DIY Video:How To Turn Your Old Fan Into An Airconditioner AC for cheap.

This project goes into the build of a DIY swivel top wind turbine generator that can generate off the grid electric power to run lights, radios, charge batteries. This durable, lightweight and portable wind turbine would be very useful in SHTF / Power outage / Emergency situations. The materials you need to build this wind turbine are as follows. 3/4th inch PVC pipes including 5 90 degree couplers, 3 Tee couplers,4 Three and half inch pipe, Two 8 inch pipe, Two 3 inch pipe and long 11 inch pipe for the post. The propeller for the turbine is made from a 5 gallon bucket lid or you can buy them from your local hobby store, 3V 350ma DC hobby motor, wire from an old extension cord. The base stand for the turbine is assembled using the PVC couplers and the tee's. The 11 inch PVC post pipe is finally attached at the center of the support base. Use PVC pipe cement to strengthen the connection between the joints. Next step is to make a hole at the bottom of the post for the electrical cord . A hole is drilled one inch from the end of the PVC pipe. The wires from a broken extension cord is used for this project. The wires are soldered to the ends of the motor first for a good tight connection. The wire is fed through the pipe and the motor is mounted at the top . A duct tape is wrapped around the motor multiple times so that it fits the entrance of the pipe opening. Before encasing the motor, the blade is put on . To build the swivel assembly ,we need a PVC union, an adapter, 3 inch pipe. The adapter is screwed on to the union, the 3 inch pipe is then connected to the adapter. The tail fins are made from an old waste basket. The fins are screwed on the post using machine screws. To stop the post from rotating 180 degree in both directions, we put couple of screws on either direction on the side of the post in such a way that it prevents the post from rotating 180 degree . Not only you can charge your batteries using this set , but this can be connected to an inverter to run AC powered appliances. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMZdAf9hrFk

This project goes into the build of a simple and inexpensive waste oil/ used vegetable oil candle from an old nail polish bottle. You can burn motor oil ,vegetable oil, olive oil or you can also use lamp oil in these types of candles. The first thing your need for this oil candle is a reservoir to hold the oil in. Here we use a finger nail polish bottle. Next , a length of 100% cotton yarn is needed that is slightly longer than the length of the bottle. Another requirement is a one inch square piece of aluminum foil. The first thing you need to do to start this process is to take the bottle , clean it completely and fill it with your source of fuel like veg oil, waste motor oil, corn oil, olive oil . When you are pouring the oil, you don't want to go all the way up to the top of the bottle. Leave small amount of space at the top of the bottle. Take the aluminum foil and fold it length wise in half .Puncture a small hole in the middle of the foil . Through this hole, the cotton wick is pushed through. Lower the wick into the bottle and fold the aluminum foil around the neck of the bottle. This acts as a lid . Make sure that everything is folded down nice and tight around the bottle. Check the candle and see if this wick is wet. And if it is not , turn it upside down for a minute . The oil will then come into this wick and saturate it. Be careful that your aluminum foil doesn't fall off. If your cotton wick is a little bit longer, pull it up a little bit . This exposes the wet part of the wick. Take your scissors and cut the wick down just a little. Light the candle . When you first go to light them it takes a minute because you have to get everything warmed up. Let it burn a little bit. Make sure to not use a thick layer of aluminum foil for the lid. The aluminum foil will heat up and cause problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbHFrvL99eA

