Category — OFF-GRID 101

This December will be 4 years for us living 100% off grid, I can tell you it’s been quite the adventure, my only regret is that we didn’t do this earlier. Let me recap what we have been doing these 4 years…

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Warm in the coldest weather

This extraordinary little house was built around 1910 as a Croquet Pavilion by Harold Fowler, an International champion. It has now been renovated as an off-grid holiday cottage, usually by the week.

A local specialist in environmentally sustainable construction, Julian Bishop, was commissioned to design an eco-cottage.  The brief asked that the visual profile and footprint remain as unchanged as possible, allowing the building to maintain, but not increase its position in the landscape.  The materials were environmentally sustainable: energy to come from natural sources and water to be collected from the roof.   The craftsmen involved were locally based and committed environmentally.   The result was that materials used have less environmental impact and are less toxic.  (more…)

Already well know in developing countries

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

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

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

Every bug-out bag should have one

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

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

Depression Era: next time it could be you

IF YOU READ the article on Global Storming last month, you will know why changes in weather patterns are making extreme weather so common, and natural disasters so much more likely. Then there are the signs of imminent economic collapse to consider, plus geopolitics, terrorism and disease. Finally there is the distinct possibility that each of us face that our home, our job, our family, might be the next one sacrificed on the roulette wheel of our national economy.

But the key question is: what do you do about it?

Resilience is far more in the mind that in the larder or the fuel supply. There are three principles for people to find meaning and inspiration when times are the blackest. (more…)

Homesteading, it’s a buzzword that means different things to different people, back in the day, it meant getting land for free as long as you lived on it and improved it for x number of years. It was a way to get people to move west (in the USA), back when travel was slow and painful, even dangerous.
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My hubby and I live 100% off grid, we have lived this way since Dec 2007, we get a lot of questions about how we live, about the costs of living this way and such. I ran across this article on line a little bit ago and found that it answers many of the questions I receive. (more…)

One of the oldest methods of preserving foods, canning is experiencing a resurgence — with sales of home-canning products up 35 percent in the past three years.

One of the best of hundreds of blogs is Canning Granny. Coming next month is the first Can-It-Forward Day, when home canners can connect through a national circuit of parties and social-media activities.

“I think canning goes with the interest in home arts, knitting, homesteading,” said Jeanne Sauvage, founding member and editor of Canning Across America, a nonprofit group committed to the revival of home canning. The group, started in 2009, is among the participants in Can-It-Forward Day.

“It also intersects with the local food movement,” Sauvage continued. “What canners do is they get fresh local produce and preserve it for times when they can’t get fresh local produce.

“It’s all part of the concentration on local food.” (more…)

Hanging to dry...

It’s funny how your perspectives change as you grow. When I was a kid, I used to be embarrassed because my mom hung our laundry out on the line to dry. I hated the smell of line dried clothes, sheets and towels, to me that meant we were poor, we couldn’t afford a dryer. All of my classmates had soft, fabric softener fresh smelling clothes, our clothes, towels and sheets were stiffer and to me were just second rate.

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