Americans taking themselves off the grid | Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

Americans taking themselves off the grid
by VEG-HEAD on AUGUST 14, 2010 - 1 Comment in SELF-SUFFICIENCY

American Homesteaders

Two very different projects reported this weekend show how, everywhere you look, ordinary Americans are building their off-grid future.

In Jasper, Georgia, the Pickens County Progress (which is more used to covering bear sightings and armed robberies) reports on Vered Kleinberger’s “Green Building Adventure.” Executive Assistant Kleinberger is building a small, downtown off-grid show home, with 90% upcycled construction materials – and locals are queuing to take a look around.

Deseret Mountain News reports on an altogether larger enterprise – a new off-grid community being built outside Spring City, Utah.

Safe Haven Village will allow members to really live independently from a society they say is broken.

The community buildings will incorporate sustainable techniques. Whether it’s collecting rainwater, building greenhouses or using solar energy, organsiers hopes to turn the wild property into a place where people can come to practice total self-sustainability.

“I don’t have to go out there and buy stuff from Walmart to keep my life going really nicely,” said one. “I can live here. My children’s children’s children can live here on what this land can produce on a perpetual basis.”

The structures being built are modest and rough, with buildings each smaller than 200 square feet. So far, Safe Haven has outlined a main community area and started construction on a kitchen, storage room and shed. One structure’s walls are made of tubes filled with sand. Another is carved into a hill, and another is made from clay mixed with hay.

Each building serves as a teaching ground for anyone wanting to see multiple building techniques for sustainable houses — all in the same place.

“The more people that know how to do it, the more people that are awake and know it’s possible, the more we can pressure our institutions to change the rules,” said Renee Shaw, part of the Safe Haven group.

But sustainable building isn’t necessarily cheaper, Sterling Allan said.

“It’s extremely labor intensive and slow,” he said. “What I like about it is that it’s honest.”

Modern building methods, on the other hand, “use slave labor and rape the earth,” he said.

Challenging building codes that weren’t meant to support sustainable practices has been a learning experience for the Safe Haven community.

“People like me research the building codes and find out how to do things the right way,” he said. “We can build all these legally.”

The system isn’t meant to support sustainable living practices, he said. Even freely collecting rainwater wasn’t possible until July 1 under Utah law.

Now, Safe Haven residents will have to convince state and county officials that filtering the water with sand and charcoal is acceptable.

The Allans and Torgersen are hoping to change the way legislators and Americans think about modern life and what is sustainable.

Deseret Mountain News reports on an altogether larger enterprise – a new off-grid community being built outside Spring City, Utah.
Safe Haven Village will allow members to really live independently from a society they say is broken.
The community buildings will incorporate sustainable techniques. Whether it’s collecting rainwater, building greenhouses or using solar energy, organsiers hopes to turn the wild property into a place where people can come to practice total self-sustainability.
“I don’t have to go out there and buy stuff from Walmart to keep my life going really nicely,” said one. “I can live here. My children’s children’s children can live here on what this land can produce on a perpetual basis.”
The structures being built are modest and rough, with buildings each smaller than 200 square feet. So far, Safe Haven has outlined a main community area and started construction on a kitchen, storage room and shed. One structure’s walls are made of tubes filled with sand. Another is carved into a hill, and another is made from clay mixed with hay.
Each building serves as a teaching ground for anyone wanting to see multiple building techniques for sustainable houses — all in the same place.
“The more people that know how to do it, the more people that are awake and know it’s possible, the more we can pressure our institutions to change the rules,” said Renee Shaw, part of the Safe Haven group.
But sustainable building isn’t necessarily cheaper, Sterling Allan said.
“It’s extremely labor intensive and slow,” he said. “What I like about it is that it’s honest.”
Modern building methods, on the other hand, “use slave labor and rape the earth,” he said.
Challenging building codes that weren’t meant to support sustainable practices has been a learning experience for the Safe Haven community.
“People like me research the building codes and find out how to do things the right way,” he said. “We can build all these legally.”
The system isn’t meant to support sustainable living practices, he said. Even freely collecting rainwater wasn’t possible until July 1 under Utah law.
Now, Safe Haven residents will have to convince state and county officials that filtering the water with sand and charcoal is acceptable.
The Allans and Torgersen are hoping to change the way legislators and Americans think about modern life and what is sustainable.

