Green Building - Sustainable Development

Green is something that is not damaging to the environment, and also prevents environmental damage. Green is concerned with the principles and moral standards of being sustainable and less wasteful and less polluting. Green is the color of life and a symbol for renewal, revitalization, rebirth, nature, energy, and is associated with meanings of growth, vitality, wealth, harmony, freshness, safety, fertility, and environment. Green is everywhere and is the most common color in the natural world, and is second only to blue as the most common favorite color. Green can also mean a piece of open land for recreational use in an urban area. Green Color.

Shelters and Homes that Mimic Life - Housing (types) - Smart Homes - Passive - Geothermal - Green



Homes should be producers of energy and resources, and not just consumers of energy and resources. Homes should be healthy, able to produce food, easy to maintain, have its own water, cause no pollution, and be self-sustaining.

We have the technology and the Knowledge, so let's use it..Less is More. Small is Big. Form Follows Function - Architects.

Tesla will help Australia to turn 50,000 homes into power generators. Landmark plan to turn houses into a giant, interconnected power plant. Tesla is about to start selling solar panels at Home Depot.

Homes should not be energy slaves, or be rent traps, or be a source of pollution or a contributor of pollution. No one should force other people to pay for your dependencies, like drug addicts do. People need to be aware of the relationships that they are getting into, especially the relationships that we have with material things such as our homes, whose maintenance shouldn't have to cost more then the product itself. You are essentially buying debt and poison, and you are forcing future generations to have to pay for your debt and suffer from your poison too, which is unfair, illogical and unjustifiable. Buildings already account for up to 40% of our global energy demands, which is unsustainable and criminal.

Zero Energy Building is a building with zero net energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site. Zero Energy Project - Zero Net Energy Homes.

Green Building - Self Managing - Efficiency - Indoor Air Quality - Human Centered Design

If the things you receive, or if the things that are provided for you, like a home, if that gift disconnects you from reality and the true nature of things, then that is not a gift, that is a trap. When your home needs services that pollute or damage the environment, then you are slowly killing yourself in a trap that someone else has set for you. But if you had a choice to build a better home, I'm sure you would pick a home that was more respectable to your life as well as respectable to other lives and to future generations, while saving you time, people, money and resources, what a sweet deal that is.

Builders of Highly Efficient Healthy Homes - Green Building

House Building Guidelines - Elements of Design - Location - Orientation - Windows

Tools - Machinery - Metal Working - Distilling

Sustainable Development - Smart Homes - Passive - Geothermal

Earth-Ship - Domes - Cement (concrete) - She's a Brick House

Bio-Mimicry - Bio-Plastics (composites)

When you hear someone say that environmentally friendly energy efficient homes cost to much, what they are really saying is that they would rather, selfishly and narrow mindedly, pass on the Cost and the Debt and the Dependency on to someone else rather then do what is right. Forcing future generations to suffer from your ignorance is unfair and illogical and unjustifiable. These bad decisions takes away future generations choice of freedom and sustainability. This criminal and ignorant activity needs to stop. "Do it Right the First Time" needs to be the slogan of all developers. 

According to the Idaho Forest Products Commission, a typical 2000 square foot house requires 26,700 board feet. An "average" tree with a 20 inch diameter and 42 linear feet of usable wood generates approximately 260 board feet. Doing the math indicates about 102 trees for that house. Other organizations in the lumber industry state different numbers, some as low as 30 trees for a 1500 square foot house while some state 60 trees for a 2000 square foot house. So if everyone who uses trees to build houses plants enough trees to build 2 houses we can slow down the deforestation.

Hemp is the more Superior Plant when compared to trees.

A closed system that can thrive independently with the ability to open the system in order to increase the systems potential.

Energy Audit - Energy Assessments - Energy Supply Types

Green Living Tips - Green Products - Environment - Big 5 - What every Human Needs.

Warning: Green Certified is a vague phrase, because everything is relative, which means that many questions need to be answered. Is the process greener than the other alternative that this particular process was compared to? Who measured these comparisons? Are the comparisons verified by a third party? Is this certification only applicable to only a few unique scenarios? All labels need an explanation because there is just too much false advertising.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is a green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council or USGBC, it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of green buildings, homes, and neighborhoods which aims to help building owners and operators be environmentally responsible and use resources efficiently. The goal of all certification rating systems is to provide tools and methods to assess the environmental and resource-efficient performance of a building. The main objectives of such tools are: Optimize building performance and minimize environmental impacts. Provide a way to quantify a building’s environmental effects. Set standards and benchmarks to assess buildings objectively. Furthermore, the end result of such an assessment is to provide a certificate verifying the achievement of the desired performance and quality of the building. Some benefits of certifying a building or a property include: The negative impacts of a building on the environment can be better understood and this knowledge can be utilized to reduce such impacts. Holistic sustainability considerations will be made for the fulfillment of technical, economic, social and functional requirements of the building. Promotes sustainable design and construction principles throughout the building lifecycle. Increases the monetary value of a building or a property in the real estate market.

Independent - Self Manage - Sovereignty - Controlling your Future

Sovereignty is a government that is free from external control. Sovereignty the full right and power of a governing body to govern itself without any interference from outside sources or bodies. Based on solidarity, not isolation.

Sovereign is possessing supreme or ultimate power and not controlled by outside forces. Making decisions based on facts rather than by force. Independent but not separated. Dependent but also sustainable. Sovereign State.

Direct Democracy - Decentralized - Independent - Managing Styles

Autonomy is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision. Immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority. Impairment of Autonomy.

Will Power (free will) - Choices - Introvert with Purpose - Destiny

Independence is freedom from control or influence of another or others. The state of being able to support oneself without help from others. Our Human Independence Day is coming. Worker Coops - Political Independence.

Independent is being free from external control and constraint. Not controlled by outside forces. Free to make choices independently. Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory. The opposite of independence is a dependent territory. Independence does not necessarily mean freedom.

Self-Reliance the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow their own instincts and ideas. Self-Dependency is freedoms highest level. Resilience - Confident.

Self-Efficacy is the extent or strength of one's belief in one's own ability to complete tasks and reach goals.

Self Govern is when people or a group are able to exercise all of the necessary functions of power without intervention from any authority which they cannot themselves alter. Open Governance.

Self Sustainability is a system that is self-sustaining or self-sufficient that can maintain itself by independent effort. The system self-sustainability is the degree at which the system can sustain itself without external support, the fraction of time in which the system is self-sustaining. Self-sustainability is considered one of the "ilities" and is closely related to sustainability and availability.

Self Perpetuating is to cause to continue or prevail. Causing itself to continue to exist.

Self-Sufficiency is the state of not requiring any aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy. On a national scale, a totally self-sufficient economy that does not trade with the outside world is called an autarky.

Responsibility - Do it Yourself - Working Together

Self-Determination states that nations, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference. Self-Actualization.

Self-Managed Economy is based on collaborative self-management, common ownership of resources, and the production of use-values through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital.

Self-Care is any necessary human regulatory function which is under individual control, deliberate and self-initiated.

All countries should be sustainable, Independent, accountable and capable of self-management so they can survive on their own without being dependent on other countries. Only trade what they can and only take in what they need because they cannot produce it themselves. This of course could only happen when a good education is available for every citizen.

Freedom is the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints.

Substance is the action or fact of maintaining or supporting oneself using minimal resources for subsisting.

Subsisting is to support oneself. Responsible.

Existentialism assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves. Free Will.

Personal independence - Freedom - People Power - Micro-Smart-Grids.

Individualism is the moral stance that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism and more corporate social forms. Avoiding misused Conformity. Church and State.

Individuality is the quality or character of a particular person or thing that distinguishes them from others of the same kind, and experiences a separate existence or freedom to a certain degree. Self-Control.

Individual Discretion is the power or the right to decide or act according to one's own judgment. Having freedom of choice and judgment, while avoiding addictive behaviors and avoiding doing things that are irrelevant or not valuable.

Discretion is acting on one's own authority and judgment. Discretion is freedom to act or judge on one's own. The power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies. The trait of judging wisely and objectively. Knowing how to avoid embarrassment or distress. Respectable - Viewer Discretion.

Prudence is discretion in practical affairs. Knowing how to avoid embarrassment or distress. Risk Assessment.

Practical Affairs are the things that you can do or change. Activities such as work and responsibilities.

Methodological Individualism is the requirement that causal accounts of social phenomena explain how they result from the motivations and actions of individual agents, at least in principle.

We are One Species. This is not to say that you don't have individuality or autonomy, because you do. It's just saying that you are not just one person, or that you're alone, because you're not. Don't separate everything that you are from everything that we are. No one is anyone without anyone else. We are one. And you or I are just parts of us. And most everyone is good parts, except for some of the bad parts, who are not part of us, they're just parts that we don't need, unless we can educate them.

Agency in sociology is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, structure is those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc.) that determine or limit an agent and his or her decisions. The relative difference in influences from structure and agency is debated – it is unclear to what extent a person's actions are constrained by social systems. One's agency is one's independent capability or ability to act on one's will. This ability is affected by the cognitive belief structure which one has formed through one's experiences, and the perceptions held by the society and the individual, of the structures and circumstances of the environment one is in and the position they are born into. Disagreement on the extent of one's agency often causes conflict between parties, e.g. parents and children. Intelligent Agent.

Agency in philosophy is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. The capacity to act does not at first imply a specific moral dimension to the ability to make the choice to act, and moral agency is therefore a distinct concept. In sociology, an agent is an individual engaging with the social structure. The level of reflexivity an agent may possess may either be classified as unconscious, involuntary behavior, or purposeful, goal directed activity (intentional action). An agent typically has some sort of immediate awareness of their physical activity and the goals that the activity is aimed at realizing. In ‘goal directed action’ an agent implements a kind of direct control or guidance over their own behavior.

Sense of Agency or sense of control, is the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one's own volitional actions in the world. It is the pre-reflective awareness or implicit sense that it is I who is executing bodily movement(s) or thinking thoughts. In normal, non-pathological experience, the SA is tightly integrated with one's "sense of ownership" (SO), which is the pre-reflective awareness or implicit sense that one is the owner of an action, movement or thought. If someone else were to move your arm (while you remained passive) you would certainly have sensed that it were your arm that moved and thus a sense of ownership (SO) for that movement. However, you would not have felt that you were the author of the movement; you would not have a sense of agency (SA).

Structure and Agency is the ability of an individual to organize future situations and resource distribution. Structure is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. The structure versus agency debate may be understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure.

Emotional Self-Regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. Emotion self-regulation belongs to the broader set of emotion-regulation processes, which includes the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings. Emotional regulation is a complex process that involves initiating, inhibiting, or modulating one's state or behavior in a given situation – for example the subjective experience (feelings), cognitive responses (thoughts), emotion-related physiological responses (for example heart rate or hormonal activity), and emotion-related behavior (bodily actions or expressions). Functionally, emotional regulation can also refer to processes such as the tendency to focus one's attention to a task and the ability to suppress inappropriate behavior under instruction. Emotional regulation is a highly significant function in human life. Every day, people are continually exposed to a wide variety of potentially arousing stimuli. Inappropriate, extreme or unchecked emotional reactions to such stimuli could impede functional fit within society; therefore, people must engage in some form of emotion regulation almost all of the time. Generally speaking, emotional dysregulation has been defined as difficulties in controlling the influence of emotional arousal on the organization and quality of thoughts, actions, and interactions. Individuals who are emotionally dysregulated exhibit patterns of responding in which there is a mismatch between their goals, responses, and/or modes of expression, and the demands of the social environment. For example, there is a significant association between emotion dysregulation and symptoms of depression, anxiety, eating pathology, and substance abuse. Higher levels of emotion regulation are likely to be related to both high levels of social competence and the expression of socially appropriate emotions.

Self-Monitoring refers to an ability to regulate behavior to accommodate social situations, and to closely monitor your audience in order to ensure appropriate or desired public appearances. It's understanding how individuals and groups will perceive your actions. Empathy (seeing yourself from someone else's point of view).

Self-Regulatory Organization is an organization that exercises some degree of regulatory authority over an industry or profession. The regulatory authority could exist in place of government regulation, or applied in addition to government regulation. The ability of an SRO to exercise regulatory authority does not necessarily derive from a grant of authority from the government.

Natural and Legal Rights are two types of rights. Legal Rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (i.e., rights that can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws). Natural Rights are those that are not dependent on the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable (i.e., rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws).

System Quality Attributes within systems engineering, quality attributes are realized non-functional requirements used to evaluate the performance of a system. These are sometimes named "ilities" after the suffix many of the words share. They are usually Architecturally Significant Requirements that require architects' attention.

Industry Self Regulation is when an organization monitors its own adherence to legal, ethical, or safety standards, rather than have an outside, independent agency such as a third party entity monitor and enforce those standards. Self-Policing

Self-Organization is an organization that is decentralized or distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive and, even, self-repair substantial damage or perturbations.

Sovereign Citizen Movement is when self-described sovereign citizens take the position that they are answerable only to their particular interpretation of the common law and are not subject to any government statutes or proceedings. They do not recognize United States currency, and maintain that they are "free of any legal constraints." They especially reject most forms of taxation as illegitimate. Participants in the movement argue this concept in opposition to "federal citizens," who, they say, have unknowingly forfeited their rights by accepting some aspect of federal law. The doctrines of the movement are similar to those of the freemen on the land movement more commonly found in Britain and Canada. Etienne de La Boetie.

Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to feed back into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled carefully when applied to feedback systems. Is Feedback another word for Learning? But you still have to define what you're learning.

Survival Skills are techniques that a person may use in order to sustain life in any type of environment. These techniques are meant to provide basic necessities for human life which include water, food, and shelter. The skills also support proper knowledge and interactions with animals and plants to promote the sustaining of life over a period of time. Survival skills are often basic ideas and abilities that ancients invented and used themselves for thousands of years. Outdoor activities such as hiking, backpacking, horseback riding, fishing, and hunting all require basic wilderness survival skills, especially in handling emergency situations. Bushcraft and primitive living are most often self-implemented, but require many of the same skills.

Interdependence is the mutual reliance between two or more groups. In relationships, interdependence is the degree to which members of the group are mutually dependent on the others. This concept differs from a dependent relationship, where some members are dependent and some are not. Independencies is freedom from control or influence of another or others.

Personal Development covers activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitate employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations.

Workers Self-Management is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce.

Working Alternatives - Low-Impact Living - Sustainable - Simplicity

Holacracy is a system of organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested in a management hierarchy.

Sociocracy is a system of governance using consent decision making and an organizational structure based on cybernetic principles (a system with closed feedback mechanisms). Sociocracy has been advocated as a management system that distributes leadership and power throughout the organization. It is currently used by public, private, non-profit, and community organizations and associations. Sociocratic governance and management is taught in college and university courses in business, political science, history, and sociology.

Polis is the Ancient Greek city-state developed during the Archaic period, considered in its ideal form for philosophical purposes. The best form of government of the polis for Plato is the one that leads to the common good. The philosopher king is the best ruler because, as a philosopher, he is acquainted with the Form of the Good. In Plato's analogy of the ship of state, the philosopher king steers the polis, as if it were a ship, in the best direction. The basic and indicating elements of a polis are Self-governance, autonomy, and independence (city-state).

Earth Sharing - City Planning

Development Humanity is a concept within a field of international development. It involves studies of the human condition with its core being the capability approach. The inequality adjusted Human Development Index is used as a way of measuring actual progress in human development by the United Nations. It is an alternative approach to a single focus on economic growth, and focused more on social justice, as a way of understanding progress

Livelihood refers to their "means of securing the basic necessities -food, water, shelter and clothing- of life". Livelihood is defined as a set of activities, involving securing water, food, fodder, medicine, shelter, clothing and the capacity to acquire above necessities working either individually or as a group by using endowments (both human and material) for meeting the requirements of the self and his/her household on a sustainable basis with dignity. The activities are usually carried out repeatedly.

Subsistence Economy is a non-monetary economy which relies on natural resources to provide for basic needs, through hunting, gathering, and subsistence agriculture. Subsistence means supporting oneself at a minimum level; in a subsistence economy, economic surplus is minimal and only used to trade for basic goods, and there is no industrialization.

Subsistence Agriculture is self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed themselves and their families. The output is mostly for local requirements with little or no surplus for trade. The typical subsistence farm has a range of crops and animals needed by the family to feed and clothe themselves during the year.

Fair Trade - Management - Self-Smart - Working Together - Sharing Resources

Adequate is having the requisite qualities or resources to meet a task. Sufficient for the purpose.

Purpose is the quality of being determined to do or achieve something; firmness of purpose. An anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions.

Independent, not Dependent: You don't want people to be dependent or Codependent, you want people to be independent, free to choose, free to explore, free to learn. Yes we will always have people who will need help and will have to be Dependent on other people to live, but it will not be because they're ignorant, it will be because they have no choice because of a disability, or because of where they live, where they can't fulfill all their needs because of the land or that they live in city with few options. This is why you have to be intelligent when building your cities. Just look at history. You find these ancient cities that have been abandoned, why? Independency can only come from knowledge, so education needs to improve. 

Interdependence is the mutual reliance between two or more groups. This concept differs from the reliance in a dependent relationship, where some members are dependent and some are not. There can be various degrees of interdependence.

Collaborations - Self-Regulation

"Going Back is Going Forward, we have unintentionally over complicated our lives, it's time to go back and simplify."

"A lot of people live in their own little world because they don't have the right information and knowledge to see beyond the bubble that they live in, thus they are vulnerable to threats and are unable to respond accordingly to these threats. Threats that come from the environment and from other people."

"In order for humans to enjoy the freedoms of being human in the physical world, and function with freedom of choice, humans must learn to do certain life preserving functions 'manually'. This is just a small inconvenience for freedom. We are still in control but we are also responsible for our negative effects." 

Self Directed Learning - Education - Knowledge Management - Making a Difference - Success - Thrifty - Conflict Management - Anarchy - Activism - Human Rights - Confidence (but not cocky).

Arm Knitting for Beginners (youtube)

Local Living Economy - Closed Loop Production  - Story of Stuff (youtube)

"I see an incredible future for this planet and all its species, that's if information and knowledge is properly shared.

Humans have incredible abilities, as you can see from our technological advances. And one of our most incredible abilities, is our ability to communicate, which could reverse the damage we have done to ourselves and the planet. But as it is right now our communication system is dysfunctional and corrupted. If we don't fix this we will continue to decimate this planet and all of its species to the point of mass extinction. And even if some of us do manage to survive it will be in a world that is horribly unlivable.

Communicating information and knowledge that people desperately need has to be top priority. I know this will work because we have documented proof that it does work. Any place where you have a more informed and educated people is a place of prosperity. Not to say that this process will be without problems or difficulties, but as long as it's done right and keeps going, it will fix these problems and difficulties that we will face along the way."

Stateless Society is a society that is not governed by a state. In stateless societies, there is little concentration of authority; most positions of authority that do exist are very limited in power and are generally not permanently held positions; and social bodies that resolve disputes through predefined rules tend to be small. Stateless societies are highly variable in economic organization and cultural practices. While stateless societies were the norm in human prehistory, few stateless societies exist today; almost the entire global population resides within the jurisdiction of a sovereign state. In some regions nominal state authorities may be very weak and wield little or no actual power. Over the course of history most stateless peoples have been integrated into the state-based societies around them. Some political philosophies, particularly anarchism, consider the state an unwelcome institution and stateless societies the ideal.

State of Nature in moral and political philosophy, religion, social contract theories and international law, is the hypothetical life of people before societies came into existence. Philosophers of the state of nature theory deduce that there must have been a time before organized societies existed, and this presumption thus raises questions such as: "What was life like before civil society?"; "How did government first emerge from such a starting position?," and; "What are the hypothetical reasons for entering a state of society by establishing a nation-state?". In some versions of social contract theory, there are no rights in the state of nature, only freedoms, and it is the contract that creates rights and obligations. In other versions the opposite occurs: the contract imposes restrictions upon individuals that curtail their natural rights. Societies existing before or without a political state are currently studied in such fields as paleolithic history, and the anthropological subfields of archaeology, cultural anthropology, social anthropology, and ethnology, which investigate the social and power-related structures of indigenous and uncontacted peoples. Though this has been criticized as an essentialist view and othering like with the concept of the noble savage.

Smart Homes - Intelligent Automation

Home Automation is the residential extension of building automation and involves the control and automation of lighting, heating (such as smart thermostats), ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and security, as well as home appliances such as washer/dryers, ovens or refrigerators/freezers that use WiFi for remote monitoring. Modern systems generally consist of switches and sensors connected to a central hub sometimes called a "gateway" from which the system is controlled with a user interface that is interacted either with a wall-mounted terminal, mobile phone software, tablet computer or a web interface, often but not always via internet cloud services. All devices and sensors should be connected and easy to monitor and adjust from an interface control panel on any computer. And information should be displayed in any format that's needed so that a person can quickly see changes and understand what's happening and react accordingly. Appliances should shut off automatically using a timer or when things boil over or when there is too much smoke. Water should shut of automatically when leaks are  detected or when water is running too long. Home Appliances Monitoring System.

Home Monitors - Sensors - Efficiency - The Internet of Things

Building Automation is the automatic centralized control of a building's heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting and other systems through a building management system or building automation system (BAS). The objectives of building automation are improved occupant comfort, efficient operation of building systems, and reduction in energy consumption and operating costs, and improved life cycle of utilities.

Smart Home - Proto Homes

AirJack: Convert nearly any audio device to wireless with this compact bluetooth adapter.

Wellness Concierge - Airo Corp

Energy Monitoring - Energy Alternatives - Internet Communication

GeenStone
Realm of Design
Ask Nature How to Build Green
Jessica Green: Good Germs Healthy Buildings (video)
Microbial Ecosystems
Microbes - Biobe - Biomimicry
Forest Conservation Resources

Category 6 Cable is a standardized twisted pair cable for Ethernet and other network physical layers that is backward compatible with the Category 5/5e and Category 3 cable standards. Compared with Cat 5 and Cat 5e, Cat 6 features more stringent specifications for crosstalk and system noise. The cable standard also specifies performance of up to 250 MHz compared to 100 MHz for Cat 5 and Cat 5e.

Coaxial Cable is a type of electrical cable that has an inner conductor surrounded by a tubular insulating layer, surrounded by a tubular conducting shield. Many coaxial cables also have an insulating outer sheath or jacket. The term coaxial comes from the inner conductor and the outer shield sharing a geometric axis. Electronic Noise

Fiber Optics are significantly faster than coaxial cables. Although optical fibers are hair-thin, they have the capacity for greater bandwidth than traditional cables.

Siamese Cable stands for a cable that is built to include both video and power. In contrast to Power over Ethernet (PoE), the power is attached to the side of the data cable.

IR Trigger Cable - 3.5mm Mono Cable (15FT) - 12V Trigger, IR Infrared Sensor Receiver Extension Extender.

Conductive Paint Transforms Walls Into Sensors, Interactive Surfaces. Smart walls react to human touch, sense activity in room. With a few applications of conductive paint and some electronics, however, walls can become smart infrastructure that sense human touch, and detect things like gestures and when appliances are used. Researchers found that they could transform dumb walls into smart walls at relatively low cost using simple tools and techniques, such as a paint roller.

"Whether it's a Smart Home or a Smart City, without Smart People, it will never be smart enough. Smart technology is almost useless in the hands of a person who's undereducated, which we can clearly see throughout the world today in 2017."

Green Building Resources

Green Building refers to both a structure and the using of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. In other words, green building design involves finding the balance between homebuilding and the sustainable environment. This requires close cooperation of the design team, the architects, the engineers, and the client at all project stages. The Green Building practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort.

Multi-Family Dwellings - Sustainability - Development Planning

Self-Sufficient Homes is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication services, and in some cases, public roads. Advocates of autonomous building describe advantages that include reduced environmental impacts, increased security, and lower costs of ownership. Some cited advantages satisfy tenets of green building, not independence per se (see below). Off-grid buildings often rely very little on civil services and are therefore safer and more comfortable during civil disaster or military attacks. (Off-grid buildings would not lose power or water if public supplies were compromised for some reason.)

Zero Energy Building is a building with zero net energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site, or in other definitions by renewable energy sources elsewhere. These buildings consequently contribute less overall greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than similar non-ZNE buildings. They do at times consume non-renewable energy and produce greenhouse gases, but at other times reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas production elsewhere by the same amount.

Energy Plus House produces more energy from renewable energy sources, over the course of a year, than it imports from external sources. This is achieved using a combination of microgeneration technology and low-energy building techniques, such as: passive solar building design, insulation and careful site selection and placement. A reduction of modern conveniences can also contribute to energy savings, however many energy-plus houses are almost indistinguishable from a traditional home, preferring instead to use highly energy-efficient appliances, fixtures, etc., throughout the house.

Plus Energy is a term used in building design to describe a structure that produces more energy than it uses. The term was coined in 1994 by Rolf Disch when building his private residence, the Heliotrope as the first PlusEnergy house in the world. Disch then went on to refine the concepts involved with several more projects built by his company Rolf Disch Solar Architecture in order to promote PlusEnergy for wider adoption in residential, commercial and retail spaces. Disch maintains that PlusEnergy is more than just a method of producing environmentally-friendly housing, but also an integrated ecological and architectural concept. As such, PlusEnergy is intended to be superior to low-energy or zero-energy designs such as those of Passivhaus, which is a rigorous, voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building, reducing its ecological footprint. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling. Passive Cooling and Heating.

Environmental Technology is the application of one or more of environmental science, green chemistry, environmental monitoring and electronic devices to monitor, model and conserve the natural environment and resources, and to curb the negative impacts of human involvement. The term is also used to describe sustainable energy generation technologies such as photovoltaics, wind turbines, bioreactors, etc. Sustainable development is the core of environmental technologies. The term environmental technologies is also used to describe a class of electronic devices that can promote sustainable management of resources.

Living Building Challenge is an international sustainable building certification program created in 2006 by the non-profit International Living Future Institute.

Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition made up of 10 contests that challenge student teams to design and build full-size, solar-powered houses. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends design excellence and smart energy production with innovation, market potential, and energy and water efficiency. Simply put, there's nothing else like it.

