point Return

Beginning to grow

dv — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:36:37 +0000

It has been some months since I wrote at length. One reason is I have been in a new and busy rhythm -as I shall soon elaborate. Also, I have been making shorter posts elsewhere and twittering. And, there is another blog that narrates the events at pointReturn more frequently.

Let me make this a tour of many topics that are worth reporting on. And because it’s a rather long-winded tour, I must be considerate and offer quick jumps. Click on any of these or read on.

Phase shift: A slight and perceptible change has occurred
The work rhythm: What is the work routine and life at pointReturn?
Growing food: Experience with growing vegetables and grains
Water, now: Status of water availability following rain water harvesting
The road ahead: Where do I see it go and what are we doing about it?

Falling in love with swales

dv — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:59:27 +0000

“A swale is a water harvesting trench, dug usually on a contour line.” That’s the technical definition- it tells you as much as a definition of the horse as a four legged animal does about that splendid beast. Between the time I read of swales in Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Designer’s Manual in 2006 and actually decided to embrace them as the central feature of pointReturn, it was a good three years. It was even a whole year after I did the Permaculture Design
Course.

Slideshow
I have put together a slideshow on the swale work done at pointReturn. A link to the slideshow appears at the end of this article as it is best viewed after reading this.

That I had fallen in love with the word ’swale’ helped. It kept buzzing at the back of my mind like some tempting movie I must see someday. ‘Swale’ is a decidedly lovelier sounding word than Continuous Contour Trench- or its abominable abbreviation, CCT, the usual tag for a swale in India.

How I eventually came to love swales, is a story worth telling in some detail. Long time visitors to this site know most of what I will quickly summarise in next few paras. I had gone out of the way to seek a land that was abandoned, bereft of top soil, water and any agricultural activity. [story]. I wanted a blank canvas on which to demonstrate restoration from levelZero. My goal was to make 18 acres self-sufficient in water, food, energy and cash for forty people.

In 2007, I installed a windmill to pump water based on a logic that went as follows: ‘No doubt the groundwater is likely to be little, since the bald sloping land must have shed all rainwater -and topsoil- as runoff. There must have been very little groundwater recharge over the years. Still, being so close to a hill, there must be some water down there. Maybe it cannot sustain a multiple horsepower pump- but a windmill? A windmill sucks but under a litre per stroke or about 50litres per minute. Surely, there must be a sustained water supply down there to feed such a windpump’.

The new pavilion at pointReturn

dv — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 05:53:30 +0000

There’s a large new shelter at pointReturn now. It is a 1,000 sqFt at the ground level, another 1,000sft 8′ off the ground, and further up, there are two sleeping lofts, of about 200 sFt each. I like to call it the pavilion.

The choice of name rests on my fondness for cricket; a pavilion is central to the game. Players feel a proprietary right over the pavilion, and it belongs to them for the duration of the game. There they rest between their labours, observe the happenings, discuss options and pick the next moves based on the evidence on hand. pointReturn needed such a place too, to review plans and progress, to meditate on outcomes and to correct course as necessary. So I call it a pavilion.

I imagine it to be a centre for all activities. The ground level will house a library, an Internet connection and a work bench, still leaving a large floor area free for whatever need arises . There is also a verandah -an additional 300 sFt- which will be set up in a cafe mode where residents may sit and shoot the air. The first level above ground is a vast space that can be used for meetings. It will also double as a dormitory for up to ten people without feeling crowded. Further up, there are the two sleeping lofts.

Adjacent to the pavilion on the ground level is the existing kitchen with two wood fired rocket stoves. Close by on the other side of the pavilion is a washroom which is still under development.

Balancing costs, speed of execution, total embedded energy of materials, user comfort and ability to withstand storms common to open spaces, I picked on the construction style popular in Auroville near Pondicherry. I shall explain it in some detail in a moment, but first some speculation on how the technologies might have come together to create robust structures which have come to be referred to as ‘capsules’

It is fascinating how waste products of groves and plantations have been used to create products of wide utility. After the coconut has been dehusked, fibre in the husk is separated, carded and spun into ropes, thin as a twine to as thick as needed to moor a ship. Going back at least 1,000 years, ocean going ships in India’s west coast were built without a single nail. wooden scantlings were sewn together by rope and caulked with pitch. Coir rope has reigned irreplaceable till this day. It’s available in every corner of India, in many sizes. Fine coir rope is the tie-cord in traditional hut building.

