One of the most important aspects of this is that it gets people thinking in terms of what it takes to solve their problems, rather than strictly about the money.

I've been working with a community land trust. Houses take material, labor, and lots of planning to build. The easiest way to access that, of course, is with loads of money. But ultimately you can get it done with much much less money if you identify what you can actually do and then go do it yourselves.

They know what they did.

I didn't actually weigh them, but the bigger two were maybe a half pound each.

Good to know. I'm not really sure what happened there. The post button was grayed out until I added an image. Next time I'll try to back out of the post and restart.

Thanks! That site is super helpful.

It seems like most of the balcony solar-like set ups would be more pre-made than I'm after. Really I just want a little project that I can learn about solar on and gives me something useful at the end of it. Maybe a direct drive attic vent fan would be more my speed at this point. I'm also open to other ideas if someone has a good beginner project.