TerraLiner:12 m Globally Mobile Beach House/Class-A Crossover w 6x6 Hybrid Drivetrain

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PART Cv:

Fundamental Assumption Five -- The TERRALINER and its TOAD will be conceptually, physically, and programmatically distinct



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1. The Right Vehicle for a Specific Mission Profile


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In the various “Action Shots” that Earthroamer provides on its website, it demonstrates the undoubted virtues of a small, low-height, ultra-compact vehicle like the XV-JP (a discontinued model) -- see http://earthroamer.com/employees-facilities/previous-designs/xv-jp/ , http://www.earthroamer.com/tab_xpedition_vehicles/xvjp5_specs.html and http://www.earthroamer.com/galleries/xv-jpinaction/index.htm . For instance, under-foliage clearance:








The last image also demonstrates what one might call “under-souk” or “under-outdoor-shaded-market” clearance……:sombrero:

Some of those who've been following the thread may think that I am a “size-freak”, and that for me bigger is always better. It is simply not true. I fully recognize the value of smaller vehicles like Jeeps, Defenders, G-wagens, and Toyota Landcruisers. For exploring unknown dirt tracks where a simple thing like a big tree-branch that overhangs a road might block passage for larger vehicles, a compact SUV is preferable.

But that does not mean that a compact SUV is the vehicle of choice for full-time, camper-based living. For full-timing, I think it's equally clear that a vehicle the size of an American Class-A motorhome, with a full set of slide-outs, is preferable. For most people.

Sure, there do exist people who travel the world in just an SUV, most famously, Gunther Holtorf, who spent 23 years living out of his G-wagen – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8703/index.html#one-1659 to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8703/index.html#seven-3990 , http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29505145 , http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/t...23-year-500000-mile-journey-around-the-world/ , http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...ing-556-000-miles-215-countries-mercedes.html , http://www.autoblog.com/2014/10/16/...n-on-557k-mile-26-year-road-tr/#slide-3017826 , http://www.outsideonline.com/1912491/worlds-greatest-traveler-1988-mercedes-has-been-172-countries , and http://www.outsideonline.com/1912491/worlds-greatest-traveler-1988-mercedes-has-been-172-countries .

But travelling this way has consequences.

For instance, as egn so wonderfully put things early on in the thread, there is the “wife acceptance factor” to consider. After his first extended trip to Africa, Gunther and his third wife, Beate, got a divorce. Was Gunther's expectation that they should spend the next few decades living out of an SUV the main reason? Who knows. After all, she was his third wife. But one can easily imagine that this is not the kind of travelling she had a stomach for.

Gunther then got realistic, put an ad in the personals column of Die Zeit, and found his fourth wife Christine. With Christine he spent the next 20 years almost continuously on the road, racking up over 800,000 km in “Otto”, the same G-wagen that he started with. So sure, for some people living for decades out of an SUV is their idea of a good time. But not for most.

This is what it looks like:









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[video=youtube;-Ad3mbgqmCg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ad3mbgqmCg [/video] [video=youtube;YpeYOWK3l9E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpeYOWK3l9E [/video]
[video=youtube;vxYydSKUObk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxYydSKUObk [/video] [video=youtube;GC2VQe49FPM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC2VQe49FPM [/video]



The exterior images of "Otto" are certainly as romantic as these things come -- especially the photo of Otto parked below the North Face of Everest, on the Chinese side.

But the images of Otto's interior give one pause for thought. Also see the detailed "interior tour" of Otto at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29505145 . It's one thing to live like this for a weekend, or for two weeks. But to live like this for more than 20 years? Many overlanders would like to pretend that they could do it. But could they? Could they really? Notably, Otto did not even have an RTT, a roof-top tent. Perhaps this is understandable, given the fact that Otto travelled to some fairly cold places, places where sleeping in a tent might not have been that comfortable.

Now agreed, some will tour the world with just a motorbike, or even just a bicycle, living out of their tents wherever they go. But how many husband-and-wife couples have done so?

In my 2 or 3 years of web-research, whenever I've come across blogs of bicyclists traversing the Tibetan plateau, or motorcyclists traversing Africa, not once have I come across a blog maintained by a husband-and-wife team. Instead, the blog is maintained by a lone male bicyclist, or it is maintained by a pair of male motorcyclists, for instance, the Canadian brothers who circumnavigated China -- see http://bmwmcmag.com/2010/10/canadian-brothers-circumnavigate-china/ , http://www.ryanpyle.com// , http://www.ryanpyle.com/television/the-middle-kingdom-ride.html , http://www.ryanpyle.com/images/media/TimeOutBeijing.pdf , http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazin...le-on-chinas-longest-motorcycle-ride?page=all , andf http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Middle-Kingdom-Ride-Motorcycles/dp/0957576218 :



[video=vimeo;23699025]https://vimeo.com/23699025 [/video] [video=youtube;Z6tOESbJkek]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6tOESbJkek [/video]
[video=youtube;r0gL5I9KL_Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0gL5I9KL_Q  [/video] [video=youtube;tJb1LMHatmY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJb1LMHatmY [/video]



If one examines Wkipedia's list of long-distance motorcycle rides, the overwhelming preponderance of male names is striking -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-distance_motorcycle_riders . And again, this trip around China only took 65 days.

Even the hemispherical trip of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman across Africa took only 3 months -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Down , http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2007/nov/28/africa.kenya , http://longwayround.com/index.htm , http://www.longwayround.com/journeys.htm , http://longwayround.com/journeys_long-way-down.htm :



[video=youtube;Z_XO4l5zMDI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_XO4l5zMDI [/video]


Bromantic bonding is all fine and good. But how many male ExPo readers would want to spend the next two decades traveling with their best male friend? Without female companionship? Here assuming that most ExPo readers, like the general population, are heterosexual? Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman both seem to be happily married; Boorman has two children, and McGregor has four. But notably, their wives don't come along on their motorbike trips, and neither do their children.

I would also be curious to know how many other husband-and-wife teams have travelled for more than a decade in just an SUV? Granted, the Internet is fully of blogs of husband-and-wife teams who have done major overland trips together in an SUV, sometimes lasting multiple years, for instance, Nyathi's world-wide journey, already mentioned. See http://www.expeditionoverland.com , http://www.expeditionoverland.com/preparation.htm , http://www.expeditionoverland.com/the_vehicle.htm , http://www.expeditionoverland.com/journal.htm , http://www.expeditionoverland.com/africa_1.htm , http://www.expeditionoverland.com/morocco.htm , etc. And see Foley's list of SUV-overlanding blogs at http://foleysv.com/fellow-overlanders .

But even a journey of 2 years in an SUV is not the same thing as living for decades out of an SUV. Retired couples who buy American Class-A motorhomes generally plan to make it a "lifestyle" for at least 15 years.


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2. Sojourning versus Exploring


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Many expedition motorhomes then try to strike a compromise between these two ideals: between the go-anywhere, off-road capability, agility, and geographic reach of an SUV, versus the living comfort of a much larger, more “standard” kind of motorhome.

In this thread I have then been developing the idea that the two functions should be distinguished, made completely separate, and addressed by different kinds of vehicles. For exploration, on the road and on the ocean, the TerraLiner will have its TOAD and its Hydrojet RIB. Whereas for glamping in comfort, the TerraLiner will be a large motorhome that is only different from an American Class-A in so far as:


(1) The TerraLiner will be very autonomous, in terms of power, water, and sewage
(2) The TerraLiner will be able to drive easily on dirt roads and bad roads
(3) The TerraLiner will be able to drive right into the middle of a fallow field, rented from a farmer


But otherwise, the TerraLiner itself will not be the “exploration” vehicle. Rather, that's the mission profile for the TOAD and the Hydrojet RIB.



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3. The Analytical Inadequacies of the Kiravan Design Process


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It seems to me that when Bran Ferren conceptualized the Kiravan, for instance, he and his designers failed to make this basic analytic distinction. If one begins from the basic premise that one's main “house” is never going to do much off-road or exploratory driving, then there is no need for a gooseneck-hitch design that might allow a big, long vehicle to negotiate extreme angles on difficult terrain:







I can't embed the video from which I “grabbed” these images, but you can watch it on aol.com, at http://on.aol.com/video/designing-a-family-friendly-extreme-expedition-vehicle-517751459 . In this video Ferren claims that a large expedition motorhome should be able to “do” all of the things illustrated in the images just above. That the entire vehicle must to be designed to travel across extreme terrain, as opposed to just one element.

By way of contrast, my basic engineering and operational premise is that this is a false statement. No, the TerraLiner does not have to do these things. Yes, the TerraLiner's TOAD needs to be able to do these things. But not the TerraLiner itself.

To repeat, the TerraLiner itself does not need to be a rock-climber. In these images and in his talk, it's clear that Ferren and his design team simply assumed that the entire Kiravan has to be rock-climber. Why they made this assumption escapes me. Where exactly did Ferren think he was going to take the Kiravan? And once there, how did he think he was going to genuinely guarantee the safety of himself and his family? Just by rock-climbing into some spot where the locals couldn't get him?

I may be wrong about this, but to be honest, whenever I look at the Kirivan, and every time I watch that video in which Ferren explains his design process, I can't help but think that the whole thing was designed in a sociological vacuum. Ferren and his team seemed to have imagined that:


(a) there is a vast, undifferentiated, uniform “Third World” composed of nothing but dirt tracks with absurdly challenging angles, and rocks that need crawling
(b) that every country in the Third World is equally dangerous
(c) that all countries which are not First World, are Third World
(d) that there is no difference in income or road-quality between Fourth World central Africa and Second World central Asia; or Fourth World central Africa versus Second-World Mediterreanean Africa
(e) and that only technology and design can keep Ferren and his family safe.


If any of them had spent just a few days with Google's “Panoramio” and “street-view”, checking out the condition of roads surrounding lake Titicaca, for instance, or the recently built roads throughout China and on the Tibetan plateau, they might have been pleasantly surprised to learn just how good roads are becoming in many Second-World countries.

And if they'd just thought through the sociology of keeping safe in such countries – if they had realized that they could pay local farmers, eco-tourism farm/campgrounds, or eco-lodges to keep the Kiravan safe – Ferren would not have needed to load up the vehicle with so many paranoid-pathetic attempts to achieve security via technology alone. If instead Ferren had imagined himself glamping on farmland, getting to know the locals a bit, interacting with them, befriending them, and contributing something to the local economy, his paranoia might have quickly dissipated…….

After all, if one wants to remain locked inside one's protective “Kombat Kamping Kira-Cocoon” , why travel the Second and Third world at all?

As we will see on the coast of Chile south of Punta de Lobos, the coastline of Lake Titicaca, the Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica, and various spots in the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Trinidad, as long as there is a reasonably good dirt road providing access to a reasonably flat farmer's field, the TerraLiner should be just fine. All that is required is driving a bit off-road on flat-terrain, not rock-crawling. Once lodged in such a farmer's field, paying the coastal farmer a “just price” for his generosity, the TerraLiner will be as safe as houses.

