Society & Culture Self sustainability

[Tigger Please!]

i got right into permaculture a few years ago; it makes you realize how onerous a lot of australian architecture really is...

 

[Wright Away]

i got right into permaculture a few years ago; it makes you realize how onerous a lot of australian architecture really is...

An example of ridiculous housing design here in Adelaide is Mawson Lakes, it was intended to be a high tech "green" suburb, in reality it is the highest power using residential suburb in Adelaide, partly because the houses have NO eaves. None whatsoever in a climate like Adelaide's that is ridiculous.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

Adjust for Southern hemisphere accordingly:

http://www.hgic.umd.edu/_media/documents/hg601.pdf

 

[woopedazz]

Imagine trying to get laid in a tiny house loft. It would be a novelty the first couple of times and then just a missionary-instigating bedroom.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

Imagine trying to get laid in a tiny house loft. It would be a novelty the first couple of times and then just a missionary-instigating bedroom.

Have sex outside.

 

[Tigger Please!]

Have sex outside.

coitus alfresco

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

!

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

 

[Caesar]

I'm a little less ambitious, but I would appreciate some tips on growing herbs.

My biggest problem is that I really only have a small west-facing courtyard that gets incredibly hot during summer. I would need a setup to deal with that. Ideally I would like to grow parsley, coriander, basil, sage, mint, tarragon, oregano, thyme, rosemary, chives, marjoram and chillis.

At this stage, for the majority of the herbs I am thinking of a hanging basket setup with automatic drippers, on the western fence (so that the sun disappears as soon as possible in the afternoon). Would this work? Do I need some additional shade? Do some of those herbs need differing conditions to grow?

 

[Mooster7]

I'm so tired of this hippie bullshit.

The headquarters building where I work is relatively new. They built it for us 4 years ago. The old place was perfectly adequate, I'd like to add (as well as being about 20 minutes closer to home).

This new building is completely "green." It's won awards. It's the pride of the Al Gore Chicken Little club. It's a piece of shit and already falling apart.

The roof is au natural. The wanted to plant alfalfa sprouts or something like that up there, but dirt is dirt. Nature is nature and it's weeds. Anyone driving by looking at the building sees a bunch of weeds growing on the roof. I keep wanting to go up there and plant marijuana seeds and have a crop growing. I would have done it already except I made the mistake of joking about it, so I would be the prime suspect if it happened.

The urinals are 'no flush.' In theory you can pee in them and it just goes somewhere. In reality, no one uses them because they'll smell like foul piss all the time. We discovered that the firs day of moving in. The toilets proper have motion sensors that flush after you leave. Fortunately there's an override button because these toilets won't even swallow a piss. They use 3/4 as much water as a normal toilet, but to get anything to go down you have to flush it three times so it actually uses twice as much water.

The bathroom sinks can't be turned off or on. They too have motion sensors and only let loose of the water if your hands are beneath the faucet....kind of. Oh good! No wasted water! What wasted water? The US is crawling with water. We have no wasted water. In our county, we have a state of the art waste water system which actually DOES deserve awards. Aside from that there is no wasted water. If there is, then that may be a good thing because then we can lower the oceans before the polar ice caps melt. When's that supposed to happen? Oh yes, never. Because it takes a while for faucet water to warm up and you only get a little squirt when you put your hands under there, you always have to wash your hands in cold water. I admit this is a minor point. It's mostly the girls who complain, but as a counter-action, most of us guys piss and then go into the kitchen to wash our hands. The girls don't because they're trying to save the ****ing planet.

The admin/tech area is massive with an angled 25 foot (7.62 meter) ceiling. This allows for large window bays for natural light. People can work there all day without needing to have the lights on! Yay! No. The room is impossible to heat in the winter or cool in the summer so the climate control and air handlers are burning enough electicity per second to send Marty McFly back to the future. Otherwise the people working in there would have to wear either eskimo suits or swim wear depending upon the season. AND since we are a "secure building" the lights in there are left on at night, when ALL of the admin/tech weenies are gone home. That's right! Natural light by day, artificial light All.Night.Long. It would be better to have a low 8 foot (2.438 meter) drop ceiling and use a conventional non-hippie lighting system. But no.

