Category — OFF-GRID 101

In homebuilding, innovation in materials technology and energy efficiency is everywhere, but construction methods seem always to lag behind as many contractors stick to the familiar and sometimes the cheap. The Guardian reports that choosing a home has become “as simple as picking furniture from the Ikea catalogue” for residents of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, where a neighbourhood of affordable architect-designed kit houses has just been launched. If you can’t afford pricey designs that does not mean settling for generic or uninspired aesthetics, inefficiency and mid-grade craftsmanship.

Author Sheri Koones champions this alternative path – prefabricated housing – that she has been promoting for years in a series of books about this option. The latest is “Pre-fabulous and Almost Off the Grid,” which features more than 30 homes built using some sort of prefabricated components. (more…)

How many of you would like (love?) to to have your own place and live for just what you’d pay in taxes? Assuming you already have a piece of land (hint, look for so called “junk” land and you can often have it for a song)… Well that’s precisely what Anna Hess and her husband Mark did. (more…)

Last Sunday afternoon, I went to a gardening roundtable discussion in my community. I live on a mountain side in the high desert of far west Texas (yes, Texas does have mountains, the Davis Mountains to be exact). It was quite interesting talking to the various gardeners out here. Some were just starting out, some were experienced gardeners but not in this location, and some had gardened out here for many years.

I have been really itching to get out and garden this year, I haven’t gardened much for the last 2 years because of water issues, we didn’t have much of a rainy season those two years. Our rainy season usually starts in July(ish) and ends in September(ish), during those few months we get most of our yearly amount of rainfall. It’s hard to wait for the rainy season to start, typically I would start in spring and hand water. (more…)

How much land do you need to survive? This is not a theoretical question if, like Carol Deppe, you bellieve the zombie apocalypse is just around the corner.

The author of The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times,Deppe says you need an acre. But others say a quarter acre is enough.

Deppe’s book might help you build a veggie-garden with climate change in mind, but she lives in temperate Corvalis, Oregon, population 54,462. In other parts of the country such as New Mexico, Texas or Nevada, she might have other concerns. As it is, the book is mainly about surviving when the world infrastructure collapses and she has nothing to rely on but herself. (more…)

Those of us who are interested in survival stuff already know about paracord, that magically strong yet thin and lightweight cord that was once the domain of parachutist, this wonderful product is often turned into decorative as well as useful items that can be pulled apart and used in emergency situations. I see paracord bracelets, belts, necklaces, and such, this one is a drawstring bag that you can use to carry things. Paracord comes in a rainbow of colors and styles, it even comes in multicolor. I am thinking about using crochet yarn to do this too, I want to make some re-useable grocery bags and this looks like a good way to do it, I’ll crochet a single chain and use the same “pattern” to make the bag. (more…)

With it still being winter time, and with many mega-blizzards going on though out the USA, there will always be a need for alternative ways of keeping warm and cooking. Rocket stoves and rocket mass heaters neatly fit the bill here, what is really great about them is they don’t use up loads and loads of wood, in fact you can burn twigs in them quite nicely. Since I first wrote about rocket stoves, there have been many experiments and improvements made by industrious tinkerers, and fortunately for us, these tinkerers also have cameras and are putting up videos of their progress. (more…)

Whether you live off grid or in a regular home, you need light. With the right number and position of windows, you can get along just fine during the day, but once the sun goes down, you start needing some sort of lighting. Fortunately today there are lots of options for those of us who live off grid. (more…)

Thinking of buying a new Apple laptop? Treat yourself to a ThinkPad instead. And save hundreds on energy as well as up to $1500 on the cost of the computer.

Ever since Apple Computers (APPL) pulled its laptops out of a voluntary eco-rating scheme (EPEAT) last year, its been pretty obvious that the company has lost touch with its West Coast roots and become just another greedy hardware supplier – albeit with a booming software catalog to pull in the punters.

Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics is into its 18th edition and benchmarks the best practices (more…)

I can hear you now, it’s deep winter, why think about gardening now??? Well my friends, this is the time when you should be thinking about preparing your soil for late winter and early spring, there are only a few months in which to do this, while your garden is sitting idle, assuming you aren’t snowed in you can be working on your soil, if you are snowed in, this is something you need to do during the fall and spring, of course you can always work on your soil during the summer month too. Let’s talk about preparing your soil. (more…)