I came across a similarly designed injection molding machine a few weeks back. I love the idea of recycling being done locally instead of the current situation that has numerous inefficiencies. I figure having more ideas for different methods will help motivate more people in this space.

I know there are a lot of solar charge controllers in the works that got set back by world chaos. How many, if any, of the things I saw previously will make it to market is up in the air. I have seen a few devices out there that can work, but the prices have gone up on them a bit and they aren't exactly plug and play without testing to see if they are working properly.

Since solar panels are the most robust part of any solar power setup, I'm of the opinion that it makes more sense to just buy more panels when doing small scale solar. Spending $400 or more on a charge controller that's likely to burn out a few times over during the lifetime of the panels to eek out some extra power doesn't add up to me. That money can be spent on a few extra solar panels to provide extra power and they will still be providing power for decades. I've found a few controllers that each have their own caveats.

What I am looking at are Boost Charge Controllers, meaning the input voltage from the solar panel is lower than the output voltage. If you are using a so-called 48V battery or 13S pack, it has a fully charged voltage of 54.6 volts. Pretty much any panel with an open circuit voltage lower than that would work with a Boost Charge Controller. All of the name brand stuff I have found either doesn't do higher voltage Li-Ion, or has more problems than the cheaper offerings.

The 3 options I have looked at recently are as follows:

1 - MPT-7210A - The Amazon links are not endorsements of sellers, just the first ones that come up for me. You can find these things in other places quite possibly for much cheaper even with shipping. This particular option isn't the best, but there are videos on YouTube showing people working with it. The main problems seem to be cheap capacitors, which is relatively easy to fix, and it doesn't have proper Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). Initially this was the first thing I found and at the time it was less than half the current price. It's still not a bad option to try out if you can get it for closer to $30, but with other options available it isn't worth the $50+ most places are selling it at, and I don't think I would bother trying to buy one that hasn't already made it across the Pacific right now.

I think the first video I found from the YouTuber vuaeco was on this device, and he quickly became one of my favorites. I love his DIY videos, and he does a lot with Li-Ion cells, small scale solar, and ebikes. I highly recommend checking his stuff out even if you decide against this charge controller which he goes over here:



2 - CTK300  (CTK EV300, CTK300-II) - There a a few variants of this I have seen around, it seems like one handles more power than the other and the rest are the same with different colors. This one seems a bit better as far as being easier to set up and a bigger case without needing a fan. The other one seems to have a better display. Here is a video which is an update to a previous video, which goes over some important points:



Both of those previous options have other videos you can search for more info. A major issue with the off brand stuff is that they may not get design updates and testing that a name brand item would. One thing I heard a number of years ago in regards to computer power supplies is that the #1 cause of failures is shipping and this last option could avoid that problem. I found this DIY charge controller recently:

3 - DIY 1kW Open Source MPPT Solar Charge Controller - I came across the video for this a few months ago and was really impressed by it. There is a YouTube video series about it on that page. I'm a big fan of open source hardware and software, and this seems like a winner. It may not be as great an option for someone who only needs one, as many components are bought in packs of 10 or more. In my case I could build one and then use all the spare parts to build more. With my leg injury taking much longer to heal than I planned, I may not get around to this very quickly. If other people here are interest, maybe we can pool resources and get 10 or more of them built to save both on cost and resources versus buying a bunch of components to sit around and ultimately get thrown in the trash.

It uses an ESP32 for a wireless connection to log data on your phone. With MPPT it will be much more efficient at converting power than most other cheap options, yet cheaper than any name brand models. Given the open source nature, people can make changes and improve on the design and share it with others. I'm hoping to see more people on YouTube put up videos about their experiences building this controller. I have experience with power delivery and interest in electronics, but I don't have the skills to completely reverse engineer something like this by myself. It would be nice to see someone with good test equipment checking out the voltage, switching frequency, and MPPT features to see how they compare to the intended design, to name brand MPPT controllers, and to the numbers shown in the data logging app.

This post is getting mighty long, so I'll leave it here for now. I know there are a lot more options for lower voltage Li-Ion, and I remember Area 13 ebikes (formerly Bolton ebikes) mentioned something about getting a charge controller designed, but the current options have their limitations. If I come across anything new I will post back with more info.

Jay Angler wrote:Two simple things to increase safety:

1. Make sure your charger and particularly the wires and connectors aren't showing any damage. Consider buying spares, so you're not tempted to use something you shouldn't when in a rush.

2. Set a timer and remove the charger as soon as the battery is full, or nearly full. Over-charged batteries are far more likely to cause a serious fire.

I'm always skeptical of chargers. My experience is that ones without active cooling tend to get amazingly hot. Ones with active cooling could have a fan fail, or more likely jammed up with debris like grass, leaves, hair etc. I always set mine on steel or concrete away from combustibles. I've never been afraid to roll out extension cords, so putting everything out in the driveway or concrete pad out back is much less hassle than losing everything to a fire.

With number 2, that technically "shouldn't" be an issue, but we all know about should and shouldn't. Both the charger and the Battery Management System (BMS) have circuitry to stop overcharging. Then again, my experience charging individual cells (without a BMS) has not only shown that some chargers brands don't stop when they are supposed to, but even two of the same charger model have different internal resistances which stops charging at slightly different points.

It would probably be a good idea to check the voltage of the battery after the charger says it is fully charged at least once to make certain it isn't overcharging. In my case, I use so-called 36V batteries or 10 cells in series (10S). A fully charged Li-Ion cell is 4.2V or 42V for the 10S packs. If it were hitting 42.5V (4.25V per cell) or more, that would mean both the charger and the BMS were not operating properly, and in the case of a new bike could be turned in for warranty service or replacement. Different size packs will have different voltage ranges, and different battery chemistries such as LiFePo don't explode, but have other issues like charging at low temperatures. I'd imagine most of the information you need would be provided by the manufacturer. Unfortunately a lot of ebikes seem to have proprietary connectors and show power in bars or dots instead of a more precise voltage, so it may not be straightforward to perform this basic safety check.

In any event, that Rad bike looks great!

As per above:

Brian James wrote:Unfortunately the original company mentioned in this post went out of business. The company that bought them out would make an 8” riser if requested but there would be a $1000 mold fee up front, so unless a lot of people organized a group buy for 8” risers it would be cost prohibitive.

I'd imagine that's not a viable option anymore. You can use ceramic fiber blanket and a castable refractory cement like satanite, mizzou, or similar. They also have hardeners like ITC-100 High Temperature Ceramic Coating. It looks like you can get it on Amazon nowadays. If you want something freestanding without using a bunch or refractory or fire bricks, you could use nichrome wire on the outside to hold the blanket together, then apply a coating to the inside to seal it up so the combustion gasses stay inside the tube. Best practice will depend on your exact goals and design. My experience is with backyard metal casting foundries, so going this path may not be great for all rocket mass heater designs.

I could kick myself for not grabbing "broken" electric mowers from the side of the road. Some of the older ones had brushed motors, but most of the ones you can find now are brushless DC motors (BLDC). They have no brushes to wear out or fail prematurely from improper installation. The only things that can go wrong are the motor controller, which you can often find cheap replacements for, or something with the battery pack which usually isn't the entire pack gone bad and can be fixed or replaced for a fraction of the cost of a new pack.

I personally would hunt around on Craigslist or similar and find one for cheap or free to fix up. The chances of the motor itself being destroyed is insanely low, so if you can rotate it by hand and the bearings seem good then it is probably going to be good for a long time to come. Even if you pay $50 for a good chassis with the blade and motor, that's likely going to be much cheaper and easier than retrofitting a motor to an old chassis. Just getting the relationship of the motor, the blade, and the ground right is going to take a substantial amount of engineering that has already been accomplished on one that came electric from the factory. If it comes with a working charger then you are that much ahead. If the charger is bad then maybe that's all it needs to get going!

I'm really not a fan of the nomenclature used on various tools to describe their "voltage". Most of them use Lithium Ion 18650 cells in a series-parallel configuration. Knowing the number of cells in series is the important part so the motor controller won't prematurely shut off with an input voltage that's too low, or blow up capacitors (or worse) with too high an input voltage. There are certain numbers of cells in series which are more common, so you would likely want to target one of these common "sizes" or "voltages" which would be easier if tools didn't fudge their voltage numbers differently than other implementations of Lithium Ion cells. It should be simple enough to do a search online to see what the exact details are for any mass produced machine you might find for sale.

