microbiomehomedome

gardening again
landscape again

one spider out, one spider in

microbe man... great resource on compost tea brewing specifics.
bacteria create gold
tree farmers - why in quotes?

SCHOOL'S OUT

AND IN OTHER NEWS

this guy



is charlie patton, he just invented this



it works like this



the seawater greenhouse

a greenhouse passively converts cold seawater into freshwater. the plants get watered and the temperature is lowered, providing perfect growing conditions for arid coastal areas.



these guys will build it for you

and they did all the science here

and exploration architecture... blew it up here

the basic design pulls warm salty air through a porous cardboard wall that has cold seawater trickling down it. this cools the air in the greenhouse. as the cool air is sucked out the other end of the structure it encounters yet another cardboard membrane, but this one has seawater that has been heated in overhead pipes trickling down it. As the cool greenhouse air meets the warm seawater it gets hot and humid. This heavy air then runs right into a series of pipes that have deep cold seawater in them. As the humid air rapidly cools on these condensers water droplets form and then fall to collect in a subsurface cistern.

Over time a thick skin of evaporated salt crystals forms on, and eventually replaces, the cardboard.

prototypes and pilots



This seems to me like one of the best ideas I've heard about in a while.

but always operating across scales

here

the skin can be recyclable recycled plastic.

off gassing is an issue. dunno, UV stabilizers help.

high speed small scale living systems.



top image, Copywrite. "The New Riviera." 2010. HODGES & CO all rights revealed.

Bucky was almost right

Buckminster Fuller proposed building massive domes over entire cities, large enough to have their own weather and float suspended on the cushion of warmed air that they created. A truly awesome vision.

Here on Alcatraz Ave we're facing a couple of problems. Rats eating our vegetable starts, pollution from the busy roads, and a cool canyon climate created by the shadow of the building next door. The solution is to scale down Bucky's dream from massive infrastructure to the home. A simple large greenhouse would be built to cover the entire lot, dug down it would keep out rats, a double walled skin would moderate the temperature, and block air pollution. Integrated rainwater capture would feed into precision targeted irrigation, allowing for year-round food production, aquaculture of tropical fish species, and maintenance of a Living Machine-type wastewater treatment system.