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Groundwork Hudson Valley Eco Home Digester

Groundwork Hudson Biodigester

June 5, 2015

Over the last two years, Solar CITIES and Mercy College have built an enduring relationship with the Science Barge. This relationship led to Solar CITIES donating our signature liquid composting biogas system, field tested at Mercy, to our neighbors at the Groundwork Hudson Ecohome garden. #EnvisajThat!

This was the third tank that we installed that day. We made the first three using 3-inch closed-cell soy based polyurethane foam donated by Lee Stoltzfus from Foam-Tech Inc.  Lee volunteered his time, labor, and materials to work with us to investigate the advantages of foam insulating IBC tank biodigesters for improved cold climate performance.

Want to visit? The community garden is located at 56 Buena Vista in Yonkers at these coordinates. It is walking distance from the Yonker’s Train Station and Science Barge.

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Aquaponics and Practical Education Center Begins Biogas Training

John Maer and T.H. Culhane sign their satisfaction upon completing the first Solar CITIES IBC at the Practical Education Center

May 29, 2015

On Friday, John Maer, preacher, teacher, and visionary, was giving us a tour of his amazing Practical Education Center which is based around aquaponics, when we spied an IBC tank lying around. We had been talking about how we might integrate small-scale biogas systems education into their curriculum all afternoon. Since I still had some uniseals and plumbing parts in the car from our previous Florida builds I said, “I don’t suppose we could just do a quick build right here and now and get the ball rolling.”

Of course John, being the type of missionary for sustainability, justice, and self-sufficiency that he is, was enthusiastic with that tinkerer’s excitement.

Within the hour we had constructed another IBC system, ending our Florida biogas building mission with a satisfying completeness. We built five digesters in five days!

Now John’s Practical Education Center can continue to spread the word about biogas digesters to the surrounding community. They host high school and college students and often work with “at-risk” youth on hands-on solutions to the questions of how to make a living and live a healthy life.  What a great way to end our Green Faith Biogas tour!

Backyard Biogas at Rodrigo’s House

May 28, 2015

The value of bringing the Solar CITIES Biogas circus on the road comes from the number of people we meet who are ready to embrace home scale biogas once they learn how simple it is to do.  Rodrigo Lima met us at the Ft. Lauderdale Green Planet festival in one of our workshop sessions and spent time with us at our booth and immediately joined our Facebook group. When we posted that we were traveling to Florida to attempt some hands-on builds of domestic dragons, he was the first person to write and say “yes, let’s do this at my place!”.  As a tool maker and inventor in industrial design with a passion for gardening, he already had a hydroponics system set up near his fruit trees and just needed a biodigester to provide the liquid fertilizer and the gas for accent lighting gas lamps and barbecues.  He invited us over for dinner after he got home from work and had an IBC tank delivered which we built in the garden before sitting down to a delicious meal.

The Best Garden Centerpiece: An IBC Biodigester

T.H.and Alex celebrate the siting of Alex’s new IBC Biodigester as the liquid composting centerpiece to his garden education center.

May 26, 2015

We met the incredible organic farmer Alex McCrae at the Green Planet Festival in the fall and he immediately expressed his enthusiasm for the small-scale biogas revolution.  As it turned out, he already had an IBC tank and plumbing parts on site at his organic farming education center in Davie Florida, so it was easy for us to drop by with the uniseals and put together a Solar CITIES DIY system in less than an hour. He then decided the best location for a biodigester was in the middle of the garden, like a kind of liquid composting monolith, distributing its nutrient-rich gifts to all plants around it.

Florida’s First Backyard Biodigester

May 25, 2015

Florida got its first backyard biodigester on when T.H. Culhane and Tim Laugher drove to Florida from New York to start the biogas wave. They built five IBC digesters in five locations in five days. This was the first, a blessing for the launch of our Green Faith mission, dedicating our biogas initiative to the glory of God.