It's this failure to draw an analytical distinction between (a) sojourning, versus (b) exploring, that I think has plagued “globally capable” motorhome design thus far. Sojourning and exploring are not the same thing. They are not the same mission, they have different parameters and requirements, and trying to make just one single vehicle cover all mission profiles will be a compromise at best, and a quixotic, unattainable goal at worse.



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4. TOADS: Long-Established Best Practice


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Thousands of retired Americans who have large Class-A motorhomes have long known this, which is why so many of them tow a small runabout car behind their RVs. The Class-A motorhome is for living in, while the SUV is for exploring:









[video=youtube;PI85j4AW2Bw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI85j4AW2Bw [/video] [video=youtube;PbkXSj_aByE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbkXSj_aByE [/video] [video=youtube;xrzf1PEWv-c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrzf1PEWv-c [/video]



This solution has been arrived at so many times, by so many people, that it must have something going for it. I included a surplus of images above, to drive home the point that this is not a new or innovative idea. It is an extremely standard and widely implemented solution in the world of mainstream motor-homing. Literally thousands of owners of Class A motorhomes in the United States are towing their TOADs right now, as you read this.

And the most popular TOAD they pull?

A Jeep Wrangler.

There has even emerged a subsidiary market for the tow-bars and the alterations necessary for the TOAD, so that when “flat-towed”, all of the TOAD's wheels can drive freely at high speed while the engine is turned off, and yet the mileage gauge won't register additional miles. Apparently some small cars are more “TOAD-able” than others – see http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/what-cars-can-be-flat-towed-behind-an-rv.htm . But alternatives to “flat-towing” also exist, like dolly-towing and trailering.

I am stating all of this with some degree of emphasis, because on ExPo I've gotten the impression that some participants are almost “anti-TOAD”. They seem to think that if one resorts to a main vehicle + TOAD combination, one has somehow “failed”, from a design point of view, or logistically, or in some other way that I do not fully understand. There's a kind of “purist” attitude one occasionally encounters, that seems to have developed as anti-thesis to the world of mainstream motor-homing, where TOADs (the thesis) are ubiquitous.

But the longer that I've thought about the various possibilities, the more it becomes evident that towing a TOAD is the best solution to many logistical and engineering problems.

You want to do some rock-crawling? Take the TOAD. But don't design your main motorhome to be a rock-crawler. You want to travel the Canning-Stock route in Australia? Take the TOAD, and have a really good time, instead of taking a much larger vehicle like a MAN-KAT 6x6, a vehicle too big for the trail, a vehicle that will give you nothing but headaches on such a narrow route – see posts #609 to #612 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page61 and http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page62, and post # 957 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...rsion-Free-Frame/page96?p=1735251#post1735251 .

On the other hand, do you want to rest for a few months on the coast of Chile where the climate is sunny and Mediterranean, on a ranch with a vast Pacific beach, surf pounding just a few hundred meters away? Sojourn in the TerraLiner, a Class-A motorhome that you can, nonetheless, drive down the gravel road that leads to the fallow hillside with a great view of the sunset, where the rancher said you could glamp for 2 months in exchange for nominal rent.



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5. Why a Fifth Wheel is not the best format for Global Sojourning


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Now to be honest, the big-truck + fifth wheel combination – the two linked by a gooseneck hitch, aka the “Kiravan” – simply does not strike me as a sensible format for global motorhoming at all.

If the fifth wheel being pulled is an adequate size for sojourning, then the truck doing the pulling has to be fairly big too:








Which means that the truck doing the pulling can't be a small Jeep Rubicon. And so the vehicle combination does not gain the use of a small SUV that can go all those places where bigger vehicles can't (no matter how “articulated&#8221. Sure, a fifth wheel can still carry a motorcycle. But it would be much easier to shop in the village and stock up with supplies for another month using a Jeep Wrangler.

In the above images, even though large American pick-up trucks do the towing, one can still imagine these trucks serving as runabouts to get one to the local grocery store or open-air market. But the trailers themselves do not seem off-road or bad-road capable at all. Their wheels are tiny, and their axle-clearances minimal. Whereas at least Ferren's fifth-wheel trailer could park easily in the middle of a farmer's field. But to tow that trailer, Ferren seemed to think he needed a rather large truck in front, a vehicle that looks significantly bigger than any of these pickups.

So I find myself asking: did Ferren seriously imagine himself running into local villages to buy groceries using his Mog? It's an awfully big vehicle, and would certainly not have the "under-souk clearance" of a Jeep Wrangler, even one that's a bit higher because it has a camper attached, as per the Earthroamer XV-JP:








The Kiravan tractor is a modified Mercedes Unimog U500NA, and its chassis frame has been stretched. The complete Kirivan vehicle is 52 feet long, or 15.85 m. And so the tractor alone, scaling the elevation-view above, is 25 feet long, and 11 feet high, or 7.62 m long x 3.35 m high. The trailer scales to roughly 13 feet high, or 3.95 m. In short, the Kirivan tractor really is a tractor. It is not an SUV. It is a very large vehicle in its own right, and one wonders how Ferren imagined it fetching groceries in the tight quarters of Second- and Third-world cities?

Apparently, the front and back of the Kirivan can detach -- see http://kiravan.net/tractor/ and http://kiravan.net/trailer/ . But detaching them does not appear to be necessarily an easy process? The trailer does not have a front set of wheels, and so it's fairly clear that the trailer will have to be perfectly positioned before detachment. Whereas in the case of the older (2003) Maximog, the trailer had two axles with hydraulic motors, so it could be repositioned independently of the Mog. The Kirivan trailer does have a hydrostatic drive powering the trailer axle, but this seems to work only in concert with the Mog, as part of a 6x6 drive system for rock-crawling at low speeds (up to 25 mph). So if the Kiravan trailer is not that easily detached, then how did Ferren imagine he and his daughter would buy groceries? Just with the Kirivan's motorbike?

There is a photo of the “Kirabike” on the website, but it doesn't seem equipped with the necessary panniers:







See http://kiravan.net/images/kiravan-image-06/ and http://kiravan.net/kirabike/ .


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6. TerraLiner Stealth Glamping, and Stealth Grocery-Collection in Open-Air Markets


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There is also a safety dimension here.

The TerraLiner will only find itself exposed to possible attack when underway, between farmland glampsites. But traveling between glampsites the TerraLiner will basically look like just another large truck or bus (apart from the windscreen....), a large truck towing a 6 m long draw-bar trailer, a trailer that will house the SUV "TOAD".

Recall that much earlier in the thread egn suggested that simply towing a Jeep Wrangler behind the TerraLiner is not an option, because although legal in the United States and Australia, it is illegal in most countries in Europe. Furthermore, as suggested by thjakits, it’s much better to trailer a TOAD so that it’s protected from dust, rocks, etc. And so a while back, I suggested that the production-model Oskosh M1076 draw-bar trailer would make an excellent mobile garage for the TerraLiner's TOAD. The palette used by the M1076 is about the right length (6.325 m); the M1076 is off-road and certainly bad-road capable; and the M1076 would match the wheel size, ground clearance, overall mechanical appearance, etc. of the TerraLiner – see posts #887 to #889 on page 89, at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page89 , and also see http://oshkoshdefense.com/variants/m1076-trailer/ and http://oshkoshdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/17391_PLS-Trailer_LowRes_4.30.2015.pdf .

Once the TerraLiner arrives at a farmland glampsite, it should be safe enough. Here I am banking on the idea that farmers are property and business owners. As such, farmers would be inclined to respect and protect the property of other members of the bourgeois class. Put it this way: it seems foolish to travel around the world in a big, expensive motorhome as if one were a hippie vagabond. It's foolish to spend a fortune on a large, globally capable motorhome, and then expect that one should be able to free camp or wild camp in safety like a homeless person, without having to participate in the various mechanisms that the bourgeoisie worldwide have always used to secure and protect property. Such as, renting a bit of space on a farmer's land.

Once securely glamped off the main roads, and perhaps completely invisible to outsiders on a farmer's property, the only vehicle that the TerraLiner would subsequently use to explore the surrounding countryside -- or fetch groceries -- would be a smallish SUV, of the kind that would be painted and weathered so as not to attract attention. Much like Gunther's "Otto", or the Earthroamer XV-JP: a small SUV that would at least have adequate "under-souk clearance":







Whereas the Kirivan's Tractor is just about the most attention-grabbing grocery-collector imaginable. Not only is the Kiravan Tractor big and very tall, but it looks expensive, it's filled to the brim with technology, its cockpit positively glows with dials, and it's probably the very last kind of vehicle one would want to drive through a Third-World market. The Kirivan Tractor is not a stealth grocery-collection vehicle at all. It doesn't seem as if Ferren's design team thought any of this through, in a sociologically realistic way that would have been obvious to anyone who has travelled a bit outside the First World.

The question of how a large global motorhome keeps itself supplied with food provisions may seem rather banal, but it is critically important. Fuel and water may always prove available at large gas-stations that serve big trucks on the outskirts of towns and cities, even in the Third World. But the most wonderful places to buy groceries in the Second and Third World are open-air markets located in city and town centers. Ever since spending some time in Palermo, Sicily, where open-air markets are still alive and flourishing, I've become a real believer in shopping al-fresco for my fruits, vegetables, and fish. When and if I can.

In London I live close to Covent Garden, because that's where the best Apple Store in London is located -- see http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/coventgarden/ . But alas, Covent Garden itself now sells jewelry and crafts to tourists, and not food. The big market in London for fresh produce is the New Covent Garden market, located near the Battersea power station -- see http://www.newcoventgardenmarket.com and http://www.newcoventgardenmarket.com/market/location . Unfortunately the fish market is located in precisely the opposite direction, at Billingsgate, i.e. Canary Wharf -- see http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/business/wholesale-food-markets/billingsgate/Pages/default.aspx and https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place...22,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x21a470f257c99218 . One of the main attractions of much smaller cities with open-air markets like Palermo, is that fish-stalls might be located right next to vegetable stalls, and the whole market might be within easy walking distance of parking, the central core, etc.

In Palermo I lived in Ballarò, an ancient quarter that is probably the most beautiful slum on earth. I walked out my door and immediately found myself in an ancient market that goes back to the Arab period, a market where I could buy every kind of fish, fruit, and vegetable imaginable -- see https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballarò_(Palermo) , https://translate.google.co.uk/tran...tps://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballarò_(Palermo) , and http://wikimapia.org/6385829/Ballaro- Market :









The second-to-last image is a famous socialist-realist painting of Palermo's open-air markets by Renato Guttuso. And the last shows the present-day location of Ballarò, on a map where the outlines of ancient Palermo are superimposed on a modern satellite image. The oldest Punic/Roman walls are delineated in red, surrounded by a harbor area that has since been mostly filled in, and the walls of the expanded Arab city are in yellow.

