The problem with a lot of the architectural solutions taken from the past is that they rely on an open building envelope. Ventilation is great when it’s enough, but the moment you have to close off the building envelope to use mechanical air conditioning, those architectural features dont help. Swamp cooling has similar challenges.

Shading, however, is a really important feature that we are largely missing. Lots of eco-friendly buildings are designed with large overhangs over south/west facing windows to block sunlight during the summer and let it in during the winter. I think it would be neat to have a building that is designed to be slightly more “active” than that. E.g., maybe every equinox you deploy/stow a rigid awning structure, so you get even more light in winter and less in summer.

It’s a little strange because I dont actually really know who the audience of the book is supposed to be. The main text seems aimed at people who would purchase the stuff, but the appendices seem aimed at people who would be producers. The content seems like something that a library should have, but it’s printed like a phone book with paper that probably wouldnt hold up to library usage.

I could almost see it as a “coffee table book” in a store that sells locally made, quality stuff, but that can’t be a very big market.

Same, honestly. I bet the authors (it’s literally just 2 people) have a hell of a nice spreadsheet that I’d like to get my hands on.

That’s a little out of scope: the catalog is all stuff you’d wear for the most part. There is a section for companies that make costumes, though, ranging from stuff you’d wear to a ren fair to serious re-enactor clothing.

There’s also a decent amount of leatherworkers who do sheaths.

I wish I had an equivalent resource for tools, because there’s still a good amount of small businesses making tools.

Having battery storage is the most expensive part of any off-grid system. Without it, you obviously dont need batteries, but you can also get rid of all the battery management stuff, charge controlling, inverters, etc.

Direct attic fan sounds great because you need it the most when it’s the most sunny.

It would be cool to do a direct solar powered hydroponics or pond project, where you just pump all the water to a reservoir when you have sun, and let it drain back 24 hours a day.

Presumably, it gets mowed? If not, I’d say to find a local wildflower mix and sow it in late fall/winter. Lots of plants tolerate this well cause it’s how they naturally reproduce. You dont have to worry about water as much that way because they sprout and start putting down roots way before the weather gets hot and dry.

Another thing to consider is salt. If that area gets exposed to a lot of road salt, it might cut down your options a bit.

Balcony solar that is grid tied is probably not something you want to DIY. The amount of power you can generate probably wouldnt be worth the hoops you’d need to jump through. That’s not including using the smart inverters that plug in (cause that’s not really “diy”).

Off grid balcony solar isnt super hard. If you have an all-in-one charge controller/battery/inverter (jackery, goal zero, and a million others), you just plug the panels right into it, and you can pull power out the other side with no trouble. That’s also debatably “diy”. Getting a little more advanced than that still isnt too hard.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/12/how-to-build-a-small-solar-power-system/

Personally, I have a goalzero power station and 300W of panels. I wish I had done a little more research before buying the goalzero, cause I probably would have gone a different route (LFP battery, not NMC) because I care way more about charge cycles than energy density.

It makes sense that UV is only s small % of the energy from the sun, so sunscreen would only be responsible for a small change in heating.

Looks like some can inhibit sweating, too, which could be a double whammy.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5139786/

That’s the problem with sunscreen, too.

The upside to systems like this, though, is that once the infrastructure are in place, cold water could be supplied instead by a chiller plant instead of the river.

I find it odd how often bottles and mugs come up in the context of BIFL. How often are people having them break?

With the exception of disposables or the cheap freebies that you sometimes get at events, I’ve never had a bottle or a mug break.

My travel mug is a Stanley that’s ~20 years old, and it has one hand opening. It still pretty much looks the same as the day I bought it.

I can’t believe I didn’t even mention pack covers. A bunch of packs even have little compartments for the cover, so you never have to even think about where it is

What many backpackers do for a quasi-BIFL approach is to just buy a non, waterproof bag that’s durable, and use a garbage bag on the inside (typically bags designed for trash compactor or nylofume which are much more durable than normal bags).

The problem is no coatings last forever, so you might as well have your waterproof layer be a replaceable wear item.

If you do want something that doesnt require an extra bag, avoid anything that has a coating on the outside, because that is inherently sensitive to abrasion. This especially includes DWR, which mainly serves to shed water and prevent water from getting into the fibers, not preventing water from getting inside.

Also, avoid gore tex or similar. Those are good for on your body, because you are generating heat (and sweat) so it needs to be breathable, but a bag does not need to be.

I prefer coatings to be on the interior of the fabric for durability. Some people like it on the outside so water gets shed instead of getting the fabric wet (even though whatever is on the inside will be dry). Coatings like polyurethane are actually waterproof, though they will break down over time if they are kept hot and humid, so just make sure you take care of your gear.

Alternatively, a waxed cotton canvas may be the best bet for you since it can be retreated as necessary.

I’ve never made paneer, but I have made a lot of ricotta (well, this type of ricotta, there’s also leftover whey ricotta, which I haven’t made). I had no clue paneer was basically just pressed ricotta.

Do you ever salt it, or is that just not common with paneer?

My trouble is always ending up with too much leftover whey. Yeah, you can use it in bread, but unless you are baking like 4 kg of bread, you won’t use it all. I’ve used it in soup, too.

Yeah, I suppose that’s all down to what power has been granted to them. I certainly wouldnt buy a house where the HOA has power over what you do on your own property. That’s why you dont buy a house without reading all the documents.

There are reasonable HOAs, you just dont hear about them. Plenty of them are just entities that exist to pay for care of common grounds. I lived in a place with one that just handled trash pickup, and a community pool.

I know multiple people that have them exclusively for road maintenance through their neighborhood. If that gets expensive, it’s just direct evidence that your community has sprawled too much.

I am still using a Nook (Barnes and Noble’s brand) ereader from 2009. It was in storage in a damp basement for a year, and the fake leather case it was in literally disintegrated around it, but it was fine. The battery turned spicy pillow, so I replaced it for a few bucks, but other than that, it’s still working great. I haven’t connected it to wifi in like 10 years, so I have no clue how well transferring books from a library works. It has a micro SD card slot that makes it capable of holding a huge amount of books, so I just drag/drop a hundred books on every few years by plugging it into my computer. The only complaint is no backlight.

and hoping nobody will force them to.

And the sad thing is, probably no one will.

Do you find that you are getting consistent watering out of your drip irrigation in terms of the volume of water used each time?

I have a mixture of pressure-compensating drippers (which dont seem to actually compensate well or last more than a year or two) and drippers that are like little spigots that can be turned up or down, which is nice for some plants that need more than others.

The trouble is it takes me a long time to get the flow right in each one, but it does not seem consistent day to day. I’m wondering if it’s just due to the natural variation in water pressure, though that tends to be ±4% throughout the day, and less than 1% if you look at the same time each day when my irrigation runs.

Everyone likes to claim that eggshells are some kind of a amazing fertilizer, but they aren’t. They are calcium carbonate, which is not really water soluble (in other words, not available to plants). You can improve solubility by baking and then pulverizing them to a powder. They are basic, though, so it’s possible to rise the pH too much for some plants. I wouldn’t just do it willy-nilly.

It would be awesome if balcony gardeners could just scrounge all the fertilizer their plants need, but it’s not easy. If you are on a budget, you can just buy a canister of miracle grow that will last indefinitely for $12.