While you could give away the things you no longer want to charities or perhaps recycle them some other way we have comes across 20 creative ideas for unused items to be put to good use around the home once again. Perhaps this will give you some ideas for ways in which you can use your own junk.
20# Bottle lamp pendants
[Image Courtesy of ETSY]
If you have some have some old bottles lying around you could recycle them or perhaps you could turn them into bottle pendant lamps if the bottoms of the bottle are cut off carefully. They make attractive and unusual lamp shades.
19# Wine bottle chandeliers
[Image Courtesy of Remodelister]
You could have even more fun emptying wine bottles and then string them together and make a wine bottle chandelier.
18# Drum kit chandelier
[Image Courtesy of LudwigMetals]
If you have been forced to give up playing the drums as the neighbours have complained about the noise too much then rather than throw them away or sell them why not turn them into a drum kit chandelier?
17# Credit Card Guitar Picks
[Image Courtesy of Amazon]
What use are old credit cards when they have reached their date? Well you could turn them into guitar picks if you have the PickMaster credit card guitar pick maker.
16# Light Bulb Oil Lamps
[Image Courtesy of Sergio Silva]
These lightbulbs have been turned into some great looking oil lamps that are a real focal point.
15# Wrench Wall Hooks
[Image Courtesy of ETSY]
If you have some old wrenches lying around or you pick some up cheap at a car boot sale they make great coat hooks.
14# CD Spindle Bagel Holder
[Image Courtesy of Flickr.com]
If you buy blank CD or DVDs to burn yourself on your computer you might be wondering what to do with the case that the CDs came in. Well, they actually make superb lunch boxes for bagels.
13# Bicycle Sink Stand
[Image Courtesy of Benjamin Bullins]
Have an old bike that you don’t use anymore, why not turn it into something useful such as this sink stand?
12# Bike Wheel Clock
[Image Courtesy of ETSY]
This rim and cogs from a bicycle makes a great wall clock when you add on big bright red hands.
11# Glove A Chipmunk
[Image Courtesy of Miyako Toyota]
If you have some old woollen gloves that you don’t use anymore turn them into a glove soft toy.
10# TV Aquarium
[Image Courtesy of AquaHobby]
An old TV can be used for an aquarium if the insides of the TV are stripped out and it looks great.
9# Pop Tab Bag
[Image Courtesy of Indstructibles]
If you have a lot of the tabs from cans that you have opened you could save them up and turn them into a bag as in this pop tab bag.
8# Piano Bookshelf
[Image Courtesy of TGMdesign]
If for some reason you have a piano in the house that is no longer played it can be stripped down and used as a very unique bookshelf.
7# Hanger Room Divider
[Image Courtesy of DesignBoom]
You can save up the hangers from Ikea, or any other shop for that matter, and turn them into a colourful hanger room divider. The one pictured here makes use of 2,000 children’s hangers from Ikea.
6# Tennis Racket Mirrors
[Image Courtesy of CountryLiving]
If you have old tennis rackets that are no longer used they could be turned into tennis racket mirrors that would be a focal point. They would also make the perfect and most unusual gift for tennis fans.
5# Bowler Hat Lamps
[Image Courtesy of Graham and Green]
Bowler hats can be more useful than for keeping the rain off your head, they can be turned into unique lamps.
4# Old Books Shelves
[Image Courtesy of Real Simple Home]
Old hardback books can be turned into very attractive and unusual looking small shelves very easily.
3# Chair Shelf/Closet
[Image Courtesy of YiKongLu]
This is a very ingenious way to use old wooden chairs that you no longer use. Just hang them on the wall and the seating can be used for storage while the rungs under the chairs can be used as a closet to hang clothing on. Check out these wooden chair hangers.
2# Vintage Suitcase Chair
[Image Courtesy of SeeKatSew]
If you have an old vintage looking suitcase hanging around you can turn it into a suitcase chair by padding out both halves of the suitcase and adding on some wooden legs.
1# Old Ladder Bookshelf
[Image Courtesy of ETSY]
This old wooden ladder has seen its day when it comes to climbing on it, however it has been turned into a useful book shelf, giving it a new lease of life.
Russia is widely known as being the biggest oil and gas exporter but now it seems that the country is going to be known for another thing, solar panels.
