Big one right now for me is regenerative gardening. Ive gardened for years and have always practiced some of the permaculture principles, but this is the first year Im gardening with the explicit goal of regenerative gardening.

Genuinely curious how the EROI compares to a single sided panel.

It is generating more electricity. On the flipside (heh) it would cost more energy to produce.

Good idea!

Ah ok so the idea is if youre capturing it, it isnt running off into the river system. That does make sense.

This setup is but its only three high. As you add more you would have to play it by ear.

Whats the logic?

So this is 3 of these stacked up together. Each is 11.4 liters. All that equates to about 9 gallons. Thats enough to water my gardens probably 1.5 times. I have a lot of garden beds though. If you just had a small one you could do more.

My total setup is 116 gallons (but thats with two large rainbarrels too) which lasts me a long time.

A good rainstorm would fill this setup very quickly.

There is no maximum here. I think thats a US thing.

For sure! You could probably do it with old 10 gallon buckets as long as they stack. Same principle. Then all you need is a bit of waterproof sealant and a spigot.

Its for watering my garden. I water primarily with rainwater. Otherwise I have to lug my watercan to the spigot on the otherside of the house. For me, rainbarrels are a godsend. I have two 55 gallon ones in conjuction with this one.

As for effort, this took me 20 minutes to assemble. Not hard or time consuming.

For me its not about money, its about increasing my rainwater storage using what I had lying around.

We usually get hot dry summers and I have a well. Any water saved from the ground is important.

So my rainbarrels are daisy-chained. My primary rainbarrel (storebought) is fed directly through a little port attached to the downspout on my garage. The overflow is attached via a tube that feeds my secondary rain barrel (homemade from a plastic 55 gallon drum). What I did here is take another plastic tube from my secondary rainbarrel’s overflow and fed it through a hole on the lid of the top ice cream tub in this setup.

So for me, its an overflow barrel for my overflow barrel. Each barrel has to be slightly lower than the last so gravity can feed it from one to the other, hence why I could only stack three ice cream tubs for my setup.

If you were to make this yourself, you would want to cut a hole in the top lid large enough to feed your downspout into. Then you could add as many tubs as you wanted to get the capacity you want.

Additional pictures so you can see what I did. Its dead simple though.

One thing I forgot to add! You need at least some waterproof caulking where the lid meets the bottom of the next barrel to keep it sealed! Very important step.

There was an old motel I used to drive past all the time. Went out of business. Now its little modular storefronts for local businesses. Nice to see spaces being repurposed.

Could be! A small one. It comes with a storage pouch.

Sunflair Mini Solar Oven. Its pretty good for camping and very small meals. It comes with a tray and a silicon collapsable pot. It folds up compactly so its really good for backpacking.

Downsides: its not a perfect seal. I pinch the corners with clothespins to help seal it better and that helps. Its also very small so its more of a one person meal kind of thing. The collapsable pot is nice but its very flimsy so you have to handle it carefully, especially if you have a lot of liquid in it.

Overall not a bad little thing but its not super cheap for what you get so unless you plan on taking it camping, youre probably better off getting a higher quality model or making your own.

If you want something more robust Ive heard good things about the GoSun range. More expensive (though not by much) but also better quality overall. Never used one myself though.

I usually use it camping so its mainly been potatoes with a few herbs. Trying to use it more now though. I have a bbq book with a few solar cooker recipes I plan on trying.

That was shockingly more practical than expected! Obviously takes a long time to fill the tank but it works.

Anyone know any communities out there for this sort of pedal powered or human powered stuff?

Interesting. The more you know.

I thought it was biomimicry. Bionics is augmenting our bodies with technology.

My Python skills are non existant sadly. I appreciate the offer though. Pretty cool idea, solar powered ceramic firing. My father is big into ceramics and I learned a bit over the years, so a pretty fun read.