One point that is noteworthy is that you can always run a BLDC motor at a lower voltage than maximum if you get an appropriate motor controller. My fat bike was originally 13s "48V" and I had a spare 10s "36V" controller that fit in the original compartment. The top speed is slightly reduced and probably a fair bit less torque, but it rides fine. Since I had everything on hand I had the bike rebuilt and running in one weekend. This would be particularly useful if, for instance, you find a less common size like a 14s and have batteries and controllers for the more common 13s. The small drop in voltage by decreasing the power by one cell in series shouldn't kill performance. By building a higher amperage pack (more cells in parallel) there will be less voltage drop under load, and may be comparable to the running voltage of the stock setup. You can go the other way and overvolt things, but that has a much higher probability of burning out a motor or controller if you aren't careful. In either case, it's probably wise to add replaceable fuse close to the battery that is smaller than the maximum safe output from the battery pack or Battery Management System (BMS).

For me, I already had invested in "36V" (10s or 10 cells in series, 42V max) for my electric bike, so it was an obvious choice to go with a "40V" Ryobi when it was on sale. Like I said, I could kick myself for riding around after I first built the bike and not stopping to grab a handful of electric mowers I had seen at the curb on garbage day. The battery is the most complex and expensive part, so once you get a good grasp on that, you can save yourself quite a bit of money and reuse good cells that are otherwise sitting in a warehouse, waiting for legislation to force them to be recycled before they were ever even used!

I seem to remember people using tulle, netting or whatever stuff similar to the net bags onions come in, and sticking the entire ends of branches inside and tying it up. If done right, it can provide strain relief so the fruit don't fall off so easily. It might also be a good idea to thin out overly burdened branches. Before citrus greening disease ruined all the citrus in my area, my old house would have immense bunches of oranges that would greatly weigh down the branches, and in a wind storm it would bounce around wildly. They were extremely sour, which I personally prefer, but no one else would eat them. Most of them would go to waste anyway, so I personally never bothered trying the netting trick.

I've also heard that cedar and citrus oils are good at taking care of pheromone based pests like ants and termites. You might be able to extract the citrus oil for a non-food purpose like that. I'd imagine that would leave the solids in a more agreeable state for composting.

It's really hard to say, if they lived nearby where you could share what you have going on, possibly invite them over or out to dinner as a friendly gesture then that could work, but if they aren't nearby and not particularly receptive to what you are planning then they might not be interested in what's going on in the area. Very few people comprehend most of the things that I do, and I'm fortunate to have one good friend with some similar interests and a few corners of the internet to learn and share.

Plus some people simply won't sell. I'm mostly in that camp. Unless something completely kills the value of land, chances are I will have less invested in buying and paying taxes over the course of my life than the current price similar properties are selling at, and to me the value of the land is much more than that. My father worked hard all his life and the person he married took everything, which was against his wishes but he just naively trusted her. No money, no tools, not a single personal effect, so I'm pretty adamant to leave land and tools behind at the very least. I wouldn't sell my stuff to save myself, maybe to help someone else. If I had something to convince me to move elsewhere with a good land deal then I would consider selling, but I have little desire to ever leave this region. Some people are going to have their own motivations that can only be figured out by asking.

It's hard to comment on how other people operate, but as someone who owns a small piece of land and gets regular lowball offers, I can give a bit of insight. First, there may be some sort of attachment, whether it is future dreams that always end up out of reach, sentimental memories, or just sunk cost fallacy where they have been paying taxes on the land all of these years. I can imagine they likely value the land much higher than the tax assessor does.

I got my land for a very good price, but the tax assessor value was lower still. This might upset some people, but it meant my taxes are cheaper and I have no intention of selling. A few years ago I had gone online looking at prices of land nearby because I knew some people that were slightly interested in the area, and saw prices being paid were triple what I paid. After lockdowns and other world chaos with people wanting to change location, a lot of land was bought up at the higher price, which means there is very little chance of ever finding a deal like I got. Many people are aware of this and are unlikely to sell unless they are the one getting the deal.

A bit of an aside, but I've maintained cars for people for many years, and they are always getting strangers walking up to them, especially at the grocery store, saying they want to buy the car on the spot. They have a deal they "can't refuse" which is usually $1k or less. You can't touch a car in my area that both moves under it's own power and has good air conditioning for double that money. So unless someone is seriously ready to pay substantially more than the car is worth, cash in hand, then no one I know is willing to give up the good thing they have.

Obviously things are different with a piece of land that isn't being used. But the caveats I mentioned above still exist. Unless you catch the person in a financial crisis and they have few options, I doubt many people would be underselling right now. I'd imagine any offer under that of the high end of recent property sales would be considered an insult. Given the value of the property to you because of its location, if you are genuinely serious then it's probably going to cost extra up front. It sounds to me like this extra upfront cost would be worth it in your case, but that's a complex question you would ultimately have to figure out for yourself. With any luck you can make direct contact and have them name a number instead of playing games, as this might yield a reasonable price, or at the very least avoid them getting an offer they find insulting.

Given the timing for tax reasons, it would probably be rough asking for money during the holidays. Starting early sounds very wise. Good luck to everyone involved!

I saw some videos from one guy with a lot of ideas around solar water heaters. Here is one of them:



There are lots of options for using different tubing, something clay based instead of concrete, and plenty of insulation options. I really like the idea of using some sort of front face to take the brunt of the intensity from the sun and radiate the energy as infrared heat to a water container or tubing underneath. Perhaps set up like a solar dehydrater but for heating water. Additional thermal mass that is well insulated will help carry that heat well after the sun goes down. With the right design it is certainly possible to have sufficient hot water from solar even in freezing temperatures.

I recently made a solar water preheater that takes advantage of the solar oven design that most houses in my area seem to have for a roof. Injury has prevented me from adding thermal mass or closing things in with insulation, yet it still works well enough that I can wash my hands, dishes, or take a quick shower from late morning to late afternoon and the preheated water goes in to the water heater, meaning the water heater doesn't turn on. When I'm able to get around better I will share some pictures and ideas for different designs, but most of what I have in mind came from Van Powell's videos. He goes into great detail and explains his reasons for doing things, as well as options for people to make changes to suit their needs.

My understanding with no-dig is that you don't want to be digging perpetually. Doing it once in the beginning to get started is often the only way to get things going well from the start. I would look into using that soil for the top few inches of your raised bed (plus mulch), and possibly setting up a composting bin in the shaded area close to the house. That will make it easier to access so you will still be likely to use it during bad weather. You can then use the compost to top dress the raised beds and stick with the no-dig method from then on.

The corridor isn't a bad idea, especially if you are going to continue to build soil there. It would be a good addition to a system, but it's going to take many generations of worms and bugs to move any discernible amount of nutrients from one spot to the other. Even just 1 buckets' worth, with all of the soil biology along with nutrients, could put you ahead by months or more.

Lh Forsythe wrote: I need results this year.

That's a very heavy requirement. It will be almost infinitely more achievable if the plants you choose are native or naturalized to your area and can survive without daily attention. I recently cracked my leg, and if I didn't have trees, watermelons, sweet potatoes, and other things that survive or come back on their own in my area, then I too would have nothing but Bermuda grass and the few weeds that can survive along side it. In the past I've had to leave for emergencies during the summer, and the sun picked winners and losers in my garden, so I try to stick with the winners and only dabble with others. If I am going to invest time in caring for a plant that won't grow without attention, I go for things that are rare or very expensive to buy locally. It seems more beneficial to me to buy the cheaper stuff from a farmers market than to fight all summer for something that costs a few dollars a pound or less.

Does the van have a roof rack? In the past I've made a couple things designed to clamp down to a roof rack to haul plywood and lumber, as well as mattresses, futons and various things. It really depends on the vehicle and how easy it may or may not be to add things like trailer hitches and roof racks. I was fortunate enough to find pieces at the junkyard to upgrade my brother's SUV, whereas some other vehicles had relatively flimsy supports that I didn't trust with any significant weight.

You would also want to factor in height and ability to keep things in place through repeated braking or acceleration. I could see an empty full size van with a roof rack and a small trailer or carrier holding quite a lot of fencing if it is rolled up really tight. You might want to practice some knots. I know of a handful that have served me well, but I'll still look up a few and practice before any big moving days involving rope.

