iN VIDEO: How to build your own e-bike plow

Philip Marciniak may build e-bikes but he’s not planning to go into business building and selling snow plows for them.

But he’s keen on seeing what others can do with his innovative bike plow and has posted a video on how he built it on his Sustainawave.com website.

“My plan for the bike plow going forward is I’m just going to show how people can build their own,” Marciniak told iNFOnews.ca from his home in Saanich on Vancouver Island.

“I essentially built it with scrap I had lying around. It’s not an expensive piece of equipment to build and, if people want to make their own, that’s great," he said. "If people are inspired to do some business with it, hey that’s fine too.

"Maybe people will have improvements. Maybe someone will figure out a better edge or some kind of better attachment system. I’d be curious to see where people take it. Just the idea of people building their own and clearing bike lanes or sidewalks in their community, that’s enough for me. That would bring me a lot of joy, for sure.”

He made his first, flat exit, snow plow last winter.

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Then he got to looking at the 200 litre plastic rain barrels he uses to water his garden.

“I was looking at it one day after the snowfall and I got this idea – if I cut a quarter of it out it would, maybe, have just the right shape to work as a shovel scoop,” Marciniak said.

He built a wooden frame out of scrap lumber and fit it on his cargo e-bike.

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“I basically screwed it all together and bolted it on to the bike and gave it a shot,” he said. “Right off the bat it worked surprisingly well.”

He does caution that he doesn’t know how it would work on other e-bikes, so anyone trying to copy his design might want to start off wearing some body armour or, at least, a full-face helmet.

“I was worried about it catching an edge and sending me over the handlebars,” Marciniak said. “But the plastic has enough give and flexibility and the edge sits a couple of inches below the wood frame so it’s got a bit of give to it so if it really catches an edge, it just sort of skips up and over it and I’m on way.”

He went out the other night to test the new design by plowing around his Saanich neighbourhood.

After a bit he decided he was hungry so he zipped into downtown Victoria along the Galloping Goose pathway for some Vietnamese take-out then plowed his way back home, stopping to chat with pedestrians and cyclists along the way.

On the e-bike he figures he can probably plow up to six inches of fresh, light snow.

“If it’s over six inches you probably would have a hard time,” Marciniak said. “It’s the sort of thing you want to catch as it’s falling. Plowing two or three inches, you can hit it and it feels like it’s almost not there. With the electric power you can cruise along at 20 km/h with a couple of inches of snow and it just throws it out the side like it’s not even there.”

One important trick is to deflate the tires to 15-20 psi to give better traction. Ice tires also help.

Marciniak uses his cargo bike for his appliance service work and got frustrated by the, now, all too frequent snowfalls in the Victoria area.

About two years ago he formed his own company, Sustainawave, where he converts peddle bikes to electric for his customers or builds new ones.

He specializes in cargo bikes using all Canadian parts that feature “regenerative” braking systems. These are similar to brakes used on electric cars that help recharge the batteries when applied.

To see more about Sustainawave and the bike plow, go here.

READ MORE: New car-free housing in Victoria helps save money and the planet

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