Our very first liter of biodiesel.
Tips for Greasers
Start with a car that’s not going to fail in every possible way because it’s old and terrible. Our car Chance broke down far away from home, often. Not because the WVO system we installed in it failed, but because the car was old and falling apart. We would have been better off spending more money on a newer and better working car.
Making homemade biodiesel consumes time and requires effort. Burn homemade fuel in a car that gets good mileage.
While any diesel car can be converted to run on WVO, it is less expensive and less labor-intensive to make homemade biofuel for an unconverted diesel car than it is to convert a car to run on straight WVO.
Hybrid vehicles use their batteries only in stop-and-go traffic and offer little benefit to people whose lifestyle is one of driving long distances on highways. For a lifestyle of mainly long distances, a biofuel or WVO vehicle is the better choice.
But don’t expect to harvest unfiltered WVO on the road, turn it to fuel, and be off and running. To do so requires carrying filters, hauling gear, and making a mess. It’s hard to come by high-quality sources of oil. Overall it is impractical and a real pain. It’s reasonable to carry a tote or two of WVO or homemade biodiesel if you have a large enough vehicle and the storage space to hold it. And there are people who filter and offer WVO to others, but be sure to call ahead and find out about the provider’s process. Make sure their methods live up to your standards.
Websites like Fillup4Free.com create a network of the community of fuel makers and users. If you make fuel, filter WVO, and produce beyond your need, you can sell the extra online. If you travel in a diesel car, these sites will help you find fuel while on the road.
Shelter
Do not be tricked into believing that modern decor must be slick or psychedelic or “natural” or “modern art” or “plants” or anything else that current taste-makers claim. It is most beautiful when it comes straight from your life — the things you care for, the things that tell your story.
— Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language
When Mikey and I decided to build new structures, we had to decide what material to use. Some natural builders use straw bales, and others adobe mud bricks. The soil needed to make adobe brick came from as far as Arizona, and straw bales had to be hauled in from Colorado. Instead, we thought about what was nearby and found a free waste material less than a mile from our door. At the time, T or C’s recycling center collected but did not recycle the town’s paper waste. Although papercrete requires the addition of cement to make it a useable building material, and cement has a negative impact on the earth, both straw bales and adobe mud have a carbon footprint, too, in the fuel it takes to transport them to southern New Mexico. Both of those methods also require a lot of labor. We would have had to hire a team to build with us. So, with paper around the corner and an ideal dry climate, we chose papercrete.
When setting out to build a new structure, consider what a material’s impact on the earth has to do with where on earth you are standing. Consider your climate. Begin by looking at the materials that are nearby. Talk to local recycling and sanitation centers to find out which materials are not being recycled, and consider how they could be transformed into building materials. Look to the natural resources of your area, those that don’t have to be trucked in. Be sure they’re not scarce before harvesting them.
Find a Like-Minded Structural Engineer
Once a structural engineer signs off on a design, local building inspectors are relieved of liability and you are able to build your structure, no matter how unusual. You can build up to a certain size without a permit. But for larger structures, especially those made using nontraditional designs and techniques, it is likely that a building inspector will ask for an engineer’s stamp of approval.
Before we could legally build, we had to jump through a few hoops to get our papercrete building plan approved. Initially our local building inspector asked if we were going to have our papercrete mix tested by the Underwriters Laboratory (UL). Unable to afford the thousands of dollars the UL charges to test a material’s flammability, we shot a 5-minute video of Mikey holding a blowtorch to a papercrete block that I held in place. The inspector watched the video, saw that the papercrete block did not ignite, and gave us a permit to build a papercrete fence.
Building with Papercrete
Papercrete is a fibrous building material made of repulped paper, cement, and water. We were attracted to it because it makes use of a free and abundant waste material, is lightweight, and requires minimal labor. At the same time, it is super strong and insulates so well that a building made out of it costs very little to heat and cool. We knew we could do it ourselves, and it seemed an ideal material for our dry climate.
We like the variety of methods of working with papercrete: it can be poured into molds to make bricks and slabs, pumped into walls or slip forms; sprayed, troweled, and used as mortar or stucco. It works well with ferro-cement techniques in which armatures made of rebar and metal lath provide the frame.
Though our domes are made of paper, they fit nicely into our natural landscape. Once covered in an umber-colored mortar, they look as though they’re made of earth. People assume they are adobe.
The general idea is to combine equal parts (by weight) cement and paper and add as much water as is necessary to mix. The more water you add, the longer the drying time.
Adapt the material depending on your end use: add lime, cement, and boric acid to increase the pH, making the papercrete fire-resistant and less attractive to bugs; prickly pear goo and latex paint make it water-resistant; sand adds grit and structure; and clay lets the mix breathe, allowing moisture in and out.