Sustainable Building Competition – 4th Edition

Natural Building involves a range of building systems and materials that place major emphasis on sustainability. Ways of achieving sustainability through natural building focus on durability and the use of minimally processed, plentiful or renewable resources, as well as those that, while recycled or salvaged, produce healthy living environments and maintain indoor air quality. Natural building tends to rely on human labor, more than technology. As Michael G. Smith observes, it depends on "local ecology, geology and climate; on the character of the particular building site, and on the needs and personalities of the builders and users." The basis of natural building is the need to lessen the environmental impact of buildings and other supporting systems, without sacrificing comfort or health. To be more sustainable, natural building uses primarily abundantly available, renewable, reused or recycled materials. The use of rapidly renewable materials is increasingly a focus. In addition to relying on natural building materials, the emphasis on the architectural design is heightened. The orientation of a building, the utilization of local climate and site conditions, the emphasis on natural ventilation through design, fundamentally lessen operational costs and positively impact the environmental. Building compactly and minimizing the ecological footprint is common, as are on-site handling of energy acquisition, on-site water capture, alternate sewage treatment and water reuse.

Building Material is any material which is used for construction purposes. Many naturally occurring substances, such as clay, rocks, sand, and wood, even twigs and leaves, have been used to construct buildings. Apart from naturally occurring materials, many man-made products are in use, some more and some less synthetic. The manufacture of building materials is an established industry in many countries and the use of these materials is typically segmented into specific specialty trades, such as carpentry, insulation, plumbing, and roofing work. They provide the make-up of habitats and structures including homes.

Biocidal Natural Building Material is a natural building material which has biocidal properties. The biocidal properties of biocidal natural building materials are inherent to the material, rather than being supplemented afterwards. This makes that the material is long lasting and inexpensive, as no additional processing needs to be done.

Biocide is a chemical substance or microorganism intended to destroy, deter, render harmless, or exert a controlling effect on any harmful organism by chemical or biological means.

Sick Building Syndrome is a phenomenon affecting building occupants who claim to experience acute health and comfort effects that appear to be linked to time spent in a building, but where no specific illness or cause can be identified.

Living Building Challenge is an international sustainable building certification program created in 2006 by the non-profit International Living Future Institute. It is described by the Institute as a philosophy, advocacy tool and certification program that promotes the most advanced measurement of sustainability in the built environment. It can be applied to development at all scales, from buildings – both new construction and renovation - to infrastructure, landscapes, neighborhoods and communities and is more rigorous than green certification schemes such as LEED or BREEAM.

U.S. Green Building Council
Urban Green Council
Green Building Program
Dice House from Sybarite
Pixel Studio 505
Roxbury E+ Boston, MA  2013 Boston’s E+ initiative to pilot net zero energy housing prototypes.
Sustainable Living
Living Future Institute
Living Future
Living Building Certification
City Development and Management

Biophilia: Does Visual Contact with Nature Impact on Health and Well-Being?

Institute for Health in the Built Environment at the University of Oregon is passionate about combining research and design in order to create a healthier built environment and population.

Berkeley Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces is re-inventing our workplaces by integrating and applying interdisciplinary sciences to achieve worker health and psychological well-being.

The Center for Active Design mission is to transform design and development practice to support health, ensuring equitable access to vibrant public and private spaces that support optimal quality of life.

LiveWall® Indoor is the green wall system which provides a healthy growing environment for plants on virtually any interior wall surface.

Futuristic City Designers

Jason Mclennan - SuperGreen
Bullitt Center
Bullitt Foundation
Saunders Architecture
Mcdonough Partners

Bauhaus was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught.

Jürgen Mayer is a German architect and artist.
Tatiana Bilbao is a Mexican architect.
Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architect.

Trillium Architects
The Venus Project - Futuristic Building Designs
Advanced Architecture Design

Videos on Sustainable and Affordable Development
Sustainable Cities (youtube)
The Sustainable City (video)
Architecture, art and design - 100 years of the Bauhaus (3/3) | DW Documentary (youtube)
Why Great Architecture should tell a story (video and text)
UBC's Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (youtube) - UBC

Form and Function (design guides)
NASA Sustainability Base
MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Limited - Ghost Laboratory
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU active in architecture, urban planning, design, and art.
Make it Right

Zero-Energy Building - Efficient - Plus Energy Home

The Next Generation of African Architects and Designers - Christian Benimana at TEDGlobal 2017. (video and text) We have estimated that by 2050, we have to build 700 Million more Housing Units, more than 300,000 Schools and nearly 100,000 Health Centers, which means we have to build seven health centers, 25 schools and nearly 60,000 housing units each and every day.

Green Movement India is an emerging movement that stresses practices and initiatives in transport, construction, law and more.

Green Movement Sri Lanka is a consortium of 147 non-governmental organizations with a common goal of increasing environmental awareness and furthering conservation efforts in Sri Lanka. The movement provides environmental education resources, and also uses legal avenues and political pressure tactics such as lobbying to achieve their aims. Another aim is sustainable development. Green Movement (wiki).

Our H2OUSE

Selficient has the mission to build sustainable, customizable, self-efficient and attractive housing solutions by making the house modular and able to grow with the needs of the home owners.

reACT 1.To adapt or respond to change; 2. To promote positive sustainable lifestyles and self-reliance within communities (noun) 1. “resilient Adaptive Climate Technology”; 2. An innovative building system designed to adapt and respond to diverse communities and ecosystems.

Enable House Northwestern. Students from Northwestern University have created a sophisticated, energy-efficient home that is strategically designed to address the many challenges that come with aging. The solar-powered Enable House was built with various responsive design features - such as movable interior walls that create adaptable spaces through the years. The home's deck features a beautiful greenhouse-like structure that opens up to the outdoors with sliding walls.

SILO, short for Smart Innovative Living Oasis, Missouri Solar House Design Team.

Green Building
Solar Power - Energy Types
Green Building Supply
Plug Green
Building Green
The Natural Builders
BPC Green Builders design, construction and renovation of Energy Efficiency and Healthy.
Green Building Trade Show
Aprovecho Sustainability Institute
Smart Growth
Smart Growth America
Green Communities
Green City Blue Lake
Urban Sustainability Network
Green Education (environmental awareness)
Green Building Design Course
Jets on Green
Green Infrastructure
Green Town
Green America
Tree Hugger
Green America Today
Green Map
Energy Independence

How to Redensify the City

Sheikh Zayed Desert Learning Centre - Alain Zoo

Smart Cities - Building for the Cities of Tomorrow (Documentary, 2015) (youtube)

Mobile Cities - Emergency Shelters - Shipping Containers

51.2 million people around the world live as refugees and are living under forced displacement, "internally displaced"

U.N. - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Homeless Info - Social Issues

Home Building Resources - Small Homes (tiny houses) - Factory-Built Housing - Prefabricated Houses

Design Guides for Building Homes

Windows

Location, Location, Location: Location - Dangers - Orientation - Sinkholes - Home Inspection

Related Subjects - Internal Pages - Sustainable - Green Products - Living Machines - Genetic Engineering - Green Schools - Building Ideas - Housing Types - Sustainable Farming - Limits to Growth - Renewable Energy Plans - Energy
Water - Food - Sustainable Food Calculator - Eco-Initiative Ideas - Sustainable Landscaping - Eco-Friendly Tools - Green Innovation Ideas - Self-Manage - City Development and Management - Environment - Low Impact Living - Environmentally Friendly Living - Biodegradable Products - Toilets that are Earth Friendly

The Big 5: What Every Human Needs to Live a Happy, Sustainable, Healthy and Productive Life without Abuse or Waste.

1: Water - Information Station Computer Menu Sample

2: Food - Stoves - Refrigeration - Farm Animals

3: Shelter - Skyscrapers made of Mud

4: Energy (big 5)

5: Education

Green Ideas and Movements (earth protection organizations) - Green Infrastructure (city management)

TU Wien Imperial and Royal Polytechnic Institute from 1815–1872; Technische Hochschule (TH Wien), College of Technology from 1872–1975; Vienna University of Technology from 1975–2014) is one of the major universities in Vienna, the capital of Austria. The university finds high international and domestic recognition in teaching as well as in research, and it is a highly esteemed partner of innovation oriented enterprises. It currently has about 26,200 students (19% foreign students/30% women), eight faculties and about 4,000 staff members (1,800 academics). The university's teaching and research is focused on engineering and natural sciences. The education offered by TU Wien is rewarded by high international and domestic recognition. The chances of graduates securing an attractive employment are very prosperous. The high demand for TU Wien graduates, from economic and industrial, governmental as well as research institutions are manifest evidence of this.

Building Intelligently

Uncompromising Ecological Architecture (youtube)
Earth Architecture
Off the Grid Desert Living
Off Grid
Autonomous Building
Recycled Lumber
Basic Initiative
Calthorpe
Green Building Focus
Eco City Builders
E Build
Weatherization - Tools
Architecture 2030
Green Your Home
Urban Homestead
Building With Awareness
Building Green TV
Jets on Green
Zero Energy
Sustainable Development
Nat. Assoc. Home Builders
Green Switch
Green Order
Efficiency First
Current Energy
In Habitat
SSD Architecture
Struever Brothers
Our Green Directory
Living Homes
City Planning
The Living City
Eco-Conscious Lifestyle
Live Green Live Smart
Green Strides
Black & Veatch
Eco Lifestyle

Jessica Green: Are we filtering the wrong microbes? (youtube)
Eco Biz Locator
Eco Business Links
Clean Business Technology
Clean Production
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) 
Green Matters
Green Is Universal
Sustainca
The Renewable Planet
Water
Rare Conservation
Social Enterprise
Conference
New Dream
Green Ideas
Biodiesel Fuels
Green Cars
Science Knowledge Base

Wood Innovation and Design Centre - Building Codes (engineering)

Pollution Absorbing Ideas

A smog vacuum cleaner and other magical city designs (video and interactive text)

Zocalo Development - Air Filtering Tools - Pollution Absorbing Buildings

Quasicrystalline is a structure that is ordered but not periodic. A quasicrystalline pattern can continuously fill all available space, but it lacks translational symmetry. While crystals, according to the classical crystallographic restriction theorem, can possess only two, three, four, and six-fold rotational symmetries, the Bragg diffraction pattern of quasicrystals shows sharp peaks with other symmetry orders, for instance five-fold.

Building Homes using Dirt and Earth

Adobe is a building material made from earth and often organic material. Most adobe buildings are similar to cob and rammed earth buildings. Adobe is among the earliest building materials, and is used throughout the world. Skyscraper of Mud

Cob Material is a natural building material made from subsoil, water, some kind of fibrous organic material (typically straw), and sometimes lime. The contents of subsoil naturally vary, and if it does not contain the right mixture it can be modified with sand or clay. Cob is fireproof, resistant to seismic activity, and inexpensive. It can be used to create artistic, sculptural forms, and its use has been revived in recent years by the natural building and sustainability movements.

DIY home from Earth and Straw (youtube)

Building with Sand, Straw and Clay

Rammed Earth is a technique for building walls, foundations, and floors using natural raw materials such as earth, chalk, lime or gravel.

Compressed Earth Block is made primarily from damp Soil compressed at high pressure to form blocks.

Earth Building
Kiln
Earthen Hand
Earthen Architecture Art

Dirt Homes - Made by Hand using the Earth - what God has given us

House Alive
Cob Cottage
First Earth (youtube)
Earth Ships
Earthship
Build your own Earth Ship
Spaceship
Bamboo
Palm Thatched Mud Hut (youtube)
Straw Bale Homes
Strawbale
Straw Bale Guide Book (amazon)
Building Straw Houses (youtube)
Hobbit House Built in just 4 Months
Green Magic Homes

Tiny Homes - Mobile Shelters

Icelandic Turf House - Photos

Floors - Radiant Floor Heating - Warm Your Floors - Passive Heating and Cooling - Radiant Ec

Engineering - Architecture

Earthen Floor also called an adobe floor, is a floor made of dirt, raw earth, or other unworked ground materials. It is usually constructed, in modern times, with a mixture of sand, finely chopped straw and clay, mixed to a thickened consistency and spread with a trowel on a sub-surface such as concrete. Once dry, it is then usually saturated with several treatments of a drying oil. Earth Enable.

Bricks - Building Blocks

Brick is building material used to make walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. 1.2 Trillion bricks are made every year.

How to Make an Adobe Brick (youtube)

Hydra Form Brick Machine
Build a Lego Bricks House

Engineering Stone Work
Building Codes

Hemp - Hempcrete
Hemp Technologies
American Hemp
The Hemp Builder
Building with Hemp – An Incredible Natural Insulation & Sustainable Material (youtube). - Lime

Bio-Mason uses microorganisms to grow biocement™ based construction materials. BioMason is a North Carolina startup company that manufactures bricks without heat or clay. About 8% of global carbon emissions come from making bricks.

Green Products - CRETE House

Autoclaved Aerated Concrete is a lightweight, precast, Foam concrete building material invented in the mid-1920s that simultaneously provides structure, insulation, and fire- and mold-resistance. AAC products include blocks, wall panels, floor and roof panels, cladding (facade) panels and lintels.

Poro Therm clay block walling system.

