How To Do it yourself

How 2 Review scours the World Wide Web looking for the best do-it-yourself projects to help you become more self-sufficient. Whether you are looking to save money, simplify your life, or even prepare yourself for possible economic hard times, you will find information here on everything from building your own solar water heater to raising your own food. Please enjoy your visit and feel free to cast a vote to rate the articles you find useful. We welcome your suggestions and recomendations for additional articles.

Shelter > Kitchen - Page 1 of 1

Greg's Earth Oven by Greg Porter
Added: June 24, 2007 Rated 4.4 by 5 readers ( Vote now 1 2 3 4 5 )

Illustrated step-by-step instructions for building and using your own traditional earth oven.

Fresh bread from your very own earth oven? The author shows us how he built this great little oven from ordinary mud. He writes: "It started with cob. I have always been interested in natural, alternative, inexpensive, and do-it-yourself building techniques. ... Well, a house might be a bit much to start with, maybe try something smaller, just to get a feel for it. What could I build that was small and useful? - An OVEN!"

This great article takes you step by step through the process, with lots of pictures, and a section on how to use your new oven.

This page has had 104 visitors.

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Build the Pyramid Stove by Gary Shannon
Added: June 25, 2007 Rated 4 by 1 readers ( Vote now 1 2 3 4 5 )

Don't let the next power failure leave you unable to cook dinner.

For about twenty dollars worth of ordinary red clay bricks you can build an efficient temporary backyard stove that burns charcoal, small sticks of wood, or tightly rolled pieces of junk mail to cook up a nice big pot of bean soup, or grasshopper stew. In a real emergency you might even borrow some bricks from your garden walkway or from the edging around your flower beds. Since no cement or mortar is used in the construction of the pyramid, once the power is restored you can replace the bricks until the next time they are needed. The stove requires 63 bricks to build.

This page has had 694 visitors.

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A Hay Box Cooker by Nev Sweeny
Added: July 4, 2007 Rated 5 by 1 readers ( Vote now 1 2 3 4 5 )

The original "crock pot" slow cooker, known as a haybox, or fireless cooker, saves fuel by cooking without fire or other heat source.

How can you cook without a source of heat? It's easier than it sounds. Of coures you will need heat to get the process started, but once your pot full of soup or stew is heated to a boil you can place the whole pot in an insulated box to prevent the heat from escaping, and let the food go right on cooking for hours on its own stored heat. Traditionally made by putting the steaming pot in a wooden box and stuffing hay all around it for insulation, a more modern haybox cooker can be made with an insulated camping cooler and polystyrene foam insulation.

The result is a slow cooker that reduces fuel consumption by as much as 80% and gives your soups and stews that unique slow-cooked flavor blend and tenderness. This web site site shows you how to get off to a succesful start as fireless cook.

This page has had 60 visitors.

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Passive Solar Water Heater Handbook by David Bainbridge
Added: July 8, 2007 Rated 5 by 2 readers ( Vote now 1 2 3 4 5 )

Here's a complete book on building passive solar water heaters that you can download for free.

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.

This page has had 97 visitors.

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