Lo-tech Recycle&Research&Design

Following on from the threads on city and urban survival, the long-term outlook would be to improve shelter and lifestyle conditions. While raw materials may be in short supply, there wil be plenty of materials that can be put to a recycled practical use.

The idea of this thread is to pull together design-ideas and alternate material-uses that could improve long-term living conditions. To start the process rolling, I've been looking at solar-thermal designs using household materials.

The one practical item in abundance most households are CD/DVD-ROM discs. The Read-Write underside surface could be reflective enough to be used as part solar reflector/concentrator of a a rooftop power-generator.

I've rendered up a design in SketchUp that is copyright-free for anyone to build/adapt/improve-on...anyone willing to take up the challenge of building and testing the design?











[edit on 6-6-2007 by citizen smith]

Neat idea and great graphics work! Cd's make great mirrors for the job. An even greater mirror, are the platters from hard drives. They are really perfect, flat, rigid and reflective. You know hard drives that are around 100mb that seemed to be HUGE around 4 years ago lol. These are still kickin around and probably destined for the trash heap....

PS I've dabbled with sketchup, but whats th difference in the PRO version?
I use Pro-Engineer for my hobby projects and CNC machining.


[edit on 6-6-2007 by greatlakes]

I cant make graphics like you & my Scanner inst working So I will just try to explain my Safe heating method for gas grills.

Every disaster people die from asphyxiation because they bring there gas grills in the house for heating. With a little four thought you don't need to die to be warm. Parts list is simple. one gas grill, one 55 gallon drum and one piece of sheet metal, and cardboard and tape.

First thing we need to do is find a safe place for the grill. It must be by a open window. Second you lay your cardboard on the ground and put the open end of the 55 gallon drum on it. trace around it. Then we measure the window opening and cut the cardboard to fit the window opening and tape the cardboard in place. then we cut out the circle that we traced in a previous step.

Next step is to prepare the drum. Using the sheet metal we have two choices. we can either bend it or cut it using an appropriate tool to fit the center of the drum. The Sheet metal must go 3/4 of the way to the end or must have a notch cut or bent in it near the end.

now we prop the drum on top of the grill that has been pushed up against the open window making sure the drum matches the opening we cut in the cardboard. If you have lead seal you can try to seal the cardboard on the barrel but I wouldn't. the cardboard is meant to be taken down quickly.

The way this works is, the grill heats the air inside the barrel hot air rises so the hot air rising threw the opening you left in the sheet metal will drew in cold air from the underside of the sheet steel. the now heated air will vacate the drum into your house while other air rushes in to replace it.

No carbon monoxide poisoning because your heating or burning is taking place out side. this is very smiler to the way a conventional furnace works.

Sorry for the roughness of this but as I said I don't know how to use the fancy software and I cant drew it up because of my scanner. Perhaps citizen smith can drew this up. if there are any questions feel free to post them or U2U me.

A nice little blog article on how to build an alcohol fueled camping stove from two soda cans. www.gnn.tv...

I haven't tried this build but it seems a bit safer than other designs I have seen. Most designs I found build up pressure through the jet holes.

A really low tech way to get hot water for bathing and washing needs is with black pipe. It's very inexpensive to get a number of feet of this at any hardware store, along with some fittings. We used to have a roll we kept for camping, and it's still around the house somewhere.

The filler end had a funnel where water could be hand poured into it, then a short section and then a cutoff valve. Then the whole roll (as long as you find desirable) and the other end had another cutoff valve and an old shower head. After filling the black pipe with water till it ran out the other end, shut both valves and let it set in the sun for a few hours. (Even on chilly fall days, the black pipe will heat the water nicely in about 3 hours.)

With the coiled black pipe laying flat on the ground, make a three way tie at three equal distances around the circle and rising to about a foot or so above the coil. Join all three lifting ropes in a secure knot.

Now hoist it ,using a simple double pulley attached just above the point where the three lifting ropes are knotted together, into a nearby tree. Make sure that you open the filler shutoff valve so it can suck air, keeping the valve itself higher than the bulk of the pipe. (We always just tied this part to the rope below the place where the three lifting ropes are knotted.)

Note: The shower head can be made to 'center' in the coil by tying it in place, pointing downward. We used an elbow for best effect.

The valve with the shower head is left dangling down within reach for easy operation. (A simple curtain can be hung from the coiled pipe for modesty.) An outdoor hot shower that will work like a charm. This can be modified to many situations and applications.

That's an amazing idea and very good graphics, but wouldn't it be easier to just use aluminum siding/sheet metal or even aluminum foil in a survival situation, instead of cutting 110 CDs? Although I know very little about how solar energy is harnessed.

The idea came about as part of a design project for uni, so I thought I share what work I had so far...I'm planning on starting tinkering in the shed to build a working prototype in the next few weeks and will post photos/results

Originally posted by Yarcofin
wouldn't it be easier to just use aluminum siding/sheet metal or even aluminum foil in a survival situation, instead of cutting 110 CDs?

The rationale is to save materials such as aluminium siding/metal sheeting for other purposes and make use of other less practical resources. Cutting several hundred CDs down to size could be a welcome distraction to keep the mind occupied too

To GL:
The only difference between the free and the pro versions are a few additional tools and facilities such as 'export-to-GoogleEarth'...I use it in conjunction with AutoCAD but haven't had any chance to get to grips with Pro.Eng yet (let alone linking to a CNC milling machine!) I'd be happy to email you a .dwg file of components (or other P.E. import-compatible format) if you'd like to have a tinker

To AA:
I'm trying to build a mental-picture of your oil-drum convection heater design from your description, I'll have a go at rendering something up when I finally finish my studying in 2 weeks.

I've also done a few concept scribbles on a design using domestic satellite-reciever dishes and will post the SketchUp drawings when I get the chance...In the meantime, please by all means pick the design to bits, as that way, the ideas can evolve and be refined

Maybe tinker with this and homemade heater: blog.hemmings.com...-3769

and a hot water heater: www.ananova.com...

Not sure the latter one, how he routed the water and pathing...Would be a neat easy project...

Update:

I recently came across these amazing solar-thermal design and build pages that should definately be saved and printed

Solar-thermal R&D articles available to download

Tesla Bladeless-Disk-Turbine R&D for steam-powered electricity generators


A complete solar-steam and B.D.T generator unit in action!
Image source

Originally posted by greatlakes
platters from hard drives [...] are really perfect, flat, rigid and reflective. You know hard drives that are around 100mb that seemed to be HUGE around 4 years ago lol. These are still kickin around and probably destined for the trash heap

The metal HDD platters would make an excellent material for the turbine disks as they are made to very high tolerances.
This site explains the scientific priciples and full instructions and plans to build one to run on compressed-air, although I don't know if the platter material would be tolerant of sustained high-temperature steam