I'll even include a free signed copy of the first edition

Nick Rosen, author of HOW TO LIVE OFF GRID, is selling the Camper van featured on the front cover of the book.

Its a Renault Master Long Wheel Base – diesel with power steering. The price, £2500

In Chapter 2 of the book he tells how he chose the vehicle:I was ignoring anything Volkswagen. For some reason the VW Camper still carries an enormous cachet. The best-designed VWs have been collectors items for years, and by the time Jamie Oliver travelled to Italy in one (beautifully done up with a Cath Kidstone interior) for a TV series, prices were topping £10,000 for a twenty-year-old vehicle. The people I know who have them tell me they break down often (as indeed happened during Jamie’s trip to Italy), they guzzle petrol, they are noisy and uncomfortable, and you cannot stand up in them. All in all they are a puzzling purchase, except for the fact that they look nice and retro.

The first likely candidate for me was an elderly Talbot. At £3,500, the price was right for a purpose-built camper with a double bed in a little protrusion that overhung the driver’s cab. Simon, the seller, lived in deepest north London and was moving back to Newcastle. Being shown around the van by its owner proved unexpectedly to be an unnerving experience, rather like being shown around someone’s home only more . . . intimate. The normal things you say to people when negotiating for a second-hand car sounded in the practice room of my mind like personal insults as I struggled for the right words. At last, I could see the point of estate agents. How do you tell someone that you find their (motor)home a mite depressing, that the oven is miserable, or that you can smell the musty odour of the curtains? When Simon showed me the heating system I was sure I could smell something else gas. It may be OK to buy second-hand electrical goods, but a leaky gas cooker? I don’t think so.
Simon wasn’t going to let me go without a struggle. I weakly agreed to a test drive  my first in a camper van. Simon slid into the driver’s seat to show me how it all worked; I would take over on the return journey. We shot out of the drive and onto a windy back road as he proudly demonstrated the vehicle’s turn of speed. It was noisy and not ideal for long hours travelling across country. When it was time for me to assume the controls, I discovered another vital requirement power steering. This 1987 baby didn’t have it. Turning, parking, even rounding a corner needed concentrated effort, and since I was visiting obscure places on my trip, I realised that power steering would be as important as standing room. I thanked Simon and sank gratefully back onto my Honda 90.
I knew what my wife wanted, a large designer van, well proportioned, snug, solid, reliable and above all safe. With a child along on the trip, safety had to be the primary consideration. But a van that fulfilled those criteria would not come cheap 10,000 at least, judging by the ads I had seen. Viewing Simon’s Talbot was a useful trial run, though. It made me realise that the off-gridders I visited would judge me by the van I drove. Appearance is all, as Oscar Wilde said; what else is there to judge by? I reckoned the only people I would put at their ease with the Talbot would be other Talbot owners.
There was a whole class of campers built out of converted vans, and I figured one of these would be the best bet. Overall, they were at the low end of the price range, which was a big plus. I returned to my hunt for the mythical London street market where dazed Antipodeans sold their mobile homes for the price of a final multi-stop trip round the world. It didn’t exist. Months later a camper enthusiast explained that it had come to an end a few years before when the markets were overrun with sharks who shipped unsellable vehicles from around the country to palm off on the Aussies. A piece of carpet over a rusty hole in the floor; brakes that had no more than a few miles of life in them; that sort of thing. The police had decided to close the operation down. In earlier times the van sellers would have moved to another street, but simultaneously the Internet was becoming the market of choice for the Aussies, and just about everyone else. Why restrict yourself to a Sunday morning in the rain when you can do the whole thing from the comfort of your own keyboard before even arriving in the UK?
Back on eBay, an ad for a Ford Transit caught my eye. It was unequivocal about the quality of the engine, and since that was the subject in which I was least qualified, it gave me some peace of mind. Here’s what you getran the ad:
N Reg Ford Transit 100 SWB Hi-Top Camper 2.5 Diesel 2 Berth (+ 1 small child at a push); MOT; Power Steering; CD Player (Speakers front and rear); TV (240V); DVD Player (240V Brand new, still under guarantee); Gas Cooker (4 Burner Hob & Grill); Paloma Gas Water Heater; Shower; Portable gas heater; Sink; Fresh water tank (40l Aquaroll) with pump; Portapotty Toilet; 3 Way Fridge (240V, 12V, Gas, a bit temperamental, could probably do with a new one to be honest); Front swivel seats; Leisure Battery; 2 x 12V to 240V Inverters; 25 Metre Mains Hook-up Cable; 12V and 240V lighting; Mul-T Lock; New brake pads and timing belt.

A small child, it said. I had one of those.

The van had not yet reached its £2,000 reserve in the auction, and with a few hours to go I sent an email offering £2,500. The sellers were from Nottingham and they did not react at first, hoping for a better bid online, but naively I overlooked this. Another bell tolled when, after they had accepted my bid and I had sent my deposit of 250, there was a long silence. As I had bought outside the auction I had lost the right to comment publicly on the seller’s performance, and thus any hold I might have had over them.
Before I could collect, I had to take out insurance. This proved to be a minefield of its own. Most mainstream insurance companies do not cover motorhomes unless they are professionally converted by a limited number of recognised businesses. After considerable research I found a broker that would take on the job, and they found an insurer that did not demur at my grimy east London postcode. For about 450 I was insured for a year, as long as I did not cover more than 5,000 miles.
The van vendors eventually got in touch and we arranged to meet at a convenient station, Wellingborough, chosen because it was about halfway on a direct line between Nottingham and London. Two hours after our meeting time I was still waiting at Wellingborough station. At that point I should have just taken the final train back to London and forgotten my 250, but I had already bought the insurance, and anyway, after two weeks of looking, this was my van of choice.
Martin from Nottingham arrived in the van just after the final train to London had departed. If I decided not to buy it, I reflected as he pulled up, he would be unlikely to offer me a lift home. He was trailed by his wife in an expensive-looking Subaru estate. They made a strange pair: Martin a gaunt, roll-up-smoking hippy, his wife the cheerful, chubby apologist. Martin was ready to spend all night going over the details of the van, but the bed was all I looked at carefully, and at about five feet eight inches long it was fine for Martin but too small for either me or Fiona to stretch out fully. It could be lengthened by spinning round the two front seats to add extra foot room, but that wasn’t much comfort. But it was now nearly 11 p.m., and after a cursory examination of the main points I was ready to make the purchase. Martin had already knocked 150 off because he had forgotten to bring along the Portapotty. He had also installed a new exhaust, as the receipt he pulled out of his top pocket proved, because the old one had fallen off that morning. The inside of the van was dirty and badly made, but that didn’t worry me as he knocked off a further 100.
I drove back to London relieved rather than delighted with my purchase. There were only two seats in front and therefore nowhere to put Caitlin. Never mind. My Internet research had turned up a removable Ford Galaxy chair with a built-in baby seat which would allow Caitlin to sit comfortably and safely in the back. At night the seat could be stowed outside, and the bed could be made. We would be a bit cramped when there were three of us, but when I was travelling alone and space was not an issue the low fuel consumption would come into its own. A yellow light with a picture of an oil lamp was blinking, but I did not pay any attention to that.
The following morning I took the Ford to a local mechanic who confirmed that the engine was in good condition, and had miraculously survived a long journey with almost no oil. He poured in twenty litres, and as far as I was concerned it was now time to head out on the road and live the off-grid life.
Then I showed the van to Fiona. She could not have been more disappointed. It was, as she immediately pointed out, too small. Small was beautiful, manoeuvrable, economical, I argued. The sort of people I was planning to visit might not be too impressed if we turned up in a glossy love-wagon. And some of the narrow dirt tracks I was anticipating would be impassable to larger vehicles. The killer criticisms I could not overcome were that the van had no space for the baby seat, and it had been converted by someone who was both visually illiterate and incompetent at DIY. The shower area, with its doorway made of surplus architrave from a building job on a gated community somewhere in the north-west, was perhaps the most pointless feature since there was nowhere for the water to run off. I dared not test the fridge and the cooker as I would have been too depressed had they failed to work. The ugly wall tiles, the pointless shower area and the dirty old fridge would have to go; Fiona also insisted on the replacement of the ceramic floor tiles (in a camper van?), which were cracked and therefore dangerous for Caitlin. Never mind the time it would take to do the work, I thought, the cost could well be on the way to another thousand pounds. And whatever improvements we made would never be enough. When arriving to stay with friends, or at a small, select literary festival we were planning to attend over the summer, I could sense Fiona’s rising fear that she would be judged by my bad taste.
Months later I was vindicated when a lifelong van dweller called Adrian, who had spent twenty years studying the question, including measuring vans in the street, concluded that the Ford Transit and its short wheelbase is the best vehicle for long-distance off-gridding. But after just a few days of domestic negotiation it became clear I had made a serious error and had better put the van back on the market immediately. I returned the Ford Galaxy seat to the breaker’s yard where I had bought it a few days earlier for a ton, and accepted 75 back. Then I wearily turned on the computer, posted pictures of the Transit on Gumtree making sure that I stressed the deficiencies to deter all but the most seriously interested and went back to eBay’s camper-van section, a website I had thought I would not need to look at again for at least a year.
This time we got lucky. Within a few minutes we had found a van we both liked a Renault Master converted hospital bus that had just been refitted by James, a carpenter whose hobby was . . . refitting camper vans. It looked great, and it had three seats in front, so Caitlin would be up there with us in the cab. The bidding had ended at 3,500, but that was not enough to secure the van because James had set the reserve at 4,000. I had to have it. I just could not stand another weekend in London, nor the thought of another week looking at tiny photos of camper vans taken from careful angles. A quick phone call to James and an offer of his full asking price was enough to seal the deal. Because I was still within the fourteen-day cooling-off period, the insurance I’d bought for the Ford Transit was transferred to the new vehicle at no extra cost, so it remained only to make the trip to Clacton-on-Sea and hand over the cash. Again I was buying outside the auction system with little or no recourse if things went wrong.
A few days later, with the scent of sea air and fish and chips in my nostrils, I was shown around my new motorhome. This time there was no doubt in my mind. It was the Ikea of campers, with tasteful cork-tile flooring, cream curtains sewn by James’s mum, and hessian-style cushion coverings. It was noisy, but I had now seen enough vans to know that in the trade-off between price and desirability, I had done well for the money. Most importantly, Fiona would love it. The sink and cooker were stainless steel and brand new, and the fridge was free of others smears and stains. It was twice as long as the Transit so long that I scraped its gleaming white panel against the side of a Ford Escort as I turned a corner the very next day. It also consumed double the fuel of the Transit, but at least it was diesel, so I could try to run it on vegetable oil. Numerous websites assured me this was possible. It had an oil-powered heater that would keep us warm as toast and two big ventilation panels in the roof. The stereo had four speakers wired in under the roof insulation. The small water tank meant we would be carrying little excess weight and the water would not go stale and brackish in the summer heat. Sure enough, Fiona approved, and she soon got to work, adding silver foil camping blankets as backing to the curtains, to insulate us against the cold night air, and see-through black blinds against the daytime sun. She also began a search on eBay for a camper-van awning. There was no shower or loo, so we would depend on pubs, garages and the countryside for our toiletary needs, and rivers, the sea, municipal showers or the people we visited for a proper wash every few days.
The engine was good and the van was running perfectly, but I still took it round to my local garage for a service. Mistake. Inner-city garages don’t really get diesel camper vans, as they freely admitted after I had paid the bill. And although they charged me a fortune, it was several days before I was back on the road. From then on I always took it to little roadside garages well away from towns, and had faults dealt with when I could fit them in.

