Posts by — marese

Will Chester-Master – green dream An Organic Farm Shop in Gloucestershire has won Environmental retailer of the year award. And their next plan is to take the farm off-grid.

Abbey Home Farm on Burford Road just outside Cirencester, offers fresh homemade meals and food from the farm.

The farm shop and cafe has its own bore hole, solar panels and wood-chip boiler which provide heating and hot water for the whole building. They are also planning to apply for permission to install a large wind turbine on site to provide all the power the farm needs. (more…)

A Tennessee cabin with 45 acres advertised on a couple of web sites as follows: Built in 2005 with 8 inch pine logs on bottom floor and log siding on second floor. Green metal roof. Entirely secluded with no neighbours in sight. (more…)

This is what to expect Off-gridder Lamar has researched the great depression and “gleaned much info from my parents that lived through it” to come up with some useful tips for what, thanks to our great leaders in Washington and New York, will be some real tough times:

1. Don’t worry that your savings and checking account will disappear. FDIC banks are guaranteed for $100.000 per person. (more…)

Patagonia’s McDivitt If you want to save the planet, better buy it – before the bad guys do.

In the latest example of moral status anxiety, millionaires are snapping up vast tracts of wilderness in underdeveloped countries to preserve it for posterity.

Sebastián Piñera, one of the richest men in Chile, has created Parque Tantauco on one of South America’s largest islands, Chiloé, off the coast of Patagonia.

Piñera bought the land in 2005 and set about protecting the offshore habitat of blue whales and the inland virgin forests. (more…)

Racing for the sun

Let the sun help you up those hills.

There are a number of bike designs which incorporate a solar powered motor – see links below.

Another option is the pedal-charged battery, which powers the motor which powers the bike.

Check out these sites: (more…)

Say it with maps

U.S. sales of GPS units shot up by 488 per cent last year. GPS units have numerous practical applications. They have opened up a new world of exploration and social interaction to anyone who can afford the $200-$300 price tag for a top of the range model.

Many technologies, like calculators and spellcheckers, can make us lazier, encouraging innumeracy and illiteracy. But GPS devices seem to be having the opposite effect, inspiring users to become more geographically literate and sparking a new interest in reading and making maps. Your Nintendo Wii might get you off your couch, but a Garmin GPSMap 76CSx Mapping Handheld GPS can get you out the door and into a world of your own creation. (more…)

Tchenguiz – green means bucks

Property billionaire Vincent Tchenguiz wants to make his next fortune through environmental businesses. If he can help the environment while doing it, then so much the better. But actually he doesn’t give a green fig about the global ecology. All he is interested in is eco-policy, eco-publicity and eco-profits.

Under his plans, the environment is a product like any other that he can commodify to trade and sell to corporates and governments around the world. If all goes well, Tchenguiz says the business could easily turn into a multibillion-pound venture that is at least as lucrative as property.

His company, Consensus spends more than £20m every month on its environmental portfolio, which spans more than 220 companies, joint ventures and funds. It covers everything from emerging green technologies to the planting of trees.

‘This is not for charity,’ he says. ‘The effects are positive for the environment, but I am running a business.

‘The environment can be leveraged in the same way as real estate. (more…)

Reputational issues

BP Solar this week tried to take us a step closer to mass-market off-grid living. The solar energy giant announced the availability of its home Solar kits through Home Depot stores in the metropolitan Denver and Boulder, Colorado, areas. The program enables customers to purchase complete, installed solar electric home power systems. Problem is, the notoriously bad service at Home Depot will deter many thousands of potential customers.

The service offers a licensed solar professional who visits you at home to assess your electricity needs and give a free consultation but the net is crawling with complaints about the outside experts provided by Home Depot. (more…)

Traditional values – self-reliance

If you’re the type of person who lives way off grid, and/or would love a machine shop but just don’t have the cash, here’s a plan to help you out…
Multimachine! group to the rescue! Their site is packed-full of all the plans you might need to build a complete machine shop. Even better, one model uses a car’s engine block as a main component!

Why would you need a machine shop? Even a muscle-bound dyke like me could live a happy life, off-grid, without ever seeing a lathe or precision drill. But these things are often necessary to maintain the tools and machines that help us live. Here’s what a multi-machine might be good for: (more…)