When it comes to reducing our carbon footprint, I find that the ideas and systems that get the most attention are always the big, expensive ones. They are always about electric cars, solar panels, wind turbines and other big ticket items which most of us can’t afford. Often the necessary work of changing how much energy we use gets lost in endless circles of ‘meta’ type discussions and nothing ever really gets done. There isn’t a lot of interesting information out there about what individuals and families can do in their real lives to reduce their personal footprints. Well intentioned people often have little to no idea about how or what they can do on a daily basis to conserve resources other than using compact fluorescent light bulbs and recycling plastic but there is so much more to do than that.

My family and I have been particularly focused on reducing our footprint, conserving resources, and living more simply for the past five years or so. Gradually we have implemented one simplifying and natural system after another with considerable success. Several months ago, my wife came across an incredible way to cook food that uses 20% - 80% less energy, increases nutrition of the food, saves time, space, money, resources, and electricity plus it lets you come home at the end of a long day to warm, well cooked food you don’t have to do anything to but serve. This way of cooking is called retained heat cooking, fireless cooking or cooking with a cook box or hay box. We use it practically every day now and it has made our lives a lot easier.

Scientifically speaking, “cooking” food is not really what most of us think it is. “Cooking” isn’t necessarily boiling or simmering food on your stove top, for instance, because technically food is being cooked whenever it is at 180° or higher. No matter what method you use to keep your food at a minimum of 180°, that food is cooking. You can accomplish this conventionally by setting your pot on a hot burner and continuously forcing heat up from the bottom of the pot over a long period of time until that food is completed cooked OR you can recognize that stove top type cooking is really done best as a two step process. In step one, you create a low insulation set-up in which you add heat to the pot and its contents until they are over 180°. In step two, you transform your set-up into a high insulation arrangement whereby that built up heat is retained in the pot so that it can proceed to cook the food gently and evenly with no additional energy input until that food is completely cooked. All the energy required for complete cooking has already been provided. You are just retaining it within the pot until it has done its work rather than allowing it to dissipate into the surrounding air. In other words, put ingredients in a pot, bring them to a boil, boil for 15 minutes or so, take the pot off the stove and then insulate it in a simple cook box or basket until the cooking cycle is completed. Depending upon what you are cooking, in anywhere from a half hour to several hours later, you can take a pot of piping hot, perfectly cooked food out of your cook box and serve it up just as it is.

My wife has just completed a 50 page e-book about this process entitled Retained Heat Cooking … The Wave of the Future Again: Discover how easy it is to make and use your own off-the-grid cook box to cook uncommonly good food of all kinds. It includes detailed instructions on how to assemble your own retained heat cook box as well as sections on the history behind this method of food preparation as well as the scientific principles behind how it works. She not only includes recipes and other cooking instructions but also a section on the importance of retained heat cooking in developing countries which are so often characterized by deforestation, shortages of potable water and grinding poverty. My family strongly believes that the resources we over-consume here has everything to do with the lack of enough resources elsewhere. So we feel happily compelled to use retained heat cooking regularly in our home as well as any other measures we can manage to reduce our load on the earth’s resources.

Putting together your own cook box can be as simple or as involved a project as you want it to be. Design specifications and ideas are in the e-book. You can make your own from boxes, baskets, drawers, or coolers and insulate with anything from hay, cardboard, or blankets to rice hulls or Styrofoam. Cook boxes are very simple to put together and can be made to fit your kitchen, your wallet and your design sense. You can probably get up and put one together right now from items lying around your house and use it to make a meal right away. That is what my wife did and we are still using that instant cook box she put together months ago. If you have a laundry basket or a similar sized box, an old comforter or sleeping bag or blankets, a few old towels and a trivet then you can can get started right now at reducing your energy bill.

While you are reducing your carbon footprint with retained heat cooking, you will be reducing your energy costs as well. Cook box cooking saves 20% - 80% of your energy costs over stove top cooking, with the most savings coming from long cooking foods like grains, beans and meats. The food in a cook box is cooked slowly over a longer period of time which is actually the most beneficial way to cook many foods. Cooking at a lower temperature preserves nutrients, releases flavor, and increases digestibility. We have learned through personal experience that food cooked by the retained heat method comes out perfectly every time with each ingredient done just right.

