Making Fuels at Home
Hand Book of Home Made Power $24.95
The Famous Mother Earth News Book from the 70’s.
This book is HANDS ON. USE IT NOW. 374 jam-packed pages of do-it-at-home energy knowledge. This book is actually MUCH BIGGER and easier to read than the original paperback copy of the book. It covers wood heat and wood power, water/hydroelectric home power and RAM-pumps. The handbook also has chapters on wind power, solar energy and an extensive chapter on making and using methane. The methane chapter covers the anaerobic digestion of animal waste. We’re talking digestion and methane made in pails, drums and even a propane tank. Put animal waste and water in a propane tank, keep it warm and let it digest. In a few days you can pipe the pressurized methane directly to a Colman lantern type of lamp, a stove or as a pressure feed to a compressor for a car.
The Mother Earth News Handbook of Homemade Power
Unlike most of the books, articles and TV reports on developing energy issues, this manual will NOT bore you with dyer projections of out of control gasoline consumption or unprecedented electricity shortages. Nor will it question the virtues of geothermal power versus nuclear fission versus the "hydrogen economy" as solutions, to our society's increasingly unsatisfied appetite for energy.
Instead, this handbook is designed to help you sidestep the energy problem once and for all—on a very personal basis—right here and right now.
In the pages of this guide, you'll learn how to heat and cook with that most traditional of all renewable fuels, wood. You'll find working plans for the construction of two kinds of water wheels and the dams and other hardware that go with them. You'll discover how to find and rebuild an old wind-driven electrical generator, build your own from scratch or—if you aren't that handy—buy a brand-new unit and have it installed.
This manual shows you how to construct a solar stove, oven and water heater. It explains—in simple, uncomplicated language—just how Steve and Holly Baer heated their New Mexico home with ninety 55-gallon drums and the sun. It takes you step by step through the production of a usable fuel—methane—from waste . . . in both test quantities and batches large enough to heat your house and power your automobile.
The following pages, in other words, are packed with information about "alternative" energy systems that really work and that you can put to work right now . . . today! Yes, there are answers to the developing energy crisis . . . and you can hold a rich collection of those answers in your hand if you order this handbook!
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Wood
COLD? YOU CAN ALWAYS HEAT
WITH WOOD A CORD IS A CORD IS A
HERE'S HOW WE HEAT WITH WOOD: Ron Engh
When you can, begin felling a tree by first removing some of its branches. Do this with a first-cut into the limb from the bottom with your chain saw. Then sever it from the top.
Your initial cut into the trunk itself should be horizontal, about one-third of the way through the diameter (see Fig. 1), and into the side toward which you want the tree to fall. Next saw diagonally downward to the deepest point of the first saw mark.
When you make your third and final cut (from the opposite side) don't saw all the way through the trunk. Leave enough wood to serve as a hinge, which you can sever after the tree falls (see Fig. 2). Otherwise, when the great mass crashes to the ground, the branches will act as springs and cause the trunk to kick back.
Begin trimming out your fallen tree by cutting away the small crinkly branches. Thick chunks are a little more difficult ... and here's how I break up hard white oak: First, I examine the face of the wood for any existing cracks (which serve as my splitting guide). Then, with a six-pound maul, I start swinging away at the center of the drum (see Fig. 3). Sometimes the piece splits open quickly. Other times, not. It's satisfying but tiring work.
Wedges (Fig. 4) are excellent tools for a woodsman. If a log refuses to be split with an axe or maul, place a wedge along the grain and drive it in with your maul's flat end. You may have to use two or even three wedges on a stubborn chunk.
BASIC AXEMANSHIP: Mark Gregory
THE WOOD-BURNING COOKSTOVE: B. Touchstone Hardaway
COOKSTOVE BAKING: B. Touchstone Hardaway
COOKSTOVES I HAVE KNOWN: Esther Shuttleworth
STOVEPIPE POWER: A. Michael Wassil
CHEAP HEAT: Bill Cheney
NEWSPAPER LOGS
TWICE THE WOOD IN HALF THE TIME: Tom Murray
Chapter Two
HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN WATER POWER PLANT: C.D. Bassett
Part One: There's Energy in That Stream
The location of the dam, as suggested in Fig. 1, should be governed by two principles. It should be placed where the greatest useful head is obtainable . . . that is, where the greatest fall occurs in the shortest length of stream. Such a site is often indicated by a natural waterfall, by a conspicuously steep slope or by the swiftness of the current. The second locating principle is a simple matter of cost: a dam should be placed where it can be smallest and still impound the most water. This means, in general, that it should be placed where the stream valley or cut is narrowest.
