Refugee Tin Shack Palace

The main feature of passive solar is from collecting and storing heat for comfort, so two parts, greenhouse panels or plastic form an essential part, and for a refugee camp, dirt for thermal mass.

Taking a standard 3ftx8ft panel for walls, a 7-1/2ft wall section with a 3ft opening to a matching wall section to be built with a planter by cutting 5 panels into 3ft & 5ft sections to make an "L" shaped cross section with a lot of mass down low, the upper wall 18" wide.

With a open floor width from the planter to the base of the greenhouse wall is 9ft, the roof overhang to adjust seasonal gain by latitude & climate, made from 12ft panels, 7 side panels 8ft tall finish the core, material for doors, vents.

That's 19-3ftx8ft tin-panels plus 8ftx18ft of greenhouse wall, 6-3ftx12ft roofing panels for a core living unit that has 6ft of width at full height and 3ft more to the base of the greenhouse wall allowing sleeping to fit without taking too much from the active space, so, 12ftx18ft overall. The east-facing side can be clear panels to help morning warming.

The north side represents the cold sink, where a cistern and storage can be, this side is optional so not drawn in. Since ramming dirt for walls is semi-permanent, it grounds the tin for stormy weather, adds quiet, drapes can insulate fairly well.

This will allow the residents to maintain comfort zone by adjusting gain & ventilation, greenhouse glazing can be stapled clear plastic or standard plastic panels, if plastic using trellis slats to tack it down with 16" spans or less stands up to winds well. the design supports year-round growing, indoor wood fires for cooking, cisterns to hold water are the pits from getting the soil, rain-water caught by the roof siphoned to them to reduce external living needs.

It's hard to say how a place can be sited, generally facing SE to SSE is best, this warms early in the day across the planters, shading the afternoon sun is better for most climates.

Most passive solar are for large buildings, this a mere 216-sf and will be cozy for a small family which can be built by hand without power tools if need be. Using as little energy to provide comfort takes a priority in how materials are used, hopefully the design concepts will be adopted by people having the tin shack to rebuild what they have.

Letter to the UCI on the Downtube Attachment Rule

My interest as a bicycle designer is that when moving the downtube to above the chainrings, a significant drag reduction is accrued by this polo-bike frame style, thus making the bicycle as a machine more efficient.

Now, since common street bicycles copy the official form, which is slower, this actually costs billions of calories of food to be eaten for no reason by riders per day worldwide who are using their bicycles for transportation, in reality if these frames had their downtubes above the chainrings that food would not be needed per day.

So, with the importance of the bicycle as basic transportation worldwide and its use by the poorest people on the planet, this seemingly benigh attempt at a "level playing field" actually is costing these poor to eat more per day using their bicycle as transportation.

There is no structural need to alter anything on a bicycle made with the downtube above the chainrings, the standard tubing wall thickness doesn't change until above this point so needn't be changed in alloy, temper or dimenesions; it requires re-jigging the downtube on an assembly line along with changing the headtube attachment, no other changes are needed to manufacture this design and the scaling of them to the world ridership saves energy by design.

Please could you seriously consider this issue, as I state it seems rather off, but has a huge effect on efficiency of the basic machine, on the order of 1-mph increase in average speed by simply moving the tube up for a traditional road machine with '70's tubing, thus a very significant percentage of the work being done to overcome aerodynamic drag is removed.

While this will effect racing speeds, that is only one facet to consider in the same light as an engineering change to the machine for transportation, hard to ignore the vast influence the UCI rules have on manufacturing.

The UCI can be seen as a leader in using its knowledge for the betterment of humanity to pursue this.

Respectfully yours,
tom mallard

Mechanical Power Systems From The Wind

Mechanical Power Systems From The Wind

This paper is for all those farmers and ranchers who live and love their wind-swept land and want to make a living from it but it’s hard.

There are some things very standard to farming, and by brand the PTO, Power Take-Off unit is one of those things. What drives that unit is usually a shaft from the engine of the tractor, so this is to add a unit with industrial springs that are storing energy, these wound-up by windmills in a system of carts & conveyors that automatically keeps winding things up when the wind blows and stacking them ready to pick up and cart them to the fields.

