Celebrate Earth Day 2013 By Planting a Tree April 19, 2013

Let’s resolve do our part in the fight against global warming. This Earth Day, you can do a small part to help offset your carbon footprint by planting a tree. You can either plant a tree in your own yard or join a program for a very small fee and they will plant trees for you. For $5, you can have 50 trees planted, $10 will plant 100 trees and so on.

http://www.carbonify.com/offset/tree-planting.htm

Trees (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

By planting a tree you will be helping to:

1. Offset CO₂ emissions
2. Provide wildlife habitat
3. Provide much-needed shade around your house in the summer

Check with your local greenhouse to see which native trees will thrive in your area and climate. You can even get a FREE TREE to plant by going here:

Get Your Earth Day on With a Free Tree From Algiere’s Landscaping! (algiereslandscaping.com)

Related articles

• Earth Day 2013: What You Can Do in Your Apartment Community (apartmentguide.com)
• 5 Must-Have Green Tech Upgrades For Earth Day 2013 (earthtechling.com)

Grow A Great Summer Garden April 15, 2013

The best-kept secret to having a great summer garden: get chickens to help you!

Plants love the nitrogen that’s abundant in chicken manure. The poop is also high in good pre-digested organic matter. But chicken poop is too strong to put directly on your plants because it will end up burning them.

Composting your chicken poop is a great solution and will lead to one of the best gardens you’ve ever had.

We first got chickens over a year ago, and every time we clean out the chicken coop, we add the chicken manure to our homemade compost barrel. I also add lots of leaves, grass clippings, and all of our kitchen food scraps (non-meat) to the compost barrel. We make sure to spin the barrel every month to get things nice and mixed. So every summer we end up with a very dark rich soil that we shovel into the wheel barrow and add to the garden before it gets tilled.

Harvesting the Compost Barrel

Tilling the Garden

We have a two-acre lot with woods that come right up to our half-acre yard, and we didn’t want to tear up too much grass, so we decided to make our garden long and narrow (2 rows deep) to span the length of our yard. It creates a nice border around the yard and makes everything easy to get to. Some of our soil has quite a bit of clay content, but we are even able to get good results with that soil because of our compost.

We were amazed at the bountiful harvest that we had last year: great-tasting tomatos all summer long (we grew Better Boys), green beans, large butternut squash,  zucchini, and potatoes. We had so many tomatos later in the summer that we had to can a lot of them to avoid throwing them away. And we enjoyed lots of great butternut squash soup.

Related articles

• Lesson 715 – Using Chicken Manure in the Garden (simplethrift.wordpress.com)
• Eliot Coleman’s Guide to Great Compost (chelseagreen.com)
• Garden Growing Guide: How To Prepare Your Garden (canadianbudgetbinder.com)

Our New Solar Panel Kit April 13, 2013

A month ago we decided to get our feet wet with the whole solar thing, so we bought our first solar panel kit from Harbor Freight Tools.

Cost of solar panel kit: $180

Cost of 2 batteries:       $140

Our beginner’s solar panel kit. Simple to set up and use.

It’s one of the starter kits, designed mostly for RVs and small cabin homes, to get you running your TV and other small appliances off of solar. The brand is called Thunderbolt Magnum.

We’re very happy with the kit so far. It was simple to set up. It comes with three solar panels, a frame to install them on so that they stand at an angle, and a 12 volt charge controller, which is the brains of the kit and connects to the batteries. It also came with 2 12-volt light bulbs that plug into the charge controller.

My husband has come up with a great way to fully integrate the kit into our everyday use:

• He moved the panels to an area of the yard which gets the most full sun.
• He placed the charge controller into our entertainment center.
• He hooked up an outdoor electrical line that goes from the panels, across the yard into the crawl space, and up through a hole in the floor behind the entertainment center and into the charge controller.
• The batteries are stored out of sight behind the entertainment center.
• He re-wired two of our lamps to accept the light bulbs that came with the kit.

So, basically, every night we are running our living room lights as well as our TV off of the batteries charged from the solar kit. We also charge our phones and other small gadgets with the batteries as well.

Our only complaint is that the light bulbs give off a blue-ish glow unlike most light bulbs, so it takes some getting used to. But we are very happy knowing that a small part of our household has gone ‘off the grid’.

If you’re worried about the cost of solar panels, as they are quite expensive, see if you can get them for free. Check out the article below for more information.

Related articles

• How to get free solar panels for your home (stateofglobe.com)

Our goal is to eventually get a few more of these kits along with a higher-capacity power inverter in order to run some of our larger appliances off of solar.

Roadside Litter Pick-up With a Goal of Recycling April 7, 2013

Carl on his first litter pickup.

Lately when I had been driving to and from work, it was getting harder and harder not to notice the huge amount of litter covering the roadsides, most of it recyclable. So I read online that our county offered free litter pickup supplies at the Planning and Zoning department.

When I dropped by, they were very helpful and offered all kinds of free supplies to get the work done: large plastic bags, ‘gopher’ gripper sticks (I have no idea what they’re actually called), durable work gloves, orange safety vests (we already had orange shirts), and even reusable ‘go green’ tote bags (to use at the grocery store). Everything was free, all they asked in return was that we let them know how many bags we filled up. This is so they can report these figures and get more supplies. They get these supplies from grant money from the county government.