We have no garbage disposal in the kitchen and this has never been adequately explained to me. We simply can't have one. Our dish washer is some ****ing hippie thing which cost thousands of dollars, but doesn't actually get any dishes clean. You have to wash the dishes by hand before putting them in the dish washer. You may ask, "at that point, why not just put the dishes away in the cabinetry?" I do. So do many others, but the rule is the dishes have to be washed and then put in the entirely ineffective dishwasher for "sanitary reasons." Mostly it's the girls who obey the rules. No one has yet died from us guys washing the dishes by hand and saying **** the dishwasher.

We have some solar power things up on the roof when it doesn't get crowded by weeds. There's a windmill across the street that barely moves. And we have an enormous diesel generator with a 20,000 gallon (75,710 liter) fuel tank that has to be tested weekly and quarterly all the fuel has to be burned out to insure freshness/readiness. In four years we’ve never had a power outage which would necessitate the generator. 40,000 gallons (302,800) gallons of diesel have thus far been burned unnecessarily in the last four years. Happy new year by the way. We’ll burn more in 2013.

The carpeting (I despise carpet) is made from recycled plastic bottles and gorilla ass hair or some such thing and it started falling apart two months after we moved in. It’s been replaced multiple times and finally had to be replaced by something Al Gore and his pot-smoking ****-suckers wouldn’t approve of. The new carpeting took and has lasted just fine. It cost less than the original which (again) did not work.

Speaking of recycling. That’s the biggest bunch of godam bullshit ever perpetrated on the human species. I buy into recycling aluminum (aluminium for you under the Queen) and other metals. That actually works and saves energy, money etc. All other forms of recycling are bullshit. Paper, cardboard, this that…..I could go look at the all the separation bins we have, but I’m not going to. I throw everything in the ordinary trash. The reason is recycling doesn’t work. Recycling uses more energy, creates a bigger *carbon foot print, requires tax subsidy to operate at all and overall costs more than it does to simply throw shit away and having it hauled off to a landfill. By the way, a landfill itself is recyclable. Today’s landfill is tomorrow’s golf course or wild life habitat. No shit.

It's not just our building. Our building is a model, blueprint and typical example of all the stupidity that's going on in the entire green world.

I could go on. Main point is our building has won the Al Gore pussy bullshit seal of approval even though it is a piece of shit and uses more energy/resources than it saves. It does make people happy and feel good about saving the planet though. That’s what it does. It makes delusional people happy. That’s what the entire green movement is. Delusional hippie assholes who want to feel good about something. I remember when hippies simply got high. Hippies have never been clean. Ever seen a photo of Woodstock after the concert was over? ****ing slobs. All of you.

EDITED TO ADD: The building cost 22 million dollars. It could have been built conventionally for about half that price. Oh yes, I could go on and on.

 

[Caesar]

1) Plenty of sustainable buildings work fine. You got a dud. Sucks for you.
2) Plenty of people who want to be self-sustainable are not remotely interested in the environment.

 

[Mooster7]

1) Plenty of sustainable buildings work fine. You got a dud. Sucks for you.

1. How do you know plenty of sustainable buildings work fine? Who told you? Ours is one of those that work just fine. Any information you would ever be able to find about our building will "prove" it's an enviromental godsend and that it works just fine. Anyone in authority will tell you our building works just fine. It's won awards!!! So have many other buildings that "work just fine."

2) Plenty of people who want to be self-sustainable are not remotely interested in the environment.

2. Completely agree.

 

[Caesar]

I've worked and lived in several sustainable buildings and had no problem with them.

Several sustainable buildings have quite high usability ratings by their inhabitants. For example, the Conde Nast building has been hugely popular with people who work there because of things like the high levels of fresh airflow, excellent use of natural light and so forth. Sustainability doesn't always have to be to the detriment of comfort/amenities.

 

[Mooster7]

I've worked and lived in several sustainable buildings and had no problem with them.

Several sustainable buildings have quite high usability ratings by their inhabitants. For example, the Conde Nast building has been hugely popular with people who work there because of things like the high levels of fresh airflow, excellent use of natural light and so forth. Sustainability doesn't always have to be to the detriment of comfort/amenities.

