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  • From: John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] human powered tools
  • Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 13:58:26 -1000

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
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net




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