100-Year-Old Way to Filter #Rainwater in a Barrel

by Linda Holliday
February 25, 2015

"During our boiling, broiling, blistering summer of 2012 here in the Missouri Ozarks, water was a topic of conversation wherever we went. Creeks and ponds dried up (some never recovered) and the water table dropped, forcing a few neighbors to have their well pumps lowered or to even have deeper wells drilled.

"Many folks shared memories of rain barrels, cisterns, hand pumps and drawing water with a well bucket as a child, usually on grandpa and grandma’s farm. Some said they’d never want to rely again on those old-time methods of getting water. But, at least they knew how it was done.

"It seems we have lost much practical knowledge in the last 50 or so years because we thought we’d never need it again. Now we are scrambling to relearn those simple know-hows.

"A tattered, 4-inch thick, 1909 book I happily secured for $8 in a thrift store reveals, among umpteen-thousand other every-day skills, how to make homemade water filters. The instructions in 'Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis’s Cookbook' are quite basic as everyone had a rain barrel back then and presumably knew how to clean the water. Now, 104 years later, I am thankful the authors had the foresight to preserve their knowledge for us, and pointed out that rainwater collected in barrels from a roof is a necessity in some locations, but also is best for laundry and 'often more wholesome for drinking purposes than hard water.' "

Learn more:
https://www.askaprepper.com/way-filter-rainwater-barrel/

#SolarPunkSunday #WaterFiltration #Rainwater #RainwaterCollection #WaterIsLife #WaterSystems #OldSchoolTechnology #NeoLuddite #OldWays

#Germany is using heated #bricks to replace gas-fired industrial boilers

Michelle Lewis | Jan 19 2026

"At 100 megawatt‑hours (MWh), the Brunsbüttel system is scheduled to come online by the end of 2026. It will be tied with the 100 MWh Rondo heat battery that went into operation in California in October as the largest industrial heat battery in the world. Covestro’s project is backed by Breakthrough Energy Catalyst and the European Investment Bank.

[...]

"The underlying technology is deceptively simple. Rondo’s heat battery uses bricks – a proven heat‑storage medium that’s been used in steelmaking for centuries – paired with modern automation and controls. Electricity heats the bricks; the stored heat runs a conventional boiler; and the system produces emission‑free steam using electricity from #renewable sources."

Read more:
https://electrek.co/2026/01/19/germany-is-using-heated-bricks-to-replace-gas-fired-industrial-boilers/

#SolarPunkSunday #OldSchoolTechnology #NewSchoolTechnology #HeatBatteries #HeatStorage #RenewablesNow

So, after my discussion with @BrambleBearGrrrauwling about keeping cool earlier this week, I was motivated to get around to editing the segments in #TudorMonasteryFarm that involved how Tudor-era household dairies kept cool in the heat (and how they made cheese without refrigeration). CW - video contains sheep's milk and dairy cheese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnafFliVkkM

#SolarPunkSunday #KeepingCool #AncientTechnology #History #Histodon #Dairies #OldSchoolTechnology #TudorTechnology

One of my favorite things to do with friends is to go to the arcade and play pinball (and skeeball) -- games I've enjoyed since I was a kid. I prefer old school games over video games, and it makes me happy when I find out about folks who fix up old pinball machines and other mechanical games.

Meet the man keeping hope, and 70-year-old pinball machines, alive

Steve Young's passion built a business that keeps historic tables running.

Tim Stevens – Jan 6, 2025

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/meet-the-man-keeping-hope-and-70-year-old-pinball-machines-alive/
#PinBall #ArcadeGames #MechanicalGames #RightToRepair #FixIt #OldSchoolTechnology

Why Nothing Works Anymore

#Technology has its own purposes.

Ian Bogost, February 23, 2017

"The contemporary public restroom offers an example. Infrared-sensor flush toilets, fixtures, and towel-dispensers are sometimes endorsed on ecological grounds—they are said to save resources by regulating them. But thanks to their overzealous sensors, these toilets increase water or paper consumption substantially. Toilets flush three times instead of one. Faucets open at full-blast. Towel dispensers mete out papers so miserly that people take more than they need. Instead of saving resources, these apparatuses mostly save labor and management costs. When a toilet flushes incessantly, or when a faucet shuts off on its own, or when a towel dispenser discharges only six inches of paper when a hand waves under it, it reduces the need for human workers to oversee, clean, and supply the restroom.

"Given its connection to the hollowing-out of labor in the name of efficiency, automation is most often lamented for its inhumanity, a common grievance of bureaucracy. Take the interactive voice response (#IVR) telephone system. When calling a bank or a retailer or a utility for service, the IVR robot offers recordings and automated service options to reduce the need for customer service agents—or to discourage customers from seeking them in the first place.

"Once decoupled from their economic motivations, devices like automatic-flush toilets acclimate their users to apparatuses that don’t serve users well in order that they might serve other actors, among them corporations and the sphere of technology itself. In so doing, they make that uncertainty feel normal.

"It’s a fact most easily noticed when using old-world gadgets. To flush a toilet or open a faucet by hand offers almost wanton pleasure given how rare it has become. A local eatery near me whose interior design invokes the 1930s features a bathroom with a white steel crank-roll paper towel dispenser. When spun on its ungeared mechanism, an analogous, glorious measure of towel appears directly and immediately, as if sent from heaven."

Read more:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-nothing-works-anymore?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
#OldSchoolTechnology #Gears #Steampunk #Luddite #BuiltToLast #AI #SmartAppliances #Waste #PlannedObselence #NotSoSmartTechnology