Do-it-yourself Projects to Get You Off the Grid: Rain Barrels, Chicken Coops, Solar Panels, and More

Illustrated with full-color photographs accompanying easy-to-follow instructions, this unique collection utilizes the best that the online community has to offer, a mammoth database churning out ideas to make life better, easier, and, in this case, greener.

Here are fun, useful projects designed to get you thinking creatively about going green. Let the Instructables team illustrate just how simple it can be to make your own backyard chicken coop or turn a wine barrel into a rainwater collector.

Here, you will learn to:

• Clip a chicken's wings
• Power your lawn mower with solar power
• Create a chicken tractor for the city
• Water your garden with solar power
• Build a thermoelectric lamp
• Create an algae bioreactor from water bottles
• And much more

Get started today--making your life greener. Get off the grid

Instructables.com is a bona fide Internet sensation, a web-based community of motivated do-it-yourselfers who contribute invaluable how-to guides to the site on a wide range of topics, from gardening and home repair to recipes to gadgets that defy categorization. The site hosts more than 100,000 projects. More than 15 million people visit the site each month, leaving comments and suggestions on the ever-growing list of do-it-yourself projects.

Noah Weinstein is an editor at Instructables.com and cofounder of SF Media labs. He has worked as a white-water rafting guide, custom speaker builder, sheep shepherd, and tractor driver. He earned a BA from Brown University where he concentrated in environmental studies and visual art, and spends time making things both big and small at his shop in Oakland, California.