Brilliant UFO abduction lamp.
Your blood puddle pillows are in.
Clean your dishwasher with Lemonade Kool-Aid.
Clever light bulb design.
Days Ago digital day counters are small gadgets that attach to your food containers via suction and magnets to keep a running count of how many days ago you put your leftovers in the fridge.
Scrabble furniture.
Handy way to skip all the intro crap on DVDs that is usually forced on you when you throw a disc in your player. Apparently the chapters on DVDs that you can't skip (FBI warnings, copyright stuff, etc.) are flagged, on the disc, as UOP, or User Operation Prohibited. This site lists some of the techniques you can try to skip the ennui.
This colour coordinated bookshelf looks cool, but you might have a hard time finding a particular title.
For chewie edge lovers or corner brownie fans - it's the Edge Brownie Pan. All edges, all the time. Via BoingBoing
Puzzle carpet.
This to That is a handy site that will tell you what adhesive to use when attempting to glue various objects together.
Super creative bathroom tiles.
Skinny house in Brazil.
Apparently there are many LED lightbulbs available already. Via TreeHugger
WiiRoomba. YouTube of a guy controlling his Roomba with a Wii remote.
Hardcore Lost fans have a party and repackage the snacks and beer as Dharma Initiative rations. Make your own with the PDFs that they've so generously shared.
Here's a nice set of home improvement videos with the energetic and snappy Eric Stromer.
Faucet Fountain turns your regular faucet into a drinking fountain.
Kids and the Home Office. Here's a list of tips for the parent that works from home.
Save the Internet.
Your blood puddle pillows are in.
Clean your dishwasher with Lemonade Kool-Aid.
Clever light bulb design.
Days Ago digital day counters are small gadgets that attach to your food containers via suction and magnets to keep a running count of how many days ago you put your leftovers in the fridge.
Scrabble furniture.
Handy way to skip all the intro crap on DVDs that is usually forced on you when you throw a disc in your player. Apparently the chapters on DVDs that you can't skip (FBI warnings, copyright stuff, etc.) are flagged, on the disc, as UOP, or User Operation Prohibited. This site lists some of the techniques you can try to skip the ennui.
This colour coordinated bookshelf looks cool, but you might have a hard time finding a particular title.
For chewie edge lovers or corner brownie fans - it's the Edge Brownie Pan. All edges, all the time. Via BoingBoing
Puzzle carpet.
This to That is a handy site that will tell you what adhesive to use when attempting to glue various objects together.
Super creative bathroom tiles.
Skinny house in Brazil.
Apparently there are many LED lightbulbs available already. Via TreeHugger
WiiRoomba. YouTube of a guy controlling his Roomba with a Wii remote.
Hardcore Lost fans have a party and repackage the snacks and beer as Dharma Initiative rations. Make your own with the PDFs that they've so generously shared.
Here's a nice set of home improvement videos with the energetic and snappy Eric Stromer.
Faucet Fountain turns your regular faucet into a drinking fountain.
Kids and the Home Office. Here's a list of tips for the parent that works from home.
Save the Internet.
DIY Solar Charged Lawnmower
If you've got an old, broken, space-eating gas lawn mower, you may be interested in resurrecting it and converting it into an eco-friendly solar charged model, provided you don't mind having it look a little Frankenstein.This how-to walks you through the process of modifying a mower as well as creating the solar panel/charging station that provides the power. The mower does take a while to charge up (40 hours by the authors calculations, assuming a half-charged battery), but since most lawns don't require mowings of any greater frequency than that (or anywhere near that, one would hope), the solar solution seems like a perfect fit for the task.
The author provides a lot of detail, including a couple of schematics and a parts and costs table. The final price tag was $699, with the bulk of the cost going towards the motor ($312), solar panel ($120) and battery ($90).
Solar Powered Sun Bricks
These aren't the first solar powered walkway tiles we've seen, but they are the largest. The previously linked sets were smaller and perhaps easier to integrate into some tile work, but this version of the same idea comes in more of a standard brick size - and in the end, the more options the better, really.
From the site: Flush-to-the-ground, integral solar panels generate up to 8 hours of light each night. So guests can follow a cheerfully illuminated path to your door...Sun Bricks come on automatically when darkness falls, and incur no operating costs. Just recess them in your walkway, and forget them!
