Search Results for: heat the body

Low-tech Magazine: The Printed Website

In 2019, Low-tech Magazine finally made the jump from web to paper. The printed archives of Low-tech Magazine now amount to four volumes with a total of 2,398 pages and 709 images.

In 2023, we also launched a thematic book series. Since 2024, all books can be ordered in epub format, too.

Why Paper?

The books are based on the same electronic documents that make up the solar powered website of Low-tech Magazine — all articles were converted to Markdown, a lightweight markup language based on plain text files. However, we have partly rewritten and improved some articles, updated all references, and added more and better images.

The books can be read when the solar powered website is down due to bad weather. In fact, the content can be viewed with no access to a computer, a power supply, or an industrial civilization. A printed website also serves to preserve the content of Low-tech Magazine in the longer run. Websites don’t live forever, and the internet should not be taken for granted.

Low-tech Magazine Volume I (2007-2012)

Low-tech Magazine Volume I contains 32 articles published between 2007 and 2012. The book has 618 pages and 268 images. [Epub edition]

  • How to downsize a transport network: the Chinese wheelbarrow
  • Medieval smokestacks: fossil fuels in pre-industrial times
  • The bright future of solar powered factories
  • Pedal powered farms and factories: the forgotten future of the stationary bicycle
  • Bike powered electricity generators are not sustainable
  • The short history of early pedal powered machines
  • Insulation: first the body, then the home
  • Aerial ropeways: automatic cargo transport for a bargain
  • Hand powered drilling tools and machines
  • Boat mills: water powered, floating factories
  • Recycling animal and human dung is the key to sustainable farming
  • The status quo of electric cars: better batteries, same range
  • The sky is the limit: human powered cranes and lifting devices
  • Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank
  • Gas bag vehicles
  • Trolley canal boats
  • How (not) to resolve the energy crisis
  • Hoffmann kilns
  • Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills
  • Water powered cable trains
  • Get wired (again): Trolleybuses and Trolleytrucks
  • Electric road trains in Germany, 1901 – 1950
  • The monster footprint of digital technology
  • Cargo ships, then and now
  • Moonlight towers: light pollution in the 1800s
  • Tiles as a substitute for steel: the art of the timbrel vault
  • A steam powered submarine: the Ictíneo
  • The Citroen 2CV: cleantech from the 1940s
  • Life without airplanes: from London to New York in 3 days and 12 hours
  • Satellite navigation in the 18th century
  • Email in the 18th century: the optical telegraph

Low-tech Magazine Volume II (2012-2018)

Low-tech Magazine Volume II contains 36 articles published between 2012 and 2018. It has 704 pages and 257 images. [Epub edition]

  • How to Build a Low-tech Website?
  • We Can’t Do It Ourselves
  • Ditch the Batteries: Off-grid Compressed Air Energy Storage
  • History and Future of the Compressed Air Economy
  • How Much Energy Do We Need?
  • Bedazzled by Energy Efficiency
  • How to Run the Economy on the Weather
  • How (Not) to Run a Modern Society on Solar and Wind Power Alone
  • Could We Run Modern Society on Human Power Alone?
  • Heat Storage Hypocausts: Air Heating in the Middle Ages
  • Why the Office Needs a Typewriter Revolution
  • The Curse of the Modern Office
  • How to Get Your Apartment Off the Grid
  • Slow Electricity: The Return of DC Power?
  • Power Water Networks
  • Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s
  • Reinventing the Greenhouse
  • How to Build a Low-tech Internet
  • The 4G Mobile Internet that’s Already There
  • Why We Need a Speed Limit for the Internet
  • How Sustainable is Stored Sunlight?
  • How Sustainable is PV Solar Power?
  • Restoring the Old Way of Warming: Heating People, not Places
  • The Revenge of the Circulating Fan
  • If We Insulate Our Houses, Why Not Our Cooking Pots?
  • Well-Tended Fires Outperform Modern Cooking Stoves
  • Modular Cargo Cycles
  • High Speed Trains are Killing the European Railway Network
  • Power from the Tap: Water Motors
  • Back to Basics: Direct Hydropower
  • The Mechanical Transmission of Power (3): Endless Rope Drives
  • The Mechanical Transmission of Power (2): Jerker Line Systems
  • The Mechanical Transmission of Power (1): Stangenkunst
  • How to make everything ourselves: open modular hardware
  • Electric velomobiles: as fast and comfortable as automobiles, but 80 times more efficient
  • Cargo cyclists replace truck drivers on European city streets
  • The solar envelope: how to heat and cool cities without fossil fuel