The only real adjustment that most people will have to make to use a cook box is to plan meals in advance and start cooking them ahead of time. In the instantaneous microwave world that we now live in, this may appear to be difficult but it really isn’t. Besides it is a small adjustment to make so you that you can help to reduce your contribution to global warming, overconsumption of water and other negative environmental damage. Any little changes many of us make can add up to big changes that can reverse our current disastrous course. All of us pitching in with such small changes is basically mandatory at this point. We are going to have to make adjustments. Making the adjustment to retained heat cooking is easy because it costs nothing to implement and makes the food taste better anyway.

In terms of our 50 page e-book, Retained Heat Cooking … the Wave of the Future Again, it is available at our Bamboo Grove Press website for $5.95. My wife is an incredible researcher and a great cook. Her e-book has all of the information you need about how and why retained heat cooking is the best available method for cooking most of your food. My wife has also released a shorter 10 page e-book about solar cooking entitled On Your Way Towards Solar Cooking:The Why’s and Wherefore’s of Solar Cooking in Brief priced at $1.99. In this book you get a brief overview of solar cooking along with over 50 links to all the information you need about solar cooking, buying a commercial cooker or building your own, solar cookbooks and more.

Please forward this post and links to these e-books to anyone you know who might be interested in cooking with a cook box, improving the taste and nutrition of their food, and reducing their carbon footprint with virtually no start-up investment. It will improve their lives and help the earth tremendously.

Below are two videos we made about our experiences with fuel efficient, retained heat cook box cooking. I hope you enjoy.

All the best,
Paul

Bamboo Grove Press is the publishing arm of Pockets of the Future and today we are releasing our first in a potentially nearly endless series of e-books on a wide range of subjects related to natural living, homesteading, herbalism, homeschooling, old paths/new ways of thinking, innovative building techniques, frugality, preparedness from the inside out and the outside in and so on. I am so excited to have our first two e-books ready for you that as I share this, I am trying to type and jump up and down at the same time!

Our first e-book is:

Retained Heat Cooking … the Wave of the Future Again

by Leslie Romano

Discover how easy it is to make and use your own off-the-grid cook box to cook uncommonly good food of all kinds. This is a frugal, time honored method of cooking that saves time, space, money, resources, nutrition and electricity. Includes sections on the history and science of retained heat cooking, how to make and use your own cook box, tips and suggestions based upon personal experience, recipes, related homeschooling ideas and ten incredible advantages to cooking highly nutritious, perfectly cooked food with this natural, easy to implement retained heat cooking method. Only book of its kind on the market. 50 pages. $6.99

Our second e-book is:

On Your Way Towards Solar Cooking: The Why’s and Wherefore’s of Solar Cooking in Brief
Plus Over 50 Links to Solar Cooking Information, Reviews, Directions for Building Your Own, Places to Buy Commercial, and Cookbooks From Which to Make It All Happen

by Leslie Romano

Once you discover the significant benefits of cooking in ways other than on an industrially made stove in an electrified kitchen, you just can’t stop! Here on the farm, we have become so enamored with retained heat cooking that we are eager to learn more ways to cook alternatively. Solar cooking will be our next endeavor. Become more prepared and more self-sufficient through solar cooking. This e-book will get you started with a brief overview of the why’s and wherefore’s of solar cooking as well as over 50 links to all the resources you need to make solar cooking an effective way to save energy and cook nutritious food for you and your family. 10 pages. $2.50

More titles in the works:
We have several more e-books already in the works on a special herbal tea you can forage yourself that provides surprising benefits, easy to make herbal personal care powders, and the wonderful benefits of raising rare breed livestock on your family farm or homestead. And those are just the titles we have already started writing.

If there are subjects you would like to see addressed by us in e-book format, please leave a comment and let us know or contact us personally.

This is so fun! Come join us. There is much to learn and share.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

This is cross-posted from our Bamboo Grove Press Blog.

My husband and I were raised with pretty much the same attitudes as any other middle class Americans. Yet somehow, we ended up here. Where is here? Well, we are out in the country with six children, an assortment of rare breed dairy cows and goats, chickens, a garden and so on. Here also includes baking in an outdoor wood-fired earth oven, taking showers in an outdoor bamboo shower (during the summer!), hand washing our laundry (all year), making all of our food from scratch, building all of our outbuildings from scratch and so on. Furthermore, here includes homeschooling, heartfelt meditation, ongoing scriptural studies and daily relationship building in a very intimate family setting. And, honestly, it feels like we have only just gotten started.