Our pre-off-grid life was pretty much like most anyone else, we lived in a regular house, a mobile home actually, in a regular neighborhood in north central Texas. PB owned his own business, taking care of restaurant equipment for several big name companies and a smattering of smaller ones, he was a one-man-band, no employees. I worked 2 jobs, the first as a merchandiser and pricing coordinator for a big box electronics company and the other job was as a trainer in a semi-well known gym for women. We weren’t what you would call well off financially, but we were happy.

We were both empty nesters from previous marriages, in the beginning neither one of us knew the other had a secret desire to live off grid, when we began to explore the idea of actually doing this, it didn’t take us long to find our perfect plot of land in far west Texas, it was just under 6 acres of unimproved, rough, almost inaccessible land on the side of a mountain in the high desert.

I cashed in my stock from my job and had enough to buy the land and had a little left over to buy some building material for the start of the cabin (soon to be renamed the sky castle). In less than 2 weeks, PB had a minimal structure built, it was enough for us to move in. We were able to get some solar panels, a charge controller, a few deep cycle batteries and a few other things we needed to get started. We began to disassemble our current city lives, PB shut down his business, I quit both of my jobs, and on December 22, 2007 we moved all of our remaining belongings to our new life in west Texas.

The first few months were pretty rough, we lived in a most primitive manner, some might even say our first few years were pretty primitive, I suspect some might even say we still live very primitively, that’s OK, it’s quite wonderful to me. We met a great neighbor who gave us some help, it made life a bit easier, things like access to his water well instead of having to go to the community well, access to his washer and dryer instead of washing by hand and hanging to dry, access to his shower instead of taking spit baths… all things we were prepared to do on our own, but having such a great neighbor we were able to do many things a little easier, in return we do most of the maintenance on his house, we do other things for him too, so it’s a fair trade.

We quickly learned about the barter system and before long we had enough connections with the community that when anyone had some used, scrap or excess building materials, they would contact us first to see if we could use it. Most of the rest of the sky castle was built using this scrap material that would have otherwise gone to the landfill. PB would go and tear down a building at a friend’s property and we would get to take the material home. Please understand, we aren’t tree huggers, we aren’t doing any of this because it’s “green”, for us it was cheap and expedient, the fact that we were in fact being green was merely a bonus.

Little by little we built up our little place into a home, with running water, eventually installing on demand propane powered water heaters, water tanks for more water storage, we built another room, the first one was 16×16, the addition was 12×12, we built on decks and eventually, my favorite addition, the shower. We also began to work on other things, like the garden, putting up out buildings, sheds and such.

All of this has taken time and lots of sweat, we have spent very little money, mainly because we do everything ourselves, and a lot of experimentation, some of which worked great, some which failed miserably. We have been blessed by good health and only minor accidents, mostly scrapes and splinters. We have grown to really love our little community, I’d say that has been as important as anything we have done. No matter how perfect your place might be, if you aren’t happy with or welcome into your community, that will not end up in a good way.

Now we are living like kings, at least that is my opinion, of course by most people’s standards including the government, we live well under the poverty level, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, I love my life, I love living with the freedom I have, I love working hard for what we have, it really does make me appreciate each and every little thing we have. When we first started out, I was hauling 3 one gallon containers of water up the hill from my neighbor’s house every day, sometimes twice a day, I guarantee you that makes me appreciate my 1550 gallon poly plastic water container with all the plumbing involved, doing dishes and laundry by hand inside my sky castle, getting to shower with hot running water…

I look forward to many more years with PB, improving our lives and the sky castle. The last couple of days has been quite fun for PB, one of our friends and neighbors came by, he had been eyeballing the gravel in our creek bed, he offered a trade for a few trailer loads of gravel, he let us use his Bobcat tractor to do some dirt work, PB achieved in a few hours of work what would have taken him weeks if not months of hard manual work, it cost zero dollars, but was priceless for us. I have to say that life is good.

A big part of my happiness is because of my faith, I found a little church in the neighborhood (we are blessed with 2 of them close by), I joined and quickly became active in the church, now I’m on the board of trustees, working to make things better and better. I have been a Christian for many years, most of my life, but living out here and being part of this church and community has helped me grow in my faith and get closer to God. I’m not saying that is necessary for you, (though for me it is), it’s a choice you have to make, I am saying that going to church is a good way to get closer to your community, and hopefully to God too, I am blessed everyday and in every way, even in the bad times, there is always a lesson to learn, a period of growth, a strengthening. Getting to live in and near nature allows me to personally witness Divinity on a daily basis.

