A collection of innovative, creative, out of the ordinary, crazy,
goofy, and sometimes amazingly inventive and practical ideas and
projects. Solar coffee roasters, water powered tracker, solar refrigeration, water rollers, Got an "odd" project -- please send it in! |
Interesting Projects | |
Mirror gives Italian Village Its Place in the Sun |
![]() They use a heliostat to reflect sun into the town square. I've thought about doing this (on a much smaller scale) to reflect light into my east facing living room windows. |
Solar Bubble Build www.solarbubblebuild.com/build_images13.php
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Hippo Roller
water transport From Inhabitat.com
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![]() An easy way to transport several days worth of water for a family. The best designs are the simple ones. |
A Solar Water
Heater Made of PET Bottles
Update: Instructional Manual:
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![]() The Instructional Manual has a lot of good pictures
that make it fairly clear how it goes together. (Thanks to Cameron and Tom for providing more info on this.) |
Roasting Coffee on Sunshine |
![]() How to build a 1200F solar coffee bean roaster. |
A very
large pipe coil solar pool heater http://pasarlascanutas.com/...
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![]() Very nicely done, lots of good detailed pictures, and some performance data. Its in Spanish, but the Google "translate" button is your friend. |
My Shower Curtain is a Green
Warrior
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The Rutgers Solar Heating System
for Greenhouses Mears, Roberts, Simpkins, and Kendall Rutgers University The Rutgers Solar Heating System for Greenhouse - 1977 (0.8 MB pdf) Greenhouse Solar Heating-1981 (2.5MB pdf)
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![]() While I do not know of anyone who has tried this as a pool heater, it seems to me it might work well, and it would be very inexpensive -- perhaps $2 per square foot? The papers give information on a several greenhouse energy schemes, so you have to wade through all this to find the details on building the collector. The collectors described in the paper are quite large, but could be scaled down. Note that even though this is a very simple collector, there are details that you must get right for it to hold together -- so read all the construction notes. If you build one of these PLEASE let me know -- Gary A number of other interesting commercial greenhouse related papers at the Rutgers Horticultural Engineering Website: http://aesop.rutgers.edu/~horteng/ |
The Snail Shell System
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![]() I think I would need a window. |
The James Hand Washer
Another supplier of human powered washers:
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Accelerated Composites Aptera |
![]() While it is licensed as a motorcycle, they have put a
lot of emphasis on safety including air bags and front, side, and rollover
protection.
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Solar Still ElPaso Solar Energy Association |
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The Bruce Weiner MicroCar Museum http://www.microcarmuseum.com/index.html
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![]() Many on display in Madison, GA |
Bert Race
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David Goes Electric Bruce Johnson |
![]() Interesting article on converting a walk behind gas tractor to electric power on a budget.
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Hot Water,
Cold Beer Doug
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![]() Its a heat pump that pumps heat out of the beer and into the domestic hot water tank. |
Spiral Pump http://www.earthgarden.com.au/waterwheel.html
The Spiral Pump - A High Lift, Slow Turning Pump, Peter Trailer
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![]() The pump in the picture pumps 400 gallons per day to a tank 50 ft above the pump.
Sometime I am going to have to sit down an figure why this works :-) |
Dog Powered Scooter http://www.dogpoweredscooter.com/
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Water-Powered PV Tracker Bill Spurlock |
![]() Describes a clever solar panel tracking system that uses gravity feed water to power the tracker. |
RedRok |
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Harvesting water from fog |
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Beer Bottle Solar Water Heater, Ma Yanjun www.greenupandgo.com/renewable-energy/beer-bottle-solar-power/
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![]() I guess you work with what's available. |
Building a Simple Sterling Engine Jay Wilson |
![]() Interesting article on building a demonstration
level Sterling |
Single Seat Volkswagen
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![]() ![]() This car is powered by gasoline only, and its 250 mpg is not one of the phony plug in hybrid mileage ratings that does not include fossil fuel burned to make electricity -- its an honest 250 mpg -- amazing. Said to be ready to go on sale in Shanghai in 2010. |
A Low Tech
Hot Tub & Solar Heater http://eco-ants.co.nz/solarhw.html
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![]() More on the new version of the collector... And a start on a temperature controller for the hot tub ... (I think there is some risk here of getting the plastic pipe to hot if the collector stagnates -- see notes on our PEX collector and stagnation) |
Water bed cooling |
![]() Remove all the coverings except for a sheet or two, and let the water conduct heat away from your body. The temperature of the water in the bladder will be the average of the last few days, and cooler than body temperature. After more experience, Randy adds that during the cooler season, you want more insulation (e.g. a blanket) between you and the water bladder to keep it from getting to chilly. Its a mater of adjusting the amount of insulation between you and the thermal mass. |
A Solar Ammonia Absorption Icemaker Jaroslav Vanek, Mark “Moth” Green, and Steven Vanek http://homepower.com/files/solarice.pdf
Or,
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![]() Interesting article describing a demonstration level solar refrigerator using Ammonia as the refrigerant and a parabolic trough solar collector as the heat source. The article may be available as a free download at the first link, if not, search the HP achieves for issue 53, and order the download. |
Bubble
Wrap Window Insulation
Gary New Installation Instruction Sheet
(8/15/06) AND, The Card Board Shutter |
![]() Added some small updates to instructions 11/13/05.
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Solar Heated and Insulated Horse Tank - Version 2 Full details - performance and construction ...
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![]() Full construction step-by-step. |
True DIY Heat Pump Projects The Homemade Heat Pump Manifesto...
Multi part EcoRenovator blog on DIY GSHP...
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![]() The EcoRenovator site and forum have some fascinating, unusual, and hard core DIY energy projects. |
Fran's
Use of Subterranean Air to Defeat the Evil Air Conditioner
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![]() A nice simple and effective system and a well written story ... |
Homemade Pipe Radiator |
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Homes from Steel Grain Bins
Its Not Just a Grain Bin...It's a Home... One using strawbale insulation...
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![]() ![]() Once you start looking for these on Google, you find there are a lot of them. |
Rotating Solar Home |
![]() Maybe this should be in the "active solar" section :-) |
A More Efficient Shower http://www.sunfrost.com/efficient_shower.html
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![]() Interesting story and prototype. |
Steam Power - An Introduction |
![]() Good article on with quite a bit of
detail on how to size, |
Bill Lishman's Underground House www.williamlishman.com/underground.htm
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Beer Can Solar Air
Heating Collector
Original Hungarian version: English Translation: |
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More about the builder and collector ... A pretty good video on the CanSolar collector with some construction detail ... |
Sleep Genie -- A sleep Compartment with AC http://www.sunfrost.com/sleep_genie.html From Sunfrost |
![]() It saves the energy cost of needlessly air-conditioning a large space when your are only occupying a small space. |
Solar Heated Ice Fishing Shack |
![]() It cost almost nothing to build, and heats the insulated fishing shack very well. All the details from Bob... |
Our own "Experimental" page ... |
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Solar Autoclave Using Evacuated
Tube Collectors Sydney University, Australia Solar Autoclave Paper (pdf) |
![]() Two sizes described. The smaller size uses only one evacuated tube. |