There are people who work here who seem to have no problem with it. They're not looking past their noses. As you're aware, the Conde Nast building is in New York. New Yorkers are the most myopic species on Earth and they wouldn't know fresh air from a stale beer fart. Any building should have adequate air handlers better than New York skyscrapers. I'm severely happy they now have ONE. New Yorkers (city) are so far to the left you can only shoot them by mistake (which is unfortunate for the rest of the state). Anything remotely green is going to be applauded by them. I'm certain the blue collar facilities managers and the white collar folks who write the monthly checks know many amusing horror stories about Conde Nast that they won't tell....publicly. Most importantly, in New York not being PC about green hippie shit is a felony.

Our building has not only won awards, it's been featured in a magazine with all its glory and splendor. Like I said in my original post, any information you'll find about this building will be that it's a wonderful example of green tech and an outstanding shining example of saving the ****ing planet. There's nothing really on the internet you can easily find about it, but if there was, and if you were talking to someone other than me, you could Google this place and say something like, "....there's a builing in Kansas City which is so incredibly outstandingly awesome that...."

Like I said, how do you know?

 

[Caesar]

You realise they do usability surveys for most of those awards and stuff, right? As in, ask the building's inhabitants to rate their workplace?

But I guess everybody who likes these places are wrong and your anecdotal experience trumps everything.

 

[Mooster7]

You realise they do usability surveys for most of those awards and stuff, right? As in, ask the building's inhabitants to rate their workplace?

But I guess everybody who likes these places are wrong and your anecdotal experience trumps everything.

Yes! We took one of those surveys It was online and there were about 50 ambiguous questions you tick off as to

Strongly Agree
Agree
Mostly Agree
Disagree
Strongly Disagree.

Stuff like that along with a space for commentary. We took the survey when we first moved in and the sustainable paint on the walls was barely dry. Before we really took stock of the place. I myself had some compliments to make at thet time, and I'm sure there's a record of it deleted somewhere. Then the ridiculousness of the place set in after a couple of weeks. We haven't been surveyed since. Anyone who would be asked about our building now would be someone who either approved and paid for the place or someone who owes their job to someone who approved and paid for the place. Either way there's nothing that can be done about it. It's over four years and 22 million dollars later.

My anecdotal experiences represent the reality of the situation, aren't simple opinions or perceptions and, yes, absolutley trumps everything else.

 

[Footypie32]

I'm sure there's going to be plenty of trial and error with sustainable buildings. Like most things humans do, we don't get it right the first time.

 

[Mooster7]

I'm sure there's going to be plenty of trial and error with sustainable buildings. Like most things humans do, we don't get it right the first time.

Agreed, but we can't get it right before spending 22 million bucks for an emergency management headquarters and committing a workforce to it for 50+ years? All just so some delusional tree huggers can clap at the ribbon cutting ceremony and feel (quite incorrectly) as though they've saved Babmi, Thumper and the polar ice caps?

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

1) Plenty of sustainable buildings work fine. You got a dud. Sucks for you.
2) Plenty of people who want to be self-sustainable are not remotely interested in the environment.

Yep.

The libertarian aspects of self sustainability are undeniable.

Caeser, herbs are piss easy to grow and there is an ocean of material on this on the net:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/uploadedFiles/Marketing/culinary_herbs_hi_res.pdf

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

 

[nicky]

I love the idea of living sustainably - as in only eating the food you grow etc.

I have enough garden space to start my own farmers market but haven't taken full advantage - have grown some stuff and learnt a few lessons.

I want to spend more time gardening and learning that stuff and less time working. It's my career ambition.

HTB, since watching that doco you posted (resonance) i want to lose the phone and move to the country.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

Bravo nicky.

Build a nice green house when you get there.

http://growtestdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/undergroundgreenhouse.pdf

 

[J_Moore]

My biggest problem is that I really only have a small west-facing courtyard that gets incredibly hot during summer. I would need a setup to deal with that. Ideally I would like to grow parsley, coriander, basil, sage, mint, tarragon, oregano, thyme, rosemary, chives, marjoram and chillis.

I've got a very small west facing balcony. The ones in bold I've chucked in biggish pots and I water them every second day. They seem to manage just fine. If you've got an entire courtyard, you'll be apples.

The rosemary died, though.

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

Hot water for your dishes and bath AFTER you have finished cooking dinner:

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

http://files.diydharma.org/other/John_Seymour-The_Complete_Book_of_Self_Sufficiency.pdf