These are dangerous levels of spring power. It demands designing in safety on an industrial scale to drive a mower, what happens when a spring or ratchet breaks and so on.

So, this is a very simple concept, to work best the windmill may be of another type, one designed for stormy weather, one that doesn’t shut down in big gusty winds, instead it cranks them out because that is the policy to follow with natural systems, get it while you can.

Sand dunes sit, until the strong winds hit.

The burden then becomes having enough units to do the actual work-per-second needed to drive the acreage for the next, how many can be afforded ends somewhere and after that hook them up to a biodiesel fed engine and call it good because the wind doesn’t always blow but all that was saved in expenses per acre to work the land, per year.

To design all this to a first prototype system is a worthy enterprise for farm equipment manufacturers to consider.

Without the unique windmill, my assessment is the watts won’t be there to move much dirt but could supply seeding and other less powerful needs per acre. Since most windmills shut down above 30-knots, design examples of those that operate in strong wind is spartan and historical; my first approach to this was in the late 1970’s, so, the recent addition in figuring out springs and ratchets can be wound up by a variable wind to high mechanical torque and basically no loss in energy, nice combo!

Easy to see how it'd really reduce the yearly costs on any farm or ranch with these smaller uses that seem to deserve their own systems, like for rotary power for hand tools, wind-up toys that do work.

Taking this into the other processes on a ranch or farm, dairy cows, prairie cattle, row crops to hand-dug back yards moving dirt takes a lot of watts, that’s an outlet for these units, to be designed to specific purposes from running compressors to conveyor belts to shop equipment, designed to step-down the high torque to a steady output that lasts so many minutes per PSU, Power Storage Unit.

May this concept inspire, my desire is to put that paperwork into 3dcad … someday, over the rainbow ...

Just figured out these would be easy to scale down to use in refrigerators that use compressors, very nice, had thought of hand tool powering with springs before, this puts intermittent wind-power into the kitchen! Most small appliances can be powered by a standard base using spring units ... the drawings will flow.

Sustainable Row-crop Agriculture

Sustainable Row-crop Agriculture

An example of my solution is to put biomass harvesting units all along appropriate stretches of the Mississippi River and all its tributaries to gain the biodiesel and the pressed cakes after the oils are extracted, which, if my math is correct is enough annually to supply the fertilization needs of Big Agriculture for corn & soy bean rotations, totally eliminating the need for ammonia, a fossil-fuel dependent method to get the yields they need to pay the huge bill for using it.

The cakes are a true soil enhancement, beyond soil amendments which only last 1-2 seasons, an enhancement enriches the soil with organics to add to its structure, its ability to hold moisture and provide habitat for soil inhabitants, from fungi to worms, part of organic farming.

So, this plan produces gigatons of pressed cakes free for the taking & processing, not to mention billions of gallons of biodiesel and other useful oils and nobody is eating it as a food, so, all that excess nutrition goes shooting out into the Gulf of Mexico and all that fresh-water plankton dies to produce the seasonal "Dead Zone".

Now, with a domestic supply of farm fuel and fertilizer that's free until our cities & towns stop polluting groundwater and run-off, then we'll have to come up with something else like wastewater effluent ... probably enough of that to do something, Phoenix, AZ, has 10-million gallons a day of it, that's 83-million pounds of nutrients the biomass has to eat before tomorrow, converts to over 2-gallons of biodiesel per person per day from this source and the water is almost pure at the end so treated and recycled.

Hope that does the job of creating an economy due to profit from biodiesel from ignored sources and recycling fresh water on a municipal scale, saving billions a year nationally this all emits 40% of the harmful emissions versus gas-ethanol extract it to burn it up, it’s a real cut of emissions, soot is a problem biodiesel refiners have already begun to reduce, emitting about 30% less soot over fossil diesel at this time.

These two strategies can supply all volume needs with biodiesel for transportation and agriculture, and enhance the soils on a long-term basis versus today’s costly methods, providing an economy and scale that provides more food per watt used, the ultimate measure of efficiency as we leave the Industrial Age for the Thermally Aware Age, where all energy transformations are conserved instead of all the heat wasted we see today.

