Laundry and Toilet together are half water use

May 28, 2010

Today, I got an e-mail update from YES! Magazine. The theme of the current issue is on water use and conservation.
Articles point out how much more water countries of the industrial world use, compared to the developing world.
What really struck me was a graphic pie chart that showed the uses of water.

Notice that the amount [...]

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Solar Water is snug as a bug.

April 6, 2010

Yesterday, I installed coiled-up copper pipe inside the steel water tank, and rigged it up to the solar hot water panel. After that, I got it insulated. Not perfect, but fairly good, still knowing I need to be able to get inside the tank some more.
Yesterday afternoon, the weather clouded up around 3:30, and then [...]

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Copper Coil installed in Solar Tank

April 5, 2010
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Tank vs Plasma Cutter.

April 5, 2010

Yesterday, in the match-up of the year. We pitted a steel water tank against a plasma cutter! Guess who won?
I did, as I can now continue working on my DIY Solar Hot Water system. On my system, I need a way to transfer heat from the antifreeze in the solar panel to my home water [...]

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A marshland in my Laundry!

April 2, 2010

Today, I more or less finished off my greywater upgrade by adding the sandfilter and marsh plants in the utility tub.
Peep the video:

Marsh Plants for Laundry Greywater

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Greywater Improvements

April 2, 2010

For sometime, I have been using laundry water to flush the toilet.
Seriously.
My wastewater bill comes to about 4.5 cents per gallon, and toilets can use up to half the water in a house. Also, think about all that goes into getting water so pure that you can drink it, yet we flush our human waste [...]

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Solar experimenting gets 55 Gallon upgrade

March 23, 2010

Today, my solar hot water experimentation got a 55 gallon upgrade. I know a guy who works for a company that uses plenty of 55 gallon drums, and he had a few from work. I zipped over to his house on my lunch hour in the Electro-Metro and tossed the barrel into the hatchback. (There [...]

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Video: Solar Water Heating Test

March 22, 2010

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video clip might be thirty-thousand words per second.
Here’s a video explanation of my solar hot water test setup.
I don’t mention it in the video, but there was actually a layer of ice (below freezing the night before) on the tub of water only about three [...]

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Decided on a solar tank

March 22, 2010

Yesterday, some of the guys came over to help on my Diesel S10 conversion project. While they were here, I also showed them what I was doing in my solar experiments, what I had to work with, and what the limitations are.
Everyone really seemed to like the steel pressure tank, in that it is in [...]

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“Box of water” Heat Exchanger Test

March 19, 2010

I recently tested solar hot water heating with a my 4′ x 10′ solar hot water panel hooked up to a copper coil wrapped around a steel tank. While the panel itself was able to generate plenty of hot water, it didn’t transfer well into the steel tank. I think there are several factors figuring [...]

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