I have many people contact me to ask for my advice on how they should go about moving off grid, how to do it cheaply, how they should do it… it’s difficult to answer because everyone is different, everyone has different standards of how they want to live, everyone has different ideas and circumstances. My biggest advice is to have a dream and set goals, let nothing come between you and your goals, I have found that people will do what they really want to do, and unfortunately there are many who wish but don’t take the action necessary to make their wish a reality. I’m not judging, just stating the facts about what I see.

If you truly want to live off grid, then do it, you don’t have to do it all at once, but start taking the steps necessary to get you to the place where you want to be. Each step you take is a step closer to your dream, don’t let life get in the way, don’t let family, friends, a job, or anything else get in the way, do what is necessary to make yourself happy and the rest of everything will fall into place. I’m not advocating doing anything illegal, I’m assuming that most of my readers are reasonable, law abiding people. I am advocating living your life to the fullest extent, and if that includes living off grid, then do it.

If you want to learn more about our lives living off grid, you can read more of my stories here

http://www.off-grid.net/section/wretha/

you can also read about us in the book Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America by Nick Rosen, we are chapter 9 in the book.

The home, from Monolithic domes is just 320 square feet – cheap to heat cool and maintain, but amply priced at $74,000, given the cost of similar homes in the area.

Monolothic dome homes are made by inflating a balloon and then smearing a PVC coating on top of that.

The dome is in the Taos area of New Mexico, feature in my book OFF THE GRID – Inside the Movement for More Space Less Government and True Independence in Modern America.

The story also features John Kejr, a local Realtor, notorious for the high prices he seeks on behalf of his clients.

Escaping the Rat Race – Off the Grid from Nick Rosen on Vimeo.

Vonnie Mallon was an executive at Urban Outfitters before she discovered the Off-Grid life. She is featured in my book Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America. Here is a long excerpt where I meet Vonnie and her husband Pat, at their home near the Ojo Caliente Hot Springs in New Mexico:

“Vonnie had had everything she could have hoped for in the on-grid world, but she was still missing something that she would never find there.
I needed a brief break from the adversarial setting of Mike Reynolds’s Greater World, and hoped to drive a few miles to another set of hot springs. This time, however, it would be a public hot spring found at the end of an almost inaccessible track, known only to locals—and mountain-dwelling locals to boot. The idea was to spend the day up to my neck in a warm pool, naked except for a woolly hat, staring up at a blue sky from the bottom of the Rio Grande Gorge. Several locals had recommended it, and saying it was neither too hard nor too hazardous to find.
I got lost almost as soon as I set out. Before I knew it, I was in a tiny town called Carson, little more than a post office and a small store set back from the one road. When I walked into the place, it looked like a cross between a grocery store and a café, with a couple of Internet terminals thrown in. The customers, all guys with baseball caps and checkered shirts, were sitting at the two or three tables gossiping and drinking beer, occasionally popping out for cigarettes. Behind the counter was a dark-haired, immaculate woman with “big city” written all over her sculpted, masculine features. Vonnie isn’t standoffish and has no air of superiority—she was one of the most approachable people I met in my travels—but she does have the style and sense of distance I recognized as the result of maintaining a carapace around herself in a city full of strangers, a protective shell unnecessary in the rural Southwest, but that she has yet to quite throw off.
Vonnie lives in a small, isolated Earthship community, six miles out of Carson. The STAR community, as it’s known, was founded years earlier by none other than Mike Reynolds, in his most experimental days. It now has about twenty residents.
Vonnie travels along a near-impassable road to work at the store, Poco Loco, a few days a week, partly for the money, and partly because she needs to make the ride anyway. Her ancient Toyota truck eats gas at the rate of about a dollar a mile, so whenever she can, she rides in on a 100cc trail bike, which takes her fifteen minutes, compared with thirty in the Toyota. The truck is a ridiculously wasteful vehicle, but it was all she and her husband could afford after their brand-new hybrid SUV bit the dust. (How they came to lose the hybrid is a long story.)
For now, my interest was focused on the fact that Vonnie had been, until she came to New Mexico, vice president of marketing for Urban Outfitters, working out of their headquarters, or “corporate campus,” in Philadelphia. To me Urban Outfitters seems like a hipper version of the Gap. The stores feel less corporate, and the “look,” to the extent there is one, is more diverse. That’s their devilishly clever allure, but they are just as corporate as any other big, faceless company.
Vonnie invited me to stay at her place, and we agreed I would return after my trip to the hot springs. One of the bar’s patrons suggested I give myself a break and go to the touristy version at the Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs Resort, a few miles up the road. Yes, this was exactly what I needed after my grueling stay with Mike Reynolds, so I headed over to the little tourist town with its famous hot springs.
My first encounter was not promising. A couple of fierce biddies at the front desk scowled at me as though they would frown at any sign of fun, and the large, fussy, overstated marble lobby which they occupied seemed the opposite of what I was hoping for from the place. Once I had put my bag in my room, donned my robe, and walked the quarter mile back to the pools, I was pretty pleased to relax on the grid for a brief spell.
There are several pools on the compound, each with a different naturally occurring mineral in the solution, such as iron, sodium, arsenic, and lithia. The temperatures peak at over 100 degrees.
It I was visiting on two-for-one night, when the normally empty springs are inundated with locals. I spent a couple of hours lounging in the arsenic pool and was thoroughly relaxed, but the place was buzzing. Part of the buzz was caused by the large number of teenagers who ignored the “whisper zone” rule. I also realized, when a couple slid into the water beside me, that this place was not as sedate as I had expected . I lay in the iron pool for a while, with only my head above the surface, the taste of the water on my mouth reminding me of blood. To my left, a woman slid her legs around her male friend and leaned toward me; directly opposite, a pair of women swam into my line of vision and began fondling each other, one with her back to the other, and both of them facing straight ahead. I looked at them with curiosity, and received contemptuous stares in return. Whether they were a lesbian couple or a pair of prostitutes strutting their stuff was not something I wanted to discover.
I moved to yet another pool, but pretty soon the ten p.m. curfew alarm sounded. This, I realized , is the main reason for using the free springs, at least in New Mexico. They may be difficult to access, but the free springs are open past bedtime, all night if you wish. It seems monstrous to charge for the privilege of using what was once a free, publicly available pool and then close it down at ten p.m. This is a rule devised entirely for the benefit of the resort, not the guests.
I had a final soak in the arsenic pool and headed back to the Poco Loco store in Carson, where Vonnie was waiting to ferry me along her impassable road to meet the other members of her community. During the entire twenty-minute drive I clung to the handhold with one hand and pushed the other into the ceiling, to prevent my head from hitting the roof as we went over the bumps. At times there was no road, just a few tire tracks over the earth.
As we drove, Vonnie yelled a well-rehearsed biography at me over the roar of the engine. Hers had been a high-powered, demanding job, taking her all over the country, she said, and she had been good at it. Like most American executives, she had been expected to work very hard. “It’s a great company, but they definitely find ways to take more than you can give.”
She would arrive in the Urban Outfitters corporate office at seven-thirty each morning—earlier if there was a problem—as would the other members of her management cadre. Her direct supervisor had been a woman who grunted a lot and never thanked anyone for anything. “They make you feel like this is what you have to do to be on top and everything will be okay. They stretched you real thin,” Vonnie said as we finally pulled up at the end of the bone-shaking ride. “You looked around the office and the males were all reading magazines! The girls were running all over the place. It’s not that we couldn’t manage our time, but there was too much to do. We never got to talk to each other.”
I wasn’t sure whether this last comment was a reference to her female colleagues or to her husband, Pat, or both. Vonnie was perfectly open in explaining that their marriage had been under strain as a result of her work commitments. It wasn’t just the long hours, but her weekly road-trips to oversee in-store launches and promotions.
Vonnie had met Pat when she was nine and he was eight. They had been inseparable ever since. “But we didn’t fall in love until I was thirteen,” she added.
Pat is now thirty-four, with graying stubble, longish brown hair, and a nice smile. He has a lean body, hardened through a couple of years of building, decorating, gardening, and doing without. When we arrived Pat was standing in the garden in front of the house, next to a pair of tall, heavy wooden doors, open now and locked each night. They had been installed after a home invasion , the one that had led to the damaged SUV hybrid.
Pat is not the corporate type—he is a tortured artist and writer. Where Vonnie is effusive, almost a chatterbox—though with plenty of insight—Pat is laconic, shy, and distant. He lives inside his head. It is, he told me, a place he likes to be. He had been attracted to the monotonous sagebrush landscape of the Taos area because it taught him that rural beauty is a mere diversion, a way of “avoiding confronting yourself.”
“This kind of non-scenery forces you to be with yourself,” Pat said. “There’s nowhere else to go.” For Pat, civilization is the history of man’s long march away from himself, and our attempt to divert ourselves from the moment of confrontation. His pen name is Von Pat, a nice tribute to the virtual melding of his identity with Vonnie’s, a process that began with their childhood tryst.
“When we moved here, we wanted to live on our own one hundred percent—and that’s what we are working towards,” he said, like a twenty-one-year-old experiencing the intensity of his first love affair. Of course, it still is his first love affair, since neither of them has ever been with anyone else.
We had been talking in the garden, which was still fairly scrappy, with just a few plants here and there in the poor soil. There are four or five Earthships within view, all of different shapes and design finishes, mostly quite small with just one or two rooms. Vonnie and Pat’s is the largest, and Pat led me inside the long, single-story structure, another Mike Reynolds design.
The house had been a mess at first, so Pat spent two years on improvements, and now the place is perfect. Dwell magazine’s editors would wet themselves at the sight of it: high concrete interior walls as smooth as a baby’s cheek, painted in clean basic cream and beige. Some of the concrete was sculpted with soft corners to create alcoves and a breakfast bar. The wooden ceilings are all tongue-and-groove, dotted with skylights that pull open to disperse the sun’s heat during the warmer months. A purpose-built recess houses the sleek, full-size silver fridge (pre-postmodernism again), and another recess contains shelves full of tea, herbs, and natural medicine. The breakfast bar on one side of the kitchen and the sculpted fireplace in the opposite corner complete the room.
The front door of the house leads to a large sitting room, equally meticulously designed and finished, with the big sloping windows and indoor plants common to most Earthships. Turn right and you are heading for the kitchen. Turn left for the bathroom, complete with composting toilet, and then the bedroom. Vonnie and Pat have friends from back east who want to come and live in STAR community, so Pat is planning another room or two for guests. (I myself stayed in a nearby mini-Earthship.)
The couple had made the move from Philadelphia two years earlier. Vonnie had planned to keep working until they had set themselves up financially, but it was not to be. She had fought hard to be able to live and work from her Earthship but still travel to the in-store promotions. Her boss had hated the idea, but she was a trusted senior staffer, and the company eventually agreed. It was the local Internet supplier, Taos Mountain Electronics, that ruined her plans, although, in a way, she is grateful to them now.
The couple was short of money after paying for the house and the move, and were still keeping an apartment in Philadelphia. They had already paid Taos Mountain twenty-five hundred dollars for a satellite phone and Internet, but when they arrived, it simply didn’t work. “There was a lot of going back and forth to town and begging them,” Pat said, “but the company said, ‘I’m sorry, you bought it.’”
They took Taos Mountain Electronics to court—and won. But getting the money back was hardly compensation when you consider that it led to the early end of Vonnie’s job. For a brief period of time, she had traveled an hour to Taos each day, trying to work in an Internet café there from seven-thirty a.m. to seven p.m. “I was having anxiety attacks and in tears constantly—I was fading.” Her sacrifice was not enough to quell the corporate politics, and Vonnie was forced to resign. She had planned to keep the job for no more than another year, so they could build up a decent savings to then carry out their self-sufficiency plans, but it was a nice stream of income that simply dried up.
She has no regrets. “I thought I needed the money to do the other things then. You get out here and they just fade away. All those things you think that you need, you don’t need them at all. We have a community and that’s all we need.”
Food is high on their list of priorities, and it’s a special subject for Pat. “Right now food is a big deal. It’s a big journey to get food together,” he told me. As part of his “horrific” childhood, Pat was fed sugar a teaspoonful at a time. “It was slipped into my mouth—instead of meals.” Just six months before we met, he had discovered that he was addicted to sugar. It happened when he fasted for the first time in his life, for seven days on a nearby mountaintop, on his own. After the first few days he was so crazed that he forgot to even drink his water supply. When he eventually came back down he was half dead. He pulled through and has not touched sugar since. “I couldn’t move for the first three weeks. I was bedridden, with thoughts of suicide. Being here saved me.” Since then they had begun planting out their garden, built a plastic walled greenhouse and were harvesting salad and vegetables. They plan to have chickens and year round vegetables but there is a long way to go.

