The report is based on the Program for Research and Development in Appropriate Technologies 2009/2010 (attached appendix)

Light earth composite sandwich core panel construction

I have chosen a mix of clay and pine needles as our light earth mix (both very common materials).  The pine needles are coated with sufficient clay ( in the form of a well prepared slurry) to bind them together  -  but not too much so as to retain lots of air pockets and hence insulation.  The mix is flame proof (five minutes under a gas flame does not carry a flame once the gas flame is removed).  
The light earth mix is placed into a  ‘sandwhich’ wooden frame  with two spaced vertical members and two spaced horizontal members both at 600mm centres.   This framing allows the light earth mix to fill the spaces between the framing members and hence binding the light earth into the frame.
The building construction will be done either with 2.4m x 1.2m construction panels (100 thick prepared horizontally on the ground and allowed to dry) or continuous runs built ‘in situ’.  In both cases the walls will be designed as non-load bearing and will be braced wth steel,straps (although there is considerable load bearing capacity and bracing strength which needs to be further tested) Under these condition we only required to test face loading strength which can be done easily without any complicated equipment, and an engineers report attached. We are about to produce two full sized panels to test under the supervision of Mike Collins (volunteer) a registered engineer who has many years experience with testing building materials for govt research institutions.

Annualised Geo-Solar  (AGS) heat storage

Mainly need to compile existing reasearch, plenty done on this.  Still to decide on exact materials to use for subsurface insulation and water membrane, need to do a bit more research on this

Solar/wood fueled heating for space heating/hot water/food drying/cooking/cooling and AGS

Use of rocket stoves  for multiple uses (as above) including how we can use them for long burning application applications
I have found a volunteer who has considerable experience in heat engineering (Karl Hartman).  After discussion with Karl, I have decided that we need to have  two major applications
1)    Those that  need quick  heat. (cooking,  oven, small water heaters)
2)    Those that need stored heat (space heating  and large water cylinders for radiators/driers, hot tubs)
And that we are best to keep the two seperate.  I will concentrate on the first catergory for now, and developing a simple manifold and valves for directing heat flows into different uses.
We have tested one rocket stove using a single piece in situ building technique, this has worked well, although the material immediately around the combustion chamber is breaking up and will need to be ‘rebored’ and filled with another material.  We have decided to make  bricks and fire these and then construct the rocket stove. We understand that controlled conditions for firing will give us a better material.

Charcoal production and traditional asian charcoal burners

We have a design for charcoal making which we will trial soon

Low cost DIY  composting and biogas toilets and wastewater recycling systems

We have just constructed two prototype greywater treatment systems, one attached to cottage, the other to outdoor eating area.  We will test these over next year.
We are about to construct a small composting toilet system and trial over the next year
DYI high quality water filters
More research to do yet
Food coolers and cool storage
We are about to construct a prototype food cooler system
Hand powered washing machines
Present system is being improved by a volunteer
Common grinding/food preparation machines/facilities for self sufficiency
No plans to do anything at present
Biogas and Alcohol fuel production    
No plans to do anything at present

Greenhouses

No plans to do anything at present

Swales and Yeomans Keyline Systems

I have made contact with two practioneers in Australia, and I have been learning more from them
I have been offerred $5000 worth of air travel, to do research,  by a friend (who won it as a prize, and doesn’t want to use it). I intend to travel to Australia and spend time investigating the systems further.

Community Land Trusts

I am intending to do more research on this after we come back from our land hunting trip in the South Island (November)   I may use the air travel to visit several CLT’s  in UK and USA.  I will decide on this in December

Bob Corker,   29th October  2009