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?

Active backup heating

Adds heat from a fuel or a machine, on demand. Distinct from passive solar gain, which collects heat that arrives on its own schedule.

Ranked by useful heat delivered per unit of energy put in. A heat pump moves existing heat rather than generating it, so it delivers several units of heat per unit of electricity and sits well above anything burning fuel. Among the combustion options, a mass heater extracts more from the same wood than a plain stove by storing a short, hot burn instead of sending it up the flue.

Solutions

• Wood stove / mass heater: A stove that burns wood to heat the house. A mass heater is a heavy version that burns hot and fast, then stores the heat in its stone or brick body and gives i
• Heat pump (air- or ground-source): An electric machine that heats the house by taking warmth from the outside air or the ground and pumping it indoors. Because it moves heat rather than making it
• Rocket mass heater: A wood heater with an insulated burning chamber that makes a very hot, clean fire, and a long bench of earth or stone that the hot gases run through before leav
• Gas boiler (condensing): A boiler that burns gas to heat water for radiators or underfloor heating, and recovers some of the heat that would otherwise go up the flue. It is the usual wa
• Gravity-fed pellet stove (no electricity): A pellet stove with no motor and no fan: pellets fall from a hopper into the fire by their own weight, and the fire draws its own air. It gives the steady heat