Seed Catalogs

It’s the middle of winter, cold, dreary, but something I start receiving in my mailbox makes me long for the warm days of spring, the seed catalogs. Those shiny, colorful pages full of picture of ripe fruit and veggies and herbs. I have already started buying some things, a week ago, while on one of my rare trips to town (it’s a 3+ hour drive to town), I was in a Sam’s Club store, I was about to start heading for the check out lanes when I spotted something green and leafy sticking out from an odd aisle.

It was boxes of blueberry plants, grapevines and other goodies. I will always bypass the flowers and such, I refuse to grow something that isn’t edible or medicinal or in some other way useful, a pretty face just doesn’t do it for me, it has to actually DO SOMETHING, it has to taste good or be useful in some other way.

I purchased a box that had 4 blueberry bushes growing, these are not the blueberry twigs I received in the mail last year, these actually had roots, stems and leaves, and at $16 for all four plants, I couldn’t go wrong. I still haven’t planted them though, right after coming home, I promptly developed a cold, or something, I’ve been down for a week. I did purchase a soil tester, the kind with the probe, you stick it in the dirt and it tells you the PH of the soil, something that is pretty handy when planting more persnickety plants.

I would guess that my soil is on the acidic side because of all the pines and oak trees in my area, but the only way to know for sure is to test it, I’ll be doing that either tomorrow or Monday, then I’ll either amend the soil or I’ll be planting those blueberries.

I also purchased a bag that contained four different kinds of onions, shallots, garlic and one horseradish root. I’m not crazy about horseradish, but since I have it, I’ll plant it and decide what to do with it later. The bag says it has 200 bulbs, so I’ll have lots of onions, garlic and shallots. While in the store, I also grabbed a head of elephant garlic, I’ve always wanted to grow those…

Last year, my garden really flopped, it was a combination of having not enough time to properly work it, I was working way too much and had so little time or energy left over, the other problem was a lack of moisture, we essentially didn’t have a rainy season, I rely heavily on captured rain water to water my garden and we just didn’t get it, not even one good rain, that would have filled my 1000 gallon rain barrel, but it just didn’t happen, and I didn’t have the time or energy to water my garden with 5 gallon buckets.

I have high hopes for my garden this year, with all the mulch I put down last season, I expect my garden soil to be pretty easy to work, I follow the Ruth Stout method of growing, it really does work, it’s basically laying down a mega-thick layer of mulch, straw or hay or whatever you have that will be at least 6 inches thick, 12 inches is better. It keeps down the weeds, it helps keep the soil moist and you don’t get all the splashing of mud onto your plants when it does rain. It really does keep your soil light too, it keeps it from compacting so you don’t have to dig or till each year. The book I have, The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book has been out of print for a long time, but it’s still available, if you have a chance to snag one, I highly recommend it. Here are some of her other books:
Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy & the Indolent
and
How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back: A New Method of Mulch Gardening
The second one is a bit pricey, again probably worth it if you can catch a used one at a decent price… I’ll be keeping my eye out for both of those.

Oh I almost forgot, when I purchased the soil tester, I purchased a bag of water crystals, you add these to your soil before planting, when you water the crystals soak up the water and slowly release the water over time. The trick is not to add too much, otherwise when they soak up the water, they will push your plants right up out of the ground (ask me how I know this…). You just dig down a bit, add the crystals, mix them with the soil and cover with more soil, you don’t want them at the surface, you want them below the soil line. Between the water crystals and the mulch, I have high hopes for my garden this year, if nothing else, I’ll have the blueberry plants to rely on for years to come.

I’ll be writing another article soon about the need to purchase heirloom seeds, and saving these seeds, not just for us now but for the generations to come, if we don’t take action now, we risk losing our ability to grow plants on our own terms, we will essentially become slaves to companies like Monsanto.

