My friend and stove mentor Nathan is on the ground in Haiti making Lucia Stoves without the usual machined parts from Milano, just from scrap. Helps to have a Ph.D. in fluid thermodynamics. These are better than the Approvecho GreenTec clay stoves from China because they gasify rather than torrify and give pH neutral biochar on 1/3 the fuel rather than caustic ash on 1/2 the fuel. The biochar can also be used to filter water. It already filters the air through the char while the downdraft stoves burn so the indoor air is scrubbed of VOCs. Very little smoke. If you are familiar with the commercial versions of the WorldStove seeing one made from an oil drum is revelatory.

~Albert

02/22/2010 from Nat Mulcahy:

The large stove in this photo is the first 100% a Haitian made Lucia Stove and it cooks meals 200 school kids at a time the smaller stove is the household sized version.

Here you can see the inside we have both the burner unit and the fuel drying chamber (handy with the rains now here)

the artists working onthe stoves  insisted on making trees and birds on it AT NO EXTRA CHARGE to letpeople know that if they use LuciaStoves the trees will come back to Haiti and then so too the birds!

From  punkrockpermacultur.com                                                                                            

I haven’t had much time to post because I’ve been working pretty much non-stop on a Permaculture Relief Corps mission call Perma Corps for Haiti, which has been getting a LOT of support from here and also here .  Which brings me to my next subject sustainable bamboo production! I absolutely love bamboo, in fact, I currently live in cozy and locally sourced bamboo framed yurt.  I wish to bring up the subject because RIGHT NOW there are currently around two million people homeless in Haiti, 1 million or so in Port Au Prince and another million scattered throughout the countryside.   It is very likely that in couple of weeks when when the seasonal rains begin in full force (not to mention Hurricanes) many of the tents  and encampments where displaced Haitians are housed will be completely washed out.  Haiti desperately needs cheap, permanent, sustainable housing that is hurricane and earthquake resistant ASAP and bamboo combined with Cob is the ideal locally sourced combination.  Below is a wonderful manual about Humanitarian Bamboo from the amazing IDEP foundation, as well as, my top 5 reasons bamboo rocks. This list comes with the best and most up to date links you could ever hope to find on the web regarding sustainable bamboo.  If you have any bamboo resources such as connections with bamboo plantations or builders or can offer help in anyway please email thejulianeffect(at)gmail.com as Perma Corps for Haiti is looking to have teams on the ground shortly and then building structures right away.

TOP 5 Reasons That Bamboo Rocks!!!

1.)  Bamboo is a very strong, very cheap, natural, quickly renewable, highly flexible and adaptable, building material.

To see just what Bamboo can do just take a peak at this link and especially these great e-books below:

• Into to Bamboo Building
• Modern Bamboo Architecture
• Modern Bamboo Structures (technical)

2.)  Bamboo is a ideal perennial and beneficially plant for Permaculture Design applications:

• Bamboo in Permaculture Design
• Bamboo in emergency housing
• Permaculture Bamboo farming
• Expert Permaculture educator Robyn Francis shows off some of the amazing Bamboo varieties at Djanbung Gardens (video)

3.)  Bamboo can sequester TONS of carbon while still being regularly harvested and can drastically improve soil fertility when used as biochar!

• Detailed description of the potential for large scale bamboo carbon sequestration projects
• Bamboo used as biochar (large pdf)

Biochar from bamboo has a unique pore structure, making it a perfect soil structure for beneficial aerobic bacteria and fungi, resulting in crop yield gains of as much as 800-percent. It is important to mix the biochar with well-prepared compost inoculated with bacteria from undisturbed (usually nearby forest) local soils.

4.) You can eat it and it tastes amazing!

How to grow edible bamboo shoots

5.)  In Permaculture there is a saying, “Unity through intergration, intergration through diversity!” and the world of Bamboo is full of diversity.  Due to bamboo’s amazing diversity of both products and species it will be a key economic factor in helping the 2/3rds (developing) world out of poverty especially in heavily deforested regions such as Haiti.

Bamboo and sustainable economic development

• Posted by Evan O’Neil at Haiti Rewired on February 8, 2010 at 7:21pm
• View Evan O’Neil’s blog

Evan O'neil

As Evan Hansen noted in an earlier post, the Haitian recovery will have to be down to earth, literally. Local food production is invaluable in a country where people struggle to feed themselves. For advice on this I sought out Geoff Lawton of the Australian Permaculture Research Institute. He answered my questions about how to strategize and deploy sustainable permaculture solutions across the country.
EVAN O’NEIL: Given the ecological degradation in Haiti, and the need for food and fuel, how canpermaculture projects help rehabilitate the landscape and provide sustainable livelihoods?

