What is it made of.

That was the question from when I was 3 years old. I was the kid that tore everything apart to make something else.  With that began a road to lots of gifts.  Now that I am an adult people still bring me their junk.  We use this junk all over the farm.  For some reasons I get dehumidifiers in all of the time.  They have nice little fan motors and the coils we use for distillation of methanol from wood.  In our state we are not allowed to use it for ethanol.  Believe me, the government will check you.  We have had the DEA,EPA, and the FDA here because I tinker so much the people drive by on this little country road and feel the need to call somebody.  My wife don't like it so much but, I got teach the DEA how to make biodiesel.  I ran out of homemade lye and bought to much, so I got a visit.  He was a great guy and he learned something that day.  The EPA guy was a nice guy too.  The FDA was a jerk, but I wasn't doing anything wrong so he couldn't find a way to fine me. Any way, be well aware that being different sometime rubs people the wrong way.  Here is a list of some thing we use and get free.

Food buckets
old ac motors
old engine
old mowers
old farm equipment
vacuum pumps
water heaters
water pumps
little solar panels
old computers and controllers
old fridges
old hydraulic pumps

We make silage in buckets from sorghum to feed to the chickens and cows.  We power all sorts of thing with the motors. I will try to keep an eye on this forum and give helpful input when needed.

When you don't look like everybody else you stick out and people target you.

I think it is best to have a hedge of bamboo or other items around the farm as people do starting thinking that house is lowering my property value.     Out of sight, out of mind.


I also tinker with with motors, and solar,   This computer is now powered with a Tesla Model S battery module.


I have a new rule for myself, unless I can directly use the free stuff it does not come to my pile :-)     I have been cleaning out old electronic projects which I will never get to, and I have moved on to building things I can use each day.

I have been working on growing my own food for both my plants and possible chickens in the future, I have been using tree hay to feed worms.      

So much fun in getting things that were thrown away to something that feeds you or keeps you warm.

Christopher Shepherd:
Oh wow... I want to come scrounge at your place!!

I recently moved, don't have a home built yet, and don't have chaos piles to work with built up yet. It's a bit frustrating. I will admit that I moved a LOT of stuff, and a major amount of it was things other people had labeled trash. I looked at things I was sorting, and if I could use it for at least 3 things that are all on my plans, it moved. The house I'm building is called Maison du Bricolage which loosely translates to "home built of scavenged stuff" sounds a lot more classy though. :D My structure will be built solidly out of proper materials, because I'm subject to codes, but all the rest is my bits and parts and assembling them oddly to make things they were never intended to be.

Keep us up on your projects! I am VERY curious!!
Always happy to see a fellow recycler on permies!!
:D

Christopher, welcome... glad to have you here.

Christopher and Mart, in case you haven't discovered it yet, we've got a thread going on practical upcycling of useful "junk".  It's here.
https://permies.com/t/12412/projects

It'd be great if you could take some pictures, upload them, and explain a little about why & how you made or adapted this or that thing.

Pearl you are welcome to use anything in my pile you need, if you ever make it up here to Ohio stop in.  I will try to post a few things on the post spot Joel asked me to.  Here is a picture of my 14 year old sons stand.  He made the stand out of repurposed wood and all the containers are saved from his grandmother who gets them free.

Unrelated question: does the honor box bit work for him? I dislike marketing my stuff, have considered doing that. Does it work well for him?

The honor box works well for us.  He actually usually gets more than he asked for.  If somebody is so desperate they have to take it without paying they can have it.  We had a farm sell about 1-1/2 miles away.  There is quite a few big nice homes put on it and they made rules for themselves they can't grow food.  They are board in the evening and go for walks.  They come buy food off of my sons stand because they know where it was grown.  They all seem to be vary honest down to earth people that just don't like farming work.  We do market a little bit by giving tours every once in a while when the customers want to know more.  Gives us a little opening to discuss permaculture.  We are not experts by any means nor do we claim to pure permaculture, but we strive to grow chemical free food with some of our own lines of corn and vegetables.  We do a lot of farming the old way so we burn carbohydrates instead of petroleum.

Here are a few things we have sourced.  Most of the items are used somewhere on our farm. We use these things to improve our useful junk.
temp snap disks N.O. and N.C.
tecs and tegs
auto light switches
12v heater coils and strips
little fans and little pumps  (most are recycled from junk)
supercapacitors
heat exchangers  (most are recycled from junk)


If anybody would like to use this kind of stuff I usually have it and can help you source it yourself.  I sometimes go to makers fairs and have giveaways of surplus to other tinkerers.