Here in FL I was getting 4-5 harvest of those yard long beans a year. The plants wouldn't live terribly long, but I'd get plenty of beans and just kept replanting. My experience with nightshades and brassicas was that I could grow them for 2 years, but the second year harvest wasn't as great. I've had ghost pepper, eggplant, collard greens, and dino kale, the kale did the best of the bunch on its second year. It waned a bit and I lopped off the dying top which caused it to grow arms off the main branch and made a bunch of tiny leaves which never got as big. It was ok and it looked really amazing, but I would have been better off growing something different in warmer months in that space. I guess shade cloth or some other method to break up the intense summer sunlight could have helped, but that seems like more hassle than just composting the struggling plant and picking a more appropriate plant for the season. I live at the beach with almost pure sand and very high evaporation, so it might be different for others with different conditions.

I haven't built a tiny house yet, but I've built lots of regular houses and I currently live tiny within a larger home. One thing I did with my bedroom was to make it absurdly small. Like I can touch both walls at the same time with my elbows small. I don't expect anyone to be as extreme as I am, but I think it's a great idea for people looking to downsize to not only try living that way, but push the boundaries beyond your comfort zone temporarily, one at a time. See how that works and try to think of ways to make the best of it if you were forced to minimize that much.

This can be applied to greywater. You could try taking the trap off of a sink and put a bucket down to catch and measure your water usage. Play around with alternatives to get that measurement as small as possible. I'd imagine a tank made for an RV would be easy to source and cheaper than going custom built, especially if it is something like a used fresh water tank. Surely they must have some sort of level indicator with a float or some other mechanism. Alternatively you could look into getting an Arduino and a sensor. they are really cheap, robust, use little energy, and you could add all sorts of sensors and controls for things if you are into that stuff. I don't know about the storage aspect, if it needs to be filtered of solids or used relatively quickly so it doesn't get gunked up and cause clogging issues. Perhaps some sort of drip irrigation could be used so it is always slowly draining and not stagnant if you have to leave in a hurry for a while.

I'm not really sure about the EMF part, I guess it very much depends on your reasoning. Protecting yourself from EMF and protecting your equipment from EMF damage would require completely different planning. Trying to protect both in an effective manner is going to require huge amounts of knowledge, otherwise you could get it 95% right and be effectively unprotected, which is both useless and wasteful. If you want to use conduit, you might as well get electrometallic tubing (EMT) instead of buying plastic and trying to wrap it. I'd strongly advise just using metallic clad (MC) cable as it is flexible and much easier to work with. Bending conduit is heavy on math and a bit of art. One of the top paying jobs an electrician can get is bending big conduit, as a mistake on large tubing is very costly. The people who are aces at it can make absurd amounts of money because it is very difficult and few people can do it consistently without many mistakes.

If going low voltage DC, you might be able to just buy some shielded cable like shielded ethernet cable and just combine multiple conductors for more current draw. The twisted pairs inside the shielding further confine any EMF from being generated as well as help to block outside EMF. This would be great for lighting or powering small stuff like phones and laptops, small fans and whatnot. Appropriate sized conductors in MC cable would work for larger DC loads. It would be beneficial in many ways to keep the power source as close to your largest low voltage loads as possible, which isn't going to be an issue with high voltage in a tiny home given the short distances between components.

I've always liked the idea of having some solar (or other renewable energy) lighting inside. Even if it is just a very small setup that isn't much more than a glorified night light. After falling and breaking major bones last year from running around in the dark, I immediately installed some low voltage lighting that I undervolted to use very little energy and provide light for safety. I wouldn't recommend anyone climb around with broken bones like I did, but I love the cheap effective lighting so I'm never in the dark and I have loads of backup power when the grid goes down. Even if you aren't interested in this idea, you might want to run cables you think you may need, or have some sort of conduit, chase, or access panels for future upgrades or repairs.

Learn, practice, and build. There's loads of help here and lots of great YouTube channels out there for inspiration. Good luck!

I usually cut the top off, maybe an inch at most, and submerge the tuber in water whether it has anything growing or not. You can do the same. By leaving a bit of the tuber attached it will help feed the new slips until they grow roots of their own. Once they get good roots going you can split off the slips as mentioned above. It probably happened that way on you because the water level was below the sprouting part and growing roots there wasn't advantageous at the time.

You could probably pop the rest back in some fresh water and repeat the process. The only issue I have doing this is if I am not around to change the water the tuber chunk can start to rot. Even then you can cut off parts starting to get nasty, rinse it off, and put it back in fresh water. My sweet potatoes have been growing back on their own for a decade, they are tough as nails. You will likely have success with this, good luck!

Much like mentioned in this really great video I found a while back, I'm one of those anti crimp connector people. Mostly because it's way easier to keep a couple supplies on hand in quantity than to keep most of that stuff plus a ton of fiddly overpriced connectors well stocked. For a pro shop it's great, as a DIYer I will stick to other methods, and the points brought up in this video I think are particularly useful for this repair:



I realize a vacuum isn't a race car, but they both experience vibration. If the manufacturer had followed some of this advice you wouldn't be dealing with this issue. Having the wire unsupported and bent around before the crimp connector in a high vibration environment caused the wire to fatigue and fail. If this isn't addressed it will fail again. One trick I've been using on cars is to cut two pieces of shrink tubing, grab E6000/Amazing Goop/Shoe Goo or similar glue, and I will put glue on the solder connection to keep out moisture, short piece of shrink tubing over the repair, and then longer shrink tubing over the whole thing as a strain relief. In this case you might not have to go quite that far and perhaps just use a dab of epoxy or anything to keep that wire from flopping around, work hardening it to failure.

I agree not to cut both zip ties at the same time. It may be possible to cut the one off, lift the wire/connector up, add new zip tie, repeat on second zip tie to get it out to work on. I also will purposely flip one end of zip ties 180* so they snug things down but pull apart later, instead of fighting with the clip or ruining the zip tie.

If you have trouble fitting your hands in there it might be worth a coffee, beer, whatever to someone with appropriately sized hands for the job.

Edward Norton wrote: There is no sticker over a screw invalidating warranty that you find on computer gear

Just an FYI, in the US they passed something stating that is no longer a valid excuse for refusing warranty service or refunds. I remember maybe 20 years ago when some dealerships were refusing to replace bad transmissions because people changed to an aftermarket air filter. I bet you can still find places trying to convince people it's their fault when they touched something they "shouldn't" have touched even when the failure had nothing to do with what was touched. This goes both ways. I've seen people buying things like broken computer processors on ebay when the seller knew it was broken, it was their fault, and they sold it for parts at pennies on the dollar. They get bought up to turn around and get a free replacement and people seem to be proud of this fraud. Overall it is a net win, but between them still putting sticker on things to scare people and scammers trying to rip off businesses it still isn't a perfect situation.

EDIT - I guess with some of the confusion outside the US, this recent Great Scott video can help clear up some confusion and show the strengths and weaknesses of wire nuts vs Wago connectors:

I'd imagine the reason why mapping things out is so prevalent might be in part because of PDC's. They often have people plan things out to show they understand the concepts they are trying to learn. Some teachers may be sticklers on the math side, while other might be fine with a more South Park approach to layout.

There's no reason you can't cut out pictures or shapes to roughly plan things out for yourself. Maybe sit at a table with spice jars to use them as stand-ins for plants and take a photo for later reference. Some people might prefer to just go outside and put plant pots or some other marker down to help visualize how things will work out in 3D space. Again, pictures would likely be helpful.

If you take a PDC and try to sell your designs to other people, I'd imagine most of them would want a design on paper before they unleash you on their property. With planting, it may not be as big a deal if you can juggle everything in your head, but I certainly wouldn't let anyone with an excavator loose on my land without a very detailed plan in advance.

And that brings up another point - excavator operators often aren't familiar with permaculture and might not comprehend your reasoning for doing uncommon earthworks to the point they may go rogue thinking they are helping. Giving them plans and making sure they understand they are not to deviate from said plan if they want to get paid can help avoid counterproductive earthworks.

Fox James wrote:there is lots of info suggesting  once ‘ any ceramic fibre’ is  super heated it becomes a dangerous carcinogenic  product! The fibers can change in chemistry and produce very fine air born particles that can even enter the body through our skin!
I dont know how dangerous that might be but  there is no doubt in my mind that ceramic fibre is not a heathy option!

From my limited understanding following some metal casting forums, many people using ceramic fiber blankets will coat it in some sort of high temperature clay slip, refractory cement, 'water glass', or specific products from manufacturers designed to harden high temperature work surfaces and prolong the life of forges, or in this case rocket heaters.

ITC-100 refractory coating Q&A

How much area will ITC-100 cover in a forge?

