Archives for October 2009
It’s Easy Being Green
TimberTower: a High-Tech Wind Turbine, Made from Trees
Our article on industrial windmills appeared on The Oil Drum and, as could be expected, this generated many interesting comments. One in particular was made by a reader named “anyone“, who sent in a link about a high-tech wind turbine placed on a tower made entirely of wood.
So while we suggested to redesign traditional windmills by using modern, high-tech materials, the German company TimberTower proposes the opposite: redesign modern wind turbines by using traditional, low-tech materials.
Large wind turbines are usually made of steel, and while they definitely deliver more energy over their lifetime than it takes to produce them (contrary to small wind turbines), using no energy at all would of course be even better – and cheaper.
Wood is easier to transport (the TimberTower is manufactured out of glued laminated timber panels which are assembled on-site), doesn’t need to be mined, has no corrosion issues (think of offshore turbines), and it captures carbon. And while trees bend in strong winds, they usually don’t break.
Using a timber tower for a 100 metre high wind turbine can save approximately 300 tons of sheet steel, writes the company at their website. One “TimberTower” also ties up approximately 400 tons of CO2. They say they can build them as high as 200 metres. Serial production should start in 2010. More: TimberTower. Related: wooden pipelines, wooden bridges.
City Life – Lessons in Vanity
“Already in the western world and Japan millions of city-dwellers and suburbanites have grown accustomed to an almost hermetically sealed and sanitized pattern of living in which very little of their experience ever impinges on non-human phenomena. For those of us born to such an existence, it is all but impossible to believe that anything is any longer beyond human adjustment, domination, and improvement. That is the lesson in vanity the city teaches us every moment of every day. For on all sides we see, hear, and smell the evidence of human supremacy over nature – right down to the noise and odor and irritants that foul the air around us. Like Narcissus, modern men and women take pride in seeing themselves – their products, their planning – reflected in all that they behold. The more artifice, the more progress; the more progress, the more security. We press our technological imperialism forward against the natural environment until we reach the point at which it comes as startling and not entirely credible news to our urban masses to be told by anxious ecologists that their survival has anything whatever to do with air, water, soil, plant, or animal.”
Quoted from (again): “Where the Wasteland Ends
Hand Powered Table Saw
The Jointmaker pro R2 is a great example of a modern tool being high-tech and low-tech at the same time. And it’s already sold out. Video here. Update: there is a new version available, the Jointmaker Pro v2. Related: Human powered drilling tools and machines / Hand powered tree sawing machine.
