Page 10 RAIN January 1980 (...__M_O_N_EY_ _) • Economic Concentration, John M. Blair, 1972, $18.95 from: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 757 Third Ave. New York, NY 10017 The increase of corporate economic concen-• tration in this country in spite of repeated co~gressional efforts at trust-busting and regulation of corporate mergers has led to a sense of futility and frustration as the effects of that concentration have become more visible. The detailed. loQk Blair gives us of the forces leading to that centralization and those opposing it; how the different kinds of concentration work and affect us; the role of government in tipping the scales one way or the other; the history of anti-trust regulation; and the alternative of various kinds of public ownership opens a new level of understanding what needs to be done and how to go about it. The book is based in large part on the comprehensive congfessional hearings on economic concentration carried out in the early '60s under the leadership of Estes Kef;mver. Invalua le to anyone interested in better rules for our economic games:-Tom Bender ( SOLAR ) A Solar Water Heater Workshop Manual, 2nd Editim;t, by Ecotope Group, 1979, 82 pp., $5.00 from: Ecotope Group 2332 East Madison Seattle, WA 98112 Thermosiphon solar hot water systems are simpler, cheaper alternatives to active solar technology. According to Ecotope, when properly designed and installed by the ho:- meowner, these systems provide 3/4 of the energy supplied by the highest quality commercial solar equipment and cost 1/2 to 2/3 less. If you want to install your own thermosiphon system, then try this manual. All aspects of collector construction, storage tank insulation, and freeze protection are discussed. Additional information on site evaluation, plumbing and building codes is provided. New material in this revised edition is offered on hot water conservation, active systems, a~d solar ~orkshop organization. Even if you prefer active over passive systems, or are not a do-it-yourself~r, this book will help you understand concepts important for the selection of quality commercial solar equipment and a; competent installation contractor -Jeff Paine -The Waste-Not House _ The Integral Urban.House, The Farallones Institute, 1979, $12.95 from: Sierra Club Books 530 Bush Street , San Francisco, CA 94108 The house that this book is based ~n is like a visit td Alice's Wonderland. All our normal ways of doing things have bt;en changed with some magic cunning to Do More. Sidewalks are redesigned to purify urban air. The front lawn feeds rabbits instead of lawnmow- _ers. The neighbor's flies are trapped to feed chickens. The fences support fruit trees and mulberry bushes to feed silkworms to make stuffing for insulated clothes. Not even wastes are wasted. The sewer is cut off and its contents hoarded for fertilizing and watering the garden. All the details are in this book. ,Don't get fooled, though. The book starts out with all sorts of ecological and design theory and decision-making processes. But as usual, that stuff came about as much after the fact as before. The house came about from a simple "lwonder ho'w self-reliant a house in the city can be!" Then followed a sifting through the mental debris of university professors, Californiafoppies and all t~e strange and wonderful people who wander through Berkeley for far-out ideas that might work. That they do work, and generally work well, is due to the people in the Farallones Institute who carefully sifted , out the good ideas and ~ade them work. . The magic of the house itself comes through somewhat diffused in the book, sandwiched as it is among 480 pages of charts, tables, Storing Kitchen Garbage in Sawduat At the Integral U~ban House in Berkeley, we devised the following method for handling table scraps and other food-related wastes from the kitchen: 1. During preparation for and clean-up after meals, the materials for the compost are left in a collander in the sink to .drain off excess liquid. 2. Whenever the collander is full, it is empti.ed into a small five-gallon ' bucket that has a tight-fitting lid. 3. Each addition of kitchen waste to the five-gallon bucket is followed by a thick (one- to two-inch) layer of sawdust, dipped out of an adjacent sawdust-holding bucket..(See drawing.) 4. Periodically, the sawdust dipper is pressed down upon the surface of the material in the bucket, compacting it evenly. If necessary, more sawdust is added to keep smells from •leaking out. 5. When the bucket is almost full, it is topped with an extra inch or so of sawdust, covered with its lid, and moved to a storage·spot outside the kitchen. An empty bucket is brought. in to take its place. When all the buckets are full, it is time to make another compost pile. 6. Once every couple of months, the sawdust bucket is hauled to a nearby cabinet shop (or other sawdust source) for refilling. If you use your own urin~for nitrogen fertilizer in your garden, you save energy used in the production of synthetic fertilizer equivalent to the amount of food-energy calories you consume in an entire month! A 180-pound man who produces 1.5 quarts of urine each day, over a year's time excretes 12.25 pounds of nitrogen. At an application rate equivalent to 300 pounds of nitrogen per acre, which is comparable to the rates applied on farms, one man's,annual production is sufficie,:zt to fertilize over 2000 square feet of vegetable garden. If the value of 12.25 pounds of nitrogen is computed at the cost per pound of bloodmeal, which is $3.50, then a man's annual nitrogen production is worth $43.75. A'25-pound bag of ammonium sulfate, at 21 percent nitrogen (5.25 pounds of nitrogen), consumes 42,000 kilocalories in the production of nitrogen. That is equivalent to the amount of food-energy calories consumed by an average adult male during an entire two-week period. ~--,I,...__ ------11 ...,__~ --c
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