Wasted Air

In this home model Growing Power Diary of a Worm I have talked a lot about waste and worms, two essential elements to this way of Growing. What I have learned about Growing Power has been from Will Allen and the good persons at Growing Power as well as by experience. In insulating my unheated sunroom, where sits our Growing Power Box, we have stumbled upon a simple and well known, if not always understood, insulating factor, air. We call it the Air Insulation Resource (AIR). Today my friend John, who really discovered how air could be used simply and affordably to heat sunrooms, houses or greenhouses like at Growing Power, paid a visit to Will Allen to share with him this discovery, as Will has shared with us and many others the power of worms in Growing Renewable Affordable Food (GRAF). Will is a very busy person and a hard person to reach. At the Growing Power tour on Monday I told him that I had a very simple method of saving Growing Power lots of money on their major cost, the heating bill. Also I wanted to talk to him about the DMZ Gardens. He told me to call some time, and if he was in just to come up there. I called a few times yesterday but he seemed too busy, but today was told that he was there and not in a meeting or on a phone call. John and I headed up to Growing Power. On the tour Monday I took the picture of the inside roof of a greenhouse that GP heats. I saw myself how simply we could use the AIR system to save on the heating bill.

When John and I got there Will was eating lunch. After lunch he came out to tell us that he would be with us shortly. Than he got on a phone call that lasted well past the time we had to leave. However, the time was not wasted. John and I got to check out the ways we could employ the AIR system to save big time on the GP energy bills. The outside, heated green house has a metal frame, which poses a slight problem for our inside inserts, but is doable. The four or five major heated greenhouses have wood frames that make the AIR inserts much simpler to put up in the winter and take down in the summer. Also we got to talk to some of the employees and refined our way of explaining this simple but effective method. To one of the women sorting out seed bags John used the example of fur to explain the heating power of air. With fur, as with glass, plastic or insulation, it is not so much the material that that keeps animals or people warm but the air in the fur that is the true insulating factor. After a couple examples like this the worker finally got it and said, “That is why our goats can keep warm in this very cold weather.” In talking about it to employees we found other ways to simply explain why air is the great, inexpensive insulating factor. For example thin ‘down’ jackets that have a layer of fur between two thin layers can be warmer than a thick solid coat.

Air works with waste and with all types of materials as a valuable resource to grow and insulate. In compost carbon, like coir, woodchips, leaves or cardboard, breaks down with the nitrogen like coffee grounds and creates air in the soil, which is essential for worms and plants to grow. Layers of air between glass and plastic or air in insulation or fur works to keep heat in and cold out. For example, at present it is 11 degrees outside in the cold; 64 degrees in my office next to the sunroom; and 58 degrees in the sunroom at my small radiator heater. Today was a sunny day and we were able, with our affordable five-pane window inserts, to keep the heat from the sun and the heat that leaks through the double pane doors to the sunroom in the sunroom via air pockets in the window inserts. So only now, around midnight, is the small electric heater turning on. (It is set to go on at 58 degrees.) Our greatest energy resource is in the air around us. Let us not waste air.

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