Search Results for: label/water%20conservation/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

820 results

Airing Our Dirty Laundry

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Domesticus
3 Comments
...ey come out of this thing. The Spin X might be a good option for apartment homesteaders as it just hooks up to a regular 110 outlet and does not need a drain line. Water from the clothes is sent out the front of the unit into a small container that you must empty. A Spin X will set you back $469. No discussion of dryers would be complete without mentioning the recent scandal in Britain wherein three bored firemen nearly lost their jobs for filming...

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Crapper Livin’

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Design, Preparedness, Solar
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...ix miles off the coast of Ventura, this handsome building features a solar water heater and a 12 volt electrical system to power the lights. Built of durable materials such as cedar and recycled plastic decking, this building should see many years of service. SurviveLA advocates the virtues of living small. Why not, for example, live in the Santa Rosa Island campground bathroom? The average American house has been super-sized to a gut busting 2,40...

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Root Simple Visits Simparch’s Utah Compound

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Thoughtstylings
...posting toilet all housed in and around a repurposed WWII era Quonset hut. Water is biked in with specially adapted cargo bikes. Solar power pumps the water up to the tower where it is heated by the sun in a black drum. A solar panel array and batteries provide more than enough power, all day and all night, to run power tools and pump some tunes out on the powerful stereo system. The composting toilet features, what must be the most stunning view...

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Make a Pepsi Can Stove

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Preparedness
2 Comments
...e bottom of a Pepsi can and the end result is incredibly light. I cut the top off of a 24 ounce Heineken can to make a pot and I used some chicken wire and aluminum foil for a stand. Basically this setup is good for boiling a cup of water, so don’t plan on making any complex balsamic reduction sauces. You can use the stove for coffee and for simple things that need boiling water, i.e. instant soups. Light and compact, this stove is ready for when...

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Dookie in the Tomatoes

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Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
14 Comments
...rrives at a centralized packing facility where it is loaded into a massive water bath by underpaid workers to mingle with thousands of other tomatoes. The water bath acts as our second salmonella Petri dish along the tomato’s path to our table. Alternately, a blade used to automatically slice tomatoes gets infected with salmonella, thereby spreading the bug to all the other pre-sliced tomatoes headed to the food assemblers (a more accurate term th...

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