FRIENDLY REMINDER...



Spring 2009
Hand-on Ecological Design Series in Downtown Santa Barbara

Part 3 - Solar Design for Home & Garden
Guest Speaker: Shawn Jacobson, Solar Energy Consultant and Designer
Saturday June 13
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
1611 Olive Street

Explore solar energy in a whole new light. This class will cover solar applications for homes including passive solar heating, Photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation, solar greenhouses and more, as well as how to design a garden in relationship to the sun. Students will participate in lecture, discussion and hands-on exercises to illustrate solar energ flows and simple techniques for solar heating, cooking, and cooling, as well as small scale applications and principles of PV integration.

with Leif H. Skogberg (more information below)
Donations Only (suggested $25, not required :))


Please bring a lunch for yourself, and/or a potluck dish to share. Thank you!



Background and Context:

Join us Saturday June 13 with Solar Design for Home & Garden as we continue to evolve a beautiful 1/3-acre downtown Santa Barbara lot into a model of urban sustainability using permaculture and ecological design as our guide.

Part 1 - Water Harvesting Earthworks on Saturday April 12th, was a great success and was an absolutely earth-moving fun day. With the initial earthworks completed, we were ready to take some serious soil building, living sponge creating, fertility enhancing steps.

Part 2 - Building Healthy Soil on Saturday May 30th, covered basic soil components as well as various strategies for improving and enriching soil fertility, including: composting, vermicomposting, sheet mulching, cover cropping and more. We moved 10 cubic yards of compost, made a demonstration compost, and got some mulch spread too.

Now Part 3 - Solar Design for Home & Garden will launch into the Element of Fire utilizing Permaculture design science and other eco-design principles to maximize the beneficial use of solar radiation wherever possible on our site. This course will cover basic laws of nature (with regards to solar radiation), solar/fire sector analysis, onsite solar design applications and solar electricity. To ensure dirty hands we will also plant a tree or two.

Guest speaker joining us this weekend is professional solar energy system designer, project manager and educator Shawn Jacobson who will be, quite literally, sharing his tool bag for solar design (with some really cool techy gadgets) while also covering basic principles of solar electric design, generation, transmission and storage. We hope you can join us under the oaks during lecture and in the garden for a Saturday full of fun in the sun!



More Design Course Series Details:


Part 3 - Solar Design for Home & Garden
Guest Speaker: Shawn Jacobson, Solar Energy Consultant and Designer
Saturday June 13
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
1611 Olive Street

Explore solar energy in a whole new light. This class will cover solar applications for homes including Photovoltaic (PV), passive solar and solar greenhouses, as well as how to design a garden in relationship to the sun. Students will participate in lecture, discussion and hands-on exercises to illustrate simple techniques for solar heating, cooking, and cooling, as well as small scale applications and principles of PV integration.


Part 4 - Natural Material & Construction
Guest Speaker: TBA
Saturday June 27
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
1611 Olive Street

Discover your innate building skills working with natural material and age-old technologies, used in modern applications. Learn how to create healthy indoor environments using all natural non-toxic material like wood, clay, sand and straw. This course will focus on simple techniques for using natural material like cob, straw bale and light-clay straw to retrofit existing structures to be more energy efficient, have improved indoor air quality and enhanced aesthetics.

Advanced registration is requested. Thank you! :)

For more information or registration, email: LeifSkogberg@gmail.com, or call (805) 886-6251
About Instructor:
Leif H. Skogberg
Ecological educator & designer, Leif H. Skogberg has been immersed in organic gardening, composting, natural building, permaculture and ecological systems design for nearly a decade. Certified in Permaculture Design, Green Gardening & Sustainable Landscape Operations, Leif has degrees in Environmental Horticulture Science and Liberal Arts from Santa Barbara City College.
As a student, Leif Co-founded & Chaired the SBCC Student Sustainability Coalition, during which time he led several successful student led efforts to institutional sustainability at SBCC, including; a campus sustainability assessments; an ecological footprint analysis of the campus; an eight week Adult Education lecture series entitled "Creating a Sustainable Future: Ecology, Ethics & Design"; environmentally preferable purchasing; improved campus recycling; and more. He also assisted with the creation and framing of the course "Projects in Sustainability" and the SBCC Center for Sustainability.

During this time as a student and activist, Leif also led numerous Natural Building workshops while design building a small "mud hut" out of all natural and recycled material near downtown Santa Barbara. Leif currently works full-time for the City of Santa Barbara as a Recycling Educator/Coordinator, while also providing independent environmental design consulting services on the side.