Subject: Eco-Village at Sirius Home Page

From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 21:12:40 -0400

http://www.siriuscommunity.org/ecovillage1.html

-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
mailto:[email-masked]  
http://sunSITE.unc.edu/InterGarden
Welcome to the

Eco-Village

at Sirius Community

This Page under construction

Conference on Sustainability: >From Vision to Practice - Aug 15th-18th

Summer and Fall '97 - Eco-Village Internships

Update from the Eco-Village Office

The Eco-Village Office is up and running having received a healthy seed of funds from our recent combined associate member and ecovillage fundraiser mailing. A total of $4980.00 has been received to date from 26 contributors with the ecovillage office share being $3675.00. Thank you all so very much for your generous contributions!

Our first wave of interns are nearing completion of their projects and have been a wonderful asset to our work. Brian, from Hampshire College, ran some figures the other day that show that: The amount of forest needed to offset the pollution caused by the electricity consumed at Sirius amounts to about 9 acres. We are in the process of determining the "ecological footprint" of all our activities. This is a pilot project for a ecological auditing tool for intentional communities and ecovillages (and eventually any human settlement).

Carin has been producing working drawings of the 840 sg. ft. solar greenhouse that is to be built on the Community Center. The foundation is there and just awaits the funds and time to complete it. Carin is going through a complete analysis of the design including solar gain, heat storage, and heating load. She is also looking at glazing options and south wall design. There is talk about including an aquaculture tank in the greenhouse and growing tilapia fish for harvest. Carin is also about to unleash a survey on the Sirius membership tracking their transportation use patterns and modes. This will also be turned into a "footprint".

We are recruiting more interns - hoping to have as many as 6 by the summer time. One of the interns will be helping to research the issues involved with installing our wind generators. Others will continue the ecological footprinting project, solar greenhouse design, and research into hydrogen energy systems. Arrangements have been made to trade 16 person-days of carpentry for a 1800 Watt wind generator and Tower worth over $3000. This will compliment our existing machine and will work nicely into the community-wide renewable electricity backup system that we have planned.

Feel free to stop by the office sometime. Call 413-259-1254 or email me at [email-masked] and I'll be glad to meet with you and show you what we are up to!

-Jeff Clearwater, Eco-Village Office Focalizer

[email-masked]

413-259-1254

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