Open question

[48ford]

I'm busted,
The magazine got me out in country,but the city is closing in on me.
I always wanted to build the car that used a jet starter motor.
I find it funny that in south Texas(we winter down south)the wind is always blowing hard,but on windmills,lots of sun but no solar batch tanks,or colectors. Makes you wonder.
We go the south Padre Island a lot and Irene looks at the waves and falls asleep,I look at them and thing ,Long wide,paddle wheels turning generatos,waves roll in,roll back out,never stop.
Later Russ&Irene

[34ford]

Been there done that also. In my younger days we use to heat the house with a Ashley convection stove in the basement. I cut a 12x16 hole in the floor by the front door and put a small fan in it to pull the hot air out of the basement . Had a really neat old decorator cast iron grille I covered the hole with. Boy was that heat nice. Makes me tired thinking about all the wood I cut and hauled home and split. I use to cut wood in an area and when it snowed I couldn't get my van in there so I hauled it out on the toboggan.  Built a splitter and used the engine off of my snow blower to power it cause I couldn't afford to buy an engine for it. Did all the splitting in the summer so it was back on the snow blower for the winter. Still have the snow blower and it goes strong, it's 25 years old this year.

I quit my subscription when it got away from it's roots.

[1FATGMC]

they lost all of us at about the same time. Another example of the Corporate mentality that infects most publications today.

Small world isnt it?

By the way, I still have mine. I still mine things from it now and then. I have been thinking about solar heat in my shop.

I read once, a long time ago about the time when the originator of Mother Earth sold out, that most of the readership wasn't people living the Mother Earth lifestyle, but doctors, lawyers, and other corporate people who dreamed of getting out of the rat race and into a slower style of living.  The magazine provided them with hope that they could do it.  Some did and most didn't.  

The owner of the magazine sold out for big bucks, can't blame him, and the new owners took it in a different direction.

   

Frank the attached greenhouse on the side of the shop has worked great last year and this year as we go into winter for heating the shop.  I can go into the shop in the moring and just throw a few pieces of scrap wood in the stove to take the chill off.  By 10 or so the heat coming into the shop from the greenhouse really heats the shop up and keeps it nice and warm all day.

   

The door to the left and the 3 openings to the right (there is also one to the left of the door you can't see) go from the greenhouse into the shop.  There are also two openings down at floor level.  One is just below the picture out of view and the other is down at the far end by the catus.  I keep the bottom one by the catus open and the top one to the left of the door has a fan in it blowing into the shop.  This takes cold air off the shop floor and draws it into and the length of the greenhouse and blows it out  into the shop.  Most of the time though I just open the door and the cold air comes in the one end and circulates out the door into the shop on its own.  The green house generates a lot of heat (it will be in the high 80's in there with outside temps in the 20-30's), so if I blow that air into the shop it can acutually make the shop hotter than I like.

In the summer the sun is much higher in the sky and the greenhouse doesn't get that hot.  I have a door on one end of it going outside that I leave open and the other end has vents to the outside that I close during the winter.  In the summer the door and openings to the shop are closed so it doesn't heat the shop at all.



This is a picture from the shop side of the greenhouse wall.  Now the only problem with solar heat is that you need sun light.  I wasn't aware that you guys east of the Mississippi got any  .

Framing The Green House  

Roof and Sheathing for Greenhouse

Greenhouse Windows

c ya, Sum

[enjenjo]

That's pretty much what I have in mind Sum. My though is just a heater instead of a greenhouse, I found what I want in an 82 issue of Mother. I would like to put a geenhouse like that on the house though, maybe next summer

[carnut1100]

Dad used to buy it in the early 80s and again in the late 80s and early 90s. I have al those issues and read them occaisionally. There is a lot of good stuff in them, but they got crap so we stopped getting them. Nowadays we buy one about every 5 years.
I would like to get a copy of the articles they did in around 83 to make your own garden tractor. It used a VW transaxle and steel I beam for the front axle etc. I have one issue but not the whole 3 part series of articles.
I never saw the electric car issues, but I have part of the series where they did a 3 wheeler with motorbike running gear and tilting front wheels. It was really cool.
They have lost the plot.

[enjenjo]

All the old articles are on the net at   http://www.motherearthnews.com/

[41woodie]

I read "Mother" religously for years but quit when they went corporate.  Now I subscribe to "Countryside & Small Stock Journal" it's about as close as you can get to the original Mother.  We live on 40 acres so still playing Farmer Brown as another hobby.  Anyway it was a good excuse to buy a Kubota tractor.  MH

[Ed ke6bnl]

A thought occured to me today, I know that is an event by itself, but to continue, how many of you are or were fans of Mother Earth magazine? I quit subscribing about 1990 because it got a little too "store bought" to suit me, rather than make it yourself.  I bought an issue the other day, and it still isn't my cup of tea, one article on which $12,000 tractor was best kind of said it all

I use to subscribe in the 80's, built a 30 gal barrel stove from a kit ordered from the catalog.  Used the plans to buil my new born baby boys rocking crib he is now 19 years old and many other and foster kid have lived in it.  And the famour air compressor bottle rocket that shoot anywhere from 2 foot duds to near 70 feet.  Sure wish I had a mill and lathe then to build the same projects that I carved out of wood and scrap pipe and old pallets.  The mag changed I changed and never went back Ed ke6bnl

[Ohio Blue Tip]

Great minds do read alike!  I still have the first few years of Mother and like the rest of you, dropped my subscription when the magazine changed direction.
I miss my Mother.
:cry:

[Mac]

Guilty also of having been a M.E.N. subscriber.

I moved to the boonies in `84. Wood heat from a Sotz barrel kit, split with a "Monster Maul". Built my barn style shop out of locally sawn rough cut hemlock pine and oak. Put a passive solar addition on the old tennant house we bought. Worked part time as a rural mail carrier.

Shucks, I even did the August West Chimney Sweep thing for about 5 yrs.