How To Do it yourself

We've looked at a lot of solar food dryers, from simple ones made with a couple of cardboard boxes to a huge indirect pass-through tower dryer with electronic temperature control built by the Appropriate Technology Program at Appalachian State University, but this design is the cleanest, simplest, easiest to build model we've found so far. And it's more effective than many other complex designs. Whether you are planning on drying fruit slices, making your own beef jerky, or dehydrating vegetables or herbs and spices, this nifty unit will do the job for you.

The author notes that before stumbling upon this design, "... I've tried about every solar dryer design imaginable. The only common factor in all those attempts was their very limited usefulness here in the humid upper Midwest. None of them could reliably turn food into a non-moldy finished product, unlike the many successful electric models I had built for myself and friends." But this design solved that problem. Check it out. You'll be surprised how simple it is.

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"The wind should be looked upon as a natural resource just as worthy of development as other natural resources. If we can derive our energy from the wind, why is it not as good as to get it from coal?" In the 1890's a good windmill could supply running water in the rural home and much-needed water for irrigation and livestock. Regardless of any vulnerabilities in our electrical grid, the wind will always be with us, and the information in this booklet is as valuable today as it was more than a hundred years ago. As the author, Mr. Barbour put it, "...it is the windmill which makes it possible for the resident of the town, or the farm and ranch to enjoy one of the luxuries and conveniences of the city home. Such water service is cheap and satisfactory."

For that reason we feel it is important that this information be preserved and passed along, and we are glad to reproduce the entire text and all illustrations of this important booklet here.

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This ingenious wind turbine uses blades made from a length of black ABS plastic pipe, a stock 30-volt motor for the generator, a 2x4, some sheet aluminum, and some pipe fittings to make a slick-looking, smooth-running piece of machinery. This project page is loaded with nice photos and plenty of details on how the turbine was constructed. There is even complete parts list with some suggestions on the best places to find parts inexpensively.

The latest updates to the page include the author's answers to several questions from readers, and the latest modifications and upgrades. As his web page shows, there's even enough power to run his laptop computer indefinitely as long as the wind keeps blowing.

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"The lack of clean drinking water is a major health problem in the developing world. To reduce this health risk ways of producing clean water at an affordable cost are needed, and people need to be educated about germs and sanitation, lest they accidentally re-contaminate their clean drinking water. Recently, several of us at the University of California at Berkeley have attacked the first of these requirements. ... In this article we describe a new low-cost device that pasteurizes water."

"For those not familiar with the pasteurization process, if water is heated to 149? F (65? C) for about 6 minutes all the germs, viruses, and parasites that cause disease in humans are killed, including cholera and hepatitis A and B. This is similar to what is done with milk and other beverages. It is not necessary to boil the water as many people believe. Pasteurization is not the only way to decontaminate drinking water, but pasteurization is particularly easy to scale down so the initial cost is low."

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Using the blower end of a vacuum cleaner the seed huller separates seeds from hulls, while the seed press, made from a standard hydraulic jack, cold presses the oil from the seeds. You can even use the Calder Grain Grinder to break the hulls instead of the commercial grain mills recommended in the article. This article, reprinted at Journey to Forever shows us how.

"In 2,500 square feet, a family of four can grow each year enough sunflower seed to produce three gallons of homemade vegetable oil suitable for salads or cooking and 20 pounds of nutritious, dehulled seed -- with enough broken seeds left over to feed a winter's worth of birds.

The problem, heretofore, with sunflower seeds was the difficulty of dehulling them at home, and the lack of a device for expressing oil from the seeds. About six months ago, we decided to change all that."

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Photo: David Monniaux
via Creative Commons Wikimedia This PDF document is the complete illustrated text of The Integral Passive Solar Water Heater Book (ISBN 0933490038). This 104 page (8.2MB) book starts with basic design principles and takes you right through the complete details of plumbing and installation of a passive solar home hot water system. The build-it-yourself chapter even covers such seemingly incidental topics as how to safely get the components up onto your roof.

Having a solar water heater like one of the designs presented in the book, will not only pay for itself in electricity savings in a year or two, but will keep right on delivering hot water even when the power goes out for any reason.

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