ITC-100 will cover 6 to 12 square feet per pint, or 3 to 6 square feet per half pint.  If you apply a basecoat of Satanite to your forge first, you can get by with the larger number for square feet coverage.  An additional benefit to doing this with Satanite first, is that Satanite is cheap and by building up a 1/4" layer of Satanite over you Inswool liner before applying the ITC-100 your forge will be more robust.

With inswool Liner being an "Alumina-Silica fiber blanket for high temperature applications." I'm pretty certain, as mentioned above in the portland cement section, you could probably use cement, steel, or other materials as a skeleton. Then insulate it and use refractory cement or some other coating to strengthen the wool or other insulating layer like insulating bricks. If you build it yourself and keep leftover materials then you can do your own repairs. It would seem very wise to use proper safety equipment when building or repairing anything using ceramic fiber blankets.

And let's touch on another aspect of hardening the surface of the blanket - airflow. If you went up to a house and stripped away the interior and exterior walls so all that was between you and the outdoors was a roll of unbacked fiberglass insulation, that insulation wouldn't do you much good with its ability to breathe. Especially if the wind picks up, without layers to block airflow the insulation is almost 100% worthless. Would this not be the case for loose ceramic fiber in a rocket heater riser designed to contain combustion gasses? It isn't able to insulate if it there is nothing to stop it from breathing. At that point it's just a carcinogenic blanket not doing much good in my eyes. A skeleton covered in insulation and coated to be relatively air tight seems like the way to go when using ceramic fiber blankets. They also make ceramic boards which wouldn't allow gasses to permeate and might be better for certain applications as well as quick experimentation.

This is along the lines of something I am interested in doing. I'm going to try a brushless DC motor with solar, but the same idea. I'm thinking of going with a kit for a Ford Crown Victoria, or similar in the sense that it is a fleet vehicle with great parts availability and affordable. They have kits for around $200 - $300 which would also require a certain amount of accessories beyond the basic kit like the condenser, evaporator, hoses/hard lines, pressure sensor and such. Ideally a donor vehicle or a junkyard can provide serviceable parts as it gets costly buying everything new, and you mention using a donor SUV which is handy.

I figure it should be great for cooling something at the size you are using since you can have options with insulation. I think the restrictiveness of the system stuffed under the dash of a car, plus the inadequate filter setup isn't the best unless you have free access to the parts as in your case. A wood or sheet metal box could be fashioned to hold the blower motor, blower controller, and filter. Make a drain pan for the condensate. I'm going to look for a decent quality house filter of a common size like 20" x 20" which should be an easy upgrade to the vehicle setup. I'd imagine heat would come from a different source so the blend door and actuator aren't needed. If using a vent I wouldn't trust an old actuator to work for long. All that's really needed is a thermostat and a switch to power it.

You can use a thermostat made for controlling car AC. You can find universal ones or certain models in the 80's and earlier had a knob and copper temperature probe to control the pulley clutch. It really depends on what vehicle you get things from if you reuse the car setup. It might not work stand alone since cars for a lot of years now have everything tied together with onboard computer systems. You could try a cheap Arduino controller to run things like I'm investigating, but it doesn't have to be complicated. I'm also looking at eliminating the clutch with electric drive, but yours looks like it will work well with the AC clutch and alternator combination.

You can also lengthen the lines to move the noise of the motor further away. I think they have formulas online for lines of certain lengths and diameters needs X amount of refrigerant and oil. I wouldn't go crazy with it but an extra 25 feet and a little hut to muffle the noise, or at least moved to the opposite end of the container from where you work could be an option. Put the condenser with its cooling fan out there with it and run the evaporator lines and controls inside just like central air in a house. Here's a little bit of inspiration in the form of a repurposed blower motor:

Max Wagner wrote:
My biggest struggle is:
It would not add any more intake than my current design, which I assume is the main problem.

The stack effect can help cure this problem. I wish I knew exactly where I saw it, but there was a paper from some school that did some testing and they used exhaust stacks of 1, 2, and 3 feet long (~305, 610, and 925mm). The smallest one did the worst by far and the longest did the best. The biggest one worked somewhat better than the middle one. Yours is 300mm. If you could make it at least 500mm I think the extra stack effect would roughly double (or more) the air draw once you get it burning well. The extra airflow creates better combustion which creates more exhaust in the stack and draws even more air, so doubling the size will more than double performance if everything else is working well.

Another issue if the area of the tubing as you look at it from the end. It has a rough area of ~ 6400 square mm which is a hair larger than a 3" (76mm) tube. If you have something smaller than a 4" (102mm) tube (with an area of ~8100 square mm) it doesn't create enough heat to really get air moving which makes it have trouble consuming the wood. Since this is a stove and not a house it wouldn't make sense to go too big, but it you could find find 100mm square or 120mm (~4.72") tube then you could get the type of fire going that is needed to really make it sing. Once you get it close it will start to create a rather uniform wall of flames and no smoke.

With those two things holding you back plus being outdoors it will be a struggle to keep lit and smoke free. Not to mention the smaller size needs even more attention paid to it to keep the fire going. I made a few similar to your K shape above using old cans for the shape and some refractory clay mixture left over from building an aluminum melting furnace. It worked fantastic but was too fragile for long term use. I wish I could make it work better without using steel because the auto wood feed feature, coupled with a sloped bottom so it automatically dumps ash into a bucket was really handy. Many people here use the J tube because it is tried and true. If you are building a mass heater, you definitely don't want to wast a ton of materials on an unproven design. With smaller scale stuff it's not as big of an investment but can be very educational.

One last tip from that paper I can remember is that if you try to choke the air from the bottom it tends to smoke more, but if you restrict it at the top it seems to work better and can burn slower before starting to smoke. Seemed to work that way for me in my experience. I punched a hole in the bottom of a cheap charcoal grill and converted it into a rocket grill with a 4" (102mm) tube and a stack that was 2 feet (610mm) tall. It worked really well except for that you couldn't walk away for more than 5 minutes without it burning out. The insulated combustion chamber I made would stay hot since it has thermal mass from the clay I used. That made it burn hot, but also relight easily if I did let it go out since it stayed hot for a while. I would also save used cooking oil to dip some sticks in and that would help it burn a bit hotter and longer if I needed to step away for a few minutes. I hope that you find something useful here to help with your build.

Has anyone here tried the method people use on YouTube where they use a welder to recondition batteries? There was a popular one not too long ago from  Uncle Tony's Garage:



and the follow up here:



I haven't tried it myself and usually in the past I just replaced batteries for people because they tend to get very impatient when their car won't work. It isn't perfect for all situations, as from what I understand the sulfation can fall to the bottom of the battery and bridge between cells creating a short. But if it's dead anyway and you have all the tools and safety equipment, it seems like a worthwhile option even if it only buys you a few months of battery life.

My county has a similar allowance, but there are other laws regarding height and living on the land without a domicile of 600 sq. ft. or more. These restrictions may be in a completely different part of the building code. I don't recall exactly, but I think it was something like 13 feet above finished grade to the highest point on the roof in my county. You might be able to get away with it being a few inches off (just say you're going to lay sod raising the finished grade), or berm up the base as mentioned above.

It's a bit funny how many absurd things I see on the side of the highway driving all the way down to my property, then hearing (and in some cases dealing with) horror stories about angry neighbors calling cops, the town/county, and complaining to everyone under the sun about someone way down the road from anyone doing the smallest of things in ways they don't approve. Everyone has to do their own risk management, plus things and people can change over time. I've had to do some amazingly unnecessary things to accomplish goals without further raising the ire of these bad apples.

Another thing is that my county has different rules for agricultural land, and my land is considered ag and residential. If the area you are looking at has similar rules and you are doing something ag related you may have more freedom with certain building requirements.

I'd be interested in hearing more as well. I'm in Northeastern-most FL and have an acre inland a bit between St. Augustine and Daytona. I'm not looking to move but it would be nice to share ideas and help move good ideas forward. I'm mostly interested in solar, electric bikes, trees and would like to get involved in aquaculture/aquaponics. Hopefully I'll have more of my ongoings to share on here very soon, and it would be great to hear more from others given how different things work here versus most other places in the country.

Coydon Wallham wrote: Also, are there ways to form the mortise and tenon that they hold without glue?