Coconut palm leaves have for millennia, been hand plaited into mats. Lightweight, flexible and good for 3 years, these mats are laid on roof slopes to form as thick a pile as possible. The spathe of the palm that encloses coconut inflorescence maybe discarded by the tree once the flowers are exposed, but the rural Indian finds it makes a stiff yet pliant thong with which to tie down coconut mats on the roof frame.

Status report: June, 2009

dv — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:31:42 +0000

There are many lessons one learns in an undertaking such as pointReturn. Those from Nature come in accompanied by compelling evidence and demonstrations. These are exciting to learn. Those of a personal nature however, seem harder to accept . I will quickly deal with the latter first.

Personal lessons highlight what we know but seldom accept. For example, that money can’t dictate speed. Deliveries of goods and services are a consequence of interactions between a number of people and events over which one has little control.

Quite a part of the time in this project is spent waiting for things to happen. I, being at the age i am, sit and despair that with all these problems and delays to cope with, I will never complete the project. Then suddenly things move and I forget the delays and expenses. I have thought that I should write these difficulties down here, but even in spells of inaction I am busy: researching options, making calls …and of course fretful. [By the way, the antidote for this malaise, that I have discovered, is to sit quietly and ruminate on all that has been achieved at pointReturn so far.]

Lessons that Nature teaches you are to do with re-learning knowledge that one was certain of; in the light of experience in the field one scurries back to corrective information. One makes mistakes frequently; what seemed a permanent solution hits a new hurdle. The antidote is to try things in a small scale before spreading iout.

Water woes:

One of the missions of pointReturn is to make it self-sufficient in water for all its needs, which, given the inadequate groundwater, meant harvesting enough rainwater. Readers who have been following my endeavours will recall, how the windmill had struggled and how I had dug a 1.3 million litre capacity pond encircling the borewell from which the windmill pumped. There was a distinct improvement in the windmill’s output; I had raised first year’s tree plantings successfully on the water pumped; and I had cropped two small grain harvests in a tenth of an acre

However, it is clear, there is more to do. Lack of the usual bonus summer showers this year has exposed how marginal our water security is. We have struggled to water all the plants. I am now chagrined that my declaration of “Mission Accomplished” a year ago, ranks with the other famous premature one in recent history.

Adventures with the Rocket Stove

dv — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:54:39 +0000

A Rocket Stove is probably so named because the vertical column of flame in it resembles that of a rocket’s. The flame however does not descend as in a rocket, but rise. The updraft thus created, draws ample air to completely burn firewood. The net result is that the stove is smoke free, economic in firewood use and fast to cook with.

It was invented by Dr Larry Winiarski about a decade ago. There is growing interest in it worldwide, among people who have been searching for the ideal cook stove for the poor. It has been found that respiratory diseases among poor women are traceable to long hours spent cooking in unventilated indoors using smoky stoves. The Rocket Stove addresses all these issues with great simplicity. In addition, making do as it does with twigs and slender sticks as fuel, a Rocket Stove has a beneficial impact on the environment. Women are also spared long treks in search of cooing fuel.

Winiarski has stated the principles governing design at this link. If that is too rigourous read, a quick illustrated explanation
is found here. Simply speaking, a Rocket Stove consists of two pipes arranged in a L-shape; the vertical limb, [usually about 400mm or 18″] is longer than the horizontal. The horizontal limb is where the fuel is introduced. Some free space is ensured here for combustion air to be drawn. Fire is begun using an oily rag, paper, straw or pine needles. Slender twigs are then placed over the fire and once they catch, larger sticks may be introduced. Soon the initial smoke ceases and there is a steady brisk column of fire. Heat is controlled by pushing in or pulling out firewood. [This site has a good review of various wood stoves, their merits/demerits and finally a simple Rocket Stove design]

Looking back on the first Rocket Stove project at pointReturn, it is now clear it was both too large for current needs and over ambitious in design. I was building a stove that can cook for a dozen people who are not yet on the horizon. An over creative approach led to incorporation of a two-pot top with a damper control and two baking boxes. It was fun to design and build though. It engaged five of us on a full fun-filled day. You can see the detailed drawings I made at this link. You can also choose to run them as a correctly sequenced instructional slideshow. Caption in each frame explains the step.

But before you build one like that, here is a critical review. The size as I said, is too large. On the day it was inaugurated it did cook for 26 people but such a stove is more efficient when it is used regularly, more or less all day, as in hostels and restaurants. Chunky lengths of firewood are required to sustain a robust vertical flame. In other words the design is for a professional cooking.