So for me at least, a significant part of the magic of traveling in Second and some Third-World countries, would be buying fresh fruit, vegetables, and even fish in markets like this.

Of course, one would need to be super-cautious when it comes to food purchase and preparation, buying only un-pealed fruits and vegetables, and carefully washing everything with soap before slicing. And when buying fish, for instance, one would want to insist that the vendor slice off a new cut from the main body of the fish (e.g. a large Tuna). But in countries like India one may often have no choice but to buy food in such markets, so one had better design and think through logistics accordingly. According to The Economist, only 2 % of food and grocery retailing in India occurs in the "formal sector", i.e. in supermarkets -- see http://www.economist.com/news/leade...-poverty-mexico-provides-lessons-all-emerging . The article is about Mexico, but about half-way down it makes the more general point that in many or even more countries that are not First-World, much of the economy still lies in the "informal" sector, and this is especially true of food retailing. So if one wants to buy fresh fruits and vegetables in India, one will have to be willing to wander open-air markets in the centers of towns and cities. And the same is true in most Third World countries, and much of the Second World.

Again, for me this is a plus, not a minus. I loved shopping for my groceries al-fresco in Ballarò, when I lived in Palermo. So if the TerraLiner is parked safely on a rented farmer's field overlooking a bit of coast somewhere, then one will need to get to the open-air market located in a nearby town or city somehow. And the very last thing one would want to do, is arrive at that market in the Kiravan's 3.55 m high, 7.63 m long tractor. Rather, one wants to arrive at the local market in the most nondescript, innocuous, small 4x4 SUV one can find. And it would help if it looks beat-up, mud- covered, and old.



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PART Cvi:

Fundamental Assumption Six -- SLOW TRAVEL


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1. The TerraLiner will be designed for Slow Travel, sojourning for months in choice spots


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Now for many, the whole point of travel by expedition mobile home is to see as many different countries as possible, covering as many miles as possible. But perhaps because I’ve already travelled quite a bit myself, that kind of “whirlwind tour, 10 countries in 20 days” sort of travel does not interest me one bit. Not even 20 countries over the course of two years.....

Earlier in the thread I covered a few “Germany to India” and “London to India” expeditions conducted by Landrover – see posts #350 to #361, at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page35 , http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page36 , and http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page37 ; and posts #365 to #380, at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page37 and http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page38 . I also covered the Tatra Round the World expedition, as well as Beppe Tenti’s tour of Africa – see posts #220 and #221, at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page22 and http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page23 , and posts #231 to #235 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page24 . These are the kinds of road-trips where driving is continuous, and there is no stopping to take in the scenery or the culture, anywhere. Although this kind of travel appeals to some, it has absolutely zero appeal to me. I honestly can’t see the point to it, except perhaps as some kind of status symbol one can parade amongst one’s peer group, when one returns home a month or two later.

For instance, although Beppe Tenti circumnavigated Africa, because he did so in less than a year, one could plausibly argue that in some real sense, Beppe Tenti never truly saw or experienced Africa at all. For that, Tenti would have needed to spend 5 or 6 years travelling around the continent, not 5 or 6 months. And he would have needed to stop in a few places for a few months, enough time to get to know some local people, and begin to appreciate the local culture.

In my experience, those who’ve travelled a great deal in their lives, and who want to continue travelling, all feel the same. Yes, we want to continue travelling. But we want to sojourn from place to place, as opposed to traveling at breakneck speed.

I’ve then been imagining the imaginary owners of the TerraLiner as similar: as a very “sporty”, surfing-and-diving retired couple, with lots of time on their hands, who are quite happy to slow travel the world. (Yes, lots of people who began surfing in the 1960’s are still surfing today, even though retired.)

So I’ve been imagining the TerraLiner as a kind of “base camp” that puts down roots for a few months here, and few months there. The TerraLiner then becomes a temporarily rooted “house” that the owners return to after exploring a given area using their small 4x4 SUV, their Hydrojet RIB, and their powered paragliders. The TerraLiner itself does not do all the running around; rather, the smaller vehicles do.

This seemed to me such an obvious and preferable way to travel, that when I began imagining TerraLiner glampsites in particular locations, I simply assumed they would be sites where the TerraLiner would stop for months, not just for a few days. But it gradually dawned on me that this may not be how many or even most overlanders prefer to travel. For some, constant and continuous movement from one site to the next, never staying more than a week, and usually just a few days, is the optimum format. So it seemed important to signal right at the beginning that this is not what I have been imagining. I’ve been imagining the TerraLiner used for a very different kind of travel: a kind of slow travel and episodic sojourning that may appeal to only certain types of overlanders. Everything about the TerraLiner is then designed around this sixth, basic, fundamental assumption.

Now granted, because I began researching a few such multi-month glampsites in detail, I found myself quite literally falling in love with places that I’ve never been to, and had not even considered visiting before beginning this thread. For instance, in future posting series I will get very, very caught up with Red Bluff in western Australia, Punta de Lobos in Chile, Lake Titicaca in Peru, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, Cabarete and the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, Grande Anse beach in Guadeloupe, and the Caravelle peninsula in Martinique. So once I've covered the technical aspects of Water, Power, and Wind, subsequent posting series that explore logistics in-depth will meander, and then some…..:ylsmoke: .. I will be mixing geographical discussion with further design discussion of the TerraLiner, the Hydrojet RIB, and the TerraLiner's Toad. Future posting series will also cover topics as diverse as Eco-Lodge camping, and the logistics of Caribbean island-hopping via roll-on/roll-off ferry transport…..


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PART Cvii:

Fundamental Assumption Seven -- THE TERRALINER WILL NOT BE AN "EXPEDITION" MOTORHOME


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1. What "Expedition", "Exploration", and "Travel" could possibly mean in our era


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Finally, we come to what is perhaps the most important fundamental assumption of all: The TerraLiner will not be an "Expedition" Motorhome. This requires some explaining.

In the Anglosphere – and in Britain especially – there seems to be a kind of residual yearning for the "Golden Era" of European exploration and Empire, when white Europrean men could say that they were indeed “the first” of their kind to set foot in India, China, Japan, North and South America, etc. etc.

The British Empire created a cult of adventure in Britain, sustained in fiction by Enid Blyton’s Famous Five children’s novels, the adventure tales of the Boy’s Own magazine series, the tongue-in-cheek anti-heroic Flashman series, E.M. Forester’s Hornblower series, and the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Famous_Five_(series) , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys'_Own , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flashman_Papers , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Hornblower , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey–Maturin_series . I wouldn’t be able to mention all these if I hadn’t read quite a bit of this stuff myself. Patrick O’Brian’s novels also attain the status of great literature; his prose is astonishing.

But there is something wrong about such dreams of “adventure”, and exploratory "firsts” in the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century. Everywhere has already been explored, including most of the world’s major coral reefs above 200 feet. China is paving roads and laying railway tracks across half of Asia. Latin America’s Second-World countries want to become First-World, and they no longer want to serve as mere pictareseque backdrops for Anglophonic adventurism.

So although the recent cruise by the British adventurer Bear Grylls and his team across the Northwest passage in an open Zodiac RIB Hurricane was certainly impressive in many ways, it's something best described as a "Qualified First". See http://wheredidmybraingo.com/bear-grylls-explores-the-northwest-passage/ and http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/11/15/bear.grylls.expedition/ :




[video=vimeo;11132880]https://vimeo.com/11132880[/video] [video=vimeo;11105728]https://vimeo.com/11105728[/video]



What is a "Qualified First"?

In an era when almost everywhere has been seen, explored, and documented by someone, in some kind of vehicle, the only way one can claim a “First” today, is by adding a qualifier. The Northwest Passage has been done umpteen times: boats of all types have been doing so since the 19th century, and passenger cruise ships have been plying the Northwest Passage since 2009. So what is a contemporary aspiring adventurer like Bear Grylis supposed to do? Well, he invents a new category of adventuring achievement: "The Northwest Passage in an open RIB!!!" Bear Grylls tries to claim a “First” by qualifying the achievement, by tagging on "Zodiac RIB".

One can then imagine a future in which someone attempts to enter the Guiness World Book of Records merely for being the first to “Climb Mount Everest whilst juggling 6 balls all the way from base camp”. But at a certain point such “Qualified Firsts” become rather silly, don't they? Mere stunts.

Was crossing the Northwest Passage in an 11 meter RIB also just a silly “Qualified First”? Agreed, it was great marketing for Zodaic. But a major moment in the history of world exploration? I don’t think so.

Still, Bear Gryllis' Arctic cruise was much more impressive than the mere Birmingham-to-Beijing roadtrip conducted by Landrover in 2012, the so-called “Discovery Expedition” – http://www.autoblog.com/2012/05/02/land-rover-completes-8-000-mile-journey-of-discovery-from-birmin/ . To call that an “Expedition” is simply a joke. As the narrator admits, the only real setback they suffered along the way was a bit of snow before crossing into China – see posts #364, #365, and #703 earlier in the thread, at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page37 and http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page71 :



[video=youtube;77487qPkey0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77487qPkey0 [/video]



Perhaps because I do not make my living as an overlander or adventurer, at a certain point all of this becomes a bit laughable for me.

It also reveals something important about our time: a time when the “Age of Exploration” – at least on earth – is over.



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Further, it’s all the more ironic that in the competition for “Firsts”, even the British came very late in the game. At least on the high seas, one might say that the “Great Age of Maritime Exploration” ended circa 1750.

The vast majority of “Firsts” in oceanic discovery were made by Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch navigators in the 16[SUP]th[/SUP] and 17[SUP]th[/SUP] centuries, a fact continuously lamented by Captain Cook in his journals – see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129669/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_James_Cook_(miniseries) :








That’s precisely why Cook was so obsessed with discovering and sailing the Northwest Passage: so that he could claim at least one “Positive First". In Cook's own mind, the only thing that he had really accomplished was proving a negative: that there was no great Southern Continent, but only one huge, vast Pacific ocean until one reaches Antarctica.

So to claim, as so much British propaganda tries to claim, that Captain Cook was the “greatest explorer in history”, is just plain false -- see for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y9-5NZ2AfY. I can think of any number of Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese navigators who were more important: not just Columbus, but also Vasco Da Gama, Amerigo Vespucci, Magellan, Abel Tasman, Jorge Álvares, Fernão Pires de Andrade, Fernão Mendes Pinto, etc. etc. The list is very long – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_explorers . For the last three, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Álvares , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernão_Pires_de_Andrade , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernão_Mendes_Pinto :








Or see the following timeline of European exploration; notice how English last names only begin appearing in quantity in the 18[SUP]th[/SUP] and 19[SUP]th[/SUP] centuries -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_European_exploration . And by the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] century, the list of major discoveries on both land and sea gets awfully short, in comparison to previous centuries. As the second map above makes clear, the truly great era of oceanic exploration was 1340 - 1600, an era completely dominated by the Spanish and the Portuguese.

