Posts by — veg-head

Summer’s coming, and our thoughts are turning to outdoor fun and relaxation. Here are some items you can find online that are useful or essential, either to a camping weekend or a full-fledged off-grid life.

BUNK COT
When it comes to stacking the kids friends where you don’t have that much room, try this bunk-bed cot:

The Disc-O-Bed Cam-O-Cot makes an instant bunk bed and holds up to 400 pounds. That’s two fit adults or several children.
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Bangalore, April 22nd — Planting miniature forests in cities sounds like a job for a government department rather than a small entrepreneur. Although these “forests” are on patches of land that lawns or landscaped gardens would otherwise have occupied.
Founded two years ago by industrial engineer Shubhendu Sharma, Afforestt has grown mini-forests for clients ranging from Cisco Systems and the GMR Group to an eco-conscious infotech professional living in an off-the-grid house in Bangalore. (more…)

Spread Peace Radio featured renowned philanthropist and leader in the industrial hemp industry, Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp, Inc. (OTC: HEMP), has announced his plans to fund and build a 500-acre Kins Domain in Arizona.

During the talk radio interview, broadcasted last week, Perlowin enlightened listeners on what initially inspired him to create self-sustainable communities and the social-economic benefits Kins Domains provide. Inspired by the book series “The Ringing Cedars Of Russia,” this 500-acre Kins Domain “Project” encompasses one 2 1/2 acre (one hectare) lot, surrounded by a living fence, trees (2/3), a pond, organic gardens and fruit trees, a natural beehive, a family tree that stays on the Kins Domain for future generations and an all-green home to create a high frequency, natural energy microclimate. (more…)

Stephen Marx, lives off the grid in Vermont and he’s angry.

Thirty-two years ago, Marx moved out of New York City to the end of a long dirt road, beyond the reach of power lines. The retired literacy teacher and gardener bought a couple of modest-sized, 20-year-old solar panels and times his use of appliances to coincide with topped-up batteries.
Yet he says he’s only recently become anything like an environmental activist. The 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of “corporate personhood” (in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) tipped the scales.
“It was really bothering me. I was getting angrier and angrier,” Marx remembers. “I tend to shut down when I’m angry, so I walked up the hill with May (his dog). I said to myself, ‘Wait a second — corporations have rights. We gave them rights; I gave them rights’ — I mean, I vote; I accept responsibility. It means that corporations can do whatever they want, but the Earth can’t. And that was it.
Everyone had been saying ‘We can change this,’” Marx continued. “And then it came to me: We can’t change this — no one’s going to change multinational corporations. But maybe we can make it an even playing field. It became something positive, instead of a negative.” (more…)

One of the world’s biggest solar power collectors is being built next to the tiny town of Nipton, Calif., which is ironic because Nipton is the closet thing to an off-grid town – with 85 per cent of its energy coming from a set of solar panels installed by one of its 60 residents.
Gerald Freeman unlocks the gate to the small power plant and goes inside. Three rows of solar collectors, elevated on troughs that track the sun’s arc like sunflowers, afford a glimpse of California’s possible energy future.
This facility and a smaller version across the road produce almost all of the power required by Nipton’s 60 residents, its general store and motel.
Freeman, a Caltech-trained geologist and one-time gold mine owner, understood when he bought this former ghost town near the Nevada border that being off the grid didn’t have to mean going without power.
He contracted with a Bay Area company to install solar arrays on two plots of land. The town has a 20-year agreement to buy its power at a below-market rate. (more…)

If, like me, you are surrounded by trees then you will want some kind of ultra-efficient bio-mass heater – probably more than one. The efficiency ensures a burn at high heat, and that in turn means the gases released by the wood are also burned – so a good mass heater is low-pollution.

You need to be able to handle the larger logs, branches and trunks – that is best done with an outside furnace which directs the heat inside. You need a fire you can watch and enjoy – that consumes the medium size logs.

But what is to be done with the tiddly twigs and leaves or the cuttings from tree pruning? Its fairly pointless burning them – they are gone in 60 seconds.

The Solo Stove provides an answer – it’s a well-designed camping stove – one of many rocket stoves on the market. Rocket stoves are so called because they burn at a high heat. (more…)

NAtGeo TV had a show in the UK last night about the growing number of British preppers – men and women who are preparing against future catastrophes ranging from economic collapse to electro-magnetic flares that knock out all electric equipment.

What they have in common is they are ready for a world without food distribution, and with no law and order.

Most have spent thousands of pounds preparing for disaster.

Pictured here with her with survival equipment, American ex-pat, Annie Durbin, who lives in east London, is one of Britain’s female preppers.
She said: ‘The specific point that I became interested in prepping was in the summer of 2011, just after the riots. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)