Are you preparing for economic collapse?

bubblesmoney

Although i think tin hat time is a long way off, i am replying to this query because sustainable energy need not necessarily be a dream for the common man, since it is an MSE forum i am mentioning some of these things as some might be useful for some even if it is not tin hat time.

solar water heating has been used at our home abroad for the last 18y. only investment was about 200£ in 1990 for equipment and installation for 3 bathrooms. no further investment has been needed over 18y apart from replacing some rubber beading once for a small amount as it was worn out. my mom uses it every day for the last 18y. only rarely has the electrical heater needed to be needed. I don’t think it will be of much use in the uk due to the weather here.

Although ground heat might be an option in the uk but i havent seen one in person, just some videos. looks like the energy generated is more than what is consumed by the motor.

Other options at renewable energy for the individuals home, see this for grants.

Solar cooking is encouraged in a big way in some rural parts of india by the govt.

See this video of a solar cooker made out of cardboard and aluminium foil. but this oven takes a few hours to cook in.

People have a misconception that solar cookers take hours to cook. That’s only true for the solar ovens. With a parabolic (or variants) dish type solar heater one can fry an egg under 3 mins (obviously only if the sun is out!). One can do every type of cooking. If pressure cookers are combined with solar cookers of any type, cooking time will be cut down drastically. See this flash cooking method where 2 eggs are fried in under 10 seconds!! Be careful if you are experimenting with this method and take proper eye protection especially if using a mirror to bounce the light from the lens to the bottom of a pan because if you bounce it into your eye it will cook your eye in a few seconds just like you saw the eggs getting cooked! Or you might set your house on fire if the focal length of the light from the mirror falls on something that burns. Intense light can burn a hole through metal (if kept for some time) so keep the pan a little away from the focal length of the lens. Oh it goes without saying that you don’t cross the light beam with any part of your body or you will get badly burnt.

this one is a variation where you can cook instantly (costing about £50 in India) but it is safer if one wears some eye protection to protect from the glare. On the video see one chap fill a iron with bricks instead of coal and heating it for 10mins and then using it for ironing clothes at his village laundry shop.

In one town in India they cook 20,000 meals on average every single day using solar cookers for distributing free food. There are two such massive solar cooking facilities able to cook at peak 38500 meals each every day!!! I have had the food at one of these places once a while ago. Cooking at 600degrees with steam. i am aware of one in tirupati, south india and another in mount abu, rajastan.

See these versions
This one reaches 300degrees using oil and can pasteurise a gallon of water in 15 mins apart from the usual cooking. Thats a small scale version, see this large scale version which cooks for 500 children at a school every day in india and it uses oil too so apart from the usual dry cooking, steaming etc one can fry things as well, plus there is a storage facility for the hot oil so that cooking can be done even at night just using solar power heated oil.

Various variations can act as solar dryers, solar desalination mechanism for getting drinking water, solar water heaters, solar heaters for heating stones etc for heating rooms at night where temp extremes are there at day and being cold at night.

This one might be useful for farmers.
2 cows should be enough to provide enough methane via biogas (gobar gas) to provide for the cooking needs of a 4 person family. Apart from this the byproduct is a good fertilizer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM9SZyPpm-I&feature=related

Similar versions use human waste too in village areas where toilets are directly plumbed into underground pits that both act as biogas units plus the byproduct is fertilizer.

A more ‘advanced’ but still simple version uses household kitchen waste and is 40 times more efficient in energy production and just takes 2 days for the fermentation process rather than the one using animal waste. One can buy it from small scale factories selling the ready to install product in your backyard and it takes very little space. People install it on the rooftop terrace of flats in cities! One simple version is on the link http://www.tinytechindia.com/biogas.htm

Similarly there are electricity generating versions but a lot costlier.

Manufacturers of solar cookers around the world. But the uk one seems to be crap from 1st impressions. The german one seems ok but expensive. They only sell the parabolic versions and not the oven versions where one can cook in many vessels simultaeneously. Costs in india seem very cheap by comparison. Approx. cost of these units, Domestic parabolic solar cookers around Rs. 5000, Community 2.3 m dia. around Rs. 25000 and Scheffler concentrators start at Rs. 75000 and depending on applications can be multiplied to any scale. 1 £ = 75 rupees approx. The oven type cookers are available for around 4000 rupees i think.

