Richard Freudenberger

All About Batteries

Batteries have become such a ubiquitous part of life that we often don’t give them much thought until they fail.  At that point, they’re an inconvenience, an unwanted expense, and to most of us a profound mystery. Yet they’ve brought so much accessibility to our lives that it would be difficult to imagine getting by […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]