top of page

Completing the Outside and Electrifying

Ingredients

 

The Adjustable Pegs

  • 8 relatively thick aluminum angle bars, 50cm (20 inches) long each. These will make the main part of the pegs.

  • Around 20cm (8 inches) worth of thicker aluminum angle bars. We will cut this into four equal pieces, and it will make the base of the pegs, in contact with the ground.

  • Eight thick bolts with eight corresponding locknuts and washers. Mine were sized M8. These will secure the pegs to the walls. Loosening these bolts will allow us to adjust peg length.

  • An aluminum / stainless steel sheet of dimensions at least 20cm x 50cm (8 inches x 20 inches). We will cut this into four strips to protect the wood from the sliding metal pegs.

  • 8 U-shaped aluminum channels (right-hand photo), 40cm (16 inches) long each. These will be in the inside, behind the pegs, and will lock the nuts so that you can tighten and loosen the bolt from the outside. It's very important this aluminum channel has the same inner width as the nut because the nut will go inside.

 

Thick Aluminum Pipes

You will need two aluminum pipes 1.5 meters long (60 inches) each, and one more aluminum pipe 1 meter (39 inches) long. They should all have a diameter of 2.5 cm (1 inch). This is only if you want the Crab to be hand pulled as well as bicycle pulled, as this will make the front handles.

 

The Silicone

The best silicone to use for these conditions is construction-grade silicone. It costs more than the budget bathroom silicone, but it holds in place much better. One standard sized bottle is enough. Get a silicone gun as well.

 

The Tarp

The tarp I used as a roof is a 2 meter (79 inches) x 3 meter (118 inches) PVC-coated truck tarp with a density of 540 grams/square meter. That means the whole tarp weighs 2m x 3m x 540g=3.24 kg. It's the perfect size, and being white means it lets light through well enough for the inside of the Crab to be bright and relaxing during the day. It's really tough and has eyelets every 23cm (9 inches), which is perfect for my purposes.

 

The Steel Rope Cable

Steel Rope lasts a long time, and can only be cut through with a big cable cutter. The cable I used was 2mm thick PVC-coated steel rope, which ties down the tarp as well as the solar panel. I used 20 meters (66 feet) total, divided into two times 7.5 meters (25 feet), for each side, and then two times 2.5 meters (8 feet), for both solar panel attach points.

 

Cable Clamps

There are many kinds, any of them will do. Basically anything that clamps cables together, allowing to make a loop like in the photo.

 

The Solar Panel

The solar panel I used was the A+ Life 18W triple junction solar panel, of dimensions 80 x 32 cm (31 x 13 inches). Is very thin, light, and uses recent technology that generates energy from morning to evening even in cloudy weather (there's no  link with alien energy, so more sun does help). It's not one of those flexible ones, making it cheap (108$). Actually, it's just as flexible as it is expensive: not. Of course, that's talking about physical flexibiliy. So far as it's function is concerned, it can be installed in many ways, one of which I'll tell you about down below.

 

The Current Regulator / Adaptor

This item is necessary to turn the energy coming from the solar panel into a steady current usable by your electronics. They come in a variety of options and prices, but be aware that a too cheap one might fry up the devices you're trying to charge: not a money saver. The one I use is the Sunload M60. It's quite expensive (290$). Ok, it's very expensive. What in that plain black box can be worth so much? It's not easy finding a solar device into which I could directly plug my 12-volt laptop into, as well as all my 5-volt usb-charged gadgets. It is a lot of money, but that's what allows the Crab to have running electricity, which is pretty cool, and I'm sure I won't fry up my electronics. This thing also has a large internal battery so I can charge my stuff even when the sun's down. I have found one slightly cheaper option, the A+ Life Solar Camping Kit (around 280$ for regulator and solar panels), but it suits my needs a little less well.

The Adjustable Pegs

These pegs' purpose is to prevent the crab from tilting when I'm inside it. They ease the load off of the wheels, as there are now 6 supporting points (2 wheels and 4 pegs). The peg height is adjustable by loosening both of those big bolts (picture 1) with a socket wrench (mine are 13mm width). This also locks the Crab from theft, as anyone wanting to steal it would need a wrench with a 13mm socket - not the kind of thing any old Joe carries around - and would need to know where to use it. Not to mention the bicycle locks he would have to break in order to get the thing moving. Anyway, here's how I built the pegs.

 

The pegs themselves are simply two 50cm (20 inch) aluminum angle bars connected together with a space in between.  The top connection is simply a flat metal rectangle bolted on, and the bottom connection is a 5cm (2 inch) long piece of thick aluminum angle bar, also bolted on. Two bolts go through the space in the middle with a big washer. On the inner side of the wall (picture 2), these bolts are secure by nuts that fit exactly in the U-shaped aluminum channels. That way you can simply turn the bolt from the outside, and because the inside nut doesn't move, this puts more or less pressure on the peg, allowing it to slide or to lock. These U-shaped aluminum channels are 40cm (16 inches) long so that they can be connected to the top and bottom of the side wall.

