Efficient things
Efficient things
Printer ink can cost as much as vintage champagne, so finding an inexpensive and eco-effective way to make would be great. Now three inventors from Derbyshire, UK, think they have just the solution: extract the carbon from unwanted tires to generate a cheap and plentiful supply.
Printer Ink From Car Tires Read More »
An off-grid experimenter in Australia, Tom Chalko, has retrofitted a chest freezer to create a fridge that uses only 100 watt-hours (0.1 kWh) per day! Why a chest freezer? Tom points out that vertical door refrigerators are inherently inefficient. As soon as you open a vertical fridge door the cold air escapes, simply because it
Man Retrofits Freezer to Make an Ultra-Efficient Fridge Read More »
Drying clothes with centrifugal force is efficient and quick. The centrifugal dryer Spin-X rotates at 3300 RPM (revolutions per minute) — using 1420 G forces. Most washing machines only spin at 500 RPM. The dryer removes a quart of water from clothes using the same amount of energy a regular clothes dryer uses in the
Centrifugal Clothes Dryer: Spin-X Read More »
There are actually a wide variety of natural, gourmet salts out there: pink salt from the Himalayan Mountains, black salt from Cyprus, grey Celtic sea salt and red salt from Hawaii and Australia. Natural sea salts are nothing new, of course. They’ve been around forever. By contrast, white table salt is but a blink of
Salts: Natural and Uncommon Read More »
Japanese soaking baths are built small but deep. These compact “ofuro” will fit in just about anywhere — even the smallest apartment. Diamond Spa makes the baths pictured here. We’ve no idea on the price, but the concept is good. If anyone knows where to get this style of tub at a reasonable price please
Very Compact Ofuros (Japanese Baths) Read More »
The Presso is a manually operated espresso machine — no electricity is required. You make an espresso by adding hot water and ground coffee at the top. When you press down on the levers, the pressure pushes the water through the coffee, and it is deposited in your cup. You can make either a double
Presso: A Non-Electric Espresso Maker Read More »
If you want a metaefficient lubriciant, a soy-based one is probably the best choice. We’re talking about the kind of lubricant you use on gears, valves and chains. SoyClean makes a lubricant with all natural ingredients, and it penetrates just as well as more toxic lubricants. When using it, there are no harmful fumes or
Non-Toxic, Soy-Based Lubricants Read More »
Grinding coffee by hand has a few advantages: it’s quiet, it yields a more uniform grind, and you can take them camping. You can find hand-cranked grinders at Amazon.
MetaEfficient: Hand-Crank Coffee Grinders Read More »
Solar water heating works efficiently even in cloudy areas. Home Power Magazine recently ran an article that gives a simple overview of solar water heating systems (well, relatively simple). In the article, they examine various popular systems that have proven themselves reliable.
Solar Water Heating Simplified Read More »
Have you ever spent time at the sink, judiciously adjusting the hot and cold water, to achieve that happy medium between “cold” and “scalding hot”? Well, we’ve been there too — and we’ve noticed that water streams down the sink in a meta-inefficient manner. That’s why these faucet restrictors are so handy. They attach like
Faucet Restrictors/Aerators Read More »