Pat was on antidepressants when I visited . He had slowly come off them since arriving in New Mexico, but he still needed them occasionally. “I always thought [my problems] were in my mind, but now I realize the role my body played,” he said, sitting at the kitchen table in his tranquil home. Thoughts of his body and its inner workings are, in and of themselves, enough to give him a panic attack. “This thing is a piece of meat, and its name is Patrick,” he would say to himself.
Vonnie had been on the road for six years by the time they moved to Taos. And Pat was “in a very dark state” influenced by his diet. Their relationship had all but broken down. “Our motives for coming here were love and freedom,” she said. “Freedom, and through that, love—reconnecting with our relationship. We catapulted a spiritual awakening. I needed to be silent within myself, and get rid of all the distractions around—the constant society expectations, the work expectations. It was easy to lose myself, continuing in this forward manner, never really being in the present.”
For Pat, there was another aspect to the move. “I wanted to get away from what was unnatural —the city and what goes on inside of it,” he said. “I had this picture in my head of nature, which I knew nothing about, although I knew the city never made sense to me. It functions but the keyword is function. I didn’t want to just function—I wanted to live. Coming here, my preconceptions were slapped in the face by the wind and the rain and the snow. Everything started to fall away, and I didn’t want to go back to the city at all. Even if you are committed to living in the city, you should be fundamentally conscious of it.” (This is what Thoreau would call “living deliberately .”) “Where does your water go, where has your food come from? It seems like we don’t want to know these things; they are too difficult to face.”
Vonnie and Pat were now at the end of the second year of their new life. I asked what they thought they had learned. Pat answered, “If you can afford land, then anybody can build an off-the-grid shelter for hardly any money at all. I realize that now. The materials are on the ground.”
There had been highs and lows. The low point was what the STAR community believed to be a xenophobically motivated home invasion (like many in the area) of one of their number, a middle-aged nurse named Patricia. A year earlier, a gang of Latinos had forced their way in and demanded to know where the drugs and money were. They kept Patricia hostage for four hours, telling her, “You hippies don’t belong here.” It ended with Pat and another resident pursuing them in Pat’s new 4×4. They flipped the car, destroying it. So, for a while, Pat and Vonnie had no Internet and no car—the two key items in their survival plan.
In retrospect, Vonnie is able to see the incident in a positive light. “We came together as a community,” she said. Nobody was hurt, but it took them all a long, long time to feel safe again. Now they are permanently ready for trouble—all of them are armed. Vonnie showed me the gun she keeps close to her at all times, a small silver pistol.
The community had meetings to prepare to defend themselves against future attacks. (None have come yet.) They held a second set of meetings to decide what to do about the nonexistent road. “Mike [Reynolds] turned up,” Pat told me, “with his band of goons. He was drunk, he slobbered over the free sandwiches, demanded a hundred-dollar-a-year [subscription to STAR community] from each of us, made all the same promises he makes each year.” And he left, and has not been back to the community since.

Penny: doing her democratic duty

Here is Penny’s story of how she is trying to get the British government to pay attention to those of its citizens who wish to, or need to live off the grid. She already has strong grassroots support – but she needs more support. She needs your support:

Gazing idly at the television can sometimes involve you in far more than you bargained for! In Early July, I happened to see Nick Clegg talking about a website he was launching called “Your Freedom”, the purpose of which was “to restore Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations” (1)

Over the next couple of days I started to think of just such an unnecessary regulation. I’d been given Nick Rosen’s book “How to Live Off-grid
” for my birthday, as it has always been something we were passionate to do, even if it meant moving to another country, and this seemed an ideal opportunity for someone to make the case for allowing people to live peacefully, in a sustainable manner, off-grid, here in the UK.