So how did we end up here? We ended up here because my husband and I share a passion for answering the question “What does it mean to live a natural life?”

What does that even mean … a natural life?

Discovering answers to this question endlessly fascinates us here. It challenges us, inspires us and constantly reshapes our thoughts and actions. Let’s see, living a natural life surely includes eating locally grown, organic produce and learning to tough out humid summers without air conditioning. Right? What else? It surely includes being willing to use our hands to carry out the tasks of daily living and living with far fewer possessions than is the norm. Yes. What else? We think it seems to include stepping away from cities and disengaging from a wide range of urban attitudes and dependencies. Definitely yes. But still - what is all of this? Does living a natural life go beyond lifestyle concerns and economic choices? Why do so many people crave “a natural life” and yet not know how to create one? And how did our passion for this question get us here?

What we have realized after years of considering these questions is that living a natural life means living according to the Original Design. It means that we live contentedly (obediently even) within the supports and guidelines of “natural laws.” It means that we are willing to scrap virtually everything we have been led to believe is true or necessary for a successful life and aude sapere - dare to think - for ourselves. Dare to think fearlessly, creatively, In harmony with each other, by looking within for answers, and, most of all, in faith.

There is an Original Design for humans and human life on this sweet, green Earth. We only have to keep editing and editing and editing out what we humans invented over millennium until we find what the Creator designed for us and in us in the first place. Pretty much everything works better according to original plans and instructions, yes? This is no less true of human beings. And this is rather less a statement about technology than it is about inner attitudes and ways of acting.

Being passionate about something brings an inherent discipline and responsibility with it. As I read this morning:

Anything you don’t give your life to is not worth doing. Swami Vivekananda said, “Give me men of passion.” Passion does not mean sexual passion; it means a passionate nature, that if I do this, I must do it perfectly. I must do it as well as I can. I must do it now. And promises do not constitute work. He who wants to give must give now. Youth: A Time of Promise and for Effort, vol. 2, p.157 P. Rajagopalachari

Our passion for this ongoing process of discovering what a natural life can be has brought us such a deep feeling of well being and has provided so much “grist for the mill” for our growth that we have for some time now felt a likewise passion for sharing what we are discovering with the many other uncomfortable people who also crave a natural life. It is for this reason that we write extensively on our Pockets of the Future blog and share photos, videos and information there and on our POTF web site. We are pleased that so many people are finding these resources useful for expanding and re-shaping their lives. But we are restless to do more.

As such, my husband and I are very pleased to announce the launch of our family-based publishing business - Bamboo Grove Press. Through Bamboo Grove Press, we will have the means to share much more of what we have been blessed with and what we have discovered during our own transformation. We will be able to share our delight in family life, our complete dependence upon a spiritual perspective, and the fruit of skill building in many areas. I am happy to say that we will be publishing books for children as well as for adults. (We even have a game in mind but we will see how that goes.) We will just generally be leaving as complete a paper trail as possible so that the many people who will be increasingly craving a natural life themselves will be able to have companions in their homes on their book shelves. While remolding oneself and one’s family life into a life that is more natural brings ease and contentment, it is nevertheless a profound transformation to undergo during otherwise hostile and uncertain times. Companions, friends, associates can help so much. We want to be that, to the extent that we are able, for brothers and sisters now and in the future.

Last week, P. Rajagopalachari advised a group of young people to:

Be Natural, Be Fearless and Have Faith

It is on that basis that we present Bamboo Grove Press for your consideration.

From the rustling leaves of the Grove,

Leslie

We have been hand washing all of our laundry for about six weeks now and it is going pretty well. We are still fine tuning how we do things but we do have enough of an effective system going to share what we have learned so far.

Equipment: For our wash tubs, we are using two large Rubbermaid bins. We use these simply because we already had them. Having used them all this time, however, I can say that we are looking forward to getting some real wash tubs some day - preferably ones on legs. Anyway, we use the two large Rubbermaid storage bins for washing and scrubbing (which my husband set up on cinder blocks for me to help spare my back) and we use two 5 gallon paint/food storage plastic pails with bale handles for the two rinses. You can get these at hardware stores. We find them to be a perfect size and the handle is really helpful for hauling the water away to dump on select garden locations.

