Free Community Workshop – Construct a Sustainable Shower

What’s a Permablitz? – In general, it’s a free workshop to help get something specific done in a concerted effort of many and in a short time period (typically a day), at a fellow Permie’s (permaculturalist’s:) yard.

In our case, we meet for a day at the ecoLODGy Permaculture Centre to add an element to the series of educational, live examples of permaculture related objects that inspire the visitors to our centre to engage in sustainable ways of living (farming, building, eating…). Participants contribute their time and effort in return for a great experience, learning and some good, free farm-fresh food.

For whom is it? – People who want to get active in a group of like-minded people, help each other, learn a new skill or explore a new way of doing things, have fun together, and see a nice result at the end of the day (whilst it often being experimental in nature and might not be perfect at first try:).

This time around, we will together build outdoor showers in rammed earth wall technique with a compost-heated hot water system attached. There will be one at an advanced stage and one started from scratch so that participants can get involved in different aspects of the building process. You will learn about earth building and the principle of hot compost.

We start the day with a meet and greet at 8am and a short short introduction to ecoLODGy at 8.15am and at 8.30 we go striaght into planning our work. We will act in teams with some people advancing the rammed eart buildings and some bulding up and coiling the compost heap. We will have lunch together and then work again until at least 4.30 pm (or until we are all happy with the results:). Please bring clothes that may get dirty and good strong shoes 🙂

Jean Pain is known as an early pioneer in “compost heaters”. Picture Source: https://www.permaculturenews.org/2011/12/15/the-jean-pain-way/

Maximum number of participants: 15

This activity will only make sense in fairly dry weather. The Organizers will communicate if the event needs to be shifted due to bad weather.

(By the way, the showers will afterwards be finished off by our team with a tadelakt plaster – a traditional waterproof , non-toxic and beautiful artisan finish -, which will take a longer while and lots of effort but is in our view honestly one of the most amazing things to learn about in natural building… if interested, check for our related workshop “Let’s Build Natural: Introduction to Tadelakt” .)