Posts from — August 2007

Mel’s Costa Rica welcome

Mel Gibson is about to head off-grid on a remote $12m, 400 acre ranch in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, 300 miles from capital, San Jose. Gibson, who achieved Hollywood stardom playing a detective in the Lethal Weapon series, is still serving probation following his arrest for drinkdriving, during which he unleashed an anti-Semitic tirade on a policewoman

“Mel loves the country, ” a source told the London Express newspaper. “He’s planning to live there for much of the year.” (more…)

Dunster: he’s already there

Q: What is a zero carbon home? A: One which emits no carbon.
If you live off-grid then you are likely to be living a zero-carbon life. If you are trying to find a way to reduce your carbon, think about making yourself “off-grid ready,” i.e. having all you need to go off-grid if you had to.

Western governments plan to make all new homes zero carbon by 2016 which means they will be bringing tax breaks in and changing zoning/planning policy to encourage it .

Architect Bill Dunster recently showed off his own home in Hamton for Best Life magazine. Here are five steps you can take to reach the goal long before 2016. (more…)

Traditional values – self-reliance

If you’re the type of person who lives way off grid, and/or would love a machine shop but just don’t have the cash, here’s a plan to help you out…
Multimachine! group to the rescue! Their site is packed-full of all the plans you might need to build a complete machine shop. Even better, one model uses a car’s engine block as a main component!

Why would you need a machine shop? Even a muscle-bound dyke like me could live a happy life, off-grid, without ever seeing a lathe or precision drill. But these things are often necessary to maintain the tools and machines that help us live. Here’s what a multi-machine might be good for: (more…)

Even Apples may turn green

You might think the very idea of green gadgets is self defeating. After all its just more consumption, right?

Wrong

The best kind of green gadgets – energy saving, built to last, perhaps made by well paid third world artisans — can do huge good and be value for money at the same time. (more…)

Buy it now

The Off-Grid web site is serialising Nick Rosen’s book, How to Live Off-grid: Journeys Outside the System In this excerpt Nick visits an off-grid community in Devon which is fighting a planning permission battle – on behalf of all of us – for the right to buy some land and build off-grid, low-impact houses. The public enquiry has just finished and the residents of the Benders are awaiting the fateful decision later this year. Now read on.

Land Matters: a question of permission

I contacted the Land Matters commune in Allaleigh, Devon, via an activist group that helps off-gridders and others win planning permission for their living spaces. I spoke to Charlotte, one of the main organisers, (more…)

More water please

NEWS STORY: Africa’s third longest river, the Niger, is to be the focus of one of the most ambitious water management programmes ever undertaken on the vast continent. ANOTHER NEWS STORY: US bottled water sales are growing nearly 10 percent annually — and the trash from tossed containers climbing just as quickly — as the clamour for Americans to go back to drinking tap water rises.

WHAT DO THESE STORIES HAVE IN COMMON? They recognise the importance of water as a source of life, and they are about the politics of water – the water haves and have nots. (more…)

Amy: off-grid therapy

Amy Winehouse couldn’t take it but others have found hope across the causeway. A bleak island off the Essex coast is becoming the celebrity rehab clinic of choice.

Osea Island seems an unlikely place of refuge. It rises from the sea off the Essex coast, cut off from the land apart from an ancient stone causeway that uncovers for an hour or so at each low tide. The narrow link looks daunting, with deep water on each side, and the glistening rocks lend a forbidding air to the scene.

Hidden inside the woods that cover the island is a medieval village and, nearby, a red-brick manor with its own power and water supply. There are no signs to reveal it is in fact a clinic called The Causeway, a place little known outside the exclusive circles of the rich and famous. This was where Amy Winehouse came for treatment after her collapse following an overdose of drinks and drugs. (more…)

Get to the source

BusinessWeek has reported on the hidden problems with solar energy and concluded that power consumption should be as close as possible to the point of production:
Even the most advanced photovoltaic solar panels convert just 20% of the available sunlight to electricity. The resulting direct current [DC] then must undergo conversion to alternating current [AC], losing another 20%. If that AC goes on to light an incandescent bulb, which is only 5% efficient, you end up using a fraction of 1% of the original sunlight as room light. [Even switching to compact florescent bulbs, which are 15% efficient, makes little difference in overall energy efficiency.] But if you were to simply leave sunlight as light — via proper skylights, window orientation, and louvers — nearly 80% of the light ends up as illumination. (more…)

…and if you are tired of walking

Bedouin Paths, an ethical tourism company based in London, is launching quality hiking tours in Sinai, Egypt. With a sustainable future and the local community in mind, Bedouin Paths will be dedicating a large percentage of the profit from its trips to fund English classes for Bedouin children and develop the Wadi huts in the mountains. The hikes begin in early October. (more…)