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Biomass

Fascine Mattresses: Basketry Gone Wild

Around the 17th century, the Dutch started reinforcing their dykes and harbours with sturdy mats the size of football pitches – hand-woven from thousands of twigs grown on nearby coppice plantations. These “fascine mattresses” were weighted with rocks and sunk into canals, estuaries, and rivers.

How to Make Biomass Energy Sustainable Again

From the Neolithic to the beginning of the twentieth century, coppiced woodlands, pollarded trees, and hedgerows provided people with a sustainable supply of energy, materials, and food.

Thermoelectric Stoves: Ditch the Solar Panels?

Wood stoves equipped with thermoelectric generators can produce electricity that is more sustainable, more reliable, and less costly than power from solar PV panels.

Too Much Combustion, Too Little Fire

The fire – which we have used in our homes for over 400,000 years – remains the most versatile and sustainable household technology that humanity has ever known.

The Printed Website: Second Volume Out Now

The second volume features a third of the web articles published in the earlier years, carefully selected for their continued relevance and interest today.

Heat Storage Hypocausts: Air Heating in the Middle Ages

The heat storage hypocaust could keep a room warm for days with just one firing of the furnace.

Restoring the Old Way of Warming: Heating People, not Places

Most modern heating systems are primarily based on the heating of air. This seems an obvious choice, but there are far worthier alternatives.

If We Insulate Our Houses, Why Not Our Cooking Pots?

A fireless cooker doubles the efficiency of any type of cooking device because it shortens the time on the fire and limits heat transfer losses

Well-Tended Fires Outperform Modern Cooking Stoves

Despite technological advancements since the Industrial Revolution, cooking remains a spectacularly inefficient process.

The Art of Producing Sustainable Consumer Goods: Basketry

Virtually all human cultures have made baskets, and have apparently done so since we co-existed with ground sloths and sabre-toothed cats.

Medieval Smokestacks: Fossil Fuels in Pre-industrial Times

Almost all of the leading economies in Western Europe during the last millenium relied on a large-scale use of fossil fuels such as peat and coal.

How to tie the world together: online knotting reference books

Not so long ago, each profession or trade had adopted the knots best suited to its requirements, and knotting was part of their daily lives.