Russia has begun to make small inroads into solar farms and developer Hevel Solar is putting up an investment of $450 million into building the solar panel farms in Russia between now and 2018. The company is a partnership between the company owned by Viktor Vekselberg, Renova Group, and Rusnano, the nanotech company. They plan on making their own solar panels along with building solar panel farms. Hevel Solar hopes to finish off their third solar panel farm by the summer and their first project is located in East Siberia. They have another in Orenburg which is close to the southern border of Kazakhstan and this finished construction last week. Of course Russia isn’t known for its sunny climate as other successful solar farms have been built in such as Chile and the US. They are more known for their gas and oil. However, the company has faith in solar panel farms and they have built them in the sunnier regions of the country. They said that there is a market for replacing off-grid diesel generators as these are expensive when it comes to maintenance and fuel.
What do you do with the gigantic oil tankers that are no longer used? Just leave them to rust? Well a team of architects have another idea about what to do with them and they would like to re-use them as infrastructure by turning them into living communities.
At the moment decommissioned oil tankers are scrapped in ship graveyards in developing countries and it is here that workers have to take the ships apart by hand and this is a task that isn’t without danger. The workers have to deal with toxic chemicals and oil that has been left behind and all they get from it is salvaging metal that is sold for scrap for a pittance of profit.
Now the shipping industry and the Government is trying to put an end to this but this leaves us with the issue of what to do with the oil tankers when they are decommissioned. A team of Dutch designers, Sander Bakker, Chriss Collaris, Rubern Esser and Patrick can der Gronde think they have the answer with a project named Black Gold as they want to re-purpose the vessels.
At the moment the project is only a concept as the team have been talking about taking a vessel that has been abandoned and then reusing it as a public building. The designers talked about how oil tankers are becoming irrelevant thanks to changes in the transportation system. The designers want to take the internal structure of the tanker out and replace it with floor-plates. As the tankers have big beds it wouldn’t be difficult to make an ad hoc structure in the big shell. An open rectangle would be cut in the sides and this would allow air glow along with styling on the interior that would be similar to that of an airplane hanger and there would be free passage of wind and sun.
They plan on ensuring that the entrance would be connected to the coast with a pedestrian walkway, while the top of the vessel could be used for farming and inside there could be a commercial plaza or sculpture garden. The team propose a cultural centre in a country in the Persian Gulf as this is where the majority of the oil comes from.
If you have already traveled by airplane, chances are you’ve noticed a tiny hole on the lower portion of all passenger windows. And, well, you have probably been wondering what on earth is the purpose of a hole on an airplane window. It’s definitely not there because it looks good, it’s actually quite relevant to your safety during the flight.
Marlowe Moncur, the technology director of aircraft window manufacturer GNK Aerospace explained the purpose of the “breather hole” to io9. It’s a hole designed to balance out the pressure between the last two layers -yes, there are a few layers – of a typical pressurized-cabin window. Before we go any further into the purpose of the “breather hole“, we will first check out how a window in a pressurized passenger cabin is set up. As shown in the Boeing 737 maintenance manual (the most widely produced jet airliner in aviation history), the window structure consists of three layers of acrylic – a tough, transparent and flexible resin – although only two of them have an actual structural function.
These structural layers are the intermediate and outer ones – while the inner layer (called “scratch pane”) only serves as a buffer between the passengers and the structure of the window itself. These layers prevent the cabin from reaching the external pressures that, depending on altitude, are too low for the vital functions of the human body. Basically, the primary structural window garantees the cabin remains at a constant pressure equivalent to an altitude of 7,000 feet, which is still quite acceptable for the body. However, in most cases, only the last acrylic layer is responsible for ensuring such conditions; the intermediate layer is just there for extra safety. Having said that, let us get back to the misterious little hole. As can be noted in the diagram shown above, the breather hole is located in the middle layer of the window. This little puncture acts as a bleed valve ensuring that the pressure between the last two layers and the cabin always remains the same. This is necessary as a way of preserving the middle layer (the extra safety one) so it is only exposed to severe pressure differences in cases of emergency – that is, if the last layer the window is fractured in some way. However, the effective use of this security layer is incredibly rare. As Moncur explained, all windows are exposed to rigorous testing before receiving the seal of approval.
