Local inventor in national DIY contest

Bailey’s Crossroads inventor Carlos Villamar’s design for a sustainable greenhouse is in the running for a national competition hosted by Make magazine.

Villamar has moved up to second place in his group in the DIY Hero contest. The public can vote for him here. Voting ends 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 14.

Group winners will move on to the quarter-finals, and those winners could get into the semifinals. The contest ends May 5.

The top winner will receive $25,000 and be featured in Make magazine.

The greenhouse Villamar invented can grow plants, fish, and mushrooms. It provides a source of food for people in extreme conditions, such as deserts and tundra. It can even be dropped out of an airplane to provide humanitarian aid in remote areas. It runs on passive solar energy.

Villamar uses the greenhouse he built in his backyard eight years ago to grow microgreens, other vegetables, and oyster, lion’s mane, and wine cap mushrooms. It has a tank with goldfish and catfish that produce nitrates to feed the plants.

One of his greenhouse designs with solar panels can even generate enough electricity to run a house. Another design uses saltwater to create steam to sustain the fish and plants.

Because the greenhouse is suited to arid regions, Villamar says, it could be especially useful as the earth gets drier due to climate change.

Villamar, a patent attorney specializing in electrical engineering, has seven patents on his greenhouse design.

If he wins the DIY competition, he would use the $25,000 to build a commercial prototype.