Customer Reviews

The Human-Powered Home: Choosing Muscles Over Motors

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Good overview of the history of foot pedal & hand crank devices, & what is being used again today in our times. For example, foot pedal sewing machines, lathes for cutting, emergency radios, etc. Also how to generate some of your electricity needs by foot pedal power. Borrowed this from the library & then decided to buy my own copy. Plenty of references in it for further reading also.

I will definitely keep this book in my collection. I would have liked more diagrams of parts for construction of more things. The construction descriptions were great and useful. The Vitagoat is prototype #2 from the Rodale Press "Pedal Power" book from 1977. (still available from Amazon)

..for anyone who wants to understand more about pedal powered and other human powered devices. I was looking for this book thirty years ago, but it hadn't been written yet!

This book is excellently written. It is both readable and complete. This year, I taught a group of middle schoolers how to adapt a bicycle to generate electricity. This book helped me to prepare my course work, and I hope to use it again to teach kids about intermediate technologies and their use in the carbon-free, nuclear-free future.

I plan to build more pedal powered devices, and this book will be my first and most essential reference.

With the recent rise in concerns over energy, some are looking to alternative sources for energy - such as humanity. "The Human-Powered Home: Choosing Muscles Over Motors" is a guide to the world of pedal powered and other manual devices that could save its users hundreds every year as well as get them valuable exercise that's sadly lost to most of today's society. Exploring human-powered machines that one never would have expected to be possible, Dean brings many new and useful ideas in "The Human-Powered Home", something enthusiastically recommended to those who want to trim the fat along with the power bill.

Couldn't get this book from our library system, so had to have it. It's good ... it shows ways on not relying on electricity, etc. It's a good reference book ... because I can't remember all the different products they use to maintain an easier life style ... just in case there may be interruptions to our expensive utilities.

I SKIMMED THE BOOK AND DISCOVERED THAT IT GIVES YOU NEW IDEAS HOW TO COME UP WITH ALTERNATIVE DESIGNS FOR HUMAN-POWERED SYSTEMS BUT..... HALF THE BOOK REVIEWS ATTIC MACHINE THAT TAKE UP THE FUNCTION OF MODERN MACHINES. I WANTED TO KNOW HOW TO PROVIDE POWER FOR THE MODERN CONVIENCES NOT TAKE A STEP BACK IN TIME. I THINK ANYBODY WHO IS INTERESTED IN ALTERNATIVE POWER USES WOULD DO AS I DID WHEN SEEING THIS...ALL I COULD THINK OF WAS ONE WORD DUHHH! I HAD HOPE THAT THIS BOOK WOULD SHOW HUMAN POWERED STORAGE SYSTEMS THAT WOULD STORE POWER FOR LATER USE AND MAYBE SUPPLIMENT THAT STORAGE WITH SOLAR POWER. I THOUGHT THEY WOULD ALSO HAVE MORE TECH PROCESSES/PLANS IN THE BOOK TO BUILD THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS. THE BOOK GIVE YOU ALOT OF REFERECES TO OTHER BOOKS THEY USED INFO OUT OF AND THE WEBSITES IN WHICH YOU COULD GET THE PLANS FOR THE SYSTEMS THE THE BOOK CLAIMS THEY SHOW YOU THE ALTERNATIVES FOR. THE BOOK ALSO ONLY EXPLAINS HOW TO POWER SINGLE APPLIANCES AND AS I SAID NOT THE WHOLE HOME.. I LEARNED MY LESSON TAKING BOOKS AT FACE VALUE, IN THE FUTURE I WILL DO MORE RESEARCH BEFORE BUYING A BOOK OFF THE INTERNET.
A. VIALPANDO

This book is very interesting, but isn't very practical unless you have a dozen kids pedaling round the clock to charge up your batteries, or if you have a house big enough to accomodate all the separate bicycles needed for every pedal-powered appliance, or if you accidentally get tranported back in time to The Great Depression, or if you move to a 3rd world country, or just wait few years until America becomes a 3rd world country. My bets are on the latter, so I'll keep the book, just in case! :)