Free water, my friends, is a gardener’s dream. Plants don’t care that you’re too cheap to give them sparkling clean drinking water. God bless the rain barrel. Since installing (well, having my dad install) my new rain barrel, I have used the hose a total of ZERO times to water my meager garden. I feel like I’ve discovered a secret.
Now, I will say that I have no idea how much I spent watering the garden last year, so I don’t have a great base for cost-comparison purposes. But I imagine that this rain barrel will last many growing seasons if it’s properly wintered. At just under $60, I would guess that it pays for itself in just a year or two. Gardeners with hard data, jump in here any time…
Time to get down to the nitty gritty. The functioning of a rain barrel.
This variety is a base model. It’s equipped with a spigot at the bottom, an overflow hose and an opening at the top for the water to enter through. The opening is covered in a very fine steel mesh. The downspout, purchased separately, sits on top of this mesh and spews the water into the barrel from your gutters. The mesh is key to keeping mosquitos from breeding in this stagnant water.
My first day of rain barrel bliss saw it fill up in under an hour during a downpour. I have mine feeding from my garage’s gutter system, and only one side of the garage. That’s probably less than 200 square feet of roof on which the water fell. I could have easily filled up a dozen barrels during that downpour if I’d had them hooked up to all four of my downspouts.
The water from my 30-gallon barrel lasts through 3 thorough soakings of approximately 5- square feet of garden, watering about every day and a half.
Little Square Farm, the maker of my rain barrel, repurchases food-grade barrels being disposed of by local restaurants. A win-win-win in my book!
TapGuard is an in-bottle filtration system that retrofits to Nalgene and CamelBak bottles (classic lid only) and promises to filter out unsavory tastes and harmful chemicals and bacteria. It’s a one-piece silicone housing that envelopes a replaceable carbon pouch. As you drink, the water flows through the carbon pouch and into your parched mouth.
(break. minimonster is chewing on a box… end break.)
I tested this product for a while, about 3 weeks. It was a love-hate relationship. My first go resulted in a split carbon pouch, while I was conditioning it in my faucet flow. It never made it into the TapGuard. Now, the makers found the same issue and have repaired and replaced this “old model” carbon pouch. So you shouldn’t have the same issue.
I switched to the next carbon pouch and was more gentle (two are included with each TapGuard), installed it into the TapGuard, installed the TapGuard (almost losing it) in the CamelBak, and filled ‘er up. I took a drink. I spilled water ALL OVER my shirt. Luckily I was at home…
Take two, I realized that I was drinking out of the wrong side. I took a drink from the correct side and…the water tasted a little less chorine-y.
I was extremely bummed that the straw lid for the CamelBak couldn’t be used with this product. I also was a little turned off when each first drink I took, after the bottle sat a while, was slightly warm. This is probably due to the water that sits in the carbon pouch after you’re done drinking. Yuck.
All-in-all, an ok product that I think could use a little improvement to reach a more varied audience.
Oh, also, the production of this product is carbon-negative. They have some specifics on their product packaging and their website.
Mrs. Green Gear and I enjoy Relaxing… This is an understatement. We do daily things to make our days less cluttered and more enjoyable such as turning off the TV after 8pm, taking the time to sit down and eat together, etc…. but sometimes that isn’t enough. Over the course of a year the residual balance of modern stress builds and the only way you can wipe the slate clean is by participating in extended relaxation, otherwise known as a vacation.
One of our favorite ways to do this is to drive about an hour outside of Columbus, Ohio to the Hocking Hills region and spend a few nights at a cabin away from Cable News, Cell phones, Cars, and well… people. It’s a “staycation” we look forward to with a lot of anticipation. This year we looked around the thousands of websites for cabins in Hocking Hills and found the Good Earth Cabins located outside Hocking in Vinton County (an area I had visited in my youth for deer hunting). Good Earth Cabins adds a little eco-friendliness to the standard cabin fare by using recycled materials (where possible), installing new energy efficient appliances, and cleaning the place with “green” cleaners.