For agitating the wash and rinse water, we are very happy using the Rapid Washer from Lehman’s. It works much, much better than a regular hardware store plunger as it moves much more water with each plunge and it fits perfectly into the 5 gallon pails. You occasionally need to use a mallet to pound the handle back down into the metal head of the plunger.

For scrubbing, we are using a glass washboard also purchased from Lehman’s. They note that the glass washboards last the longest and that they are by far their best seller so I went for one of those. I have always been “stain removal” challenged. I don’t like using chemicals and I have never found anything that really works all that well at removing stains anyway so I just sort of gave up ages ago. Using a bar of soap, water, a washboard and elbow grease, however, is like magic. Honestly! So many stains just disappear before your very eyes. I have read others comment upon the fact that items they would have otherwise thrown away were saved through the ministrations of a washboard and a few minutes of vigorous effort. The washboard at the bottom left of the photo is the one we use. (I might mention here that brass washboards are used primarily as musical instruments, in case you were wondering.)

Wringing as much water as possible out of each item shortens drying time dramatically. I read many comments here and there on the web about women wrecking their hands and wrists from years of wringing out clothes. Well, one of my wrists is already wrecked so official equipment was called for. I bought this wringer which Lehman’s sells but got it here instead for about $70 less. Apparently these wringers are used at car washes so you can find them for sale through various businesses other than just Amish ones.

I am still using (infinitesimally) small quantities at a time of Charlie’s soap for washing. I use so little at a time now that I think my remaining supply will last for another six months at least. However, when the bottom of the container is finally in sight, I will start making my own laundry soap. As for the bar soap to use for removing stains, I still don’t have a good bar I like yet. I will grab a bar of Dr. Bronner’s or something the next chance I get. Someday I intend to make my own laundry bar soap. Someday…

Method: To fill the bins and pails in our outdoor laundry room, my husband rigged up a hose that goes from the utility sink in the basement through a hole in a window screen and out to the outdoor laundry room. I am very grateful to be able to wash everything with warm water that I am neither heating myself nor hauling. It is not always easy running up and down the basement steps to turn the water on and off in a timely fashion but, hey, the children perform that task admirably. So our method is as follows:

1. Fill one bin about a third of the way (too full and we get soaked when plunging). Fill the other bin just six inches deep or so and place the washboard at one end and the bar of soap at the other. Fill the 5 gallon pails about halfway. Put maybe a 1/4 tsp. of Charlie’s soap in and swish it around so that it is well mixed.

2. Sort the laundry to be washed by color, heaviness and dirtiness. Put the cleanest, lightest clothes into the wash water first. Plunge a bit and let soak a little if there is time. Then plunge vigorously for two to three minutes. I have read that you should agitate the clothes and water for 10 minutes, but I just don’t strength enough in me to do that frankly. If any item is stained, toss it into the washboard bin.

3. Squeeze the clothes out and toss into the first rinse pail. Agitate enthusiastically for 25 plunges or so. Squeeze out thoroughly and toss into second rinse pail and repeat. Wring out and toss into a basket of clothes waiting to go through the wringer. Rinsing at least twice is a big deal and the key to success to ending up with sparkling clean laundry. Sometimes we have to rinse certain items more times than twice. We always try to find a balance between clean rinse water, water conservation and reasonable time investment.

4. Work through any clothes that have been tossed into the washboard bin. Rub a very small amount of soap onto any stains or dirty areas and rub vigorously on the washboard. Rinse and toss into first rinse pail. I want to emphasize the hint to not use too much bar soap for this exercise. Rinsing out excess soap is trying and wasteful.

5. Put all items through the wringer. It helps to wring things out in some kind of order so that you can keep the wringer at the same setting. You want it as tight as you can get it for thin things like dish towels and shirts and so on. But you loosen it to wring out things like thick bath towels or jeans or jackets. I have learned to put many items through the wringer two or three times in a row to get them really quite dry. If you fold the item in half, it not only effectively increases the pressure and effectiveness of the wringer, it has the effect of pressing the item. We are now lining up three dish towels together at a time, folding them in half and putting them through the wringer all at once several times. They come out looking ironed and they dry on the line in a hurry. This is a good place in the whole laundry process to experiment to discover more effective methods Cheaper By the Dozen style.

