I don't have to be sold in the webpage but many others might, I know that plastics are incredibly useful.  First of all they dont have to be made from oil - bioplastic from plant oil, and even biofiberglass - using plant fibers to strengthen the plastic are totally natural and sustainable.  Second the energy footprint for making useful things out of plastic is far better than say, melting and casting and machining metal.  Plastic can be injection molded directly into complex shapes very difficult with metal with no waste and low energy.  Third plastic is potentially much more useful at

I seem to remember seeing in a book of depression-era ingenuity of someone making a well drilling rig out of a truck axle.  The combination of ring gear to increase the torque, easy conversion of horizontal shaft power to the 90 degree downward motion, the existing spring mounts being an easy attachment point for the frame resisting toe twisting force, the weight of the differential helping provide downforce made a cheap and easy way to get the force needed so the wells wouldn't have to be manually augured out or dug.  It's likely you could dig for little cost over a manual/animal powered

I read the http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Agricultural_Microcombine page and you say the complexity of pulleys and such to get a single power source is the main hangup, and you propose electric motors as an alternative due to infinitely variable speed, though I dont see more info yet as to cheap controllers and such.

Has anyone considered using a power steering arm from a car/light truck/even a semi, and a pump from the same thing turned by some smaller engine, to make an easy and cheap power earth rammer?  The $5-7k cost is still a little high for more hobbyist type use.

The "Have More" Plan, by Ed Robinson and Carolyn Robinson

Wondered if anyone else has read or seen this, I stumbled across it somewhere and it singlehandedly changed many of my perceptions about "what I need" to go off the grid and do rural homesteading.

A few highlights of the book:

If i'm posting in a bad place feel free to comment or for moderators to move where appropriate, i'm real new here and havent read much of what others have yet.  Just stuck in a brainstorm and a posting mood..

I posted something in General, I wasnt sure whether it belonged better here but traffic here was so low and I thought it might only apply to LifeTrac builders.  So I posted it in general hoping it would be okay.

Posting a link here in case someone is subscribed to this subforum and would be notified.

http://factorefarm.org/content/would-feedback-feasibility-tractor-outlin...

First a brief introduction.  I stumbled across the LifeTrac open source tractor design and felt a desire to post before much thought.  I haven't read much into say the politics of the board so if I step on any toes or post in the wrong place feel free to correct me and suggest what I should be doing, move my post around, forward it to somebody, etc.  I just wanted to bounce some ideas off the heads of other people since I was so happy to find others that obviously seem to have a similar mindset or want to work on similar projects.

i'm curious about how you have, or plan, to deal w/ wastewater. i suspect your volume is low, but it could be an interesting and widely applicable project.