Michael Skowronski (Comforce/RhoTech) <a-mskowr@microsoft.com> asked:

>Our community will be in the mountains of Arizona at about 6500
>to 7000 ft elevation............We are only in the planning stages.
>......number of people......range of 20 to 50........animals......
>chickens, cows, and maybe pigs. We will be farming but we
>would like to make it as automated as possible using ecotechnology.
>I have been looking at hydroponics and aquaponics and like the benefits.
>.....The community will be fully self sustaining and utilize only renewable
>energy.  I have done a lot of research into methane digesters, as well as
>solar and wind energy.

I have not lived in a self-sustaining community before so my comments are purely academic and may not be too practical. Is this community a "summer" camp in the sense that the community will spend several months  each year  or will this be a permanent settlement ?

If it is going to be a summer camp for a self-sustaining community, I would just invest on using dry systems (labour intensive) for animal waste handling and even for human excretement. Grey water can always go to small constructed ponds/wetlands  since your community is rather small. This will also require very little material investments. I would invest on solar and wind harvesting devices and a storage battery systems which will allow you to run your radio communication and other electrical applicances (e.g. TV).

It may be tricky with methane digesters especially if the temperature sinks to below 15 C during certain parts of the year. You will have good compost from the animal raising activities and if composting is housed in the greenhouse, this will provide additional heat for the plants during the cooling seasons.

If you are going for commercial operations where the livelihoods of the community is dependent on them, then we are dealing with another scale of operation in farming, transport of products, etc.etc.

A question to OAI:
what do you think the minimal influent volume to a LM should be so that it makes some sense in investing in the construction of a LM ?

regards
jacky foo