Permaculture Van

Ask away, although my knowledge is limited to what you see on this blog.

#zone1 #compost heap from onsite #bamboo grove. As the organic matter decays, the pile will shrink and logs can easily be removed. This composting kit should last a few seasons. We tried to extend the life of the bamboo by placing the hollow ends of #macrocarpa stakes driven into the ground. Inspiration from Caity and Gerald Endt of #okiwipassion farm on Great Barrier Island. #newzealand #permaculture #oratia #nickholmeschickenhomes

Coastline and surf of the far north

I love these trees!

This peninsula on the north island of New Zealand might be the most beautiful place on earth.

Northland, North Island

South Island, New Zealand chapter of the swell surfed round (most) the world

The savings can finally be deposited in a bank! This is about 6 weeks worth of food scraps from #vanlife in NZ that have been repeatedly compressed and layered with bacteria active sawdust. This #bokashi is not as pickled as expected, possibly due to the cooler weather of the South Island in winter. It's a small contribution to the massive hot compost heap soon to be built at #makinghome in #dunedin

The hedge was trimmed so that the beds could receive the maximum benefit of the short winter days.

This project is called Making Home, and the man with the vision is Louis Brown. Louis aims to transform his yard into an urban permaculture paradise and his 84-year-old house into a living building in the next four years. I’ll be explaining more about the project in coming posts.

Southern West Coast, South Island "glacier country"

Wanaka and Rob Roy Glacier

Milford

Gas stats The precipitous drop in my fuel economy in May over two fill ups was due to city driving in Dunedin--not only that, Dunedin is known for having some off the steepest streets in the world. It makes for a stark contrast to previously finely tuned slow driving habits over mostly level roads with little acceleration. After Dunedin, I drove the speed limit of 100km per hour for most of a tank from the Catlins (the southern most area of NZ) to Milford Sound. A couple days of good weather opened up and I wanted to get up there as fast as I could to enjoy it. Man, it felt good drive fast and actually get somewhere! Now it's back to that slow grind...until the next window in the weather requires faster driving.

North coast during and post storm

Mini Rocket stove R&D. Here we were strictly testing whether the J-tube itself worked well enough and was drawing air properly through the combustion chamber.

Otago received a nice little bit of snow earlier this week and the solid frost this morning reinforced the feeling that it sure ain't getting warmer. Over the last week I've been working on several ways of heating the van. I don't have insulation, so that's a big strike against me, but I'd still like to find a way to heat the van a few degrees (Celsius) for the early nights that have me wrapped in blankets and incessantly boiling hot water for tea. In the pictures above, you'll see the evolution of the project. I started by assembling old pipes and fittings from the metal scrap yard in Dunedin into a mini rocket stove. A rocket stove is a way of heating a small space or cooking using relatively little fuel compared to a traditional stove or fireplace. However, designs for heating differ greatly from cooking as the focus for the former is on creating thermal mass that will radiate heat into a space rather than dissipate once it's left the flame. The guts of a rocket stove consist of a J-tube. During the R&D phase we were working strictly with the j-tube before adding the thermal mass cylinder around it and an exhaust flume. This J-tube ended up being restricted by the distance between the exhaust pipe and the combustion chamber underneath the feed tube. It needed to be shorter. It had moments when it was drawing perfectly, but this design required constant attention and proved to be too finicky for a practical installation in the van. A wider feed tube and larger combustion chamber would likely bring more success but also take up too much valuable space in the van. It's still inspiring that this design was completely sourced of junk metal pipes from a metal recycler in Dunedin. A mini stove design is possible if the parts are made for the design rather than piecemealed together. However, that's not in the budget or the general philosophy of what I'm trying to do with this van. Huge thanks to Nick Holmes and a north coast local named Basil on this project. I'd be way out of my league without their help.