Clever recycling and repurposing hacks?
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Is there anyone out there with an off grid mentality? People interested in elegant solutions achieved with those things that others throw away or eschew (always wanted to use that word).
I won't be the firs to post as I am tied up on another project, but I will get there. If others have great solutions, please jusmp in now and get this started. The motto is "cheap, free and elegant". The bottom of a coke bottle used as an ash tray is a no go. A door used as a drafting table is a go.
Also a good idea does not count unless it has been realized in photoshop.
The closer your cost of materials gets to zero, the more valuable your contribution.
Ready? GO!
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2 projects, same building for a family owned, fun bike shop that underwent an expansion.
Steel cable rail using reclaimed bike parts and a stair rail using XC skis.The timber frame rail for the loft rail was in place, I purchased the steel cable and channel. The bike parts were recycled. For the stair rail, the timber was recycled and the skis came from customers and a pile of trade-ins from behind the shop.
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Hmm... I'm not sure to which extent this would be categorized as 'ashtray out of bottle' or 'table out of door'...
Anyway, I wanted to make jam, but I didn't have scales yet, so I made one out of a knitting needle, two yoghurt buckets, and a piece of string...
Sad truth: it has only one type of weighing: just as much in the one as in the other!
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@unknownuser said:
Hmm... I'm not sure to which extent this would be categorized as 'ashtray out of bottle' or 'table out of door'...
Anyway, I wanted to make jam, but I didn't have scales yet, so I made one out of a knitting needle, two yoghurt buckets, and a piece of string...
Sad truth: it has only one type of weighing: just as much in the one as in the other!Not so, you can use known weights in one bucket to weigh any object in the other bucket. For instance, you could have 10 Euros of cheese, 20 yen of sushi, 50 nails of beer. Would work fine for recipes as regardless of true weight you can work out proportions. Also all the objects mentioned are standard and have known weights.
Also from the photo, I now understand the pyro part of pyroluna. Your hair is flame red.
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Although for windows only, how about using virtual pc (free), or virtual server (also free) to extend the life of your legacy software including everything from DOS programs to the ones prior to your current OS.
If you have Win7, then VWinXp (free). It can be setup to install hardware drivers no longer supported by current OSs. Continue to utilize your old $10k+ plotter no longer supported by Vista, or Win7 drivers.
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@roger said:
Not so, you can use known weights in one bucket to weigh any object in the other bucket. For instance, you could have 10 Euros of cheese, 20 yen of sushi, 50 nails of beer. Would work fine for recipes as regardless of true weight you can work out proportions. Also all the objects mentioned are standard and have known weights.
Also from the photo, I now understand the pyro part of pyroluna. Your hair is flame red.
Hmmm.. I hadn't thought of using nails and coins etcetera.. good tip. Now I can postpone buying a proper scale for that much longer
Hm.. screws are a bit lightweight... good for fine tuning. I think I'll use some of my smaller books as heavier weights - those are usually mentioned on amazon.com or bol.com... I can look for weight by ISBN And yes...the nickname is because of the hair.
And also because I'm a little bit crazy - that's the second part
Oh I have this other repurposed object.
It used to be a part of a bookshelf, but after moving I found it had to be cut off. Now I use it as a cutting board, as a lid for that pan that doesn't have one, and as a table mat to put 'm on when it's done! So it's multi-repurposed! -
@unknownuser said:
And yes...the nickname is because of the hair.
And also because I'm a little bit crazy - that's the second parthaha.. a lunatic red-head
watch out
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This is my car aerial, a coat-hanger! My original aerial was pulled off by a deranged neighbour who was convinced I crashed his car (I never driven his car!
). So instead of replacing it with a proper one, I used a coat-hanger instead. I kind of works, except in bad signal areas. Because of that, we've never replaced it, which is stupid- because it's a crap workaround, that I don't recommend (just look at that scratched paintwork, where the coat-hanger has got caught- awful!).Like all eco-friendly sticking plasters, there nothing like investing a little more, and getting the job done properly (which is what my wife constantly tells me!
). 
Tom
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had to repair the front gate yesterday.. the screws holding the 2x4 of the frame had pulled out of the wall.
so I first used plastic plugs. useless. the 2x4 just fell off the wall soon as I let go, plugs as well still on the screws.
so I took an old bamboo chopstick, poked it into each hole, broke it off, then screwed the 2x4 back in place.
it ain't going no where
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Classy Trash: Antique Metal Objects as Modern Table Lamps
That blog, Dornob, has many such repurposed items...enough to keep you busy for a few hours at least, Roger
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Dornob, thanks you were right. I spent about two hours there. This is the kind of stimulus package I can get behind.
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You'll be turning your heating off next, putting an extra woolie jumper on, and living the rest of your life in a yurt!
It's a slippery slope I tell you!
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Tom, you are pretty close to the truth. I live in Arizona, so turning the heat off and donning a wool sweater in the winter is no big deal. And we are eyeing a cave house in Spain which is a lot more permanent than a yurt, but equally counter culture. Just waiting for the Euro to crash to make the exchange rate more attractive. After all, slippery slopes are the basis of the joy of skiing.
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This frame for this bed consists of 2-liter soda bottles and one sheet of plywood with holes drilled to accept the bottle necks. A small amount of highly-liquid black acrylic paint is poured inside the bottles and tumbled until they are coated. All holes and edges of the plywood are eased with a router equipped with a rounding over bit. The upper section represents the standard box springs and mattress.