With the cost of corn tied to biomass production instead of the price of ammonia, we’ll have more food for less. The parasitic and captive-market system currently in vogue seems to be losing its favor lately, hoping that’s a trend, I remain without funding for these ideas, with public utility PhD’s ready to work on the problems of pathogens & poisons, nice project.

Advancing Thermodynamic Architecture

Current architecture doesn’t consider the thermal opportunities for buildings, not only areas of high solar gain, but more important in a desert where to draw cold from and to store this for use during the day. Thermal fluids store therms, units of heat or cold, at twice the capacity of water, specific heat of 1.0, standard thermal fluids are 2.0 or twice the thermal storage capacity, don’t freeze until -43C/-45F, haven’t quite started to boil at 300C/600F.

So, to keep a home cool in summer, areas of lower temperatures can be used as a source of cold to store it, using insulated pipettes to move thermal energy from source to room. Cooling power can be obtained using ice-house ammonia refrigeration systems, the propane refrigerator of the rural past uses this system which takes heat to produce the changes for creating cold. This heat is quite easy to get from a dish solar collector, cloudy climates using more collector area than the Sonoran Desert.

Then, with some insulated tanks and thermal fluids, an entirely solar-powered space heating and cooling system is straightforward to produce. This moves the major power demand of the house off the grid, using solar-thermal instead of electricity gains orders of magnitude in efficiency over the grid system, no energy transformations are required in the solar-powered system, the heat or cold is used as-is, very little waste heat is created so minimal impact on global warming versus the grid, no contest.

To remove space heating and cooling at the residence eliminates outside power inputs and makes using PV’s, photo-voltaics, able to produce the electricity in a more practical way, being able to store enough in reasonably sized battery arrays to maintain for the daily cycle.

The residence still has these thermal needs to handle: Hot water and heat for laundry and cooking. A way to supply these with natural energy systems is to store 300C/600F during the day, that’s enough to burn the bacon, have instant boiling water on tap and other features not as easily available to electricity or gas. This concept requires a new series of product lines of appliances that will on the outside look identical to existing ones, the difference being the use of a thermal fluid to cook, heat or dry something, or, having the cooling power to refrigerate and make ice.

This then frees the PV-battery system from all thermal needs for the home including major appliances, so much so that having the battery capacity to run electronics, small appliances and lighting becomes very practical, thus the home can be totally off the grid and constructed having an identical look to existing homes if desired.

There is no reason to have a wire to the grid, the use of thermal energy directly doesn’t involve electricity, there’s no economic reason for a homeowner to put up more PV’s than they need just to spin the dial for a few bucks, and, if you’re not on the grid they can’t bill you. A homeowner is far greener with a diesel generator run on biodiesel for big ampere needs like running shop equipment, PV-battery systems are not good for high amps, so this is considered in the home, with the engine’s exhaust heat co-generated into the thermal system of the home.

A need in industrial design is a recognition, then, of the need to engineer all these methods and products. A major system needing full-cycle design is what goes into the sewer, all of that “waste” is a source of nutrition to grow the biomass to produce biodiesel with, this worth about 3-gallons a day per person in the home, thus supplying a transportation fuel by living in the home, a miniaturized version of the centralized supply process.

A personal note, without exception everyone the designer has described this to wants one of these homes!

So, the market for them is there, homeowners are fed up with captive-market, parasitic capitalism where every watt adds to the profit of others and you don’t get a dime’s worth of value for a buck. Current pond-algae biodiesel sells for $1.75/gallon in California local to where it’s made in biodiesel stations, this product pollutes the planet 40% of what gas-ethanol does, 60% is a big reduction in harmful emissions, and the fuel is made from “waste”.

The waste-stream includes solids, and if exploited by technology instead of ignored can produce other useful oils that have market value. At the end, the pressed cakes are rich, organic soil amendments that help the idea of self-sufficiency in food on any lot by digging them in, enhancing soil and plant growth, and, the waste processing purifies the water as the biomass extracts the nutrients, treated at the end and recycled water becomes another self-sustaining possibility if you have the systems in the home to purify and recycle onsite, the building design capturing run-off.