Trees at pointReturn

dv — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 03:10:34 +0000

The pointReturn adventure began not so much with the idea of giving trees a home, but to facilitate the home trees will make. For thirty years now I have not been able to pass a full grown tree without, at a minimum, registering its presence. Often I do not know its name or nature and I am more mystified, therefore. What is its inner life like? I am sure it has one, for, I sat alone once, for a whole two hours staring at a giant neem tree and let it heal my heart. It stood over 80 feet tall. In the evening breeze, it gently waved its boughs and I was sure it was all only for me; at any rate the universe did not exist save for the tree and me.

Skipping lyricism for bare facts, it can be asserted that barring those in the snow-capped poles -but, including those of us in deserts- man has survived mostly by trees in his habitat. And he is still an ignorant beneficiary of the largesse of nature delivered through trees. Ignorant, I say, because the ’science’ of botany is nothing more than a continuing exercise to catalogue discovered facts about plants, a task yet to end, despite half a millennium of sustained devotion. Plants are the source of our food, energy, medicine, clothes, intoxication and creative urges. I also reluctantly add, they are the raw materials of much modern commerce.

The space under trees’ canopy is nature’s kitchen. I will not insult you by making this a primer on trees and their myriad ways, but the integrating role of trees can never be overstated nor frequently enough recalled. A collective of trees is greater than the sum of its constituents. I often find people saying ‘plant mangoes’ - or coconut or apple or oranges or whatever. But that is approaching them as units of profit production in the way specialised factories are designed.

Of course trees can be made to perform in a monoculture, just as square miles of agricultural mono-cropping can be, but you would be undervaluing their potential, let alone the cost of such a practice. But when trees are allowed to develop in the company of their fellow species, they are in a happy society, a mutually assistive one at that. They all grow well, producing an abundance of goods and services, with monetary profit as one of the many by-products. It is a tree’s nature to be of use, to produce, to serve the planet, not just man.

Permaculture : an interlude

dv — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:09:42 +0000

Bill Mollison, 80 years old, toddled up to the
blackboard and wrote “You are so lucky. Three teachers!”. Then swinging around, he stood, cuddly as a lad, cocking an eyebrow up and smiling the friendliest conspiratorial smile you ever saw. That kick started the Permaculture Design Course [PDC] in Melbourne, Australia on September 22, 2008.

In the two following weeks, over 60 participants from around the world were to be seduced and informed by Bill’s integrity, wit and wisdom. For close to thirty years he has been spreading a way of thinking about our sojourn on this planet, calling it Permaculture. Now he was at it again- a man grown heavy with age and recently recovered from an illness, but with his passion undiminished, fire raging within, thoughts sparkling with clarity, stories unending and his impish humour intact.

Permaculture advocates the deliberate marshalling of natural elements to create a living system that sustains everything in it, including -incidentally- humans. The essence of it is obvious to those who are prepared by life to receive it; but it’d seem a folly of fools, to those who bliss through life without a single doubt. For example, Bill in his autobiography “Travels in Dreams” quotes Ronald Reagan: “See one tree, you seen them all; trees pollute the air more than cars”. The good man could not have been taught Permaculture by anyone, let alone Bill.

Exploring cob

dv — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:58:50 +0000

I settled on cob as a material of construction after eliminating other options one by one. When i considered cost, embodied energy, ease of use, comfort for occupants, aesthetic potential and sense of fulfillment I found cob was hard to beat. And now having grown familiar with it, I will stay with it for long, long time, I think.

My first pick was compressed earth block. I went over to Auroville and studied the process for a day. It was too demanding and needed a team of six, needed cement and produced far too many blocks. I decided it was for good sized communities that wanted to use their own labour to build a number of homes.

Would rammed earth be easier? Sure soil preparation is less fastidious and no machinery is required as with earth block machines. But it needs form work, scaffolding and a team of at least 3 sturdy workers. At pointReturn labour is hard to by.

There was of course the option of the ‘instant’ variety of building using cement, sand and steel, all bought and brought in. I had built the very first structure, the strongRoom using these. The frustrating delays with workmen defeated any advantage this method had. The escalating prices of materials, nailed the idea dead. There was in addition, the nagging guilt about the environmental cost of this option.

And so I came to look at mud. At pointReturn the soil is caked hard, a result of most top soil having been washed away by rains and absence of organic matter. After rains, the earth hardens within hours of sunshine; a crowbar directed at it bounces back like it hit a rock. This told me that it would be a good material to build walls with.