The way people put mallets together is basically that. A slightly wedge shaped mortise with a saw kerf in the tenon to drive a wedge in. You can also put a dowel in from the side but there are some tricks to that so it stays tight and doesn't loosen up easily. Recently I've been playing around with smaller scale stuff and using toothpicks and bamboo skewers and drilling holes a bit too small so it has a solid friction fit. If I make it too tight it won't drive in without breaking. I can always drill it out if I want to pull it apart. The same can be done on a larger scale if you are careful not to go too far and split the work piece.

David Huang wrote: However, I'd be concerned about not having the ability to get the equivalent of "higher gears" that a standard diameter tire might offer.

The trikes in that video had pedals fixed to the front wheel. All of the mountain bikes have gears specifically made to work with the wheel diameter of the bike. Also, most of the motors I have seen for smaller diameter wheels are wound differently to give a higher RPM. With a different circumference and RPM, it might not be exactly the same speed, but there is some compensation. A top speed should be listed with any bike you buy.

The smaller diameter does have the advantage of lower effective overall ratio for starting from a standstill. While beneficial, I'd imagine there is a certain point where lack of traction will negate the benefits of ultra steep gear ratios.

With any uncommon size wheel, especially with the popularity of fat bike tires, spares on hand are a necessity to keep a bike going. There are also products like FlatOut or tire inserts that work much better than slime for stopping leaks or preventing punctures in the first place. I would also look at other wear items like brakes to see if they are commonly available.

I don't have much experience with prebuilt ebikes, but two warrantied bikes sounds better than one. The only thing that would weigh heavily for me is if any of them would use a local authorized shop to do warranty repair vs shipping parts, waiting for new parts, then assembling yourself or paying out of pocket for repairs.

I strongly agree with the points mentioned above. The only issue is that this is likely to be a community bike, where numerous people of different skill and knowledge levels will be using whatever bikes are available. If someone there is ready to become a bike mechanic, then using a quality standard bike (with standard, affordable, easy to find parts) will be much cheaper to buy and to maintain. If not, then having a bike with a warranty might be the only good option for the moment. I'd really like to see a lot more going on with bikes up there to reduce the need for gas powered vehicles going back and forth. Hopefully I can lend a hand, or at least some knowledge going into next year.

For just working on it as simple scaffolding it is probably fine as-is. Try grabbing it and shaking it back and forth. It probably won't shake much in one direction, but shake a fair bit more in the other. Certain repeated pushing, pulling, or hammering motions will cause it to oscillate more and more until it starts to walk across the floor with continued motion. Make certain to tack down whatever boards you put across the top to walk on. If you need to hold a large amount of material weight (more than your body weight plus yourself), or using it regularly to sleep on in the very near future, then you could probably L brace the bottom and add 1x4 or 1x6 diagonal bracing. If you are just working with a few tools and a few dozen pounds of materials or less, I would just be mindful of how much sway it has and build it up strong later if you want it to last a long time.

Using it as a loft to sleep on or hold a bunch of supplies means it might get awkwardly loaded without much thought. If you have your wits about you and test it out to see how it reacts before working on it temporarily it should be sufficient. I've had to work on much, much scarier scaffolding setups in the past. Fortunately I'm fairly light weight and perhaps a bit lucky.

The next handful of weeks should be quite hectic. This week I have a few bike specific goals planned and then more bike plans mixed in with other projects. Without getting too far ahead of myself, I'm going to try to rebuild the dead battery that came with my fat bike first, followed by fixing up the sibling of the red and white bike above. I already got most of the parts in for the bike, and everything for fixing the battery pack. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to go about fitting it back in to the bike, as I rewired things to get it running when I bought it. I might just go ahead and tear the fat bike apart and fix everything some time soon.

But for now the battery pack is on deck. It was going to be around $550 plus shipping to replace it which is why I was able to buy the bike for cheap. Since it had ocean water damage, I opened the pack shortly after bringing it home. Water had damaged the bottom of the pack, causing corrosion on some of the cell interconnects. Unfortunately a few of the cells had also started to leak, and the BMS (battery management system) died as well. I decided the best course of action would be to reconfigure the battery from 48V to 36V.

The original battery was a 13S6P configuration, or 13 sets of 6 parallel cells, each strung in series. I removed 3 sets of 6 cells to change it in to a 10S6P battery. This leaves me with a battery that is still pretty decent (36V nominal, 12AH) and removes most of the corrosion. The areas that were still corroded on top I sanded, cleaned with vinegar, and repeated until it was mostly clean. I may end up having to solder one small spot where the bridge between two cells was significantly weakened, and use a few dabs of anti seize on the other spots to protect it from corroding further. I will have to check it out after a while and make certain it doesn't start rusting again. I'm hoping to get a spot welder and nickle strip for future battery packs, and may need that stuff to go back and fix this correctly. I'm pretty confident it won't be a problem in the short term, but I won't leave it for years on end without giving it a good look.

In any event, I only have two major tasks left to get the battery functional - Add in the BMS and reconnect the cells where I lopped off the end. Because I removed an odd number of parallel packs in the middle of the series string, I have positive next to positive instead of alternating like they used to. I need to run a wire around to the opposite side to reconnect the string and get full voltage from beginning to end. After that I will remove the old BMS wires and put the new ones in place. I've been using XT60 connectors on all of my batteries because that is what I had on hand from playing around with some solar powered devices, so I'll end up using that again. They are common amongst the RC community and with the relatively low amp draw (under 30A) of my bikes it seems to work perfectly fine for my needs.

I also ended up with enough good cells to make a 5S2P pack which would be comparable to a so-called 20V (4AH) pack used on cordless tools. I haven't bought a BMS for doing that yet, but with several different bikes, solar, and tons of cells floating around, that project is going to be put off for a few months.

Coydon Wallham wrote:You brought up another important point about pocket screws that I had forgotten to ask about- torquing them in.

Also, when you use deck screws for pocket holes, are you using a jig to drill the holes? For larger dimensions are you using a regular bit, then following up with the long bit you mention?

My father had me turning wrenches when I was a small child, so I just go by feel. In this case, if you predrill, start light, and keep snugging it up until the joint isn't loose then it should be tight enough. Since you already have screws going straight into the ends, and none of the wood appears to be splitting, it should be plenty strong. I honestly never use the adjustable torque feature on drills. If you predrill everything and slowly increase the torque until the boards tighten together and don't flex apart from basic handling then it is tight enough. I usually will grab scrap pieces to test whenever I change materials or screws to make sure everything appears to be working as expected.

I generally use the jig and just pull it back off the end enough so the screw comes out in the right spot. You don't want it poking through way too far to one side or the other as you can end up with a loose connection. One option is to purposely have it come out a bit offset and then use a pocket hole on either side, this way the diagonal screws in opposite directions complement each other. This doesn't work on end pieces, but the joists in the middle can benefit from this. I've also been known to freehand it by drilling in at 90 degrees and then adjusting to the angle I need when working with pieces that are cut at different angles, such as 2 x 22.5 degree pieces to go around a 45 degree corner.

I have built temporary scaffolds in a similar fashion, and I can tell by looking at it that below the point of the bracing, those 2x4's will flex and will get a bit bouncy when doing certain actions standing on top. All of your legs have the 2x4's in the same orientation (1.5" sides all facing the same way, as are the 3.5" sides). If you take more 2x4's and make them into an L shape, that is, leaving the existing 3.5" side as-is and putting the 3.5" side of new boards to the 1.5" side (making an L shape 5" in one direction and 3.5" in the other) it will be more sturdy than just doubling up the 2x4's into a 3" x 3.5" block. You will have much less flexing below the line where the braces attach. Adding another set of diagonal bracing to the other two sides supporting the joists will further increase rigidity and make it feel quite solid.

T Blankinship wrote:
Could you post more about this. Thanks

Supposedly the ebike rebate is wrapped up in a bill that is currently being modified in the Senate. I first heard of it from the Bolton ebike podcast, and there is some information out there. Since it could be changed or entirely removed from the bill, I can't really say anything else about it with certainty. A google search would yield up to date information. I haven't kept up with the politics, so I don't know exactly how likely or unlikely it is to pass,  how long it could be hung up, or how long it would take to go in to effect. I just know that ebike sellers are backed up because of supply shortages, and that ebike sales are likely to continue to outpace expectations if the bill is passed with any form of an ebike rebate in place. I'd imagine the first weeks of the new year will bring new information about how that is going to pan out.

