After we left the still for 2 days, we check the water level in both trays. The water evaporated out ~ 1 cm height(~0.8 L). So the rate is about 0.5 cm per day (~0.4 L/day). Our target is about 3L/day, so if we can’t increase the evaporation rate, we would need to increase the…
Solar still: Add the output pipe and glass
We used PPR pipe for the drain tube, cut it in half with a hand grinder then sanded it clean. We drilled a hole in the side to insert the pipe through. then we screwed the wood to support PPR pipe. The pipe needs to slope down to make sure that water will not get…
Solar still : continue assembly
We painted the outside with weatherproof paint, inside with black to absorb heat. After we left it for a day to dry, we added a bolt lock and EPDM (the black foam stripon the last image) for sealing the lid.
Assembling the Solar Still
Today we screwed the wood parts together. We used EPDM insulated rubber (Link) for the base insulation:
Building a Solar Still
We stumbled across this page on Mother Earth News: https://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/home/how-to-make-a-solar-still-ze0z1209zsch So we decided to give it a try. We get a lot of sun here on the land… Today we cut all the wood parts
Cistern water level monitor
The cistern in front of Ban Mae has a steel lid 1.2 x 1.2 m approx. weight is about 10 kg. If we want to know water level in the cistern, we need to lift it every time. It would be better to have a water level monitor we could easily see every time we…
Building a slow sand filter to process greywater in floating house
The usual disclaimer: processing of greywater or any other part of a water system in your house is critical and can lead to severe problems if done wrong. Even greywater can contain significant amounts of E. coli and other pathogens. Please do not try this at home. As always, I describe my experiments below for…
Using a Secchi disk to measure the clarity of pond water
Here is another project I’ve had on my to-do list for a while that I finally got around to. The Secchi disk is a tool that can be used to measure water clarity. It can be easily made yourself, so we made one out of corrugated plastic futureboard and black waterproof electrical tape and a length…
Building a solar hot water heater
I’ve been trying to put together this project for most of the year. We finally got to it about a month ago, but I was too busy over that period to blog it. So here is a summary… I was inspired by a few of the projects on the Internet for DIY solar water heaters….
Sprinkler on the roof
We’ve been planning this test for a while now and we finally had a chance to run it. Since the workers took off for Songkran, they’ve been busy with other things. But we finally got a simple sprinkler on the roof of BaanMae. Our main goal here was just to do a feasibility test of…