There's also the not-so-small fact that as the graphic below makes clear, most of the land territory that Europeans have claimed to have discovered, is territory that had been previously inhabited by non-Europeans for thousands or tens of thousands of years:







The great European era of exploration and discovery was, in truth, an European era of conquest, imperialism, and colonialism. It was an era in which white European men with military backgrounds "discovered" new places primarily by subjugating them, using armed force. If one wants to call that "exploration and discovery", then the Japanese also "explored and discovered" China and Indonesia when they conquered them during WW2. Or the Germans "explored and discovered" eastern European countries and Russia when they drove through them with their tanks.



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2. The TerraLiner: A "Globally Capable" Class-A Motorhome. Nothing more.


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The issue I am raising here is the question of what “overlanding” might actually be for, in our day and age. On ExPo it seems that many contributors want to arrogate mere roadtrips or multi-month vacations in a camper, to the status of major “Expedtitions”. But surely this is total nonsense, and somewhat hubristic? At least Captain Cook had the humility to recognize himself as an “also-ran”. So surely Americans and Europeans today who drive roads driven thousands of times before by others, could recognize that they are not really doing anything all that new? Even if the roads are sometimes rough and Third World?

Notice how there's still a bit of that Anglospheric, residually colonial, slightly delusional "adventurist" mentality informing the first sentence in Bran Ferren's design-program for the Kiravan:

“Safely tansport a family of three to remote place of great natural beauty that others seldom see."





Once more, see the video at http://on.aol.com/video/designing-a-family-friendly-extreme-expedition-vehicle-517751459 . Here we find a slightly Star-Trekky emphasis on geographic exclusivity: "To boldly go where no American family of three has gone before".....
Whereas I would be happy to settle for a super-comfortable, Class-A, "bad-road" glamper that can bask in the glow of a Pacific sunset in Chile, glamping on coastal farmland that no motorhome has glamped before.....:coffeedrink:

To my mind then, retired couples who buy large Class-A motorhomes and who simply drive around the United States and Canada for years, enjoying the mobile RV lifestyle; or those who buy big catamarans and do the same for years, sailing around the globe at a leisurely pace, engage in a vehicle-dependent form of travel that seems much less pretentious, arrogant, and deluded. They are not pretending to be something that they cannot be.

The age of genuine discovery and exploration is now over, and nobody today can be Hanno the Navigator, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, or Francisco Pizzaro – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_explorations . To think otherwise is total folly. With Google Maps or Google Earth, anyone with a computer can literally see what the world looks likes, to a very fine level of detail, everywhere. And because Google Maps and Google Earth are saturated with photos taken at ground-level, one can get a pretty good idea of what everywhere looks like, too, at “human eye level”.

The only genuine explorers today – explorers charting the previously mysterious and unknown, geographically speaking – are astronmers with their huge new telescopes, instruments like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) now being built by the European Southern Observatory (EOS) in Chile. Once the ELT comes on line, via high-dispersion spectrography this telescope will be able to chemically characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets, not just proving their existence, as per the Kepler space telescope. As such, the ELT might be the first telescope in human history to detect the biosignatures of life on an exoplanet – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_large_telescope , https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/events/...ts_files/exoplanets_post_kepler_abstracts.pdf , http://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.1048.pdf , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet . If the ELT does detect an unmistakable biosignature of life on an explanet – for instance, an atmosphere rich with oxygen on a water-covered exoplanet located in the goldilocks zone – that would indeed be a major, world-historical discovery. That would be true exploration.

So again, I find myself thinking that designing an “Expedition Motorhome” for “Offroad Exploration” or “Expedition Travel” seems a bit daft. Indeed, the very phrase “Expedition Motorhome” seems pregnant with delusional arrogance. Whereas “Bad Road Motorhome” or “Off-Road Motorhome” seem more mechanically and sociologically accurate, and much less fraught with pretension and hubris. What’s wanted today at the large end of things is not an “Expedition Motorhome”, but rather, a globally capable version of an American Class-A; or a land-based equivalent of a world-cruising catamaran……

So perhaps “Global Motorhome” or “Adventure Motorhome” are better descriptions. Or, as we’ve been calling the vehicle in this thread, a TerraLiner. Unfortunately, like everyone else in this thread I have repeatedly used the expressions "Expedition Vehicle" and "Expedition Motorhome", if only because it is reasonably clear what these expressions signify, and they imply a useful contrast to more standard kinds of motorhomes that are only suitable for First-World travel. So I will continue using these expressions in reference to the TerraLiner, but the proviso always kept in mind in the background, that I don't think there is any such thing as genuine terrestrial "exploration" in our day and age......:sombrero:


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PART D: Why have I posted all this material?


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A number of you have written to me in private, expressing an interest in hearing about my “latest thinking” on matters like power, water, solar, etc. So there was a group request, and this is my monster-sized response…… You kinda asked for it!!...

But again, seriously, it helps me tremendously to “think things through” by writing for a potential audience, either real or imaginary. And I've found that the responses I've received so far in this thread in reaction to various proposed aspects of TerraLiner design have helped me tremendously. This is a very particular kind of vehicle, one that will interest only a handful of people, at least at this stage in human history. So even my transportation-design tutors were only moderately interested, and could give only the most limited kind of feedback, mostly from an aesthetic point of view. So before posting everything, I would once again like to express gratitude towards all those who've been reading along, and who've offered helpful responses and criticisms.

I realize that my own contributions have occupied the lion's share of the thread. Here are the statistics so far, compiled by Boardreader:





See http://boardreader.com/thread/Fully_Integrated_6x6_or_8x8_Expedition_R_gq7dX2oad.html .

My own number is about to go up drastically. But again, I am posting on stuff that seems relevant, and that I hope you will all enjoy reading over the coming months (yes, I expect it will take you that long….. )

After this series is complete, I want to go back and finish some of the earlier posting-series that I've kinda left hanging. For instance, I would like to insert some material about Kamaz Trucks in the slots reserved on page 140, posts #1394 to #1400.

Then, I'd like to finish up the posts begun on the theme of “Coastal Fog Deserts”, on page 146, beginning with post #1452. I set aside some slots up to post #1460, but these will only be enough for “Part A.” They'll be followed by a “Part B” that I will insert further along. The capacity of an AWG to allow extended boon-docking in costal deserts that are drenched with humidity is a very interesting discovery, at least for me. It has very interesting “end user” implications. We don't tend to think of deserts as humid places, and many deserts are not. But some, those classified as “Coast Fog Deserts”, have year-round fog, and humidity levels well above 70 %. This makes them perfect spots to run an AWG, and create all the water one might need. In the middle of a desert!

After that, I need to “clean up” a few posts on page 142, numbers #1415 to #1417, which address the issue of Chinese Sixes and crossing trenches. For me the discussion about Chinese Sixes is far from over, and I plan on posting a great deal about that topic, too, with specific reference to lots of videos of RC models….:sombrero:

And after all that, I would really like to revive discussion of Skoolies. I want to thank thjakits specifically and a few others for introducing me to the wonderful world of Skoolie bus conversions. Skoolies are some of the most beautiful conversions I've seen, filled with light and a sense of spaciousness, if only because the vehicle before restoration was designed as a gallery of big picture windows. When one begins with the base design premise of a bus that has “windows everywhere”, then conversion becomes a matter of paring back and closing off the absolute minimum number of windows so that the Skoolie bus can still function as a motorhome. Whereas in other kinds of conversions, one almost has to “fight” with oneself (and others…...), in order to justify creating windows. So for me it's interesting what happens to interior design when lots of windows function as a design constraint; when lots of pre-existing windows have to be respected and preserved, not fought for…..


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In short, if I don't respond immediately to your first reactions/thoughts to this first monster series of posts, please do not take offence. I've got a number of loose ends that I left hanging that I need to clean up first.

Now, to the matter at hand. The thread seems to “want” to discuss water and power, in depth, and so that's where this monster series of posts begins. But in addition, this will turn into a discussion of wind, awnings, and much else besides….

Enjoy!

All best wishes,



Biotect


PS – If you think that at times reading the following posts will be hard, because some are literally packed with calculations, just imagine what it was like to write these posts!!

I am an artist and a designer, not a mathematician or engineer. So if at any point in what follows I've made an error in my calculations, I would like to apologize in advance for the error. I checked and double-checked everything that I wrote. But if I made a mistake, please let me know. I also tried to be extremely attentive to the scalar values expressed on various maps and charts, e.g. figures “per day” versus “annual totals”. But there is literally a mountain of statistical information in graphical form in these posts. So if I did not interpret all of it correctly, please let me know where I messed up. And rest assured in advance that I will be grateful for the corrections!!



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PART E: TOILETS


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Okay...

First, the smell. Not a problem - the Eco-John, unlike the Incinolet, does not vent fumes/odors into the living space. The auger screw has seals on the ends. Non-issue. The smell being vented to the outside of the living space is an issue, but they offer a "catalytic converter in the chimney" option to eliminate that odor. Don't know how wall that cat works, but odor is probably a non-issue both inside and outside.

Second - custom built. Hey, if you are going to have them custom design and build something for you, then you might as well just do it right. Make it the combination incinerator/distiller I suggested the other day. Incinerate the toilet waste and capture/distill the water back into the fresh tank. Combined with the Bliss-style grey recycling and you've reduced the water lost to a point where any little ol' AWG can keep the system topped off.

(And have them add an electric heating element backup to the incinerator in case the diesel-fired burner has any problems. If Eco-John had an all-electric option, they could probably steal half of Incinolet's buisiness.)

.....

Sixth. I though the same guy built MaxiMog and KiraVan?

Hi dwh,

Yes, Bran Ferren built both, but he built the Maximog for another guy, whereas he built the Kirivan for himself -- see http://kiravan.net/maximog/ and http://kiravan.net/maximog/ . Or, as he likes to claim -- perhaps for marketing/deflection reasons (?) -- he built the Kiravan for his 4-year old daughter:







Yeah, right. And if you believe that.....:sombrero: ....T

The Kiravan is such an über-geek sort of vehicle, so intensely utilitarian and masculine, a vehicle that fetishizes technology to such an absurd degree (all those switches in the cockpit....), that it's utterly implausible to think that it was designed by and for anyone other than a middle-aged man:








See http://kiravan.net .

As egn suggested a while back, the Kirivan doesn't seem to be exactly the "right" solution. On my own view, it's not quite the right solution because it did not make the crucial analytic distinction between "the house" for sojourning, versus the TOAD for off-road exploring, or just fetching groceries.