Comments on the concept are welcome. -
Interesting concept... how do the top and bottom attach to one another? Won't the bottles tend to bend or skew outward?
You'll probably stay dry if your house floods, considering the amount of upthrust*- not sure that is the right word. buoyancy might be better? or lift? not sure not sure.
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@unknownuser said:
Interesting concept... how do the top and bottom attach to one another? Won't the bottles tend to bend or skew outward?
You'll probably stay dry if your house floods, considering the amount of upthrust*- not sure that is the right word. buoyancy might be better? or lift? not sure not sure.
Some good questions. Worthy of a rethink. Perhaps it would be better to arrange the bottles in a hexagonal stacking matrix to that all the bottles touch and join them with silicone adhesive. I could be done as one large unit or in units of seven bottles as that configuration would be inherently stable as it would be wider than tall.
I used to have a small sailboat and kept the areas in the hold, in the cabinets and under the beds filled with empty two liter bottles just in case we would be swamped by a following sea or developed a hole in the hull. The boat has been knocked down sideways in rough conditions on San Francisco Bay.
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@roger said:
Comments on the concept are welcome.
It looks more like one of those devices that crushes you! You're beginning to sound like my dad (who oddly enough, is also called Roger)!
(fortunately he's now almost 70 and I'm 43, so I flew the nest years ago, but he too was obsessed with these 'green' solutions. In fact we visited some remote recycling joint on Vancouver Island in the late 1970's so he could make a report for the British Labour Party, back here (yes, you guys can partly blame my dad for the horror of green politics so inherent in the Labour Party! 
It actually got so bad at home that in the end my mother walked out on him, because (partly- she also had her other other reasons 
) he refused to install a working central heating in a barn we had converted to a house- it was bloody freezing in there during the winter! We were one of the first families in Britain to convert an English barn into a house (built by me, my dad and a handful of others). The local farmers caught on and got in on the act in the early 1980's and made even more money than they already owned, then the stockbroker belt of London moved down to Lewes, and the rest is history. So, my British chums, you who are fed up about being lectured about green politics and 'heathy' eating, you can partly blame my dad for that!! Lynchmob? You have my full sympathy! 
)Rant over.
Back to the bed, Why not just use wood? Wood would be far easier to pack away (I presume that the lids screw back on against the top wood part to hold it in place? I'd hate to the one who would have to take those all off again!) And, how will you get the strength from the bottle neck? There will be an immense amount of pressure exerted on the neck of the bottle. You may find that one night you roll over, and land with a thud on the ground, while one side of your bed collapses!
Another option of course, is "freecycle"
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@unknownuser said:
Won't the bottles tend to bend or skew outward?
Ah yes, I've been beaten to it!
Most green sticky-paster ideas, imo are silly. It is better to design something so well, that it'll last. Unfortunately, designing things to last doesn't bode well with capitalism.
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Dear Tom the pipe guy, regarding the rant:
I think I would like your dad a lot. I suspect the lack of central heating had less to do with green than being a clever way to get his son out of the house.Now, in regard to the bed. Are you sure you are an architect? Let's assume that two people, springs and a mattress came to 600 pounds. Pro rated over 165 bottles that is a whopping 3.64 pounds per bottle (Did you really mean to use the word IMMENSE? [I didn't think so]). Hopefully you are not allowed to do structural calculations in your office. I weigh about 240 pounds and have jumped on one of these bottles giving it a tremendous shock load. I neither splits or blows off the screw cap. In the local supermarket I have seen these bottles in 1/4 height bottle carriers stacked 5 crates high with no bending or deformation.
In fact PET plastic soda bottles have a design rating of 200 psi. One atmosphere is 14.7 psi. Soda is around 55 psi (55/14.7 = 3.74 atmospheres)
A Mercedes C class sedan weighs 2,271 pounds. When divided by 165 bottles, each bottle would only need to carry 13.76 pounds per bottle. Would you be willing to put a few Euros on a capped 2 liter PET bottle being able to support 13.76 pounds? [I didn't think so.]
You ask why not use wood? I built a couch from Mahogany from a single board. The board cost $500 right from the lumber yard. I also built a quarter-sawn oak coffee table to plans from a wood working magazine. They estimated the cost of wood at $200. I had the local lumber yard cut down some boards for me and went to check out. When they gave me a bill for $200, I smiled and said thanks I hope you can sell boards of this dimension because I am not paying $200 bye, bye. Soda bottles are free for the taking. I am on a fixed income (actually not fixed as for the second year in a row there has been no cost of living increase). I also find the soda bottle aesthetic interesting when not left to chaotically litter a landscape or become part of a land fill. Also they weigh very little (52 grams per bottle) compared to the space they take up. One-hundred-sixty-five bottles plus the plywood weigh less than my current bed frame. Availability speaks for itself.
@tfdesign said:
@roger said:
Back to the bed, Why not just use wood? Wood would be far easier to pack away (I presume that the lids screw back on against the top wood part to hold it in place? I'd hate to the one who would have to take those all off again!) And, how will you get the strength from the bottle neck? There will be an immense amount of pressure exerted on the neck of the bottle. You may find that one night you roll over, and land with a thud on the ground, while one side of your bed collapses!
Another option of course, is "freecycle"
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@roger said:
Perhaps it would be better to arrange the bottles in a hexagonal stacking matrix to that all the bottles touch and join them with silicone adhesive.
Hexagonal sounds good. But instead of adhesive, I was thinking you could put a band around them to hold them together. Something that doesn't stretch too much... something like this:
No idea about the price though. But probably cheaper than mahogany
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