If you are lucky enough to have access to fast moving water on your land, you can use it to generate power.  And there are free plans available on the web for DIY water powered generators (see below).  But be careful only to go to recommended sites.  Bogus companies like Earth4Energy has affiliate deals sweeping the net, selling worthless e-books for $30-75.   Yes, they will refundyour money if you complain, but 70% do not bother.Hydropower need not be expensive if you build the microhydro setup yourself, and once you have built it, you will be able to maintain it without calling in experts.  One of the biggest problems with buying off the shelf solutions is that when they break down you will depend on outsiders for help – this can have a high cost since many off-grid locations are rather remote.

For really good quality, detailed instructions on a DIY microhydro set up visit http://www.re-energy.ca/t-i_waterbuild-2.shtml

Rainy day woman

As a crippling drought grips much of the Southern and Southwestern United States, the population continues to grow and water resources become scarcer. In Tucson residents will soon hand  cash rebates to residents who install home rainwater-harvesting systems — a technique well-known to off-grid homeowners, which is now entering the mainstream.

The City Council approved $100,000 pilot program Tuesday that will be the precursor for a rebate system intended to go into effect next year.Rebates could be in the range of $850, said interim Water Director Andrew Quigley, which, in a far-sighted move, is the amount the city currently rebates for gray-water systems. Rainwater harvesting captures rainwater for use on a property, while gray-water harvesting reuses water from washing machines, sinks, showers and bathtubs for irrigation.

The rebates are not expected to begin until July 2012, because Tucson Water which spent $23,000 setting up a similar gray- water-harvesting rebate program, is now spending $100,000 to set up the rainwater program.

In the United States, a typical water-harvesting system can cost between $2,500 and $4,500, said Lincoln Perino, who installs them in Tucson for  Technicians for Sustainability.

Perino said people want to put in rainwater-harvesting systems but are concerned about the price. “The will is there, but they need the economic push to get them over the edge.”

The city will have to determine what constitutes a water- harvesting system to qualify for the rebate. Quigley said the systems will at a minimum have to capture rainwater and deliver it for a beneficial use on a property.

Tucson, AZ: Harvesting Desert Rain

In a new paper to be presented at the 2011 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, John Whear, biomedical engineer at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, examines how to manage rainwater as a common pool resource. Whear studied management techniques for other common pool resources like fisheries and forests, as well as organizations developed for sharing scarce water, such as the Edwards Aquifer Authority and social systems in pre-colonial India.

Drawing from game theory, Whear argues that a successful common pool resource (CPR) depends on participant behavior, which requires monitoring and management. Effective monitoring can be made simple with the technology available today, he said.

Along with reducing pressure on ground and surface water supplies, Whear proposes that large-scale rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems can also lesson the threat of deadly flash flooding common to urban areas in Central and South Texas.

By catching large amounts of the fast-falling rainwater and draining it slowly over several days, the RWH systems can decrease runoff and increase the amount that is absorbed into the ground and recharge zones.

“Once recharge can be determined with an adequate degree of certainty, the acquired data could be used for the economic benefit of participants,” Whear said. “Possibilities include a flood control tax abatement and aquifer recharge credit.”

Whear first presented a rainwater harvesting paper last year at the 2010 ASME conference. In that paper he examined the options for distributing harvested rainwater and began contacting water management organizations.

“That’s when I learned that rainwater harvesting is as much a social issue as it is an engineering one,” he said.

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.

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. The inside diameter needs to be small enough that the tube can completely fill with water. The outside diameter of the tube needs to form a good seal with the filter.  The length of the tube should be at least a foot long but can be much longer if needed.  Ideally it should rest on the bottom of the container.

How does a siphon work? A siphon forms a vacuum that pulls water through the filters much like a syringe.  This vacuum force is in addition to the normal force of gravity but is much stronger.   This is proven by the fact that a siphon can counteract gravity and pull water uphill (as long as the eventual outlet is lower than the water inlet).   In a gravity drip bucket system, the addition of a siphon can more than double the water flow rate over simple gravity alone.   It has also been proven to improve the flow rate of low pressure systems.   See the table below.

Setting up a siphon In a simple gravity feed system, setting up a siphon is very easy.   You simply insert the hose into the filter outlet and drop the other end into the clean water receptacle.    Initially, gravity will force water through the filter, but instead of dripping into the bucket it will begin to fill the siphon hose.    When the hose is filled the siphon is formed.  As the water exits the siphon it creates a vacuum which pulls more water into the hose.

