The power required isn't 'astronomic', for a start the material is preheated! Thse dryng tilets are to be found around the place more and more, many are passive solar powered. I installed one in a flat using with the warm drying air being drawn through via a solar chimney.
Yes UK housing stock is very poorly insulated. There are quite a numebr of initiatives studying or working on the problem. FYI my brother lives in the UK and works and builds social housing. One of the more interesting apporaches is external insulation.
When I mentioned 'power coming from the sun', I am specifically talking about photosythesis and not PV.
Customers taking control of power production, and at a local level is something I've been promoting and helping people set up for a long time now.
Thanks for the suggestion but I am well beyond baseline thinking! I should also mention that many of the things I discuss I have already tested in the field.
"The power required isn't 'astronomic', for a start the material is preheated! Thse dryng tilets are to be found around the place more and more, many are passive solar powered. I installed one in a flat using with the warm drying air being drawn through via a solar chimney. "
Poop may be warm on exit but there is quite a difference between @38 degrees and 100. It is also wet, ditto urine. I'm currently visiting England. It's August, so mid summer, it's mostly rained since I got here (a week) and apparently, that's been true for most of July too. I'm not aware of any passive solar system that can deal with the kind of amounts we're talking about, especially given the fact that we are discussing cool temperate conditions, which means a fairly limited number of months of regular sunshine, can you point me at something? I must admit, I'm struggling to imagine a system that could cope with the volumes produced.
"Yes UK housing stock is very poorly insulated. There are quite a numebr of initiatives studying or working on the problem. FYI my brother lives in the UK and works and builds social housing. One of the more interesting apporaches is external insulation. "
Most current insulation solutions are oil based, so unless these solutions take that into account, and tbh, most of what I've seen/heard ignores that particular elephant in the room, then that adds further to oil demand, rather than reducing it. It sounds like your brother is doing good things, more power to his elbow.
"When I mentioned 'power coming from the sun', I am specifically talking about photosythesis and not PV."
Apologies for misrepresenting you. I'm afraid that distinction is not at all clear, especially as the primary driver for the macerating toilet is a solar panel. In all honesty, I had to re read it several times to be able to even deduce photosynthesis might be part of the process and that only happened after you responded.
"Customers taking control of power production, and at a local level is something I've been promoting and helping people set up for a long time now."
Sounds interesting, what does that look like? Always good to get ideas of what works.
"Thanks for the suggestion but I am well beyond baseline thinking! I should also mention that many of the things I discuss I have already tested in the field."
Perhaps we have different ideas of what baseline thinking comprises. For me, that's the assumption that the trappings of so called civilisation will always be with us. This is the first blog post of yours that I've read and with all the talk of macerating toilets and solar panels, it seemed to me that you were not thinking beyond a time when electricity and modern manufacturing are the norm. Again, if that's a misrepresentation of what you think, I apologise. As a long standing environmental activist, I am horribly accustomed to the blindness of others on this issue. Most people deluding themselves that we can simply switch to using non renewable renewables and carry on living as we have been for the last half century. If this is not you, I'd be very interested to be pointed at any writings you've done describing your real low tech experiments and solutions. Living as I do with barely any power, I don't have the resources to spend time trawling through blog posts and I am always keen to learn from others. No point reinventing the wheel, after all.
As you asked for constructive criticism, here's mine.
I agree that we do best to avoid "leaping blindly towards false solutions", but tbh, the solution that follows is, IMO, just that. Yes, it's true that both urine and poop could be evaporated, but the power required to do so, especially in a cool temperate climate, would be astronomical. Where is this power to come from? This might be a context specific solution for the tropics but in the UK? Not a chance. Also, the idea that we can somehow harness waste heat energy from buildings to power this seems to have no basis in reality. Whilst it's true that it might be possible to retrofit some buildings to do so, the majority of the UK housing stock is not only poorly insulated, meaning heat loss is vast and not retrievable in any way, but also, not hugely suited to harvesting due to the shape and spacing of houses. Trying to retroactively convert 1930's semis for example, would be well nigh impossible as far as I can see. Given oil has peaked and that non renewable renewables provide only a fraction of the power and usability of oil, it seems to me that these are not very long lived solutions to a problem that will always be with us. Might I humbly suggest your ponderings need to go a bit further from current baseline thinking? Electricity and the trappings of so called civilisation are unlikely to always be with us. Seems to me that we need to be designing systems that will work without vast amounts of energy, whether that's in the manufacturing of evaporating loos or the powering of them.
May I also point out that referring to energy as "coming from the sun", when speaking of solar panels, is somewhat disingenuous. It comes from the sun via various extremely polluting mining and manufacturing processes, resulting in a relatively short lived product. To more accurately describe things as powered by the sun, you'd need to be referring to plants and the beings that munch on them, all part of Gaias design. It's just my opinion but to my mind, your clients would have been better advised to start taking ownership of their output. I'm mindful that the original intent of permaculture was to provide long lived/lasting solutions, which a macerating toilet, shipped in from who knows where, that cannot be easily replicated or powered, is not. There is no need for people to be so poo phobic, it's all perfectly natural. There is also no need for horrible smelly compost loos. Far better, imo, to design decent compost loo systems that will last forever. The system as described sounds great but fragile in the extreme. It's kicking the problem into the future, because at some point either the toilet will break and parts not be available/affordable or they won't have the ability to power it, at which point, they will be back to square one.
Thanks for commenting.
