Actauly starting construction on desert homestead and like to share the experience.

Ahh shit man,, that was sweet,, however,, as ya know people an things on here are just as fulla shit as the real world...

I use logic when shit dont make sence,, an a lot about this contraption an daves claims of said contraption dont make sence,,...
Who knows,, ive been wrong before,, but then again,, ive been dead on...:X
you know my motto..

LOVE ALL,,,TRUST NOONE..

 

I have nothing but respect for your point of view hippiehillbilly and I understand your sceptisism. More people seem to talk more than deliever in these forums. However I be continuing on with my plans none the less.

The airwell project is quite an assome tool, but you are right in the respect that it won't be enough to supplie me with all the water I need. The conditions that produced the 35 gals where unusual and yes rain was on the way that weekend. however it did not rain when the water was being produced from the device.


Many of my trips out to the desert are not photo documented as I am working a lone and the work progress is slow. And this was just a first step in the airwell project. Mianly to see if it worked or not. If it didn't I wouldn't even be continuing with the work on the land as there would be no point in doing so.

Now the main work for water is being focused in harnessing the wash that flows through the property to produce a large catchment area, in the thousands of spuare foot range. The catchment area will catch 210 gals of water for every 1000 square foot of catchment area for every half inch of rian fallen. the catchment area will be lined with 20mil pond liner with perferated drainage pipes channeling the rain water to underground cisterns placed along the center of the wash. So far I have dug 90 cubic feet of the wash. Like I said before, I'm in no hurry.

Once the catchment area is finish I will biuld a large airwell ,as by then I will have the funds to do it. But for now I just go out once a or twice a month and work on the land and some day I'll get to a point when I can live out there, in relative comfort.

I won't be defending the airwell in any future statements til I biuld another one as I can see that would be the only way that I could save face on this subject.

with respect to you all.

 

Now there ya go dave,, see all ya gotta do is be honest an my mind wont have red flags...

Just remember you are the one whom posted the rescource pages that inevitably made ya come clean with the truth of the critter,,,not that i wouldnt have researched it myself,,(just as i did the weather stats for yer lil projects area...)

Hang in there ya lil desert rat you..

As for me,, i prefer green grass an high times forever...:sunglasse
to each his own...

Luv~N~Lite

 

i know here in missouri when temps are 80 an humidity is 50 %or better a simple window ac unit will produce atleast 15 gallons of water per 24 hour period and that's excess water "the new ones use the water to cool the condensor via the fan flingy it " i went to the blythe charts too looked like he would have ideal conditions in the morning times all year long. my only concern would be havin enuff photocells, like i said my airwell lol window ac pulls a steady 12 amps 110ac havent researched photocells in awhile but seems kinda hard doing it solar .i lived in las vegas for 5 years i dont think u could get a gallon a week out of the air no matta how big an airwell u had , lot of people out there use swamp coolers , device for raising humidity

 

Well, I have been working on several types of air wells and non of them can produce the mount of water needed under predominant conditions. Well hippyhillbilly is right dispite my best efforts. The most water I can squeeze out of the air is 1/2 a liter per week using passive solar technuiques. I don't have the funds to continue research any longer and the this project is now done.

On the upside I'm now moving the home stead project to Southern Co. . I'm in the process of closing a land deal for 6 acres of land between Fort Garland and San Luis. The land has road access and water rights. The land is just below tree line, 1/2 mile from HWY 159,next to a creek" sandio de cristo creek". Now i can have the best of both worlds , Desert and the mountains.

I'm keeping the land in the desert for now unless any one wishes to buy it.lol

So the plan remains the same just the location has change. Where theres a will theres a way , even if it means relocating to a better location.


respect and love to you all.

 

Lovin you dave! Some friends of mine have land out there too near cortezz. Are you bringing the air well with you?

 

Yes I will be bringing it out with me, just in case. As the rain fall out there has much to be desired. But I'll be putting in a well there as soon as I start biulding. still waiting to see if the deal has gone through though.

 

The deal has gone through and it is official. With all the legal easments and water rights in tow.

Now to pay off all my dedts. Which is the next step to self reliance. Then we start saving for the the actual construction, now that all the experimenting and research is behind me.

Now comes the part that is the hardest for most of us actualy paying every thing off and freeing ourselfs from dedt. Starting with the highest intrest rate and working my way to the lowest. Dedt is evil , "Get thee behind me Visa!!".LOL I only have one credit card and it is first on the list to be eliminated. for this to work I need to stop using it all together and what better way than to cut it up. I will be selling my 20acres as soon as I can, I will probably break even if I'm lucky on that. If not than i'll just keep it for the hell of it.

