Planet Mechanics

Meet Dick Strawbridge & Jem Stansfield – two eco-engineers who travel around the U.K. & Europe, using ingenuity, resourcefulness & humour to help people lower their energy consumption.

Dick Strawbridge and Jem Stansfield bring their unique brand of eco-engineering to a farm in Devon in southwest England.

In Water War, Dick and Jem must make England’s most remote youth hostel completely energy self-sufficient. With the only reliable energy source miles away, the pair must use only the natural resources found in the valley to help power this hostel. But where will Dick and Jem find enough energy to generate enough electricity to keep the hostel up and running? Setting out with two very different game plans, Dick looks to generate energy from a local stream while Jem searches for enough wind power to create a high-powered wind turbine. Jem must create wind turbine blades that are each just over one metre long, and perfectly aerodynamic and identical. With Jem’s wind turbine almost complete, Dick must haul 27 reels of heavy-duty fire hose up the mountain to trap power from a waterfall that is nearly one kilometre away from the hostel. By week’s end, they have built a fully functioning and de-mountable Wind Turbine – and a compact Cross Flow Water Turbine. But, will either eco-friendly solution generate enough electricity to keep the Black Sail hostel open?

In an area known as the ‘frying pan of Spain’, Dick and Jem head to Andalucía in their eco-friendly workshop to help one farmer pump enough water from his well to sustain his cattle. Dick and Jem devise radically different solutions to farmer Jesus’ water problem – Dick harnesses wind power using a traditional windmill pump while Jem pushes his inventive boundaries to the limit with a Stirling engine. But, ambitious Jem may have bitten off more than he can chew, by also volunteering to build a massive solar cooker to make enough paella for an entire crowd at the annual Andalucían festival. While Dick sails along creating his windmill, Jem struggles to pull together a Stirling engine, which uses temperature differences inside a cylinder to move a piston, which can then be used to power machinery – in Jem’s case working a pump to draw water from the well. Will Jem’s ingenuity pay off or will the tried and true windmill pump win out? And, more importantly, can either of these two engineers cook well enough to please the audience with their traditional Spanish paella?

Invited by former Olympic sailor Alberto Sonino, Dick and Jem travel to Venice, Italy, to help save one of the world’s most beautiful cities from the damaging effect of boat pollution. With 40,000 boats commuting around Venice, exhaust from Europe’s largest car-free zone mixes with water and creates an acid that is eroding away the historic buildings’ precious facades. With a stunning U.S. $30,000 boat provided by Alberto, Dick and Jem get to work on creating an electric-powered motor. To power the engine using a clean power resource, Dick and Jem outfit the water taxi with solar panels that re-charge the motor’s batteries. To test the design, Alberto creates a marathon course that will take at least two hours, encountering open water, bridges, tight canals, traffic and a meeting with the head of Venice’s waterways. Satisfied with the result, Dick and Jem next challenge themselves to build an electric speed boat, using a specialized go-kart motor. Will this boat sink or swim?

Dick Strawbridge and Jem Stansfield bring their eco-engineering talents to County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland in an attempt to harness the power of the ocean waves. It has been calculated that the sea around Ireland could contain enough wave energy to supply over eighteen times the country's entire electrical demand; however, the destructive nature of waves make them a difficult energy source to tap. Taking on the Atlantic Ocean, Dick and Jem want to generate green electricity for Irish surfers Keith and Rosy who tour the coast looking for the best waves in their travel trailer, the 'surf shack'. With a few days and some simple resources, Dick and Jem work with the surfers on a test project that will put the waves to work. Using practical experiments and demonstrations, the Planet Mechanics devise a huge wave energy converter with some surplus sewer pipe and steel and bolt it to a concrete pier. Can the wave converter survive the ravages of the sea? And can it generate electricity required to power the 'surf shack'?