Ed Begley, Jr.
Credit: Planet Green
Living with Ed follows Ed Begley, Jr., and his wife, Rachelle, as they green their home, family, and celebrity friends. But if you've ever wondered what kind of advice they'd give the rest of us, then the Ask Ed forum is your chance to find out. Readers submit questions and comments about the show, green living, etc., and Ed chimes in with his green answers; here, we've rounded up some highlights of the past week.
Q. I am now a victim to the recession. I was at this company for 23 years so it was tough. In my job search I keep wondering, how can I, a 52-year-old woman, find a green job in the area that I live in as I compete against people that are much younger than myself. In my heart I have always wanted a green job (thats what I attended college for so long ago—environmental studies); I dont feel very confident in finding a job in the green area. Any suggestions would be very welcomed by me and anyone else facing the same hurdle.
A. First, green training is important. Check out this article —there's some great info there on all sorts of training programs. For job search, check out www.5milliongreenjobs.org and www.greenfootjobs.com
Ed
Q. I live in New York and I have driven my 1997 F 250 pickup over 100,000 miles on used cooking oil. I'm ready to modify a used diesel generator to create electricity powered by used cooking oil. How can i go about finding a used 30-kilowatt desiel generator for this project?
A. Try:
www.uspowerco.com www.generatorjoe.net www.dieselpowergenerators.com www.useddieselgenerators.net
Ed
Q. I saw a converter for cow dung on Planet Mechanics that powered a lawnmower or grain dryer or something and I was wondering if one of those could be used in place of natural gas, hot water heaters, furnaces, or stoves—and also how I would get the designs for building one. I wouldn't be able to do it on a large scale, like in CA, but it would really work in Oklahoma for our community or at least our family. We are pretty poor, so most of what we would use would have to be from the scrap piles and junk yards. There is a dairy farm right down the road a bit, so I don't think getting manure would be to much of a problem.
A. Generally manure is turned to methane gas via a machine called a digester. We showed a large scale one on Living with Ed—where the manure is washed from the stalls, the liquid and solids are separated, the liquid goes into a holding pond sealed by plastic and the methane is then pumped off and used in a generator to make electricity.
I'm sure there are smaller scale versions—I would search under "manure digesters" on Google.
Perhaps someone online here knows of a more residential size unit as opposed to the kind that are used to run dairy farms.
Ed