The thing about pocket holes screws is that it is what is called a 'toenail' attachment. Toenailing, as the name implies, can also be done with nails. There are a number of pro's and con's to toenails versus nailing or screwing straight into a butt joint. I framed houses for a number of years and by far the main reason to using nails was the speed a nail gun can assemble a house. Toenailing is a stronger method of attachment, but with a nail gun it is awfully easy to split the wood, which makes it weaker. Predrilling and not over torquing screws is very strong.

I have also used pocket hole joinery and deck screws to attach 2x4's and 2x6's. I built a large workbench with some pocket hole joinery maybe 15 years ago that is still as solid as the day I made it. Getting the jig positioned properly, adjusting the depth of the drill bit, and getting the appropriate length of screws figured out on scrap pieces before you start is key to success. There are lots of other small but important things to know when attempting to do this. If the head of the screw isn't flat underneath then it can potentially split the wood. This is one of the things that causes failure for most people who attempt to use screws that aren't from Kreg and just use whatever screw they have on hand. I personally just never fully tighten the screws with a drill or impact driver. I drive them most of the way in and then tighten by hand.

Another trick is to get a long (~6") bit of appropriate thickness for the screws (maybe 1/8" to 3/16") to drill the hole the rest of the way through. The Kreg bit has a small nub sticking out that works fine for 1/2" wood, but thicker stuff really needs that hole punched all the way through to avoid splitting the wood, or having threads grabbing to both pieces and not wanting to snug up. This usually gets people to drive it home with a drill, ensuring failure and becoming disheartened with pocket holes. Having a second drill so you don't have to constantly stop and switch bits greatly speeds things up.

Another trick is to glue the end grain. Most people say this never works, but multiple tests on YouTube indicate that it can add substantial strength. The problem with end grain is that it soaks up glue and dries it out before it can set up. If you glue the end grain, let it soak in for ~10 minutes, and add more glue it can add quite a bit of strength. Combining this with pocket screws can be a very strong method of attachment. Assembled incorrectly it won't be very strong at all. I've never tried it, but on a house I'd imagine quality construction adhesive would be a better option than yellow wood glue.

More traditional joinery methods are also extremely valuable. Using a rabbet (or rebate) or mortise and tenon is very strong and doesn't require glue or fasteners. But it often requires special tools and special skills. If you have the time it is great to practice different methods and learn as much as you can. It's virtually impossible to suggest a good course of action without a lot more details for what you have planned.

Emeril Lagasse once said that he could spend his whole life learning to cook and only know a small fraction of what there is to know. Woodworking is very much the same. There are easily thousands of ways to get a project completed so it serves you well, and probably even more ways to do it and fail. The internet is full of people hopping up and down trying to convince others that their way is the only way. If your main goal is to build a loft, find someone who has been successful numerous times and try out their method. If you want to learn how to use pocket hole screws in unconventional ways, there are probably less videos on that. You might want to check out a woodworking forum and ask people that use them regularly.

If you want I can try to get some pictures to give you a better idea how I have gone about using pocket holes with construction lumber.

You may want to look in to the federal rebate on ebikes that may be coming soon. A 30% rebate is quite a chunk of change for something that expensive.

Today I want to get into some of the details regarding lithium ion cells and my thoughts on what are good practices for ebikes. There will also be a lot of crossover for solar. I haven't actually made a lithium ion only solar power setup, but I have used my 145 watt panel with a pair of 50AH gel cell batteries that were donated to me to charge my laptop, cell phone, and a couple USB boost packs that all had lithium ion cells, so I do have experience in this area.

I mentioned previously that I had made a smaller 36V 8AH pack as a backup to extend my range. Normally this would be a bad idea with standard output 18650 cells (the kind that look like oversized AA alkaline batteries). The reason for this is voltage drop. Even if you go by the specs of the cells and it says it can provide a certain amount of current doesn't mean you won't have problems trying to design a system that will expect over 90% of that current. Batteries have chemicals in them that take time to react. Pushing them to their limit regularly not only causes excess heating of cells (which is why you mostly hear of high performance EV's and high power electronics having battery fires) and shortened cell lifespan, but the cell voltage will drop substantially. This means under heavy load you won't have the same amount of power that you would with cells not being pushed as hard. It also means that the low voltage cutoff of the motor controller will kick in sooner because the voltage drops below the minimum voltage threshold.

In my case I had bought cells much larger than typical 18650's and they were designed to output much more current than what I use without experiencing significant voltage drop. They had a great deal on them and it's cheaper to ship them in bulk, so I bought 80 cells. I used 10 in series (3.6V nominal for a 36V pack). For a one-off as my first pack it was a good learning experience, and it is great for a secondary pack I can take with me to extend my range. In my case, all of my bikes tend to get about 2 miles for every 1AH of battery capacity (on flat ground and other conditions specific to riding in my area). One of the things about buying used cells is finding good deals when they come along and jumping on them. There are a lot of pro's and con's to using these cells. While I do plan on using the rest for a large trike, I wouldn't use them for a bike because the cells don't lend themselves to being assembled in a shape that is good for most bikes.

The 18650 cells (the number stands for 18mm x 65mm, 0 for cylindrical shape) do have a bit of wasted space when trying to pack them together, but the numerous small cells allow for many different configurations for the overall shape of the finished pack. If you look at the packs made for certain bikes, they are sometimes stacked up to make a triangle to fit inside the frame of a bike. That plus the availability and low cost makes the 18650 cells a good option for an ebike. In my case I have been using 36V systems, and there are all kinds of various scooter packs of that voltage so you don't have to start from scratch assembling each individual cell if you don't want to go that route. Many scooter packs are a bit too small for running an ebike by itself. One option is to get multiple packs and attach the cells in parallel. For instance, I built a pack from 4 smaller packs of 10 in series and 2 in parallel (10S2P) to make one with 10 in series to keep the voltage the same and 8 in parallel (10S8P), increasing the total AH of the pack and all of the benefits that come with it (increased range, less voltage drop, less battery heating and stress for longer life).

It looks like it was originally lead acid batteries similar to what is used in a computer UPS and runs in at 24V. I've found some info online regarding changing to a lithium ion pack and other than mounting without the original case it should be pretty straightforward. Most of my spare parts are for 36V, so I will have to order a few things after the holidays. I can show what I do to build the pack on my ebike thread next month and go over the differences between what I've previously done and what your bike needs. I'll check back in when I get that far with it.

Is there any chance I could get detailed pictures of the ebike and the battery connector for the ebike you have that is missing a battery? Or any information on the brand and model? I would like to look into building a battery pack for you to get that thing going. I started a blog on here to share some of my experiences building and fixing ebikes, and plan on putting up more info about building battery packs. Depending on the design of the old battery I may or may not be able to make one that looks exactly the same or fits the old mount, but I'm certain I could build a pack much cheaper than buying new from the manufacturer and get that thing going again. I can even add a charging port so the battery never has to leave the bike!

I'm well versed with all things electrical (graduated from Morris County (NJ) School of Technology in Electrical Trades in 1998) and would love to make it up there sometime next year to teach people about residential electrical, ebikes, and solar energy systems, and help out where I can.

This time around I am going to give an overview of what I did to get a used ebike working. I think this might be the way a lot of people would want to go if they aren't willing or able to afford a brand new ebike, and with sales of ebikes going through the roof, there will eventually be more and more deals somewhat comparable to what I found.

My goal was straightforward - I wanted a fat bike. I was willing to do all sorts of things (and still working down some of those avenues), but after seeing just how absurdly expensive or complicated (meaning special tools, ultimately leading to complicated = expensive) I decided to hunt craigslist to find my fatbike. After many months of searching I managed to find a good deal and jump on it before it disappeared.

While this wouldn't have been much of a deal for someone to fix by replacing with OEM parts, this thing was a screaming deal for me! The reason for the deal was pretty simple - the previous owner put about a thousand miles on it exclusively going up and down the beach, and one day while wading in the ocean a wave hit it and knocked the bike over. It worked for a little bit and then the charger went up in smoke and the thing wouldn't run. I knew just buying the wheels complete with tires and tubes would cost in the neighborhood of what I paid for the whole bike, so I was determined to make this work.

I dragged it home on a Friday and by midday Sunday I was testing it out. The original battery pack had a small amount of water damage, enough to ruin a few cells. Of course I didn't have any cells to fill in for the bad ones, and reconfiguring the pack was a task for another time. So I used what I had on hand, my spare 36V 8AH battery pack from the previous post and a spare motor controller I bought for my first bike when I thought it had a problem. This bike was a 48V system, but I knew the motor would work at 36V and the new controller works with both voltages. The old controller was also messed up pretty bad and was extremely small. The new motor controller was larger, so much so that I had to modify the case and tap it in to place with a block of wood. I do intend on changing the setup down the road since there is no way to keep the large controller in there without the big connectors hanging out the top hole, and it is far from waterproof. Then again the original setup was supposed to be waterproof and the Atlantic Ocean strongly disagreed.