The Last Straw - Women of Green

Earth Block also known as a pressed earth block or a compressed soil block, is a building material made primarily from damp soil compressed at high pressure to form blocks. Compressed earth blocks use a mechanical press to form blocks out of an appropriate mix of fairly dry inorganic subsoil, non-expansive clay and aggregate. If the blocks are stabilized with a chemical binder such as Portland cement they are called compressed stabilized earth block (CSEB) or stabilized earth block (SEB). Typically, around 3,000 psi (21 MPa) is applied in compression, and the original soil volume is reduced by about half.

Mudbrick is a brick, made of a mixture of loam, mud, sand and water mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. In warm regions with very little timber available to fuel a kiln, bricks were generally sun dried. In some cases brickmakers extended the life of mud bricks by putting fired bricks on top or covering them with stucco.

Compressed Stabilized Earth Block
Compressed Earth Blocks
Aect Earthblock
Earthuprising
EcoRock
Thermalcore
Earth Bag Structures
Ultra Ever Dry (youtube)
Superhydrophobe (wiki)
Sand Castle Holds Up A Car! - Mechanically Stabilized Earth

Friction, frictional material, Internal Friction, Frictional Force. Sliding Plane failure plane, Angle of Repose. Molecular Bond.

Angle of Repose of a granular material is the steepest angle of descent or dip relative to the horizontal plane to which a material can be piled without slumping. At this angle, the material on the slope face is on the verge of sliding. The angle of repose can range from 0° to 90°. The morphology of the material affects the angle of repose; smooth, rounded sand grains cannot be piled as steeply as can rough, interlocking sands. The angle of repose can also be affected by additions of solvents. If a small amount of water is able to bridge the gaps between particles, electrostatic attraction of the water to mineral surfaces will increase the angle of repose, and related quantities such as the soil strength. When bulk granular materials are poured onto a horizontal surface, a conical pile will form. The internal angle between the surface of the pile and the horizontal surface is known as the angle of repose and is related to the density, surface area and shapes of the particles, and the coefficient of friction of the material. Material with a low angle of repose forms flatter piles than material with a high angle of repose. The term has a related usage in mechanics, where it refers to the maximum angle at which an object can rest on an inclined plane without sliding down. This angle is equal to the arctangent of the coefficient of static friction μs between the surfaces.

Confining pressure, Overburden Pressure, also called lithostatic pressure, confining pressure or vertical stress, is the pressure or stress imposed on a layer of soil or rock by the weight of overlying material.

Geotechnical Engineering - Reinforced Earth

Mechanically Stabilized Earth is soil constructed with artificial reinforcing. It can be used for retaining walls, bridge abutments, seawalls, and dikes. Although the basic principles of MSE have been used throughout history, MSE was developed in its current form in the 1960s. The reinforcing elements used can vary but include steel and geosynthetics. MSE is the term usually used in the USA to distinguish it from the name "Reinforced Earth", a trade name of the Reinforced Earth Company, but elsewhere Reinforced Soil is the generally accepted term.

Tessellation Concrete Panels - Kite Bricks

The Mobile Factory fits into two shipping containers and can be sent anywhere in the world, hence the name. Rubble goes in at one end, is processed into liquid concrete, and eventually comes out the other side as brand new concrete building blocks. These are designed so that you simply need to stack them. Just like Lego. Story

3D Printed House

Emergency Shelters - Log Cabins

Apis-cor Mobile 3D Printer Creates Residential House in 24 Hours.

Compressed Earth Block Machine - Fastbrick Robotics - Time Lapse Video

Brick Making Machine (youtube)

Engineers Investigate a Simple, No-Bake Recipe to Make Bricks from Martian Soil The amount of pressure needed for a small sample is roughly the equivalent of someone dropping 10-lb hammer from a height of one meter.

Factory Built Homes

How to Build an Igloo Inuit style (youtube)

Building Blocks of Life - American Clay - The Natural Home

The power brick that actually is a brick! (youtube) - They've found a way to chemically change the internal composition to enable it to store electrical energy. The average house contains about ten thousand bricks.

Build Block - Insulating Concrete Forms reinforced with steel Rebar, which is a steel bar or mesh of steel wires used as a tension device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures to strengthen and hold the concrete in compression. Rebar's surface is often patterned to form a better bond with the concrete.

Cement - Concrete

Cement is a binder, a substance used in construction that sets and hardens and can bind other materials together. The most important types of cement are used as a component in the production of mortar in masonry, and of concrete, which is a combination of cement and an aggregate to form a strong building material. Cement is a powdery substance made with calcined lime and clay. It is mixed with water to form mortar or mixed with sand, gravel, and water to make concrete.

4 Billion Tons of concrete are made each year in the world. Green Concrete (Low CO2)

Stronger and more Durable Concrete that is made using the wonder-material graphene could revolutionize the construction industry.

Foamcrete, Papercrete and now AirCrete, which is a foamy mixture of air bubbles and cement that is cheap to make, waterproof, fireproof, and DIY-friendly.

New 3D-Printed Cement Paste gets Stronger when it Cracks -- just like structures in nature.

Engineers have known for some time that calcium chloride salt, commonly used as deicer, reacts with the calcium hydroxide in concrete to form a chemical byproduct that causes roadways to crumble. In the lab of Drexel University assistant professor Yaghoob Farnam, researchers are using recycled materials, like slag, silica fume and fly ash to make concrete that can withstand the chemical deterioration caused by concrete's reaction with road salt. Pyrrhotite is a compound that contributes to the cracking of foundations.

Fracture-Resistant Cement based on the nanostructure of the sea urchin spines.

Self-Healing Concrete that uses a specific type of Fungi as a Healing Agent.

A bio-inspired addition to concrete stops the damage caused by freezing and thawing. Concrete is one of the most abundant and durable building materials used in modern-day infrastructures, but it has a weakness -- ice -- which can cause it to crumble and spall. Now, inspired by organisms that survive in sub-zero environments, researchers in Colorado are introducing polymer molecules with anti-freezing abilities into concrete. The method, which tests if the new concrete can stop the damage caused by freezing and thawing. Concrete is a porous material with capillary pores that allow water to permeate into the material. For places that experience large temperature swings, concrete roads and buildings go through "freeze-thaw cycles." The water freezes and expands inside of the material, building up pressure as the ice crystals grow, eventually popping the surface of the concrete off. The polyethylene glycol-graft-polyvinyl alcohol (PEG-PVA) molecules that the researchers have identified appear to keep the ice crystals small and prevent them from coalescing into larger crystals.

Roman engineers made Roman Concrete by mixing volcanic ash with lime and seawater to make a mortar, and then added chunks of volcanic rock. The combination of ash, water, and lime produces what is called a pozzolanic reaction, named after the city of Pozzuoli in the Bay of Naples, triggering the formation of crystals in the gaps of the mixture as it sets. When saltwater mixes with the volcanic ash and lime used by Roman builders, it leads to the growth of interlocking minerals, which bring a virtually impenetrable cohesion to concrete. The same reaction happens in nature, and clumps of natural cement called ‘Tuffs’ can be found scattered around volcanic areas, which is probably what gave the Romans the idea. In contrast most modern concrete is a mix of Portland cement - limestone, sandstone, ash, chalk, iron, and clay, among other ingredients, heated to form a glassy material that is finely ground - mixed with sand or crushed stone that are not intended to chemically react, and so do not cause mineralisation when mixed with saltwater.

Binder as a material is any material or substance that holds or draws other materials together to form a cohesive whole mechanically, chemically, or as an adhesive, which is any substance applied to one surface, or both surfaces, of two separate items that binds them together and resists their separation.

Cohesion is the state of cohering or sticking together. Cohesion in physics is the intermolecular force that holds together the molecules in a solid or liquid.

Composite Material is a material made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties that, when combined, produce a material with characteristics different from the individual components.

Construction Aggregate is a broad category of coarse to medium grained particulate material used in construction, including sand, gravel, crushed stone, slag, recycled concrete and geosynthetic aggregates. Aggregates are the most mined materials in the world. Aggregates are a component of composite materials such as concrete and asphalt concrete; the aggregate serves as reinforcement to add strength to the overall composite material. Due to the relatively high hydraulic conductivity value as compared to most soils, aggregates are widely used in drainage applications such as foundation and French drains, septic drain fields, retaining wall drains, and road side edge drains. Aggregates are also used as base material under foundations, roads, and railroads. In other words, aggregates are used as a stable foundation or road/rail base with predictable, uniform properties (e.g. to help prevent differential settling under the road or building), or as a low-cost extender that binds with more expensive cement or asphalt to form concrete.

Aggregate as a composite is the component of a composite material that resists compressive stress and provides bulk to the composite material. For efficient filling, aggregate should be much smaller than the finished item, but have a wide variety of sizes. For example, the particles of stone used to make concrete typically include both sand and gravel.

Photocatalysis is the acceleration of a photoreaction in the presence of a catalyst. In catalysed photolysis, light is absorbed by an adsorbed substrate.

Concrete is a composite material composed of coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement that hardens over time. Most concretes used are lime-based concretes such as Portland cement concrete or concretes made with other hydraulic cements, such as ciment fondu. However, asphalt concrete, which is frequently used for road surfaces, is also a type of concrete, where the cement material is bitumen, and polymer concretes are sometimes used where the cementing material is a polymer.

Recycled Tires create Stronger Concrete. Lab tests showed that fibre-reinforced concrete reduces crack formation by more than 90 per cent compared to regular concrete, Recycled-rubber roads are not new; asphalt roads that incorporate rubber “crumbs” from shredded tires exist in the U.S., Germany, Spain, Brazil and China. Most scrap tires are destined for landfill.

Plastic Roads - Storm-Water Runoff

Mortar in masonry is a workable paste used to bind building blocks such as stones, bricks, and concrete masonry units together, fill and seal the irregular gaps between them, and sometimes add decorative colors or patterns in masonry walls. In its broadest sense mortar includes pitch, asphalt, and soft mud or clay, such as used between mud bricks.

Lime Mortar is a type of mortar composed of lime and an aggregate such as sand, mixed with water. It is one of the oldest known types of mortar, dating back to the 4th century BC and widely used in Ancient Rome and Greece, when it largely replaced the clay and gypsum mortars common to Ancient Egyptian construction. About 6,000 years ago, they used lime to plaster the pyramids at Giza. In addition, the Egyptians also incorporated various limes into their religious temples as well as their homes. Indian traditional structures built with lime mortar, which are more than 4,000 years old like Mohenjo-daro is still a heritage monument of Indus valley civilization in Pakistan. It is one of the oldest known types of mortar also used in ancient Rome and Greece, when it largely replaced the clay and gypsum mortars common to ancient Egyptian construction. With the introduction of Portland cement during the 19th century, the use of lime mortar in new constructions gradually declined. This was largely due to the ease of use of Portland cement, its quick setting, and high compressive strength. However, the soft and porous properties of lime mortar provide certain advantages when working with softer building materials such as natural stone and terracotta. For this reason, while Portland cement continues to be commonly used in new constructions of brick and concrete construction, in the repair and restoration of brick and stone-built structures originally built using lime mortar, the use of Portland cement is not recommended. Despite its enduring utility over many centuries, lime mortar's effectiveness as a building material has not been well understood; time-honoured practices were based on tradition, folklore and trade knowledge, vindicated by the vast number of old buildings that remain standing. Only during the last few decades has empirical testing provided a scientific understanding of its remarkable durability.

Hydraulic Lime is a general term for varieties of lime (calcium oxide), or slaked lime (calcium hydroxide), used to make lime mortar which set through hydration. These contrast with varieties of air lime, the other common types of lime mortar, which set through carbonation (re-absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air). Hydraulic lime provides a faster initial set and higher compressive strength than air lime and eminently hydraulic lime will set in more extreme conditions including under water. The terms hydraulic lime and hydrated lime are quite similar and may be confused but are not necessarily the same material: hydrated lime is any lime which has been slaked whether it sets through hydration, carbonation, or both. Calcium reacts in the lime kiln with the clay minerals to produce silicates that enable some of the lime to set through hydration; any unreacted calcium is slaked to calcium hydroxide which sets through carbonation: These are sometimes called semi-hydraulic lime and include the classifications feebly and moderately hydraulic lime, NHL 2 and NHL 3.5.

Pozzolan are a broad class of siliceous or siliceous and aluminous materials which, in themselves, possess little or no cementitious value but which will, in finely divided form and in the presence of water, react chemically with calcium hydroxide at ordinary temperature to form compounds possessing cementitious properties. The quantification of the capacity of a pozzolan to react with calcium hydroxide and water is given by measuring its pozzolanic activity. Pozzolana are naturally-occurring pozzolans of volcanic origin.

Pozzolans for Lime Mortars. Materials which enable lime mortars to set more rapidly include ash and brick dust. Known as 'pozzolans' after the volcanic additives used by the Romans, these materials are widely found in the lime mortars used in old buildings and monuments. Where conservation work is required, new mortars ought to match these mortars, not only to ensure continuity with the past, but also to ensure that the new work is both visually and physically compatible with the old. It is therefore important that we know more about the performance of these additives.

Lime is a calcium-containing inorganic material in which carbonates, oxides, and hydroxides predominate. In the strict sense of the term, lime is calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide. It is also the name of the natural mineral (native lime) CaO which occurs as a product of coal seam fires and in altered limestone xenoliths in volcanic ejecta. The word lime originates with its earliest use as building mortar and has the sense of sticking or adhering.