6. Hang everything to dry and feel more satisfied from doing a load of wash than you ever thought possible.

7. Definitely include all family members in this weekly event. Children gain strength and precision. Husband’s feel good lending their broad shoulders. Bonding ensues. Teamwork issues are spotted and ironed out. And then everyone gets to feel incredibly satisfied surveying the family laundry tidily hung from the lines and gently flapping in the breeze.

8. Once the hand done, real soap-cleaned, individually wrung, sun-dried laundry is brought inside on a regular basis, you may notice two positive effects in your home. The first is that everyone will make darn sure that these heroically cleaned clothes are put away double time. The second is that family members may automatically start generating less laundry due to the subtle, natural process known variously as the awareness raising, consciousness expanding, gratitude generating affects of hard work.

To spend some leisurely time with us as we do our laundry together outside, sit back and watch the following videos. Oh, and on the fifth video my husband shares some great thoughts about the moderation that arises naturally from working within natural systems and resources. I really appreciate what he has to say there.

From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie

During the nearly two years my family and I have been homesteading, we have often found that something we need is not available in the marketplace. It seems odd that in a time in history when we have more stuff than in any previous time, we have to search high and low for simple tools and systems for natural living and homesteading. Often even a thorough search turns up nothing so we end up having to invent or adapt something to meet our homesteading needs.

For many years, my wife has had a general idea about creating an “outdoor bamboo shower” where the wall are made of rustling bamboo and you can see the sky and feel the sun while you shower with a modest amount of solar heated warm water. When I recently discovered a source of free Yellow Groove bamboo, I set out to make her dream a reality. The project is now complete and it exceeds all of our expectations. After making a number of adjustments, we now have a fully functionally outdoor bamboo shower with a 50 gallon solar heated hot water tank. My first diary on the subject found here (with videos) was about digging up and transplanting a bamboo grove, harvesting a quantity of bamboo poles, and building the shower itself with lumber and the bamboo poles. This diary is about building the solar heated water tank. Embedded videos of the process are below.

We have a lot of pressing needs on our homestead right now including completing a strawbale milking barn and a strawbale chicken shed. Working on an outdoor shower at the end of the summer did not seem particularly critical but the project took on a life of its own. After posting about the first part of the project here, I received some helpful comments including this one.

During the summer, I have a black plastic trashcan that sits in the sunniest part of the yard and provides the perfect temps by the end of the day.

I use 64 OZ plastic bottles with handles and holes drilled in the lids for my “shower” both in summer and winter (in the winter, the shower is a black contractors cement mixing tub placed by the wood stove.). The plastic bottles are acquired by eating a lot of Pace Picante sauce and are also kept by the sink for hand and dish washing.

Using an easy to rinse off soap like Dr. Bronners, one can get completely clean with one 64 OZ bottle of water.

Since we have been using two black plastic trash cans for water storage for years, I was familiar with her idea. The idea came to me to put a valve in the bottom of one of our water storage trash cans and run some hose or PVC pipe from it to the shower. As it was already late August I thought I would shelve the idea until next year. As it turns out the idea’s time had come regardless of the calendar or any other priorities. When I went into a hardware store for something else, I decided to take a look at the hose attachment hardware just to have an idea of what was available. I found a nozzle that would screw onto the end of the hose that could also be caulked into the trash can quite easily. I bought it immediately and the project was back on.

The building process involved a few more adaptations that are progressively documented in the videos. For instance the silicone caulk turned out to be too weak. I went back to the hardware store and asked for something thing that had threads, a nut and some washers so that the weak and toxic caulking could be done away with altogether. One of the hardware store staff thought an outdoor faucet would work if paired with some 0 rings. He was right. It did. After installation, the water could be turned on and off right from the tank itself. This was a good improvement.

The next problem to solve was the water pressure at the “shower head” (which is a hose attachment for watering gardens). What followed was a good deal of experimentation with the height of the now water tank, its distance from the shower and the length of the hose between the two. After finding satisfactory heights, distances and lengths as well as building a simple platform for the tank and learning how to add a new hose end cap to the severed hose, we achieved enough water pressure to take a very pleasant shower.

