permaculture

[John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> What about using a hose pump for this. Easy to drive, slow but reliable 
> and few moving parts to wear out.
> This is a pump that utilizes a rotor that compresses a flex hose to move 
> fluids. A cheap model for plant watering should be available somewhere.

Yeah, was thinking of that sort - I've seen ones you can attach your 
electric drill to, for example.  That's in the same realm as one PP or 
less (PersonPower - could be HumanPower, but we already gave HP to the 
Horses... :-)
Assuming you could get enough RPM off the bike that is - to what extent 
do these kind of pumps depend on high RPM?

> What about using a roller system to compress biomass for pre-drying, 
> pre-shredding treatment, something like a cane mill or sorghum press.

Thanks for mentioning - reminds me, crushing/mashing could be very 
effective.  John Jeavons points out that when adding veggie 
chunks/scraps etc. to compost, slicing them up doesn't help much but 
mashing/crushing them makes a significant difference in speed of 
composting (exposes more surface area, same as with shredding woody 
debris along the grain instead of chopping across the grain).

Issue of power available from one human still remains however...rollers 
big enough to crush woody debristhat big need more power than that.

> Just got another idea. Hook a rider and bicycle up to a shredder that 
> works like a sorghum press
> (usually powered by a mule at the end of a long pole).

Again...one PP is only a fraction of one MP (or HP), so they wouldn't be 
able to power the device.  If they could indeed turn it, it would take 
ten+ times as long to do the same work.

Trouble with horses and mules is, they're picky eaters.  We need 
something with more possible inputs.
Now, if we could power something like this with pigs, with goats...with 
chickens...! ;-)

cheers,
John S.

--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
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