LOW-TECH MAGAZINE

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Low-tech Magazine in Spanish, French, and Other Languages

During the last months we have been working on transforming Low-tech Magazine into a multilingual publication. Many articles had been translated over the years, but they were not easy to find. Now, each language has its own solar powered main page.

The Spanish and French versions are the most complete for now, with respectively 41 and 34 articles online. Dutch, German, Polish and Italian main pages are also available. Some languages also have articles that are not translated into English.

Archive-spanish

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Posted on January 27, 2020 at 02:24 PM in Access to information, Cover story | Permalink | Comments (3)

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 fire alone provided what we now get through a combination of modern appliances such as the oven and cooking hob, heating system, lights, refrigerator, freezer, hot water boiler, tumble dryer, and television. Unlike these newer technologies, the fire had no need for a central infrastructure to make it work, and it could be built locally from readily available materials.

Toasterbanner

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Posted on December 29, 2019 at 12:28 PM in Cooking, Cover story, DIY, Embodied energy, Energy consumption, Energy production, Fossil fuels, Global warming, Heating, History, Infrastructures, Lighting, Low-tech solutions, Thermal energy, Wood | Permalink | Comments (19)

The Printed Website: Second Volume Out Now

Second-volume

The printed version of Low-tech Magazine can be viewed with no access to a computer or a power supply -- or when the solar powered website is down due to bad weather.

The second volume of the printed website is out now and contains 32 articles originally published between 2007 and 2012. The book, which has 618 pages and 268 images, is for sale in the Lulu Bookstore.

Whereas the first volume contained all but a handful of web articles published between 2012 and 2018, this second volume features a third of the web articles published in the earlier years, carefully selected for their continued relevance and interest today. Overall, we wanted to make an attractive book with timeless articles rather than an exact copy of the website.

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Posted on December 05, 2019 at 04:36 PM in Access to information, Books & References, Cover story, DIY, History | Permalink | Comments (12)

Mist Showers: Sustainable Decadence?

The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels. The mist shower, a satisfying but forgotten technology which uses very little water and energy, could be a solution. Designer Jonas Görgen developed a do-it-yourself kit to convert almost any shower into a mist shower and sent me one to try out.

Mist-shower-hack-kit

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Posted on October 17, 2019 at 01:34 PM in Cover story, DIY, Energy consumption, Infrastructures, Low-tech solutions, Water | Permalink | Comments (42)

How to Make Wind Power Sustainable Again

Forest-of-wind-turbines-low-resFor more than two thousand years, windmills were built from recyclable or reusable materials: wood, stone, brick, canvas, metal. When – electricity producing – wind turbines appeared in the 1880s, the materials didn’t change.

It’s only since the arrival of plastic composite blades in the 1980s that wind power has become the source of a toxic waste product that ends up in landfills.

New wood production technology and design makes it possible to build larger wind turbines almost entirely out of wood again – not just the blades, but also the rest of the structure. This would solve the waste issue and make the manufacturing of wind turbines largely independent of fossil fuels and mined materials. A forest planted in between the wind turbines could provide the wood for the next generation of wind turbines.

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Posted on June 02, 2019 at 12:34 PM in Cover story, Energy production, History, Low-tech solutions, Recycling, Towers, Waste, Wind energy, Wind turbines, Wood | Permalink | Comments (27)

Reinventing the Small Wind Turbine

Detail-eaz-wind

Many commercially available small wind turbines with plastic blades and steel towers are infamous for their low reliability, high embodied energy, and limited power output.

Building them out of wood can address these issues. Because of their aesthetic appeal, and thanks to the ability to produce them locally, small wooden wind turbines can also improve the public acceptance of wind power.

Furthermore, innovation in tower design facilitates the installation of small wind turbines, reducing the need for concrete foundations and heavy machinery. 

Image: A wind turbine with wooden blades. Source: EAZ Wind.

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Posted on June 01, 2019 at 08:57 PM in Cover story, DIY, Embodied energy, Energy production, Kinetic energy, Low-tech solutions, Small windmills, Wind energy, Wind turbines | Permalink | Comments (12)

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