TIP!
Don’t pass up reading ‘The Hand Sculpted House‘. It is an inspirational book that teaches you new ways of looking at homes and how cob can be used to build them

An hour of Internet research on cob building quickened me. I ordered Ianto Evans classic ‘The Hand Sculpted House’ the same day. This is a classic. Not only does it teach all you need to know about cob building, it also makes you look afresh at how dwellings should be designed.

Cob is the simplest, most abundant and most used building material on this earth; it is earth itself. As long as there is a reasonable proportion of sand and clay, it will serve. You add some reinforcement like straw, add water, knead it underfoot and it is ready for building. You take palmful of the stuff and just pile it up. There are some limitations but none that upsets its high rank.

Large water storage - a solution

dv — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:53:03 +0000

A windmill pumps water when the wind blows and that is not always when you need the water. At some point or the other you will have to make a decision about creating extra storage for the pumped water. Here are some notes from my experience that might offer you a lower cost option.

At the pointReturn location, the installed windmill is estimated to have a capacity to pump 20,000 litres per day [lpd]. This is an estimate based on the wind regime here. However, that is not an output you can be certain about. Obviously, the output also depends on the water available underground.

A windmill is an ideal solution in arid areas where water resources are poor or undeveloped as the pointReturn site is. For each revolution, a typical windmill pumps out a little more than a litre. It follows that it needs to be supplied at better than just that rate. An electric motor on the other hand, will pump hundreds of times the output of a windmill -provided the well has that quantity of water available. It is quite common to see monster pumps sucking wells dry in a short burst and running themselves to destruction, if left unattended. The pleasures of flicking a switch on are often visited upon by the pain of having failed to switch off in time.

Where inflow of water into the well is low, a windmill is a good solution. At pointReturn, the mill is at stand still for several hours in a day; it turns over lazily for some hours and runs at great speed for some. The output during these phases are obviously varied. There is an additional unpleasant wrinkle: in the dry months - as the last two months have been- the water arriving at the borewell is low and is sucked out quite quickly. So the sight of the mill turning at great speed might in fact mean no water pumped at all. But a windmill, for having run dry, isn’t ruined quite as quickly or badly as an electric pump is.

The short point is the water output from a windmill is unsteady. The indulgence -wasteful, I might add- of switching a motor on and seeing a violent gush of water issue forth, is not possible with a windmill. One needs to accumulate water as it is pumped out and use it discreetly when required.

It makes sense to store the water at a height so that it can flow by gravity to where needed, when needed. At pointReturn walter is stored atop the one sturdy structure there is - the strongRoom. This serves several purposes, primary among them is as a storage where we can lock away tools and basic essentials; the site is unmanned at nights.

The strongRoom is only 10′x10′; the area of its roof is therefore, limited. There sit four old plastic tanks I have had for about 11 years now; each is of a 1,000 litre capacity. They are made of Linear Low Density Polyethylene [LLDP]. Such tanks were popularised by the brand ‘Sintex’, a name that has become generic.

On good days, when the wind is blowing fairly and the borewell is fed by sturdy underground springs, following rains, the overhead tanks [OHT] have overflowed within hours. The 4,000 litres of storage capacity has just not been enough. It was a frequent sight on many mornings to see the overflow amount to a strong wasteful stream.

The solution was obvious but the costs were forbidding. What options did I have?

Build a large concrete OHT
Extend the strongRoom and place additional LLDP tanks on top
Build a series of elevated storages all over the site and have the overflow run to them

Off grid power

dv — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:46:35 +0000

There is now solar powered electricity at pointReturn and I thought it would be useful to set out how I think about power and energy and what was the process by which I finally selected what I did.

The energy needs of a self-sufficient campus must be met from a basket of sources, each of which is ideal for one area of use- water pumping, lighting, power tools, farm work, cooking, electronics, and transportation. The broad plan for pointReturn, to be realised over the coming years is as follows:

Water pumping: windmill, solar electric
Lighting: solar electric
Power tools: premium grade solar electricity
Electronics: premium grade solar electricity
Cooking: firewood, biogas
Farm work: animal, tree oils based biofuel
Transportation: electric and tree oils based biofuel

The above list of energy needs and sources is in the order they are likely to be realised, and as I write the list has been realised up to step 4. The list is also meant to encourage finer thinking about our energy needs. Not all needs require electricity; of them that do, not all need premium grade electricity.

At the risk of lecturing the technically adept reader, let me go through this quick primer. Wind and solar chargers store the power they generate in batteries. It is in the form of direct current or DC. DC is good enough for lighting, heating and some water pumps