Via PopGadget
First Affordable Zero Energy Home in the US
Ideal Homes of Norman, Oklahoma has produced a "Zero Energy Home" that sells for just under $200,000. ZEH have been produced before, but have tended to be much more expensive and thus out of reach of the average consumer.The home is connected to the power grid, but attempts to satisfy as much of it's own energy requirements through alternative, renewable methods as well as utilizing high efficiency construction techniques, resulting in net zero energy consumption for the year.
From the site:
"Zero energy homes get a black eye in my mind," says McKown, "Every time they do a demonstration site, they run out and they hire some brilliant architect and they go off and they build this one-off amazing house that sticks out of the neighborhood like a prairie chicken, and it costs a million dollars. Everybody looks at that and says, 'That's interesting. With enough money, you can do anything.' "We wanted to show that you can take any house out of a builder's product line," McKown continues, "and make it a zero energy house and it would look and feel and be just like a regular house, and it doesn't have to cost a million dollars. We could do it under $200,000."
The home made use of some interesting energy saving technology, such as:
- Tankless water heaters
- Ground source heat pumps
- South facing solar panels
- Low-e vinyl windows
- Fresh Air HVAC system
More Solar Powered Home Address Lights
We've seen solar powered address lights before, but it's always good to have more options on the market - and it doesn't hurt to have sleeker looking options such as these, either. The address numbers are available in two colours; natural aluminium and soon, black.
Possible Solar Technology Breakthrough out of South Africa
A team of South African scientists led by University of Johannesburg professor Vivian Alberts has invented a solar power technology that is not only more efficient than current solar power solutions, but can be produced for, they claim, a fraction of the cost. From the article:
The South African solar panels consist of a thin layer of a unique metal alloy that converts light into energy. The photo-responsive alloy can operate on virtually all flexible surfaces, which means it could in future find a host of other applications.
The new panels are 5 microns thick, allowing for a tremendous efficiency improvement over older solar panels that measure about 350 microns thick.
Science in Africa has a November 2004 article with some additional details:
Prof Vivian Alberts of the Department of Physics at the Rand Afrikaans University in South Africa and team have developed and patented a novel manufacturing technique that finally makes it possible to construct CIGS solar panels at a very low cost. The method is easily upscalable to industrial output levels, while remaining much cheaper to produce than conventional silicon solar panels.
Work done over the last two years indicates that panels can be produced in commercial volumes at a cost of about R 500 for a 50 Watt panel. This is much cheaper than existing solar panels available on the market. CIGS is a remarkably stable material and conversion efficiencies should be sustainable for 15-20 years in any given panel.
It will be interesting to see if this technology is able to gain traction and catch on, offering both humanitarian and eco-friendly benefits to the world. Also worth watching is the film-thin photovoltaic solar strips developed by Nobel laureate Alan Heeger's Konarka.
Solar Powered Home Address Lights
Help friends, delivery people and vagrants find your home after dark with this solar powered address light. The unit lights up at dusk and automatically powers down at dawn. With three nights worth of light being supplied from just 4 hours worth of daylight, the unit seems very efficient.
Outdoor SolarCap Light Emitting Tiles
If you want a lighted front walkway but are sick of moonray bulbs constantly burning out (or worse, having the bulbs stolen), then these solar powered LED tiles might be better suited for your needs. The tiles are available in amber, blue, white, yellow, red and green. From the site:The SolarCap Lighting system consists of modular, self-contained lighting devices that can be used for decorative or traffic flow purposes -- powered only by solar energy. These unique devices incorporate the newest "EnergyCache" technology for energy storage, instead of the high maintenance rechargeable batteries that are currently used in solar devices. Unlike batteries which must be changed every two to three years and cannot tolerate environmental extremes, EnergyCaches enable SolarCap lighting to be used in any environment without maintenance for more than 10 years with a wide operating temperature range of -13°F -140°F (-25°C - 60°C).
Affordable Film Thin Solar Strips
Popular Mechanics has published their 2005 Breakthrough Awards, in which they showcase some of today's most promising and interesting scientific innovations (yeah, they shill, but still interesting). One of the more interesting entries is flexible photovoltaic plastic. The ultra-thin energy producers are being developed by the 2000 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Alan Heeger. The more interesting part: the actual energy harnessing chemistry occurs within the solution of semiconducting polymers that can be painted onto surfaces such as roofs, tents, clothing and I hope he's right.
Categories: green energy alternative solar photovoltaic cool innovation electricity
3 Comments | Permalink |
Email
3 Comments | Permalink |
Email
Recent stuff from HouseHacker:
2 Comments | Permalink |