Troubleshooting Since the siphon is such a simple device there are just a few problems that can arise.  The most common is if there is a bad seal at the inlet and air is pulled in instead of water.  If this happens the flow rate will slow down to just the normal gravity feed rate.  However if you use clear hose for the siphon it is very simple to troubleshoot.  (If you see air in the line you have a bad seal or the tube is damaged).   One simple fix that often works is to simply stretch the tube out slightly with the end of a pen or pencil and then reinstall it into the filter.   If that still does not work a small dab of plumber’s putty should do the trick.

A second problem that can happen is if the feed rate of the filter is too slow to fill the siphon tube,   This may be an indication that the filter needs to be cleaned or replaced or it may mean that the inside diameter of the siphon hose is too large.

The third problem that can happen is if the siphon is damaged or blocked.  Again if you are using a clear tube it should be easy to perform a visual inspection.  Check to see if there is anything blocking the tube or if the tube has any splits in it.

Once the siphon is set up properly it will work wonderfully: no electricity needed, no manual pumping, no batteries to change out, and still a lot more clean water available.

Summary Siphons are a low-tech, low-cost way to more than double the flow rates of water filters.   Regardless of whether you use siphons or not, everyone should have backup water purification capability just in case things happen.  Most folks have flashlights, weather radios, and first aid kits stored somewhere for emergencies and water availability should be in the same category.

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.

Today it usually refers to someone who is living more like our ancestors did, in a more self sufficient manner, on a plot of land, often raising livestock, growing their own food, living more independently. Most of us are more than one generation removed from those who lived on a farm or homestead, so we don’t benefit from the knowledge of our family members who lived in a more self sufficient manner. I know in my family, it was my great grand parents who had lived on a farm, my grandparents and parents lived in suburban neighborhoods with small yards and animals no bigger than a dog.

Because of this, those of us who want to live closer to the land have to resort to alternative methods of obtaining  knowledge. I continually scour the internet for books about living off grid, gardening and such, I found this book The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading: An Encyclopedia of Independent Living (The Ultimate Guides), actually I didn’t find it, I was offered an opportunity to review it and I jumped at the chance, it was a book I had been looking at previously and was more than happy to review it.

I keep getting distracted from writing because I keep finding more and more interesting things in this book to read, I just read about growing cotton, then picking it, cleaning it, and spinning it. Since I crochet, this is especially appealing to me, and something I think I can do with little trouble. For now, I’m not set up to raise wool bearing animals, but I can grow cotton and process it.

This book has a lot to offer, it doesn’t go into extreme detail on any one subject, but gives you enough information so that you can decide if that particular thing is something you really want to try.  Nicole Faires (don’t you just love her name?) the author, has certainly lived the life, she is not just spouting theory, she grew up on a hobby farm raising chickens and growing her own food among other things.

While not an exhaustive list of homesteading subjects, I believe it covers the majority of them quite nicely, such as:

• land-buying, communities…
• water-getting it, purifying it and such
• food-finding it, growing it, preserving it…
• animals-livestock, domestic…
• shelter-various home styles, barns, fences…
• financial-making money from your skills…
• health-medicines, herbal medicines,
• and lots more

There is a great  dictionary in the back so you will at least sound like you know what you are talking about when chatting with the old timers at the feed store, LOL, seriously, I have had a good time reading the terminology and their meanings. Such as “butt-up”, before reading this book, I would have said that is how one lands when tripping over a rock and doing a face plant, now I know that is a type of roof ridge made in thatching which forces the straw together from both sides of the roof to form a peak. “Flying change”, I would think it’s what happens when you lose control of your change purse, but it really has to do with horses.

Near the back of the book, just before the index, the author’s bio and several blank pages (perfect for adding your own notes), there is a great bibliography with tons of resources, mostly in the form of internet links. These will send you to more detailed resources for the subjects found in this book. This alone is worth the price of the book.

