07-14-2008, 03:44 AM
Wood fired hot water soaking tubs have been around awhile, although I'm not sure about them for showers in the morning. Perhaps if one insulated the heck out of the water storage tank and heated the morning shower water up with the previous evening's fire it might work but getting up early enough to light a fire under the water heater to have a shower doesn't seem like it is going to go along with the shower and run off to work in a cubicle lifestyle. Perhaps there was a reason most folks took weekly baths way back when? One, it took a lot of work, two, they didn't work in cubicles.
Oh, just an odd thought here, did you know that soap is actually a fairly new invention? Somewhere around early in the Industrial Revolution, not medieval or before like I had always thought.
On the wood stove thing, it might work if one made coffee the night before and put it in a thermos. Otherwise the idea of making fire BEFORE making coffee sounds dangerous.
The "alternate" alternate lifestyle sounds a lot like farming in pre-industrial days. Reading about the Salatin family of Polyface Farms might give a lot of folks some interesting ideas of what can work in sustainable farming:
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
The biomass plant at Pepeekeo says they will need three truckloads (semi-truck loads) of fuel every hour to run their biomass electric plant. That's a lot of wood. I don't see households generating power from wood, but they can use wood to heat water and food, especially on rainy or cloudy days.
With any lifestyle - there will be more than one choice and one choice will not "fit all". Everyone needs to look at their own needs and see how others have fulfilled similar needs and look around to see if the same will work for them. There is a tendency to hope for one, nice, clean, green, "final" answer, but I don't think there is one. It is kind of a continuous journey with new answers as the old ones wear out.
Oh, just an odd thought here, did you know that soap is actually a fairly new invention? Somewhere around early in the Industrial Revolution, not medieval or before like I had always thought.
On the wood stove thing, it might work if one made coffee the night before and put it in a thermos. Otherwise the idea of making fire BEFORE making coffee sounds dangerous.
The "alternate" alternate lifestyle sounds a lot like farming in pre-industrial days. Reading about the Salatin family of Polyface Farms might give a lot of folks some interesting ideas of what can work in sustainable farming:
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
The biomass plant at Pepeekeo says they will need three truckloads (semi-truck loads) of fuel every hour to run their biomass electric plant. That's a lot of wood. I don't see households generating power from wood, but they can use wood to heat water and food, especially on rainy or cloudy days.
With any lifestyle - there will be more than one choice and one choice will not "fit all". Everyone needs to look at their own needs and see how others have fulfilled similar needs and look around to see if the same will work for them. There is a tendency to hope for one, nice, clean, green, "final" answer, but I don't think there is one. It is kind of a continuous journey with new answers as the old ones wear out.
Kurt Wilson