Solar Powered Garden Gadgets

Solar Powered Garden Gadgets

by Deb Powers

 Is your garden green? Want to make it greener? Want to have a little fun in your garden? Take a look at these fun gadgets for your garden that use the sun as their main power. They range from do-it-yourself to very cheap to possibly expensive but too cool to pass up, and all of them are as green as your garden.

Oh jolly playmate come out and play with me...

When I was growing up, my grandmother had the last rain barrel in the neighborhood. Rain barrels are coming back into vogue. Set into a place where they can collect the run-off from your roof during a rainstorm, a rain barrel can provide nearly all of your watering needs during a typical summer in the temperate zone. Check out the offerings at New England Rain Barrel to see some of the accessories you can use with their rain barrel.

 Enjoy your garden in the evenings with this very stylish, very cool Sun Table. Set the table out in a sunny spot in your garden where the built-in solar panels can collect and store energy. The table fully charges in about four hours of sunlight and holds enough solar electricity to run your laptop for about four hours or a lamp for about six hours. The makers suggest that you charge it in the day and use it in the evening, but it's great for early morning coffee and web-browsing, too.

This sleek outdoor shower is totally warmed by the sun. It attaches to a garden hose and heats water to a comfortable 86 degrees in its base and hose. In just about two hours, you can heat up enough water for two 8 minute showers - and you can even adjust the heat with a flow regulator that mixes cold water directly from the hose into the flow from the solar-heated water.

Water features and fountains add a note of relaxation to your garden, and the spilling, flowing water adds moisture to the air. Gardens with a fountain are more likely to attract birds and butterflies, and they seem cooler. However, most fountains use electricity to keep the water in circulation. The solution? A solar-powered water fountain like this one, available in ceramic blue, copper and brass.

Love your kitsch? Liven up your garden with solar-powered garden gnomes - and you thought they couldn't possible get any tackier. You'll find a wide variety of them at Amazon.com - carrying lanterns, shining spotlights or just plain glowing to light your garden path at night after soaking up the sun all day long.

Photo credits: Rain Barrel: piekhaar; Solar table: Solartable.net; Outdoor shower: Hammacher Schlemmer; Water fountain: Solar Garden Gadgets;

DIY Solar Projects

DIY - Cheap Solar Energy Projects

by Deb Powers

Solar energy DIY projects (Credit: reznor70@stock.xchang)Every morning, I make the rounds of about a dozen news sites and at least as many blogs about renewable energy so that I can put together a green blog post about what's going on in the world of renewable energy. The ReNewsable Energy Digest is fun to research and write, but it has one major failing.

I freely admit that I'm easily taken in by the WOW factor. I look for the big numbers - billion dollar energy projects that will supply electricity for thousands of homes - or the NEW factor - the first manned airplane to take off solely under hydrogen power. They're the "that's so COOL!" forward-thinking this-is-the-future-of-energy news stories, but I sometimes forget to make room for the littler stuff - the things that you can be doing today, right now, each and every day to use solar, wind and other renewable energy forms in your home and your office.

A lot of these ideas are good old-fashioned ideas that your grandmother did as a matter of course. Of course, in her day, it wasn't solar energy or renewable energy source. It was simply the way that you did things back then. Most of them are low-tech, all of them save energy and reduce your energy bill as well as reducing your carbon footprint, and every one of them is powered by a bona fide source of renewable energy.

Solar Powered Clothes Dryer (RAWKUS @ stock.xchang)Solar Powered Clothes Dryer

Grandma called it a clothesline. There are dozens of ways to use solar and wind energy to dry your clothes, from a simple rope clothesline strung between a pair of trees to a revolving clothes reel that hangs from the wall of your house. Even the most extravagant clothes reel will set you back all of $50, and most won't cost you more than $20. If you've got a porch railing or backyard fence, you've got all the space you need to dry a load of laundry, and on a sunny day with a nice breeze, the clothes will dry just about as fast as they do in your energy-hogging electric dryer.

If you've never dried clothes on the line before, here's a few tips to help you avoid some of the mishaps I've run into drying clothes outside.

• If possible, avoid setting up your clothesline under trees, especially pine trees. It's no fun trying to get pine pitch out of your tighty-whiteys.
• String your clothesline tightly and brace it every 10 feet or so. Wet clothes are heavy and they WILL drag the line down toward the ground.
• Skip the chlorine bleach for line-dried whites. Instead, add a half cup of lemon juice to the final rinse water. You won't believe how bright your whites are.
• Hang t-shirts and shirts from the bottom edge with the neck facing down. They dry more quickly and you don't have clothespin marks in the shoulders.
• You can dry clothes on the line any day that the temperature is above freezing. For colder days, invest in a $20 clothes drying rack and put it in front of a sunny window.

 Solar Heated Outdoor Shower

Outdoor solar shower - Credit: katjung @ flickrOne fun way to use solar energy is with a solar-heated outdoor shower. Most of the simple solar outdoor showers rely on passive solar heating and gravity feed. Basically, you fill a dark container with water, hang it overhead in a sunny spot, and when you're ready to shower and the water is hot, you stand underneath and open the spigot.

Most pre-packaged outdoor showers hold five gallons of water - enough for a five minute shower. Some of the cooler DIY solar showers I've seen include these:

• Mother Earth News: Portable Solar Shower from Inner Tube
• Build It Solar: Discussion of Hose Solar Shower setups
• Build It Solar: Description of How to Make Black Pipe Solar Shower
• Home Power: Excellent article on Solar hot water installation basics

Heating and Cooling Your Home Naturally

Grandma also had some tricks for heating and cooling the house naturally, summer or winter. For instance, you can reduce the amount of energy you use for air conditioning by simply installing retractable awnings above your south-facing windows. That will cut down on the direct sunlight coming through those windows and keep the rooms cooler. Cut down on heat loss during winter by making a set of velcro-trimmed window quilts. Some other ideas for capturing solar energy and using it in your home:

• CNN: Solar power curtains
• Warm Windows: Warm window shades
• Planet Green: 7 DIY Weekend Solar Projects