Author: Daniel

After all that… and there was a lot of all that to all that… I have decided the power system with those former race car batteries (cells, really) is just too complicated and potentially dangerous to be worth the cost savings compared with the all-in-one units from SimpliPhi I had been contemplating at the start. … Continue reading SimpliPhi, improvise, and dinosaurs?

The weather is lovely and I’m now really back to work on the HomeBox. As per always, before anything may be done, something else must first be done (applies recursively). One thing that had to be done before a lot of other things could be done is I wanted to have a good, solid workbench … Continue reading Power and Glory

And by A Lot… I mean… a lot!! This particular 9+ acres of land not too far from our current residence came to our attention recently. This lot has a lot going for it… and a lot going against it. And that’s why we think we can get it for a lot…less than the asking … Continue reading A Lot Of Thinking

By dark of night, this little garden wagon carries into the garage a nominal 20kWh of energy storage, recently liberated (paid for fair and square) from a race car and hauled home in the back of the White Ravvit, whose cargo space didn’t much care for the weight (nearly 450#) concentrated on the six landing … Continue reading Of Wealth And Power

You might reasonably wonder what this race car has to do with my HomeBox project. As it turns out, more than you might think. Allow me to briefly introduce the EVSR, an all-electric race car. As you might imagine, electric race cars need batteries. They need to be small, light-weight, energy dense, and have outstanding … Continue reading A Li-ttle Help From My Friends

This post isn’t about the HomeBox directly, since that’s on hiatus for the winter. However, everything in the HomeBox has to get made somewhere — what happens in the workshop is part of the story. And anyway, I wouldn’t want you to get bored waiting til spring for a new construction post so I shall … Continue reading Putting the table back in Table Saw

It occurs to me that for those of you who weren’t following this blog when it was a Facebook photo album – or even if you were, you may well have missed this picture. This thing here is the original T.H.R.O.N.E., which stands for “temporary household repository of nutritive excrement”, in case you were wondering. … Continue reading T.H.R.O.N.E-18-38

Some months ago, I commissioned an artist to paint a mural for the T.H.R.O.N.E. Room ceiling. The theme was to be royalty from the animal kingdom — you know, because throne. Today, I took delivery of the mural, as rendered on 5 pieces of plywood. Five? Yeah, five. Why? That was the smallest number of … Continue reading The T.H.R.O.N.E. Room Ceiling

There are really just two ways of doing something: right and again. Today was a day of do-overs. Just in case you somehow thought that I was getting all this way-finding right the first time… nope. Mistakes happen. Plans change. And sometimes, a thing I think is gonna be fine, isn’t. So it goes. This … Continue reading Two Ways

As the seasons turn here in formerly-sunny New England, outdoor projects have a tendency to go on hiatus. The HomeBox is no exception. The house itself, now fully dressed and insulated, is certainly capable of being kept warm enough to work inside, but the place where all my power tools are, the structure I affectionately … Continue reading Getting Colder