So I contributed the following proposal to the Restoring Civil Liberties section of the site:

______________________________________________________________

“Living in a temporary dwelling on your own land

by pennyb on July 03, 2010 at 09:54AM

In most of Europe, it is currently perfectly legal to live in a caravan or camper or log cabin, any temporary dwelling in fact, without planning or other permissions on land which you own.

In this country it is not allowed. What I would like to see is the abilty for those who wished to, to live full time on their own land, in a temporary dwelling.

Why the contribution is important

With the housing crisis that we have, it seems completely absurd that so many people who care desperately for the environment, cannot live in a simple sustainable way on their own piece of land.

Most people who wish to do this are not strange new age travellers – I used to be a bank manager. I would just like to live a very simple life, pay what taxes I have to, and leave as small a footprint on this earth as possible. Please let me and thousands like me, have a chance to do so.”

______________________________________________________________

Much to my surprise the comments and votes started to come, and have not stopped since (at time of writing there are 214 votes – almost all of them totally favourable, and 284 comments – more votes and comments than any other suggestion in that category). There have been a couple of very negative people with concerns about the harmful impact it may have on the countryside, but the vast majority of people have been positive and supportive.

As it started to gain momentum, I decided to contact some organisations to see if they were willing to support the proposal. Greenpeace put it up on their staff notice board, CAT gave me lots of contacts, I spoke to Simon Fairlie at Chapter 7, LILI, (low impact living initiative) took the trouble to ring me and thanked me from the bottom of their hearts for managing to get this issue such high profile attention. The proposal continues to get lots of really positive responses, and provoke interesting debate.

There’s just one small problem however, there has been no feedback from anyone in Government, not a sausage, b-all! Twice I’ve sent a polite message to the site moderators asking what the process and timescales are likely to be for feedback on the popular proposals; nothing. I wrote to Paddy Ashdown, as he is on record as supporting Tinkers Bubble in Somerset; nothing. I put a comment in the proposal itself; nothing.

The last time the website home page was updated was 9th July, nothing since.

This proposal is now 7th by number of comments out of around 5700 proposals on this part of the site and has an average vote of 4.7 out of 5. It is, without question, one of the best-supported proposals that has come out of this Government exercise.

What we need to do next is build on this momentum, really push it in as many ways as we can think.

If you want to help, firstly, go on the site leave a comment and vote 5 stars. You’ll need to register to do this –

http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/

Once you’ve registered go to this link:

http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/restoring-civil-liberties/living-in-a-temporary-dwelling-on-your-own-land

Scroll down to the voting stars (you’ll know them when you see them):

Click the far right star if you wish to rate the proposal with 5 stars, they’ll all turn yellow.
If you wish to add a comment, go right to the bottom of all the comments to the reply box.
In addition, you could write to your local MP – or make an appointment to see them in person. Just one supportive voice in the House of Commons would lead to the matter being raised, whether through questions to the relevant ministers, points raised in debates, or an EDM for others to sign and get behind. If there were more than one MP – even better!!

To take this to the next level we need to make a lot of noise. They have asked for feedback from the country – let’s give it to them!

Penny Burgess

Books for the new decade

Here are some of the top-sellers amongst people who use this web site:

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times

TEOTWAKI literature is the largest sector - Author James Wesley Rawles has been an enthusiastic survivalist since his teenage years. He was posting frequently on the subject on Usenet in the early 90s and is now editor of www.SurvivalBlog.com.

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre

How to produce over half an average family’s food on just a quarter acre—and earn $cash annually, all while spending less than half the time an ordinary job requires.

The Self-Sufficiency Handbook

All sorts of practical info- including three A-Z sections offer planting and harvesting instructions for vegetables and salad crops, fruits, and herbs.

The Renewable Energy Handbook, Revised Edition: The Updated Comprehensive Guide to Renewable Energy and Independent Living

Living off the grid is a combination of new technology and ancient wisdom – this book encapsulates the new technology. Author William Kemp is one of the foremost experts on domestic renewable energy.

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

Gardening When It Counts rediscovers traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food. Designed for readers with no experience.

Landbuddy is a free service from Off-Grid.net which helps people who plan to go off-grid to form a group to share skills, costs and responsibilities.

The best three posts published by August 31st will win the book, and be featured on off-grid.net thus increasing the visibility of their own entry.

Go to http://www.off-grid/net/landbuddy to post your details -

It allows anyone to register, then post their details and location on a google map so that others can find them – the more detail you post about yourself, including photos and video, the better chance you have of finding others to form a group.

The best three posts online by August 31st will win copies of the book – Editor’s decision is final. Names will be announced September 3rd. You will be asked for a mailing address where we can send the book.

Buy the book here

OFF THE GRID

by Nick Rosen

Buy the book here:

Buy it from Amazon

Buy it from Borders

Buy it from Barnes & Noble

Buy it from Indiebound

The grid is everywhere, sending power to the light switch on the wall and water to the faucet in the kitchen. But is it essential? Should we depend on it and the giant corporate structure behind it? With energy prices soaring, the housing market in shambles, financial institutions collapsing, and unemployment hovering at devastating highs, up to a million Americans have already freed themselves from dependence on the utility companies. More are joining the movement every day.

In OFF THE GRID: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America (Penguin Original; On-Sale: August 2010; ISBN 978-0-14-311738-4; $15.00) award-winning documentary filmmaker and part-time off-gridder, Nick Rosen, takes readers on a fascinating and complex journey through a seemingly simple lifestyle. Nick traverses the US, encountering both luxury hideaways and harsh environs, to investigate the growing trend for off-the-grid living. His adventures take him from one overlooked part of the country to another, in rented cars that often double as hotels and on public transit when his subjects demand it. He spends time with all sorts of individuals and families striving to live the lives they want— bathing in hot springs, forgoing municipal power and amenities—in the ultimate search for freedom from government and its far-reaching grasp.

In the book, Nick is always asking why the individuals he meets have chosen this life, and comes up with a wide range of surprising and often comical answers.

The people featured in OFF THE GRID, as within the movement at-large, are not always the into-to-the-wild recluses that one might expect, although a few such are profiled, including the rustic character made popular through Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Last American Man and gun-toting novelist Carolyn Chute as well as cult author Alan Weisbecker. To the contrary, many of those living off-the-grid have built communities of like-minded people, often families with young children who are committed to helping one another. There are groups of devoted environmentalists who see this lifestyle as the only responsible way to counteract the massive energy consumption prevalent in ordinary American life. Others live this way rather unexpectedly, after finding urban and suburban lifestyles in conflict with their personal ethics, and still others were forced into their situations by economic factors beyond their control.

The colorful characters that populate OFF THE GRID are incredibly diverse. But what they do have in common is their understanding of how tenuous their unique situation is and the effort and determination required to maintain it. In the modern era, when Americans and the world in general are pushing towards greater connectivity and development, they are struggling to hold onto what they have—and often fighting back against the authority they wish to escape. Although the stories of these alternative lives are varied, all are truly incredible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nick Rosen is an award winning documentary maker, journalist, and broadcaster. Born and based in London, he has often lived and worked in the US. Over the past two decades he has been a Teaching Assistant at the Georgetown University Philosophy Department, a journalist in San Francisco and a documentary filmmaker in New York. Nick is an off-grid expert, editing the website www.off-grid.net, and since 1994 has been off the grid part-time.

OFF THE GRID

By Nick Rosen

Penguin Paperback Original / August 2010

$15.00 / ISBN 978-0-143-11738-4

Not a How-to. More a Why-to

Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America

The grid is everywhere, sending power to the light switch on the wall and water to the faucet in the kitchen. But is it essential? Should we depend on it and the giant corporate structure behind it? With energy prices soaring, the housing market in shambles, financial institutions collapsing, and unemployment hovering at devastating highs, up to a million Americans have already freed themselves from dependence on the Utility companies. More are joining the movement every day.

In Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America, award-winning documentary filmmaker and part-time off-gridder, Nick Rosen, takes readers on a fascinating and complex journey through a seemingly simple lifestyle. Nick, who is Editor of this web site, traverses the US, encountering both luxury hideaways and harsh environs, to investigate the growing trend for off-the-grid living. His adventures take him from one overlooked part of the country to another, in rented cars that often double as hotels and on public transit when his subjects demand it. He spends time with all sorts of individuals and families striving to live the lives they want— bathing in hot springs, forgoing municipal power and amenities—in the ultimate search for freedom from government and its far-reaching grasp.

In the book, Nick is always asking why the individuals he meets have chosen this life, and comes up with a wide range of surprising and often comical answers.

The people featured in OFF THE GRID, as within the movement at-large, are not always the into-to-the-wild recluses that one might expect, although a few such are profiled, including the rustic character made popular through Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Last American Man and gun-toting novelist Carolyn Chute as well as cult author Alan Weisbecker. To the contrary, many of those living off-the-grid have built communities of like-minded people, often families with young children who are committed to helping one another. There are groups of devoted environmentalists who see this lifestyle as the only responsible way to counteract the massive energy consumption prevalent in ordinary American life. Others live this way rather unexpectedly, after finding urban and suburban lifestyles in conflict with their personal ethics, and still others were forced into their situations by economic factors beyond their control.

The colorful characters who/that? populate OFF THE GRID are incredibly diverse. But what they do have in common is their understanding of how tenuous their unique situation is, and the effort and determination required to maintain it. In the modern era, when Americans and the world in general are pushing towards greater connectivity and development, they are struggling to hold onto what they have—and often fighting back against the authority they wish to escape. Although the stories of these alternative lives are varied, all are truly incredible.

When Nick Rosen travelled the UK, interviewing off-gridders for his book How to Live Off-grid (UK edition – click the cover image to buy in US), he filmed them as he went, and a selection are now available on the channel. Here is one example, from Hillholt Wood in Lincolnshire. Nigel Lowthrop is one of the leaders of the UK off-grid movement. He succeeded in turning his 30 acre wood into a vital local resource,and won planning approval after a long battle. (Click “keep reading” to see the video)

There will eventually be hundreds of videos on the channel, as well as being referenced with the LandBuddy site.

For more clips, go to the Off-Grid YouTube Channel.    And don’t forget to submit your own.

Buy the UK version of How to Live Off-grid

Jenny takes a trip

Oki doki folks! Jenny here. Hello out there once more!

Continuing on from my previous article, which can be found here, I shall now home in on some finer details beginning with choice of van, and energy sources, both for powering the van and for power in the van.

Van:  I already discussed in the pre-mentioned article my reasons for choosing a van/minibus to live off-grid in…..but now how do I go about deciding, which van (from this point forward meaning minibus as well as van) to use? Does it matter? Well, from my research I have learnt that yes, indeed it does matter! Especially if, like me, one hopes to use USVO (Used Straight Vegetable Oil) as the fuel – more on USVO specifically in a moment.

• To use USVO, I need to ensure my van runs on diesel.
• Ensuring less vandalism/other bother, I would like an inconspicuous-coloured/shaped van; I am thinking white/navy blue/black/dark green will be fine.
• The van needs to be able to undergo a one-tank conversion to be able to run on the higher viscosity USVO or already have the conversion upon buying; van pumps suitable for this are: Bosch Diesel Kiki, Nippon Denso, Doowon and Zexel. Two-tank conversions work with a greater variety of vehicles, still using diesel at the beginning and end of a drive to warm up the vegetable oil and prepare the diesel tank to be at-the-ready for the next drive… but I would like to avoid using ANY diesel…I am fortunate I do not yet have a vehicle and so do not have to fear discovering that the vehicle is not suitable for one-tank conversion.
• I am flexible regarding the length and height of the van; seems most practical and flexible to me though that it is not higher than the maximum height of a vehicle allowed into various public places such as car parks – although if I loved everything else about the van or caravan I would not let this prevent me from purchasing it; the times I would use car parks, for example, would be rare.
• To remain as earth-friendly as possible and to avoid needing even larger sums of money, I would like a second-hand vehicle. Decreasing the chance of being swindled, I can research the source from where I’ll be purchasing the vehicle and search for good or bad references. I think it will be worthwhile taking the vehicle to the mechanics for a check-over before purchasing.

From what I understand, the below webpage lists the car & van manufacturers/models that are suitable for the one-tan conversion (I just need to Google each of them now to see which are vans and which are cars! Hehee. Please check messages below this article in one week to find the results of my findings) http://www.dieselveg.com/Vehicle%20List.htm . With dieselveg.com the one-tank conversion costs just over £1000.

USVO:

Vegetable oil (peanut, hemp, rapeseed, olive, sunflower…any others too) burns much more cleanly than fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is still emitted but this simply replaces the carbon dioxide that the plant used to grow the oil would remove in photosynthesis. The term ‘straight’ in this acronym simply refers to the vegetable oil not being mixed with others fuel types. I would like to use ‘used vegetable oil’ from restaurants and other catering outlets, who, I have read, are happy to give it away for free as they currently have to pay to have it collected and burnt (cannot be put down sinks as will cause sewage blockages). For example, in the US, 300 million gallons/year of waste vegetable oil ends up in landfill sites/sewage systems. Now, I am not pretending that the amount of waste oil produced by catering outlets is sufficient for all societies across the world to use….even if the world dramatically reduces its reliance upon cars….unless they are going to be practically eradicated (but this is not something I am particularly advocating). It is not sufficient. However, it seems only logical to me to make use of this otherwise wasted oil first before beginning with firsthand oil.

I can collect the oil directly from a willing catering outlet; however, the oil needs to be clean; not with bits of food nor even water in it! Heheee. Some restaurants will do this, but often I will need to be able to filter it myself. There are contraptions that I could buy to do this…However, I do not plan to be so short of money that I will be unable to afford the on average £1 extra per week that is needed to purchase pre-filtered USVO from organisations such as www.goldenfuels.com and www.vegoilmotoring.com. On the lowimpact.org forum, Forum people kindly informed me that an average van usually guzzles a maximum of one gallon per 30 miles. Let’s say that I would actually drive my van a luxurious maximum of 10 miles per week – meaning I’d need only 1/3 gallon of USVO, this is just over 1 litre.

Just to clarify one thing that I was not sure of before I began researching: vegetable oil (whichever form) is a biofuel, not to be confused with biodiesel. Biodiesel is a biofuel that is converted by adding alcohol and a catalyst. This mixture is left to settle and then biodiesel is poured off the top, leaving glycerine at the bottom. I favour vegetable oil as you don’t need to use any other substances or contemplate what to do with leftover products. I can simply store my oil somewhere in the van in a protective container.

The fuel I use may need to be 10% diesel in the Winter due to the viscosity of vegetable oil alone becoming to high. However, several people have found in the last few winters (probably not including this Winter!?) that they have not needed any diesel. I shall be willing to undergo a process of trial and error!

I find the following to be an excellent general information source concerning using vegetable oil in vehicles: http://www.vegoilmotoring.com/eng/mixing-diesel-svo .

You may have heard talk of being able to use Algae as a biofuel by 2020!! See http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/emerging-technologies/current-focus-areas/pages/algae-biofuels-challenge.aspx

I still need to learn how to drive….there are numerous more ethical alternative driving schools in the UK, especially in London, for example www.greendrivingschool.co.uk and www.eco-drive-school.co.uk.

Taxes/Insurance:

Using SVO/USVO actually results being exempt from road taxes!

I will be checking with The Co-operative and Caravan Club to establish if they will provide insurance for a van that I am living in and how much it will cost. Please check messages below this article in one week to find the results of my findings.

Solar Energy:

As the energy source for the remaining devices I would like to run, I was advised by CAT (Centre of Alternative Technology in Wales) to steer clear of wind energy and go for solar energy. Albeit a small windmill on top of the van, it would still produce enough noise to attract unwanted attention and to be labelled as disturbance by locals. It is also not predicted to produce as much energy in a UK location year-round as the solar option.

There is still a negative environmental impact during the production of solar panels but this still amounts to far less environmental degradation than that caused by fossil fuels and the solar cell constituent parts of the panels can be recycled.