Finally, I wanted to see how quickly we could bring up the temperature of the 50 gallons of water in the tank. After doing some research online, I found a website that sells clear plastic liners that float on the top of the water in hot tubs, pools and watering troughs for animals. The flexible type of Plexiglas they use lets the sun in and minimizes heat loss due to evaporation. I found an old piece of Plexiglas in one of our outbuildings and cut it to fit the top of the hot water tank. This Plexiglas is not flexible and does not float like the kind the web site offers but it does the trick. Our tank has reached temperatures over 100 degrees and that in mid September. So we now have a functional 50 gallon hot water tank for our outdoor bamboo shower for under $35 dollars and a couple of days’ work. Everyone in the family has used it from the 5 year old all the way up and everyone loves using this natural and refreshing shower. The shower also provides a wonderful object lesson in water conservation as the entire family can easily shower with about a gallon of water per person.

In the interest of getting multiple uses out of the same resources, we are planning on more uses for the tank in different seasons of the year. For instance, in the winter the livestock watering tanks can freeze over. The ice even here in Virginia can be a couple of inches thick in the morning. Cows need a lot of water to facilitate digestion and maintain their milk supply so we have had to break the ice every cold winter morning and remove it from the trough. The cows will drink much more water if it is warm so we have often been required to lug gallons of hot water from the house to the trough. Outdoor water faucets and hoses can freeze as well so again lugging hot water has sometimes been the only answer.

Since cows drink 10 to 15 gallons at a time and since power outages can last for days, having back up water reserves is essential. As simple winter time water storage, this 50 gallon solar hot water tank could prove to be very useful. If the tank holds any heat at all in the winter it could be used to give the cows slightly warmer water and will be a great back up for power outages. If nothing else, we will be drawing water from the bottom of the tank with the faucet so the water will be ice free. If the tank continues to stay 10 to 20 degrees above outside air temperature then I may well build a few more for winter use. I could even bank them with straw bales to help hold in heat.

A final note on bamboo: There was some interesting discussion about the merits of bamboo on my last post so I want to take a moment to add some positive information about this generous grass. Bamboo sends up new growth once a year, usually in the spring. The rhizome or root ball increases its mass all summer, fall and winter and by spring it has usually doubled in size. At that point it sends up shoots which usually double the size of the plant depending upon water and weather variables. The new shoots grow quickly - as much as a meter a day in some varieties - making bamboo the quickest growing plant in the world. The new culm or cane of the bamboo reaches its maximum height anywhere from a few days to a few months after sprouting depending upon the variety. After reaching its full height, the leaves unfold within a week or so and then that particular culm is done growing forever. The next year most of the new shoots will grow a little bit taller than the shoots from the previous year and this process will continue until new shoots reach the maximum height and density for that particular variety.

What makes bamboo such an incredible renewable resource is that the whole grove can be clear cut and the timber harvested and the rhizome will still continue to grow. The next year it will again send up new shoots. So this spreading root system that is often feared because of is unrestrained creative life force is in many ways actually a blessing as it is such a valuable renewable resource. The giant timber bamboos that reach diameters of 10 inches and heights above 80ft can supply wood for all purposes and reach that height in one growing season. It takes decades for trees to reach that height and most trees die after they have been “harvested”.

Bamboo cultivation is still in its infancy in the west but bamboo already has a wide variety of uses. Here are a few:

â—¬ Bamboo for lumber. Bamboo can be used for lumber and it is often harder and more durable than traditional hardwoods. Since bamboo is such a quick growing renewable resource, using bamboo instead for appropriate traditional lumber applications would save trees.

â—¬ Animal Forage. Bamboo is a grass and our cows, goats and donkey love it. There is research being done on bamboo as animal forage which I am watching. The potential for bamboo to act as “vertical pasture” is exciting, especially for small landholdings like ours.

â—¬ Bamboo can be used as a fiber for rugs, blinds, matting, fencing, thatch for roofs, baskets and even cloth. Right now the bamboo for cloth comes with an environmental price but again the uses for bamboo are still only now beginning to be fully developed and explored here in the west.

Here are links to the videos documenting how I built the solar heated water tank:

Bamboo Shower Project Update$35 50 Gallon Solar Hot Water Tank (Part 1)

Bamboo Shower Project Update$35 50 Gallon Solar Hot Water Tank (Part 2)

Bamboo Shower Project Update$35 50 Gallon Solar Hot Water Tank (Part 3)

All the best,

Paul

My wife, Leslie, had long had the idea to build an outdoor shower inside of a bamboo grove where the bamboo would be the shower curtain. At our last homestead we planted some Stone bamboo but did not have a place for the shower. However, after we arrived at our new place, I found an ideal location for the shower. We hoped to purchase some bamboo after the sale of our old house and plant it and let it grow until it was thick. Then I had a rough idea of what kind of shower I wanted to build.