The power required isn't 'astronomic', for a start the material is preheated! Thse dryng tilets are to be found around the place more and more, many are passive solar powered. I installed one in a flat using with the warm drying air being drawn through via a solar chimney.
Yes UK housing stock is very poorly insulated. There are quite a numebr of initiatives studying or working on the problem. FYI my brother lives in the UK and works and builds social housing. One of the more interesting apporaches is external insulation.
When I mentioned 'power coming from the sun', I am specifically talking about photosythesis and not PV.
Customers taking control of power production, and at a local level is something I've been promoting and helping people set up for a long time now.
Thanks for the suggestion but I am well beyond baseline thinking! I should also mention that many of the things I discuss I have already tested in the field.
Thanks again!
"The power required isn't 'astronomic', for a start the material is preheated! Thse dryng tilets are to be found around the place more and more, many are passive solar powered. I installed one in a flat using with the warm drying air being drawn through via a solar chimney. "
Poop may be warm on exit but there is quite a difference between @38 degrees and 100. It is also wet, ditto urine. I'm currently visiting England. It's August, so mid summer, it's mostly rained since I got here (a week) and apparently, that's been true for most of July too. I'm not aware of any passive solar system that can deal with the kind of amounts we're talking about, especially given the fact that we are discussing cool temperate conditions, which means a fairly limited number of months of regular sunshine, can you point me at something? I must admit, I'm struggling to imagine a system that could cope with the volumes produced.
"Yes UK housing stock is very poorly insulated. There are quite a numebr of initiatives studying or working on the problem. FYI my brother lives in the UK and works and builds social housing. One of the more interesting apporaches is external insulation. "
Most current insulation solutions are oil based, so unless these solutions take that into account, and tbh, most of what I've seen/heard ignores that particular elephant in the room, then that adds further to oil demand, rather than reducing it. It sounds like your brother is doing good things, more power to his elbow.
"When I mentioned 'power coming from the sun', I am specifically talking about photosythesis and not PV."
Apologies for misrepresenting you. I'm afraid that distinction is not at all clear, especially as the primary driver for the macerating toilet is a solar panel. In all honesty, I had to re read it several times to be able to even deduce photosynthesis might be part of the process and that only happened after you responded.
"Customers taking control of power production, and at a local level is something I've been promoting and helping people set up for a long time now."
Sounds interesting, what does that look like? Always good to get ideas of what works.
"Thanks for the suggestion but I am well beyond baseline thinking! I should also mention that many of the things I discuss I have already tested in the field."
Perhaps we have different ideas of what baseline thinking comprises. For me, that's the assumption that the trappings of so called civilisation will always be with us. This is the first blog post of yours that I've read and with all the talk of macerating toilets and solar panels, it seemed to me that you were not thinking beyond a time when electricity and modern manufacturing are the norm. Again, if that's a misrepresentation of what you think, I apologise. As a long standing environmental activist, I am horribly accustomed to the blindness of others on this issue. Most people deluding themselves that we can simply switch to using non renewable renewables and carry on living as we have been for the last half century. If this is not you, I'd be very interested to be pointed at any writings you've done describing your real low tech experiments and solutions. Living as I do with barely any power, I don't have the resources to spend time trawling through blog posts and I am always keen to learn from others. No point reinventing the wheel, after all.
As you asked for constructive criticism, here's mine.
I agree that we do best to avoid "leaping blindly towards false solutions", but tbh, the solution that follows is, IMO, just that. Yes, it's true that both urine and poop could be evaporated, but the power required to do so, especially in a cool temperate climate, would be astronomical. Where is this power to come from? This might be a context specific solution for the tropics but in the UK? Not a chance. Also, the idea that we can somehow harness waste heat energy from buildings to power this seems to have no basis in reality. Whilst it's true that it might be possible to retrofit some buildings to do so, the majority of the UK housing stock is not only poorly insulated, meaning heat loss is vast and not retrievable in any way, but also, not hugely suited to harvesting due to the shape and spacing of houses. Trying to retroactively convert 1930's semis for example, would be well nigh impossible as far as I can see. Given oil has peaked and that non renewable renewables provide only a fraction of the power and usability of oil, it seems to me that these are not very long lived solutions to a problem that will always be with us. Might I humbly suggest your ponderings need to go a bit further from current baseline thinking? Electricity and the trappings of so called civilisation are unlikely to always be with us. Seems to me that we need to be designing systems that will work without vast amounts of energy, whether that's in the manufacturing of evaporating loos or the powering of them.
May I also point out that referring to energy as "coming from the sun", when speaking of solar panels, is somewhat disingenuous. It comes from the sun via various extremely polluting mining and manufacturing processes, resulting in a relatively short lived product. To more accurately describe things as powered by the sun, you'd need to be referring to plants and the beings that munch on them, all part of Gaias design. It's just my opinion but to my mind, your clients would have been better advised to start taking ownership of their output. I'm mindful that the original intent of permaculture was to provide long lived/lasting solutions, which a macerating toilet, shipped in from who knows where, that cannot be easily replicated or powered, is not. There is no need for people to be so poo phobic, it's all perfectly natural. There is also no need for horrible smelly compost loos. Far better, imo, to design decent compost loo systems that will last forever. The system as described sounds great but fragile in the extreme. It's kicking the problem into the future, because at some point either the toilet will break and parts not be available/affordable or they won't have the ability to power it, at which point, they will be back to square one.