But I don't want to be too hard on the Kiravan, because at least it was a first-draft attempt to really think through what a genuinely comfortable, globally-capable motorhome for extended travel might look like. And the Kirivan certainly employs a number of interesting technologies, and has some interesting design features, for instance, a roof-top "penthouse" that seems like it may have been inspired by the TATRA GTC "Around the World" Roof-top-tent:








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See posts #291, #292, #294, and #301 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page30 and http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page31 .

The Kiravan website also has a very generous and useful roster of links to participating suppliers and/or manufacturers -- see http://kiravan.net/suppliers/ .


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1. The EcoJohn and Incinolet


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dwh, as regards your comments about the EcoJohn: if the augur in the EcoJohn works well, and if there really is no smell, then great. But I would have to see it to believe it. Or, I would have to see some testimony on the web to the same effect. However, there does not seem to be anything on the web in the way of videos about the EcoJohn, whereas there are many videos about the Incinolet, mostly because people hate how bad it smells.

Here are some more amusing Incinolet videos:






In one video the guy claims that you can continue using the Incinolet even while it's going through a burn cycle. But this strikes me as an especially terrible moment to seek relief, because the Incinolet would smell particularly awful....



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2. Cinderella


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The only other incinerating toilet out there seems to be the "Cinderella", and it seems to have more of a separation between the combustion chamber and the chamber where one does one's business:









If you look about 35 seconds into the first video, you'll see what appears to be a very heavy slab of some kind, clamping down and sealing the combustion chamber shut. Whereas the Incinolet does not appear to have any such slab or seal.

For more information see http://www.siriuseco.no/en-us/cinderellatoilet.aspx , http://www.siriuseco.no , http://www.siriuseco.no/en-us/functions.aspx , http://www.cinderella-toilet.nl/en/ , http://www.cinderella-toilet.nl/en/#section-built-with-love , http://www.cinderella-toilet.nl/en/comfort/ , http://www.cinderella.as , http://www.cinderella.as/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=356 , http://www.cinderella.as/index.php/produkter-74/toalettsystemer/cinderella-original , and http://www.cinderella.as/images/stories/Dokumenter/Cinderella_Brosjyre_WEB.pdf.

Although in some ways the Cinderella merely looks like a “new, improved, Scandinavian-chic” version of the Incinolet, Cinderella does explicitly claim that their incinerating toilet is odorless – see http://www.siriuseco.no/en-us/functions.aspx . And because they are Scandinavians, I am inclined to believe that they are telling the truth…. ...Incinolet makes no such claim, and has a universal reputation for smelling like the apocalypse.

Cinderella even makes a propane gas-powered version, shown in the photo with one of those fancy new plastic composite-fiber propane cylinders – see http://www.cinderella-toilet.nl/en/cinderella-gas/ , and see post #304 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page31 :





Both products are Scandinavian: the toilet is Norwegian, and the propane cylinder is Swedish.

Last but not least, they make a version called “Cinderella Motion”, specifically designed for motorhomes – see http://www.cinderella-toilet.nl/en/cinderella-motion/ and http://www.cinderella.as/index.php/produkter-74/toalettsystemer/cinderella-motion-for-caravan :





[video=youtube;t1Js-u0ZPt0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Js-u0ZPt0#t=14 [/video]



So who knows: perhaps the “Cinderella Motion” might be a genuine, simple, hassle-free and stink-free alternative to both the EcoJohn and the Incinolet?



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3. More Experiential Feedback Needed for the Cinderella and EcoJohn.


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dwh, if you ever come across an "end user" video that reviews and/or critiques the EcoJohn with the augur, I would love to see it. Sure, I know that the EcoJohn's augur is supposed to take care of things. But until I actually see an EcoJohn in action, and test it for a few months, I just don't believe that it will prove odorless. We modern humans are psychologically habituated to “flush and forget”, so a low-water-usage vacuum toilet seems like the best compromise.

But who knows, maybe the Cinderella incinerating toilet really is odor-free, as advertised…..?

If anyone reading this has had experience with either the Cinderella, or the EcoJohn toilet that uses an augur, and can speak to the issue of smell, please post!!

It's abundantly clear that the Incinolet toilet stinks to high heaven, and should be eliminated from consideration. But it's hard to find information about the other two on the web. In particular, it's hard to find third-party testimonials regardings the issue of smell. So if anyone comes across a third-party video testimonial for the Cinderella or the EcoJohn, please post!!



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4. Continuing with an "EcoJohn Incinerator at a Distance", for now…..


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In the meantime, I will be working with the assumption that the only truly non-stinky incinerator, is an incinerator located some distance from the toilet itself. For the moment, I will be designing with assumption that neither the EcoJohn with Augur, nor the Cinderella, are to be trusted on the issue of smell.

Remember, this is still a somewhat hypoethetical design project (we'll see if it becomes concerete…..), so I merely want to be able to state in my summary of mechanical systems that it's perfectly realistic to have "vacuum-flush and forget + incineration", combined. I want to be able to indicate that I am very sensitive to the problem of toilet smell, and that I know that incinerating toilets have a bad reputation for stinking something fierce. I just need to indicate that I have found at a solution to this common worry, as proposed by EcoJohn. The exact details are not so important; but of course details will become much more important if/when we begin to see the TerraLiner through, past the "vaporware" phase.

I then have a small request to make. Imagine that you were approaching EcoJohn to specify the ideal set-up. Imagine for a moment that EcoJohn's augur simply does not work as well as advertised, and that it still leaves behind enough bits of poop to bother quite a few end-users. So just imagine for a moment that you are approaching EcoJohn with a proposal for a design that combines “flush-and-forget + incineration", in which an Ecojohn Incinerator is located at a bit of a distance from the toilet itself.

What do think should be the ideal size of the "blackwater" tank that accumulates the poop? Or should poop even be accumulated? Safas argued that accumulating poop before incineration would be more efficient, i.e. burning waste in bulk. But dwh, you seemed to indicate that the incinerator would probably need to be running constantly, in order to burn waste properly in good time, before the next load arrives? Needles to say, both the Incinolet and the Cinderella begin incinerating waste immediately, the minute it drops into their combustion chambers.

Your worry about the length of time required for incineration seems well-placed, because the average length of the Incinolet's incineration cycle is usually 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 hours, for one "standard" poop -- see http://www.incinolet.ca/faq.html and http://www.incinolet.com/incinoletmanualhi.pdf .

Where did you find the equivalent information about the incineration time for the EcoJohn? Sorry, it has been a while since I looked through EcoJohn's material, and so if you would be willing to save me some effort, by just providing the link or reference.....:bowdown:



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5. A Thought Experiment -- specifying "Flush & Forget + Incinceration": what size of blackwater tank?


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Now here is where I would be grateful if you'd be willing to do a little thought-experiment……:coffeedrink:

Imagine an extremely efficient vacu-flush toilet. The most efficient Sealand toilets now consume just .5 Liter a flush, and one Sealand even goes as low as .39 Liters using the "low flush" setting – see http://www.dometic.com/QBank/EPiSer...ne/2900-VacuFlush-Product-Guide-Web_14752.pdf . Assume that 2 people will occupy the TerraLiner 60 % of the time, 3 people 30 % of the time, and 4 people 10 % of the time.

What size of blackwater holding tank (if there is one) should there be? And what size of incinerator? As you suggest, it would be good to have an electric element to serve as backup, so it's probably a blessing that the standard-model EcoJohn Incinerator is diesel fueled: that way once the electric element is added, it will be "Bi-Fuel". So if one form of heat generation breaks, the other will still work, and the system will continue to function reasonably well until the defective half can be repaired. Whereas it probably would be much harder to “add” diesel power to an incinerating system that starts off as electric.

I am not looking for anything ultra-precise or carved in stone. Just a rough-guess estimate of the specs that such a system should probably have. I know that it's not your ideal system, dwh, because you want to recycle blackwater. Either that, or incinerate poop in an EcoJohn with an auger, and trust that there won't be any smell.

In short I am just asking you to humor me for a bit, and let me know what you think might be the specifications of such a combination “flush-and-forget” + incineration" system…..



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PART Fi: WATER – Recycling Greywater,
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and Collecting Rainwater from the TerraLiner's Roof versus Water from Ground Sources



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1. No Recyling of Blackwater


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dwh, at one point in your post you wrote:

Rather have Bliss style grey recycling + AWG + Incinerating toilet.

I fully agree, assuming here that the TerraLiner only recycles greywater, and does not distill blackwater.

As for recycling and distilling blackwater: ABSOLUTELY NOT. No way. NOT EVER.


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dwh, did you read my posts in which I revealed some intimate details about my intestinal history? See post #1446 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...edition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page145 and #1468 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...edition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page147 .

First off, my objection is pragmatic. I just don't think recycling blackwater is "worth it", relative to the quantities involved. Sure, I very much want to explore recycling grey-water from showers and the washing machine, if only because that's where the lion's share of water is lost. But with a vacuum flush toilet, we're talking only .5 liters per flush!!

It seems that the average person visits the toilet 2500 times a year, so 6 - 8 times per day – see http://www.health24.com/Medical/Kid...-the-kidney/Fascinating-toilet-facts-20120721 . So double that figure for two people (12 - 16), and add in a "fudge factor" so that a third person won't overload the system. In short, if we design a system that can process 20 toilet visits per day, we would still "lose" only 10 liters of water per day, i.e. 20 flushes x .5 liters each. And when only two people inhabit the TerraLiner, the figure will be more like 6 or 7 liters “lost” per day. That's nothing in comparison to the amount of water lost from showers, or the washing machine. Even though egn and his wife take absolutely minimal 15-Liter showers, this means they are still losing 30 liters a day just for bathing.

Second, I want fecal matter burned, not strained. And I do not want the TerraLiner’s users to be required to handle fecal matter when they change the filters on the Watermaker, or whatever filters are put in place leading up to the Watermaker, so that blackwater can recycle into to the system…... Cleaning out the ash of a Cinderella or an EcoJohn incinerator is one thing. Cleaning a system that also recycles blackwater is another. Dumping blackwater at special sites is already a yucky chore. But cleaning filters covered with blackwater residue would be even yuckier. And what system of filters could withstand getting gummed up by toilet paper?

Furthermore, I am genuinely and truly frightened of the pathogens that are present in our poop. And so I want there to be no chance whatsoever that something might go wrong with blackwater recycling. The best way to ensure that, is to never recycle blackwater. And to burn the emissions of the toilet instead.