The site of the water wheel, Fig. 2, may be either at the dam or some distance below it. The former location is the more common, being simpler to build and eliminating the need for a pipe or penstock to deliver water to the wheel. Disadvantages include the fact that the spillway must be of ample capacity to protect the powerhouse in time of high water, and the fact that only the "artificial head"—that created by the dam itself—is available. In cases where the ground falls away abruptly below the dam site, the "divided-flow" layout may be desirable, for it greatly increases the head.
Part Two: Putting Water to Work
Part Three: Dams Turn Water Into Kilowatts
Part Four: Homemade Wheel Delivers Over 3 Hp
Part Five: Building an Overshot Wheel
THE HYDRAULIC RAM PUMP: William J. Hebert
HOW THE RAM WORKS: Don Marier
WATER POWER
A MONSTER ROCK TUMBLER
A MINIATURE PEBBLE SMOOTHER
CHAPTER THREE: WIND
HENRY CLEWS' MIRACULOUS WIND-POWERED HOMESTEAD: Henry Clews
FREE POWER FROM THE WIND: Ed Trunk
THE MAN WHO INVENTED THE MODERN WINDPLANT: MARCELLUS JACOBS
THE ANSWER IS BLOWIN' IN THE WIND: James B. DeKorne
In the case of our infamous first adventure, we tried to lower a tower and generator with a line tied to the back of my pickup truck while two men "steadied" the assembly by holding lines perpendicular to the lowering line. Fig. 4 was made from a photograph which was taken only an instant before the rig got out of control and crashed into the ground . . . bending the tower, breaking the cast-iron generator housing and gear box in several places and plowing a big hole in the soil. It was a lesson that could have been tragic . . . anyone struck by the falling tower would have been killed instantly.
I BUILT A WIND CHARGER FOR $400!: Jim Sencenbaugh
HERE'S HOW I BUILT A WIND GENERATOR: Winnie Red Rocker
CHAPTER FOUR: SOLAR
DR. E.A. FARBER: SUNSHINE SUPERMAN
TWO WAYS TO HEAT A HOME WITH SUNSHINE POWER: Everett Carlson, Jr.
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVE AND HOLLY BAER OF ZOMEWORKS
THE HOMESTEAD SOLAR SHOWER: Mike Oehler
KENNETH WHETZEL'S SOLAR HEATER
HOW TO BUILD—AND USE!—A REFLECTOR COOKER: D.S. Halacy, Jr.
Alright, Let's see what your solar-heated homestead house might look like (see Fig. 4): As small as practical, it should probably be based on the MIT Type A design with a roof collector oriented to the south at the angle of latitude plus 15 degrees. The structure would have large south-facing windows with interior shutters; no windows or doors on the west (to shield against the coldest winds); entrance on the eastern (most sheltered) end; and relatively small, well-sealed windows on the north. You might also try a reflector at the base of the collector. It would, of course, increase the collector's efficiency and—on the "A" design—shield the large windows during summer heat.
HOW TO BUILD—AND USE!—A SOLAR OVEN: D.S. Halacy, Jr
HOW TO BUILD—AND USE!—A SOLAR WATER HEATER: D.S. Halacy, Jr
CHAPTER FIVE: METHANE
METHANE EXPERIMENTS IN INDIA: GOBAR GAS
AN INTERVIEW WITH INDIA'S GOBAR GAS EXPERT, RAM BUX SINGH
AN UNHERALDED METHANE GENIUS: L. JOHN FRY
A MODEST EXPERIMENT IN METHANE PRODUCTION: Robert C. McMahon
DRUM METHANE GENERATOR
PARSONAGE HILL METHANE PLANT: Alton Eliason and Joe Pelliccio
MOTHER'S METHANE MAKER
MOTHER'S ANAEROBIC-POWERED AUTO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Hand Book of Home Made Power $24.95
The Famous Mother Earth News Book from the 70’s.
This book is HANDS ON. USE IT NOW. 374 jam-packed pages of do-it-at-home energy knowledge. This book is actually MUCH BIGGER and easier to read than the original paperback copy of the book. It covers wood heat and wood power, water/hydroelectric home power and RAM-pumps. The handbook also has chapters on wind power, solar energy and an extensive chapter on making and using methane. The methane chapter covers the anaerobic digestion of animal waste. We’re talking digestion and methane made in pails, drums and even a propane tank. Put animal waste and water in a propane tank, keep it warm and let it digest. In a few days you can pipe the pressurized methane directly to a Colman lantern type of lamp, a stove or as a pressure feed to a compressor for a car.
