Lowtech Graph lists low-tech options for every need of a home. Here you can compare them, find tutorials to build them, and link them together into a circular system. Why low-tech?

Cold storage

Keeping food cold enough to slow what spoils it. The ground and a shaded, ventilated space do part of this for nothing; a machine does the rest reliably but continuously. The options differ in how cold they get, how steady that is through the year, and whether they need power.

Ranked by how cold the store gets and how dependably. A powered refrigerator holds a set temperature whatever the weather. A root cellar is reliably cool from ground contact but tracks the season rather than a setpoint. A zeer pot achieves a useful drop below ambient only while the surrounding air is dry enough for evaporation, a real limitation in Normandy's oceanic climate.

Solutions

• Root cellar (passive cool storage): A cellar or room dug into the ground to store vegetables and fruit. The earth around it stays cool and steady all year, so food keeps for months. It needs no el
• Electric refrigerator: An ordinary electric fridge, with a compressor that pumps heat out of the insulated box. It keeps food cold whatever the season. It needs power all the time, th
• Zeer pot (evaporative pot-in-pot cooler): Two unglazed clay pots, one inside the other, with wet sand between them. As water evaporates from the sand it draws heat out of the inner pot, keeping it about
• Insulated cool box: A well-insulated box that keeps already-cold food cold with ice or frozen packs. It makes no cold of its own: it carries it, from a freezer, a winter night or a