Tuesday, August 30, 2011

How do you keep a cistern from freezing in Mongolia?

I've been following Dan Richfield's "Off the grid build." I appreciate his documentation of the whole process. In his recent post he mentioned about freezing cisterns. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI9LInmNfpE
I don't know about if my cistern top should be covered with 2 meters of ground? How would the water get in? He uses an 18" cistern riser. I have a lot of questions. I can insulate it well, but there's got to be an opening to release pressure. Isn't that going to result in freezing?

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Collecting Slate

We have a great source for natural slate. At first I doing the flagstone floors in volume 3 didn't appeal to me because of the unevenness of the surface. I realized that we have an abundant free source of good quality slate, so I started collecting little by little. I'm not sure how much we'll actually do with this. I'll use extra time to collect it now and then. I was thinking starting with utility rooms, or the garage flooring. If I get a lot, then I may do it all with this. It's definitely an easy installation. 

I'm trying to have creative thinking about using available items. Here bottles are everywhere and people are tossing them all the time. There are some cans, but less. What else is available here in perhaps a new way. The last few days I decided slate. We're a very long way from actually using it, but I started.