The tools you need are dictated by the volume being produced. Small batches can be made in a 5-gallon bucket and mixed with a mixing paddle attachment on a standard drill. Large batches can be made in a handmade tow-behind mixer, like we did. Papercrete slurry can be pumped with a 9-horsepower trash pump. You can use traditional stucco tools to spread the papercrete. It can also be sprayed with a stucco sprayer (that requires an air compressor).
Imagine a Papercrete Dome
The papercrete dome Mikey and I designed is not hard to build — Mikey and I are not big people, and we did it ourselves without outside help. The process amounts to building a metal armature and filling the walls with papercrete, then mortaring the walls inside and out.
SketchUp is user-friendly shareware that can be downloaded free from the Internet. With it you can draft sophisticated to-scale plans for buildings, projects, and landscaping. We used SketchUp to make a 3-D drawing of our dome. You can use our design — all of our drawings are free online (see Resources, page 308).
If you are building on a cement slab, anchor-bolt metal plates to the slab and attach the dome to these plates with a weld. If you are building on the earth, you’ll need to dig a foundation ring that your rebar armature will sit in. We made ours 1 foot deep and 1 foot wide. The first foot of our dome’s rebar ladders sits in this ring. The ring is filled with cement to stabilize it.
The rebar armature is done. Each rebar ladder is joined together at the top. It’s time to run the electric.
The armature is made up of rebar ladders welded together and formed on a wooden jig. A wooden jig is just like a small stage — two large pieces of plywood screwed down to a 2-foot by 4-foot frame. Making armature ladders requires drawing out the dome’s wall shape on the jig. A hemispherical dome design offers the most headroom and can be achieved by starting the wall’s curve at about 6 feet. Use the jig to weld the metal ladders in place. The jig assures that each ladder made is the same size. The number of ladders made depends on the size of the dome. The structural engineer who approves yours will tell you how many she or he thinks is best.
The rebar ladders join at the dome’s apex and attach to an ocular (a circle also made out of rebar). When all the ladders are attached to the ocular, rebar
hoops are made to fit around the body of the dome and are welded in place 1 foot apart from each other, beginning at ground level and ending at the very top of the dome. Think ring-toss when imagining how these fit the design. These horizontal hoops give the armature support when they’re welded to the vertical ladders. At this stage, cut away areas where windows and doors will be placed and cut spaces to mount electrical outlets, light switches, and plumbing. Run electric and plumbing. Window and doorframes can be built out of either metal or wood.
Once this rebar dome is standing, its outer and inner walls are skinned, first with 6-inch remesh and then metal lath. The remesh is hand tied to the rebar with baling wire. The metal lath can be applied with a pneumatic tool called a hog ring tie that works with an air compressor. At this stage the dome looks like a birdcage, with the skinned exterior and interior walls 1 foot apart. This is the space where the papercrete goes. Remesh the interior first so that you can still climb the exterior metal lath while applying remesh to it. Work from the top down.
I use a welder to secure loose rebar connections and to weld the electrical boxes into place.
After skinning the dome, we ran the electric and put in the door. Our friend Smoke designs the neon portion of the burning man at each year’s festival; his extra parts light our threshold.
Before pouring a papercrete wall, consider filling the first 1 foot of the walls with a nonwicking material so that pooled water that follows rain and gathers around the dome’s circumference will not wick up inside the walls. Waste materials that are suitable for this purpose include glass bottles and stones — anything nonwicking, abundant, and free.
We mixed our papercrete in a homemade tow-behind mixer that could handle 250-gallon batches. Once mixed, the paper slurry is poured into the walls through a hole made near the top. If you have a trash pump, you have the option of pumping the slurry into the walls. For a tough exterior mortar, increase the recipe’s cement portion. For a breathable interior wall, add mud to the mix.
We built our own mixer out of a feed tank, I-beam, and the differential from a Ford 150. When towed by our pickup truck, a blade mounted inside chops the paper and turns it into pulp.
Tips
Let dry completely before sealing, or it may attract mold. (Know that papercrete requires a long drying time. Building when there’s a good chance of rain isn’t a very good idea.)
Use glass bottles in papercrete walls to let in light. Be sure your windows face south.
Papercrete is a good insulator; a tiny wood-burning stove can heat a 1,000-square-foot room.
Remodel Existing Buildings
In addition to building papercrete structures, Mikey and I remodeled a 40-year-old mobile home and a 20-foot shipping container that we floored with bamboo, painted, and ran power in. Both the mobile home and the shipping container were waste materials.
Because RVs, trailers, and mobile homes are small, they are easy to work with and inexpensive to remodel. Often they can be obtained for free if you haul them yourself. Because they are smaller than many homes, they do not require a lot of materials or labor. They’re not worth a whole lot, so they make good learning projects: mistakes are not expensive. These structures are easily transformed into guesthouses, art studios, and offices.
Tips
Working as an apprentice to a skilled builder on your own house reduces labor costs and is a great way to learn about techniques, tools, and materials.
