My firewood shed and firewood

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(Transcript from video):

Courtney Brooke: Good morning Zev.

Zev: Good morning.

Courtney Brooke: What are you doing?

Zev: I just took the cover off our solar hot water panel. It was covered for the winter and now the sun is hitting it. I let water in and that’s going to be heating water up so that we have nice piping hot water in our sink throughout the warm season.

Courtney Brooke: So that water gets hot in there and then where does the water go?

Zev: Then it gets pushed by the gravity from our high spring cistern which is about 60 vertical feet above the house pipe down here. It gets pushed by that pressure back through that cover pipe and into our hot water tank which is on the second floor of the house . Then it just is stored there by gravity to feed down into our sink in the kitchen and the sink in the in the other bedroom

Courtney Brooke: So there’s no pump?

Zev: No pumps.

Courtney Brooke: no electricity?

Zev: Yeah that’s right. It’s not quite passive because water is moving but yeah it’s a solar panel called a pt50 which has these four inch diameter metal  tubes inside that have enough water that they can resist some freezing in the spring and fall  but also have enough surface area that they can get enough surface area to volume ratio from the sun to heat the water up to like 140 degrees or something.

Courtney Brooke: And is the water like hot all the time?

Zev: Not when the sun’s not shining.

Courtney Brooke:  Ohhh.

Zev: Yeah, but it’s there. Our hot water tank stores the hot water for a good 12 or 18 hours hot enough for washing dishes. So, it’s only if we run into two or three days of rain that we have to worry about having enough hot water. Yay!

Courtney Brooke: Happy spring.

Zev:  Happy spring.

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Simultaneously this year, three new members in three different neighborhoods are working on setting up their own unique versions of the tiny house. Near the front of the property, in the Forest Garden neighborhood, Liz Diaz and Joseph Rasband have just moved into their creation. Joseph built the house on the trailer bed liberated when a tree fell on their trailer in 2016. In addition to a separate utility shed for their solar components and other equipment, a detachable mud room has been joined to the front door. Both Joseph and Liz are dedicated farmers, whose cows, chicken co-op and other gifts to the community continue to thrive while the construction project heads towards completion.

Donna Ireland recently relocated the magical little house to the Bellavia Gardens neighborhood that her son, Richard, built her for the purpose of living at Earthaven. An unstoppable gardener, her neighbors can look forward to her myriad contributions to the beauty, nutrition and all-over fertility of the Bellavia experience. Donna is a professional bodyworker and health educator whose Beneficial Way program will be presented at Earthaven in the near future.

above: Donna and Richard stop a moment for a snapshot during his recent visit.

Also, up at Hawk Holler, Sam Del Vecchio is fulfilling his long held dreams about living lightly on the land. His tiny house project has various Earthaven experts chipping in their experience and expertise for this slightly less than tiny moveable living space. The approximately 32’x10′ (interior) space will be built with natural, non-toxic Thermacork walls that are 100% cork and completely breathable. Sam and his family (wife, Julia, and young ones Luca and Meira) came to Earthaven several years ago, finally winding up in our Eastern-most neighborhood, where Julia plans to build her little house on the very next site. An acupuncturist, Sam has several other healing modalities under his belt, but is devoting most of his time these days to his new home.       

 above: Sam and the Thermacork.

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While it’s hard to be encouraged by the way humans are utilizing planetary resources and influences, to some extent it just makes us hunker down even more, to mine those inner resources that will help us go the distance—get another project done, another plan designed, even explore another conflict…and keep creating what means most to us, including collaborating on celebrations and community traditions.

One way to share some of these developments with us is by staying subscribed to this newsletter and becoming a Supporting Member.

I hear visitors sometimes wonder how such a cool place could be so…messy! It’s understandable that the vision we have of where we’ll be in another decade might be the same one visitors are looking for now. But Earthaven is not a Planned Community! We’re a community in various stages of planning, still dreaming ourselves into existence, in many ways more a process than an accomplishment—one that needs more time and capital to unfold in the organic way we’ve learned to trust.

So we invite you to visit with an eye for what stands out as beautiful to you, whether in the landscape, the built environment, or the lives of the people and animals you meet. Please feel welcome to join us (as Supporting Members, students, work exchangers, and for a community tour), and to feel the possibilities. Come grow with us!

Earthaven, by the way, is growing! As our new structure takes shape, eight people have lined up so far to take the jump into Full Membership as soon as we’re ready to make that official. Here’s what one wrote in a recent membership interview:

Question: What are your deepest dreams and aspirations for living in community?

