Holistic ICT for EcoLiving

I had met with Marcin Jakubowski several times and his partner Brittany Gill once before and I consider them as friends. Knowing the effort they were putting forward and the common values we shared, I thought it was important to commit myself to visit their Factor E Farm and take a look at what they have been doing there for the last year and a half.


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So on Tuesday I drove up to Kansas City to Union Station to pick up Andrius – who was coming in from Chicago via AmTrak – and met him at a little after 10PM. It was too late to go to Factor E so we stayed in a Super 8 in a place called Kearny, MO just off I-29. On Wednesday morning, we then went to Maysville which about an hour or so NE of KC on I-29 to meet with Marcin, Brittany and Ronnie at Factor E Farm (see their blog here).

Site Summary and Overview
First thing after the introductions was a tour of the place and its a work in progress. We saw the typical farm animals a piglet, 3 goats, 12 chickens, 4 ducks a dog and a cat. The center of the activities seemed to be focused on two areas, construction of a house for Ronnie (the newest of three people living on the farm) and in the greenhouse which had a simple “Barrel Hydroponics” food production system and also where the Compressed Earth Block (CEB) machine was located.

• Shelter – The existing house that Marcin and Brittany live in is made of Sandbags with a earthen roof. Power comes from a Lister engine running on straight vegi oil which recently was being repaired. They collect the oil from restaurants and also use the oil to power their vehicles which includes a VW subcompact and a Suburban.
• Connectivity – They have a cell phone and use Skype (VOIP). Internet comes from a wireless internet provider at about 30 dollars a month. The location of the house was too low under the hill, so a relay tower was constructed on the hill as a base station with a router to resend the signal to where the Factor E staff live.
• Water – Water is an issue. They had been collecting water from the greenhouse roof using barrels but the reason dry weather meant that their supplies dried up and so now they are relying on their neighbors for their water supply and that means filling up barrels of water and trucking them in. The current focus is to use a do it yourself well drilling system to drill a small well that can supply their water needs. Unfortunately the well drilling machine has not performed as advertised complicating and slowing down their efforts to drill the well. Showers are taken in the greenhouse using the stove there to heat hot water.
• Waste Management – Waste management is basic. Greywater from the single sink is used to water plants I assume. A single outhouse is used to handle the human waste production which I assume is composted and then used as fertilizer – Humanure.

Life on the Factor E Farm
Our first work task on Wed was unloading the trailer which was filled with recycled materials that they had collected from the surrounding communities. Once the trailer was empty we then went to a older farmer who in his earlier days was an ag professor in Texas. He let Factor E take some of the wood he recently cut up when he downed a couple of old Locust Trees. The wood would serve two purposes it would be fuel for the wood stoves that are the primary way Factor E stays warm at night and also it would be used to help build Ronny’s Cordwood house.

In the evening we had pasta and beans for dinner. Marcin and Brittany laid out their plan for developing Factor E. Marcin is now working on a paper that organizes all the major components which he refers to as 18 core technologies needed to develop a prosperous sustainable settlement.

We began to go over the key items and also discuss ways Andrius and I could help. Much of the night was spent with the discussion dominated by Andrius and Marcin about whether or not they share the same values. Andrius feels that it is important to support efforts that are people centered and so he needs to know about people’s deepest values. I felt like the discussion was getting repetitive and went to sleep early.

The next morning after a breakfast of oatmeal we had a chance for some focused discussion. What emerged for me at least was a process and strategy that might be relevant to me as well as OVF.

Marcin has identified open source technologies (meaning that the technologies are not under the proprietary control of the inventors) as key pieces to enable significant cost as well as energy and time reductions in the development of sustainable built environments. So for example many of these processes are based on simplified designs and materials sourcing that can empower people towards a higher level of self-reliance as well as being able to feel good about being sustainable.

My realization though is that the vital ingredient is not the technologies themselves but how effective we become in developing the core skills needed to deploy these technologies at the community level.