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2. Open Defecation and Keeping Pathogens at Bay


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Finally, I really like the idea of trying to supply the TerraLiner with as much water as possible from rain, and from an AWG. In other words, not from the ground. I consider the ground in most undeveloped countries to be thoroughly contaminated with pathogens deposited there primarily because of “open defecation”:







See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_defecation , http://www.economist.com/news/asia/...es-not-just-building-lavatories-also-changing , http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/07/daily-chart-13 , http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/04/economist-explains-9 , , http://www.economist.com/news/21589107-needed-toilet-revolution-nothing-loos-your-chains , http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/sanitation ,http://www.economist.com/news/asia/...trition-contains-valuable-lessons-secrecy-and , http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/w...well-fed-children-with-malnutrition.html?_r=0 , http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27775327 , http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33980904 , http://unicef.in/Whatwedo/11/Eliminate-Open-Defecation , http://opendefecation.org/news/ , http://opendefecation.org/#slide6 , http://www.susana.org/en/resources/library?search=open+defecation , http://randread.com/2014/08/12/world-must-build-toilets-save-lives/ , http://riceinstitute.org/maps/?terms=Sanitation , http://riceinstitute.org/blog/more-...eally-decline-in-india-between-2001-and-2011/ , http://riceinstitute.org/maps/worldwide-density-of-open-defecation-by-country/ , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rose-george/open-defecation-india_b_7898834.html , http://www.firstpost.com/living/ind...s-why-bring-manusmriti-into-this-1634347.html , http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-long-and-short-of-open-defecation/article4505664.ece , http://www.theglobalist.com/10-facts-open-defecation-in-india/ , http://arstechnica.com/science/2014...-child-mortality-puzzle-among-indian-muslims/ , http://thesociologicalcinema.tumblr...revalence-of-open-defecation-is-often-used-as , and http://www.thiswormyworld.org/maps/open-defecation-in-india .

Note how these global maps suggest that open defecation is not just a severe problem in India. Open defecation is also a severe problem in many African countries, including relatively prosperous Namibia, where as per India, over 45 % of the population defecates "al fresco". Open defecation is also a severe problem in Laos and Cambodia, and it's a serious problem (15 - 25 %) in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Indonesia, most remaining African countries, and Bolivia. It's also a problem in Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, and various central American countries, because even a rate of 1 - 5 % means that lots of fecal matter is entering groundwater.

Notice also in the second map how the rural figures are much higher than the total figures. That's because people in the countryside are much less likely to have toilets than people in the city. One may think that one is more "safe" drawing water from a rural well or stream, but one is actually in more danger, not less. In Bolivia, 40 - 60 % of the rural population defecates in the open, whereas the percentage for the country as a whole is between 15 - 25 %. Note that India becomes a lighter shade, but that's only because the goalposts have changed. In the first map, dark red signifies 45 - 100 % defecating in the open, whereas in the second map, 60 - 80 % of India's rural population defecates in the open. Also notice how, whereas in Russia, both the total and rural figures are less than 1 %, in China and Mexico the national figure is less than 1 %, but the rural figure jumps to somewhere between 1 and 20 %.

As the third map suggests, strictly on a person-per-square-km basis, India is by far the worst, but Nigeria, Cambodia, and Pakistan are also quite bad.

That person-per-squre-km figure is quite important, because if the overall population of a country is growing rapidly, then even if the percentage of open defecators is declining, things could still be getting worse. Because the total number of open defecators per square km would still be increasing. This is what seems to be happening in many regions in India.

In India the degree of open defecation varies widely between Muslim areas like Kashmir, cities on the coast like Bombay, and progressive states like Kerala, where open defecation is the lowest, less than 25 %; versus rural areas in the Gangetic plain where open defecation is the worst, over 75 %:







As the second map suggests, there is a strong inverse correlation between open defecation and the percentage of households that have toilets.



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The degree of improvement or worsening in India since 2011 also varies dramatically by region. In terms of the percentage of change, it would seem that there has been dramatic improvement for the better in many areas (in some areas, 75 to 100 % better), and dramatic worsening in only a few areas (more than 30 % worse):







But the problem with percentage figures is that they completely disguise the seriousness of the problem. Because if instead one counts people per square km who defecate in the open, in most of India there has been either no improvement, or there has been a significant worsening:







As the last map suggests, much of the Gangetic plain has seen the population of open defectors increase dramatically, by 100 - 500 open defecators per square km. In effect, families that defecate in the open are breeding more open defecators. So even though the overall percentage may be stable or dropping, the absolute number of open defecators is not getting any better, because the overall population is increasing so quickly. And in many places in India, the absolute number of open defecators is getting much worse.

Note that this argument is not original to me, but rather, can be found on the RICE Institute blog at http://riceinstitute.org/blog/more-...eally-decline-in-india-between-2001-and-2011/ , and http://riceinstitute.org/wordpress/...2014/06/Spears-2014-increasing-OD-density.pdf :

.....what matters is not the proportion of people defecating in the open in a country, but the [absolute] number of people defecating in the open around his or her surroundings....

.....most people in India live in a district where their exposure to density of open defecation increased from the 2001 census to the 2011 census. This is especially true outside of a few highly densely populated and relatively highly developed metropolises. If exposure to open defecation density is indeed a relevant risk factor for early life health and human capital accumulation – as an active and growing literature indicates – then there is little evidence that sanitation in India has been improving; indeed the average sanitation exposure in India arguably worsened from 2001 to 2011.

But I hope that I might have done a better job explaining the mathematics and the demographic nature of the problem than RICE!.

I then suspect that similar demographic dynamics will be at work in developing countries that have rapidly growing populations and "classical" age-pyramids, with more than 50 % of the population under 30. In countries like Indonesia, Cambodia, and most African countries, the density of open defectors per square mile will probably increase over the next few decades, no matter how many toilets AID agencies try to install. Sure, the percentage will fall, but the absolute number of people per square mile who are literally *********** pathogens into the water supply, will increase, because the overall population is increasing so quickly.

Yes, I know this is very pessimistic. But if one has taken a course in demography, one knows just how difficult it is to make headway against problems that are fundamentally demographic in nature. Open defecation and the pathogens that it releases into the water supply is also a demographic problem, and not merely a technological, developmental, or toilet-access problem.

So one reason I like the Bliss Mobil solution so much, is because they seem very focused on trying to avoid obtaining water from the ground. For me, that’s also one of the primary reasons for an AWG.



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3. Just say "No" to Blackwater Recycling.....:coffeedrink:


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dwh, I then want to ask:

“Why go through all the problem of avoiding contamination by pathogens in fecal matter on the ground, only to reintroduce the possibility of “internal” contamination, via blackwater recycling?”

For me blackwater recycling defeats the whole purpose of rainwater and AWG water-collection in the first place. I want to avoid contact between the TerraLiner’s water system and water-borne fecal matter as much as possible. So why would I want to reintroduce the risk internally, with blackwater recycling? In short, recycling blackwater for me defeats the whole logic of the design of the TerraLiner’s water system, at least from a health-and-safety point of view. It seems illogical and contradictory; and perhaps even a very stupid thing to do.

This is more or less non-negotiable for me. I will be happy with a system that "leaks" 6 - 10 liters of water every day, because this water is used to flush the toilet. Losing 6 - 10 liters a day for flushing a vacuum toilet is the price I am willing to pay for that added level of colonic security…..:ylsmoke:

Perhaps one needs to have the amount of experience that I've had with water-born pathogens, in order to appreciate the seriousness of this problem. Perhaps there is simply no substitute for getting sick in a Second or Third World country, and then *********** one's guts out for the next three years. If one hasn't travelled to the Third World at all, then one will simply not understand. If one is habituated to just dropping a hose into a lake or stream in the United States, or Western Europe, or even Eastern Europe -- where less than 0.1 % of the population defecates in the open -- then one will no doubt think there are no serious dangers when doing the same in Africa, much of Asia, and much of Latin America. Notice that in most eastern European countries not even the rural population defecates in the open. There too, the figure is less than 0.1 %.



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4. Specifying the size of the AWG necessary to replenish the system


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The smallest and lightest AWG we've discussed so far -- the EcoloBlue 30 -- still produces 30 liters per day, albeit in optimal humidity conditions. But even if the EcoloBlue 30 were producing only half that much, it would still probably be able to keep the system recharged, assuming that greywater is recycled, i.e. the shower and washing machine water.

But of course a "safer" AWG, with more of a built-in margin for error, would be better. An AWG that exceeded the system's water replenishment requirements by a factor of 50 %, would probably need to produce at least double the EcoloBlue 30’s output, in optimal conditions. This would be a large AWG that prdouces 60 liters per day when relative humidity is 90 %, such that it’s still producing 30 liters per day when the relative humidity is at 40 %, and 15 liters per day when the relative humidity is 30 %.

Here it’s important to realize that personally speaking, I view the AWG as more of a “supplement” to a Watermaker, and not as a replacement. The Bliss Mobil system has the right idea: roof-top rainwater collection + Watermaking. In most of the world there is plenty of rainfall, and Bliss Mobil claims that its WaterMaker can produce 70 - 100 liters per hour (!!), not per day -- see http://www.blissmobil.com/en/products-en/23-foot/water-23ft/1117-recycling-of-water-23-ft.html . But of course it's a Watermaker, not an AWG: it is being “fed” water direct through a hose from the roof. It doesn’t have to make water from mere vapor in the air.

But still, because the Bliss Mobil’s Watermaker is so fast and efficient, once again blackwater recycling is simply not worth the risk for me. If the TerraLiner’s Watermaker had the same level of performance as the Watermaker used by Bliss Mobil, then when functioning as a Water Recycler, it would replenish the freshwater tank in no time. Even if a long shower consumes 50 liters, or a very large jacuzzi bathtub consumes 150 liters, that water will have returned to the system as “fresh” and clean in less than two hours.

So I see the AWG as collecting water from vapor only when the Watermaker is not getting enough rainwater from the roof. There are a number of locations on earth – namely, coastal fog deserts – where the AWG may become the primary source of water replenishment. So one still has to calculate its size based on that possibility.

According to the review of the EcoloBlue 30 by the Gadget King, although the machine’s stated capacity is 30 liters per day, his office had only around 48 % to 55 % humidity, so the unit took "three days to fill up the tank" – see http://www.gadgetking.com/2010/01/15/making-water-from-thin-air/ . Here is the official performance chart from EcoloBlue – see http://www.yourfamilyclinic.com/wellness/water/ecoloblue/30smanual.pdf , page 39:







So according to this chart, the Gadget King’s machine was producing more like 18 liters a day, instead of 30 liters.

What interests me in particular is what happens at 35 % humidity: performance then drops to just 10 liters per day, or 1/3 of peak performance.

Using this as a rough-estimate guide for the performance-degradation of all AWG’s, if we want an AWG to replenish the system at a rate of 20 liters per day even in the worst circumstances, when humidity is 35 %, then we would need an AWG that can produce 60 liters in the best of circumstances. Or, we would simply need two EcoloBlue 30’s instead of just one, which would be better from the point of view of redundancy. It would also allow one to “scale” power usage, running only one AWG when humidity is high, and using both when humidity is really low, in the 35 – 40 % range.