The book is easy to read, well made, with lots of color photographs and diagrams, nice thick glossy pages ensure this book will last for a long time, that’s a good thing because once you have this book, you will be referring to it over and over again throughout the years.

PB (my hubby) has been trying to steal this book from me ever since I received it, his comment on it was that it is a good all over resource, not detailed on each thing, but a good book and he’s glad we have it, he has also been going on and on about how well this book is physically put together, the binding, the paper quality and the pictures. Now that I’m finished with this review, I can safely give the book to him, I’ll not see it again for a while. :)

See my other book reviews here:
http://www.off-grid.net/tag/book-review/

Honesty disclaimer:
I did receive this book free from the publisher for the expressed intent of giving a review, that in no way influenced my review, all of my reviews are honest and from the heart.

What goes up when the rain comes down?

Brace yourself!  Worldwide, 2010 was the wettest year since records began. And it was not just the amount of rain and snow, but the intensity which increased.

Choosing where to live in the future will be much more to do with protecting yourself against flooding than worrying about warmer weather and rising sea levels.

Australia, Pakistan, Tennessee, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Brazil, the Balkans, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Colombia, Sri Lanka, France and the UK all experienced devastating rainfall last year. And there was unusually heavy snowfall in some of those regions.

Why is this happening and what should you do about it? There is a list of tips at the end of the story.

Every scientist agrees that temperatures are rising, and that as warmer air expands it holds more moisture. Each 1 degree centigrade rise in global temperature adds 7% of moisture to the air. It is this that has made rainfall, when it occurs, more intense.

. “The pervasive increase in water vapour changes the intensity of precipitation events with no doubt whatsoever,” Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research announced in January. “Yes, all events. Even if temperatures or sea surface temperatures are below normal, they are still higher than they would have been, and so too is the atmospheric water vapour amount and thus the moisture available for storms.”

Cycles of rainfall are also changing. In the US, Kenneth Kunkel of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, analysed data from more than 1000 rain gauges across the country. Over the past 100 years, the intensity of extreme rainstorms that occur once per year on average has risen 1.4 per cent per decade, he found.

he says that in 2000, a “once a year” storm was dumping 14 per cent more rain on average than it would have done in 1900. “It would be wise for society to take this into account when building a dam to last 50 or 75 years, or a new housing development,” says Kunkel. “That’s not really done right now.”

At its most devastating, the intensity of once in 20 years” extreme rainstorms is increasing even faster, by about 3 per cent per decade, although for these rare events the statistics are more patchy. The overall increase also seems to be accelerating. Most of it happened in the last three decades, and Kunkel hasn’t even included 2010 in his analysis yet. “I’m guessing that when the data come in, they are going to be high,” he says.

Other studies show that heavy rainfall has been increasing in intensity in most other parts of the world too These results can’t be put down to changing methods or issues with scientific instruments, as almost all the figures come from the humble rain gauge, unchanged over the decades. “It is basically an 8-inch bucket– so simple that you almost can’t call it technology,” says Kunkel.

Insurers agree They are seeing a rise in claims for flooding. Claims for flood damage are rising faster than claims for other natural disasters such as earthquakes and eruptions, says Gerd Henghuber, a spokesman for insurance firm Munich Re. “The growing number of weather-related catastrophes most probably cannot be fully explained without climate change.”

So warmer weather is leading to wetter weather, empirical evidnece confirms that more rain is falling and at least one insurer says that the rain is causing more destruction– welcome to Global Storming

In 2007,Nature magazine compared the results of 14 different models of rainfall data for the 20th century. The models that included greenhouse gas emissions matched the overall global pattern seen so far, with increased rainfall in most regions (Nature, vol 448, p 461).

Still, that study looked only at total precipitation. When it comes to flooding, what really matters is whether climate change is making extreme events even more extreme. This is a harder question to tackle, partly because extreme events are rare and so our information on them is limited.

In another recent study, a team led by Allen looked at one specific event– the floods that occurred in the UK in autumn 2000, causing £1.3 billion worth of damage. With the help of computer time loaned by volunteers via climateprediction.net, they did thousands of model runs simulating the weather in 2000, with initial conditions both as they were and as they could have been without global warming. They found that climate change had nearly doubled the likelihood of this kind of flood (Nature, vol 470, p 382).