Vered Kleinberger is also building off-grid. The seed for the Green Building Adventure sprouted years ago, said Kleinberger,32.

“I wanted to pull out the trailer next door and build a bigger classroom space and meeting space,” she said. “I’ve been running the non-profit Educational Excursions out of the house for the last five years and it’s a family house, so it’s crammed full of other people’s stuff. There are no bedrooms in there anymore.”

And it’s true. The inside rooms, the porch and the small driveway are completely packed .

Initially Kleinberger intended on constructing a building four times the size of the one she’s building now, but after her mother decided to move back into the family home the timeframe was quickly ratcheted up.

“I had to get all this stuff out of the house much sooner than I thought so I decided to build this smaller building first which is where I’m going to store everything and put an Educational Excursions office upstairs,” Kleinberger said.

“I wanted this to be an example of what we are going to do next door. That’s a big project and I didn’t realize how big a project until this. That’s why I’m so glad this happened. Now I have an idea of what I’m getting myself into. So this will be Phase I and that will be Phase II.“

The hunt

Kleinberger began her hunt for used and reclaimed materials on Craigslist, which she says has proved to be an invaluable source.

“Getting the materials has been an interesting adventure and Craigslist has been so helpful,” she said. “I’ve met people from all over Georgia and been places I probably would have never been to.”

After some plinking around Kleinberger found used oak barn wood in Dallas, cedar decking from Gainesville and 100-year old heart pinewood in Cabbage Town, all of which she hauled back home in a trailer attached to her old orange veggie-powered Mercedes-Benz.

Kleinberger also procured metal-fortified wood beams from her brother’s biodiesel-conversion shop in Marietta.

“Then I was like, I’ve got material from Atlanta, I’ve got material from Cape Springs, but I really need a piece of Pickens in this building if it’s going to be here in Pickens County. “

So she found an old barn on the corner of Harmony School Road and Refuge Road and put out a call for help. The goal was to deconstruct the entire barn in one day’s time.

“Everybody thought I was crazy, and honestly I didn’t really know if we could do it but we got it down in one day,” she said. “And it’s funny because there are things like pulling nails that you never think about. You think, yeah, let’s recycle wood, but that’s a lot of nails to pull.

“And now I’m so glad that we took the barn down because a lot of the lumber I got other places didn’t have nails it made me really appreciate what I had been getting from other people. It’s not just bulldozing structures over and dumping it in the ground.”

The construction

Kleinberger says building with reused and recycled materials turns the construction process on its head. You can have a general sketch of what you want, but with materials coming in a la carte’ building becomes more of a reactionary process.

“I’m not a builder,” she said. “I mean, I have a picture in my head but most of what I have in my head isn’t physically possible. But more than that, instead of coming up with a plan and buying the materials to fit that plan, here we are getting the materials and we have a general plan and you have to build to the materials that you have.”

So Kleinberger has been working closely with local builder David Garner to get the materials she has on-hand to work with the general outline of what she visualized.

“He didn’t realize what he was getting himself into because I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into,” Kleinberger said, who has been swinging hammers and sawing boards on the project since day one. “But he’s been great about the whole thing. He’s been a pleasure to work with.”

But even with all the unconventional methods and materials, such as the diagonal sheathing rather than the OSB or particle board used in most modern construction, the newspaper she’s using to hide the insulation, the interior doors she’ll be hanging on runners to cover shelves and the patchwork of heavy-gauge metal roofing, Kleinberger’s building is all by the book.

“We’re building this all to code,” she said. “My permit says it’s a storage building so that changes things a little, which is why I’m able to build things the way I am.”

Vered Kleinberger is also building off-grid.

The seed for the Green Building Adventure sprouted years ago, said Kleinberger.

And it’s true. The inside rooms, the porch and the small driveway are completely packed .

The hunt