Alternative Energy

On-Farm Plastic Recycling

From last year’s Cooking with Food Waste workshop to the upcoming installment of the developing Waste Not series, Living Web Farms is making a point to not only reduce waste, but  help change the perspective on waste all together. There is no waste in nature.  As agriculturalists, there is great importance in studying farming practices […]

Home-Scale Biogas Production

My enlightenment on the subject of biogas began when I stumbled upon an article in a dog-eared copy of The Mother Earth News entitled “Chicken Manure Can Power Your Car.”  Buried among debatable bootstrap business stories and homespun garden-prep tutorials, the write-up recounted how a one-legged British maintenance man named Harold Bate converted a 1953 […]

Return to Atomizing Oil Burners

Part One available here The nexus of appropriate technology, circular economy and agriculture is a buffet of challenging, interesting projects.  In 2017 and 2018, our continued work in biochar and gasification, and among other esoteric projects, our work with small-scale plastic recycling, – not to mention organizing the WNC Repair Cafe project – have kept […]

Biomass for the Masses

by Richard Freudenberger, Living Web Farms Resource and Alternative Energy Coordinator Call it firewood, biomass or solid fuel, it’s still one of the most reliable ways to heat your home—but only if you do it right. Even long-time wood-burners can disagree on what is “right,” so we’re going to do our best to clear the […]

Atomizing Waste Oil Burners

Update: 10/26/18.  Part 2 available here Summer HVAC season is coming to a close and lately our local scrap-yard has been teeming with old oil burning furnaces. While Asheville residents are replacing oil burners with updated heat pump systems as fast as they can, conscious builders and tradesmen are recycling the used equipment, and although […]

Conducting a Do-it-Yourself Home Energy Audit

by Richard Freudenberger, Living Web Farms Resource & Alternative Energy Coordinator There are two benefits to saving energy in the home. One is the financial gain of allocating less of your household budget to keeping the household humming, and the other is the less noticeable advantage of managing consumption for the sake of our planet’s […]

DIY – Make a TLUD Gasifier

By Dan Hettinger, Biochar Facility Manager Last month I wrote a little about the carbon impact of biochar production, and concluded with the assumption that going ‘carbon-negative’ is likely very possible with simple scale ‘backyard’ biochar technologies.  Bob Wells’ immensely popular presentation on the Tin-Man shows an effective DIY method with a single 55 and […]

Earth-Coupled Cooling Tubes

by Richard Freudenberger, Living Web Farms Energy & Resource Coordinator   Earlier this year at Living Web Farms we completed a propagating facility for Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) larvae at our Grandview Farm. The Black Soldier Fly, or BSF, has a similar appearance to a mud dauber wasp but is not a nuisance to […]

Closing the Loop – Biochar as Carbon Negative Technology

By Dan Hettinger, Biochar Facility Manager The increase in annual global carbon emissions has stalled in recent years despite strong global economic growth.  In effect, economic growth is no longer coupled with increased carbon emissions.  In 2015, most of the world agreed that we can limit climate change to a rise of 2 degrees Celsius. […]