Recently in Odd Projects Category

Some New Stuff

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This is just a collection of some interesting (at least to me) items added tot he site over the last week or so....

Harvesting Fresh Water From Fog
Areas with regular daily fogs (e.g. some coastal areas) can harvest impressive amounts of FogHarvesting.jpgfresh water from the fog.  Nets catch the fog and then channel droplets from the fog into a catch basin. 



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Booklet on "Hot Water From Your Woodstove"
This is a good 45 page booklet from Lehman's describing a couple systems for adding a heatWoodStoveHotWater.jpg exchanger coil to the firebox in your woodstove to heat water.  Good detail on both thermosyphon and pumped systems, and lots of information on troubleshooting and doing the installation safetly.




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Skysails -- Kites for Towing Ships
These are large kites that can be deployed under favorable wind conditions to reduce fuel SkySails.jpgconsumption.  With favorable winds, fuel consumption can be reduced as much as 50%.
Operation of the Skysails is largely automatic.




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Homes From Cylindrical Grain Storage Bins
A collection of links to homes made from cylindrical steel grain bins.  These homes offer a GrainBinHomes.jpgthermally efficient shape, and some options for good insulation thickness -- plus and interesting look.

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Gary
Marc has worked out a what appears to be a very nice design for extracting heat from a large compost pile for space heating.

Compost.jpg

Marc's design includes a blower and air supply manifold system to aerate the pile, a pipe network to add water to the pile as needed, a pipe network to extract heat from the pile, insulation to increase the efficiency of the composting process, and a nice containment and cover system.

Link to Marc's blog entry on heat from compost...

Other heat from compost schemes on Build-It-Solar...

Judging from the emails I get, there is a lot of interest in using compost to generate heat, but there is not a lot of detailed information out there on how to actually build such as system.  I think Marc has taken a good cut at it.  What do you think?

Gary



The Solar Dinosaur

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OK, I suppose its a little bit of a stretch to call this a SOLAR dinosaur, but it does have a solar powered Dino Horn and a rotating Dino Beacon!

This is a dinosaur theme play structure that we built for the grand kids.  If you should be unbalanced enough to want to duplicate it, the picture plans and construction details in agonizing detail are here...   (free as always)


Dino.jpg 

Gary


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This page is an archive of recent entries in the Odd Projects category.

New Ideas & Projects is the previous category.

Small Hydro is the next category.

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