FiveBudgets
Text description
A diagram with the homestead in the center and five budgets around it: energy, measured in kilowatt-hours per day; water, in gallons per day; heat, in BTU or kilowatt-hours per season; food, in pounds and calories; and money and time, in dollars and hours. Arrows show how they connect: energy pumps and treats water, energy can make heat with a heat pump, water grows food through irrigation, and food you grow saves or earns money. Money and time pay for and run all of the others.
HeatFlowSection
Text description
A cross-section of a small insulated house on a cold night, inside about 68 °F (20 °C) and outside about 20 °F (minus 7 °C). Heat flows out by conduction through the insulated walls, the ceiling insulation and the floor. Air leaks: warm air escapes through gaps near the ceiling while cold air is drawn in through gaps near the floor, which is called the stack effect. Radiation: the window loses heat toward the cold night sky. On a sunny day, sunlight through the south window adds heat back.
HomesteadSection
Text description
A cutaway of a small homestead. Sunlight falls on a solar array on the south roof slope, and power flows down to a battery cabinet inside. Rain runs off the roof into a gutter and a storage tank beside the house, and piped water returns to the house. The walls, roof and floor are insulated. To the south are a compost bin and raised garden beds, and to the north a woodlot.
SunAngles
Text description
A section through a south-facing wall with a window and a roof overhang. The high summer noon sun, about 73 degrees above the horizon at 40 degrees north latitude, is blocked by the overhang, so the window is in shade. The low winter noon sun, about 27 degrees above the horizon, passes under the overhang, through the window and deep into the room, where it lands on a concrete floor that stores the heat as thermal mass. North is to the left, south to the right.