Many of these things might not be practical for everyone here. Just mentioning these things since the OP asked.

There are loads of such things being manufactured by many companies abroad in developing countries, everything from street lights (in my home town) to road divider lights, lanterns, irrigation power systems, water purifiers, desalination units in other places, dryers, solar powered refrigerators, community centres powered by solar power etc. Will check out the solar cooker next time I go just out of curiosity. It wasn’t as easily available earlier but many small companies seem to be selling them now all over the India purely because of the money saving features. I know loads of people who have the solar water heaters installed.

Many developing countries give grants and subsidised loans for buying solar products. In india many places one used to get grants (irrespective of earnings) if one used these products to cut down costs and encourage use of alternate energy. Loans at 2% interest are available for buying such things especially in rural areas where some banks give the loans and also sell these units as part of their social responsibilities. Many companies either donate or adopt villages and subsidise these products for the villagers in areas covered by these companies. Biogas use is now more common in farms. Loads of commercial establishments use solar water heating. Where I used to live almost every other house has solar water heaters installed. People buy them now even though grants are not offered now as they see the benefits of it.

This website is pretty detailed about solar cooking.

As for water, rain water harvesting should be a piece of cake in the uk with it raining so often. Know a few people elsewhere who do rain water harvesting and use it for gardening etc.

Guess i better stop writing otherwise some people on the forum might kill me if this gets any longer. :rotfl:

i have tried to a limited extent abroad (just for the heck of it) rain water harvesting, solar water heating, composting of kitchen waste for the garden vegetables etc. but havent tried the solar cooking yet but will try it some time especially the lens cooking just for fun. my wife is going to kill me if i start fooling around with that lens stuff.

Davesnave

Zelie wrote: »

I'm still planning on killing and eating Dopester (except his liver, of course). Other than that I don't have many plans. I have no debt in particular and decent savings. And I live in a flat so gardening is out the window.

Don't eat Dopester; he talks more sense than the rest of us put together!

Allotments are coming back, big time. They make brilliant sense too.

Castleman

Compulsory reading:

Nightfall by Asimov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_short_story))

Day of the Trifids

SingleSue

I will have a veggie garden this year.....mind you, we have done that more out of eekness of the prices in shops than any kind of forward planning for complete meltdown.

lostinrates

BUBBLESmoney..........thats great stuff.

StevieJ

Castleman wrote: »

Compulsory reading:

Nightfall by Asimov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_short_story))

Day of the Trifids

I think too many people base real life on the novels of science fiction, just like Gunslinger and its Dark Tower connotation (post above) BTW is Stephen King now on the GCSE syllabus

oldMcDonald

Zelie wrote: »

I'm still planning on killing and eating Dopester (except his liver, of course). Other than that I don't have many plans. I have no debt in particular and decent savings.

No, not Dopester.

Sure, I have joked about it in the past, but I like Dopester. I like his avatar. I like the fact that he keeps his dried dog food in his loft and didn't realise that this may just result in very fat mice and hungry pooches, should we ever get to TEOTWAWKI.

There are certainly many other posters here much more deserving to be dispatched to the stock pot first............

Zelie wrote: »

And I live in a flat so gardening is out the window.

You have window boxes you grow fruit and veg in?

mewbie_2

gunslinger13401 wrote: »

.
If you cannot post anything more than sarcastic,infantile drivel,perhaps it would be better to post nothing.

Oh I don't know about that. A bit of sarcastic,infantile drivel is sometimes just the thing.

On the note of not taking this seriously. Well for a lot of us we had the best thread ever a short while back on the same subject, and I think when this appeared we were already partly in fun mode.

oldMcDonald

gunslinger13401 wrote: »

If you cannot post anything more than sarcastic,infantile drivel,perhaps it would be better to post nothing.

Thank you for highlighting this part of gunslingers post, Mewbie. I was a little thirsty and had nipped outside to lick the car windows, so I missed this

tiff

Where is the previous thread?