Posts by — techstar

There are a lot of things you or a professional handyman can do around your home to help cut back on energy use.  That’s something that will benefit both your budget and the environment.  

Small Do-It-Yourself Jobs

Not all green projects are major undertakings. There are simple ways for you or a professional handyman to make your home more energy efficient. Switch out light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs throughout the house. Install occupancy sensors so lighting will come on when people are in the room and automatically turn off when they leave the room. Clean or replace furnace filters once a month. Clean the air conditioner filter regularly. Add insulation to hot water pipes. Install a water filter and quit buying bottled water. Replace your showerhead and faucets with low-flow versions. This won’t reduce water pressure but water consumption and energy costs can be reduced by up to 50%. Insulate the water heater and turn it down to 48 degrees and cut your water-heating bill in half. Install ceiling fans. Weatherize your windows and doors with caulk, weather-stripping and sealants. The average home can lose 30% of its heat or air-conditioning though the windows. Replace the thermostat with a programmable one with a timer.

Watch “the Online carpenter” Mitchell Dillman as he shows off this “green” home improvement project located at 1011 E. Yampa in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (more…)

Would it be worth the effort?

People prepare to go off the grid for many different reason – the environment, economic collapse, solar flares to name but three.

The latest fear to be added to the long list: A massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. The best defence: to be both off the grid and underground.

An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic radiation from a nuclear weapon. If the weapon is detonated high in the atmosphere, above a target area, it can produce a radioactive pulse across a huge area. The effect could knock out electricity and fry sensitive computer processors, even a total blackout that could last months.

Some fear Iran could get a lone nuclear missile onto a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, and detonate it over the central U.S. (more…)

The way to avoid them is go off the grid

As long ago as 1999, Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, told reporters: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” Others, including the top executives of Google, LinkedIn and Facebook, have since said much the same thing.

They are right.

Privacy in 2011 is a matter of nostalgia. In the past two months, Facebook introduced “frictionless sharing,” Verizon told customers it could share their location and search strings with advertisers, and two members of Congress have called for the FTC to investigate “supercookies,” which track your activity across multiple websites and are difficult to detect and remove. These developments signal an accelerating rush to compile, index and disseminate personal data in the digital age.

There are several reasons for this, but the most important is corporate profit. Many people freely surrender personal details on social media sites or in exchange for a discount. Government agencies monitor and catalog a dizzying array of personal information, from biometrics to travel history. (more…)

Laurence Kemball-Cook ponders his invention

Paving slabs that convert energy from people’s footsteps into electricity are being tested in London and may then be applied in some of the world’s off-grid slums in major cities.

The special slabs are set to help power Europe’s largest urban mall, at the 2012 London Olympics site. The recycled rubber “PaveGen” paving slabs harvest kinetic energy from the impact of people stepping on them and instantly deliver tiny bursts of electricity to nearby appliances. The slabs can also store energy for up to three days in an on-board battery, according to its creator, Laurence Kemball-Cook, a 25-year-old engineering graduate who developed the prototype during his final year of university in 2009. (more…)

Already well know in developing countries

Clean water is vital to off-grid living, and only the lucky minority can depend on easy access to flowing water or a proper well. Most will be pleased with rainwater or a trickle of dirty water on their land, which they can then filter before use.

Adding a siphon to a gravity fed water filter improves the water flow.  This article discusses the way a siphon works with a ceramic water filter cartridge but the general principal applies to other water filter technologies as well.

What is a siphon?  A siphon is simply a length of hose that is added to the output of the filter where the water normally drips out.  The dimensions of the tube are critical. (more…)

Every bug-out bag should have one

Imagine you’re driving or trekking, or living, hours from nowhere and things go seriously wrong. Medical emergency, auto failure, up to your neck in quicksand, even under attack from looters. No cell-phone reception and nobody around to send for help. Now what?

With a cell-phone-sized Spot Emergency messager, just push the appropriate button and rescuers are on the way. (more…)

Teams of University  researchers have secured grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help re-invent the toilet for use in the developing world.

Their work will be followed closely by off-gridders to see if they can come up with any improvements on existing composting systems.

The researchers have one year to build a toilet that can run off-the-grid, in communities where there is no access to sewage systems, electricity or running water. Their model also has to be cheap enough that it’s affordable for people who live on miniscule incomes of a dollar or less each day.   (more…)

Vodafone is set to announce it will build one of Africa’s greenest commercial buildings as a base for testing new ways of using renewable energy across its global network.

Based in Midrand, South Africa, the innovation centre will examine how the company can reduce carbon emissions through the use of renewable energy, as well as batteries. The centre will also look at how to reduce the running and deployment cost of base station sites. Findings will be shared across the Vodafone group. (more…)

Ah, the irony. In San Andreas, CA, atop a possible earthquake of cataclysmic proportions, the town is adopting the latest distributed power generation technologies.

Someday soon, fuels from forests in this area south-east of Sacramento may power water plants, schools and even private businesses.

Bob Dean, a member of the board of directors of the Calaveras County Water District,has proposed portable cogeneration plants to both generate electricity and allow for more efficient use of wood-chip waste generated as local forests are thinned. (more…)