I see a thriving community where people know the land intimately, they know the food and medicine all around them, they know how to make fibers and tools from the land, and they do this in a sacred way. We create so much food, the wildlife begin to thrive and populations surge. Ceremony is weaved throughout: honoring the land and its inhabitants, individuals going through rites of passage, and important annual events. There are tools that address conflict, bringing peace to people’s hearts. …. I see a deepening in spirituality as different backgrounds come together. I see dancing and singing weaved into everyday events, [with] children heavily honored and actions looked at with an eye for future generations…. I see a place that people get excited to visit and feel sad to leave. This is the place I want to call home. (It is interesting, as I write this, to see how some of this is present already, and so maybe what I’m imagining is a deepening of it all.)

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Village Terraces Cohousing Neighborhood just completed a multi-faceted upgrade to their power, heating, and domestic hot water (DHW) systems and the neighborhood is now enjoying the results. Domestic hot water for the main building had been provided by a wood-burning stove. The system lost one of its three water heating coils three years ago due to an unrepairable leak, which has made providing hot water quite challenging.

Several designs were considered over the last 2 or 3 years with none of them really being all that workable. Then one day Chris Farmer came along and suggested that we use solar-generated electricity to heat water in an ELECTRIC hot water heater. This sounds pretty silly until one remembers that electricity is 100% efficient at producing heat. Farmer had read an article 10 years ago that said when solar PV panels come down in price to $1 per watt then it would make sense to heat water with solar electricity. Well that day has come. And that is the approach that VT decided to take.

2007 view of the same building with the 1st generation of solar panels.

The final design allows VT’s existing wood-fired boiler system to provide ample domestic hot water during the cooler months at which time the new solar PV panels will keep their batteries more fully charged and their heating systems running. During the warmer months the solar electric power will be diverted to the new electric hot water heater.

For the short time this new system has been running, VT has cut its summer wood burning in half–if not more. Their hydro use and their gasoline generator use have also been significantly reduced. And their batteries are healthier than they have ever been. For a more thorough description of the system, including a tour, see Bob Lienhart.

Earthaven member and bookkeeper since 2008, musician and computer expert.  BS in Computer Science.  Treasurer for two homeowners associations and the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society–also CBMS president, 1998-2000.

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After the Hepatitis A outbreak last Spring, the Health Department informed us we needed an approved water source – a borehole well – in order to be open to the public, host campers, and hold classes and events. These activities are essential to Earthaven’s mission, so Council has approved expenditures for drilling the well and connecting its bounty to those sites used by our visitors.  After much time spent preparing and, of course, waiting, we had the well site above the new campground approved and access to it ready for the heavy rig to drill it.

Farmer, Geoff, and Alice witnessed the operation.   The rig was something else. Suspended on hydraulic jacks with a 40 foot tower holding the motor running the drill, it had a rack of fifteen 20-foot-long hollow drill rods. First a 12-inch hole through the clay was drilled; then they switched to a 10-inch bit at twenty feet, hitting water and soft bedrock at forty feet. After another fifteen feet, they got to hard bedrock. They had to place steel casing at least five feet into hard bedrock, and then pour cement between the casing and the borehole, in order to seal out all debris and surface water.

Just to remind us that big expensive machines are not perfect, a few glitches held up the drilling. The bit got stuck in the hole; it took about a half hour of juddering to free it. Then the hammer drill bit jammed, and another half hour of mechanical bashing did nothing. So they applied a mammoth, powered monkey wrench which promptly broke, flinging an iron jaw at the mud bank. Fortunately no one was in its path.

Finally, a 6-inch bit was used to continue drilling into bedrock while pouring bentonite plus cement between the casing and the borehole. At 5:45 pm, they were 170 feet into the ground and were getting a trickle of water. Meanwhile cement and bentonite were flowing out of openings between the casing and borehole as fast as they piped it in: it would have to settle overnight.

Next day, in the rain: drill twenty feet, unscrew the rod from the drill, attach another 20-foot rod, drill, drill, drill. Finally, at circa 340 feet, they hit water. The usual deal is to drill another sixty feet to see if the fracture area will yield more water. It did; we ended up with twenty gallons a minute (our minimum need was ten) and a static level (where the water level is at resting state) only fifteen feet below ground level. This is good news, because we will need only a small pump to raise the water up to a holding tank. From there, we’ll run pipe down to the campground, the Council Hall, and the Trading Post.

The drilling cost, around $5,500, and the solar panels, pump, and pipes will cost another $10,000. We anticipate a total of close to $30,000 for labor and materials when we’re done. Most of our own labor comes from commmunity service hours.  This expense  is financialy demanding for a cash poor organization like Earthaven.  Please help us meet the growing demands from the public for day and overnight tours.  Your support is not tax deductible at this time, but still can help Earthaven community meet its mission. Many thanks  from the vigilantes: Farmer, Geoff, and Alice.

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