Our plans for our plot at UW inclluded building a Container Home – A movable home made in an used ISO shipping container made into a housing unit.

This plan had been in the to do list for the last 3 years but never got initiated. However this June, since the bridge over the stream was also due for completion, I decided to finally take it up for completion.

I will not be able to share the complete details, but for the benefit of other enthu folks, I will share the main steps as the project progresses….

Step I – Get yourself a shipping container

This is the defining step, once you have taken the leap, you must take it to completion. Beware of crooks and unreliable dealers / sellers. Try to compare several sources in terms of cost and reliability / trust / quality and then decide.

I lost a lot of time here due to unreliable people and was lucky to come out clean.

Best option is to get the container from the yard with preference to the yard where the interior work can also be carried out.

In our case, I got the basic door and windows fabricated in the container and left the other part of the interior work to be done later.
Some snaps of the activities carried out….

Will post snaps and updates in next few days….

Sal.

It was a long wait till we were able to move the container to our plot as the ground was wet and the crane would not be able to lift it up on the slope.

Finally, the container was installed in our plot and we were ble to proceed with the internal works.

The internal work mostly involved the carpertor work to make the wodden frame inside the container to hold the insulation of thermacol sheets and the plywood cover on top which would provide the internal walls of the container and insulate from outside heat (and cold as well).

Here is a snap of the internal wooden frame during installation.

The container interior framework.

In addition, we also got made a small kitchen adjacent to the container house in such a way that the container doors would lock with the walls of the kitchen when opened to give an enclosed space.

The ContaHome

We call this our container row house (because everything is in one row

A Good Evening at UW.

See Ya,

Salil.

Cutie

Buddy

Cutie & Buddy are our 4 legged family members – Labs. Cutie is a female and 2 years old and Buddy is a male and just 9 months old.

Buddy joined us only this April 09 on Good Friday when he landed up lost in our society. He was injured on the head and back and was in bad shape. The society people thought he was our dog as he looks the same as Cutie. In the evening, they put him at the SPCA from where we formally adopted him the next day.

Buddy has seen a lot of suffering and ill treatment in his short life as a puppy which we gathered from his behavioural traits, being very scared of any stick, getting extremely aggressive and also getting agressive after hiding under the bed and any small space in the house.

Anyway otherwise he is extremely loving and intelligent and we hve had to adjust to his behaviour. After 2 months, his problems  are much reduced tough he does get aggressive under certain conditions that we all are careful to look out for.

I will post some pics of C&B on this blog soon. We are plannng to setup a home for Buddy at UW and keep him there as the unofficial guard dog for the complex, but this is still to be finalized.

He is very gentle with kids and norml visitors so you don’t need to be scared when you meet him at UW. He has a habit of doing a salute march to welcome new people and visitors by carrying some object in hs mouth and marching to and fro till he is told that he is a good dog.

You can offer him your hand when you meet him and remember to say “GOOD DOG” – GOOD BOY”.

Cutie unlike Buddy does not have any such issues except that she is very scared of new people, so she may bark and growl at you when you met her. For Cutie, you can simply offer your hand for her to smell and know that you are not ging to harm her.

Salil.

Cutie & Buddy have a lot of fun…

CB at Waterfall

Buddy Exploring

Water View!!!

Have a wet time…

Salil.

Usha Woods Snapshot

We are glad to have purchased a plot at Usha Woods. It did not take us very long to make up our minds on the project.

As far as I, Salil was concerned, it was just what I was looking for and was ideally suited to design and setup my eco-friendly living project that was long pending.

We have started this blog to share our experiences at Usha Woods and our plans and ideas about eco friendly living options as we think about it.

Salil & Family.
(posted on 14th August 2009)

16th August 2009 – Silver Oaks in the Wind

Silver oaks in the wind is the name we selected for our plot at UW. This is the corner plot, no. 39, the one with the wind wane fixed on a tall pole.

We have a lot of plans for Silver oaks which we will be sharing on this blog as we go about putting our plans to reality and setting up our place as per our desire.

We hope that some of these plans would be of use to other people as well.

Will update….

