I think I want to just build affordable housing so that millenials can actually buy a house instead of living with their parents for the rest of their lives.
A house is now ridiculously. expensive, and with the cost of education so high nobody can afford to save up the down payment.
The tiny homes I have been building are really an economical and practical solution for a place to sleep, to read, to store a bit of your stuff. We have too much stuff and it seems that the more space we have, just gives us more space to pile junk.
I don't mean those huge mobile homes that people spend $50,000 on and need a huge truck to pull.
I am talking $10,000 for a complete off grid solution. Rain capture, solar panels, rocket mass stove, composting toilets. That is for the 100 sq foot model.
The next model up doubles the floor space on the first floor and adds a loft for sleeping. Also twice the solar arrray and twice the battery pack. So it is double the price.
People can add floor space by adding on more tiny houses around a deck. A no frills 100 sq foot tiny house that plugs into the main house for power would just be $5000.
I think I would make the 300 sq foot tiny house a kit that is built on site. Wall and ceiling trusses already cut out. Everything cut to length and labelled.
Don't hold me to these prices, just thinking out loud. Spitballing. Thinking outside the box, but pressed right up against it.
I just down't see how we can keep on building all these horribly built mcmansions that nobody can afford anymore. They say the definition of insanity is to keep on doing the same thing, expecting a different outcome. That pretty much sums up our entire world right now. Time for a change.
I am thinking about building an overhead loft into my current tiny house for a bed and a laptop and some shelves for books and stuff. The space is like 10 feet tall, so there would be plenty of room for one. If I did that and moved the ancient desk to the new place it would basically clear out the entire floor space below. I think if I just put a pad computer mount with charger overhead so I could lay there and watch movies or program, or read, that would be awesome. The hard part would be figuring out how to get in and out of the bed without killing myself. I mentioned that my ballance isn't the best since the stroke.
They asked me a lot of questions about the stroke in the hospital. Do I have stairs at home. Would I have problems with tripping over anything. Do I want to kill myself. Nope I am fine. Just dandy.
Yesterday I noticed that my solar array had no power. Another one of the cheap cords that came with the solar kits was melting down into a bubbling mess. So I cut it out and replaced it with the industry standard connector. Today I felt the other wires and noticed that one was very warm, so I replaced that one. Just two more to replace, which I will get to either today or tomorrow. Noticed that the amps picked up a lot with the two bad wires replaced.
I also upgraded the solar panel array connection for my workshop, connecting all 4 panels up to the standard connectors.
This also gave me much more length so I was able to put the solar charge controller on the green house shelf. So I don't have to crawl around on the ground anymore to charge my phone. Progress.
The plants are starting to sprout. I should have my first microgarden harvest in about 10 days. The other plants should be ready to go into my garden in about a month. Which means I need to get my friend to plow an area for me, and get a fence up around it to keep deer out, with a shorter smaller holed fence around the base of that to keep rabbits and racoons out.
It is much colder today. I have a long sleeve shirt on over a short sleeve black t-shirt and still just kicked on the heater to warm the place up. 2 days ago the workshop was 80, yesterday it hit 70. Today it is in the 50's. Burrrrrrrr!
Going to be colder all week. Will get down to freezing at night by midweek. Might have to get up early and kick the heat on to keep it above freezing,
I plugged in my little raspberry pi 4 touchscreen and noticed it was complaining that there was not enough power directly from the solar charge controller usb port. I have much higher car chargers that I will connect up. I think I have a small computer desk that I can put on that side of the workshop.
Planning on going in a few days and getting all the lumber I need to build the floor and loft and trusses for my loft walls, floor and ceiling. Tomorrow I need to pull everything out from under the workshop and put a layer of pallets underneath so I have plenty of storage space to store the supplies.
My plan is to have R-30 unfaced insulation rolls in a continuous sheet from the peak of the roof down to the platform. Then have a second R-30 layer from the peak to the roof. And at the peak have one more R-30 layer just 4 foot wide, so the insulation goes from R-30 on the first floor walls, to R-60 on the loft walls, and at the top of the house where the most heat will go, the insulation goes to R-90. And inside that the walls are covered in 2 inch thick tuff foam with all the seams sealed with tape. Which prevents all air infiltration and adds another R-6.5 across the entire walls and ceiling.
Speaking of insulation, when the heater kicked off after a 5 minute cycle, it was 110 just below the peak of the roof. Now as it kicks on again it is 60.
I fanned a piece of cardboard when it got to 100 up there and the heater kicked right off. I just need to install the little fan I have to push the hot air down and it would kick on more, but run less each time. Keep the temperature more consistant.
Pulled out the fan and clipped it to the battery, but no joy. Going to have to take it apart and look at it. Haven't ran it since last summer. When I got all the drywall up it regulated the temp enough that I no longer needed a fan. It was sometimes having trouble starting even then. So another thing to fix.
