Bike power!
Here's an interesting project for the handyperson/renewable energy aficionado. The following links lead to two cool articles from The Mother Earth News Online, which were published in 1981. They tell how you can adapt a bike to produce pumping power (like for water) or even electricity!
The writer admits that you can't power your whole house this way. Using a car battery to charge up and then draw from, you would have to pedal about 20 hours to get an hour's worth of electricity. But if you were going to be working out on an exercise bike anyway, hey, you'd be getting a little something back!
It's very easy to go to these pages and print them out for later use. You know, just in case of total economic collapse or something....
Part 1
Part 2
The writer admits that you can't power your whole house this way. Using a car battery to charge up and then draw from, you would have to pedal about 20 hours to get an hour's worth of electricity. But if you were going to be working out on an exercise bike anyway, hey, you'd be getting a little something back!
It's very easy to go to these pages and print them out for later use. You know, just in case of total economic collapse or something....
Part 1
Part 2