As the world continues to warm, we can expect each year to bring a more fearsome storm.  “You can have a situation where mean rainfall decreases but the extremes increase,” forecasts Kendon. Other computer models suggest that the amount of rainfall on the worst 5 per cent of rainy days will increase by 50 per cent.

What’s more, how much rain falls is only part of the story. Warmer weather will dry out soils faster, for instance, which reduces the risk of flooding. “The relationship between precipitation and flooding is immensely complex,” says Gale. “Variation in a single factor, such as soil moisture, might mean that the same precipitation event could remain in channel or could generate a significant flood.”

On top of this, we are changing the physical nature of river valleys enormously. “What we do is take all the agricultural land around cities, pave it, build houses and put in storm-water sewers, all of which stops water from infiltrating the ground where it can be stored and percolate slowly into rivers,” says Gale. Instead, rainwater is funnelled rapidly into main rivers. So part of the problem with forecasting future flooding is not knowing how the landscape will change.

Trouble is that scientists are not ready to say exactly which parts of the world will have the worst increase in floods, so there is no reason to choose one part over another

All the same there are seven things that off-grid dwellers could do.

1. Avoid previously flood-prone areas.

2. Find out what would happen in the event of a flash flood near you – would water cascade towards you, or away from you.  Would you need to move to higher ground, or leave altogether (if there is time)?

3. Will the local sewage works be flooded?  That would pose a serious health risk and be a reason to leave.

4. Will power lines be cut?  Probably yes. So no point in heading in to town to check your email.

5, Make sure your building is secured in the event of a violent storm. If wind pulls the roof  off you might just get wet, or the rood might land on you.

6. Check the FEMA web site for updates

7. Fuel and Food will run out – have your supplies laid down. Ironically a flood will probably render the water undrinkable – make sure accessible backup water -is stored above ground level.

Thanks to Permaculture Activist

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.

Now, 30 something years later, I relish the smell of line dried clothes, to me it means freedom, self sufficiency and the satisfaction of a job well done. I just brought in a set of sheets from the line, I couldn’t keep my face out of the sheets, the scent is heavenly, and no, my line dried clothes are not scratchy and stiff, fortunately there are better cleaners to use that do not leave fabric feeling so stiff like they did in the “old days”.

I have experimented with several recipes of homemade laundry soap, I still use them when I do laundry in a washing machine, but when I hand wash (which I prefer) I have found that no matter how finely I grate the bar soap, it just doesn’t dissolve well enough, I have even tried turning it into a liquid, I just don’t like how it turns out, I can’t seem to get it rinsed out well enough and it leaves whitish places on my laundry.

I turned to Dr Bronner’s liquid soaps, being a liquid it dissolves readily in the water, it is low sudsing which is good, suds aren’t what cleans your clothes anyhow. Because of all of this, rinsing is so much quicker and easier. One of the reasons that line dried clothes tend to be stiffer and scratchier is because typical laundry detergent isn’t completely rinsed out of your clothes, even if you wash in a washing machine. Just look at the rinse water after a few minutes of agitation, you will see soapy bubbles, at best you can do a second rinse to try to get the residual detergent out, but even then it’s just about impossible, these detergents are designed to leave behind residues that contain optical brighteners, fragrances and such.

Now to the rinsing, I have tried all of the methods I’ve read about on line to help get all the soap residue rinsed out and help make the fabric softer, I have tried adding vinegar to the rinse water, I’ve tried adding baking soda, I still had stiffy scratchy laundry at the end when I line dried them. So I fell back on good old fabric softener, I use an unscented one by Downy, I don’t want chemical scents saturating the things that closest to my body and where I sleep. The fabric softener is extra concentrated so I don’t have to use much, and it has made all the difference in the world. Now even my terry towels are a pleasure to feel.

I have family coming out for a visit this weekend, so today I’m hand washing the sheets, along with a load of t-shirts. The first set of sheets were dry by the time I got the second set of sheets and the t-shirts washed, after hanging the wet laundry, as I brought in the dry sheets, I couldn’t keep my face out of the sheets, they smell so fresh, so good and they are soft, not stiff at all.

