psichael's blog

Preparing for the Solar Shower Experiment

Submitted by psichael
on Mon, 04/04/2011 - 21:53

 

Today our second volunteer of the year, Jurjen went on with his journey, leaving Tribodar. We'll miss him.

I finished the greenhouse we were making next to our dry toilets, so we can vacate the space the temporary greenhouse was taking up, to start making our bathroom. Next weekend we will have an experimental workshop, in which we will assemble a solar water heater, or a couple of different models of them.

I have been reading about possible models, and I would like to try the following:

  • a panel with PE tube of ½ inch, connected to an old electric boiler, to store the hot water;

  • an old

Tags: 
solar shower
tribodar
wwoof
volunteers
greenhouse

A new volunteering season has started

Submitted by psichael
on Tue, 03/15/2011 - 21:46

After a long winter without helpers, at last the new volunteering season has opened. We had a break to have time to dedicate to our newborn, Manu Inca, and because we had no good conditions for the helpers during winter (it gets quite cold here :) Now we hope we can keep Tribodar open for helpers all year through. This will require some extra infrastructure though. We need to finally get our permanent bathroom and a heatable space for helpers for winter. All this is planned for the summer though.

Our first helpers are really nice.

Tags: 
tribodar
volunteers
project
portugal
wwoof
helpex
workaway

Drying Camomile

Submitted by psichael
on Thu, 02/10/2011 - 00:45

Today I looked at the thousends of wild camomile flowers, and felt it was time to go and pick some. Last year we picked quite a few, but we put them to dry in a dusty spot, and neglected to check on them. When I found them they were all dirty : / . So this year my seccond thought was: let's make a drying rack. I had already baught some solid mosquito net, and quickly found a couple of leftover pieces of wood, and so I had something together pritty quickly. For drying cammomila it will work just fine. Later I want to adapt it to dry tomatos in the summer.

Photos follow.

 

Tags: 
drying camomile
tribodar
dry rack

Figuring out the swale

Submitted by psichael
on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 19:29

I'm working on our first swale. Today I had the idea to make some deeper parts in it, so we could have small ponds, where frogs and lizards can live in the summer. I keep them small on purpose so we can easily fill them when the water evaporates in the hottest of the Alentejo summers. I will put a polyethilene liner in it and later cover part of the water surface with floating cork, to reduce evaporation.

Tags: 
swale
permaculture
water harvesting
berm and basin

Time to start blogging

Submitted by psichael
on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 21:17

Hello everyone. Welcome to my blog on the Tribodar website. I will be using the blog to get rid of all the nonsense I want to tell but that doesn't belong in the official categories of the site. I will try to keep it related to my personal experience.

The last couple of days I have been doing some digging and other physical work. I new this already, but I have been faced again with the fact that after a long break of heavy labour, your body gets weak, and starts hurting everywhere when you get back to it. You get all kinds of blisters and -tipical for me- little wounds.

Tags: 
tribodar psichael pain
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