[erb]

I am interested in installing solar pannels and have been thinking about going back to school to learn to do it profesionaly. i dont have alot of cash so id like to do some basic things myself

which brought me to this thread

doesn anyone know of or where to get plans or a pdf or something on doing your own energy/conservation technologies?

id like to build a rain water harvesing roof on my house or garage, or a solar water heater or a windmill water pump. ANYTHING!!! to help equip my house for a future with no/little energy.

also if anyone had a book or websit to learn basics of electricty so i can catch up on how it works before i sink what little cash i have into a course, i want to know i'll pass it

chadeden#yahoo.ca if you have any info post here or email me PLEASE

[strider3700]

I don't have a lot of time to answer everything now but here's a few links to get you started.

solar hot water overview
http://www.azsolarcenter.com/technology/solarh20.html

And here's how to build one yourself
http://www.bigginhill.co.uk/solar.htm

Even in my crappy solar location this is on my list.

For wind electric power the only play to look is the
www.otherpower.com discussion boards.

They'll recommend you buy Hugh Piggott's books. I recommend them as well. This is great if you just want to build something that works. It doesn't explain a lot of theory though so you may want to read his other books as well.
http://tinyurl.com/c9bgn

They'll also know about wind water pumps but be sure to do a search first, I've found their mods quick to delete posts that aren't perfectly on topic or previously covered.

rainwater harvesting has been done by others here so I'll let them jump in for that.

I'm still looking into solar electric so I can't help much.
http://www.builditsolar.com/ is a good start. Lots of interesting projects there as well.

[TEOZ]

Hi there erb,

Some general info, then some specific.

General-

1) Do some internet searches on these things. There is tons of info out there, much of it very good. It may be hard to tell which is and which isn’t at first. Journey to forever is an example of some good information. There are others.

2) Your public library. There is a thread here at peakoil.com for media reviews that has some valuable stuff in it. If your local library doesn’t have it, look it up on worldcat and do an interlibrary loan. Be aware that these cost the library money and they may charge you to have the book sent to them. Mine doesn’t, but I’ve heard it happens with smaller libraries with smaller budgets. I wouldn’t worry about it, but I wouldn’t go crazy either. I don’t go in and ask for 10-20 books at once. I ask for 1-2 at a time.

3) Homepower magazine. They have an intro course as well as all of their back issues and other helpful stuff on a set of CD’s that you can buy from them. I would say that this is (in my opinion) without a doubt the best single source for that kind of info. Their current issue is (or at least was) a free pdf download from their site.

5) Mother Earth News also sells a pair of CD’s containing all the issues from their early years, when they were pretty good.

6) “Backwoods Home Magazine” and “Countryside Magazine and Small Stock Journal” often have good stuff. BHM also sells it’s old issues on CD’s as well as in book form. They are very good.

Specific info about stuff you asked about-

Solar panels, doing your own energy/conservation technologies, solar water heater - HomePower CDs.

Rainwater harvesting- My favorite is “Rainwater catchment systems for domestic supply : design, construction and implementation” by John Gould and Erik Nissen-Petersen. I’ve heard some good things about “Rainwater Harvesting for the Mechaniclally Impaired” also.

Windmill water pump- Lehman’s catalog has some good info on how to put a system together and they sell systems and parts also. Most people seem to go with a pv/dc pump system, though. For that, back to the HomePower CDs again.

Equip my house for a future with no/little energy- look up passive solar, earth sheltered, earthship on the web for some interesting ideas to start with. Also Lehman’s has a little Amish book called something like “Living without electricity” that looked good when I flipped through it. I haven’t bought it yet, but I will. In addition, there is a recent one called “Better off : flipping the switch on technology”. There are tons of good books out there on this. The 70’s in particular put out a lot.

I hope this helps. Some more detail about your situation would make it easier to address your specific needs.

Best regards,

TEOZ

[erb]

thanks guys

anymore help appreciated

[JayBee]

Try this Mother Earth News article on making an in-line water heater. Much simpler and cheaper than other designs.

Mother's In-Line Collector

This article is referenced by the article above.

Mother's Tin Can Collector

These are my projects for the coming year.

[Ludi]

I've had great success using a solar cooker, I started with

http://solarcooking.org/minimum.htm

and did most of my cooking last summer with it, but this year I'm hoping to build something a bit more permanent with glass and aluminum, to gain another 50 -100 degrees F.

[tugboat]

Check out "The Energy Blog" at

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy

Tons of useful links

[small_steps]

Take a nibble of the energy self sufficiency newsletter...

http://www.rebelwolf.com/essn.html