The rear brake cable had completely seized and the front was on its way out, so I ordered new cables. Eventually I will have to replace the pads and the calipers have some wear from the harsh conditions and have to be treated with Liquid Wrench lubricant regularly. I already refurbished one pad that came apart with a piece of automotive brake material I cut out with a coping saw and some JB Weld. It makes a bit of noise at medium brake pressure, but it grabs hard and quiet when more force is applied.

I really like the adjustable gooseneck. This bike, being a beach cruiser style, also had those outrageously terrible boomerang shaped handlebars which were immediately tossed to the side. I had found a mountain bike beaten to bits in an area where garbage is commonly dumped that had a few useful parts, including the handlebars which make this bike feel so much better. The upright riding position and step through design make it so much more enjoyable to ride. No more neck or back pain, no more worrying about spilling over. I do have to be careful with the new battery pack being dumped in the basket the way it is, because if you leave the wheel straight the weight will invariably swing the front assembly to the side with the slightest of disturbance. I will be replacing that with a frame mounted design after I get all of the quirks worked out on the other pair of bikes I am fixing up.

As is, this thing is an absolute beast going down the road. The only noise you hear is the low growling of the tires since they aren't a street tread. The original mountain bike I heard nothing but complaints from people about how it looks and this thing seems to be much more socially acceptable. I'm just so much happier with the comfort. Sometime in the future I will probably buy a new front suspension fork so I can ride a little bit harder without destroying the battery pack. I mostly baby the thing and have probably put around a thousand miles on it this year. It would easily be triple that if I hadn't been laid up with injuries all spring, because this thing feels like a Caddy compared to my first bike. It begs to be ridden and I oblige.

Next on deck is one of a pair of bikes I am fixing up. They were basically bought new and put away in a garage for over a decade. A bit of rust on the chrome and rot on the tires, but the frames are in very nice condition. I currently have it strapped together just to make it work and use it as a backup for my main ride.

The battery attached to the rear tray in the cardboard box is very small for the task (36 volts nominal, 8 amp hours), and it is the first battery pack I built with individual cells and a battery management system. I spent over 6 hours assembling that small thing, but I get about 16 miles out of it, and the high current draw cells have no problem dragging me up and over a large bridge completely by itself if I decide not to pedal. I've had tons of fun piecing things together and pushing them to see what they can do, and so far I've been really happy with the performance.

My goal is to start making front 'baskets' that do not attach to the handlebars, but rather to the frame itself. I hate the feeling of a heavy basket as I try to steer and feel like I can barely control it under any condition that isn't perfectly straight. I've tried making a few prototypes that have all been failures. Not so much that they didn't function, but that they didn't look good. I seem to have a huge disconnect regarding other people's perception of positive or negative looks. I guess there is an uncanny valley where something very 'homemade looking' has a charm to it, but nothing I make ever captures that charm. I usually try to go for more of a professional look, but I don't have a factory of people and equipment to turn out my ideas, just myself and the tools I have on hand. I always go for function first, and most people I encounter seem to be of the form first variety.

After attempting two different styles and having to abandon them due to cost reasons, I extremely reluctantly bought a tool box to store important electrical bits. I'm glad I waited and found something better than the options other people told me to get, but I guess time will tell on that one. I was told to buy a fishing tackle box or some other stuff I though would be terrible. I either wanted something that matched the colors on the bike, or simple plain black. I don't know much about matching colors to make 'pleasing' combinations other than countless previous instances of negative remarks from others for getting it wrong. I couldn't possibly see some random tan, grey, or green (or mix of such colors) looking good, so I got this Harbor Freight Apache Case. I'm currently modifying it so I can add a headlight and turn signals, and bolt it to the front of the bike and possibly make a custom basket on top.

As it is, the bike is really fun if you disregard the horrible beach cruiser handlebars. The sweeping shape may be pleasing to someones eyes, but burying your elbows in your sides like a T-Rex and bending your wrists outward as far as they can go while bounding down the road is unpleasant at best. The acceleration and deceleration are really great, and the only thing missing is lights. Motorists around this area tend to either abandon all reason and slam on their brakes when they see a bike, or get aggressive with yelling and horn honking. And after seeing how bicyclists here tend to also be aggressive or completely carefree, I can see why it is a problem. I feel that if ebikes had turn signals like cars it would grab attention and be more obvious from a greater distance. Being the one with metal between my legs instead of wrapped around me, I want my intentions on the road to be obvious.

I bought several 'used' battery packs in perfect condition so I can add lights to several bikes, and I figure it could be used similarly to a car, where I could add a phone charger, radio, or other small power draw devices of convenience. I even made a power pack with four of those 8AH batteries in series to power a mini air compressor. Not that you need something that overkill for a bike, but it has come in handy on multiple occasions when journeying out to work on a car. I feel like this space has tons of room for growth and innovation, and I want to be there to see and help construct this foundation.

I'm currently in the process of getting ready to tear down and rebuild all of my bikes at the moment, so I went ahead and took a few pictures to let people see where I came from and where I am headed. I've recently come across a few of older bikes in really good shape with aluminum frames. Some of the old rubber is shiny but cracking, and the brakes need to be replaced, but once fixed up they should be decent transportation for getting around the beach.

This was the bike I started with. It was given to me about 15 years ago by someone moving away. I would occasionally get on a kick of riding it around, always thinking of how to electrify it with lead acid batteries but it never seemed worth the headache. Once I got it set up with the brushless front hub motor, I started riding it around constantly. Rode it so much I wore down the tire pretty far. It wasn't the best tire ever made, but it was soft and grippy. Certainly better than my other tires. Not too bad for something thrown in with the motor kit.

You can see the hub motor up front with a different tire, and the wiring all wrapped up on the handlebar as I start to harvest it for parts. The large gap between the rear deck and the tire held the battery and motor controller. There were a lot of things patched together to make the thing run, and I certainly got a lot of use out of it. The brakes were barely adequate, and one of the main reasons I am decommissioning this ride is because the lighter bikes can stop a lot quicker. There are tons of other benefits, but being able to stop safely from full speed is my main goal.

I'm also really partial to step through bikes when trying to drag any cargo around. It is a major pain having a load tied up high on a bike and having it want to spill over as you attempt to get on. I know there are a ton of other changes I need (and plan) to make regarding cargo and battery placement, but it is really nice to easily step on, and makes it easier for others to try out my bike, especially if they aren't as tall as I am.

Next up I am going to dive into the non-battery components needed for a DIY ebike build. This is going to assume you already have, or at least have in mind, a bike which will be the platform you build upon.

One of the first things that needs to be decided is what type of drive system you want to use. Old brushed motors made for lead acid systems with a wonky chain drive are out of the question. Every one that I have seen was a far inferior product to a brushless motor, and the minimal cost savings doesn't seem to be worthwhile. With brushless motor systems there are generally 3 types - front hub motor, rear hub motor, and mid drive motor. While there are DIY mid drive options, I will not be covering them. There aren't many DIY options, some of them require frame modifications or a custom frame, they are in general much more difficult to install, and I have never ridden a mid drive bike.

Initially I was going to build a brushless rear hub motor ebike, but at the time the one I wanted was out of stock, I really wanted the cheapest minimal viable product as a functioning proof of concept, and then next one up in price was more than I wanted to spend. I begrudgingly bought a brushless front hub motor kit. I cannot tell you how glad I am that I got that kit! I know things will be different for everybody, but at my age I am really starting to appreciate giving things an honest try before saying you don't like something. If you haven't ACTUALLY given it a seriously try, then you don't ACTUALLY know.

My favorite part right away is that when you hit the throttle, it forces the bike to understeer and stand up straight coming out of a turn. With a rear drive, there is a certain point where you hit the throttle and it wants to fold the handlebars and kick the rear end out from under you. I've purposely pushed my newer rear drive bike to the limit on several occasions and I can tell you if I hadn't been fully prepared for it that I would have been thrown to the ground. I live at the beach in Florida and there is a fair bit of sand at the intersections of every road. This means every turn you make is on ground with less than ideal traction. As long as a car isn't coming the other way I can hit full throttle starting into the turn and the wheel will feel like a front wheel drive car in the snow. It understeers and powers through. Obviously, this isn't something you want to do all of the time as it is nice to stay on your side of the road and spinning your tire will cause excess wear. But it's really nice to know that if my balance is a little off or there is more sand than usual, I can just throttle my way out of the predicament if there isn't any oncoming traffic. Don't get me wrong, I love many other aspects of my rear drive bike, and having a heavy hub motor on the front means using more arm and shoulder strength to control a front drive bike, but I just love the way it feels in turns.

