SB: Chinese Water Torture

[Robert W Tom <archilogic@juno.com>]

NiHao YakWoman ?

Your weekly reports from China are much appreciated and
they have been forwarded to the SB List as I'm sure
they too would appreciate hearing "the latest".

I've not been including the JPG images because they would
consume quite a lot of bandwidth and there may be some people
whose mailboxes could be inadvertantly overloaded by them.
Perhaps what I could do is put up the images at something like
the  Sony Image Station website so that Listmembers could go there
to view the pix if so desired, but I wouldn't do that without
clearing it with you first. Of course.

But that's not why I'm writing.

The issue of your underwear caught my interest. 
No, it's not what you're thinking. I'm not a women's
underwear fetishist.

To be specific, you  mentioned that hot water (for things 
like washing your skivvies) was available only twice a week.

I'm wondering what we (ie those of us here in the Effluent
West who seldom give the issue of hot water availabilty even
a moment's thought) might be able to do to help improve the
situation ?

We *all* know (right?) that once a home is well-insulated 
(here in the EffluWest), one of the major energy loads is for 
domestic hot water heating. One would gather that the same
may be the case in China eventually once they aquire a taste
for cushy western-style things like hot water on demand so 
it seems only natural that all of the LernerDesigned SB houses 
in China might include a DHWH system which will utilise a 
renewables-sourced method to heat , or at the very least, 
preheat the water.

Clearly the system should be low-tech and inexpensive, possibly
something like a solar batch heater in the upper regions of the 
attached greenhouses that you were describing,  perhaps with biogas 
from community bio-digesters to "finish it off" if necessary.

So back to the question of what we EffluWesters might be able to do
(materials, money, technology transfer ?) to help bring something 
like this about ?  (with the view that anything
we can do to help reduce the combustion emissions of potentially
a billion-plus people in China can only benefit the rest of the planet 
as well.)

Like food and sex, hot water is an indescribably luxurious pleasure
if one has had to do without for long periods of time ... something 
that greatly enhances the quality of life. Right ?

                 ===    *     ===
Robert  W. Tom          Kanata, Ontario, Canada       
Rob_Tom@ErehwonDesignGroup.intranets.com 

please visit:  http://www.theHungerSite.com daily
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