BOOKS: The off-grid community and the battle to live their way.
Off The Grid in America (Penguin, 2010)
How to Live Off-Grid UK (Bantam, 2008)
The UK administration’s plans for new eco-towns are increasingly threadbare, and Labour ministers are rowing back from earlier commitments. As reported in The London Times, I am therefore resigning from the committee which is supposedly advising the towns on their energy footprint. (more…)
The tornado-ravaged community of Greensburg will be featured on the launch of Planet Green TV this week. The town was given an eco-rebuild as part of a 13-part documentary series produced by Leonardo di Caprio.
The reality series “Eco-Town” chronicles the rebuild after a tornado flattened Greensburg — which is pretty well in the dead centre of the USA. By all accounts it is pretty tame stuff – Tragedy to Triumph….Greensburg Rising..etc….schmaltzy reprise of the tornado raging at 205 mph, spanning more than a mile and a half and killing 11 people…..happy folk celebrate the rise of the new roof….but of course the town ahs bveeb built with all sorts of energy saving features and that’s a good thing.
Residents won’t be able to view the series, since the city doesn’t have a cable service. The show premieres on Sunday at 8 p.m.
Di Caprio has had film crews in town since July 2007, following residents as they move from temporary trailers to new homes, covering city council meetings and shadowing families as they make the difficult decisions.
The story is told through the voices of the townspeople themselves.
The whole town will go to the Greensburg school gymnasium on Sunday for a Father’s Day barbecue and screening of the first episode.
Information from: The Wichita Eagle, www.kansas.com
Barak Obama is too good a politician to decline an endorsement from former Vice President Al Gore, yet he must have been tempted to say “thanks, but no thanks.”
Gore pledged Monday to do all he could to help Obama win the White House, but the best thing he could do is stay out of sight until December, preferably beyond.
Gore remained neutral as Obama and Hillary battled over the nomination. Because he held back last February, while Off-Grid and others called on him to endorse Barak, the fight went on longer than necessary, weakening the Democrats’ challenge to Sen John McCain this fall. (more…)
You will notice some changes in the appearance of my blog, I have been working this last week to learn how to customize the appearance (and other things), I know how to make web pages, I am fairly comfortable with HTML, but the blog code is a different animal, it’s similar in some ways, but the coding language is stricter and uses a lot of cascading style sheets (CSS), don’t worry if you have no idea what I am talking about, it really doesn’t matter. :)
The point is, I am working on improving the look of my blog and you will see some changes coming down the line, I work on a separate blog to tweak, test and learn so that I will not disrupt my main blog, and any mistakes will not appear here (I hope!).
Eeek, one mistake I just made, I lost all of my widgets, the things on the side of the page! I can’t seem to get them back, so I will go in and rebuild all of my widgets… in the words of that most wise of bears, Pooh, “Oh bother…” *sigh*
I hope you enjoy the new look and the upcoming changes I plan on making. Please feel free to leave comments, I appreciate the feedback, both positive and negative, if there is something that doesn’t look right to you or makes the blog harder to read or navigate, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Be sure to let me know which browser you are using, FireFox, Explorer… and anything else that might help, monitor type and size, Windows or Mac, and the version… if you don’t have all of this info, that’s ok, I still would like some feedback if you want to give it. Thanks! :)
Being tankless in heating your water is an easy, if somewhat costly, upgrade that you can see immediate benefits from. Costs can vary from about $150 for point of use water heater to household ones starting about $450 going up to $1000 or more for top of the line models. Point of use models install directly under the water fixture which also means less heat loss and you can convert your water heating system slowly one water fixture at a time. But since most houses have at least two sink and a tub you will already go over the cost of the cheapest whole house tankless system. On the plus the up front cost can be spread out over time, and for smaller places such as boats, RV’s, campers, etc. it might just be what you are looking for.
The average household spends $50 or more a month just to keep hot water at the ready. This means that the hot water is heated and then stored in it’s tank to wait for use. Just like anything else that id hot and left to sit heat loss happens and then it needs to be re-heated, which just starts the cycle over again. Once the water is used the cycle is again in place till that water is used, and so on. That is a lot of wasted energy you are paying for just to have the convenience of on demand hot water. At that hot water is finite since the average tank system holds about 40 galleons and tankless can supply an infinite supply. Chyanging over to a tankless system lets you use as little or as much hot water as you need without the worry over running out or heating more than needed.
The lifespan of a tankless water heater, 20+ years, is almost double that of a convential water heater, 8 to 12 years, Also a tankless system is serviceable while most tank water systems are not. Tankless systems also can be installed outside your home or in a fraction of the space vacated by your convetnional one. It’s almost like adding a small closet to your home of usable square footage.
The conventional water heater is only about 40% to 60% energy efficient do to the heat loss through the exhaust and the walls of the tank. While tankless are 60% efficient for the gas version and 99% efficient for the electric version. So for those of you who have or are looking to change to personal energy systems this is one less drain of your limited energy production without lossing the comfort of hot water on demand.
For those who use radiant heat, tankless systems can work for you too., They can be installed in RV’s boats,mobile homes, sheds, barns, etc. So the applications seem almost endless for anyplace you need/want on demand hot water production. Plus since there is no storage tank associated with this system you won’t need to worry about it freezing and bursting in frigid temperatures. So there will be no messy floods to clean up as you can have from leaking or broken tank water heater systems.
