My Garden Needs Water… Make Your Own Rain Barrel!

I recently became interested in using a water barrel to water my small Brooklyn backyard. After searching local (no luck… large garden supply stores didn’t know what a rain barrel was) and searching online, I found that rain barrels sold for about $90 to $250 (not including the rain spout diverter or hoses).

It took me about one week to realize that I could build my own rain barrel for about $35 and not have to pay for shipping. I started by searching online for articles and found some great video tutorials on YouTube. After that, I made a shopping list, got project approval from my wife and then carved out about 4 hours over the weekend to build my rain barrel.

Air-powered Car Available This Year! (Not in U.S.)

I recently heard about compressed air vehicles that will be on the market this year in India.

Conventional Wisdom in the United States: Unfortunately compressed air as an energy storage medium for transportation is not possible. (Conventional wisdom being determined by the big three auto makers and endorsed by our government).

Reality: The first compressed air vehicles will begin production in India later this year. They fill up at the local gas station within minutes for about $2.00 and will travel up to 125 miles with a top speed exceeding 65mph. The car caled the OneCat can also be “recharged” overnight from an on-board electric compressor. At about $5,000 per car, it is not expected to ever reach the U.S. market and will most likely never be discussed anywhere other than Popular Mechanics and fringe media.

“peel & stick” solar panels can blanket a roof in under 35 minutes

Lumeta’s “peel & stick” solar panels can blanket a roof in under 35 minutes

by Paul Miller, posted May 12th 2008 at 8:01AM

If destroying your roof just to get some sun-sucking solar panels installed isn’t your thing, Lumeta’s PowerPly could be the solution. The panels use traditional roofing adhesives, that’ll be familiar to regular ol’ roofers, and save the process from drilling holes and bolts associated with the regular rack systems required to mount solar panels. Right now this process is targeted at commercial projects — you can watch a pair of guys install 2.25 kilowatts of solar modules onto a California roof after the break — but hopefully residential applications won’t be far behind.

Paint On Solar Panels?

Installing solar panels on the roof of every new building in the world would go a long way towards solving our energy needs, but as we all know, solar panels are costly and often difficult to install. But what if the solar panel was an integral part of every building? What if solar cells could be painted on building products? Well, according to a team from Swansea University this type of technology will soon be coming to a hardware store near you.

The Swansea Solar Paint project is led by Dave Worsley, who, together with his team, were researching ways to make make steel last longer. By chance that they started to focus on the degradation of paints in steel surfaces, when they realized that their research could lead them to develop a new way of getting energy from the sun.

The idea is to coat every piece of steel cladding with a solar cell paint. As steel is passed through the rollers multiple coatings of of the solar cell system are applied to it. Based on the preliminary research, the materials that are being applied are suited to capturing low level solar radiation, which means that they should work just as well in areas where the sun doesn’t directly shine on them.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/03/24/solar-power-without-a-solar-panel/