Installing the front hub motor kit was pretty easy. It comes with new brake handles that have cut off switches so you aren't accidentally pushing forward while trying to stop. You don't 'have' to install them but I would strongly advise you do. The kit I got had no display, which was fine by me. I just measured the battery voltage and used a preset path of known length to gauge my range. It came with a throttle and a sensor for pedal assist. Unless you have a problem using the throttle I really don't see the point of pedal assist with this setup. I can twist as hard as I want or pedal as hard as I want, and mix the two as I see fit. Because it is front hub drive and rear pedal drive, it is effectively a two wheel drive system, so you have more traction than a rear pedal/rear hub design.

I already had a DIY cargo shelf on the rear of my bike consisting of 2 aluminum angle brackets tying down into the frame where the rear wheel bolts on, and a piece of scrap pressure treated plywood I found and cut to fit the bike with a funky setup to clamp it to the seat post. This sat a little low down to the tire, so I made a bracket to lift it up a couple inches and cut up a rectangular cat litter bucket to stuff my batteries in and slung it under the shelf, just above the rear tire. I screwed the motor controller to the bottom of the shelf behind the battery box, routed the wires from the front to the back with cable ties, and it worked!

I immediately had to replace the brake cables and pads. The rim brakes are barely adequate at stopping the bike when they are perfectly adjusted. It seems like every bike I've looked at had flex in the frame around the rear brakes when they are applied hard, and as such never seem to stop as well as the front brakes. Maybe the bikes I've seen are just lower quality. It does look like someone with some skill could make a large metal plate with a huge cutout for the wheel to fit in and bolt/clamp to the frame in that area to reduce flex and increase braking power. There are also DIY caliper mounts for disc brakes, and the hub motors all seem to have a place for the disc, but I'm thinking the welded on mounts are far superior to clamp on brackets. My newer bike with front and rear discs is much larger yet slightly lighter, and brakes so much better than the old steel frame mountain bike. The disc brakes come with their own set of quirks, but they stop the bike very well.

As for the actual kit, I just grabbed the cheapest brushless front hub motor kit available on Amazon at the time. I've easily put over 2,000 miles on the setup and other than the battery management system issues with the first battery packs, it still runs great. There are two types of hub motors - geared and gearless. The geared ones are a bit more expensive, smaller in hub size and weight, and have a lower top speed. My rear drive bike is a geared type and does about 19 MPH, whereas the 2 bikes I've built using the gearless front hub motors are heavier, slower off the line, but top out at about 23 MPH. In both cases it seems that the motor controller is limiting the RPM, as I can load the bike up pretty heavily and still reach the same speeds. Both are considered 500 watts, although for various reasons I will delve into later, the rear drive one is more comparable to a 350 watt motor.

The exact kit I bought doesn't seem to be available, and the prices have gone up a fair bit since that time, but most of the kits are similar. Some have different wheel sizes and different voltages. I'm using 26" wheels with 36 volts nominal batteries. It is possible to find a motor controller made to handle a certain wattage motor and different input voltages, which is what I ended up doing with my rear drive, but that story is for another day. I will have to take a bunch of pictures and explain how all of that went down tomorrow.

Now that I've given a run down of how I got started, let's take a look at some of the resources I used to learn and what parts I have had success with. I'll start with Battery Hook Up. batteryhookup.com has been great for me. I have purchased batteries from them on several occasions now. Shipping has taken under a week and packages have shown up undamaged. You can certainly find people online complaining about packages showing up damaged, and maybe they weren't as thorough about securely packaging things in the past, but my experience has always been positive.

Because of the nature of the business, they buy in lots and once something is sold they may or may not get any more. There are certain batteries that exist in absurd amounts, but take labor to extract (for example from all of those scooters that got plastered across cities and then banned). Others are backup batteries for critical infrastructure like telecommunications or medical devices, and there will be waves of these hitting the used market as they get decommissioned. Other times there will be packs made for a specific product and because of a design error they don't fit. Instead of redesigning an electric car, it is cheaper for them to sell the battery packs and buy new ones that fit. While you can find plenty of batteries in like-new quality, others may have been more heavily used and are usually sold at a lower price to reflect this drop in quality. For certain applications such as DIY ebikes or small off-grid solar, this can sometimes be one of the best deals. I guess the hardest part is figuring out what you want and waiting for the right time to get it. I've been very lucky that each time I bought batteries was right before they sold out of what I wanted. There are always battery packs of the same or similar type coming and going, and if you miss out it could be months before you find exactly what you want again.

Batteries come in many forms. From massive packs to a single cell. Some come without a case, some have a heavy duty case that is difficult to open or too oddly shaped to use on a bike. Some packs are sold knowing there will be some dead cells and a bad BMS, others have a guarantee that everything is functional. Some cells are metal cylinders, others are pouches. Some are not much bigger than my thumb, others are larger than Kindle tablet.

There are also different battery chemistries. I personally would suggest sticking to lithium ion (Li-Ion) because they are the easiest to use and are perfectly safe when used with proper safety equipment like fuses and a BMS. It is equally possible to make a very safe battery pack or a very dangerous one. Some of the methods I have employed in the past were not at the peak of safety, and you can find many more stories about how not to do something than you will about things actually going terribly wrong. There are far more armchair safety experts that spread doom and gloom without any experience than ones with experience. I will point out my mistakes and encourage others to do what is best for them. I've done thousands of things in my life that weren't by the book, but I had enough knowledge, understood the odds, and take my chances carefully. I briefly played the lottery when I was young and quit when I had more money than I lost. Being aware of the odds of any situation you find yourself in is better than being unaware.

I currently have no intentions of messing with other battery types at this time. Most of them have drawbacks (lower power density, higher price, charging restrictions) that don't fit my gear or my use case. There are tons of resources elsewhere to learn more, just be aware of the pro's and con's before buying.

While I have only used Battery Hook Up, I have seen others on YouTube building packs for various projects from a number of other places and nearly all of them have been happy customers. The vast majority of times that I have seen someone unhappy it has been because they didn't understand what they were buying and were sore about it. Heck, I wasn't the happiest person when I realized I had to reconfigure my packs and buy tools and supplies to make things work properly, but I was fed bad information from a YouTube video. I wasn't really mad at anybody and I'm thrilled with the price to performance ratio with what I have now.

There is another place to buy batteries that I haven't tried, but the guy has tons of informational videos. I do intend on buying from him in the future, kind of as a 'thank you' for the info he provides. Jehu Garcia's channel has lots of info for all sorts of battery setups, from cars and ebikes to power walls for houses. He often has the same types of batteries that many other sellers have, as they all buy by the pallet at auction from some of the same resources.

I already have tons of experience with electrical (2 years of school, 2 years apprenticeship, rewiring cars, 10 years of powering small things from solar in my shed) so the places I go to for information tend to go far above and beyond what is needed to build an ebike battery. I would strongly encourage anyone interested in this to learn all that you can or find someone knowledgeable. These things can be quite complex and require strong math skills and experience with batteries, wiring, and proper safety. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone with a car try to do what worked for somebody on YouTube, possibly even got things working temporarily, and ended up towing their car or dragging me and my tools to try to fix it. I almost always just undo whatever they did rather than try to make a poorly designed system work. "Everybody's got a car, everybody's got 12 volt systems, this stuff is easy!", and they have an expensive paperweight. The world has more and more paperweights as we use less and less paper.

I don't want to discourage anyone from wanting to try new things, but this is an investment. It takes time, tools, money, and learning a few lessons the hard (and often expensive) way. I've sent a few things up in smoke in my day, but I've gained enough skills where I spend a great deal of time keeping things from being scrapped. If you are only looking for cheaper batteries, but don't want to make an investment of time or money, then I would strongly encourage you to find someone else who can benefit from this information and possibly help you with your ebike goals in the process. The key to cheap cost, reasonable quality ebikes is cheap price, good quality batteries. Buying the batteries is easy, assembling them in a way that suits your needs is the part that takes a substantial amount of knowledge.