I'll keep you all posted to the mondain task and progress of the financial part of this. As it is my soul aim to bore you all to death.LOL As you all now this is a necessary part of the process. I have read many of the post here and found that one of the short falls of most homesteads and communal communities is a sort sight of the finacial requirements of maintaining one or using credit to speed things along only to come up sort later down the road. Some of the more successfull steads and communities either paid everything off out right or waited till each step was paid for before continuing on to the next step. It most be a truely awsome thing to know you are completely free , even if it takes a little time to get to that point.

So to those of you who want these same things and feel fustrated that your not moving forward fast enough. A word of wisdom;" Be pacient , when these feeling arise stop and evaluate the situation and make certain that the steps you are taking are moving you in the desired dirrection. As there are many roads to getting to the same place, some shorter than others. Be clear in your intent and your desire of what you want. Do not compromise or settle for less, or feel that its impossible to reach. Once again if these feels arise stop and adjust your course and proceed once again. Know that you will reach your goal so long as you never quit."

As you might have notice that I my self have strade of course numerous times by reading this thread from the begining. But I believe that all those times I have gone off course were important side trips so that I might become more clear in my intent of what I want. As each side trip as shown me an important facet of my goal that was either unknown to me or to gain insight into what I truely wanted or not to begin with but needed to try out inorder to become aware of what truely speeks to me. Now I have moved on from what I thought I wanted and have moved towards what i truely want: a homestead in the desert close to town and in an area with rain and water and snow on which I can raise a family. A place of natural beauty surround by snow covered peaks, aplce to call home.

If you do give up, it just means you didn't want it badly enough. We all manifest what we focus apon. SO STAY FOCUSSED AND IT WILL BE SO!!!

LOVE AND PEACE BE WITH YOU ALL.

 

Singing a song
Rolling along

Aint the success that matters -

What does matter
Is that you are Doing for yourSelf
That which brings heightened Awareness and contentment in Knowing that you can cope with and find opportunities to Grow On and Beyond within every moment - where do you choose to love - wherein is your energy ....Don't settle for less or offer your excuses - Be that Being and in that be free to Be More

 

It turn out the Colorado land had many restrictions emposed on it by the county. But luck would have it that a young couple contacted me. Needless to the offered me double what I paid so I took it. Im going to start a new Thread For the The homestead As this one has gone all over the place. As what I was Originally trying to do has become some what blurred in this thread.

I'm going to Title the new Thread A NEW HOPE Homesteading the Desert.

As I have never fallen out of love with my original 20 acre plot.

It will Acct. step by step every thing I'm doing out there and will include charts and diagrams and photo's of each step of this project. As pure the friendly advice of HHB.You'll seel the starting picture and the finished picture. I plan include links that relate to each step of the project. as well as answer question about the homestead project.

As far as the old Idea of an ecovillage, I would still like to explore that as well, so long as you purchase your own land in this area. Although I'm sure You will all be waiting to see if my home stead will be successful before imbarking on that road. As that would be the wisest thing to do. The count down is at 3.5 years and counting before moving to land. So you may have to wait a while.

If you are interested in the Idea of an ecovillage and wish to work towards that goal in the mean time, then do the following: 1. Eliminate all your dedt, 2. Save your money, 3. Research the type of home stead you would like and how you will support it, or wait to see how I did it. Either way by the time I'm done you all should have all the resorces ready to do the same or dare I say do it better.

Thank you all for your continued support in this indevre.

p.s. Old Wolf If you like you may eraise the photos in this thread that I have Posted as I will start by limiting them to the subject matter only.

 

Best of luck to you! The earthbag and cob house concept is amazing! I love the idea of it. When the time comes to actually build the houses, (time and money affording) I would love to help. I'm not in any position to move anywhere, but I would love to have some experience in creating alternate, earth-friendly houses and I'd love an excuse to go out to the desert.

 

Hey DesertDave,



Reading about your desert homestead takes me back to a few months ago –to the most wonderful, and deeply emotional and spiritual experience and memory my life has to this point- when I spent a little over 2 months living on my own –along with my small herd of goats and a few donkeys that would visit my camp which I was caretaking (and with visits ever so often by my Bedouin friends) in a remote desert camp near Wadi Rum in southern Jordan, close to the northern Saudi Arabia border. It is a beautiful multi-colored desert there, with sandstone peaks and cliffs, rolling dunes and vast valleys of sand and rock tinged with hues of violet, purple, red , orange, black and grey. It is certainly the most wild and beautiful place I have ever lived in, and I think I am most drawn to the desert because, to me, everything in the desert is a sacred gift. I do honestly feel this way about it, and the more I write and think about it , the more I awaken those emotions that the desert stirred up and captivated inside of me.



