Andrew Cavanagh

I do deliveries for Uber Eats on a bicycle for at least 6 hours every night so I've learned stuff.

It does depend what you want to do on your bicycle.

My biggest tip would be don't buy a pre made bike. They're overpriced and most will be useless if your battery goes flat. You want a bike you can still ride when that battery is out. It's not always about the battery range. There's human error (thinking you've charged the battery when you haven't, having to ride further than you expected etc).

Many of the standard e-bikes are really heavy and totally crap to ride without the electric assist.

Also what is your plan for maintaining your e-bike. E-bike mechanics are ridiculously expensive compared to the price of the bike so any maintenance is going to blow the real budget of your bike to hell.

You're much better off buying a really high quality used bicycle and putting a conversion kit on it. The easiest conversion is a front hub motor (basically you just have to change the well, mount the battery to the drink holder nuts and mount the throttle. It is very basic if you don't bother with the pedal sensor and just use a throttle).

Once you've got your first bike set up and you're happy I'd recommend buying a second conversion kit...then you have spare parts for everything when something fails or has a problem. This is my go to kit. 26 inch front wheel hub motor There'll be something similar in the USA you can buy...
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/124792382152?hash=item1d0e34a2c8:g:ndQAAOSwUzlhOEjM

Having 2 used bicycles that you convert is also a great idea. Even high quality used bicycles are really cheap. A good bike that retails at $800+ you can usually pick up for less than $200.

A conversion kit (wheel, battery, battery mount, wiring, throttle etc) you can usually pick up in the $500 to $700 range.

I'd recommend getting bigger tyres and using tannus tyre armour inserts in your tyres. Those with thornless tubes should ensure you never get a puncture and even if you do you can still ride at 10km/hr. That should cost you around $100.

Instead of buying a carrier it is often cheaper to buy a second hand bike that has a good carrier on it (you can often pick a whole bike up with carrier for $50 or less). You can give the bike away after taking off the carrier or keep it for spare parts or as a spare bike.

When you're buying bicycles choose a standard size wheel for any bike you buy (eg 26 inch) and stick with it. That way you'll have spare parts you can use for all your bikes. The easiest type of bicycle to convert (and one of the best multi-purpose bikes) is a hard tailed mountain bike (they have suspension on the front...not on the back).

So 2 bikes at under $1,000 each. If you have to repair one you'll have the other ready to go.

You'll also want really good locks. A U-lock with cable that is tested and rated by Sold Secure as Gold or better. Always lock your bike.

Think through how you're going to maintain your bike. Learn to do basic maintenance yourself but you will come up with problems that are beyond you so it's either just replace it (that's often the most cost effective route...buy a bike second hand that has the part you need and put it on) or find a local bike mechanic (that gets really expensive really fast).

To put this in context my main bicycle is an Orbea mountain bike which cost me $120. In the last 3 months I had a few issues that I had a very economical bike mechanic using used parts repair that cost me $250 total.

I make good money and he's a young guy so I don't mind paying it but I could buy another solid, name brand used bike for that. With bicycles it's nearly always cheaper to buy second hand bikes and chop and swap than it is to pay a bike mechanic.

Also learn basic skills like cleaning and oiling your chain, adjusting your brakes etc. There is no economy in paying a bike mechanic for these things.

If you want to carry a lot of heavier gear consider a trailer. Hanging heavy gear on a bike makes it hard to ride, hard to park, and can be quite unstable and dangerous if you don't balance it perfectly. Panniers are great for carrying light stuff...but it takes a lot of skill to ride safely when they have a heavy load. Add a wet, slippery road, manhole cover, mud etc and the bike will just slide out from under you.

You can pick up good bike trailers very cheap second hand. A quality trailer that holds two children you can usually pick up in the $60 to $120 range and it has a cover to keep your load dry. Or there are other trailers you might get for as little as $20 second hand that will do the job. Again it depends what you're doing on your bike.

One basic tip...buy all your bicycle stuff second hand (buying a whole second hand bike that has what you want on it is usually the cheapest option). And buy your electric motor, batteries etc new. Second hand electric gear is beyond the capacity of most people to maintain and fix.

I hope I've given you some real world information here.

People rabbit on about the watts of the motor and the size of the battery. It's mostly bullshit. You can carry an extra battery and swap them over if you need to. You can also carry a charger. Size of the motor is only an issue if you're carrying large loads up big hills.

What's far more important is the quality of the actual bicycle you're riding (not the electrical parts...the actual bike) and how you're going to maintain the bike.

Beans are one of the foods most suited for any form of heat retention cooking.
https://solarcooking.fandom.com/wiki/Heat-retention_cooking

You could use a thermos or any one of the many heat rention cookers (thermal cookers) commercially available (you can often pick one up very cheaply second hand) or you could make a haybox cooker etc etc.). Examples of brands include Shuttle Chef, Billyboil, Ecopot etc.