GEOFF LAWTON: Permaculture projects can help through a holistic design approach that integrates people’s ability, ingenuity, and skill-sets with the available resources that are locally understood. Integrating local people’s skills together with local resources can increase community members’ sense of self-reliance, have a unifying effect on the community, and empower local people to provide for their own needs, with the minimum amount of assistance from the outside world.

This process fosters and creates a sense of independence for local people in a situation that can be portrayed by the outside media as insurmountable. So the psychological and physical result of permaculture projects is that it creates a beneficial turnaround for the people and the landscape from a disaster situation to a meaningful future and recovery.

EO: What role can permaculture play in urban environments such as Port-au-Prince?

GL: Major solutions emerge out of major problematic situations. In Port-au-Prince, there are many solutions that can emerge, including the restructuring of built infrastructure in a way that creates hard-surface water runoff aimed at productive urban gardens; creating a microclimate through the recycling and redesign of the landscape; and implementing biological cleaning of urban grey- and blackwater waste.

Organic materials can be converted into high-quality inoculum compost useful for the production of extremely high-nutrient-dense food gardens within the urban and peri-urban landscape, where gardens would also include small animal systems, small aquatic systems, and medicinal food gardens.

Introducing and demonstrating appropriate alternate energy systems that can operate on a low economic investment and supply people with electricity would be an ideal inclusion and inspiration for local people as part of an empowerment and cooperative model.

A key reference and example for what is possible is given in the case of Cuba, with further information being available atwww.thepathtofreedom.com.

EO: Organizationally is there a management or ownership structure that you’ve found most sustainable? Do permaculture projects work best at a certain scale?

GL: The organizational structure most suitable for permaculture projects is management by a local nongovernmental organization operating as a nonprofit education and demonstration entity, where information is networked by the project locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally with the support and partnership of an internationally connected nonprofit NGO. This helps to pool the international skills and experience of its students, teachers, administrators, and project managers.

The education center functions best when it teaches courses for 25–35 people per site, and it is crucial that the education facility be open not just to local students but also to international students who are prepared to pay first-world international prices for education and internship programs and are inspired and encouraged by the fact their tuition provides a major part of the project’s funding.

The infrastructure on these projects needs to operate as a dual-function example of local and renewable housing—i.e., energy efficient, constructed of local materials which are readily available, and affordable to local people.

An ideal land area for a project is a site that is typical of local land use, somewhere where the land is no longer productive or is a difficult production area for local people; somewhere where the land is not the worst, or the most difficult land and not the best or ideal land, but a piece of land that represents an average example of what local people have to deal with in their everyday life.

EO: How would you strategize the best sites around the country? Are there any challenges unique to the Haitian landscape?

GL: The over-exploitation of natural resources and the depletion of biodiversity in the landscape of Haiti creates a situation where the prioritization of good key-point positions in the landscape would be an imperative for a fast result, and getting a fast result would be a powerful way to inspire local people to extend and replicate the permaculture model. A key strategy is to identify specific water-harvesting points at the tops to the mid-slopes of watersheds, in order to supply gravity irrigation and organic nutrient flow to areas that are appropriately shallow in slope for an intensified, diverse, and interconnected productive yield.

These systems need to be set up within a practical distance of the population so that numbers of local people can be involved in the implementation and establishment, and through their involvment in this process they can get the added educational benefit of acquiring new knowledge and skills that can support them in supporting themselves, now and into the future.

EO: Some conservation organizations use the concept of cores and corridors to protect wildlife. Are there analogous benefits in permaculture? Would it make sense, for example, to connect farms to the national parks, or to the forested Dominican border, in a larger green network?

GL: Ecosystemic processes and principles are inherent and central within the design science of permaculture planning and recovery and blend perfectly with natural and conservation forest ecosystems within a contoured corridor pattern, watershed dendritic pattern, and also along human transport routes, within the urban or larger landscape area. Permaculture project designs always emphasize the integration and integrating benefits of harmonizing with natural landscape forms and profiles.

[PHOTO CREDIT: Manioc planted on a steep slope. By Nick Hobgood (CC).]