While the technology is wanting, centralized systems that perform these processes are straightforward steps to follow, miniaturizing them and engineering in adequate self-maintenance such that taking care of the system is akin to keeping a pool’s water balanced and clean is the goal for simplicity. In any case if this is done then much of the food required by the residents can be put in as crops, intentionally designed into the buildings and site, with all of these design criteria satisfied the residence becomes a refuge of a most fundamental kind, a residence with the maximum real value in a home.

It’s a change from a burden that taxes the wealth of the nation, allowing that value tax to be the profit basis for a parasitic form of capitalism, compare that to a real home, a refuge from the world where the basics of living are provided by the far more sustainable, full-cycle engineering and design these homes represent.

My designs incorporate all of these features, they bring together thermodynamics and common sense using the daily solar cycle to gain the heat, cold and electricity needed, storing directly heat and cold in thermal fluids, they require no conversion of power so are very efficient thermodynamically, and by removing all thermal needs from using electricity, PV-battery systems become very practical in terms of how many amp-hours of storage are needed in batteries, a generator for intermittent heavy current loads ends any dependence on the grid using a direct generation of the power and not steam as a method whose theoretically maximum efficiency is then onl’y 40% of the heat used to boil the water to dry steam, so on that alone natural systems are over twice as efficient as using grid power unless co-generation is used to capture and use that waste heat at the power plant, requiring piping to end uses, in the world there are very few power plants using co-generation so it’s not statistically significant on the grid.

The structural design of my buildings is composite, with the primary method using contemporary concrete and foam wall systems, adjusting the position or thickness of the insulation or wall width to adjust how much thermal-mass stores energy for maintaining the comfort zone with the least energy inputs for the design temperature differential, a principle demonstrated by some adobe homes that stay cool all summer without air conditioning. This simple construction system can then be adjusted to any room’s needs, a thermal transfer built-in to move the heat-cold from sources to rooms that by locations require inputs.

Thus, the home is built using a thermal view, choosing concrete over wood to leverage the thermal-mass to advantage where a wooden home can’t in order to maintain the comfort zone with the least energy. The advancement of these strategies will bring new economies based on a high value in return for the capital investment in a home, versus today where homes of any price have very little real value because they require so many external energy inputs, mainly due to housing having become a money game, something having nothing to do with creating a self-sufficient refuge, a home that is engineered to give a fair deal. Instead, homes are a rip-off, pay-by-the-watt economy that is best described as parasitic, if not horrendously inefficient from a thermodynamic view where entropy rules what happens, lose it and it’s lost when it comes to heat or cold, you never get it back again.

Current research is focused on roof and ceiling systems, the transfer of heat build-up in these a most important thermal source to recycle within the structure. The high differential in temperature is part of keeping the comfort zone without using much energy. Also, using forced-air is about 13-times less efficient than using a fluid to move thermal energy around, hence the growing popularity of “ductless” systems and the use of fluids in these designs.

Another important facet considered is how simple thermal fluid flow is to understand and use, like electricity, a diode ó one-way valve, power ó thermal expansion. From this analogy comes the relationship of expansion to flow, this natural consequence of a temperature differential allows passive transfer of the energy, few pumps are needed in complete systems, recent research is on designing “flow amplifiers”, using solid-state power harvesting techniques?

The variety of processes and methods needed to construct one of these “habitat” or “refugia” homes is not a big list of unknown technologies, yet remains rather much unfunded, obviously the antithesis of current captive-market, parasitic energy-for-profit games.

Therefore, an intent of this paper is to challenge the AIA and engineers involved in architecture to use and apply thermodynamics to structures such that thermal energy is never supplied by electricity, using direct inputs of sunlight or solar-thermal transfer for a building’s thermal needs instead of converting electricity for a thermal end use.

Hopefully all this will spark debate and create actions that lead to a more unbiased assessment of the actual profit to society of wasting so many precious non-renewable resources pall mall until there’s literally nothing left, why not look ahead and profit from the move to a sustainable design agenda and funding climate? The principles, methods, processes and strategies described reveal an integrated look at architecture, a thermal analysis so blatantly missing from current design standards.