You rinse the beans in the usual way (usually overnight) then you bring them to a boil for a few minutes then put them in your heat retention cooker and simply leave them for several hours.

Then you bring them to the boil again, discard the water and your beans should be soft and ready to eat or ready for whatever other recipes you want to use them for.

Heat retention cooking has the advantages of reducing the amount of cooking with fuel required down to less than 15 minutes and eliminates the need to tend to a pot that is simmering. You won't overcook the beans. Any cook time between 3 and 6 hours in a good thermal cooker should be fine and safe.

More info on one way salt it used to make a microbial cuture to water plants in JADAM...a form of Korean farming that 5% of Korean farmers use...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIRvmA2Gkgs

This is a really important topic because Air conditioners use an extravagant amount of electricity. To put this in perspective an air conditioning unit will usually use around 100 times the electricity of a ceiling fan.

First if you're in a more arid climate  you can use evaporation to cool a house (swamp coolers, evaporative coolers, pots of water etc).

If humidity is low simply washing the walls and the concrete around a house can reduce the temperature substantially. It's especially effective near sunset when the cooling effect will last many hours. Cool water on the concrete slab of a house helps in the humid tropics too. If you have a lot of plants surrounding the slab of your house you can use watering them as a cooling strategy.

In tropical, humid climates evaporative cooling is mostly ineffective but there are many other strategies.

These include shading the building and especially making sure no sun hits the walls. Pay special attention to shading the west wall.

Reflective paint on the roof or shading the roof also helps enormously. Insulation or flashing in the roof also helps stop a building from heating up excessively.

Small box fans pointed directly at you are usually more effective and cost efficient than ceiling fans.

At night a small box fan on the windowsill will blow cooler air from the outside into the house. In locations where the night temperature is low enough this is as effective as air conditioning, much healthier and much, much cheaper.

Another key to staying cool when it's hot and humid is to avoid letting your body heat up.

Strategies to cool off include taking a cold shower, going for a swim or soaking yourself with a hose. If you do this in the hottest part of the day that makes a huge difference.

You an also place an ice pack on the back of your neck which has the added benefit of helping you lose weight.

If you do get heavy rain where you live it's a good idea to put a fine layer of sand or grass clippings in the bottom of your banana circle first before putting wood over that.

Without a fine layer before it matures the bottom of your banana circle can fill with water providing a habitat for mosquitoes to breed.

Pinto peanut
Desmodium heterophyllum - also repels some pests, will grow in shade to a certain extent
Desmodium triflorum - also repels some pests - used in "push/pull" systems
Brazilian spinach - will grow in shade
Longevity spinach - Gynura procumbens
Sweet potato - you can lie on it. As Su Ba says you're going to get a bit of sap.

Health wise it's very smart to eat a high percentage of low glycemic vegetables to control the insulin release in your body.

Most people who have a diet where over half the volume of food they eat is from low glycemic vegetables avoid the most common western diet and lifestyle diseases.

The good news is many low glycemic vegetables are easy to grow (greens for example).

And yes eating a diet that's really high in fruit without any good fats (nuts, avocado), protein and low glycemic vegetables is not going to be healthy for you in the long run unless you're extremely active.

Moringa loves the tropics and loves the monsoons here.

You can cut it back every year and it will grow right back (which is necessary here because it grows huge if you don't cut it).

You can eat the pods when they're green as well as the leaves.

You can also get an excellent cooking oil from the seeds (Benn oil) and you can extract the oil fairly simply at home.
http://www.permaculturecairns.com/MoringaTree.html

My best advice is don't bother.

Look for plants that have a similar flavor and grow well in the wet weather.

Some varieties of paw paw (carica papaya) taste more like melons.

There's Pepino (Solanum muricatum)...smaller but it tastes a lot like rockmelon.

If you have a dry season you could try growing your watermelon then.

A few thoughts.

I live in the monsoonal tropics and I put wood in to fill up banana circles years before I ever really heard of Hugelkultur.

I didn't see any really noticeable improvement in water retention short term.

I will say years later I don't water my bananas in those banana circles during the dry season and they do just fine.


In one of these 4 videos Wade Bauer recommends using Hugelkutur in the tropics which would suggest it works...


He also suggests putting a layer of coconut halves six inches down in vegetable beds to catch and hold water for plants.


As someone already said using charcoal in the tropics is a powerful soil amendment...especially if you soak it in worm juice, worm tea, urine or some other highly biologically active starter or mix the charcoal in when you start your compost pile.

Google Terra Preta soil for some insights on why this can be a huge long term soil improver.

If you are going to burn word to create charcoal you should really do it in useful every day ways like using a Top Lit Updraft (TLUD) cooker to cook your food or heat your water (or both).

If you have to burn scrub for fire protection you can do that with a top lit fire in a pit with water control to create charcoal too.

I wouldn't be just burning wood to create charcoal.  That's poor use of resources.