Paul Wheaton

In 2000, Wheaton shared his views on lawn care on his website richsoil.[21] Later that year, he launched the website Permies, a place for people to discuss lawn care and permaculture. By 2012, Permies had become the largest online community dedicated to permaculture and homesteading.[4] Wheaton first documented on Permies his design of natural homes.[22][23][24] Called the Wofati, it is a type of natural earth-sheltered building developed by Mike Oehler and expanded upon by Wheaton. Wheaton coined the acronym, which means Woodland Oehler Freaky-cheap Annualized Thermal Inertia. "Woodland" because it is the optimal location for such a building; "Oehler" after the pioneer, "Freaky-cheap," due to the Fairly-cost effective or frugal materials; and Annualized Thermal Inertia from a book by John Hait called "Passive Annual Heat Storage" which inspired much of the reasoning behind the Wofati design. The site has attracted notable personalities such as Geoff Lawton and Toby Hemenway, rocket mass heater developers Ernie and Erica Wisner, medical herbalist Michael Pilarski, and others who explore a range of eclectic permaculture topics.

In 1997, Kathy Sierra created javaranch.com, which she transferred to Wheaton In January 2000. In 2009, Javaranch was extended to a new domain coderanch.com with a forum.[25] As of May 2020, Coderanch had more than 3 million posts created by over 332,000 registered members.[26]

Paul Wheaton authored the book "Building a Better World in Your Backyard, instead of being angry at the bad guys.", which was an iteration of his philosophy of choosing to "build good things rather than be angry at bad guys."[27] He is also the author of many articles, published both on his own website and other major publications.[3] According to Wheaton, the book describes a collection of things people can do individually to make a significant positive global impact.[28][29]

A Wheaton's article on Hügelkultur appeared in LifeHacker in 2011, which suggested the use of wood to form the backbone of Hügelkultur bed.[30] His article on Aphids and ants was published on Countryside.[31]

In 2011, Wheaton launched a monthly podcast titled "Paul Wheaton Permaculture Podcast".[32] The podcasts mainly consisted of interviews with notable figures in permaculture and educational discussions on various topics of permaculture. In 2019, his Permaculture Podcast ranked number 2 in Feedspot's “Top 15 Permaculture Audio Podcasts & Radio You Must Subscribe and Listen to in 2019."[33]

Wheaton has also participated in other podcasts such as thesurvivalpodcast.com, in which he discussed various topics including Sepp Holzer, wofati, permaculture profitability, rocket mass heaters, light bulbs, and irrigation, and on The Pagan Homesteader podcast where they discussed Hügelkultur and Wofati.[34] Wheaton has also expressed his positions on energy saving methods in a podcast hosted by Abundant Edge.[35] Wheaton has been featured on The Joe Gardener podcast on the basics of hugelkultur. [36]

A rocket mass heater inside a tipi at Paul Wheaton's permaculture homestead in Montana

In 2008, Wheaton created his YouTube channel called paulwheaton12 which had over 86,000 subscribers and 24 million views as of June, 2020. [37] In his videos, Wheaton discusses various topics related to permaculture, which includes organic horticulture, rocket mass heaters, natural building, alternative energy, homesteading, frugality, raising chickens, wildcrafting, aquaculture, paddock shift systems, and colony collapse disorder. His videos also include interviews with Sepp Holzer and other notable people in the field of permaculture. He further presented his findings during his TEDTalk, "REALLY Saving Energy: Paul Wheaton at TEDxWhitefish".[38]

In 2019, Wheaton was interviewed by Peak Prosperity about his book, "Building a Better World in Your Backyard (Instead of Being Angry at Bad Guys.[39]

In 2020, Wheaton was also interviewed by Mike Nowak and Peggy Malecki about the "Building a Better World in Your Backyard (Instead of Being Angry at Bad Guys" book as well as his general thoughts and beliefs on permaculture. [40]

A prototype of an outdoor rocket oven designed by Paul Wheaton being test loaded with pizzas

In 2013, Wheaton produced a documentary of wood-burning stoves, highlighting sustainable ways to heat, which consisted of four segments called "Fire Science", "Sneaky Heat", "Boom Squish", and "Hot Rocket". The documentary was distributed in DVDs, in addition to online streaming and downloadable videos. According to Wheaton, his design of wood burning stoves uses 1/10 of the wood compared to conventional wood burning stoves. He also claimed that his stoves only produce 1/1000 of smoke compared to other stoves.[10]

In 2014, Paul Wheaton crowd-funded and produced a deck of Permaculture Playing Cards, where each card contained information about a different permaculture technique or notable people of permaculture.[41]

Later in the same year, Wheaton produced another documentary titled "World Domination Gardening", which featured a 3 days workshop of Hügelkultur, earthworks, ponds, and swales.[42] The documentary was distributed in sets of three DVDs, called "Sealing a Pond Without a Liner", "Ditches and Swales", and "Hugelkultur and Terracing".[12]

In 2015, Wheaton launched a Kickstarter project to make a documentary of rocket mass heaters. The documentary has been distributed in DVDs, streaming media, downloadable video files, and PDF plans.[43]

In 2017, Wheaton hosted a Permaculture Design Course and an "Appropriate Technology Course" which consisted of a 14 days workshop. The project was able to raise the pledged funds within 22 hours after its Kickstarter project was launched.[44][45][46][47]

Later in 2018, Wheaton produced a documentary called "Rocket Ovens", which he described as an efficient way to cook and bake food making less than 1% of the carbon footprint of that of an electric oven. Distributed in DVDs and streaming videos, the documentary featured environmental friendly ways of cooking, baking, and dehydrating food with lesser amount of wood compared to other forms wood-fired ovens.[48][49][50]