Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing.
Friday, August 22, 2003Site and Project Update
Have added the article The World to Your Door to the Gallery page. This shorter article details the exploration of kit housing from Third World countries as an economical source of non-toxic housing, relying on the fact that the lack of an established chemical industry in these countries offers the prospect of low cost uncontaminated building materials. Two known products of this sort are presented, though in general little else has been found on offer due to the lack of a kit housing tradition in all by the industrialized countries.
As for project news, I recently made contact with the Community Power Corporation regarding the possibility of field testing their products in any home I can realize. CPC are developers of a compact self-contained gassifer and generator system which turns agricultural waste into pollution-free electric power and, optionally, thermal and mechanical power. Developed with the intention of providing electric power from indigenous energy sources for communities in the Third World, the technology can be used to convert most any source of waste cellulose into electricity; sawdust, wood chips, agricultural waste, yard waste, maybe even junk mail! It would offer an excellent means of powering the non-toxic home out of the reach of the grid, potentially at much less cost than is currently possible with solar power. And it makes a good companion to the use of Living Machine waste processing systems which would produce a steady supply of fuel material.
The people at CPC seem interested in working with me in applying for grants for the use of this tecnology. But it remains unclear what, if any, grants my project would fit into. I've already stumped Mathew Lesko and America is not as generous in grant-giving as most of the rest of the industrialized countries. Like so many things here, it's become something of a racket only a few 'professional' grant hustlers seem able to make work.