Our plot at Usha Woods (UW) is located along the slope of the hill and is a likely spot to locate a wind generator. This was also a factor in us deciding on that particular plot, no. 39.

I was already having some plans for a wind generator similar to the one that is featured in the link below;

http://www.mdpub.com/Wind_Turbine/index.html

So once we booked the plot, I immediately started working on a basic wind wane device that would indicate the wind direction and the variation in the same at the spot planned for the wind generator, I also started building a prototype model to test the wind strength at the spot before building the actual production version.

On the next weekend, i.e. on the 8th August, I landed up at UW  with the wind wane device and we set it up on a long pole. Actually in the end, the pole is longer than what was required, but anyway, the wind wane was up and working perfectly.

It was properly indicating the wind direction continously indicating any variation in the wind direction. The wind direction was mostly from downhill blowing across the road and going uphill. The wind at the spot also seemed to be quite adequate and strong enough to spin a regular wind generator.

You can see the wind wane setup at the site in the pictures below;

Wind wane at UW Plot 39.

Over the comming weekend, I hope to test our prototype wind generator at UW provided I am able to complete the device in time.

I will post updates on that soon.

Salil.

Update: 17th August 2009

I managed to complete the prototype in time for our next visit. One good thing was that the school was closed due to the H1N1 scare going on, so the kids were free and no exam pressure.

Photo of the in progress device;

Prototype Wind Generator under construction

On our drive down, we stopped at a nursery ( Bandal) which is just before KAdav village and picked up some tree saplings. They have a great variety of plants and tree saplings and you can find any plants of your choice out here.

At UW, we got help from the workers readily to plant the saplings and also to install a wodden pole to mount the wind generator for testing.

In around 2 hours,we had completed planting all of the saplings and the wind generator was also all mounted and ready on it’s pole. However, the wind was totally missing at that point and the Wind generator was not spinning at all.

We had a lot of fun in the stream and waterfall and also had a very tasty lunch at the stream itself. See pics;

At the Stream @ UW

After lunch, we found that the wind had picked up and the WG was spinning away.  I quickly got to work attaching the test bulb and connecting the multimeter to measure the current that was getting generated.

Wind Generator in action

The current was not all that good, it was only a trickle, but for a test it was fine and we are now sure that when the production WG is setup, we can definately to generate a good amount of power.

I am currently working on the production WG and will definately update you (if anyone is following this blog that is…) :0

Will update in a week or two…

Salil.

Update on 15th August 2010:

Hi,

The week or two has seen nearly 8 months go by, the project has been getting along very slowly, initialy there was a gap of 4-5 months of inactivity after which the work as been restarted with determination to complete it within the next 6 months.

Following updates:

The Wind generator: The nost important part of the system, the motor was very elusive as there are very few suitable motors available in the market and there are no clear guidelines or parameters readily available. So there was a long gap where I was cheking out various options and sources right from a winscreen wiper motor to threadmill motor to the regular use DC motors, finalyy after much delibration I was lucky to nail a genuine PMDC motor manufacturer who had the best options for PMDC motor which would fit the requirements and not result in  total washout. This company was also very technical and ready to discuss the requirement and fine tune the parameters as possible to meet my specific need for output / RPM.

After a wait of 2-3 weeks, the motor was finally in my hands. It is a pretty large device with following specs:

Length: 14 Inches / Diameter: 8 Inches / Weight: 14.5 Kgs.

The nextstep was the motor hub or sprocket on which the fan blades would be attached. For this I went to my regular machinist and after much planning the results were erally very good.

Here is a photo of the rotor hub:

The Motor Hub

Here is a snap of the contraption with the rotor hub attached:

Wind Generator Motor with hub

Next… There are o many other parts that will complete the setup that need to be designed, fabricated, purchased, I will not be able to provide the complete details, but will definately upload some information as possible, some of the parts are:

1. The Base mounting and tower with supports.

Base mounting plate

2. The casing and mounting for the motor with pivot assembly.

3. The Tail or vane for the top assembly.

4. The support anchor pints and winch setup.

5. The battery charging circuitory and related circuits.

6. Finally the invertor and battery for drawing the power.

I wil keep updating the sections with details as the work progresses. 

Salil.