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October 2012

Ausgrid rip-off

SYDNEY, 29 Oct – POWER USERS IN AUSTRALIA paid for a $40 million substation as part of $1 billion spent on gold-plating electricity infrastructure — and it’s not even hooked up to the grid.

State-owned energy company Ausgrid spent the cash in breach of national electricity guidelines, with the costs passed on to consumers as higher network charges on their quarterly power bills.

The company is planning to spend another $1 billion on pointless upgrades to poles and wires over the next two years, potentially adding a further $502 to the annual family power bill, according to the national regulator.

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Water off-grid

Water. It’s necessary for life, and it’s pretty handy to have around. Drinking, cooking and cleaning, you need water. This will be a 2 part article, the first part discussing how we have water living off-grid (ie with no city water), the second part will discuss how to make sure you have water if you are living in town but services get interrupted, that will be also part of the “Prepping on a Budget” series.

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Prepping on a budget, part 3 – food storage and security

 

 

Now that you have decided to start putting aside some food, you might be thinking “Where am I going to keep all of this food and other stuff?” Hopefully you have lots of extra space, an extra bedroom, or a big kitchen with a pantry and lots of cabinets…  or if you are like many of us, space is at a premium and you will have to be creative about how and where you store your preps.

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Food

Light my Fire-knife

Isn’t it great that just one utensil could provide your needs for cooking and eating and heating?

Prepare for winter by mastering the art of fire-making with the Sandvik Swedish FireKnife. To use this necessary addition to your bug out bag (or just your regular camping gear), strike the back of the knife against the included fire steel for a shower of sparks.

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Community

Keeping it real – keeping it warm

Fall is here, that means winter is just around the proverbial corner. For most of us, that means having to keep our homes warm in some manner. For us, that means using our wood burning stove that PB designed and built himself when we lived back in the city and had access to a friend’s metal shop. It’s all made out of 3/16 plate steel with schedule 40 steel pipe for the flue (we aren’t afraid of flue fires). He poured about an inch and a half of refractory cement in the bottom. It serves double duty when I want to cook something on top of it, it makes great tortillas and pizza.  The whole thing weighs in at around 200 pounds, I am still amazed at the fact that PB managed to get it inside the skycastle without any help, up to the second floor (our living space) that didn’t have steps yet, we used a ladder to get in and out.

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People

Off-Grid Governor

MARYSVILLE, Mont. (AP) – Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer is proud of his off-the-grid getaway. A day spent with Schweitzer riding four-wheelers and talking politics makes it easy to understand why he’s one of the most unusual – and most effective – governors in the country.

The former scientist and mint farmer built its spring-fed fishing ponds, rigged the plumbing system, designed the rudimentary battery-and-solar-powered panel for the log cabin 40 miles from Helena. It has no cellphone service.

At his ranch – and anywhere else – Schweitzer, a popular Democrat in a conservative state, never misses a chance to leave a lasting, even outlandish, impression. “I’m well-armed,” says Schweitzer, who hangs a gun on his office wall despite a gun ban in the Capitol.

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Prepping on a budget, part 2 – book review

While scouring the internet looking for ways to be more self sufficient, I ran across a great (new to me) author, her name is Susan Gregersen. As I dug deeper about Susan, one of the things that really interested me was her very down to earth nature, she writes using everyday language, nothing pretentious here. If you have lots of money to prep with, then this book isn’t for you, but if you are on a tight to impossible budget, like most of us are, then this will be a great book for you.

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Energy

Manage your own power station

Useful article on producer.com which explains the math of power consumption – what is a kilowatt hour exactly? And goes through a checklist of energy-consumption behavior you will want to change when you begin to live off-grid.

Electrical consumption must be reduced by transferring major heating loads to other sources of energy. Electrical clothes dryers and water heaters can be replaced by gas-powered units. Hot water heating can also be done with solar thermal systems or be fired by gas or wood. Your building’s energy efficiency, passive solar collection and natural indoor lighting become much more important when trying to get off the grid.


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Prepping on a budget, part 1 – food

With prices on everything going up and our earnings going down, many of us are living on the edge, some of us are only one paycheck away from being homeless. Right now, food and supplies for everyday living is readily available, you can walk into any store and find the shelves stocked with food. But you must realize those shelves can be empty in just a matter of hours in any kind of major emergency. These types of emergencies can be on a global scale, solar flares, asteroid or comets impacting the earth, to regional problems such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, to very local problems, such as a car hitting a power pole knocking out the power for your entire neighborhood… even down to a very personal crisis, like losing your job, being injured and not being able to work, having an unexpected bill. What can you do to help ensure that you will survive?

As I mentioned, grocery stores have stocks of food, right now, but that could change in a heartbeat. It used to be that grocery stores had larger warehouse areas in the back of the store, they received fewer but larger shipments. Now, most stores have at best, a 3 day supply of food in the store, including the stock room in back. They receive multiple shipments a week, but ultimately receive less stocks of food from each one. If anything were to happen to the transportation of these foods, trucks, or trains, or airplanes or ships, then your grocery store will run out of food within about 3 days, that’s IF there isn’t a panic run on food, then you have hours at best. If something happened and you could not leave your home, starting right now, today, how long would it be before you started running out of food? How long before you would be in real trouble? A few days? A week? A couple of weeks? A month?

Today I’ll talk about how to prep in the area of food, even if you are on the tightest of budgets. If you say to me that you cannot afford to put back extra food for emergencies, I will tell you that is precisely WHY you need to do it. If you have extra food, even as little as an extra 2 weeks to a month’s worth of food, then in a financial emergency, such as an unexpected bill, or job loss, you will not have to choose between buying groceries and paying your rent or mortgage.

First you need to decide how much extra you can spend, if you do not have a budget written down, it’s time to do it and see just where your money goes, you might be surprised as to how much waste happens a few dollars here and a few dollars there. I know there are ways you can …

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Mobile

Solar powered bicycle? Beware scam artists

A group of scam artists have launched a web site selling a solar powered bicycle. But the only thing it will end up powering is their bank account.

Be careful – they will take your money, a lot of it, and deliver a bike, but it will not be solar powered in any sense that you or I recognise. And it will not go faster or longer than you can go under your own power.

Solar powered bikes have intruiged inventors for decades now, but have you ever wondered why there are none on the market?

Its the battery stupid

Bikes are incredibly ergonomic. You push the pedals, this turns the gears and the power from your legs is amplified many times over into the speed of the wheels. The main thing that slows you down (apart from your own weight of course)? The weight of the bike.

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Self-Sufficiency

Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid

Even as we own more and more gadgets, and spend increasing amounts of time using them, the average energy consumption in American homes has dropped steadily over the past 30 years thanks to factors like more efficient appliances, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But for some, a little efficiency isn’t enough. “Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid” by Sheri Koones ($15.95) profiles more than 30 prefabricated homes that use minimal energy. The name is a taken from a BC company that actually makes prefab eco-homes.

They have features like heavily insulated walls, wastewater-recovery systems and passive heating; one home has a wind turbine on the roof. Prefabrication minimizes waste

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Creepy TV Show Alert

Watch out for dishonest claims from Production company Bullseye TV, makers of tawdry shows like “I secretly Hate you.”

They have just been commissioned to make a one-off doc called Preppers UK: Surviving Armageddon, for National Geographic Channel UK. It is a Documentary spin off of US hit Doomsday Preppers, focused on British survivalists.

They will no doubt be telling people it is a serious look at this important movement, but in our opinion they will portray anyone foolish enough to agree to take part as a demented survivalist.

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