Make Your Own Inexpensive Utility Sink Built From A Plastic Barrel Half Cutting the curve on the coupling is the trickiest part of the whole project. You could do it with a saw if you clamp the piece in a good vise, but I chose to use the coarse wheel on my bench grinder to carve away the coupling above the line. This method proved to be quick and easy, but if you do it this way be sure to wear safety goggles and a filter mask as it does create fumes and little bits of plastic. You'll notice that I also carved out a flat "key" on one side of the coupling. Once you're satisfied with the fit you can use hot glue to hold the new drain in place.
Creating Swales What Should I Do? Surveying and Installation by Phil Williams Monday, July 7, 2014, 4:32 PM Swales are simply ditches on contour (contour is a level line across the landscape), with the excavated soil from the ditch being placed downslope to form a berm. Seeding the berm Most landscapes can benefit from a swale system. Swales When I am looking at a design, I want to see a contour map to figure out the possibility for pond and swale opportunities. Drain tied to swale There really is no right or wrong answer as to how many swales, how far apart they should be, how big they should be, or what you should put in the ditches. Swale planted and seeded with straw I have two different types of swales on my property. Once you’ve observed, planned, and mapped out your swales, you need to mark the contour lines. The next step is to line up your labor, tools, equipment, seeds, trees, and shrubs. ~ Phil Williams
Second Hand Building Materials 984278 10152479832130942 1750082620 n Hand-Powered Machine: Plastic Bottles Into Roof Thatch Thatch roofs are a traditional building technology in Ecuador for good reason – they keep a home cool and the reeds can be sourced locally. Unfortunately, thatch has become much harder to acquire as land for food has pushed the grass out. Roofs made from steel and fiberglass panels are woeful replacements, as they let in much more heat – and during the frequent rains they can make a racket inside. The idea of using plastic bottles waste as a building material has a lot of potential for its ubiquitous and durability. The system works by collecting 3 liter bottles, which are everywhere, cutting off the bottom and inserting them into a spinning drum which allow a cutting knife to run the length of the bottle. Dr. + Duquesne University
Get Creative With these Backyard Designs... Add Interest to your Landscaping Plain and boring backyard designs can be an eye sore. These creative garden decorations and backyard designs can inspire you to create unique installations, vertical gardens or fence decor, turning your backyard landscaping ideas into art projects. Adding fun to backyard designs takes only creativity, patience and enthusiasm, and you can turn dull and lifeless areas into beautiful outdoor living spaces, enjoying decorating your own backyard and designing impressive art installations, creating functional items of plastic bottles or painting your fence bright colors. There are hundreds of amazing backyard designs that recycle everything you have in the house into artistic masterpieces that make a statement. You can choose creating a charming flower bed or add unusual birdhouses and bright bird feeders to your garden and yard landscaping. Creative backyard ideas and interesting yard decorations Beautiful garden path and boarding flower beds Recycling plastic bottles for greenhouse design
Cargo Container + Wood Pallet Homes So many architects have begun converting cargo shipping containers into houses, apartments, offices and more – so how could you pack any more sustainability into an entirely recycled building? By adding wooden pallet walls to the exterior, of course! Container homes are more than just eco-friendly – they are cheap, quick and easy to build and transport. Likewise, recycled wood pallets are a ready source of reused material but they also provide essential shade while letting natural ventilation via the existing overlaps in their stepped wooden slats. Since both shipping containers and their smaller recycled-pallet counterparts and standardized, they work well for modular construction – predictability in size, shape and structural capacity makes these materials to built with.
How To Filter Rainwater in a Barrel – 100 Year Old Technology Here in California water has a topic of conversation wherever we go. Creeks and ponds dried up (some we think might never recover) and the water table dropped, forcing a few neighbors to have their well pumps lowered or to even have deeper wells drilled. Many folks have shared memories of rain barrels , cisterns , hand pumps and drawing water with a well bucket as a child, usually on grandpa and grandma’s farm. It seems we have lost much practical knowledge in the last 50 or so years because we thought we’d never need it again. A tattered, 4-inch thick, 1909 book I happily secured for $8 in a thrift store reveals, among umpteen-thousand other every-day skills, how to make homemade water filters. ” are quite basic as everyone had a rain barrel back then and presumably knew how to clean the water. The “wholesome” observation applies to plants, too. – until our well, too, began sucking air. , running and sloshing the water like a crazy woman onto our neglected trees far up the hill.
Mobile Fold-Out Shipping Container Home In this case, the sum is more than the parts – and the building footprint tells only half of the story. Push a button and things begin to unfold, revealing not just a deck but a lofted sleeping area and other pop-out amenities all hiding in the shell of a conventional cargo shipping container. While it has evolved through various concepts and prototypes, the primary features of the Port-a-Bach cargo container home include “a fully enclosed exterior steel shell (when folded up), appointed with large internal storage cupboards and shelves / stainless steel kitchen and fittings / bathroom with open shower, sink, composting toilet. Fabric screen system gives the versatility of creating rooms within the large open living space: includes bunk beds, double bed room, dressing room, kitchen and bathroom.”
Hot-tub Genius! Badge creator Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view. You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website. Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Clickr on one of the buttons below to install: Embed on your Web site To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code: Black background (preview): White background (preview): Firefox and Chrome addons Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. Install in FirefoxInstall in Chrome Search plugin Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. "View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view. Install "View on Flickriver" script Bookmarklet
Ice Cream Bucket Igloo This is the ice cream igloo; using large pails (20L empty ice cream containers), Pete and friends used an old satellite dish to create a form/mold around wich to assemble the pails. Each is filled with sawdust, making it a highly insulated structure. Several nails go through the lid of each pail into the neighbouring bucket, thereby holding it all together. Eventually this will be covered in chicken wire and plastered. This is the interior of the ice cream bucket igloo. Entranceway to the ice cream palace, with cut buckets in the foreground. Photos by Tyler Austin Bradley.
Gravity-fed Rain Barrel Outlet Water flows downhill. Gravity causes it to move. The movement is not hindered by the distance travelled (after all, water travels in streams down mountains to eventually reach the oceans). What facilitates the movement is the height distance between the start point and the end point. The water pressure of that flow (in PSI) can be calculated by multiplying that height (in feet) by 0.433. If you want to operate a conventional spray hose you need at least 30 PSI -- 70 feet in height. You need a lot less gain to run water out of a hose spigot into a pail or water can. A quick way to determine if you can do this: attach a hose of sufficient length to your rain barrel spigot to reach your garden. In the garden, raise the hose end to the height of the garden spigot you hope to install.
Forest Cottage Cobbled from Scrap Beams, Floors & Doors Issues of accessibility and sustainability drove this site-specific design solution: a narrow road required small modular pieces, while client wishes dictated extensive material reuse. Chilean architect Juan Luis Martínez Nahuel started with patio doors from a demolished 1960s home furnished, transforming them into the framework for a mostly-glazed, wood-framed front facade. Local 1970s parquet flooring were turned into new finishing materials, while used commercial steel and glue-laminated beams form the core structure. Reversing the usual process, the materials formed a foundation around which the plan more or less organically evolved – a modern take on making shelters out of what one finds at hand on the surrounding land. The linear, single-story residence was easily assembled piece by piece using likewise simple and traditional construction tools and techniques.