Furthermore, any possible cracks in the outermost layer of the window is enough to justify an emergency landing – even if the middle layer is fully capable, in principle, to maintain the appropriate cabin pressure conditions. Better safe than sorry, right?
Finally, Moncur also clarifies that the breather hole also serves to prevent freezing and fogging between the outer layers of the window. Of course, that doesn’t always work since it is not rare to find photographs showing some frost on the windows.
It’s a stone, cold fact that many great ideas are very simple things. And of that genre, the ones that really shine are those that make you think, ‘why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?’ LucidPipe, a truly elegant water to wire electric power generation system, is such an idea. Portland, Oregon based Lucid Energy has developed LucidPipe to generate electrical power from water flowing within the supply pipes that feed our cities and towns – Clean energy generated from an existing resource that remains virtually uninterrupted after installation. The company has recently installed a system in their home town, and has many more in the works, worldwide, from here in the U. S. to Europe, and South Africa.
LucidPipe is stunningly simple. A lift-based, vertical axis, spherical turbine is attached inline to water supply pipe. When water flows, it drives the hydrodynamic turbine and generates electricity, which is then fed back into the electrical grid. The Portland project, once fully operational, will generate upwards of 1,100 MW hours, roughly enough to energize one hundred and fifty homes. The company states that the energy produced will be worth in the neighborhood of two million dollars annually – Those are significant numbers, without a doubt; depending on specific conditions, “one mile of 42” diameter pipeline could produce as much as 3 megawatts or more of electricity.”
Inline water pipe power generators are not a new idea, but one of this level of efficiency and flexibility certainly is. A few decades back, there was a resurgence in interest in small hydro power, everything from old abandoned systems to single home versions sprung up. Generally, the failure of such systems to catch on is predicated on two things, the fact that relatively few homes and places have access to a sufficient water source, and that the small, one house systems required some fairly serious pressure to generate effectively.
LucidPipe is a completely different concept, using large diameter, municipal water supply pipes coupled with very efficient generators. What this provides is truly viable, renewable source power generation, without the environmental vagaries that solar and wind generation face. Furthermore, since municipal water supply systems are in an ongoing state of repair and replacement, installing a system can be integrated into a city’s infrastructure and budget with relatively low impact.
Those wind turbines with huge blades used to generate energy might have it’s days counted thanks to a Spanish company called Vortex Bladeless. The company has designed a tower that dispenses the propellers, but is made of the same material, and oscillates in the wind taking advantage of what is commonly known as vorticity to generate electricity.
Vorticity is an aerodynamic effect in which the wind flowing around a structure creates a pattern of small vortexes. These vortexes are strong enough to make a fixed structure resonate and oscillate to the wind forces. The effect of vorticity can be incredibly powerful, an example of how strong it can be seen from what happened to the famous Tacoma Narrows bridge, which was struck by strong winds and began to flutter until it eventually collapsed into the Tacoma river just a few months after its opening in 1940. The principle of Vortex Bladeless is to take advantage of the oscillation caused by vorticity to produce electricity. The main current prototype is basically a sort of elongated cone made of fiberglass and carbon fiber. Below it, at the base, are two magnets that repel each other – and which act as a type of nonelectrical motor, moving the cone – and an alternator, responsible for generating electricity from the kinetic energy.
The structure of a Vortex Mini is just over 12 meters high, and the cone weighs only 3.8 kg. The devices are not as efficient as a classic wind turbine, but can stand much closer to each other, which means you can put more towers in a smaller space – and this is just one of the benefits highlighted by the company. As the co-founder of Vortex Bladeless, David Suriol, said in a presentation made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last month, the fact that it does not contain mechanical components already makes the structure 51% cheaper than the ones existing today. The tower also takes up lesser space, doesn’t make so much noise and is not so dangerous for birds flying around it. The Vortex Bladeless managed to raise 1 million dollars in public and private investments in Spain, and plans to launch its first product – a tower just over two meters tall to be used in developing countries – by the end of this year. Their tallest structure, should only be ready within a year.