Low-tech Magazine Volume III (2018-2021)

Low-tech Magazine Volume III contains 18 articles published between 2018 and 2021. It has 368 pages and 183 images. [Epub edition]

  • How Circular is the Circular Economy?
  • Keeping Some of the Lights On: Redefining Energy Security
  • Heat your House with a Mechanical Windmill
  • Reinventing the Small Wind Turbine
  • How to Make Wind Power Sustainable Again
  • Mist Showers: Sustainable Decadence?
  • Too Much Combustion, Too Little Fire
  • How Sustainable is a Solar Powered Website?
  • Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
  • Thermoelectric Stoves: Ditch the Solar Panels?
  • How to Make Biomass Energy Sustainable Again
  • How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops
  • Vertical Farming Does not Save Space
  • How Sustainable is High-tech Health Care?
  • Urban Fish Ponds: Low-tech Sewage Treatment for Towns and Cities
  • How to Design a Sailing Ship for the 21st Century?
  • How to Build a Low-tech Solar Panel?
  • Fascine Mattresses: Basketry Gone Wild

Low-tech Magazine: The Comments (2008-2021)

Low-tech Magazine: The Comments collects almost 3,000 comments on roughly 100 articles that we published between 2008 and 2021. The articles are in the three other books we have made so far. The book has 688 pages and no images.

Over the years, readers have often stated that the comments on the website are (at least) as interesting as the articles themselves. We agree. Low-tech Magazine would not have been even half what it is now without the comments. You can even take this literally, because the comments take more space than the articles. This is one of the thickest books we have published so far, despite the extra small font we use.

Thematic Books

In 2023, we also launched a thematic book series, with three volumes now available. These books open up Low-tech Magazine’s archive by theme rather than chronologically. Find them in the Lulu bookstore. They are also available as ebooks.

Print on Demand

Printing is done on demand, meaning that there are no unsold copies (and no large upfront investment costs). Our book distributor Lulu.com works with printers all over the world, so that most copies are produced locally and travel relatively short distances.

It takes a bit longer to receive the book, and because each copy goes straight from printer to client, there is no way for us to control the print quality. Quality is excellent is most cases, but if you receive a copy that is badly printed, you should notify Lulu to get a replacement. It’s a very smooth process and there’s no need to return the damaged copy.

Fermentation and Daily Life

July 25, 2018 by kris de decker Filed Under: Food storage, Random, Refrigeration

There is a moment in the life of fruits and vegetables that has always puzzled and fascinated me. Put out a dish of strawberries, and in days some darker spots will appear. Maybe a thin tendril of mold sprouts out from the strawberry’s body. At this point, you can still eat it, simply by cutting off the moldy bit. But all of a sudden, the strawberry has clearly died. It’s inedible, sour. It has passed over in to the world of bacteria, mold, and minerals—it is no longer a self-regulating organism. It has stopped being an individual, but has become multitudes.

How does this happen? When is an organism living, and when is it dead? Where does death come from, and why does this change of state happen so quickly? Amazingly, we’ve developed some techniques to play with this boundary between life and death, stretch it, and blur it. I’m not talking about cryogenic freezing, blood transfusion, lab-grown meat, or any other modern technology. I’m talking about fermentation, the process of controlled decay of living organisms.