The following website will tell you the longitude and latitude of your town: http://www.astro.com/cgi/aq.cgi?lang=e …..these details are needed to discover the direction of ‘true-south’, where I will want my panel to face. These details are also needed to determine the angle I want to place my panel at, depending on the sun’s angle to Earth (which changes throughout the year). The  recommended tilts are shown here after entering your latitude: http://www.wattsun.com/misc/photovoltaic_tilt.html . Taking account of these factors will increase the amount of energy the cells can produce.

I found http://www.green-trust.org/2000/solar/findsun.htm a very good site for instruction of how to optimally place my solar panels.

There are different kinds of solar cells. Those made from crystalline silicon (CS) are most widely used. They are a little more expensive but manufacturers guarantee that CS panels still will provide 80% of their maximum energy output after 25 years! Other cells available are thin film cells, comprised from either copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) or cadmium telluride (CdTe) among others. These are cheaper and use less raw materials but are less efficient than CS, though according to CAT, much research is currently being carried out on the efficiency of thin film cells. I will assume I shall use the CS solar panels, but will do further research at the time of buying.

This website can help predict the average potential amount of solar energy that’s obtainable anywhere in the EU: http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/apps3/pvest.php .

According to the book by Nick Rosen, it is possible to power a mobile phone, lap top and a few other low-energy devices if wanted, with just one single 50w solar panel in the UK. I am still working on working this out for myself with all the equations and everything as described here: http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/khxc/gbu0-display/faq.html#4.  I have tried it out a couple of times before but keep on getting new information to alter the information I put into the equations. Please check messages below this article in one week to find the results of my findings. I will try to base my calculations on the average solar energy achievable, or indeed the minimum solar energy achievable. It would not be wise to base my estimations on peak solar energy!

No planning permission is required for solar panels so that is one hurdle I do not have to cross.

I predict that I will purchase two 12V, lead-acid, deep-cycle batteries for the storage of the solar energy. These are the cheapest and simplest type and release energy slowly, perfect for the low-energy-consumption of the few devices I plan to be using. The devices I wish to use are available in 12V versions and even if there is something unavailable in 12V I can purchase a transformer, as is likely to be necessary for a laptop. Two storage batteries enable me to be flexible with my energy usage – if there is insufficient energy being produced at a certain time, I can use previously-stored energy that I did not use. The final requirement for the batteries is that they are at least 100AH (capable of powering a 100-amp appliance for one hour). I will need to ensure all connecting wires are thick as the current is higher and could melt the wires. I will use a shunt regulator to ensure no overcharging nor undercharging of the batteries.

If my energy production is too limited, I can purchase a battery-powered mini- heater if worse comes to worse. This is the only compulsory device I can think of…and this only for winter as well. Though I need to work on this idea – or maybe I will only know for sure after trying it out; will I really be content putting up with the noise…presumably whilst I sleep too….maybe I can find a quiet one that is a little more expensive?? Please check messages below this article in one week to find the results of my findings. I did investigate woodstoves – amazing possibilities. However, I predict that I will be living near other people and I think smoke from the roof of my van will definitely be classed as a disturbance! Of course if I do find myself not living near anyone, I can reconsider using woodstoves.

There are plenty of ethical/environmental companies in the UK and abroad from where to buy all this desired equipment. www.brightgreenenergy.co.uk is just one example.

I hope to convert to a more ethical mobile phone network in the future too. I have found one offered by The Phone Co-op. However, they say the mobile must be a 3G Nokia mobile, which is one of the newer, more expensive versions. I will find out why their network is only compatible with these specific mobiles….as, normally, I would not wish to spend that much (around £96)….especially when 2^nd hand mobiles keep on finding their way to me! :-p :-). If it is, for example, for reasons of ethicality (for example Greenpeace have rated Nokia as the most ethical electrical company…or maybe rather the ‘best of a bad bunch’), then I will definitely convert to their network.

I have one final thought and a question to pose for you all: I have been hearing that it is a lot easier to live off-grid in Scotland and Wales than elsewhere in the UK. Whilst this may be true, part of me feels reluctant to aim to live/campaign in those areas; is it not more beneficial to the off-grid movement to aim to live where you would live if living off-grid was not an issue for society? Although I do realise that it is helping the movement tremendously regardless of where off-grid-living is carried out.

And for now……that’s it guys and gals! I look forward to writing and sharing my next article and indeed to the developments on research mentioned in the above article, which I shall add in messages below.

Merry days to you All…

Jenny. :-)

"I want to be free"

Aim: to live off-grid in the back of  a minibus, simply parked in a  ’normal’ town, with a job in the charity sector, still part of  ’normal’ society.

WHY? Hmmm…where to begin?

Well – like most people, I have spent some of my time in life pondering on the future; imagining how my life may turn out & how I might feel in each of the imagined outcomes.

I also spent (& still spend) time observing my others’ lives around me as they currently are. These two activities left me less & less inclined to live in an ‘ordinary’ house with a mortgage & equally less willing to rent accommodation; whilst it gave me some respite, knowing that the mortgage could be via the Co-operative Bank (www.co-operativebank.co.uk) or The Ecology Building Society, I still was not happy with the prospect of being part of the common “mortgage trap” where I’d be ‘reliant’ on or constantly hoping for house prices not to fall if I wanted to sell & would be committed to long term, huge amounts; yet more monthly payments on top of taxes, utility bills & student loan repayments.

It did not seem very attractive to me. So – I turned to the idea of renting forever more…yep – I even researched about pensions, to ensure (presuming politics wasn’t to change much in this area) that if I lived for long into old age – I’d still be able to afford renting & very basic living costs.

Again, the volume of money is not attractive to me here, though some comfort was provided to me with the idea of using more ethical, alternative energy suppliers (e.g. Good Energy www.goodenergy.co.uk).

I am also not comfortable with the average landlord/lady profiting from my rent. Renting/mortgages for typical housing is relatively inflexible or requires a lot of work & extra cost for conversion to eco-friendly as well.

I am also not interested in all that most renting/housing establishments offer (e.g. conventional toilets, superfluous space & extensive cooking & washing facilities). This does not fit well with me whilst there are still many lacking in the world. The fact that both options are also permanently fixed to the ground puts me off further as does the ever decreasing amounts of green/wild/free land (of course there are other big causes of this too but more and more houses being built is not helping). Having said all these reservations, I was still initially thinking I would rent.

The knowledge required for anything else seemed unreachable to me, requiring perhaps years of study & living quite apart from society, which I had not prepared my CV for.

But then….I read Nick Rosen’s book “How to Live Off-grid”. I found it easily readable & non text-book-like. I learnt that living off-grid in a way suitable to my views seemed doable for me! Yay! Realistic, relatively inexpensive & simple. Then, with a little extra research I realised that it is definitely doable. And so I began on my preparatory path for it. Basically, my reasoning is very well covered in Rosen’s book; environmentalism, a sense of independence, self-sufficiency & freedom, a dash of survivalist attitude (especially considering if global warming does occur & I live in a minibus on the coast – I can simply drive away if rising tides increase too much, as opposed to the tides engulfing entire fixed properties. I would of course also save a lot of money that I could instead spend on more life-fulfilling things. So, why would I like to stick around in a bigger town instead of living off-grid in th emiddle of nowhere?

I would still like to be part of society. I would like to work in the charity sector & most of these jobs, matching my experiencce, will be in towns, at least, or cities. Why in a minibus? This mode of living would be less conspicuous than a caravan & easier to handle in order to just get me started. I don’t really think I’ll need or want more though either – maybe check back for updates in a couple of years to see if it has stayed this way!

I am not proposing this compact and quite basic level of living for all, I just know that I’d like to try investigate it further and show what’s possible. I believe I have it all worked out….One solar panel on top of the roof – enough to hopefully power a netbook, mobile phone charger (or I can do that at work), mini-heater (for the winter; I did consider a mini woodstove but I believe this wood be deemed a nuisance by the public) & perhaps a lamp.

My research also suggests having two batteries for storage of the solar energy will also help for periods when there is no or limited sunlight. I have also come across websites that assist in estimating how much sun, on average shines in various UK regions. As far as bathroom, washing & toilet facilities are concerned, well, I shall be making full use of public facilities…and perhaps making use of the great outdoors on the odd occasion. And food?