Cabins in hocking hills vary in terms of quality, but every one of them includes the essentials: TV w/ DVD Player, Cookware, Modern Kitchen, Fire pit, Grill, and Hot-tub. So, from this list of amenities you might assume that people visiting here are only interested in eating food, watching movies, lighting things on fire, and having sex…. and you’d be 100% correct. Sure, there are all kinds of amazing things to do in beautiful hocking hills like play with hummingbirds, kayak, and go on a ropes course, but I’d estimate from the “guest book notes” that 99.9% of the people visiting are only interested in the food, sex, and serenity…. and if they’ve been married for more than 10 years, usually just the serenity.
Quality of these places vary, as I’ve mentioned. Sometimes they’re old and sometimes you feel like the first person staying there. Sometimes you’re literally 10 miles from anyone and other times there is a trailer full of neighbors 50 yards from your front porch. We’ve stayed at maybe 5 different cabins and this one is probably the best mix of all things. It’s new, with great modern (and green) appliances but has a lived in feel. It has a combination of open areas and woods so you can stroll around. It has a huge porch with views of the hills and hollers. It also happens to be the biggest we’ve stayed in and by far the highest quality.
We stayed at their cabin called “lazy dog” which I’m assuming is inspired by the fact that it is 100% pet friendly. This is important for the Mrs. and I because we have two dogs and putting them up at the kennel would have easily tacked on an additional 200 bucks for our 3 night stay. The lazy dog has room for six people, three bedrooms, 3 baths, and cost $150-175 during the week and $225-$250 on the weekends. We put in three nights, starting on a Sunday so we paid both rates. This place is on par with others in the area in terms of price for the weekend but a VAST savings over others during the week… and that is before you figure that this place was the best and biggest we’d been to.
The property included 11 acres with a nice field and pond… We let the dogs roam at will and other than a few ticks, they were about as happy as I’ve ever seen them. While we were there, we only left to make a beer run, other than that we grilled out every night, I finished three books, and caught some fish in the pond (one nice bass!). Every night we would watch one of their DVDs and then retire outside to sit near the campfire and chill out. We had a great time and plan on returning.
Okay… but what about the GREEN! how is this place “green.” The “green” cred for the Good Earth Cabins is an odd bird. Most of the green initiatives they have are ones that you or I would make in our house, and not the crazy ones… I mean the ones most people should do like, efficient appliances, recycled products, green cleaners, etc…. The funny thing is, this provides absolutely ZERO benefit to the consumer other than a warm fuzzy feeling. Still, when you consider that they do these things and others places don’t, this is an incrementally better option for the environment, even if you don’t directly benefit from it. The one thing I was aghast at was that they didn’t use CFLs or other low power light and didn’t have low flow showerheads…. Since it’s in the country they may not be able to do the showerheads because of water pressure, also there was no recycling because it’s in the hills, so bring your own back and put it in your own bin.
Video Below
RATING: 3 out of 5 Gears for Fixed Eco Benefit, Price / Value, and Quality.
Waste isn’t just what’s inside your waste basket, sometimes it IS your waste basket!Think about it, never fail, every time you throw out a bag of trash, you’re committing the trash bag to a very long, wasteful life in some crappy landfill.Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would take a stab at improving the trash bag and making it more green?
Well, PERF did just that with the biodegradable PERF Go Green trash bag.Made of 100% eco-friendly, non-toxic, biodegradable material, they are green and proud of it.
A month or so ago Mrs. Green Gear and I received a nice compliment of 13 gallon kitchen bags and dog waste bags.They were both in nice minimal packaging that had an adhesive on the bottom for attachment to a trash pail or wall.Pull one out, and another follows it up, Kleenex Style.I’ll focus on the trash bags in the review.They are green (duh) brand aware bags with large holes for handles.
I gave half of these to friends, and Mrs. Green Gear and I reviewed the others.The comments were basically the same, The two large handles were so big that when you tied them down you made the bag too small, or if you tied them loose stuff would fall out.I would much prefer the lined plastic tie strip.Also, both people reported ripping when throwing in objects with corners, this is unfortunate as one person said these were very durable and would hold up.On the plus side, they are very nice looking and the Kleenex dispenser is too cool.
But, these are a high class product and charge a high class price, 6.99 for a 12-pack.Still, if you buy in bulk they are less but it isn’t going to give you any cost savings value.
I commend PERF for taking the first steps in the green waste bags and look forward to product improvements in the future.
Video Review below.
RATING: 1 out of 5 Gears for Variable (though I said fixed in the video) Eco Benefit.