The bamboo shower itself would give us a back system to our current bathing practices of an indoor shower and bath. The outdoor shower helps to conserve both water and power as the water can be heated by the sun. It would also provide its own gray water system as the water-loving bamboo will absorbing the water running out of the shower. Bamboo shoots can be harvested in the spring so the walls of the shower would also be a perennial food source.

This project was just an idea that we looked forward to attempting sometime in the future. However, about a month ago we drove by an abandoned house about a ½ mile from we where live that has a giant bamboo grove growing right next to it. A sign had been posted that read “Free bamboo. Take as much as you want (at your own risk).” Since buying bamboo is not only expensive but you limited as to sizes you can buy, we took advantage of that opportunity placed in our path. We transplanted a great deal of the bamboo as well as took a variety of bamboo poles that had been cut down to use for the shower walls.

The species we now have is the Yellow Groove variety which produces sweet shoots and tolerates cold temperatures. Since it obviously thrives locally, we feel blessed to have so many specimens. After transplanting the bamboo, we built the shower itself which is captured on the attached videos linked below.

We have already been enjoying the use of the bamboo shower in this hot weather. Bathing outdoors has an exhilarating affect on your system. And the bamboo has an otherworldly presence of its own. Being able to gaze up into the bamboo canopy while showering and hear the wind rustling through the leaves is not only relaxing but cleansing on all levels.

We are concerned by typical American water practices. Most of us are completely dependant upon electricity to power our water supply and waste disposal. Most other people worldwide do not have the access to fresh water that we have here in the US. http://www.rivers.gov/waterfacts.html As you can read from the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System website, facts about fresh water are staggering. Here are just a few:

:The United States consumes water at twice the rate of other industrialized nations.

· 1.2 Billion — Number of people worldwide who do not have access to clean water.
6.8 Billion — Gallons of water Americans flush down their toilets every day.

· Each day almost 10,000 children under the age of 5 in Third World countries die as a result of illnesses contracted by use of impure water.

· Most of the world’s people must walk at least 3 hours to fetch water.

· By 2025, 52 countries with two-thirds of the world’s population will likely have water shortages.

· The average single-family home uses 80 gallons of water per person each day in the winter and 120 gallons in the summer. Showering, bathing and using the toilet account for about two-thirds of the average family’s water usage.

· The average person needs 2 quarts of water a day.

· During the 20th century, water use increased at double the rate of population growth; while the global population tripled, water use per capita increased by six times.

· Water use in the United States alone leaped from 330 million gallons per day in 1980 to 408 million gallons per day in 1990, despite a decade of improvements in water-saving technology.

· Water used around the house for such things as drinking, cooking, bathing, toilet flushing, washing clothes and dishes, watering lawns and gardens, maintaining swimming pools, and washing cars accounts for only 1% of all the water used in the U.S. each year.

· Per capita water use in the western U.S. is much higher than in any other region, because of agricultural needs in this arid region. In 1985, daily per capita consumption in Idaho was 22,200 gallons versus 152 gallons in Rhode Island.

· A corn field of one acre gives off 4,000 gallons of water per day in evaporation.

· It takes about 6 gallons of water to grow a single serving of lettuce. More than 2,600 gallons is required to produce a single serving of steak.

Electricity and our other usual power resources are not guaranteed to always be available. They are also finite and will run out eventually. We can’t expect that water will be pumped into our houses indefinitely. So my family is building low technology back-up systems such as the bamboo shower which are more environmentally friendly and allow us to meet our needs in a new way. Our next projects will be a composting toilet and attaching a hand pump to our well.

The first 2 videos below are of us building the bamboo shower. The 3^rd video features the completed shower. The next two videos are of us harvesting and transplanting the bamboo. The last video is of an artistic and sophisticated sustainable home in Taos, NM featuring black water and gray water systems, off the grid power, alternative construction materials and techniques, passive solar design, art work, converted fuel vehicles, indoor jungles and more.

Bamboo Shower 1

Bamboo Shower 2

Bamboo Shower 3

Transplanting Bamboo 1

Transplanting Bamboo 2

Angel’s Nest

All the best,

Paul