Recycled Glass Aggregate - Embed Glass in Concrete Countertops - Quikrete

Silica Fume, or microsilica, is an amorphous (non-crystalline) polymorph of silicon dioxide, silica. It is an ultrafine powder collected as a by-product of the silicon and ferrosilicon alloy production and consists of spherical particles with an average particle diameter of 150 nm. The main field of application is as pozzolanic material for high performance concrete.

Brick Layer - Masonry

Brick House (building blocks)

Smart Technology for Synchronized 3D Printing of Concrete. Scientists have developed a technology where two robots can work in unison to 3D-print a concrete structure.

First Concrete Pour: Form-A-Drain 4-in-1 Foundation Footings (youtube)
This excellent construction machine is very INCREDIBLE. Modern concrete paving machines technology (youtube)
Hendrik Marius Jonkers - Self-Healing Concrete containing bacteria (youtube)

European Inventor Award
Sakrete Concrete Resurfacing

Geopolymer are inorganic, typically ceramic, materials that form long-range, covalently bonded, non-crystalline networks. Obsidian fragments are a component of some geopolymer blends. Commercially produced geopolymers may be used for fire- and heat-resistant coatings and adhesives, medicinal applications, high-temperature ceramics, new binders for fire-resistant fiber composites, toxic and radioactive waste encapsulation and new cements for concrete. The properties and uses of geopolymers are being explored in many scientific and industrial disciplines: modern inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, colloid chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and in other types of engineering process technologies. Geopolymers are part of polymer science, chemistry and technology that forms one of the major areas of materials science. Polymers are either organic material, i.e. carbon-based, or inorganic polymer, for example silicon-based. The organic polymers comprise the classes of natural polymers (rubber, cellulose), synthetic organic polymers (textile fibers, plastics, films, elastomers, etc.) and natural biopolymers (biology, medicine, pharmacy). Raw materials used in the synthesis of silicon-based polymers are mainly rock-forming minerals of geological origin, hence the name: geopolymer. Joseph Davidovits coined the term in 1978 and created the non profit French scientific institution (Association Loi 1901) Institut Géopolymère (Geopolymer Institute). According to T.F. Yen geopolymers can be classified into two major groups: pure inorganic geopolymers and organic containing geopolymers, synthetic analogues of naturally occurring macromolecules. In the following presentation, a geopolymer is essentially a mineral chemical compound or mixture of compounds consisting of repeating units, for example silico-oxide (-Si-O-Si-O-), silico-aluminate (-Si-O-Al-O-), ferro-silico-aluminate (-Fe-O-Si-O-Al-O-) or alumino-phosphate (-Al-O-P-O-), created through a process of geopolymerization. This mineral synthesis (geosynthesis) was first presented at an IUPAC symposium in 1976. Geopolymer cement categories: Slag-based geopolymer cement. Rock-based geopolymer cement. Fly ash-based geopolymer cement. Type 1: alkali-activated fly ash geopolymer. Type 2: slag/fly ash-based geopolymer cement. Ferro-sialate-based geopolymer cement.

Portland Cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world as a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar, stucco, and non-specialty grout. It was developed from other types of hydraulic lime in England in the mid 19th century, and usually originates from limestone. It is a fine powder, produced by heating limestone and clay minerals in a kiln to form clinker, grinding the clinker, and adding 2 to 3 percent of gypsum. Several types of Portland cement are available. The most common, called ordinary Portland cement (OPC), is grey, but white Portland cement is also available. Its name is derived from its similarity to Portland stone which was quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. It was named by Joseph Aspdin who obtained a patent for it in 1824. However, his son William Aspdin is regarded as the inventor of "modern" Portland cement due to his developments in the 1840s. Portland cement is caustic, so it can cause chemical burns. The powder can cause irritation or, with severe exposure, lung cancer, and can contain some hazardous components, such as crystalline silica and hexavalent chromium. Environmental concerns are the high energy consumption required to mine, manufacture, and transport the cement, and the related air pollution, including the release of greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide), dioxin, NOx, SO2, and particulates. The production of Portland cement contributes to about 10% of world carbon dioxide emission. To meet the rising global population, the International Energy Agency estimated that the cement production is set to increase between 12 to 23% by 2050. There are several ongoing researches targeting a suitable replacement of Portland cement by supplementary cementitious materials. The low cost and widespread availability of the limestone, shales, and other naturally-occurring materials used in Portland cement make it one of the lowest-cost materials widely used over the last century. Concrete produced from Portland cement is one of the world's most versatile construction materials.

Prestressed Concrete is a form of concrete that is compressed during its fabrication, in a manner that strengthens it against tensile forces which will exist when in service. This compression is produced by the tensioning of high-strength "tendons" located within or adjacent to the concrete and is done to improve the performance of the concrete in service. Tendons may consist of single wires, multi-wire strands or threaded bars that are most commonly made from high-tensile steels, carbon fiber or aramid fiber. The essence of prestressed concrete is that once the initial compression has been applied, the resulting material has the characteristics of high-strength concrete when subject to any subsequent compression forces and of ductile high-strength steel when subject to tension forces. This can result in improved structural capacity and/or serviceability compared with conventionally reinforced concrete in many situations. In a prestressed concrete member, the internal stresses are introduced in a planned manner so that the stresses resulting from the superimposed loads are counteracted to the desired degree. Prestressed concrete is used in a wide range of building and civil structures where its improved performance can allow for longer spans, reduced structural thicknesses, and material savings compared with simple reinforced concrete. Typical applications include high-rise buildings, residential slabs, foundation systems, bridge and dam structures, silos and tanks, industrial pavements and nuclear containment structures. First used in the late-nineteenth century, prestressed concrete has developed beyond pre-tensioning to include post-tensioning, which occurs after the concrete is cast. Tensioning systems may be classed as either monostrand, where each tendon's strand or wire is stressed individually, or multi-strand, where all strands or wires in a tendon are stressed simultaneously. Tendons may be located either within the concrete volume (internal prestressing) or wholly outside of it (external prestressing). While pre-tensioned concrete uses tendons directly bonded to the concrete, post-tensioned concrete can use either bonded or unbonded tendons.

Hollow-Core Slab also known as a voided slab, hollow core plank or simply a concrete plank is a precast slab of prestressed concrete typically used in the construction of floors in multi-story apartment buildings. The slab has been especially popular in countries where the emphasis of home construction has been on precast concrete, Precast concrete popularity is linked with low-seismic zones and more economical constructions because of fast building assembly, lower self weight (less material), etc. Precast hollow-core elements is also known as the most sustainable floor/roof system and has far smaller CO2 footprint than even CLT slabs. The precast concrete slab has tubular voids extending the full length of the slab, typically with a diameter equal to the 2/3-3/4 the thickness of the slab. This makes the slab much lighter than a massive solid concrete floor slab of equal thickness or strength. The reduced weight also lowers material and transportation costs. The slabs are typically 120 cm wide with standard thicknesses normally between 15 cm and 50 cm. Reinforcing steel wire rope provides bending resistance. Slabs in prestressed concrete are usually produced in lengths of up to 200 meters. The process involves extruding wet concrete along with the prestressed steel wire rope from a moving mold. The continuous slab is then cut to required lengths by a large diamond circular saw. Factory production provides the obvious advantages of reduced time, labor and training. Another fabrication system produces hollow-core floor slabs in Reinforced Concrete (not prestressed). These are made on carousel production lines, directly to exact length, and as a stock product. However, the length is limited to about 7-8 meters. Especially in Belgium, this method is widely used in private housing. To meet modern standards (both hollow-core and massive slab) of soundproofing the floor needs to be covered with a soft floor covering that is able to dampen the sound of footsteps or a floating floor screed should be installed. An alternative is to put a strip of rubber underneath the floor slabs. Hollow-core slabs and wall elements without prestressed steel wire can be formed by extruders. The size of these elements will typically range in width from 600 to 2400 mm, in thickness from 150 to 500 mm, and can be delivered in lengths of up to 24 m. The voids of the hollow core can be used as conduit for installations. The interior of the core can be coated in order to use it as a ventilation duct.

Precast Concrete is a construction product produced by casting concrete in a reusable mold or "form" which is then cured in a controlled environment, transported to the construction site and lifted into place ("tilt up"). In contrast, standard concrete is poured into site-specific forms and cured on site. Precast stone is distinguished from precast concrete using a fine aggregate in the mixture, so the final product approaches the appearance of naturally occurring rock or stone. More recently expanded polystyrene is being used as the cores to precast wall panels. This is lightweight and has better thermal insulation. Precast is used within exterior and interior walls. By producing precast concrete in a controlled environment (typically referred to as a precast plant), the precast concrete is afforded the opportunity to properly cure and be closely monitored by plant employees. Using a precast concrete system offers many potential advantages over onsite casting. Precast concrete production can be performed on ground level, which helps with safety throughout a project. There is greater control over material quality and workmanship in a precast plant compared to a construction site. The forms used in a precast plant can be reused hundreds to thousands of times before they have to be replaced, often making it cheaper than onsite casting when looking at the cost per unit of formwork. There are many different types of precast concrete forming systems for architectural applications, differing in size, function, and cost. Precast architectural panels are also used to clad all or part of a building facades or free-standing walls used for landscaping, soundproofing, and security walls, and some can be prestressed concrete structural elements. Stormwater drainage, water and sewage pipes, and tunnels make use of precast concrete units. To complete the look of the four precast wall panel types — sandwich, plastered sandwich, inner layer and cladding panels — many surface finishes are available. Standard cement is white or grey, though different colors can be added with pigments or paints. The color and size of aggregate can also affect the appearance and texture of concrete surfaces. The shape and surface of the precast concrete molds have an effect on the look: The mold can be made of timber, steel, plastic, rubber or fiberglass, each material giving a unique finish.

Carbon Friendly Concrete - Carbon Capture

Cement is the world’s most-used building material, and in 2016 alone, we consumed 4.2 billion metric tons of it—roughly 115,000 Empire State Buildings by weight. The problem is that each ton of cement we use produces more than half a ton of carbon dioxide. In other words, the cement industry contributes 5-6% of all global emissions each year. Small amounts of sodium and potassium found in Degerhamn’s limestone means the cement produced there can be sold as “low-alkali”—known to last longer in ocean water because it can withstand the corrosive effects of salty H2O. The premium low-alkali product, used for building bridges or tunnels that traverse bodies of seawater, could be sold at higher prices. Just like that, the factory came back from the brink. The plant produces 3 million kg of cement every year, but is run by a staff of just 75. They work in teams of 25-50, in two or three shifts round the clock. KBI - Fly Ash - Calera.

Iron Kast is a new patented concrete technology based on iron carbonate that uses a majority of recycled materials to create a Less Expensive, Stronger, More Flexible and Carbon Negative concrete that grows stronger in salt water environments. (Ferrock) This cement alternative absorbs CO2 like a sponge (youtube).

Hemp-Crete - Smart Cement - Carbon Negative Cement - Cemex

Geopolymer Cement is a binding system that hardens at room temperature, similar to the more widely-known Portland cement. Geopolymer cement is being developed and utilized as an alternative to conventional Portland cement for use in transportation, infrastructure, construction and offshore applications. It relies on minimally processed natural materials or industrial byproducts to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of cement production, while also being highly resistant to many common concrete durability issues. Geopolymer cements exist which may cure more rapidly than Portland-based cements. Geopolymer Institute.

Concrete Carbon Capture. A pathway to net zero? (youtube)

Carbon Cure enables the concrete industry to improve operations while reducing its carbon footprint.
Carbi Crete is low-cost building solutions that contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Solidia is a cement and concrete technology company, offering patented green solutions that make it easy and profitable to use CO2 to create cement.
Blue Planet’s new biomimetic carbon capture and mineralization technology utilizes several patented scientific breakthoughs.
Carbon Engineering can capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.
Climeworks empowers everyone to be climate positive by permanently removing carbon dioxide from the air.

Domes

Dome is an architectural element that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere.

Geodesic Dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a network of geodesics (great circles) on the surface of a sphere or a hemisphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements, which have local, triangular rigidity, and so distribute the structural stress throughout the geodesic sphere. Bucky ball - Platonic Solids.

Are Dome Homes safer and more durable in earthquake and tornado prone areas?

Round or Octagon Houses can be hurricane-proof and withstand powerful storms.
Prefab Home Builder Deltec (youtube)
Tiny House is a Super Efficient Monolithic Dome (youtube)

Locations that are Dangerous to Build

Dome Home - Geo-Dome - Monolithic

Easy Domes built from 21 hexagons and pentagons.

Brunelleschi's Dome

Pacific Domes designs award-winning shelters that are engineered to be energy efficient, easy to erect, and exceptionally durable. As the leading manufacturer of geodesic domes for over 40 years, we are committed to the most efficient and elegant architectural solutions. Geodesic Dwell Domes, Event Domes, 360° Projection Domes. Home Building Kits.

Nubian Vault is a type of curved surface forming a vaulted structure. Can be built without any support or shuttering. The earth bricks are laid leaning at a slight slope against the gable walls in a length-wise vault, vaults rely only on locally available resources–earth, rocks, and water–they are both ecologically and economically sustainable. The Nubian Vault Association (AVN).

Roofs

Roof is the top covering of a building, including all materials and constructions necessary to support it on the walls of the building or on uprights, providing protection against rain, snow, sunlight, extremes of temperature, and wind. A roof is part of the building envelope.

