Laying out the Building Lines For Your Natural Building « Natural Living School Site Preparation After you select your site, and have a plan and design for your building, then you are ready for site preparation. The first thing to do is make sure you clear the site where the building will be located. This means removal of trees, shrubs, large rocks, stumps, or anything that may be in the way of the construction. If there is a lot of plant life, you may choose to transplant it, or if it’s just grasses you may just mow it down or weed whack it. Laying Out The Building Lines For the purpose of keeping things simple, lets look at two options. For a round structure; First, pound a stake deep in the ground where you want the center of your building to be. The trench for a round Sauna we worked on in Aurora Or. Then remove the top soil and set aside for future use. For the thickness of your inside wall, measure the size of your straw bales first. For a Rectangular Buildings; First you need to make sure that your building lines are squared. Like this: Like Loading...
DIY IKEA Shelf In-Home Aquaponics - Planted Space Dubbed "Malthus," this Ikea-hacked project by Conceptual Devices pieces together a 100g fish tank, plastic grow beds, a pump and piping onto an IKEA Broder shelf, with wheels. Malthus is designed to be an in-home unit, and to grow one meal a day, a portion of fish with a side of salad. If you don't know yet, aquaponics is basically hydroponics + fish in a sustainable loop. The fish provides nutrients and CO2 to the plants, and the plants in turn purifies the water and returns O2 to the fish. Check out our introduction to aquaponics. Forming the width of two small refrigerators, this in-home aquaponics system is designed for "the next generation kitchen or living room," hoping to grow food right next to where you cook it. All elements of the unit can be found in home improvement stores, the shelf and structure are from IKEA, the water pump, LED strips, mechanical timer, and tubing can be found readily in any retail chain. Have your own DIY aquaponics setup you'd like to share with us?
Eco Homes from the Earth: 7 Ways to DIY Wouldn’t it be nice to own your own green dream home, made with recycled and natural materials and packed with custom features? Whether you’re an experienced builder or have never picked up a power tool in your life, you can build a natural eco-friendly home with user-friendly, low-cost materials like cob, cordwood, straw and the dirt and wood from your own land. These 7 natural building techniques produce beautiful homes with a small ecological footprint and tons of personality. Earthships and Hobbit Houses (images via dominicspics, ECOnscious, Earthship Biotecture) [youtube=L9jdIm7grCY] They seem to be a living part of the very earth itself, often with nothing but a façade and some windows to betray the presence of a home in the hillside. (images via: simondale.net) Among the most famous examples of a ‘hobbit house’ is “A Low Impact Woodland Home”, self-built in Wales for about 1000-1500 man-hours (over four months) and £3000. Cob (images via: ziggy fresh) [youtube=F0KDp00n4fs] Cordwood
How to Turn a Pallet into a Garden Good news and bad news. I had planned to film a short video showing you how to make a pallet garden, but the weather didn’t cooperate. I was stapling the landscape fabric onto the pallet when it started drizzling and got really windy. That’s the bad news. But I know I promised a tutorial today, so I took photos and have kept my word to share how to make the pallet garden. I tried to be as detailed as possible. So keep reading my pallet loving friends, instructions on how to make your own pallet garden are just a few lines away… Find a Pallet The first thing you need to do is–obviously–find a pallet. Don’t just take the first pallet you find. Collect Your Supplies For this project, you’ll need the pallet you found, 2 large bags of potting soil, 16 six packs of annual flowers (one six pack per opening on the face of the pallet, and two six packs per opening on the top of the completed pallet garden), a small roll of landscape fabric, a staple gun, staples, and sand paper. Now for the sides.
How I built an electricity producing Solar Panel Several years ago I bought some remote property in Arizona. I am an astronomer and wanted a place to practice my hobby far away from the sky-wrecking light pollution found near cities of any real size. In my attempt to escape city slicker yuppies (you know the kind, the ones that like to blab loudly on their cell phone while they work on some business administration degree in a cyber cafe somewhere in Trendyland.) and their light pollution, I found a great piece of remote property. The problem is, it's so remote that there is no electric service available. That's not really a problem. I built a wind turbine to provide some power on the remote property. Here is a video of the solar panel set up and in use on my remote, off-grid property. Let me state up front that I probably won't be able to help you out much if you decide to build your own solar panel(s). So what is a solar panel anyway? After a while, I came to some conclusions: seller. A solar panel is really just a shallow box. Oops!