The EcoloBlue 30's don’t weigh all that much: 58 kg. So two of them would weigh about 120 kg, which is equivalent to 120 liters of water. That seems like a small price to pay in terms of weight, for machines that would radically increase the global reach of the TerraLiner’s ability to produce water autonomously.

Note that I stated 20 liters per day as a minimum rate of AWG water replenishment, because as already suggested, I expect the TerraLiner to “lose” at least 6 – 10 Liters per day flushing the toilet. But if the Cinderalla toilet really has solved the problem of stench that plagues the Incinolet, then perhaps this requirement could be dropped to 10 liters per day. In which case just one EcoloBlue 30 (or any equivalent AWG) would work just fine.


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5. The Operational Possibilities and Limits of Rooftop Rainwater Collection + an AWG


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It’s important to realize that an AWG can only operate in certain specific environmental circumstances. As EcoloBlue clearly states, a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or 15.5 degrees Celsius, plus 35 % humidity, is the absolute minimum requirement. Let’s then assume that most AWG’s have similar demands.

The problem of temperature should not be exaggerated. The following map of Global Mean Annual Temperature has very useful lines clearly demarcating Celsius temperature boundaries. I hi-lighted the 15 degree Celsius boundary in light blue:








So if we take Global Mean Annual Temperature as our guide, an AWG should work just fine in the southern United States, southern Europe, most of the middle east, all of India, and southern China. And everywhere below that it should work just fine (in terms of temperature), except for the southern tip of South America, the southernmost bit of Australia, and most of New Zealand.

But the above map does not account for seasonal variation. Here is an animated GIF that shows temperature bands rising and falling with latitude -- see http://geog.uoregon.edu/envchange/clim_animations/gifs/tmp2m_web.gif :







Unfortunately, ExPo's ability to upload animated GIFs seems hit-and-miss. Only occasionally do they load properly. So until this issue is is fixed, one will need to use the weblink to see this animated GIF in action.

In January the operational limits of an AWG will be roughly the boundary between yellow and orange in the following map:







So in January, an AWG will not be able to operate in most of the United States, all of Europe, Turkey, Russia, most of China, and all of Japan.

But in January countries like Italy, Spain, and Greece are drenched with winter rainfall, so the rainfall collection system on the roof of the TerraLiner, as per the Bliss Mobil, will work beautifully. November to March is the rainy season for all Mediterranean climates in the northern hemisphere. And so too, it’s a season that’s just fine for rooftop rain-collection in moderately subtropical climates, for instance, southern states like Georgia, Alabama, or Texas, southern Japan, southern China, etc.

In other words, in January there will be plenty of rainfall in most of places in the northern hemisphere that are shaded yellow on the map. Above that, we don’t have winter rainfall, but rather, we have winter snow.

Conversely, in some places July is the rainy (or snowy) season in the southern hemisphere, because again it’s winter:







For instance, in July most of the southern half of Latin America -- most of Argentina and Chile, the southern part of Brazil, Bolivia and Peru on the Altiplano, etc. -- will have daily average temperatures below 15.5 degrees Celsius, and an AWG will not work:







This low winter temperature in itself is not really the problem, because in some places in the southern hemisphere, winter is the rainy season, just as winter is the rainy season in most of Europe, i.e. those countries in Europe which have either a "mediterranean" and/or an "oceanic" climate.

In countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, southern France, and so too countries with mediterranean climates like Turkey, Israel, northern/costal Tunisia, coastal Algeria, and northern/coastal Morocco, the winter is positively dripping with rainfall -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_climate , see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Köppen_climate_classification , and http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7v.html :







The first of these maps charts Köppen climate classification Csb, or "warm summer mediterranean", while the second charts Csa, or "hot summer mediterreanean". For instance, southern France (Provence), Chile, and northern Portugal have "warm summer" mediterranean climates, and so too, oddly enough, western Oregon and western Washington. There is a some ambiguity vis-a-vis Csb and Cfb, or an "oceanic" climate, but Köppen classifies western Oregon and western Washington as "warm mediterranean". Whereas the San Francisco Bay area, Western Australia around Perth and further northwards, and "classic" mediterranean countries like Italy, Greece, Turkey, coastal Algeria, coastal Morocco, southern Spain, and southern Portugal, all have "hot summer" mediterranean climates. In all of these locations, whether Csb or Csa, winter is the rainy season.

So too even though it's kinda wet in Ireland and Britain all year round, winter is wetter, and summer is drier. Winter is also wetter in the parts of France, northern Germany, and Scandinavia that are classified as having "oceanic" climates, as either Cfb or Cfc , according to the Köppen classification -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_climate , https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Koppen_World_Map_Cfb_Cfc_Cwb_Cwc.png :







Yes, some of these places are not exactly on the ocean; read the wikipedia article for the full explanation.....:ylsmoke: ..The "Cwb" and "Cwc" designations instead refer to "Temperate highland tropical climates with dry winters", i.e. places like Mexico City, Bogota Columbia, Copacabana Bolivia (i.e. lake Titicaca), a large swath of the Himalayas in northern India and Nepal, highland Ethiopia, much of Angola, and some highland areas in southwestern China. Put very directly: these are places where an AWG will not work in the winter, and where rooftop rain collection will also not work.

But the other areas two classifications -- Cfb and Cfc -- are more nearly what one tends to think of as "oceanic". Cfb is obvious enough, because that's the climate that one finds in Great Britain, France, coastal northern Spain, etc. Cfc is then the "sub polar" variety of Cfb:

Areas with subpolar oceanic climates feature an oceanic climate but are usually located closer to polar regions. As a result of their location, these regions tend to be on the cool end of oceanic climates. Snowfall tends to be more common here than in other oceanic climates. Subpolar oceanic climates are less prone to temperature extremes than subarctic climates or continental climates, featuring milder winters than these climates..... As with oceanic climates, if none of a region's average monthly temperatures falsl below -3 °C (26.6 °F), then it typically carries a Cfc designation. This variant of an oceanic climate is found in parts of coastal Iceland, the Faroe Islands, small sections of the Scottish Highlands, northwestern coastal areas of Norway such as Lofoten and reaching to 70°N on some islands,[SUP][12][/SUP] uplands near the coast of southwestern Norway, southern islands of Alaskaand northern parts of the Alaskan Panhandle, the far south of Chile and Argentina, and a few highland areas of Tasmania, and the Australian and Southern Alps.

In summary, there are four Köppen classifications where wet winters are guaranteed: Csa, Csb, Cfb, Cfc . Although an AWG will not work in the winter in these locations because it will be too cold, rooftop rain collection most definitely will work.

So the real problem with most of the land surface in the southern hemisphere is not that winter will be cold. Rather, the real problem is that most of the southern hemisphere does not have an oceanic climate (Cfb and Cfc), nor a mediterranean climate (Csa or Csb). Most of the land surface in the southern hemisphere where winter is cold, is also land surface where winter is dry. Think of the issue this way: even if an AWG could be found that operates below 15.5 degrees Celsius, that still would not solve the problem. Even if an AWG could operate at just 5 degrees Celsius, across most of the land surface of the southern hemisphere that gets cold in the winter, there will be no humidity to process.

So during the winter in most parts of the southern hemisphere where the winter is cold, an AWG will not work, and neither will rooftop rain collection.



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6. Where winter rainfall collection on the roof will work during the Southern Hemisphere's Winter season: the case of Chile


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First, let's look at a place in the southern hemisphere where Bliss-type rainfall collection on the roof will work in the winter.

In southern Chile south of Santiago, July will be the winter rainy season, and so rooftop rainwater collection will prove a viable alternative in this central, "warm mediterranean" region of Chile -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Chile andhttp://www.studentsoftheworld.info/pageinfo_pays.php3?Pays=CHL&Opt=climate :







Further south in Chile -- for instance at Puerto Montt -- although it receives more rainfall in the winter months than in the summer, it always rains year round, as evidenced by the precipitation chart for Puerto Montt above, and the first map below. Southern Chile is one of the wettest places on the planet, even though northern Chile is the driest, and neighboring Patagonia in Argentina is very arid too. So in southern Chile, collecting rainfall on the roof even in the summer (i.e. November, December, January) won't be a problem.

Southern Chile's climate is just plain wet, and is classified as a temperate rain-forest climate akin to the "Pacific temperate rainforest" climate that runs from Northern California all the way up to Anchorage in Alaska -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_rainforest , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_temperate_rain_forest_(WWF_ecoregion) , http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/ecoregions/pacific_temperate_rainforests.cfm , and https://www.uas.alaska.edu/acrc/_docs/data_publications/factsheets/pacificcoastal.pdf :






In Chile, it's called the "Valdivian temperate rainforest" -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdivian_temperate_rain_forest , http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/ecoregions/valdivian_temperate_rainforests.cfm , and http://www.nature.org/ourinitiative...a/chile/explore/valdivian-coastal-reserve.xml

So down around Puerto Mott and surrounding country, the Bliss-type system on the TerraLiner's roof would work pretty much year-round, just as it would work year-round in the Pacific Northwest: in coastal Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and southern coastal Alaska. The same could be said for other parts of the world that also have temperate rainforest climates, places like Ireland, the west coast of Britain, the southern coast of Norway, the northern coast of Spain (as we've already seen), south-eastern Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand:







These are all regions where the temperature during the winter will definitely drop below the 15.5 degree Celsius, hence limiting the usability limit of an AWG. But rainfall will be year-round, snow will be rare, and so the Blissmobil collection system on the roof could be relied upon for 12 months a year. For the most part these are also regions of great scenic beauty, and heavily forested.

Although as seen in a previous post both Britain and Ireland have been seriously de-forested, the exact opposite is true for coastal Norway and northern Spain. Furthermore, much of the areas shown as temperate rainforest in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand also have considerable forest cover. Perhaps most surprising of all, although Japan is densely populated, Japan is very mountainous and covered with forests. An aggressive re-forestation campaign begun about 300 years ago during the Tokugawa Shogunate, means that today Japan now has enormous forests filled with huge old trees -- see http://ecotippingpoints.org/our-stories/indepth/japan-community-forest-management-silviculture.html , http://scribol.com/anthropology-and-history/environmentalism-in-1666 , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_shogunate . At present, about 68 % of Japan's total land-surface is covered by forest -- see http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS .

It's also interesting to note that Wikipedia classifies as temperate rainforest the eastern coast of Korea, the coast of Siberia northwards from Vladivostok, and Sakhalin island; Taiwan, much of southern China, southwestern China, northern Bhutan, and north-western Nepal; the southern, Iranian coastline of the Caspian Sea; the far western coastline of the Black Sea, including much of the coast of northern Turkey; the mountainous areas of the Balkans; and the Appalachian mountains in the American south. I'd already known that some of these places have temperate rainforest climates, but not all. The southern coast of the Caspian Sea in Iran was especially surprising.