Yep – I do not plan on installing cooking facilities & my recent experiences with a raw food community has shown me how to live very healthily without the need of cooking. I am equally enthused about boat off-grid living, if not more so. However, again, living in a minibus seemed more immediately tangible to me…perhaps boat off-grid living will be something I move towards in the future, especially if I keep the interest up as a hobby. I’ve read it may be hard to find a permanent spot to moor the boat, it’s more expensive, requires more knowledge & may be more liable to be vandalised. Off-grid also means more for me personally than it is currently defined as.

I extend its meaning to include a small as possible input into unethical corporations as well. I will gladly report back to this website with updates. Many thanks for reading and to Nick Rosen for the existence of this website and for writing of his off-grid book!

Jenny.

Nick: the age of the micro-grid

Is nuclear power a “Green” energy solution? What is the UK view? Is it a viable option for mitigating climate change? Can small nuclear energy modules provide the energy for off-grid communities – and in particular the baseload power required to make solar and wind power plants continuously productive?

All these questions and more will be addressed by Nick,  founder of the off-grid.net web site,  at the Denver Art Museum on the evening of Thursday, October 22nd.  The seminar is titled Mondo Energy.’ Because of limited seating, the free tickets for the event, along with more information, should be obtained in advance by visiting http://www.MondoEnergy.org.

Nick Rosen and co-speaker Gwyneth Cravens  will be holding a book-signing opportunity from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Presentations run from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. In addition to answering some of the most commonly cited questions, speakers will address: the role of nuclear power in the clean energy mix; the “Neutron Economy: past, present and future;” and what “Green Incorporated” doesn’t want you to know.

Nick will be in Denver until Saturday holding meetings about future off-grid settlements and the role of miniature nuclear reactors in powering them.

Click to buy the book Speakers will include Gwyneth Cravens, author of ‘Power to Save the World;’ Dr. Roger Pielke, professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Dr. Robert Amme, professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Denver; the Honorable William C. Anderson, former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force; Nick Rosen, award-winning international producer, journalist and author of “How to Live Off-Grid;” and John R. Grizz Deal, CEO of Hyperion Power Generation, the New Mexico and Colorado-based company

‘The Truth about Nuclear Energy’ will be held at the Denver Art Museum in the Lewis I. Sharp Auditorium and is being sponsored by Denver-based venture capitalists Altira Group, LLC, http://www.altiragroup.com; Hogan & Hartson, LLP attorneys at law with offices in Denver and worldwide, http://www.hhlaw.com; TVC – Technology Ventures Corporation, http://www.techventures.org; EUCI – Electric Utility Consultants, http://www.euci.com; and Hyperion Power Generation, Inc. http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com.

Off-Grid campaigner and founder Nick Rosen is giving a talk in Denver next week.
Is nuclear power a “Green” energy solution? What is the UK view? Is it a viable option for mitigating climate change? Can small nuclear energy modules provide the energy for off-grid communities – and in particular the baseload power required to make solar and wind power plants continuously productive?
All these questions and more will be addressed at the Denver Art Museum on the evening of Thursday, October 22nd at a free seminar Mondo Energy.’ Because of limited seating, the free tickets for the event, along with more information, should be obtained in advance by visiting http://www.MondoEnergy.org.
Nick Rosen and co-speaker Gwyneth Cravens  will be holding a book-signing opportunity from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Presentations run from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. In addition to answering some of the most commonly cited questions, speakers will address: the role of nuclear power in the clean energy mix; the “Neutron Economy: past, present and future;” and what “Green Incorporated” doesn’t want you to know.
Nick will be in Denver until Saturday holding meetings about future off-grid settlements and the role of miniature nuclear reactors in powering them.
Speakers will include Gwyneth Cravens, author of ‘Power to Save the World;’ Dr. Roger Pielke, professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Dr. Robert Amme, professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Denver; the Honorable William C. Anderson, former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force; Nick Rosen, award-winning international producer, journalist and author of “How to Live Off-Grid;” and John R. Grizz Deal, CEO of Hyperion Power Generation, the New Mexico and Colorado-based company
‘The Truth about Nuclear Energy’ will be held at the Denver Art Museum in the Lewis I. Sharp Auditorium and is being sponsored by Denver-based venture capitalists Altira Group, LLC, http://www.altiragroup.com; Hogan & Hartson, LLP attorneys at law with offices in Denver and worldwide, http://www.hhlaw.com; TVC – Technology Ventures Corporation, http://www.techventures.org; EUCI – Electric Utility Consultants, http://www.euci.com; and Hyperion Power Generation, Inc: http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com.

Kate Moss – Glamping

On the other hand,  if it brings the idea of off-grid living to thousands who would not otherwise consider it, what can be the harm in that?

British supermodel Kate Moss is renowned as a canny trend-spotter who has revived her career time and again with new looks and new boyfriends.

Moss went back to basics for her latest fashion shoot with a taste of gypsy living as she joined a group of travellers for a photo spread for the upcoming issue of V Magazine.

The style chameleon showcased a hippy chic look as she posed in a caravan, on the back of a horsedrawn cart and even perched upon a pony.

But her relaxed outfits were not without a designer price tag.

She modelled a range of high-end labels including Isabel Marant, Chloe Sevigny, Kenzo, John Galliano, Stefanel, and Dsquared.

During the shoot, which took place in May for V Mag, Kate made herself right at home with the community.

She lived with the travellers over the two-day shoot in Shepton Mallet, Somerset and sang and danced ‘around the clock’ during her visit.

The multi-millionaire was snapped huddled amongst the bearded travellers as she joined the 20-strong group for a rollicking night at their makeshift camp.

Despite shunning local hotels, there was obviously a limit to how far she was prepared to go.

Rather than bedding down around a campfire, Kate instead went ‘glamping’ – glamorous camping – and stayed in a designer campervan, rather like Off-Grid Editor Nick Rosen when he wrote his book How to Live Off-Grid.

Don’t try this at home

Titled ‘How to unplug from the grid,’  it couldn’t be a bigger plug for off-grid living, if you’ll excuse the pun. But the New Scientist cover story has sparked a furious debate about numerous inaccuracies in both the story and the accompanying picture.

The New Scientist editorial team for some reason chose to illustrate “How to unplug from the grid” with a photo (left) of a woman ironing laundry in a field, powered by a single solar panel in the foreground. What these science experts failed to appreciate was that it is quite impossible to run an iron off-grid using a solar panel other than by a major leap in solar technology. The panels would need to  achieve something like 70% efficiency compared to the current 14% from the best panels, according to the scientists who crowded the comment section of the web site. One called it “an outright lie.” Unless the New Scientist knows something we don’t, and has failed to mention in the article, then running an iron from a solar panel would be a major breakthrough of global proportions; in which case, we want some of those panels!

At least one of the interviewees feels he was portrayed inaccurately in the story:“I am a Hydro expert not forestry,” writes Mike Bestwick of Aberdeenshire.  Oh, and another small point. Mike does not actually live off-grid.

“He has the grid for backup” says the writer, Gaia Vince. Nothing wrong with that, but you would have thought the New Scientist could go to the trouble of finding people who are actually off-grid for their story about unplugging from the grid.  There are plenty about — many more than the 40,000 homes they wrongly claim in the article, although no source is given. According to the UK government the true figure is at least two and a half times that.
Best source

Mike Bestwick lists numerous other factual errors — nothing important  – just small technical errors, the sort of thing you would have thought the New Scientist (which is about to have its staff numbers cut by owners Reed/Elsivier) would ensure it got right:

“ …the wheel is not galvanised and was designed by myself,” writes Bestwick, “and constructed by my local blacksmith and I, from 50% recycled materials,and it averages 20,000kWh/annum of output,not 4,000 as stated.”The article revisits people first mentioned in Nick Rosen’s book, HOW TO LIVE OFF GRID. If  you read the article and want to know more about Tony Marmont (anyone interested can find a more detailed account of his set-up there), Richard Perez and other leading edge off-gridders, then do visit this web site more often, or buy the book (click on the link to the right).

“How to unplug from the Grid” is a great little intro to the subject despite the shoddy journalism. Subscribe to off-grid.net for the real deal and regular updates.