permaculture

["Jerome Osentowski" <jerome@crmpi.org>]

List,  When I build my first free standing greenhouse nearly twenty years
ago, I looked into all the possible greenhouse heating systems that were
being used at the time:   Woodchip/poly, compost, hotwater in ground, ect.
I even tryed the woodchip pile but never got it work for me.  I did put a 60
foot pile of compost against the north side of the greenhouse to heat and
insulate , and did that for a few years, no water pipes .  The heating
system that we found to be the best and cheapest and least work is the  one
that is still wroking after twenty years.  WE pull the hot air from the
center of the greenhouse thru the soil down to three feet . the air comes
out cool and dry at the ends of the greenhouse, thus heating the soil ect.
This system also has a second thermostat that turns the fan on at night when
the temp  drops below
37 or what ever you set it at . We also have a wood burning sauna for a
second back up , and we grow tropical plants here at 7200 feet in colo.This
system sure beats running a chipper ect.   jerome

--
Jerome Osentowski, Director
Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute
PO Box 631
Basalt, CO 81621   U.S.A.

Tel/fax (970) 927-4158    E mail: jerome@crmpi.org

For more information, please visit our web site at <<www.crmpi.org>>


----------
>From: Harold Waldock <haroldw@alternatives.com>
>To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Subject: RE: [permaculture] RE: energy options & Jean Pain & woodchip 
>composts
and woodchip biogas homescale
>Date: Fri, Sep 12, 2003, 10:35 PM
>

> Permaculturealists! Americans & Canadians! Wake up! energy difficulties are
> coming your way!
>
> Alberta is behind the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline and although it is to finish
> several years before the Alaska pipeline no gas will flow south of Edmonton
> from it!  Why?  The oilsands and tarsands need all that gas to get the more
> valuable oil out.
>
> So, what are you, fellow PC Designers, offering by way of energy design
> services? What products? What tools?  What culturally appropriate,
> acceptable, step wise and transitional programs do you market?
>
> I've been feeling keen hunger for DIY and small business energy solution
> offerings because I'm struggling to find out what is reasonable and
> available.  I surf lots but I don't find much useable stuff.
>
> Lets look at not well documented practice and opportunities and develop
> them. Bill Mollison wrote that designers are to take note that one important
> consideration is to find existing tools and through small but intelligent
> improvement adapt them to better value.
>
> I'm told that it is a common practice in the North Georgia Gulf area near
> Campbell River on Coastal BC to make compost piles of wood chips run poly
> pipe through it and heat the house and water with it.  Are there recipes and
> how to documents? Can this be developed so it is widespread and culturally
> used?
>
> As part of my PDC I learnt of Jean Pain.   He was a forester in the south
> central region of France in a highlands area over 300m in elevation called
> the Central Massive, developed a unique forest management style with many
> benefits.  Starting from the post war period to the mid 1980’s he worked to
> revegitate a overlogged and deforested landscape, in a mountainous dry
> fire-prone region.  It is not unlike the BC interior except that it does not
> get as cold.  The scrub land became forest under his management practices by
> reducing the frequency of fire through firebreaks and replanting with trees
> which were native but less fire prone than the scrub (Oaks I think).    He
> created firebreaks by cutting the trees and shrubs in strips across the
> landscape and removed the woody plant material, chipped them with his
> specially designed wood chippers.  The fire breaks reduce the risk of fire
> spreading across a forest. The chips were brought back and either composted
> for their heat for houses and greenhouses or digested for biogas.  Compost
> was used for the seedlings he grew and planted. Biogas ran his chippers,
> trucks and generators.
>
> Resources and Documents I have heard about but have never read or got my
> hands on:
> Does anybody know how to get the following?
>
> There is a group working in Belgium, practising Jean Pain’s techniques-
> Committe Jean Pain, Hof Ter Winkelen 25, Holle Eikstraat, B1840 Londerzeel,
> near Ghent. Tel/Fax +32 52 30 53 65. Email- comite.jean.pain@skynet.be (Are
> these people active?)
>
> An outline of Jean Pain’s work on  www.geocities.com/j18hellas/mag2.html -
> Scroll down
>
> Pain, I. and J., 1972 "Another Kind of Garden...The Methods of Jean Pain",
> Domaine "Les Templiers": Villecroze, France. (If I could get the document my
> sister  can translate it but has not somebody done this?)
>
> 'Another Kind Of Garden' (5th edition). Published by Negro, Draguignan,
> FRANCE. (I could not find them can you?)
>
>
>
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