Selfsufficientish.com

I keep getting ideas for products and would like them to see the light of day one day but I know I will never get around to making them. So from now on I will post my ideas here and would like to encourage others to do the same.

So my first is -

Kettles that hang on radiators. This would be a long thin kettle which clips onto the radiator. You would fill it up in the morning and the rest of the day you would have warm or hot drinking water without having to heat a kettle.

So anyone else got any ideas?

'Kitty snipper'

just like one of those catflaps that won't let a cat in without a magnetic collar.

except this one lets them all in, but if they don't have the collar a guillotine blade cuts them in half. The prototype's working pretty well but I haven't solved the mess issue yet

That's a difficult one to follow Hedgewizard I thought about a flat, rectangular water butt. Sort of 9inch thick x 6 foot high x 6 foot wide. Something that wouldn't bulge out when full of water but could fit behind a shed.

I am working on a beer glass that never empties. No success yet, will try again tonight and every night until I solve this one

A new executive toy - it's a small, rectangular piece of plastic which has PTO printed on both sides.

Mike

MKG wrote:A new executive toy - it's a small, rectangular piece of plastic which has PTO printed on both sides.

Mike

If you made it out of cardboard instead of plastic Mike, it would be ecological (if sourced from sustainable forests) and also have built in obsolescence.

Yeah - but it wouldn't last two seco... .... hang on. What a wonderful idea, Tony.

Mike

's been done though. 'S called a beer mat!

hedgewizard wrote:'s been done though. 'S called a beer mat!

I was watching a program a few years ago about monkeys in south Africa that lived by a golf course. When the irrigation hoses
were being used the monkeys would take a wide birth and take a giant leap to cross them having a natural fear of things snake
like. So i invented the scare monkey. 3' length of hose on a pole, had one on my allotment for several years now and have not seen a single monkey!
(whilst talking to the plot holders next to mine, i notice them looking out of the corner of their eye at it-not knowing what it is or perhaps it works on more than monkeys )

I just wanted to make it clear this was a real thing I tried to market ( not a joke ) the principle was that there might be a few domestic sales but if I could get into the PETS WELCOME market not only could I sell to the hotel but that may be an added sale to the hotel guests. Unfortunately the amount of fabric and being waterproof and rip-stop as well as elastication made it a bit expensive manufacturing costs alone were £15 back in 2000 so how many I would have had to "give" to oil the wheels made it a very expensive start up business.
Anyone want to buy a job lot ? P.s. sorry about the photo it is really old and I had tried to "fix" the red eye (badly)

Having just come back from holiday, how about toilet roll with the perforations in a nice V shape? Save some poor maid having to fold the first sheet into a V each day.

chilitony wrote:I was watching a program a few years ago about monkeys in south Africa that lived by a golf course. When the irrigation hoses
were being used the monkeys would take a wide birth and take a giant leap to cross them having a natural fear of things snakelike.

On a similar note, when I was an archaeologist back in 1990 I had to survey a field with a load of cows in it, big cows with big horns too. I noticed that they shied away from the measuring tape and I figured that to them it looked like an electric fence. So I surrounded my theodolite with a circle of masking tape. Hey presto no nosy cows.

Not really an invention...but we have no hot water in our barn in Portugal only what we heat with the woodburner. It is lit most evenings in Nov and also when it is cold in the morning. Obviously the pan gets cold fairly fast. So we made this giant "cosy" out of offcuts of insulation. We put the pan of hot water on a wooden slab when we go to bed or once the fire is out and cover it..keeps the water hot for several hours. Found that the cast iron woodburner took the heat from the pan if we left it on the stove! Dont think there will ever be a market for the cosy, but maybe someone else might use the idea. If my gran was still alive, she would have knitted me one!

Sorry, tried to make files a bit smaller and seem to have succeeded too well !

Carltonian Man wrote:That's a difficult one to follow Hedgewizard I thought about a flat, rectangular water butt. Sort of 9inch thick x 6 foot high x 6 foot wide. Something that wouldn't bulge out when full of water but could fit behind a shed.

If you were a millionaire, you could try these http://www.rainwaterharvesting.co.uk/pr ... Hog-540-GK but at over a grand for three, they're a bit steep.

Zoe