Marcin has identified in his Factor E Farm Wiki the primary building block technologies and systems. We can see this as a pattern language that has developed through the particular perspective of the participants at Factor E as they mix with the local environment and dynamic in Maysville:

1. HABITAT PACKAGE: CEB Press – Sawmill – Living Machines – Modular Housing Units – Modular Greenhouse Units – Solar Turbine CHP System
2. AGRICULTURE PACKAGE: Modular Greenhouse Units – Orchard and Nursery – Electric Garden Tractor – Organoponic Raised Bed Gardening – Agricultural Micro-combine -Bakery – Dairy – Energy Food Bars – Agricultural Spader – Well Drilling Rig – Freeze Dried Fruit Powders – Hammer Mill -
3. ENERGY PACKAGE: Solar Turbine CHP System – Compressed Fuel Gas – Inverters & Grid Intertie – Electric Motors/Generators – Fuel Alcohol -
4. FLEXIBLE INDUSTRY PACKAGE: Multimachine & Flex Fab – Metal Casting and Extrusion – Plastic Extrusion & Molding
5. TRANSPORTATION: Open Source Car – Electric Motors/Generators – Electric Motor Controls -
6. MATERIALS: Aluminum Extraction From Clays – Bioplastics

From these building blocks for a fully featured world class sustainability center, we narrowed them to four or five items in our discussion. It happened that these also happened to be what I saw as key items to focus on for OVF’s proposed Multi-purpose Unity Center which included:

• Babington Biofuel Burner – The burner is a simple round sphere that allows non-combustable fuels to become atomized through air pressure delivered by two holes drilled in the middle. This allows a low cost system for a relatively complete burn of the waste or bio fuel. The Babington Burner would then be located underneath and through the burning of the liquid fuels would convert the water in the Flash Steam Generator into steam that would then power the Bladeless Turbine.
• Solar Thermal Generator – Most Solar Thermal systems use expensive parabolic mirrors controlled by expensive tracking systems to move the mirrors during the day with the sun. The power then goes to central point where it either heats oil or a sterling engine. Efficiency is in the range of 25 – 40 percent.
• Hot Box – Located about three feet underground in a highly insulated box this includes the storages of the hot oils in volcanic salts to conserve the heat during nights and cloudy days and also to have a reserve for additional heating and electrical loads over the normal peak capacity of the Babington and Solar Thermal Generators. Oil from the hot box would circulate through the Parabolic Mirror collecting solar energy to heat the oil to keep the Hot Box at a high enough Temp to maintain a reserve energy capacity to power the Combined Heating & Power System for a time of at least 24 hours.
• Compressed Earth Block Machine (CEB) – The incredible thing is that there are resources all around us. At Factor E Marcin showed us his progress on the CEB machine which he has built from scratch. The machine is powered by the hydrolics from a multipurpose farm tractor and this includes two hydrolic presses to compress the earth into a block. CEB machines take aspects of several techniques in the alternative building movement. For example, Rammed Earth and Poured Earth building also use subsoil that is compacted together with a Horizontal Ram. The earth is held in place with forms and often cement is added. More “Natural” building techniques such as Cobb includes the mixing of subsoils with straw to provide added strength. CEB like both the above can use subsoils around the building location itself reducing the need for transporting materials which in the age of Peak Oil will be more restricted. Another advantage is it reduced material inputs and increase farm and community self-reliance in what many see as an age of growing instability globally.
• Solar Bubble System – Solar Bubble Greenhouse Systems includes the use of Passive Solar Energy to heat a greenhouse. The specifics of this inlcude using a industrial strength soap bubble machine to produce bubbles which then fill a approx 20 inch cavity between the outside and the greenhouse providing an insulation protection of the greenhouse in the range of r-20 to r-30. Currently a plastic sheeting is used with a aluminum frame but we are considering the development of a modular system that might make the system longer lasting and easier to construct and dis-assemable. The modular system would include the extrusion of clear plastic panels to form the bubble cavity for the Solar Bubble System and composite panels for the secondary and primary support members. Surplus heat from the greenhouse would go into a geothermal storage system adjacent to the hot box. Similarly the geothermal system would in the winter time function as a back up system to heat the greenhouse on very cold and cloudy days.

There were problems with the internet connection and so we decided to do a video bridge between Factor E and Franz Nahrada at another location. A local supporter of Factor E including a family with a organic bakery. They invited us to their house and we had a chance to briefly meet them and to talk with Franz via skype. It was a nice example of how ICT can be used to built relationships between people across the globe.

Andrius and I left at 1130 and drove to the KCI airport. After an a cup of Chai at Starbucks and a interesting discussion about a math training program dedicated to explaining how sustainable technologies work using math equations, I took off back to SW Missouri.

I think we all thought it was a worthwhile experience and I look forward to more concrete steps to establishment a partnership with Factor E as well as considering collaboration with Andrius on the math program.