Ten Best Free E-Book Sites

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Vic Richardson

You finally joined the digital reading revolution and bought a Kindle or a Nook. Suddenly you’re going broke buying e-books. Maybe you have an elderly aunt who likes e-books because she can enlarge the font to a readable size but has no money to purchase them. There are bookstores, including the Amazon Kindle store, that will give away a few free sample e-books to entice you to buy more from the same author but the selection is very limited.

Where do you go online to find more free novels to read? You know there is some site just one click away with a motherload of free books. After careful selection, I found 10 of them worth exploring.

Free e-book sites have evolved into several categories:

1. Truly free and legal repositories of books that are out

of copyright due to their age – authors

like Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc.

2. Sites that let budding new fiction authors publish for free to raise awareness of their works – readers then get to download their books and comment on them.

3. Link share sites where readers share their library by giving a download link to sites like Rapidshare or Megashare where the reader has uploaded a copyrighted book. Strictly speaking, the complete process of uploading – sharing the link – then someone downloading and reading the book violates copyright law. However, it is poorly policed right now and the sites and uploaders feel that they skirt the law in a gray area by providing only the first stage of the process.

4. User share sites where non-fictional technical papers and how-to-make-money books are posted. Since the works are original, it’s not illegal, but not likely the recreational reading you are looking for.

5. Some sites attempt to create a way to provide free on-site reading of DRM protected content by mimicking what the public libraries are doing. They let readers check out copyrighted e-books for two weeks. Once checked out, they are not available to others until the checkout time has expired. The DRM management, usually done in the Adobe Digital Editions reader for offline reading, provides the ability to disable the book at the end of the two week period.

For this article, I’ll concentrate on the fictional recreational reading genre.

Here are some of the best sites worth checking out from categories 1, 2 and 5:
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worldlibrary.net (category 1 and  2)
World Public Library is a well organized and impressive website for accessing all the out of copyright books and a large number of copyrighted books, too, that authors allowed to be shared. World Library has over 2,000,000 e-books in pdf form which you can read online in your browser or download. Paid membership is optional and costs only $8/year.

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http://www.getfreeebooks.com/ (category 2)
Free registration is required to access this library. There are donation links for individual authors but donations are not required. You can do online reading in your browser on this site or download in epub for general readers or mobi for the Kindle or pdf for general reading on a PC.

There are also a lot of blog-style articles here about free e-book resources for various e-readers – a very useful feature.

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http://www.digilibraries.com/ (category 2)
No registration is required on DigiLibraries, where thousands of modern original short stories, novellas, novels and non-fiction are available for download by new authors. The site is well organized and downloads are fast. There are no pre-1930s books mixed in with the new ones.

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openlibrary.org (category 1 and 5)
The Open Library project is a massive undertaking to get millions of books online. They have put over one million online to date and are a mixture of about 100,000 older free downloadable books (pre-1930s) to modern DRM-protected titles that you can check out for two weeks for free – there is a limit of five books checked out at a time. You can use their online reader in your browser, also, to read their books without the need to download them.

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http://www.free-ebooks.net/ (category 2 and 4)
Registration is not needed to access this library for pla in text, pdf or

in browser reading in HTML format. For ePub or Mobi (Kindle) formats, VIP membership is required and costs $8/mo. Note that the Kindle can read plain text files, too. Fiction, non-fiction and trade magazines are found here and new authors can submit e-books also. The site has a pleasing layout and downloads are fast.

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http://www.gutenberg.org/ (category 1)
This is the original book project that started collecting all

the old public domain books, over 36,000 and counting. All the books are out of print and are offered in ePub, Kindle, HTML and plain text format. The site can sometimes be slow and cumbersome to navigate but is well organized and the library is always growing.

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http://www.manybooks.net/ (category 1)
Over 29,000 free e-books suitable for the Kindle, iPad and most other readers can be found on ManyBooks.
One of the category listings is “Post-1930” and most all the books have expired copyrights, similar to the content found on Project Gutenberg.

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http://www.globusz.com/ (Category 2 and 1)
Globusz Publishing offers free contemporary e-books from new authors who ePublish to their site. It’s a synergistic way for writers to get published easily to achieve recognition and for readers to get new books in exchange for rating and commenting on the books that they read. Note that old books from pre-1930 are mixed in with the new authors to add to the book count.