Check with your own county government, and I guarantee they will have free supplies for you as well.

So today my husband Carl and I went out to do our first litter pick-up on one of our heavily-littered county roads.  Neither of us was sure what to expect, because we had never done anything like this before. Even though it was a lot of work, it actually turned out pretty good.

We found a good spot to pull off, and just started going down one side of the road. We filled two extra-large bags after going a quarter-mile on one side of the road, and then crossed over and started down the other side. In all, we filled 4 extra-large bags and went on both sides of a quarter-mile stretch of road.

It was mind-boggling to think of the amount of litter out there, since we had collected so much in such a short distance. But we are not daunted, and plan to carry on doing our part in cleaning up litter. Hopefully at some point, we can organize more people to help out.

I plan to weed through the litter and pick out the recyclables to take to our local recycling center. Next time, I think it would be better to separate the recyclables as we’re picking up litter, that would save a lot of time.

Update 4/13/2013 : I have gone through about half of the litter, and so far have filled up two giant bags of recycling. It seems that most roadside litter is eligible for recycling. I’m planning another litter pick-up operation soon…

Me on my first litter pickup – I still have to go through it and sort the recycling out.

DIY Soda Can Solar Heater April 2, 2013

My husband Carl built a solar-powered heater with soda cans and materials that we had around the house. Our house is smaller, 1200 sq ft, and with the solar heater installed in one of our living room windows and attached to a fan blower inside the house,  it prevents our heat pump from coming on all day on cold days when the sun is out.

Our solar heater built out of soda cans and materials we had around the house.

How It Works

He put an input hole into the box which allows cooler air from the house to be drawn in and heated as it passes through the cans which have been heated by the sun. The warmer air exits the box and is used to heat the house. (We have a tube coming from the exit hole connected to a fan blower inside the house to cycle air through the box.)

How He Built It

We happened to have 2 old windows to use as the covering for the box, and the size of the heater box was based on the size of the windows. Our heater box is 34″ X 54″. If you want to do this yourself, you could also use a clear corrugated material, or any kind of clear material that lets the sun come in.

Phase 1: He made a 34″ X 54″ basic frame out of a sheet of plywood and 2X4s . He cut two  holes in the frame for intake / outtake. Then he cut a coffee can in half and glued them in place.

Phase 1: Wooden frame, 34″ X 54″, with coffee cans in place.

Phase 2: We collected 108+ soda cans! (Yes we drank a lot of soda, and had other people donate them.) We washed out the soda cans and let them dry.

Phase 2: Collect soda cans, make slits in bottoms, and use can opener to remove lids.

Now came the hard part, putting the holes in the botttoms of the soda cans. He used a rotary tool with a cut-off bit to make an X pattern. His bit got worn down, and there’s probably a better way to do it, but that’s what he had on hand. He used the handle-end of a screwdriver the open the whole from the cut X-pattern. Then he used a hand-crank can opener to remove the tops of the soda cans.  This worked rather well.

Phase 3:
Next, to secure the cans for the top and bottom, he cut holes in two pieces of foam board so that the tops of the cans fit snugly into the holes.

Phase 3: Top and bottom rows of cans fit into holes made in foam board. The ‘lid’ end of the cans inserted into holes.

Phase 3: Top and bottom rows of cans fit into holes made in foam board. The ‘lid’ end of the cans inserted into holes.

Keep in mind that the heat generated inside the finished box might reach temperatures of over 120 Deg, and in our case we had a small area of the foam which melted.

So if you have other materials that you can use in place of the foam board that can withstand more heat, that would be better. (Ours had just a small amount of damage, and is still doing fine.)

Phase 4: He dry-fit the cans into the middle of the frame, with the cans in the same direction for ease-of-fit. However, the bottom row of cans have their tops fitting into the foam board facing down. He left an even gap at both ends of the frame for air circulation, between the foam board and frame. Next he sealed the bottom gap using a solid piece of foam board. (Do not seal the top end with foam board yet – although next photo shows it sealed.)

Phase 4 – Dry-fitting the cans, leaving gaps at both end of frame, sealing bottom of frame with solid foamboard

Phase 5: Then he started gluing the cans to the back of board and also gluing cans together to make a seal between them. He used Liquid Nails adhesive.

Phase 5: Cans glued onto the frame, and glued together to create a seal between them.

Phase 6:  Placed a piece of foam between intake and outtake to separate the airflow. This is a VERY important step in the overall functionality of the heater. (*Not shown in the picture: Another solid piece of foam board placed over this top-gap)

Intake Baffle

Phase 7: He painted the cans and foam board with a matte black spray paint.

Spray-Painted Cans

Phase 8: He put a bead of liquid Nails all the way around the frame and screwed the windows to the frame. Then the window frames and entire unit was painted with an outdoor black latex paint.

It was a lot of hard work but it was a lot of fun to build and is showing some great results. If you have any questions, my husband Carl will be happy to answer. He is on this blog as well.

AND THE WORKING FINISHED PRODUCT…

Finished Solar Heater