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February 2013

Going off-grid before we went off-grid

Before we moved to our off-grid home, long before, we had begun purchasing the things we would need to live off-grid. This meant solar panels, inverters, charge controllers, lots of wire and much of the other things we would need. Buying these things before we were ready to move meant we could bargain hunt, we could find deals on used items (Craigslist is your friend!) and none of this hit us too hard in the pocketbook.

Little did I know that we would be forced to put our off-grid goodies to the test before we moved off-grid.

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Taking care of your feet

Most of us give little thought to our feet, those things we stand on, run on, tread on, but there are so many things that can go wrong, and if something is wrong with your feet, well quite frankly it can be miserable at best and debilitating at worst. So let’s take a look at caring for those tootsies.

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Community

Coconut Oil: A Prepper’s Panacea

LOL, if you read many of my posts, you will notice I have a fetish for food, I also write about health and living off-grid, but food is one of my major passions. I love cooking and baking from scratch. I cook by the seat of my pants, I’m one of those who can look at a kitchen full of staples and can whip up a tasty meal. Give me the basics, flour, butter, cornmeal, leavening (yeast, baking powder, baking soda…), seasonings, some protein like chicken, beef or fish, perhaps some fresh veg and I can put together a meal fit for a king.

Today we will focus on one ingredient, coconut oil. Not too long ago, it was considered to be a “bad” oil, it was cheap and often the oil of choice for fast food restaurants for deep frying. Like many foods that have been demonized in the past, now it’s considered a healthy fat, go figure…

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Energy

Isle of Wight resident to trial Hydrogen storage

A few residents of the Isle of Wight,  65,000 population off the coast of England, are hoping to make half its homes energy and water self-sufficient by 2020. But they have not dropped their main technology partner ITM Power in favour of fuel cell provider Dantherm Power. (Correction: earlier versions of this story said ITM had been dropped but Eco-Island stated this was not the case.The company said: “Ecoisland Partnership CIC confirms that it has not issued any other Partnership Contract or Licence to any other Hydrogen Partner nor has it placed any other orders or contracts for the supply of hydrogen technology to the Ecoisland Project other than those it has in place with ITM Power plc.”)

Ecoisland, a Community Interest Company hopes to offer the domestic renewable energy storage solution after first testing it on a single home, believe to be that of Ecoisland founder David Green. The island’s local government has not endorsed the campaign but the term ecoisland was coined by the ex-CEO of IOW Council, Joe Duckworth during his short tenure.

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Energy

Off-Grid Military Energy Solutions

 

Just as the Internet was invented by the US military, in conjunction with University College London and a Norwegian research lab – so the US military are at the leading edge pf the next generation of energy production
The U.S. Department of Defense /DoD/, is the biggest single energy user in the country. It accounts for 93 percent of U.S.government fuel consumption and 30,000 gigawatt hours of electricity annually — enough to power 6ر2 million American homes.

The DoD recently embarked on a mission to source 25 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2025 and one of its latest technologies is on show today in Abu Dhabi where you can see some of the world’s leading off-grid military energy solutions at the International Defence Exhibition and Conference /IDEX this week.

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Community

Prepping on a budget – part 7 – getting started

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It’s NOT too late to start prepping! If you are still breathing, and you are reading this, it’s not too late to start prepping! Even though the main stream media is doing its utmost best to make preppers look like the bad guy, that’s not your problem, your focus needs to be on taking care of yourself and your family, the more people you are responsible for, the more you need to buckle down and get ready for whatever may be coming down the pike.

The USA is still considered a prosperous country with lots of safety nets, I’m here to tell you that we are on a very slippery slope, what is at the bottom of that slope? Well, look around at what’s going on in other countries that were once prosperous and see where they are now. With the dollar being devalued quicker and quicker, hint that means the buying power of a dollar is less and less, saving money, ie savings accounts, hiding it under your mattress and such shouldn’t be your top priority right now, unless you already have a major stock of food and other necessities put back.

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Community

Relationship (Part 2)

Today is traditionally the day when men are supposed to show their love and affection for their women by buying flowers, chocolates and cards, then there is the obligatory dinner, if you have more money to spend, maybe a splurging on a bit of bling for your woman…  All month, the world has been filled with red hearts and cherubim flying around shooting heart shaped arrows, all the commercials on the TV and radio has been trying to make men feel guilty if they do not do the traditional things that are supposed to be done by today to make the woman in their life feel complete.

BLAH I say! I had a discussion with PB today about this very subject, I don’t understand why some women feel so giddy when their man spends half a C note or more on a dozen roses and a box of chocolates, in a week the flowers will be turning brown, the chocolate will be on its way to adding inches where they aren’t wanted, then you have to toss the refuse in the trash. I say, if you are going to spend money like this, why not spend it on something that is really useful?

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Community

Baking without Eggs

Since I live so far from town, it’s a 40+ mile round trip to go to the nearest town that only has one grocery store, it’s 80+ miles round trip to go to the next closest town that has 2 grocery stores, and we don’t have our own chickens, yet! I sometimes find that I am short an egg or two when I want to make something that requires eggs. It’s just not worth it to drive to town just to pick up a carton of eggs. I ran across this article with lots of good info about how to substitute other things for eggs, and the good thing is these are things you probably already have in your pantry. :)

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Energy

So when did Environmentalism lose its soul?

The Vermont Times Argus published a spot-on review of a new book by Bill McKibben -one of many who made a career out of jetting between conferences about the environment.

Its written by Suzanna Jones, described as “an off-the-grid farmer living in Walden.” She does not object to local power – but disagrees with McKibben about the trend towards industrial scale renewables. It is, she says, part of the mainstreaming of the environmental movement.

“In his 2008 book “Deep Economy,” Bill McKibben concludes that economic growth is the source of the ecological crises we face today. He explains that when the economy grows larger than necessary to meet our basic needs – when it grows for the sake of growth, automatically striving for “more” – its social and environmental costs greatly outweigh any benefits it may provide.

Unfortunately, McKibben seems to have forgotten what he so passionately argued just five years ago. Today he is an advocate of industrial wind turbines on our ridgelines: He wants to industrialize our last wild spaces to feed the very economy he fingered as the source of our environmental problems.

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Community

Thermal mass rocket heaters

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With it still being winter time, and with many mega-blizzards going on though out the USA, there will always be a need for alternative ways of keeping warm and cooking. Rocket stoves and rocket mass heaters neatly fit the bill here, what is really great about them is they don’t use up loads and loads of wood, in fact you can burn twigs in them quite nicely. Since I first wrote about rocket stoves, there have been many experiments and improvements made by industrious tinkerers, and fortunately for us, these tinkerers also have cameras and are putting up videos of their progress.

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Eco-super-homes hit with massive Utility bills

Residents of an eco-housing tract in the UK have been hit with massive Utility bills equal to 2% of the value of their homes. It seems like a gigantic blunder by the designers of the 16 homes in Northern England.

Residents were promised cheaper bills to live in a multi-million pound eco-friendly ‘homes of the future’ complex say they will have to move out after being hit with sky-high electricity charges.
The Pavilion Gardens complex in West Bowling, Bradford, West Yorkshire, was heralded as being the most environmentally-friendly in the county when it was completed in July 2011 at a cost of £5.6million.
Residents were told their electricity bills would be £500 cheaper than average because the houses are super-insulated with biomass boilers for heating and solar panels for electricity.
But just 18 months after moving in, many residents say they have been hit with massive electrical bills almost double the annual average and they can’t afford to live in the properties.

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