One certainly cannot comprehend the value of life-giving water until they have walked across a vast dry desert valley, dehydrated from thirst with the hot afternoon sun beating down while you climb up a steep boulder-strewn mountain to come upon a lush mossy desert spring and drink the free, clean water. The vast panoramas and silences become something one expects and gets used to, and they bring a sort of security and comfort that I previously had not known anywhere else for any good length of time. Trees are not as common in the part of the desert I was in, but I could easily go pick the brittle-dry bushes of the plentiful broom bushes and always had an open fire for cooking tea or meals and bright, cheery flames and coals during the long, still, magical Arabian nights. O



The nights were filled with the most stars I have ever seen, as most of the days were cloudless and I could easily see the milky way and no less than a few shooting stars each night when I slept out under the open sky. I also had a black goat-haired tent to sleep in, which I chose to use for a few nights and for feasts of mensaf and zaerb with my Bedouin friends, but most were spent out in the open.



I had arranged to caretake a small herd of 4 goats, does of Damascus breed and a few donkeys which the owner was letting run loose around the desert would stop by exhausted and dusty in the camp and I would give them some water and food. My days were spent living as a traditional goat-herder and I would take the goats on a walk ever so often to new places in the desert and watch them forage and lead them to one of the springs every once in a while. I had a small corral for them utilizing some sheet metal but I eventually enlarged this half-cave for them as the winter was approaching. Me and the goats developed a close, symbiotic relationship and they would follow me wherever I went after awhile and I enjoyed caring for them and we simply did whatever we wanted to during the day, answerable to no man, and apart from some food I got from the village, all our needs were provided for by the desert and I have never felt more secure or at peace.



It is in the desert that the human being needs the least amount of calories compared to all other ecosystems, and the least amount of possessions carried on one’s back (unless you are carrying water across dry areas) . It makes me happy that the lack of plentiful water and fertile farming land – which I see as a survival mechanism in one way - allows for many (not all) deserts to retain their wildness and silence, and keep the populations generally low.



These days I am looking into heading up to the arctic, but I still might just head to Baja California instead and live in the desert once again. It certainly is hard to resist once you have had a taste of it. Pics from my camp and the surrounding area in the northern Arabian desert are in my gallery here>

http://www.hipgallery.com/photopost2/showgallery.php?mcats=all&si=&what=allfields&name=spiritofthewildernes&when=0&whenterm=&condition=and


-Matt

 

this project have been on and off the shelf so many times over the past five year as I continue to struggle with the all important water question. I believe I have finally come up with a solution to the problem!

Now the desert floor act like a giant desiccant absorbing moisture in the air and than when then sun heats the desert floor up all the misture evapperates back into the air. this cycle repeats each and every day. Now over the past 5 years I have been toying with the idea of getting water from the air and this tiol or obsession has tought me much. I have made about ten failed attemps at this so far. I'm so sure that this idea will work that I'm going to duccument each step of its developement here. As for the homestead it's nothing more than my own private campground/lab.lol

Now back to the idea of the desert floor acting as a desiccant. The sand and silt of the desert floor is and acts as a poor desiccant. But I noticed when I would dig a whole in the morning to act as my latrine durring each of my trips out here that the first 1/2" to 1/4" of soil was damp and some time you could even see droplets forming on the sand grains, only to disapear a short time later after sun cooked the soil. This cycle keeps many of the small plants and animals alive in the desert. Yes it took me five years of camping in the desert to notice this:blush5:. Now the idea is to use a highly absorbent desiccant in pellet form and place these pellet in a 4" dia. 1' long black sewer pipe that has fine screens at each end then place this in an area where the wind can pass through the pipe. what I suspect will happen is the desiccant will absorb 10-100X the moisture the sand and silt did.

The next step is place an air tight caps on each side in the morning before the sun hits the pipe. One of the caps placed on the pipe will have a small tube coming off of it. this tube will then pass through a container of water and then enter into a collection container. The Idea being to absorb the moisture in the air. Then in the morning prevent the moisture from escaping into the atmosphere, by capping off the tube. As the tube of satturated desiccant is heated up by the sun the moisture will cook off and be pushed through the tube by steam and pressure into the container of water to be condensed into water and then collected in the final container. After the tube of desiccant is cooled in the evening the caps are removed and the cycle starts over again. Note not all the moisture will cook off some will remain after each cycle unless dry air is pumped through towards the end of the heating cycle. It is not known if pumping dry air through at the end of cycle would increase yelds of water,most likely yes it would.