Roof Types (image)

Home Ventilation

ORNL Roof and Attic Design proves efficient in Summer and Winter

How to Not Fall Off A Ladder (youtube)

Building Codes

Carlo Ratti: Architecture that Senses & Responds (youtube)

Reflective Surfaces (climate engineering). Reflective surfaces are surfaces that can deliver high solar reflectance (the ability to reflect the visible, infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths of the sun, reducing heat transfer to the surface) and high thermal emittance (the ability to radiate absorbed, or non-reflected solar energy). Reflective surfaces are a form of geoengineering. The most well-known type of reflective surface is the cool roof. While cool roofs are mostly associated with white roofs, they come in a variety of colors and materials and are available for both commercial and residential buildings. Today's "cool roof" pigments allow metal roofing products to be EnergyStar rated in dark colors, even black.

Green Roofs Knowledge Resource - Green Pools

White-Painted Roofs are as efficient as Green Roofs?

Green Roof is a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane. It may also include additional layers such as a root barrier and drainage and irrigation systems. Container gardens on roofs, where plants are maintained in pots, are not generally considered to be true green roofs, although this is debated. Rooftop ponds are another form of green roofs which are used to treat greywater. Vegetation, soil, drainage layer, roof barrier and irrigation system constitute green roof.

Roads - Highways

Green Highways - Green Roads - Roads

Solar Roadways - indegogo - Glow in the Dark Roads and Sidewalks (luminescence)

Pothole Filling Machine - Erik Schlangen: Self Healing Asphalt (video)

American Concrete Institute - H88 Paver Laying Machines for driveways, parkways (youtube)

Hempcrete (building blocks) - Smart Cement (concrete)

Plastic Roads - Scotland-based MacRebur company creates pellets out of recycled plastic waste and lays roads that are 60% stronger and expected to last about ten times longer than asphalt roads. One kilometer stretch of road uses the equivalent of about 684,000 plastic bottles or 1.8m single-use plastic bags.

Walkways that produce Electricity - Eco-Flats

Cut and Fill is the process of constructing a railway, road or canal whereby the amount of material from cuts roughly matches the amount of fill needed to make nearby embankments, so minimizing the amount of construction labor.

Recycling (methods and ideas)

Public Transportation Services (city management)

"Don't blame us for the road your on, it's your own asphalt."

Asphalt adds to air pollution, especially on hot, sunny days. Yale researchers observed that common road and roofing asphalts produced complex mixtures of organic compounds, including hazardous pollutants, in a range of typical temperature and solar conditions.

Tools - Machinery

Factor e Farm is a socio-technical experiment. It aims to take what civilization has learned about what it means to thrive, and determine whether it is feasible to use abundant local resources to create industrial civilization, up to semiconductor and metal production.

Paper Pot Transplanter (youtube) - 4 Point Seeder (youtube)

A Vehicle Built in Africa, for Africa - Joel Jackson at TEDGlobal 2017 (video and text) Designed an SUV that's rugged enough for long stretches of uneven terrain and affordable enough to be within reach of those who need it most.

Global Village Construction Set is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that enables fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

Hello Tractor Hiring Farmers who have Farming Machinery.

Advanced Farm Tools
Renting Farm Equipment
Machine Tools - Engineering
Professions

Heavy Equipment refers to heavy-duty vehicles, specially designed for executing construction tasks, most frequently ones involving earthwork operations. They are also known as heavy machines, heavy trucks, construction equipment, engineering equipment, heavy vehicles, or heavy hydraulics. They usually comprise five equipment systems: implement, traction, structure, power train, control and information. Heavy equipment functions through the mechanical advantage of a simple machine, the ratio between input force applied and force exerted is multiplied. Some equipment uses hydraulic drives as a primary source of motion.

New Holland Methane Power Tractor (youtube) Methane-Run) Methane-Run T6s a six-cylinder vehicle, which uses only a slightly modified engine to the diesel version and the same drive train, is expected to save on fuel costs by as much as 20 to 40 per cent. Is a six-cylinder vehicle, which uses only a slightly modified engine to the diesel version and the same drive train, is expected to save on fuel costs by as much as 20 to 40 per cent. Prototype produces 80 percent less pollution than a standard diesel tractor and would help fulfill future EU greenhouse gas targets, which are expected to require a 20 percent reduction across Europe by 2020. The tractor carries nine tanks totaling 300 litresf compressed methane, and has the capacity to carry extra gas tanks of compressed methane, and has the capacity to carry extra gas tanks.

Local Motors
Shovel

Scythe is an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or reaping crops.

Cooking Stoves - Cooking - Butcher Knives

Fix it Yourself Guide

List of Agricultural Machinery and Farm Equipment (wiki)

Farming Tools (wiki)

Agricultural Machinery List (PDF)

Agricultural Supply Stores
Beekeeping Tools
Gardening tools
Harvesters
Ploughs
Threshing tools
Broadfork
Captive bolt pistol
Carruca
Cattle prod
Cloche (agriculture)
Dibber
Goad
Hay knife
Kajandu
Laia (tool)
Loy (spade)
Pig scalder
Plough
Row cover
Scythe
Selective inverted sink
Sickle
Tacarpo
Variable Rate Technology
Walle Plough
Weasand clip

Farming Knowledge

Winch is a mechanical device that is used to pull in (wind up) or let out (wind out) or otherwise adjust the "tension" of a rope or wire rope (also called "cable" or "wire cable"). In its simplest form it consists of a spool and attached hand crank. In larger forms, winches stand at the heart of machines as diverse as tow trucks, steam shovels and elevators. The spool can also be called the winch drum. More elaborate designs have gear assemblies and can be powered by electric, hydraulic, pneumatic or internal combustion drives. Some may include a solenoid brake and/or a mechanical brake or ratchet and pawl device that prevents it from unwinding unless the pawl is retracted.

Films about Machines

APHroup Field equipment:Group Field equipment: Baselier 4fk310 rotary ridgerssed for potato ridges as well as carrot rows can be formedused for potato ridges as well as carrot rows can be formed (youtube)
Dewulf GKIIISE - 3-row trailed carrot harvester (youtube)
Farmers in Japan planting rice with rice planting machines (youtube)
Baling and loading small bales | David Brown 885 | Kemper Ballenautomat Express BE 125 (youtube)
Scythe beats a Gas Powered Weed Wacker in Grass Cutting Competition - South West Annual Scythe Festival - June 2010  (youtube) - Grass.
How The Russians Clear The Ways From Snow (youtube)
The Beach Master Skid Steer Beach Cleaner Attachment | Eterra Attachments (youtube)
Oxbo 9120 Raspberry Harvester (youtube)

Design Skills - Tool Base - Wood Working

Textiles - Weaving, Knitting, Sewing - Designing

Rothenberger innovative, technologically demanding pipe tools and machines for lavatory, climate-control, gas and environmental technology.

Meet The Jaw Crusher, A Machine That Can Turn Granite Into Granite Dust (youtube)

Giant Hole Saw in Front of the Lab (youtube)

The Very Real Difference Between A Chinese-Made Bearing And A German-Made One (youtube)

Farm Equipment Auctions
Auction Zip
Iron Planet
Farm Land for Sale 

How Train Tracks are Laid - A seriously incredible machine (youtube)

Making Rope - Registerplate / Register Plate (youtube)

Rivtow Hercules is self loading, self dumping log barge Seaspan 'Phoenix' log barge. The Hercules weighs roughly 5,000 tons by itself and can carry about 15,000 tons of logs, about the equivalent of 700 logging trucks. Water flowing into the tipping tanks, ballast water is first transferred from the starboard side to the port side tipping tanks.

Metal Working

Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large-scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills, processes, and tools.

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. Metallurgy is used to separate metals from their ore. Metallurgy is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to the production of metals, and the engineering of metal components for usage in products for consumers and manufacturers. The production of metals involves the processing of ores to extract the metal they contain, and the mixture of metals, sometimes with other elements, to produce alloys. Metallurgy is distinguished from the craft of metalworking, although metalworking relies on metallurgy, as medicine relies on medical science, for technical advancement. The science of metallurgy is subdivided into chemical metallurgy and physical metallurgy. Metallurgy is subdivided into ferrous metallurgy (also known as black metallurgy) and non-ferrous metallurgy (also known as colored metallurgy). Ferrous metallurgy involves processes and alloys based on iron while non-ferrous metallurgy involves processes and alloys based on other metals. The production of ferrous metals accounts for 95 percent of world metal production. Alchemy.

Extractive Metallurgy is a branch of metallurgical engineering wherein process and methods of extraction of metals from their natural mineral deposits are studied. The field is a materials science, covering all aspects of the types of ore, washing, concentration, separation, chemical processes and extraction of pure metal and their alloying to suit various applications, sometimes for direct use as a finished product, but more often in a form that requires further working to achieve the given properties to suit the applications. The field of ferrous and non-ferrous extractive metallurgy have specialties that are generically grouped into the categories of mineral processing, hydrometallurgy, pyrometallurgy, and electrometallurgy based on the process adopted to extract the metal. Several processes are used for extraction of same metal depending on occurrence and chemical requirements.

How To Make The Mini Metal Foundry (youtube)
Raw Craft with Anthony Bourdain - Episode 1: Borough Furnace (youtube)
Primitive Technology: Forge Blower (youtube)
How to Build a Digitally Controlled Electric Kiln/Foundry (youtube)

The 2 Minute Coin Ring - In Real Time (youtube)
Metal Engineering - Smelt Your Own Ring

Pioneer Axe, The Emerson Stevens Shop was the last axe factory to operate in Oakland (youtube)

Raw Craft with Anthony Bourdain - Episode Four: Bob Kramer master bladesmith, Bob Kramer crafts the perfect kitchen knife from melted meteorite. (youtube).

Chromium steel was first made in ancient Persia. Chromium steel - similar to what we know today as tool steel - was first made in Persia, nearly a millennium earlier than experts previously thought, according to a new study. The team used radiocarbon dating of a number of charcoal pieces retrieved from within a crucible slag and a smithing slag (by-products left over after the metal has been separated) to date the industry to the 11th to 12th century CE.

Foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the Mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools.

Kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects made from clay into pottery, tiles and bricks. Various industries use rotary kilns for pyroprocessing—to calcinate ores, to calcinate limestone to lime for cement, and to transform many other materials.

Hearth is an open recess in a wall at the base of a chimney where a fire can be built. Home symbolized as a part of the fireplace. An area near a fireplace, usually paved and extending out into a room.

Fireplace is an open recess that bends inward in a wall at the base of a chimney where a fire can be built. Fireplace is a structure made of brick, stone or metal designed to contain a fire. Fireplaces are used for the relaxing ambiance they create and for heating a room. Modern fireplaces vary in heat efficiency, depending on the design.

Chimney is an architectural ventilation structure made of masonry, clay or metal that isolates hot toxic exhaust gases or smoke produced by a boiler, stove, furnace, incinerator or fireplace from human living areas. Chimneys are typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion in what is known as the stack, or chimney effect. The space inside a chimney is called the flue. Chimneys are adjacent to large industrial refineries, fossil fuel combustion facilities or part of buildings, steam locomotives and ships.

Refractory material is a material that retains its strength at high temperatures. ASTM C71 defines refractories as "...non-metallic materials having those chemical and physical properties that make them applicable for structures, or as components of systems, that are exposed to environments above 1,000 °F (811 K; 538 °C)." Refractory materials are used in furnaces, kilns, incinerators, and reactors. They are also used to make crucibles and moulds for casting glass and metals and for surfacing flame deflector systems for rocket launch structures. Today, the iron- and steel-industry uses approximately 70% of all refractories produced.

Fire Brick is a block of refractory ceramic material used in lining furnaces, kilns, fireboxes, and fireplaces. A refractory brick is built primarily to withstand high temperature, but will also usually have a low thermal conductivity for greater energy efficiency. Usually dense firebricks are used in applications with extreme mechanical, chemical, or thermal stresses, such as the inside of a wood-fired kiln or a furnace, which is subject to abrasion from wood, fluxing from ash or slag, and high temperatures. In other, less harsh situations, such as in an electric or natural gas fired kiln, more porous bricks, commonly known as "kiln bricks" are a better choice. They are weaker, but they are much lighter, easier to form, and insulate far better than dense bricks. In any case, firebricks should not spall, and their strength should hold up well during rapid temperature changes.

Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a base metal from its ore. This includes production of silver, iron, copper and other base metals from their ores. Smelting makes use of Heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gases or slag and leaving just the metal base behind. The reducing agent is commonly a source of carbon such as coke, or in earlier times charcoal.

Melting is the process whereby Heat changes something from a Solid to a Liquid. Reduce or cause to be reduced from a solid to a liquid state, usually by heating. Become or cause to become soft or liquid. Sublimation.

Furnace is a device used to heat and melt metal ore to remove gangue. The name derives from Latin word fornax, which means oven. The heat energy to fuel a furnace may be supplied directly by fuel combustion, by electricity such as the electric arc furnace, or through induction heating in induction furnaces.