I don't mind. Yesterday I took apart a nice full ear cup set of headphones. The left ear went out. No sound. Those wires were very tiny. I used a butane powered soldering iron and twisted the multiple broken wires together. What happened is that just below where the strain relief ends is a place where there is a lot of strain on wires. Ironical.
They don't have a bit of heatshrink or something like maker putty on the cord to let the strain distribute itself over a longer distance. I cut the coating on the wire back until I found the break, put the strain relief back on, then smeared seal all over this area to make the wire just a little stronger and harder to bend there to move the strain over a wider area. Hopefully the headphones are good now for a long time to come.
But see, I am different than most people. I don't throw stuff away just because it is difficult. I roll my sleeves up and get to work, fixing things. Of course I also end up with piles of junk because I have 50 projects to work on, and some things don't ever get fixed.
I have a bluetooth speaker whose usb connector failed the second time I plugged it in to charge it. I think it should literally be a criminal offense to not have thru hole components on anything that can be pressed on from outside the box. People should goto prison for designing things so they break on purpose. I can't tell you the number of times I have replaced headphone jacks, buttons, or power connectors on things like this.
I can just picture entire landfills filled with things that would be perfectly good, except some jackass designed it to use surface mount components for things that the user interacts with directly. The only thing holding the usb connector on a $200 ebook reader is 5 wires as thin as hairs and 5 little daps of solder. And that is stronger than the microscopically thin layer of copper foil that is on the board.
Seriously, jail time! Too much e-waste is a national security hazard. It is a direct assault against our natural environment.
I have been wanting to build a solar oven for a while now. I think I will work on this the rest of week, a little bit each day. No need to hurry. It won't be sunny until this weekend.
The it in that sentence is a funny thing. It is like the it in the question, "What time is it." It doesn't really mean anything, it is just a place holder. Opps, I did it again. There it is again. Wow, it happens all the time!!!
I have noticed weird things my whole life. Things that bother me and nobody else. Like, doesn't the north pole of a magnet point at the earth's southern magnetic pole? 🧲
Think about that for a second. It's true, right? Imagine holding two magnets together, ones north pole and the others south pole click together. The north of one maget doesn't point at the north of the other magnet. Why is Earth's magnetic field labelled wrong?
Another thing that annoys me is when you buy clothes and the actual size is wildly different than the size on the label. I got a large shirt and a 2 xl pull over hoodie. The hoodie is smaller than the large. Now, I don't think they should be jailed for this offense... maybe just flogged for a bit.
I took side shelves off of the copiers we took to the dump. Also took the glass tops off of them. Using the selves to hold random stuff. The glass I am going to use to make the solar ovens. I am thinking wooden box with an angled top, two glass sheets that are hinged for doors, and something to adjust the angle to the best possible angle. Just going to use cardboard as insulation for this first one. There is a nearby company that makes this kind of hard crumby insulation that you can buy as sheets.
I will just use the bubble foil insulation to make a big collector around the glass doors. Staple the foil to a wooden frame that can be unlatched and set aside when it is time to pull diner out of the oven.
I think I also need a little tray a bit from the bottom that can swing down level when the box is tilted for the sun angle. This will give you a level surface to put the food onto. That way all the juices don't run to the back of the box and make a mess.
I've used reflective foil and oven bags to heat opened cans of food before and that makes the cans too hot to touch with your bare hands. Easily over 200 degrees.
I am thinking the final version can be built like a speaker box, with two glass doors on the opening, the good insulation, and a metal interior that is painted black with good quality enamal that doesn't make the food taste funny. The swinging tray inside that the food sits on should be removable and easily cleaned, and also painted black.
Hmmmm, maybe as well as solar powered tiny homes, I can sell solar ovens. And composting toilets. That is a project for next week. I know, I know, gross. But hey, everyone poops. It is what happens after you eat that delicious food you cooked in the solar oven. I wonder if you can make a solar powered composter?
So many solar powered things to build. You know that half the energy your house uses goes to just heating water? Crazy. You spend a lot of money doing something that the sun could do for you for free.
Going to have to plant the seeds I bought the other day. I got several more kinds of tomatoes and some flowers and sun flowers. I really need an app to track all these projects.
Well, I tore apart the fan, and nothing looked wrong with it. I tried adjusting the magnetic sensor and checked the ohms on the enamel wire loops and they both tested the same, so either the magnetic sensor is bad or something else went bad. Saved the power cord and the enamal wire. I guess that saved a bit from the trash dump. Need to order another one of those fans. It worked great 24 hours a day for a year. It only cost a little over $20, so I consider it a good value. I can reuse the power cord for the new one to let it run in the peak of the roof of the new house.
Stay tuned for more random musings from the recesses of my twisted mind.
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