Build a 15,000 rpm Tesla Turbine using hard drive platters Here's a project that uses some of those dead hard drives you've got lying around. In the Tesla Turbine, air, steam, oil, or any other fluid is injected at the edge of a series of smooth parallel disks. The fluid spirals inwards and is exhausted through ventilation ports near the center of the disks. A regular blade turbine operates by transferring kinetic energy from the moving fluid to the turbine fan blades. To build a turbine like this, you need some dead hard drives, some stock material (aluminum, acrylic), a milling machine with a rotary table, and a lathe with a 4 jaw chuck. Wikipedia has a good review article ( as well as articles about Nikola Tesla the boundary layer effect ( and Reynolds number ( (which determines if the fluid flow is laminar or turbulent).
Learn to Grow Plants and Food With Beginner Garden Projects @Scott Gardner: Head over to Cornell university's web site for everything you need to know about specific plants. They'll give you the soil requirements, optimum amounts of light, soil temperatures, watering schedule etc for most of your basic garden plants. Next, review your soil condition. Of primary concern are temperature, and pH. If you want to evaluate nutrient levels, a basic soil test kit will work, or send samples to a near by lab for analysis (runs between $30-$60). Soil consistency is also very important. There are a million gardening books on BitTorrent and NewsGroups, ranging from the Idiot's guides, to the required texts for doctoral studies in agriculture and biochemistry. YouTube, Instructables, HowCast and other how-to sites will walk you through pretty much everything. Contact your extension office, they'll give you tips relative to your geographic location. Remember, you don't need to stop at Vegetables. Good luck.
How I built an electricity producing wind turbine Several years ago I bought some remote property in Arizona. I am an astronomer and wanted a place to practice my hobby far away from the sky-wrecking light pollution found near cities of any real size. I found a great piece of property. The problem is, it's so remote that there is no electric service available. One thing I noticed right away about my property is that most of the time, the wind is blowing. Let me state up front that I probably won't be able to help you out much if you decide to build your own wind turbine. Since no one seems to be reading the FAQ, I will answer the No. 1 question I get many, many times a day right here up front. Update: Here is a video of the wind turbine in operation. Update: Here is a video of me assembling and setting up the wind turbine on my remote off-grid property. I started the process of designing my wind turbine by Googling for information on home-built wind turbines. I reduced the project to just five little systems. for only $26. . Finally!
DIY Solar Still How To Make Your Own Distilled Water Make your own distilled water from stream or lake water, salt water, or even brackish, dirty water, using these DIY Solar Still Plans. With just a few basic building materials, a sheet of glass and some sunshine, you can purify your own water at no cost and with minimal effort. Distilled water is not just for drinking, and it’s always worth keeping a few gallons of it on hand. • Always refill the lead-acid batteries used for solar energy systems or automobiles with distilled water • Water delicate plants like orchids with distilled water; minerals and additives like fluoride or chlorine that are present in most tap water can harm plants • Distilled water mixed with antifreeze is recommended for car radiators, as it’s less corrosive • Steam irons become clogged with mineral deposits unless you use distilled water The box is built from 3/4 ” BC-grade plywood, painted black on the inside to absorb heat. How to Make a Solar Still 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
DIY non-hub builds, the why and how (part-1) Common hub motor kits have a simple construction, which keeps the price low (especially with Chinese mass-production). The low price and easy installation makes them the big seller by a wide margin. However, if you want a build which has unusually good efficiency (so a smaller battery can provide longer range), or…you want unusually good hill-climbing…a non-hub drive system just might be necessary to deliver your goals. Be aware that a non-hub system will by definition be more complex, probably more expensive, and is likely to be noisier. Efficiency in a system design can help many aspects of your drive. As a general rule, using more volts to accomplish a specific performance goal will be more efficient than raising the amps. Also of concern with higher volts, is the size and cost of the battery. The recent introduction of the GNG BB-drive kit showcased a great E-bike motor. It has been verified to run at 72V X 30A = 2,200W (3-HP), which is the maximum I would run this motor at.
Wonder How To » Show & Tell for Creators & Doers Project Build A Solar Panel: Step by step guide to building a solar panel with complete illustrations Introduction A solar cell's purpose is to generate electricity through the release of electrons from a material that is bombarded by electromagnetic radiation or photons. Most crystalline solar cells are sensitive to visible radiation from 400 - 700 nanometers, which correspond to 3.1 - 1.8 electron volts, of the visible region as shown by ACEPT W3 Group (1999) and also into the near infrared spectrum. As the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation increases, the amount of electron volts decreases. This means that infrared radiation has less electron volts than the visible spectrum of light (because it has a larger wavelength than visible light) and ultraviolet and gamma radiation has more electron volts than both the visible spectrum of light and infrared radiation (because they have a smaller wavelength than both infrared and visible light). Significance of Solar Panels A solar cell, in itself, is of little value in our energy consumptive world.