Another trick I use, this is a real shortcut, my shirts, especially my t-shirts (which I live in) I hang them on a plastic hanger to dry, to keep the shoulders from getting that weird hump from the ends of the hangers, I pull the neck of the shirt up toward the hook part of the hanger, just until the shoulder transitions to the sleeve is even with the end of the hanger, I use a couple of clothes pins to keep the shirt in place on the hanger.

Click to see full size image

I also use clothes pins between the hung shirts on the line to keep them from being blown together, this means the dry quicker. Since they are already hung up, when it’s time to collect the shirts from the line, all I have to do is remove the clothes pins from the shoulders, take them in the house and put them on the clothes rack. Some of my shirts I take off of the hanger, fold and put up, mainly the ratty ones, the good ones I keep on the hanger.

I am going to be ordering some Sal Suds (also by Dr Bronner) for general cleaning and doing laundry, it’s cheaper and I have read good things about it, it’s really an all purpose cleaner, from floor to ceiling, from dishes to laundry, and it’s biodegradable. I really love Dr Bronner’s cleaners and have used them for years. If you can get this in a local store, great, unfortunately it’s not available to me locally, if you are in the same boat, you can get them online here: Dr. Bronner Sal-Suds Biodegradable Cleaner, 32 fl oz liquid or the Dr Bronner’s Sal Suds Liquid Cleanser 128 Ounces. As of the time of writing this, both had free shipping.

It doesn’t take all that much time either, I do a little at a time, mostly doing it in my sink, I separate out my clothes, doing the whites and lighter colors first, brights then darks and blacks last. Often I’ll do one or two sets a day, so the whites and lights I’ll tackle one day, the others I’ll do another day. I fill my vessel with water, add some soap, then add the clothes, I swish the clothes in the soapy water, concentrating on any stains or especially dirty spots. When I’m tired of doing that, I’ll go do something else, then come back, swish some more, then wring out the clothes, if the water isn’t too dirty, I’ll wash more clothes. When I have everything washed that I want washed, I drain the water then fill the vessel back up with water and rinse the clothes, I almost always do 2 rinses. The second rinse I add fabric softener and if I’m doing whites or lights, I’ll add some Mrs Smith Bluing. That helps make the whites whiter and even helps with the light colored clothes. Again, I stop between swishing the clothes to do other things, it really doesn’t matter how long the clothes sit there.

Oh I almost forgot, my newest laundry aide, if you remember reading my previous DIY laundry article (this one has the most comments on this site to date!), I was using a plunger with holes in it to wash clothes, it worked pretty well, but I wanted something better. I remembered when I was a teenager, I worked in a Mexican fast food restaurant, we used an industrial sized potato masher while cooking the meat, I thought that might work for laundry, and does it ever! It’s not the round kind, it’s a thick wire that runs back and forth, it’s mounted on a long handle. Since it’s stainless steel, no worries about rust. It works great. This is what it looks like:

Be sure to get the one with the longer handle, you’ll appreciate it much better, so will your back. The handle on this one is 24 inches long, and the head is a little better than 5 inches wide, it gets those clothes really clean and doesn’t make a lot of splashes or suds.

Once they are fully rinsed and wrung out, I put them in a laundry basket and head outside to hang them. Where I live, the laundry dries really fast, we have very low humidity. If I really want them to dry faster, I pull out my wringer, that thing is worth its weight in gold! I don’t use it every time because I don’t have a proper washing area yet, it will be used every time once I get set up with a proper wash station outside, it’s one of those “works in progress”. I just had a gust of wind blow through, I ran outside to see if any of the laundry hit the ground, and yes, one shirt did bite the dust, fortunately it was already dry and I was able to brush the shirt off. If you have winds where you live, and you want to hand your shirts on hangers to dry, you might want to use clothes pins to secure the hangers so your clothes do not come off in the event of a gust of wind.

Life is good when you have the fresh scent of line dried laundry that is soft and so wonderful!