These all seem places well worth visiting, and in most cases, they are all located in First or Second-World countries. And I suspect that, unlike Ireland and Britain, many or even most of them will be heavy with trees, because of far-sighted conservation and forestation policies. For instance, because of such policies, in the Kingdom of Bhutan forest cover is still above 85 %, and the percentage is actually increasing -- see http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS .

However, as must be evident from the map directly above, only a small fraction of the world's land-surface is covered by temperate rainforest. So even if one could rely on year-round roof-top rainwater collection in southern Chile or coastal British Columbia, the same is not true for the other half of Patagonia, i.e. southern Argentina....

Here are some videos that do a good job of introducing Chile, its geography, and its climate, from the desert in the north to glaciers in the south, with an exceptional mediterranean-climate wine growing region in between; followed by two videos that do the same for Argentina and Bolivia:






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7. Places in the Southern Hemisphere where neither roof-top rainfall collection, nor the AWGs, will work during the Winter


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A. Winter Operational Limits: South America


Now even though Bliss-type rooftop rainwater collection + one or two AWGs will work well as a system for water production throughout much of Chile, even during the winter, the same is not true for the winter in most of the rest of the southern half of South America, i.e. those places where winter gets cold, below 15.5 degrees Celsius. For instance, even though it's cold, winter is the dry season on the Altiplano and lake Titicaca, not the wet. So the AWGs will not work (it will be too cold), and very little water will be collecting on the roof.

So too, the Patagonia and Monte deserts in Argentina will be both cold and arid. And the Atacama desert in Chile and Sechura in Peru will by hyper-arid, with no rainfall whatsoever, regardless the season. The map on the right provides particularly detailed information about the deserts of South America, and is by far the most useful I've been able to find thus far:







All of thees deserts receive very little rainfall overall, especially the Atacama and the Sechura.

On the other hand, the immediate coasts of the Atacama and the Sechura (but not further inland), will be dense with fog and humidity, although paradoxically no rainfall.... So if the temperature were warm enough, directly on the coasts of these deserts the AWGs would work. I will discuss this somewhat exceptional kind of "Coastal Fog Desert" further along, from post #1596 and following -- see http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...edition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page160 .

Now in the case of the Patagonian and Monte deserts -- which are more semi-arid, and not hyper-arid as per the Atacama and Sechura -- there is some rainfall. But rainfall seasonality seems to shift from region to region. These deserts do receive some rainfall, but the month in which it is most likely to happen varies. For instance, in the north at San Rafael Aero, rainfall peaks in December and January, which is summer in the southern hemisphere. Just south, at Chos Malal, it's the opposite: rainfall peaks in the May and June, i.e. late autumn and the beginning of winter. At Patagones there appear to be two rainy seasons, one that peaks in March and one that peaks in October. At Lago Argentino Aero, rain seems to concentrate in the winter, from May to July:







So depending on exactly where the TerraLiner is located during the winter in the Monte or Patagonian deserts, roof-top rainwater collection may or may not work, because it may or may not be the rainy season..... If roof-top rainwater collection doesn't work, the AWG won't work either, again because of the low temperature during winter. So as per the Peruvian and Bolivian Altiplano during its dry winter, the TerraLiner would have to draw down its freshwater tanks, and/or collect groundwater.

The map directly above comes from what is probably by far the best guide to desert climatology, a book titled Dryland Climatology, by Sharon E. Nicholson -- see http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dryland-Climatology-Sharon-E-Nicholson/dp/0521516498 , http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academi...tology-and-climate-change/dryland-climatology , and http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/stor...DFC43 0DE002D.f01t01?v=1&t=ieyc5i02&0ef3b328 . None of the book's maps are in color, but what the book lacks in terms of aesthetics, it more than makes up for at the level of detailed, precise information: information of the kind that is very useful when thinking about rainwater collection and AWG operation. So I will be using a number of the book's black & white, information-rich maps in what follows.



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B. Winter Operational Limits: Southern Africa


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Now the same is also true for much of southern Africa during the winter: it will be cold, an AWG won't work, but there also won't be any rain collecting on the roof either, in dry countries like Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and Angola:







In South Africa, for instance, the southernmost province of Western Cape -- where Capetown is situated -- has a mediterranean climate. This means that it gets most of its rainfall in the winter, from May to July:



[video=youtube;Z0rkXXYFfLQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0rkXXYFfLQ [/video]



But the higher-lying areas of the interior plateau of South Africa have dry and sunny winters. In other words, in the rest of South Africa summer is the rainy season, from mid-October to mid-February, with rain arriving in the form of afternoon thunderstorms -- see http://www.southafrica.info/travel/advice/climate.htm#.Vf3qnEvARsg , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_South_Africa , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Cape . So while rooftop rain collection will work during the winter in Western Cape province, it won't work elsewhere, and neither will an AWG, because it will be too cold.

This is born out by seasonal maps of African precipitation. In January (the summer) there's considerable rainfall over most of southern Africa, except for the southwestern most tip, i.e the Western Cape province. Whereas in July, the height of winter, most of southern Africa is bone dry, and only the southern-most coast of South Africa, with its Mediterranean climate, is wet:







The graphs of seasonal precipitation at selected stations confirm the same picture:







So throughout most of southern portion of Africa during the winter -- in countries like Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Angola -- neither rainfall collection will work, nor the AWGs, because it will be too cold, and there probably also won't be enough humidity. The only exceptions would be the immediate coasts of Nambia and Angola, in the Namib desert, where there will be thick fog and high humidity, but paradoxically very little or no rainfall. Again, I will discuss this kind of "Cosstal Fog Desert" further along, from post #1596 and following -- see http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...edition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page160 .

Here is a very beautiful animated GIF of mean monthly rainfall, January through to December, for the whole planet -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MeanMonthlyP.gif and https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/MeanMonthlyP.gif :







As you watch the animation, you can literally "see" all of southern Africa drying up during the southern hemisphere's winter, beginning in May and lasting until September. I uploaded the very smallest GIF file available (it was the only one that worked), so if you want to see this animation in higher resolution, just click on the two links above.

In more central, equatorial parts of Africa there is the added complication that many locations have two rainy seasons and two dry seasons:







And the same is true for much of upper Amazonia, Colombia, and Central America. But presumably these are warm countries more or less all year round (except at high-altitude). So if there's humidity, at least the AWGs will work.....

Here are two videos that do a fairly good job of explaining Africa's climate and weather patterns in general:






The second is a very long lecture aimed at secondary-school students, perhaps created for a distance-learning program of some kind.



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C. Winter Operational Limits: Australia


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In Australia too, winter (roughly May to October) is usually the dry season in most states, even though Australia is a continent, and has such varied climates -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Australia .

For instance, in the Northern Territory, the tropical climate in Darwin is dry, warm, and sunny during the winter, between May and September, and the wet season occurs between December and March, during the peak of summer -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Darwin,Australia . The same is true of the desert interior, where if/when it does rain, it rains during the hottest months of the year, from October to March -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/ave...-Temperature-Sunshine,Alice-Springs,Australia .

Queensland pretty much follows the same pattern as the Northern Territory, with Cairns -- which is very far north -- getting tons of water during just three months, January/February/March, and then becoming largely dry for the rest of the year -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Cairns,Australia . Even Brisbane, which sits at the very bottom of Queensland, still gets most of its rain from December through March, and there is a very noticeable dip in rainfall during winter, i.e. June/July/August -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Brisbane,Australia . Only once we get down to Sydney, in New South Wales, is rainfall more evenly distributed throughout the year -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Sydney,Australia . The same is true for Melbourne, in Victoria state -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Melbourne,Australia . However, although monthly precipitation in Melbourne is more or less evenly distributed, during the winter there is marked increase in the number of days each month with rainfall or snow.

And yet in the Australian Capital Territory where Canberra is located, inland from Sydney, the pattern is still wet summers and dry winters -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,canberra,Australia . Even though Canberra has a comparatively high elevation, and has more of a "continental climate" sort of climate.....

The only real exceptions to this general Australian rule of "wet summers/dry winters", are (a) Tasmania, and (b) Western Australia. Tasmania is much colder than the rest of Australia, so it has a proper four-season climate, with the winter months the wettest, and high-lying areas receiving considerable snowfall -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,hobart,Australia and https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,launceston,Australia . Western Australia has a mediterranean climate, so like Western Cape province in South Africa, it has very wet winters and very dry summers -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Perth,Australia .

This information gleaned from Wikipedia and the "World Weather and Climate Information" website, is confirmed by the maps provided by Dryland Climatology. In most of Australia, and especially in the far north, January (the summer) is the rainiest month. Whereas only in Western Australia, in south-eastern Australia directly on the coast and a few hundred kilometers inland, and in Tasmania, does July seem to be rainiest month, i.e. the middle of the winter.

Going by the first map below, it would also seem that the territory between Sydney and Melbourne has moderate rainfall throughout the year, receiving similar amounts of rainfall in summer and winter. But what appear to be mountainous areas in the far south-east -- areas where rainfall is particularly high, above 800 mm per annum -- the rain falls heaviest in the winter, as per Tasmania:







The second map is very useful, because it summarizes visually at one glance much of what I just wrote above. It divides Australia into three zones: a northern zone where summer precipitation is dominant, an "intermediate zone" where rainfall is evenly balanced throughout the year (I shaded this zone light purple, for clarity), and a southern zone where winter precipitation is dominant. It includes Canberra in the intermediate zone, but as we just saw, Canberra's climate is actually drier in the winter than the summer. So too, Adelaide has dry winters and a wet spring and fall -- see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,adelaide,Australia . So Adelaide should not really be lumped together with Melbourne, and especially not with Perth, where winter rainfall is so comparatively dominant.

But as a kind of very rough-and-ready, somewhat "theoretical" generalization, this second map is still very useful, because it demonstrates that there is an overall discernible "pattern" to how rainfall seasonality changes as one moves north/south across the Australian continent.

Needles to say, climate is always more complicated at the level of precise, local detail, but the overall picture still holds:







The upshot is that in most of Australia, during the winter the TerraLiner will be in trouble vis-a-vis autonomous water production, just as it will be in trouble during the winter in the southern parts of Africa and South America, with the notable exceptions of central and southern Chile, and Western Cape province.

Sure, specifically in Western Australia, far south-eastern Australia, and Tasmania, the TerraLiner won't have a water problem in winter, because it will be able to collect rainwater on the roof. Even though the AWG won't work in Perth, Melbourne, or Hobart because it will be too cold, the Blissmobil-type roof-top collection system will serve as an alternative. But everywhere else in Australia where the winter temperature falls below 15.5 degrees Celsius, the TerraLiner will have a problem.


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