This project goes over the details on how you can setup and install a 300W Off the grid Micro Hydro System for your home . The water source mentioned in this project have a flow rate of 15 - 30 gallons a minute and the drop between the source and the house is about 150 feet. The first step is to make an intake angled screen box for the system that helps in channeling the water from the source. The aluminum screen on the top blocks leaves, sticks and other debris to pass through into the box . The box is made of a 24 inch 2X10 ,2X4 and an 2X8 angled piece treated lumber. We add 3 one and quarter inch attachment points on the lower side of the box for the hdpe poly pipes. The box is secured using exterior screws on the outside and inner tubes on the seam to prevent leaks. The box is installed on the creek with help of couple of three and half inch concrete anchors and two boards are screwed on both the sides for support. The outlet poly pipes from the intake screen box goes to 55 gallon plastic barrel which acts as a silt catchment and also an air free source. The 3 outlet pipes are connected to the top of the barrel with the help of uniseal rubber gaskets. A 2 inch pipe is installed midway on the tank for the penstock. We also install an overflow pipe near the top of the tank to take the extra water out and a three inch cleanout pipe at the bottom . The cleanout pipe can be unscrewed to remove the silt and debris out. To take the water from the intake to the turbine, the penstock used here is a 100PSI 1100ft 2 inch poly pipe. A threaded adapter is glued to the outlet coming out of the barrel. It is then connected to a two inch full port shutoff ball valve followed by an another threaded adapter and a pipe. The penstock poly pipe is attached to this pipe using barb fittings with hose clamps. Next step is to install the pressure gauge and the surge tank to our penstock pipe. Water will come down through the poly pipe into another PVC pipe fitted with a pressure gauge, surge tank, two inch closing ball valve and a union to remove the turbine from the pipe. The surge tank is made of a standpipe that will prevent any water hammer affecting the pipes. The two inch poly pipe coming out from the barrel is connected to the two inch PVC surge tank and pressure gauge using regular . If the main shut off valve is suddenly closed, this tank will allow some of the surge to be absorbed. Next step is to build a housing for the micro hydro turbine. It is going to have a lid that opens up and a drain field pipe that goes out back to the creek. The housing for the turbine is made of three quarter inch plywood that is 2 X 2 foot wide and one foot tall. The turbine sits inside the hosing in the middle with the help of some 2x 4 scrap wood and a bucket lid piece. Then a 3 inch exit pipe comes out of here down through the middle of the housing .This drain pipe keeps the water from piling up under the turbine. The Micro Hydro Turgo Turbine is custom built based on the head pressure and the flow rate of the water source. It has three ball valves and four quarter inch jet nozzles coming out of them. The ball valves can be separately turned off when there is not enough water .The turbine is wired up to be three phase. The water coming out of the penstock hits jet nozzles that turns the Pelton wheel which is connected to 3 phase AC motor. To connect the turbine to our house, we use a 10/3 underground feeder wire. The wire is enclosed in a one inch conduit pipe. The proper way to install wire into a conduit is to get your conduit all glued together. And then you have a vacuum that pulls a string through. You tie your string to the wire and then pull the wire through the conduit. The wire goes into the house through a PVC conduit body. We install a junction box on the housing of the turbine to join the 3 phase turbine output wires to the 10/3 UG feeder wires coming from the house. Inside the house, we connect a rectifier to the three legs of the three phase coming from the turbine .This converts the AC generated into DC power. To generate useable power from this micro hydro system we need to install certain electrical devices in our houses. These include the MPPT Charge Controller, Grid Tie limiter Inverter, breaker box, disconnect switches and the batteries. These components are mounted on a 2 X 2 foot ,three inch plywood board. In case there is some excess heat for one of these electronics at some point, we cover the plywood board with a piece of sheet metal so that it will act as a heat sink. From the rectifier, the connection goes into a 25amp breaker box .The red wire goes into the breaker box and then further connects to positive of the charge controller. The negative white wire is directly connected to the negative of the charge controller. The five 12V AGM batteries are connected in series using four gauge cables. The positives from the batteries are connected to the charge controller and the inverter via DC switches .These switches allows us to isolate and disconnect the components individually. The negatives from the batteries are connected to the negatives of both charge controller and inverter respectively. The inverter is further connected to receptacle from where it goes straight to the main supply. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTrfbWw_mKRL5Ae_x1Q4-1pOs0NJGwnzi