Kees Kramer, a cabinet maker in Bantry, Ireland, rigged up this door closer with a water-filled bottle. A piece of plastic clothesline cord runs from an eyehook at the top left of the door to an eyehook shown at top right on the jamb. Push the door open and the bottle goes up; leave the door open and the ball goes down, and it closes automatically. Vary the amount of water in the bottle to get the right weight. (This is the same principle that Lloyd House uses to lift his boat out of the water in British Columbia, as shown in Builders of the Pacific Coast.)
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
Kees Kramer, a cabinet maker in Bantry, Ireland, rigged up this door closer with a water-filled bottle. A piece of plastic clothesline cord runs from an eyehook at the top left of the door to an eyehook shown at top right on the jamb. Push the door open and the bottle goes up; leave the door open and the ball goes down, and it closes automatically. Vary the amount of water in the bottle to get the right weight. (This is the same principle that Lloyd House uses to lift his boat out of the water in British Columbia, as shown in Builders of the Pacific Coast.)