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October 2013

Solar

Solar Thermal System for Heated Swimming Pool

Imagine taking a dip in your outdoor swimming pool in late October, even November as the ground hardens and the frost thickens. The steam is coming off of your heated pool, and its not costing you a cent – apart from considerable installation costs that is.

There are some design factors to be considered, including proper sizing and location. But there are many web sites to help you, as well as the off-grid technical forum for advice. It’s not imperative to have your solar pool heater configured and installed by experts.

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Water harvesting event

San Diego Permaculture and the Sky Mountain Institute will host the 2013 San Diego Permaculture Convergence, Nov. 9-10, aimed at showing how to harvest rainwater using simple structures.

The event will feature talks and hands-on demonstrations about rainwater and gray-water harvesting, aquaponics, building a chicken coop, organic gardening, urban goat-keeping, rocket stoves, growing shiitake mushrooms on oak logs and creating “food forests.”

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Community

Solar powered pyramid

Pyramid power

Ever see an off-grid pyramid? Well you are about to. This is the video story of Greg Grant, who began his off-grid existence slow and small.

He didn’t put a lot of money into his project. What he had was land, lots of natural materials, a great bunch of talented and helpful friends, and a unique vision. He chose to make his off-grid home out of short straw-bale walls, but with a steeply pitched, pyramid shaped roof.

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People

Bye-bye Lulu

Lou Reed lived off-grid on his final yearsLou Reed was known as Lulu to his friends. It was his gay name, given to him by Andy Warhol.

He went off the grid in 2010, when he learned he was dying.

He started producing ghostly photos – anticipating his future.

We wrote about it at the time, here: https://off-grid.net/2010/02/07/take-a-walk-on-the-wild-side/

You can find out much more about his bisexual years with the Andy Warhol circus here

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Energy

Utilities enter the Death Spiral

offthegridnews,eric valli, utilitiesElectricity and water rates are set to rise sharply because so many households and business are now generating their own power and managing their own water supply. The Utility company fixed costs are not going to change however many people close their accounts and go it alone. So those costs have to be paid by a shrinking pool of consumers.
Utility executives even have a name for the nightmare scenario which more and more solar panels, or boreholes or wind turbines could create – they call it the “death spiral.”They fear solar’s rapid spread across homes and businesses, combined with the increasing efficiency of modern buildings and appliances, could slowly erode the utilities’ ability to generate profits.

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Community

The Pantry Primer: Stocking your supply of fruits and vegetables

The Pantry Primer

A major challenge when living from your stockpiled foods is getting enough fruits and vegetables.  Without produce, your family can be at risk for nutritional deficiency diseases like scurvy and their immune systems will be compromised.  A minimum of 5 servings per day is recommended, but during the long winter, how can you meet that goal with the contents of your pantry?

Supplying your family with produce that will provide the necessary nutrients that their bodies need to thrive is a twofold process.  Not only should you preserve the summer’s bounty for the winter ahead, but you should also come up with ways to add fresh greens outside of the growing season.

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Net Zero Consulting service

As the world slowly wakes up to the importance of off-grid living, our knowledge is becoming valuable, or should that be invaluable?

When a nation as advanced as Japan shuts down its nuclear reactors and starts going off the grid a house at a time, you know the rest of the world will follow, eventually.

So Off-Grid.Net is opening a Net-Zero consultancy service to offer individuals, architects and businesses access to the huge range of skills and resources within our community.

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Land

Shed-dwellers evicted by planners to live on State benefits

A family’s dream of living off-grid is in tatters after they lost a four-year planning battle.

Daniel and Lora Newman, of Trelowen, Carharrack bid to become self sufficient. But last week they have been forced to demolish thei home in order to avoid jail.

At a hearing at Truro Magistrates Court, the couple were given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £1,500 towards Cornwall Council’s court costs.

Ahead of the court date, Mr Newman, with the help of family and friends, pulled down the house.which was built in a field in open countryside without planning permission.

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Hinkley C + QE = Slavery

The spectre of the British people as slaves of the new Chinese superpower just got a step closer.

The Brits have agreed to what must be the dumbest deal ever to be voluntarily undertaken by a national government that did not have a gun to its head.

I refer of course to their new nuclear power station which will be financed by the Chinese and built by the French using outdated technology. Never mind that the whole idea of a giant nuclear power station has been thoroughly discredited in Japan, the one the Brits chose is last decade’s model.

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UK solar homes pass 500,000

Recent data from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) shows that nearly 460,000 homes across the UK have solar panels installed, and that does not include off-grid homes, since these do not show up in official stats.

The data was released recently by DECC and published on the website of the Solar Trade Association (STA). It represents a combined peak capacity of 1.3GW, making domestic solar the largest sub-sector of the solar market.

The popularity of solar in the UK has largely resulted from huge subsidies that have now been scaled back. The result of intensive lobbying by the green movement, it has made a few companies super-profits and further enriched some wealthy householders, but done little to decarbonise Britain.

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Community

More tiny homes, on wheels!

tinyhomeonwheelsWith the cost of living going up and up and our wages going down and down, one of the ways to cut back on living expenses is by going small with your home. I wrote about this a while back, https://off-grid.net/2013/10/06/tiny-homes-cheap/ one of the comments I saw was the fact that so many municipalities, even some rural ones, have restrictions on the size of homes, they have minimum requirements (boo!), personally I believe it’s all about being able to extract more tax money from the people.

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Energy

Japan going off the grid, post-nuclear future one town at a time

Ohira, Japan (Agence France Presse ) 19Oct

As the impact of Fukishima continues to terrify the Japanese people, a remote Toyota plant in northeastern Japan is poinitng the way forward after the devastating quake-tsunami more than two years after it was completely shut it down.

Employees roll out more than 100,000 Corolla and Yaris sedans a year and the factory looks like most operated by the world’s biggest automaker.

But the plant is unusual for something that cannot easily be seen: it produces its own power – and its own peppers.

A gas-fired power system supplies 7,800 kW of energy — about 70% of present needs — to help keep production moving, and virtually nothing is lost.

The factory recycles heat from the burning of gas and uses it to dry the paint on finished vehicles. Hot water from the gas turbine runs through pipes into a nearby greenhouse that grows green peppers, which will later be sold.

Solar panels also supply some power to the plant.

The factory is tapped into the local energy “micro-grid” and could supply the nearby village of Ohira in case of another disaster.

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