I use backuppc, but find that in order to restore one has to be or know the admin user password. There appears to be no way to open this up to users to directly see and restore from the file tree that it manages.....
Huh? No. Users can do their own restores from the web interface without root access. I think you need to go back and read the fine manual a bit more :-) There is definitely a way to set up users on there though. I have a fair bit of experience with BackupPC (great software)