Registration is required.

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wattpad.com (category 2)
When I first discovered Wattpad many years ago, it was a category 3 site where readers uploaded copyrighted e-books from famous writers so the uploaders could conveniently read them on their mobile devices in a browser window. However, anyone else could access and read them, too. Since then, Wattpad has blossomed into a (slightly more legal) user created short story and novella site. Some of the content reads like a teenage girls’s blog but other content is first class. It’s all in plain text format in a framed window on the Wattpad site.

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http://www.baen.com/library/ (category 2)
Baen is a science fiction/fantasy genre free e-book site.

The 46 or so authors are professional established writers who provide 122 books of their work for free to get you interested enough to buy other books they sell. Some of the more famous are Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, Eric Flint and James P. Hogan. This method is also used on the Amazon site with a few Kindle books in assorted genres. The nice thing about Baen is that it’s well organized in one place, and easy to use.

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I did not mention the obvious choice of your local library system. Here in the greater Seattle area, the library systems carry a great many e-books and audiobooks, although finding, downloading and only being able to read them on your PC is a less-than-ideal, daunting task.

Smaller rural towns likely won’t be tied into a big library network with e-book capabilities either, so online sources are rural readers best hope for free e-books.

In today’s news, Amazon has announced that it is launching a Kindle e-book lending service with 11,000 US libraries. A physical Kindle is not even required – you can use a Kindle app on the iPad, PC or a Mac. I tried it using my local Sno-Isle King Library system and it does indeed work well.

I checked out a book and was able to download it from the Amazon site and read it both in the Amazon Kindle Cloud reader and the Kindle PC app. Full sync on all devices worked.

The cultural transition from printed books to e-books has created a rapidly evolving delivery system for the electronically delivered novel. In a year, this list may be mostly obsolete but I will endeavour to revisit the list keep it updated. Meanwhile, happy reading!

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Bamboo Wood Products – A Short Introduction

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Vic Richardson

Much ado has been made in the press about eco-friendly products made from bamboo.

Bamboo bicycle frames,  laptops, furniture, deck lumber,  hardwood floors and bamboo plywood all can be found online for sale. Is it really the right material for all those applications? Is it actually grown and processed responsibly or is

it just another exploited economic niche flying the green banner?

Thoughts of bamboo commonly bring to mind little grass huts on tropical islands.

Bamboo is actually in the grass family and can grow up to a meter a day and reach 30 meters in height.

It reaches a size that is fit for harvest every 5-7 years.  Being a grass, the harvesting process does not destroy the plant as would happen with trees – the root system merely grows more bamboo shoots.

The yield of usable wood material from bamboo is 25 times what common hardwood trees such as oak and maple produce basically because common hardwood trees take 100 years to mature. At the same time, bamboo produces 35% more oxygen than hardwood trees. It seems like the ideal plant to fulfill all our future wood and paper needs.

Bamboo grows readily in most of Asia, India, Africa and in the sou

thern US. My mother even grew it here in the northwestern US as an ornamental garden plant, although the growth rate is much more subdued in temperate climates.

Bamboo trunks, once cut and dried, commonly are used just as they are f or simple fences and supp

orts or split to make walls. It can be peeled thinly to create strips for weaving baskets and mats. However, to be used for enduring load-bearing applications, bamboo is manufactured in a process, not unlike plywood.

Core77 has a great pictorial article about:  Bamboo – How do they make it into boards?

How environmentally friendly the end product is relates to whether the glues that are used in the lamination step contain large amount of formaldehyde in the glue resins. Most are manufactured with glue up to 48 times below the OSHA limits.

Another thing to consider is the farming methods used on bamboo plantations. Clear cutting forests and over fertilization is common in third world countries where few laws to regulate the environment exist.

Companies making bamboo products were slow to become FSC certified

- a badge of honor for good crop management that is done in a sustainable fashion.  A few, such as Plyboo, now are FSC certified. Treehugger has a good article to check out for more details on the bamboo industry:   Bamboo Flooring – Is it Really Treehugger Green

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During the early process steps to turn bamboo into wood products, the bamboo slats are subjected to pressure steaming to get rid of bugs and to flatten out the semi-circular slats. The longer that step, the darker and softer the wood gets. When you purchase planks or flooring, the lighter shades will be the hardest.