Venting for theses systems is also flexible as some can be vented horizontally and vertically, some can even be vented through existing chimneys. Most of the newer models also have computer-monitored safety devices with automatic water and gas valves to make them as safe as possible.
Payback for the additional cost of these tankless varieties is 3 to 7 years depending on usage and model bought. If you have a smaller household the payback will be seen faster as you will no longer be constantly re-heating unused hot water. For a larger household the convience of multi-showering, either in a row or at the same time, will be noticed right away. That means no more worrying about when the 40 galleons are used up, about 20 minuets, when you are all lined up in the morning to start your day.
For anyone desiring a better way to have hot water in their home look into these tankless water heater at your local hardware/home improvement store or research models on the net. The benefits definitely outweigh the higher price tag. In addition you are adding value to your home.
Robert Grant bought his first van as a weekend getaway and decided to make it my home out of laziness.
” got a job in an outdoor shop,” he told The Guardian. It was there that the idea of slipping away to the margins of society began to creep around my mind. When rent was due for the room in which I felt only fidgety and bored, my frustration helped these thoughts to flourish until I could see myself following the good times and the good weather, shaking sand from my shoes and waking up exactly where I wanted to be, in my own mobile kingdom. (more…)
At the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, the hubbub of 21st century noise recedes as smoothly as the Lexus hybrid SUV which carries visitors to their rooms, a collection of cottages nestling along redwood-lined cliffs overlooking the Pacific.
A half-day’s drive from Los Angeles, this is the face of high-end green luxury. The Travelgood web site reports on the hotel has been there for two decades, and mentions its next big change — a $1.8m project to take the whole complex completely off grid. (more…)
BANGOR, Mich. (AP) – Maynard Kaufman is looking for a dozen or more families who want to go off-grid in Michigan. He has launched an eco-village on his own land and is seeking investor/partners.
Kaufman always has been a step ahead of the environmental movement. In 1970 he helped start the Environmental Studies Program at Western Michigan University, and in 1976 developed the program’s homesteading curriculum.
Today he’s still leading the way.
Kaufman and his wife, Barbara Geisler, are trying to start an off-grid residential development a mile north of Bangor on family farmland.
The houses will be built on the model of Kaufman and Geisler’s own solar and wind-powered house erected in 2001. (more…)
The Daily Mail has revealed the “real energy crisis roaring down on Britain” as, within 7 years, the country will lose 40 per cent of all existing electricity-generating capacity.
The UK is about to see 17 major power stations forced to close, leaving a massive energy shortfall, says a report from respected writer Christopher Booker.
From as early as 2010, experts say Britain’s power stations cannot be guaranteed to provide a continuous supply, meaning the possibility of power cuts far worse than those which last week – largely unreported – blacked out half-a-million homes. (more…)
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license, which allows you to utilise all the information on this site for non-commercial purposes, providing you credit the information with the word 'off-grid.net', which should be written as one word and accompanied by a link to our web site.
Bollywood star’s off-grid home
Jewel spurns Discovery
The Simpsons to go off the grid for 500th episode
Brad Pitt to build waterfall-powered home
Glenn Beck goes off grid
Hey Wretha, I like the new look – it’s cleaner and easier to read. Nice job. (This is not to say I didn’t like the last look, now.) :oP
Karen
June 15, 2008 8:48 AM
Lookin’ good Wretha (and loads a lot faster too!)
June 15, 2008 10:05 AM
Wretha, I LOVE THE NEW LOOK. Keep up the GREAT work. Oh yea, still looking for a can for the water filter. I’ll keep ya posted on the progress, slow though it may be.
Chris
June 15, 2008 11:32 AM
Thanks Karen and Mayberry, I’m glad to hear that it loads up faster for you, that’s probably because I lost all of my widgets :(
That’s OK, I’ll be able to put them back in the following days.
Wretha
June 15, 2008 11:40 AM
Hi Scavenger, glad you like it, I have had quite a good time learning the ins and outs of editing and customizing this blog, now I just have to reinstall my widgets. :)
Let me know when you find something for your water filter/purifier, I am very interested in how it works for you.
Wretha
June 15, 2008 5:52 PM
I love it. I wish I was as talented. Dragon
June 16, 2008 12:31 AM
Thanks Dragon, I don’t know how much is talent and how much is just plain stubborn determination… when I decide to do or learn something, I usually figure out how to do it one way or another, like I said, stubborn determination! :)
BTW, it’s really not that hard, it took me about a week of searching and reading on line to learn what I needed to know, there are a lot of great blog tutorials out there that make it easy to learn about this stuff. I also made a test blog so I could experiment on it without disrupting my real blog. The hardest part was picking out the colors and where to use them.
Wretha
June 16, 2008 1:20 AM
Looks good, Wretha! I like it.
June 17, 2008 1:54 PM
looking good
June 17, 2008 10:12 PM
Wretha,
I liked the old look but the new look is pretty cool too. It loads super fast w/o the widgets. I will download it for dad next week. I’m sure he will like the changes too.
Alma
June 18, 2008 7:52 PM