From coffee to ketchup, bread to sausage, wine to cheese, fermented foods are all around us. These types of fermentation tend to happen in far-off factories. Coffee berries are fermented before they’re roasted. To make ketchup, tomatoes are puréed en masse, left to rot, then heated to kill the bacteria. We usually don’t get the chance to see for ourselves the transformation of life—into other forms of life.

But you can. In this essay, I talk about fermentation: what makes it so magical, why people are so afraid of it. I talk about some strategies people use to make fermentation part of their daily life, and why modern life makes it so hard to do so. And finally, I speak to the ethics of fermentation—what we can learn from it and how it can help us think differently. [Read more…]

The Kume Shade: DIY Insulating Curtain

March 18, 2015 by kris de decker Filed Under: DIY, Insulation, Random, Windows

kume insulating curtains

The Kume curtain is a simple and inexpensive home-made insulating curtain that can help save money, keep our homes cozier and be kinder to the environment.

The Kume is a roll-up curtain that is composed of four distinct layers.

  • A front panel which acts as the first layer and seals the perimeter of the window opening when the curtain is closed
  • A moisture barrier which prevents indoor humidity from reaching the window and condensing on the cold glass and window frame
  • Wooden battens which maintain the fabric stretched out and thereby ensure that the curtain fits tightly against both sides of the window opening (the battens also create air pockets which further reduce heat losses through the curtain)
  • A back panel which acts as the final layer of insulation and helps seal the perimeter of the window opening when the curtain is closed.

kume insulating curtain insideWhy is a Kume curtain so effective at reducing heat loss?

  • Still air is one of the best insulators found in nature, and the Kume curtain contains a lot of it. First, between the fibers of the thick polar fleece that is used to make the curtain, and second inside the thin spaces that are created between the front and back panels by the battens.
  • When closed, the Kume curtain fits tightly against the top, bottom and sides of the window opening. By doing so it traps a layer of insulating air between the glass and the curtain, and prevents the cold air that forms against the glass from seeping into the room.
  • A Kume curtain basically works just like a good down jacket on a cold winter day. The air that is trapped in the thick layer of down creates an effective insulating layer, and the tight fit of the jacket around your waist, neck and wrists keeps your body heat in, rather than letting it leak out into the cold environment.

See and read more (including construction plans) at Kume Insulating Curtains. Via BuilditSolar. Thanks to Frank Van Gieson.

Saving Food From The Fridge

January 16, 2012 by kris de decker Filed Under: Art, Food, Food storage, Low-tech solutions, Refrigeration

food storage

Korean artist Jihyun Ryou, a graduate of the Dutch Design Academy Eindhoven, translates traditional knowledge on food storage into contemporary design. She found the inspiration for her wall-mounted storage units while listening to the advice of her grandmother, a former apple grower, and other elderly. Her mission: storing food outside the refrigerator.

[Read more…]

The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU)

December 27, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Architecture, Buildings, Cities, Construction, Craftsmanship, Random

sudu

The ‘Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit’ (SUDU) in Ethiopia demonstrates that it is possible to construct multi-story buildings using only soil and stone. By combining timbrel vaults and compressed earth blocks, there is no need for steel, reinforced concrete or even wood to support floors, ceilings and roofs. The SUDU could be a game-changer for African cities, where population grows fast and building materials are scarce.

[Read more…]

When Low-Tech Goes IKEA

November 13, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Access to information, DIY, Human power, Language, Pedal power, Pedal powered machines, Random

when lowtech goes ikea

What happens when two industrial design students from Sweden end up in Kenya creating a pedal powered machine for small-scale farmers who are often illiterate and speak more than 60 languages? You get a do-it-yourself design that seems to have come out of the IKEA factories – pictoral manuals included.

“Made in Kenya”, the bachelor project of Niklas Kull and Gabriella Rubin, is a textbook example of low-tech made accessible to everybody, regardless of their native tongue and language skills.

[Read more…]