Intrinsically, bamboo is harder than most other hardwoods, but you should test a sample that you are considering purchasing with the thumbnail test to confirm that the wood is suitably hard enough to meet your needs.

Bamboo is claimed to cost up to 50% less than other hardwood flooring. However it is still pretty uncommon in the US, so shipping costs from regional warehouses and high demand must be considered in the purchase decision.

In some cases, wood for Montana and five other western states is warehoused in Seattle.

Here are a few sources where bamboo wood products can be found in the US:

Pacific Western Wood Products

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..Green Building Supply

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Solar Panels 101

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Vic Richardson

Solar energy has become one of the most promising hopes for a less expensive power source to make everyone less reliant on oil.

The number of solar equipped houses in the US is

expected to double in the next five years, to over 300,000 homes, based on plans by the US based SolarCity. rated at 550W that can run from 25-46VDC input is $200. Total actual cost also needs to include wiring and the mounting pole and hardware. If you install it yourself, this system would cost about $700 for $3.89 / watt. To hit $2 / watt, you usually need a large array in the multi-kilowatt range.
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  • Roof leaks can be created from the assorted solar panel mounting brackets.
  • You can’t rotate the solar panels easily for maximum output.
  • Snow buildup in the winter could be a problem.
  • Roof maintenance and cleaning is harder.
  • Some consider it unsightly to cover the roof with solar panels.
  • There might be homeowner association restrictions for roof mounted solar panels.
  • You may have shade trees blocking the sunlight to your roof. With  an array of solar panels, shade on only some of the panels may cause damage as current from other panels dumps back into the shaded panels. Your array must have even sunlight.

Solar cells, the building component for solar panels, are in the 2” x 6” range, being wired together into as an array to increase voltage and current. The modern type uses a silicon crystal structure than is grown during the first steps of manufacturing.

.. – These are made much like semiconductors where a huge rod of silicon is grown as one crystal, then sliced very thin to make one round solar cell. This is the most expensive and most efficient cell type. The band-gap voltage of each cell is 1.1V.
.. These are made like the monocrystalline type but out of smaller mixed crystals grown in ingots. The end result is still sliced thin and resembles shattered glass. Cost is a little less but so is the efficiency. The majority of panels on the market are polycrystalline.

The band-gap voltage of each cell is also still 1.1V.
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The best going rate for solar panels is around $2/watt for large arrays plus installations costs.  Depending on where you live, your electric rates could be anywhere from $0.10 / kilowatt-hour to $0.40 / kilowatt-hour. Payoffs can vary from 4 – 15 years but one thing is known. Electric rates are not going down.

The only gamble in choosing to install panels now is whether the cost of solar panels will go down or solar panel technology will get even more efficient. Designers have already increased efficiencies from 2% to 20% in a few short decades. The theoretical maximum efficiency is 29% but many commercial models are still in the 14-18% range. Output is guaranteed at 90% over the first ten years and 80% over the second decade.

As a practical example of current costs, a 180W 36V Suntech polycrystalline solar panel costs about $370 and is 14.5% efficient. An Ensupra Grid Tie Inverter

There are basically two ways to set up a solar power system:

Grid feed solar power systems:

The grid feed method uses solar panels matched in voltage to a small electronic converter box that plugs into one of your home’s AC power outlets. It syncs to the line frequency and phase and upconverts the 24-48 volts DC from the panels to 120 volts AC 60 Hz to backfeed the power grid. It is scalable by adding  more systems. Most of the converter boxes are around 500W so can be driven by 2-3 panels.

Most panels are in the 120-200W size and about five feet by 2.5 feet in size.

Unfortunately if the power goes off, this won’t give you any backup power. It’s just meant to offload some of your power draw and lower your electric bill. Note that your biggest benefit is in the sav

ings on your electric bill. If you scale one of these to the multi-kilowatt range so you can sell power back, the electric rate for selling back power is much lower than what you pay. The electric company subtracts out line maintenance and administrative costs which lowers the payment to you.