Blast Furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. Blast refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric pressure. In a blast furnace, fuel (coke), ores, and flux (limestone) are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while a hot blast of air (sometimes with oxygen enrichment) is blown into the lower section of the furnace through a series of pipes called tuyeres, so that the chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material falls downward. The end products are usually molten metal and slag phases tapped from the bottom, and waste gases (flue gas) exiting from the top of the furnace. The downward flow of the ore along with the flux in contact with an upflow of hot, carbon monoxide-rich combustion gases is a countercurrent exchange and chemical reaction process. In contrast, air furnaces (such as reverberatory furnaces) are naturally aspirated, usually by the convection of hot gases in a chimney flue. According to this broad definition, bloomeries for iron, blowing houses for tin, and smelt mills for lead would be classified as blast furnaces. However, the term has usually been limited to those used for smelting iron ore to produce pig iron, an intermediate material used in the production of commercial iron and steel, and the shaft furnaces used in combination with sinter plants in base metals smelting.

DIY Metal Casting Furnace (youtube) - Hub Glass 

Forge is to make or shape a metal object by heating it in a fire or furnace and beating or hammering it. Create by hammering. Make something, usually for a specific function. Make out of components, sometimes in an improvising manner. A furnace consisting of a special hearth where metal is heated before shaping. A workplace where metal is worked by heating and hammering.

Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localized compressive forces. The blows are delivered with a hammer or a power hammer or a die. Forging is often classified according to the temperature at which it is performed: cold forging, which is a type of cold working, warm forging, or hot forging, which is a type of hot working. Forged steel is generally stronger and more reliable than castings and plate steel due to the fact that the grain flows of the steel are altered, conforming to the shape of the part. Forging is generally tougher than alternatives and will handle impact better than castings. Forging 3 Whittling Knives from Drill Bits (youtube).

Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting materials are usually metals or various cold setting materials that cure after mixing two or more components together; examples are epoxy, concrete, plaster and clay. Casting is most often used for making complex shapes that would be otherwise difficult or uneconomical to make by other method.

Casting Metalworking means a process, in which liquid metal is poured into a mold, that contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to cool and solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting is most often used for making complex shapes that would be difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods.

Cast Anything You Want In Aluminum Using Styrofoam (youtube)

Pouring Molten Metals into Water. COOL! (Aluminum, Thermite, Lead + More! (youtube)

Molding - Engineering - Chemistry

Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from Latin: ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust. Iron Pillar of Delhi was made approximately 402 CE. Adding carbon to iron to make steel does make it stronger and tougher, up to a point. Then it will get stronger but less tough (ie like cast iron). Carbon strengthens iron by distorting its crystal lattice. This distortion is similar in effect to work hardening.

Steel is an alloy of iron and other elements, primarily carbon, that is widely used in construction and other applications because of its high tensile strength and low cost. Steel's base metal is iron, which is able to take on two crystalline forms (allotropic forms), body centered cubic (BCC) and face centered cubic (FCC), depending on its temperature.

Stainless Steel is a steel alloy, with a minimum of 11% chromium content by mass and a maximum of 1.2% carbon by mass. Stainless steels are most notable for their corrosion resistance, which increases with increasing chromium content. Additions of molybdenum increases corrosion resistance in reducing acids and against pitting attack in chloride solutions. Thus, there are numerous grades of stainless steel with varying chromium and molybdenum contents to suit the environment the alloy must endure. Resistance to corrosion and staining, low maintenance, and familiar luster make stainless steel an ideal material for many applications where both the strength of steel and corrosion resistance are required. Stainless steel is rolled into sheets, plates, bars, wire, and tubing to be used in: cookware, cutlery, surgical instruments, major appliances; construction material in large buildings, such as the Chrysler Building; industrial equipment (for example, in paper mills, chemical plants, water treatment); and storage tanks and tankers for chemicals and food products (for example, chemical tankers and road tankers). Corrosion resistance, the ease with which it can be steam cleaned and sterilized, and lack of need for surface coatings has also influenced the use of stainless steel in commercial kitchens and food processing plants.

Galvanization is the process of applying a protective zinc coating to steel or iron, to prevent rusting. The most common method is hot-dip galvanizing, in which parts are submerged in a bath of molten zinc.

Reynolds Steel utilizes a specially developed martensitic-aging stainless steel alloy that can achieve tensile strength in excess of 2000 MPa, we’ve achieved a strength-to-weight ratio that can take on the world’s best. The resilient ride of steel, very high impact strength (similar to armour plating) and fatigue resistance combine to provide an extraordinary material – 953 maraging stainless steel – that can be used for tubing. Reynolds Technology (wiki).

HY-80 is a high-tensile, high yield strength, low alloy steel. It was developed for use in naval applications, specifically the development of pressure hulls for the US nuclear submarine program and is still currently used in many naval applications. It is valued for its strength to weight ratio. The "HY" steels are designed to possess a high yield strength (strength in resisting permanent plastic deformation). HY-80 is accompanied by HY-100 and HY-130 with each of the 80, 100 and 130 referring to their yield strength in ksi (80,000 psi, 100,000 psi and 130,000 psi). HY-80 and HY-100 are both weldable grades; whereas, the HY-130 is generally considered unweldable. Modern steel manufacturing methods that can precisely control time/temperature during processing of HY steels has made the cost to manufacture more economical. HY-80 is considered to have good corrosion resistance and has good formability to supplement being weldable. Using HY-80 steel requires careful consideration of the welding processes, filler metal selection and joint design to account for microstructure changes, distortion and stress concentration.

Metal is a material (an element, compound, or alloy) that is typically hard, opaque, shiny, and has good electrical and thermal conductivity. Metals are generally malleable—that is, they can be hammered or pressed permanently out of shape without breaking or cracking—as well as fusible (able to be fused or melted) and ductile (able to be drawn out into a thin wire). About 91 of the 118 elements in the periodic table are metals, the others are nonmetals or metalloids. Some elements appear in both metallic and non-metallic forms.

Alloy is a combination of metals or metals combined with one or more other elements. For example, combining the metallic elements gold and copper produces red gold, gold and silver becomes white gold, and silver combined with copper produces sterling silver. Elemental iron, combined with non-metallic carbon or silicon, produces alloys called steel or silicon steel. The resulting mixture forms a substance with properties that often differ from those of the pure metals, such as increased strength or hardness. Unlike other substances that may contain metallic bases but do not behave as metals, such as aluminium oxide (sapphire), beryllium aluminium silicate (emerald) or sodium chloride (salt), an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductility, opaqueness, and luster. Alloys are used in a wide variety of applications, from the steel alloys, used in everything from buildings to automobiles to surgical tools, to exotic titanium-alloys used in the aerospace industry, to beryllium-copper alloys for non-sparking tools. In some cases, a combination of metals may reduce the overall cost of the material while preserving important properties. In other cases, the combination of metals imparts synergistic properties to the constituent metal elements such as corrosion resistance or mechanical strength. Examples of alloys are steel, solder, brass, pewter, duralumin, bronze and amalgams. An alloy may be a solid solution of metal elements (a single phase, where all metallic grains (crystals) are of the same composition) or a mixture of metallic phases (two or more solutions, forming a microstructure of different crystals within the metal). Intermetallic compounds are alloys with a defined stoichiometry and crystal structure. Zintl phases are also sometimes considered alloys depending on bond types (see Van Arkel–Ketelaar triangle for information on classifying bonding in binary compounds). Alloys are defined by a metallic bonding character. The alloy constituents are usually measured by mass percentage for practical applications, and in atomic fraction for basic science studies. Alloys are usually classified as substitutional or interstitial alloys, depending on the atomic arrangement that forms the alloy. They can be further classified as homogeneous (consisting of a single phase), or heterogeneous (consisting of two or more phases) or intermetallic.

Tungsten Carbide is a chemical compound (specifically, a carbide) containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms. In its most basic form, tungsten carbide is a fine gray powder, but it can be pressed and formed into shapes for use in industrial machinery, cutting tools, abrasives, armor-piercing rounds, other tools and instruments, and jewelry. Tungsten carbide is
approximately two times stiffer than steel, with a Young's modulus of approximately 530–700 GPa (77,000 to 102,000 ksi), and is double the density of steel—nearly midway between that of lead and gold. It is comparable with corundum (α-Al 2O3) in hardness and can only be polished and finished with abrasives of superior hardness such as cubic boron nitride and diamond powder, wheels, and compounds.

Damascus Steel was the forged steel comprising the blades of swords smithed in the Near East from ingots of wootz steel imported from India and Sri Lanka. These swords are characterized by distinctive patterns of banding and mottling reminiscent of flowing water. Such blades were reputed to be tough, resistant to shattering, and capable of being honed to a sharp, resilient edge. Knives (eating utensils).

Ulfberht Swords are a group of medieval swords found in Europe, dated to the 9th to 11th. Viking Sword (wiki)

Rear Earth Elements - Graphene (nano technology)

Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12% tin and often with the addition of other metals (such as aluminium, manganese, nickel or zinc) and sometimes non-metals or metalloids such as arsenic, phosphorus or silicon. These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability.

Copper is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a reddish-orange color. Copper is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, and as a constituent of various metal alloys, such as sterling silver used in jewelry, cupronickel used to make marine hardware and coins, and constantan used in strain gauges and thermocouples for temperature measurement. First source of the metal to be used by humans, ca. 8,000 BC. It was the first metal to be smelted from its ore, ca. 5,000 BC. The first metal to be cast into a shape in a mold, ca. 4,000 BC and the first metal to be purposefully alloyed with another metal, tin, to create bronze, ca. 3,500 BC. Atomic number 29, Protons: 29 - Neutrons: 35 - Electrons per shell 2, 8, 18, 1. Anti-Microbial

Aluminium is a silvery-white, soft, nonmagnetic, ductile metal in the boron group. By mass, aluminium makes up about 8% of the Earth's crust; it is the third most abundant element after oxygen and silicon and the most abundant metal in the crust, though it is less common in the mantle below. Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals. The chief ore of aluminium is bauxite. Aluminium is remarkable for the metal's low density and its ability to resist corrosion through the phenomenon of passivation. Aluminium and its alloys are vital to the aerospace industry and important in transportation and building industries, such as building facades and window frames. The oxides and sulfates are the most useful compounds of aluminium. Despite its prevalence in the environment, no known form of life uses aluminium salts metabolically, but aluminium is well tolerated by plants and animals. Because of these salts' abundance, the potential for a biological role for them is of continuing interest, and studies continue. Protons: 13 - Neutrons: 14 - Electrons per shell 2, 8, 3.

Metal Foam is a cellular structure consisting of a solid metal (frequently aluminium) with gas-filled pores comprising a large portion of the volume. The pores can be sealed (closed-cell foam) or interconnected (open-cell foam). The defining characteristic of metal foams is a high porosity: typically only 5–25% of the volume is the base metal, making these ultralight materials. The strength of the material is due to the square-cube law. Metallic foams typically retain some physical properties of their base material. Foam made from non-flammable metal remains non-flammable and can generally be recycled as the base material. Its coefficient of thermal expansion is similar while thermal conductivity is likely reduced. Although many patents describe feasible topological structures, constitutive materials, and production methods, metal foams cannot be considered a commodity and relatively few commercial producers are available worldwide.

Slag is the glass-like by-product left over after a desired metal has been separated (i.e., smelted) from its raw ore. Slag is usually a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. However, slags can contain metal sulfides and elemental metals.

Blacksmith is a metal-smith who creates objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. whitesmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, grilles, railings, light fixtures, furniture, sculpture, tools, agricultural implements, decorative and religious items and cooking utensils.

Boilermaker is a trained craftsman who produces steel fabrications from plates and tubes. The name originated from craftsmen who would fabricate boilers, but they may work on projects as diverse as bridges to blast furnaces to the construction of mining equipment.

Pipefitter is a tradesperson who installs, assembles, fabricates, maintains and repairs mechanical piping systems. Typical industrial process pipe is under high pressure, which requires metals such as carbon steel, stainless steel, and many different alloy metals fused together through precise cutting, threading, grooving (Victaulic), bending and welding. A Plumber concentrates on lower pressure piping systems for sewage and potable water (tap water), in the industrial, commercial, institutional, or residential atmosphere. Utility piping typically consists of copper, PVC, CPVC, polyethylene, and galvanized pipe, which is typically glued, soldered, or threaded. Other types of piping systems include steam, ventilation, hydraulics, chemicals, fuel, and oil.

Welder

Anvil is a block with a hard surface on which another object is struck. The block is as massive as it is practical, because the higher the inertia of the anvil, the more efficiently it causes the energy of the striking tool to be transferred to the work piece. On a quality anvil the smith's hammer should rebound with almost as much energy as the smith puts into the downward stroke, ultimately making the smith's job easier and less physically strenuous. In most cases the anvil is used as a forging tool. Before the advent of modern welding technology, it was a primary tool of metal workers.

Metalworking Tools (wiki) - Machinist Tools

Annealing in metallurgy and materials science, is a heat treatment that alters the physical and sometimes chemical properties of a material to increase its ductility and reduce its hardness, making it more workable. It involves heating a material to above its recrystallization temperature, maintaining a suitable temperature, and then cooling.

Tempering is a process of heat treating, which is used to increase the toughness of iron-based alloys. Tempering is usually performed after hardening, to reduce some of the excess hardness, and is done by heating the metal to some temperature below the critical point for a certain period of time, then allowing it to cool in still air. The exact temperature determines the amount of hardness removed, and depends on both the specific composition of the alloy and on the desired properties in the finished product. For instance, very hard tools are often tempered at low temperatures, while springs are tempered to much higher temperatures. Temper is to bring to a desired consistency, texture, or hardness by a process of gradually heating and cooling. The elasticity and hardness of a metal object; its ability to absorb considerable energy before cracking. Harden by reheating and cooling in oil.

