

i think they have reverse-osmosis desalination...

Everyone loves a CF bulb! Or at least, they should :)

sadly, i hate CF bulbs -- they just look wrong and make me sad. and then the fact that i dislike something which saves energy makes me sad. no win for me!
(i've compromised by using a mix of CF and incandescent in our multi-bulb lamps though, and CF in places i don't spend much time, like the front hall.)

[fraterrisus]

yeah, one of the things we're going to do is a power usage survey. we have a bunch of PCs on the island, probably too many. but we do use a lot of CFs, in the guest rooms and in the common spaces. even our bug bulbs on the front porch are CF :)

we did used to ship in potable water, but as coraline says, we make it with ROs now. and our toilets flush with salt water.

thanks for the tips though!

[dancingwolfgrrl]

Wicked clever :) (CF bug bulb!) Power meters are also sometimes handy for getting an idea of how much of a difference a particular change would make; normally people get them through their electric companies (who often sell them at big discounts), but I'm sure they can be had otherwise!