Stand-alone battery storage solar power systems:

This system is more complex but starts out much like the grid feed systems. There is still a large panel or two and a converter box. The converter box has a DC to 120 VAC 60 Hz inverter, a battery charging system and batteries. Typically car batteries or deep cycle marine batteries are used to save cost. Compact lithium ion batteries are not required and cost considerably more.

The solar cells charge the batteries using the converter box battery charger circuits and the inverter draws from the batteries, converting the output to household 120 VAC 60 Hz. The batteries help even out the input power to the inverter to provide a more consistent output. It also gives you some power after the sun goes down.

Theoretically, you could also backfeed the grid with a system like this as long as the inverter circuit falls back to it’s own 60 Hz timebase oscillator if the commercial power goes off.

Batteries are expensive and will need replacing every few years, unlike the solar panels or electronics so there is a higher maintenance cost with this configuration.

Stand alone systems are ideal for summer homes. A 180 watt system would be adequate to run four LED lightbulbs (4 x 10W), a small radio (10W) and still charge a laptop (80W) and cellphone (5W). There is some loss in the inverter and wiring so a 180W system really delivers 80% of that or 144W. Since the laptop would be charged during daylight hours, the lightbulbs and radio power draw at night from the charged batteries would last many, many hours. You could probably even run a small water pump during the day to fill a gravity feed water tank with this design.

Mounting methods:

Fixed roof mount – This is the most popular method because it takes up the least space and a typical roof has ample space for the largest arrays. Wiring can go through the attic and be concealed. The best scenario for maximum sunlight is a south facing sloped roof.

There are drawbacks to roof mounting:

Pole mount – For small arrays, this is a better method. Ideally you dig a hole and fill it with the pole and concrete but you could use guy wires  instead for a more movable system. This would appeal to renters, retrofitters and people that move a lot.

Air cooling is much better and the solar cells run more efficiently if they are cool. Blue Pacific Solar has a great example of a full blown pole mount tracking system.

Choosing a place for the pole, not under shade trees, is an advantage over roof mount systems. Pole mounted arrays are also easier to build with adaptive tracking systems. The solar panels are motorized and the tracking sensor aids electronics in aiming the panels for maximum solar pickup, making this truly, a plug-and-play system. It adds a little to the cost initially and also adds maintenance with moving parts but increases daily output substantially.

Even if you don’t plan on using a motorized tracking array, you can still increase output 25% by manually adjusting the angle a few times a year to compensate for the low angle of sunlight in the winter.

Consider also, if you get windstorms or hurricanes, you could adjust your array to aim straight up for minimum wind loading during a storm.

New 3D configurations of solar panels have proven to provide more average output across daylight hours and more total daily output. They provide an option to motorized tracking arrays.

Effectively, they create an array resembling a tree with the panels being the leaves, all mounted on a pole. This idea is pretty new and no commercial examples are for sale, but also provides another reason to go with pole-mount solar panels. If you had to reconfigure your current array, the pole mount type is more flexible to change.

Post processing adds a non reflective coating to increase light absorption and silver paste screen printed connection terminals.

Types of solar panel cells:

Monocrystalline

Polycrystalline –

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Amorphous – These are made from thin layers of silicon deposited on a metal or glass susbstrate. They are very inexpensive but also low in efficiency and are legacy designs. The band-gap voltage of each cell is 1.7V.

Demand for solar panels is skyrocketing worldwide. The US is actually way behind Europe and China in the number of solar power installations. As electric cars become more popular, electric usage will go up. Conventional nuclear and fossil fuel-powered electric plants are expensive to build and have their own drawbacks – notably pollution and susceptibility to earthquake damage. Decentralizing power, in case of natural disaster, is a prudent idea. At this point, it is not a matter of if you convert to solar power, but when.

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Hot Showers – Off the Grid

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Vic Richardson

Historically, heating water on the camp fire, in the fireplace and later on a wood stove was the methods our pioneering forefathers used to get hot water for washing. Bathing was less frequent, typically once a week for the more civilized households, and the bathwater was shared between family members as each took turns in the galvanized washtub of water that was rapidly cooling and getting dirtier.

Electricity has brought the advent of so many conveniences.

The perfection of the light bulb, heating element and electric motor made it possible to have light any time, hot water on demand, clean clothes at the press of a button and be able to keep perishable foods cold without hauling ice and having sawdust lined root cellars.

