posted on Jan, 5 2006 @ 11:42 AM
Those are pretty handy....
Back to the drain thing. One thing I've found, is that if you take a stick and make a little whirlpool (making sure air can reach the drain), this
will usually help unclog the drain... I can only remember one time this hasn't worked. For grease clogs, run the hot water for about 10 minutes,
and there you go.
When travelling abroad, and unfamiliar with the Metric system, remember that average room temp is about 20 degrees celsius, so you can use that to
guage how hot or cold it is when seeing the weather on tv...as for some reason, we Americans are stubborn and refuse to use the system the rest of the
world uses...
A solar still for water...
If you have a piece or two of plastic, you can make a solar still to collect water. The simplest means of this is if you have a bowl or some other
container. But, in the absence of that, you can dig a small hole and line it with a piece of plastic to hold the water. Next, you stick 3-4 sticks
in the ground around the bowl or hole. Then, you attach the plastic forming a tent with a dip in the middle, so the dip is over the bowl/hole.
Another thing is to poke a hole in the very bottom of the dip.
It doesn't provide much, but the idea is to make as many of these as you can, if you are somehow in the wild without water. The water from morning
dew on the plastic will slide down into the bowl/hole and collect. The hole in the dip is to double for catching rain water and allowing it to then
go into the bowl or hole.
If you have seawater, and two containers of differing sizes, you can get a lot more water out of this.
Place the small container within the larger one. Make sure to weight it down, as you don't want it floating. Now, fill the larger container with
salt water, surrounding the empty inner small container. Use the same "tent" as mentioned above. As the sea water evaporates, it leaves the salt
behind and condenses on the plastic, running down into the small container. Viola! Your own desalinization plant. May not provide much, but may keep
you alive...
[edit on 5-1-2006 by Gazrok]