Alternative Fuels

This week, I want to go over a case study in rainwater harvesting design. This example is special to me because it’s about how we partnered with my mother-in-law to transform her property into a [...]

In one of my past blog posts, Investing Like An Ecosystem, I wrote about strategies that promote resilience and anti-fragility. One of the key areas of investment involved asking yourself one [...]

Join us for a beautiful and info-packed video tour of our permaculture homestead! This is a 3-part series where we explain and explore our: – thriving food forest complete with fruit trees, [...]

What is a Rocket Mass Heater, you ask? A while back, the team from Green Energy Futures (which includes our past PDC grad Duncan Kinney) came down to Calgary to film a workshop we co-hosted and [...]

I have always been interested in wood gasifiers and after doing a little research this morning was amazed to see that a they are popping up all over the place. Biomass gasification is a process [...]

Coppicing has always been interesting to me as a wood production system (fuel, timber) because it uses trees that can be cut perpetually. In other words, the tree is cut and grows back. This is [...]

Below I have put together a video about a tool that every designer should be familiar with. It is called a solar pathfinder. I use this tool in almost every consultancy that I do and it not only [...]

Living in Canada makes staying warm in winter an interesting challenge. In such a cold climate I have long wondered how to continue to keep humans warm (care of people) without bringing down [...]

Plant Oil Processing The Folkecenter has a demonstration lab which contains all of the equipment to press, filter and test vegetable oil for engine use. As Europe has pioneered the use of [...]

One of the reasons that Michelle and I found the Folkecenter was because of plant oil. Just over a year ago, Michelle and I converted our VW Westfalia van to run on used vegetable oil, usually [...]

Here at the Folkecenter there are numerous vehicles running on alternative fuels. Pure Plant Oil (PPO) There is a rape seed refinery here where they have the ability to press and filter rape seed [...]