 

This also reinforces the wall at each one of the pegs, making the whole thing more stable. The last element is an aluminum sheet with dimensions 5cm x 40cm (2 inches x 16 inches) that will be sandwiched between the peg and the wooden wall, allowing the peg to slide up and down by protecting the wood (brass-colored sheet visible on picture 1). To make these strips, we can simply cut the 20cm x 50cm (8 inch x 20 inch) aluminum sheet we talked about earlier into four strips, each 40cm (16 inches) long. We can use the remaining 10cm or each of these strips as the top connecting bit of each peg (seen on picture 1).

 

Here's where I made a mistake: you can see in picture 1 that the metal sheet I used is brass colored. That's just what it is: brass. I just happened to have some lying around, but please use aluminum: brass doesn't usually rust, but it can react strangely to the galvanised steel nuts and bolts as well as to the aluminum.

 

Picture 1: The peg from the outside

Picture 2: The peg from the inside

The Front Handles for Hand-pulled mode

 

These are the handles that allow me to pull it even if someone rides away with my bke (and never comes back...). The horizontal bar is very important: it makes all the difference in the world as far as comfort is concerned.

 

So, to make this, I simply bent both 1.5 meter (60 inch) aluminum pipes into an S-shape the best I could with the sand-filling technique described in the "Upper Structure" page. The pipes being so tough, I didn't do a very good job, and had to add aluminum angle bars to reinforce the corners. I then bolted those S-shaped bars onto the main frame, and bolted the 1-meter (39 inch) aluminum pipe horizontally at the front. The brakes are just cheap aluminum bicycle brakes that I attached on the standard way. Very comfortable way to pull by hand, and it gives me space for my legs.

Applying Silicone

I won't say much here because the less silicone applied, the better. Silicone is for sealing up those places where water might get through, but if the construction is well made it should only let water drip out, like the tiles on a roof, without the need of silicone. Silicone works to keep the water out, but it's not as durable against UV, wear and tear, as wood or aluminum is. So rely on it as little as possible.

Cabling the Truck Tarp and Solar Panel

The 7.5 meter cable starts at the front of the Crab with a cable clamp loop (seen at the beginning of the video below as well as in the "Ingredients" section above) that is tied with a lock through one of the tarp eyelets. It then goes through every one of the eyelets, and simply goes back and forth between those eyelets and holes that I drilled just for that purpose into the aluminum pipes below. By opening the lock (seen at the beggining of the the video below), they can be loosened at both ends, allowing to open either the window-side (back) or the opening entrance (front). Both cables end up coiling together at the back, tied together with a cable clamp. You can see that at the end of the video.

 

The solar panel is attached in a similar way: both leftover 2.5 meter cables do a cable clamp loop, hooking on to one of the eyelets, go through metal loops that I screwed into the solar panel, and attach the same way to the corresponding eyelet on the other side. I screwed on one metal loop in each corner of the solar panel, so each cable goes through two loops. To keep the solar panel in place, I added two knots to each of the cables, at the right places so I can slide the solar panel to be tilting one side or the other. I can change that according to the sun.

Holes drilled at an angle to allow cable through

The Concept of a 12-Volt Home

This part will explain the very simple electrical circuits I used in the Hermit Crab to recharge my lights, cell phone, kindle, computer, AA batteries, and music amplifier. Let's talk about the 12-volt home.

 

Our common homes are based on 220 volts (Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia,  and most of South America) or 110 volts (North America, some of South America, and Japan). This was chosen because such high voltages are a good way to carry electricity through miles of wiring, from where it's produced to where it's consumed. However, the world is evolving towards smaller and more efficient devices, that consume less, and at lower voltages. More and more of our devices run on 12 volts (i.e. computers) or 5 volts (i.e. phones and tablets), requiring adapters that come with those devices. Each of these adapters produces heat and loses quite a lot of energy in the process.

Now here's where I'm getting to: if we produced our energy locally (solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal pumps, hydroelectric energy...) instead of remotely (nuclear powerplants, fossil-fuel power stations...), we would be directly receiving 12 volts, erasing the need for all those energy-wasting adapters, and encouraging the use of low-consumption devices like led-lights and power-efficient electronics. Not only this makes you green and energy-independant, it's also a lifestyle better adapted to our modern world, as well as our modern world's ressource problems. So here's how I managed my 12-volt circuit:

 

It's very simple: the solar panel is plugged into the power regulator / adapter (the Sunload M60, that I mentioned in the ingredients). The 12 volt output goes directly into my computer, and both 5 volt USB outputs go into charging my cell phone, kindle, or AA batteries. My indoor lights, my bike's headlights, and my music amplifier are all powered by these AA batteries. Easy!

bottom of page