The first temptation with off grid living is to find a way to make enough electricity to power all those electric conveniences. However, it’s just not practical.

Even if you line your entire roof with $20,000 worth of solar panels and add a $10,000 wind generator with six foot blades, you could only generate enough electricity for 30% of a modern home’s needs. If you are lucky enough to live near a rushing stream, you might jury-rig a car alternator to a paddle wheel and get up to 500 watts output. Even that won’t go far – you could power some 10W LED lights and a small camper size refrigerator. A hot water tank draws kilowatts.

It’s back to root cellars, home canning, hand crank washing machines and candlelight for sustainable off grid living. A small solar charger in the sub $100 range will charge cell phones, small portable radios and portable LED lights for those inevitable emergencies. What about the hot water? No one wants to bathe in an icy stream, not even our forefathers.

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Most designs for DIY solar powered showers start with a solar heating system. Either an entire hot water t

ank is painted black and mounted in an insulated wooden box with a big glass sun roof or individual pipes

are snaked back and forth through the same box and fed to an insulated storage tank. You need water pressure for the shower so getting the tank elevated provides a gravity feed. The shower stall is typically outdoors near the tank. There is no reason why the design could not be plumbed to an indoor shower, however.

The simplest system uses a large black plastic storage tank mounted right above the shower that absorbs the sun’s heat. There are a number of sun showers for hikers on the market that are simply large thick black plastic bags that hold five gallons of water and follow this principle.

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Benefits of a Solar Shower:

  • The sun provides free energy for heating water so you have a zero cost electric bill.
  • You have a zero carbon footprint shower. There are choices on what material you choose for the tank so you could easily have a steel tank and wood enclosure if you choose to avoid plastics for ecological reasons.
  • Compared to rain barrels, the natural heating effect should sterilize the water so algae and mosqui

    to larvae should never be an issue.

  • The system can serve double duty as an outdoor shower using water heated on a woodstove, if solar heating is not effective at times.

Drawbacks of a Solar Shower:

  • Winterizing is absolutely required so the system doesn’t freeze up and burst pipes.

    You can either drain it for the winter or have a door you shut over the sun roof when it is below freezing. A shut-off right at the tank allows the feeder pipes to the shower head to be

    drained.

  • Water temperature control is a problem. On a hot summer day, you could easily generate water at scalding temperatures. A thermometer is highly recommended to test a bit of water before showering.

    Anything over 140 F is going to be too hot unless mixed with cold water at the shower head. To really control the temperature you would need electric motors to move shade baffles in place, controlled by a thermostat. That would require electricity and also not give you maximum solar energy capture. A better method is to have a second cold water tank to draw from to mix with the hot water like in the normal two faucet shower head design.

  • On cloudy cold winter days, the water doesn’t get warm enough to be useful for showering. However, it may get warm enough such that you only need to add a gallon or two of hot water that is heated on the woodstove to make it hot enough to be comfortable. That’s an incremental improvement.
  • Most solar shower designs use manual fill methods and gravity feed. Since there likely is no electricity, pumping the water to build pressure isn’t feasible. You could certainly leave a hose permanently attached to fill it if you have pressurized water from a valve available. Otherwise, you will need a way to pack five gallon buckets up some stairs or a ladder to fill that tank.

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Links to solar shower construction articles:

Build It Solar - the motherload of solar water heating ideas

Homesteading today Solar Shower Project – picture –>

Even if you are not living off the grid, there are ideas discussed here in this article that could be applied to more efficient home construction. Multimodal hot water systems in future homes could have dual feeds for electric hot water tanks. One feed would be the classic cold water mains.

The other feed could be from a roof or attic mounted second water tank that is painted black and has a sun roof above it.

The water intake mixture ratio could be based on the desired final temperature for your hot water system. In a perfect scenario the mixer valves would find an exact mix ratio and no electric heater elements would need to kick in on the electric hot water tank. On cold cloudy days, the system would revert back to all electric. The mix valves, control electronics and secondary solar tank could all easily be retrofitted to existing hot water tanks and be reasonably inexpensive.

For best results, showers should be taken a few hours before sundown when solar heating has peaked. With the right kinds of soap, both dishes and clothes can be washed in cold water to conserve hot water.

..Homest

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