Heat Treating is a group of industrial and metalworking processes used to alter the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material. The most common application is metallurgical. Heat treatments are also used in the manufacture of many other materials, such as glass. Heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperatures, to achieve a desired result such as hardening or softening of a material. Heat treatment techniques include annealing, case hardening, precipitation strengthening, tempering, normalizing and quenching.

Quenching is the rapid cooling of a workpiece to obtain certain material properties. A type of heat treating, quenching prevents undesired low-temperature processes, such as phase transformations, from occurring. It does this by reducing the window of time during which these undesired reactions are both thermodynamically favorable, and kinetically accessible; for instance, quenching can reduce the crystal grain size of both metallic and plastic materials, increasing their hardness.

Hardening is a metallurgical and metalworking process used to increase the hardness of a metal. The hardness of a metal is directly proportional to the uniaxial yield stress at the location of the imposed strain. A harder metal will have a higher resistance to plastic deformation than a less hard metal.

Alloy retains its memory at high temperatures. Even after the hundredth time the material returns to its original shape when heated.

Grinding is an abrasive machining process that uses a grinding wheel as the cutting tool. A wide variety of machines are used for grinding: Hand-cranked knife-sharpening stones (grindstones). Handheld power tools such as angle grinders and die grinders. Various kinds of expensive industrial machine tools called grinding machines. Bench grinders often found in residential garages and basements.

Sander is a power tool used to smooth surfaces by abrasion with sandpaper. Sanders have a means to attach the sandpaper and a mechanism to move it rapidly contained within a housing with means to hand-hold it or fix it to a workbench.

Polishing and buffing are finishing processes for smoothing a workpiece's surface using an abrasive and a work wheel or a leather strop. Technically polishing refers to processes that use an abrasive that is glued to the work wheel, while buffing uses a loose abrasive applied to the work wheel. Polishing is a more aggressive process while buffing is less harsh, which leads to a smoother, brighter finish. A common misconception is that a polished surface has a mirror bright finish, however most mirror bright finishes are actually buffed.

How to Properly Sharpen a Knife with a Master Sharpener (youtube)

SAE Steel Grades (wiki) = Steel bar, Round bar, Carbon steel, Alloy steel, Bearing steel, Spring steel, Gear steel, Special steel, Structural steel, Steel billet.

Next-Gen Steel under the Microscope. Latest work could overcome the problem of hydrogen alloy embrittlement that has led to catastrophic failures in major engineering and building projects. is the process by which metals such as steel become brittle and fracture due to the introduction and subsequent diffusion of hydrogen into the metal. This is often a result of accidental introduction of hydrogen during forming and finishing operations.

Professions - Wood Working

Crafted 2015 (video aired: 06/16/2015 | 24 min.
Acclaimed filmmaker Morgan Spurlock captures the struggles and triumphs of five modern artisans who vary by trade but share a passion to create. Discover their worlds and be inspired by this vibrant, honest documentary. Commissioned by Häagen-Dazs. 

How To Build A Primitive Drill Out Of Sticks, Stone And Rope (youtube)  Cord Drill / Pump Drill - Survival Tips.

Welder Skills

Weld components in flat, vertical, or overhead positions. Operate safety equipment and use safe work habits. Lay out, position, align, and secure parts and assemblies prior to assembly, using straightedges, combination squares, calipers, and rulers.

Welding Procedure Specification
Welder Certification

Examine workpieces for defects and measure workpieces with straightedges or templates to ensure conformance with specifications. Recognize, set up, and operate hand and power tools common to the welding trade, such as shielded metal arc and gas metal arc welding equipment. Weld separately or in combination, using aluminum, stainless steel, cast iron, and other alloys. Clamp, hold, tack-weld, heat-bend, grind, or bolt component parts to obtain required configurations and positions for welding. Select and install torches, torch tips, filler rods, and flux, according to welding chart specifications or types and thicknesses of metals. Ignite torches or start power supplies and strike arcs by touching electrodes to metals being welded, completing electrical circuits. Connect and turn regulator valves to activate and adjust gas flow and pressure so that desired flames are obtained.

Welding is a fabrication or sculptural process that joins materials, usually metals or thermoplastics, by causing fusion, which is distinct from lower temperature metal-joining techniques such as brazing and soldering, which do not melt the base metal. In addition to melting the base metal, a filler material is often added to the joint to form a pool of molten material (the weld pool) that cools to form a joint that can be as strong, or even stronger, than the base material. Pressure may also be used in conjunction with heat, or by itself, to produce a weld.

Welder or lit operator is a tradesperson who specializes in fusing materials together. The term welder refers to the operator, the machine is referred to as the welding power supply. The materials to be joined can be metals (such as steel, aluminum, brass, stainless steel etc.) or varieties of plastic or polymer. Welders typically have to have good dexterity and attention to detail, as well as some technical knowledge about the materials being joined and best practices in the field.

Welding Processes List (wiki) - Welding Codes List (wiki) - Gas Metal Arc Welding (wiki)

Metal Working

Bondic Plastic Welder

How To Make A Clock In The Home Machine Shop - Part 16 - Making The Motion Work And Hands (youtube)

EROVR - A Transformable Dolly, Wagon, & Cart

Chicken Wire being made Motion Gif

Friction Welding is a solid-state welding process that generates heat through mechanical friction between workpieces in relative motion to one another, with the addition of a lateral force called "upset" to plastically displace and fuse the materials. Because no melting occurs, friction welding is not a fusion welding process in the traditional sense, but more of a forge welding technique. Friction welding is used with metals and thermoplastics in a wide variety of aviation and automotive applications.

Cold Welding is a solid-state welding process in which joining takes place without fusion/heating at the interface of the two parts to be welded. Unlike in the fusion-welding processes, no liquid or molten phase is present in the joint. Cold welding was first recognized as a general materials phenomenon in the 1940s. It was then discovered that two clean, flat surfaces of similar metal would strongly adhere if brought into contact under vacuum. Newly discovered micro- and nano-scale cold welding has already shown great potential in the latest nanofabrication processes. The reason for this unexpected behavior is that when the atoms in contact are all of the same kind, there is no way for the atoms to “know” that they are in different pieces of copper. When there are other atoms, in the oxides and greases and more complicated thin surface layers of contaminants in between, the atoms “know” when they are not on the same part.

Distilling

Distill is remove impurities from, increase the concentration of, and separate through the process of distillation. Distilling.

Distillation is a process of separating the component or substances from a liquid mixture by selective Evaporation and condensation. Distillation may result in essentially complete separation (nearly pure components), or it may be a partial separation that increases the concentration of selected components of the mixture. In either case the process exploits differences in the volatility of the mixture's components. In industrial chemistry, distillation is a unit operation of practically universal importance, but it is a physical separation process and not a chemical reaction.

Sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas phase without passing through the intermediate liquid phase. Sublimation is an endothermic phase transition that occurs at temperatures and pressures below a substance's triple point in its phase diagram. The reverse process of sublimation is deposition or desublimation, in which a substance passes directly from a gas to a solid phase. Sublimation has also been used as a generic term to describe a solid-to-gas transition (sublimation) followed by a gas-to-solid transition (deposition). Evaporation.

Condense is to undergo condensation and change from a gaseous to a liquid state and fall in drops. Cause a gas or vapor to change into a liquid. Become more compact or concentrated.

How to Make a Homemade Distillery (youtube)

Microdistillery is a small, often boutique-style distillery established to produce beverage grade spirit alcohol in relatively small quantities, usually done in single batches (as opposed to larger distillers' continuous distilling process).

Alchema is a smart device and mobile App platform that provides customers with a hassle-free solution for making creative hard ciders, meads, wines, and other alcoholic brews.

Bootlegging is the illegal manufacture, distribution, or sale of goods, especially alcohol or recordings. Rum-Running or bootlegging is the illegal business of transporting alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling usually takes place to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws within a particular jurisdiction. Drinking Alcohol Dangers.

Four Major Steps to Making Spirits

Sourcing the initial ingredient, which is a component of a mixture or compound.

Fermenting the sourced material (that is, adding yeast which breaks down the sourced material to create alcohol). Ending product is a drink with 4-15% alcohol.

Distilling the fermented wash from step 2 (that is, boiling the liquid to separate out the alcohol and increase the alcohol content to >40% alcohol). Distilling is a required step to make spirits. Wine and beer are not distilled; hence are not called spirits and have lower alcoholic content than spirits.

Aging of the distilled spirit. This is an optional step, but storing the spirit in oak barrels will add some flavor and gold/red/yellowish coloring. For example, whether or not a Tequila was stored in oak barrels determines whether the Tequila is white (not stored in oak barrels), or gold (was stored in oak barrels). This is also how whiskey gets much of it's color and flavor.

Additionally, flavoring drinks at various steps may in turn make different spirits (gin is vodka that has been flavored with juniper berries during distillation). Mixing different drinks also results in new drinks (for example, wine + brandy = vermouth). Drinks like Wine and Beer that are not spirits and do not need distilling.

Spirits

Whiskey: Grains (malted barley, wheat, corn) -> fermentation -> distillation -> aging. Note that whiskey is basically made by distilling beer. Aging in oak barrels is what gives whiskey the distinct color. Prior to storage, the distilled liquid is clear. Some whiskey tends to be very smokey/peaty in flavor. This is because the grain was dried in a peat powered kiln prior to being fermented, and the smoke from the peat imparts flavor. Islay scotch tends to have an extremely strong smokey flavor and smell.

Scotch is any whiskey made in Scotland (usually uses malted barley, though may also use wheat and rye). Bourbon is an American whiskey made specifically from corn.

Brandy: Grapes (sourcing) -> fermentation -> distilling. Basically distilled wine. Cognac is a variety of brandy from the Cognac region in France.

Rum: Sugarcane or Molasses -> fermentation -> distilling. Like you'd expect out of something made from sugarcane or molasses, rum tends to be on the sweeter side. Rum is made by fermenting and distilling cane sugar.

Vodka: Pretty much anything (grapes, grains, potatoes) -> fermentation-> distilling. In making vodka, the liquid is distilled to 90%+ alcohol to remove most taste and aromas of the source material. It is then diluted with water to 40% alcohol.

Tequila: Blue Agave plant -> fermentation -> distillation -> aging. White/silver tequila has not been aged in oak barrels. Gold tequila is aged in oak barrels (hence the color).

Gin: Vodka with juniper berries added during distillation. Gin, like the others made with grain, starts life as a beer, which is then distilled to a high proof like vodka. ...Gin is meant to be mixed, There are more classic cocktails made with gin than with any other spirit.

Liqueur or cordials (not liquor, which is simply another word for spirits) is a generic term for a spirit with added sugar (or some other sweetener) and flavored with fruit, cream, herbs, spices, flowers or nuts. Examples of common liqueurs include Fireball, Fernet-Branca, and Jagermeister. Schnapps.

Cognac is produced by twice distilling white wines produced in any of the designated growing regions. After the grapes are pressed, the juice is left to ferment for 2–3 weeks, with the region's native, wild yeasts converting the sugar into alcohol; neither sugar nor sulfur may be added. At this point, the resulting wine is about 7 to 8% alcohol. Distillation takes place in traditionally shaped Charentais copper alembic stills, the design and dimensions of which are also legally controlled. Two distillations must be carried out; the resulting eau de vie is a colourless spirit of about 70% alcohol. Once distillation is complete, it must be aged in Limousin oak casks for at least two years before it can be sold to the public. It is typically put into casks at an alcohol by volume strength around 70%. As the cognac interacts with the oak barrel and the air, it evaporates at the rate of about 3% each year, slowly losing both alcohol and water. This phenomenon is called locally la part des anges, or "the angels' share". When more than ten years pass in the oak barrel, the cognac's alcohol content decreases to 40% in volume. The cognac is then transferred to "large glass bottles called bonbonnes", then stored for future "blending." Since oak barrels stop contributing to flavor after four or five decades, longer aging periods may not be beneficial. The white wine used in making cognac is very dry, acidic, and thin. Though it has been characterized as "virtually undrinkable", it is excellent for distillation and aging. It may be made only from a strict list of grape varieties. The age of the cognac is calculated as that of the youngest component used in the blend. The blend is usually of different ages and (in the case of the larger and more commercial producers) from different local areas. This blending, or marriage, of different eaux de vie is important to obtain a complexity of flavours absent from an eau de vie from a single distillery or vineyard. Each cognac house has a master taster (maître de chai), who is responsible for blending the spirits, so that cognac produced by a company will have a consistent house style and quality. In this respect, it is similar to the process of blending whisky or non-vintage Champagne to achieve a consistent brand flavor.

Non-Sprits - No Distillation Needed

Beer: Grains (barley, wheat, corn) -> fermentation "Hops" are added for bitter flavoring.

Wine: Grapes (sourcing) -> fermentation -> aging. Whether or not grape skin was present during fermentation determines whether the wine is a white wine (grape juice without skin was fermented), or a red wine (skin was included during fermentation). Carbonated wine is called sparkling wine. Carbonated wine specifically from the Champagne region of France is called Champagne.