Showering With the Sun
Will and I spent a pleasant hour in the hammock a few weeks ago talking about project ideas for the house. He’s been especially focused on energy savings and was very excited about the idea of building a solar shower. I have many fond memories of outdoor solar showers but the ones I have used in the past involve solar water panels, plumbing, welding, privacy screens, and several other features that would challenge my handywoman skills. Ever practical, Will suggested that rather than plunging into a new construction project, we should pick up a simple camp shower and try it out so we could go ahead and turn off our hot water heater.
We picked up a solar shower kit at a local box store for $25 that consists of a curtain with a zipper, a solar water bag with a shower nozzle, and a support structure to hang it all from. We hung the support structure and curtain from one of the big sugar maples in our backyard, filled up the water bag, and I took the first shower. It was not a great experience. The shower bag came with a long tube leading to a shower nozzle, which in theory gives you the flexibility to spray in many different directions. In actuality, you have to keep the tube stretched out and sloping down to get decent water flow, which means crouching down and risking mooning the neighbors. We had also neglected to stake down the curtain, so it was blowing around a bit and decreasing my feeling of privacy even further.
After that first shower, I cut the tube into a short piece so now I can stand under it comfortably (Will has to duck a little). We put a piece of indoor/outdoor carpet under the shower so it doesn’t get too muddy. It’s still a bit of a pain to fill, heat, and hang the bag but it’s doable. Actually, the biggest challenge is keeping the water comfortable instead of scalding hot. The solar shower heats up too well some days and we have to add cold water.
We’re going to try it out a little longer but I think it’s been successful enough that we will try building Solar Shower 2.0, perhaps using the directions from the Carbon-Free Home book. They suggest building a platform of some sort and putting a small (10-gallon) black barrel up on it with a shower spigot sticking out. Ideally, it should be designed so you can fill it from the ground using a garden hose (or rain barrel) so you don’t have to haul it up and down. Sounds good to me! Maybe we can build some actual walls around it too….
This whole 
A friend gave me her solar cooker last year because she lives in a shady neighborhood and it just wasn’t working for her. I was very excited to receive it but had trouble getting motivated to use it until I picked up a book at the library this spring. 
Anyway, now I’m starting to get into the solar cooking routine although I’m still learning the ins and outs; we had some rather crunchy baked beans last week that hadn’t cooked quite long enough - although the flavor was excellent! I’m also on the hunt for the perfect solar cooker dish. Ideally, it would be an oven-safe dark colored pyrex or ceramic dish with a tight-fitting lid. Right now I’m using a white casserole dish with a clear lid and covering it with a blue cloth to try and soak up some extra heat. It works pretty well but the lid isn’t quite tight enough to keep in steam and so the top panel often gets covered in condensation, which reduces the amount of sunlight reaching the food. It’s a common challenge for solar cooking and one solution is to vent the lid slightly but that also reduces cooking efficiency. I have seen a lot of variations of solar cookers and it would be pretty easy to build your own. This one is a little bulky but it’s well constructed with a moveable set of reflectors, a plexiglass lid on a rubber lip, and a shelf inside to keep the pot off the bottom of the oven.
We’ve been working with a 
snowed another eight inches on Monday so we took her out yesterday at our house. The snow was too deep for good sledding so she gave up when I sat in the sled. However, she had no problem towing a sled with a 50-lb bag of sand. Well, no problem except for getting the sled tangled up as she followed her nose in pursuit of squirrels, rabbits, and the groundhog that lives under our back shed. (Need to motivate your dog to pull a heavy sled? Simply arrange for a groundhog to be located at your final destination.) We all had a good time playing in the snow until the shivering got intense.
However, Will’s ultimate dream is to hook her up to a 
So we signed up for the SIREN Energy Challenge and have been trying to figure out where we use electricity and how we can cut back, which means Will is running around using his Killowatt on everything. At the same time, I am planning my garden for spring and also thinking about how we will take advantage of the summer bounty. My dad helped me set up a seed starting system with three shelves of fluorescent lights and I’m trying to talk Will into getting a chest freezer so we can store the summer’s vegetables but all he can think about is the increased electrical consumption.
I’m on the board for a local group called the Center for Sustainable Living and a few folks from the center are organizing the first ever 