The questions I hope to answer:
How much water will it produce if any?
will the desiccant poluted the water?
will the suns heat be sufficeint to cook off the absorbed moisture?
how can it be put to pacticle use, if at all?

wish me luck

please let me know what you guys and gals think of this concept.

 

welcome back desert dave.


your new plan isnt going to work any/much better than your dry well did.

dont get me wrong,these are great ideas,just not in the middle of the california desert. the problem isnt the idea,its the air...

 

Actually his idea is valid, it's just not to scale.

First, dump the dessicant. The water probably isn't usable after being absorbed and then recondensed through chemical dessicants.

Second, to get any measurable amount of recondensed moisture from the air, especially in the desert, you'll need to capture massive amounts. I'd start with a million cubic feet and work upward until you meet your goal.

So it's not an invalid idea, it's just impractical.

As anyone homesteading in Israel (I know, don't go there) can tell you, the way to build a desert oasis is to bring everything in, including daily water runs, until it's self-sustaining.

 

i never said it wasnt,nor did i say the air well wasnt valid.HOWEVER you said it, "scale"!!
on both that is the limiting factor and there is ZERO chance of this getting him any closer to supplying his own water needs much less a whole communities water needs.

 

Yogi for Peace, you've said exactly what I was thinking. I'm only up to pg. 4 in replys but I just wanted to post some stuff before i forgot.

Nobody is going to spend money to speculate on an investment they have no part of. Cancer fund raisers don't work like that.

What do you guys think about a Hip Forum Commune Trust? Where we could set up a trustee, a board commitee + voting system, and a pretty extensive "interview" process for the trust? Proof of receipts, the whole nine yards.

I know on another small forum where some Korean guy travelling cross country lost his camera, in less than 2 days the whole forum scrapped together more than $300 for this complete stranger.

Surely we could do SOMETHING? I would surely pitch in at least $20 once every couple months.

Maybe weekly we could make a post tackling one aspect of building a commune. Housing, electricity, water, buffering soil, whatever. We'd vote for the week's post and then we'd debate it out all week. Rough $$ estimations.

At the end of the week we'd compile all the links and resources made on the post. Take another vote on the best resources, and that would go on a "How to Build a Commune" sticky.

Slowly it'd build up. Then we'd make it a book and sell it for millions!!!!!......

How about these commune founding fathers post a wish list? Maybe people have junk lying around that they could use. Or they could do a weekly check on Craigslist to see if there's any free things lying around.

I was going to get 5 free meat goats and a couple lbs of oak wood for smoking em on craigslist. Goes to show ya

 

I would never trust my water supply to technology. I would rather live in a place where water is available no matter how my technology functions. Technology is so complicated, one missing part can bring ruin to the whole operation.

Somewhere with fresh running water seems like the most suitable place.

Also, batteries have a lifetime that does rarely exceed 10 years. What if, 9 of those years, everything if fine, but when the 10th roles around, and u need to replenish your technology, the economy is in a severe depression and there is no way you can get a battery? These are not pessemistic views, I care about you and find it fun to think up potential situations that you may have overlooked to further your feeling of security and ensure that it is more widespread.

All in all, you my man are a pioneer, good luck and may you avoid impending disaster.

 

Only true of modern type batteries. Look up nickel/iron (NIFE) batteries. Origninally built by Edison, they have a lifetime of at least 60 years, perhaps well over 100. I have a set sitting here hooked to my radio system and as a power source as backup for some lights that were built in the mid 40's or 50's, I dont't know how they were treated til about 20 years ago, since which they have been sitting in behind one guys garage under a cover for about 12 years, and then behind another guys garage with no protection at all for another 8.

When I brought them home they had been sitting in -40 to -50 winters for years. Out of the 15 cells I got, 12 tested at almost perfect. This is with no charging in at least 20 years. After I cleaned them all up and topped up the water in them, they were all fine.

Added benefits to them include not giving off dangerous gases when charged or discharged, no explosion danger, you can't over charge them, they don't freeze... and the electorlyte is nothing more then water and potash.

You can find plan online to build homemade versions using 50 gallon plastic drums.

 

Thank you so much
this will prove invaluable.