Archive for May, 2007
Manual lawn mowers are making a comeback
By DON BABWIN, Associated Press WriterMon May 28, 6:09 AM ET
CHICAGO – Powerful, loud mowers have been showing lawns who’s boss fordecades. But now contraptions that couldn’t cut butter without a goodshove are quietly — really quietly — making a comeback.
Manuallawn mowers, long the 98-pound weaklings of the tool shed, are pushingtheir way, or, more accurately, being pushed around more yards all overthe country.
Manual lawn mowers are making a comeback – Yahoo! News
technorati tags:manual, mowers, reel, american, lawn, mower
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Sustainable Building Directory – Informed Building
wow. list of very good renewable and otherwise green building sources-
technorati tags:green, building, sources, sustainable
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I recieved some solar hot water panels from my grandpa a while back. I want them to help heat my small building, so I decided to start taking one apart of see if I could refurbish it. Here are some photos from my experience-
Collector before disassembly
Another view of the collector before disassembly.
Removal of the top weather channel revealed the glass was actually two seperate pieces of tempered glass.
The underside of the channel.
A better shot showing the glass spacers made from plywood.
One side was almost rotted away-
The spacer after the top piece of glass was removed.
There was foam wrapped in foil surrounding the absorber. The foil was about at its end as you can tell…
Long pieces of white foam lined the collector, some of the pieces were waterlogged and heavy.
The far end was plywood wrapped in foil; almost rotted away.
Foam wrapped in foil on the long side of the collector.
Here you can see the foam that was all waterlogged and creating a major moisture problem.
A good view of the absorber plate with all of the side foam removed.
More of the foil has flaked off as seen here-
More shoddy foil.
The plywood piece of wood on one end of the collector was totally rotten. It didnt take much to get it out.
Another shot of the rotten wood-
After removing the wood piece, the absorber slid right out of the collector body. It actually was pretty light.
Another picture of the absorber sitting in the collector body.
The absorber plate and copper pipes that are soldered to it. This is the underside of the absorber.
The absorber plate and copper pipes that are soldered to it. This is the underside of the absorber.
The collector body with only a few things left. On top was a piece of
particle board with foil taped to it. Most of that was falling off- The
board was wet on one end, and smelled funky.
The foil wrapped particle board, a thin layer of the nasty, dusty foam, and underneath that was the white foam.
Wet particle board.
Kinda wet thin nasty, dusty foam.
Both the particle board and foam, all wet and soggy.
White foam on the bottom of the collecor body.
Empty collector body, pretty heavily rusted and hole filled.
The other end is better but still has some patchy rust.
Wet white foam. Heavy and stupid.
Well, thats all to report for now. I have to figure out what I am going to replace the wood with as well the foam- I think I have my work cut out for me. If anyone has any good ideas, be sure to drop me a comment. Thatd be great!
-Erik
technorati tags:solar, panel, take-apart, sol-aire
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The Sietch Blog » Follow The Green Brick Road
Researchers have found that bricks made from fly ash–fine ash particles
captured as waste by coal-fired power plants–may be even safer than
predicted. Instead of leaching minute amounts of mercury as some
researchers had predicted, the bricks apparently do the reverse,
pulling minute amounts of the toxic metal out of ambient air.
technorati tags:fly, ash, coal, bricks
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WASHINGTON, DC- The USDA has announced a controversial proposal, with
absolutely no input from consumers, to allow 38 new non-organic
ingredients in products bearing the “USDA Organic” seal. Most of the
ingredients are food colorings derived from plants that are supposedly
not “commercially available” in organic form. But at least three of the
proposed ingredients, apparently backed by beer companies, including
Anheuser-Busch, and pork and food processors, represent a serious
threat to organic standards, and have raised the concerns of the
Organic Consumers Association (OCA), as well as a number of smaller
organic companies and organic certifiers.
technorati tags:organic, food, USDA
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Could you live in a home that’s 400 square feet? How about less than 200 square feet?
Greg
Johnson does. His house in Iowa City, Iowa, is 140 square feet — a
mere 7 feet by 10 feet. It’s just large enough for a little kitchen on
one side, across from a desk where Johnson can work and eat. Upstairs
is a loft that fits a queen-sized bed and is “just big enough to crawl
upstairs and go to sleep. It’s cozy,” says Johnson, co-founder and
coordinator of the Small House Society, which encourages people to get interested in living small — and he means really small.
The 400-square-foot dream home – Buy a House: MLS Listings & Home Buying Tips – MSN Real Estate
technorati tags:mico, house, small, living
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Open-source Renewable Energy Project
An open-source engineering project is currently under development in
Canada. The project aims to create a new power plant design that will
use a combination of solar and geothermal energy for use in more
distant locations without polluting the environment. Comprehensive
coverage appears here for the first time.
technorati tags:solar, geothermal, energy, open-source, renewable, canada
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Hybrid Solar House > Science > How It Works
In the
Enertia® Building System, solid Energy-Engineered(tm) wood walls
replace siding, framing, insulation, and paneling. An air flow and
access channel, or Envelope, runs around the building, just inside the
walls – creating a miniature biosphere. Here solar heated air
circulates, pumping and boosting geothermal energy from beneath the
house, storing it in the massive wood walls. Thermal inertia causes the
house to “float” between the cycles of night and day, and even between
the seasons.
technorati tags:enertia, SIP, biosphere
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Peak Coal – May Be Only Ten to Fifteen Years Away » Celsias
We’ve all heard the term ‘Peak Oil‘ (see also),
but, have you heard the term ‘Peak Coal’ before? A recent report
indicates this expression may become yet another unwelcome pairing of
words (like ‘global warming’, ‘global dimming‘,
‘energy conservation’, etc.) for the massive energy industries that
rely on the black gold. The new word on the street is coal production
could peak in as little as ten or fifteen years from now.
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Archinect : School Blog Project : Arizona State University (Joe) : Here goes (please comment)
The highway system that dissects Phoenix is expansive. While connecting
515 square miles of the Sonoran desert to support our sprawling
culture, the valley freeways divide communities. My catalyst proposes
to retroactively collect royalties on the land taken from social
interaction. The design is a retrofitting replacement of the horizontal
steel tube that currently holds freeway signage. The replacement will
house two horizontal axis wind turbines (Quiet Revolution designs) that
will be powered by the turbulence created from the passing cars.
Average vehicle speeds on the valley highways are approximately 70 mph.
Using average annual wind speeds of 10 mph as a baseline, each single
wind turbine will produce 9,600KwH of energy, annually (enough to fully
power my 700 s.f. apartment). This power production estimate will
increase exponentially with an increase in wind turbulence speed. I
believe that the wind stream created over the freeways by our primary
mode of transportation will create an average annual wind speed well
beyond the baseline of 10 mph.
technorati tags:wind, farm, road
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