Category Archives: 5 Gallon Bucket Uses

Rocket Stove

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five gallon bucket rocket stove

If you haven’t heard of rocket stove technology yet, I encourage you to look into it and take it seriously.

Unlike traditional wood stoves, rocket stoves operate on a double burning principal, where first the wood is burned, then the smoke is burned in a secondary chamber. This has the effect of eliminating smoke almost completely, and requiring far less fuel than a conventional woodstove. Also, rocket stoves are designed to be so simple than anyone can make one with a few standard tools in an afternoon.

This particular rocket stove design (there are many) uses a metal five gallon bucket. I will be building one of these for myself as soon as I can find a source for metal five gallon buckets, which are harder to find than the plastic variety.

See more pictures and plans to build your own on RootSimple.com

Hydroelectric Generator

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This is by far the most technically advanced innovation I’ve found for a five gallon bucket so far. Sam Redfield developed this design to provide a source of electricity that can be built cheap and hooked up to any source of flowing water – including irrigation systems, creeks and streams, or even sewage systems.

If you are very mechanically capable, you can download the full 35 page design manual and attempt to build your own five gallon hydroelectric power plant.

The following video shows some of the assembly, as well as the generator in action.

Wishing Well

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Here’s an idea I discovered on BBC’s “Tightwads” documentary about extremely frugal people. This particular gentleman put a five gallon bucket at the end of his garden with a sign labelling it “Ye Olde Wishing Well.” On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, passers-by would throw money into the bucket, which he would collect on Monday.

If you want to watch the entire documentary, here is a link to a playlist of it on Youtube.

Composting Toilet

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expensive composting toiletSelf-contained composting toilets are gaining popularity very quickly as a much cheaper and more sustainable solution to human waste management than a septic field or a sewer hookup.

Commercial composting toilets are very expensive, up to $20,000 for a unit powerful enough for an entire family. Good news though, there are clever ways to compost human manure much cheaper.

One of the best known ways of processing your own human waste is the humanure system, which is laid out in great detail in the Humanure Handbook, an absolutely excellent manual that I highly recommend to anyone interested in taking their personal nutrient cycle into their own hands.

The humanure system uses simple five gallon buckets, lots of sawdust, and outdoor pallet compost bins to create a safe, healthy, odour-free system of human waste processing. Waste is deposited in a five gallon bucket (I would highly recommend lining the bucket with newspaper before-hand) and covered with sawdust after the deposit has been made. Once the bucket is full, it is carried outside to the pallet composters and dumped to allow to compost for at least a year.

 

Left: Simple five gallon bucket toilet. This one comes with enzyme packets which will presumably aid in the composting speed of human waste.

See more information on this particular toilet system.