Remodeling means less permitting, fees, and inspector visits.
Add extra insulation when remodeling. Look for structures that are south-facing or can be moved to face south. This will reduce heating and cooling costs. Additional windows should always be placed on the south side.
Find a comfortable place to live while you are building or remodeling a home. It will take longer than you think to finish the work.
Turn a Shipping Container into a Building
Shipping containers, once dented, are unusable for cargo but make fine storage sheds and can be modified into a variety of buildings. They typically come in two lengths: 20-foot by 8-foot and 40-foot by 8-foot, with 5⁄8-inch marine-grade birch floors.
Companies that specialize in shipping containers are often prepared to provide modified containers with doors, windows, ventilation, power, and plumbing for running water added to them. A good supplier can modify the ends of containers so that they can be fit together and made watertight. Be sure that the modifications you preorder are going to be done by a certified electrician or plumber to avoid future problems passing inspections. Save the pieces of metal that have been cut away to make openings for doors and windows. These can be used for other projects such as gates, fences, and doors (see page 21).
Mikey loves his shipping container lab and uses it to build all of the electronic devices that we sell in our online store. He still wishes he could bury it in the ground like Luke Skywalker’s Tatooine home in Star Wars.
Tips
Prepare for delivery by pouring four level concrete footers, one for each corner of the box to sit on. If you live in North America, face the long side of the container and any windows south so that the box will gain heat from the sun during the winter.
Find a supplier near where you live, because transportation is expensive. Make sure the company has the equipment to properly deliver a shipping container. A flatbed with tilt drop is best and makes for fast delivery and accuracy within 4 inches of your desired location.
Check the container for smells, dents that may have created a hole, and stains on the floor. Check for rust on the roof and below.
Refrigerated shipping containers are highly insulated. If you can find one, it will likely cost twice as much as the other containers. It is worth paying a lot extra for one if you plan to spend time in the container. You will make back the money in reduced heating and cooling costs.
Painting the roof white and shading the structure will reduce heat during the summer months. You can also spray the exterior with papercrete to deflect some of the sun’s heat. Mikey recently framed his shipping container lab with misters that spray the exterior, consuming a couple of gallons of water per hour. This reduces the heat radiating from the metal of the container at peak temperatures midday and provides air conditioning to his lab. We planted grapevines near the misters so that the water being used would not be wasted. The grapes are thriving.
Well-placed vents — one low to the ground and another placed in the roof — will accommodate airflow during the extremes of winter and summer. A roof turbine ventilator will let hot air out in the summertime but should then be closed up in the winter to keep the heat in.
Make Your Home Efficient
Doing two things can noticeably cut your electric power consumption:
Use a clothesline instead of an electric dryer.
Switch from an upright refrigerator to a converted chest freezer.
Chest freezers are more efficient than stand-up refrigerators because cold air sinks. When a chest freezer is opened, there is very little loss of temperature. When an upright refrigerator is opened, the cold air inside pours out to the kitchen floor. When the door is closed again, the compressor must turn on to produce more cold air.
Switching from a stand-up refrigerator to a converted chest freezer requires only a temperature controller and a reorientation about how goods are stored in the refrigerator. Plug a chest freezer into a temperature controller set to the desired refrigeration temperature. The closer this is set to freezing, the longer the food inside will last.
Once you’ve converted, organize plastic bins in various sizes and label them: dairy, vegetables, condiments, produce, and protein. Store goods in their appropriate bin so that they are easy to find. When organizing condiments, read each bottle to see which condiments actually need refrigeration. Most do not and can be stored in a cabinet.
Heat and Cool
Our 40-year-old mobile home has almost no insulation and old, leaky single-pane windows that don’t quite close all th
e way.
In an effort to avoid overinvesting in an old mobile home that has a limited life span, we made heating and cooling part of our lifestyle instead of, for example, replacing the windows with double-pane versions.
The first winter that we lived in our home we set the thermostat at 70°F and forgot about it. The first gas bill we received was $180. Today, when we use these tricks, our bill does not exceed $45 even during the coldest months of winter. Yet we have not added insulation, and we still have the original leaky single-pane windows.
Tips
Turn the hot-water heater off (or lower it) in summer.
Electric space heaters are inefficient and best used only in emergencies.
Make the most of the sun. During winter at sunrise, open all the east- and south-facing curtains and blinds. As the sun makes its way to the west portion of the sky and begins to come in through your west-facing windows, open those on the west side, too. Just before sunset close up all the curtains and blinds to hold the heat you’ve gained until the sun rises again in the morning. Keep north windows covered at all times of day.
In the winter, reduce drafts by closing the doors of unused rooms. In the summer, increase airflow by opening windows on opposite sides of the house (or of a room) just a crack (1⁄2 inch). This encourages a pull of air that is felt as movement, a breeze.
The Good Life Lab Page 20