Every user of a cell phone, tablet, or iPad knows what the Achilles heel of their device is. Regardless of who made it, or what model it is, it’s the charging/data cable that’s most likely to crap out first. Some of those are, in fact, legendarily fragile and/or touchy. That’s surprising, given how critical they are. Surprising enough that it drove Moazzam Khan to found Esbee Cables; his company is poised to debut what they refer to as, possibly the last cable you’ll buy: If he’s right, it could be game changer. Consumers are always looking for a deal, and charger/data cables are no exception. When genuine OEM, (Original Equipment Manufacturer), Apple cables retail at dang near $20 for a three footer, those bargain jobs off eBay or Amazon for .99¢ look pretty enticing. Alas, as so many have discovered, you absolutely do get what you pay for. If you read the fine print on those lightning cables, you’ll see the term “MFI Certified” on the pricier versions – What that means is “Made For Ipad/pod/phone’, and refers to the fact that the accessory in question is certified to work with Apple stuff; anything not marked MFI is, well, not guaranteed to work. From wire gauge, to insulation, and the care with which all that is assembled, the difference between cheap and pricy cables is night and day. 99.9% of those cheap cables are what’s termed 28/28 AWG cables – The first number refers to the gauge of the data transfer wire, followed by the gauge of the charging wire. AWG means American Wire Gauge, and describes thickness of the wire, and as such, its ability to transfer data and power – The higher the AWG number, the thinner the wire. What this means from a practical standpoint is that a 28/28 AWG cable is inadequate for charging; those will push no more than 500mah to your device, and most likely less – that’s all that wire can handle – That translates to ridiculously slow charges for most devices. What you really want is 24 AWG power wire; that’s 60% thicker than the 28 AWG stuff, and can handle 2 amps of charging power with ease. That’s as good, or better, than what shipped with your device.
None of that stuff is lost on the folks at Esbee Cables. A UCSB trained Mechanical Engineer, he founded the company as a response to those very problems. As Khan explains, “Everybody owns more than one charging cable and they are all ugly. They get tangled, they’re messy, and on top of that, they’re cheap rubber; they break at the connectors and at the wire/connector joint, and they don’t live up to the money they cost.” That last issue is what really got Esbee started. Again, Khan explains, “We started by tackling the existing problem of cables fraying at the ends. Our initial plan was to leather coat them, to provide additional reinforcement for the terminal ends. But, the more we looked at existing cables, the less we liked, so we ended up completely redesigning the cable inside out.” What they ended up designing might just be the first Super Cable.
The cables themselves are manufactured in China to Esbee’s specs, and as noted, they spec’d a very nice cable indeed. First item of note, these are unibody, four core cables – meaning two wires each dedicated to power and data, instead of the typical two wire core. Power wires are 24/28 AWG, and data wires are 30/30 AWG, (And the extra wire set means that 24/28 power wire pair is more than adequate to push fast charging). All those wires are tin plated, which adds considerable durability. Instead of the typical two to three layers of insulation, there are five; in addition to individual wire insulation, there’s an aluminum shield layer, which is then topped by an 18 strand layer of tinned copper mesh, (Most cables have 8 strands or less). A thermoplastic elastomer jacket, (TPE), provides a flame retardant, low smoke, Halogen-free alternative to PVC, which is a nice touch.
Then comes the leather. Esbee Cables are, as Khan noted, leather wrapped, and leather, good leather, adds a notable level of durability, strength, and class. After initial manufacturing, cables are sent to the Indus Valley in Pakistan for hand finishing with natural hide and suede. There’s classic black and brown hide leather and five colors in suede, so preferred vibe is covered for everything from high school kids to grandparents. Brass buckles neatly secure coiled cables.
Esbee claims their cables are “the world’s toughest” and has a video in production to prove just that. Cables come in lightning and micro USB configurations; the lightning cables are MFI Certified, meaning they’re built to standards set by Apple and certified to be ‘Made For IPhone/IPad/IPod.’ EsBee cable prices will start out at $24 for early bird kickstarter donators. While that’s a few bucks more than the Apple OEM cable, Khan points out “that’s comparing a five star cable to a 1.5 star cable (according to the apple website reviews).” If Esbee cables are all they’re cranked up to be, it’s well worth the difference.
Esbee’s Kickstarter campaign is set to launch within the next few weeks. Given the need for a truly high performance cable, it’s bound to be a ripper once it’s kicked off. Check their website and Facebook page to stay tuned in.