Not saying that everyone needs to live like this, BUT it’s nice to have the skills to be able to do these things.

Prof Jerry Woodall

Researchers at Purdue University have developed an aluminum alloy that could be used in a new type of mobile technology to convert polluted water into drinkable, while extracting hydrogen to generate electricity.

The potable water could be produced for about $1 per gallon, and electricity could be generated for about 35 cents per kilowatt hour of energy, which is low compared to the cost of solar at 10 times that amount.

It might be used to provide power and drinking water to remote villages or for military operations, said Jerry Woodall,  Professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The alloy contains aluminum, gallium, indium and tin. Immersing the alloy in freshwater or saltwater causes a spontaneous reaction, splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen could then be fed to a fuel cell to generate electricity, producing water in the form of steam as a byproduct, he said.

“The steam would kill any bacteria contained in the water, and then it would condense to purified water,” Woodall said. “So, you are converting undrinkable water to drinking water.”

Because the technology works with saltwater, it might have marine applications, such as powering boats and robotic underwater vehicles. The technology also might be used to desalinate water, said Woodall, who is working with doctoral student Go Choi.

A patent on the design is pending.

Woodall envisions a new portable technology for regions that aren’t connected to a power grid, such as villages in Africa and other remote areas.

“There is a big need for this sort of technology in places lacking connectivity to a power grid and where potable water is in short supply,” he said. “Because aluminum is a low-cost, non-hazardous metal that is the third-most abundant metal on Earth, this technology promises to enable a global-scale potable water and power technology, especially for off-grid and remote locations.”

“There is no other technology to compare it against, economically, but it’s obvious that 34 cents per kilowatt hour is cheap compared to building a power plant and installing power lines, especially in remote areas,” Woodall said.

The unit, including the alloy, the reactor and fuel cell might weigh less than 100 pounds.

An old mountain bike, some DIY know-how, a length of tube and a few coats of paint against the elements is all that is needed to turn an old piston-pump into your own fully-functioning mechanical water pump.

This film made in county Mayo shows how to get yourself 10 liters per minute. It could work with a hand-pump as well, turning a simple, cheap device available anywhere in the world into something whihc can supply water for an entire community.

Pieter Hoff

Forget geo-engineering and multi-lateral political accords. Could the answer to global warming –not to mention the impending global water and food crises, be found in a device that mimics the effects of bird droppings and is little more complicated than a bucket?

Earlier this year, after seven years and six million Euros in development, Dutch horticulturalist and inventor Pieter Hoff unveiled a gadget he calls the Groasis Waterboxx. It’s an incubator that works without power or irrigation and Hoff reckons it can help save the planet.

“Yes it is a bucket, but an intelligent bucket,” says Hoff. “My ambition is to use it to reforest five billion hectares of poor quality land, reducing levels of carbon in the atmosphere, increasing global food production and rebuilding depleted water tables around the world.”

Global salvation in a bucket may sound like a tall claim, but for all the rhetoric, the Groasis is astonishingly simple and very very plausible. US-based Popular Science magazine is certainly convinced. Last month it declared the Groasis one of the top ten inventions of 2010.

Simple low tech design

It may be an award winner, but the technology in the Groasis couldn’t be simpler because Hoff designed it with no moving parts to keep costs down. So it’s just a ring-shaped plastic container or bucket with a lid that allows saplings or seeds to be planted in the centre opening. The bucket chamber is initially filled with 16 litres of water and there are two holes on the lid that allow it to be topped up by rainfall and condensation.

Near the bottom is a smaller hole with a wick that touches the soil. This allows water to seep out at the rate of about fifty millilitres a day. It runs into the soil, creating a damp water column that the sapling’s roots can follow as it grows

Now 50 mls a day may not sound like much, but according to Hoff, it is a ‘Goldilocks’ amount: neither too much nor too little. If the plants or saplings have more water than 50 mls, they don’t develop their root systems fully and become feeble water junkies, dependent on irrigation for survival.

The water savings per plant are enormous. “A major problem in establishing plants and trees, especially in hot areas is that ninety per cent of precipitation evaporates. A young vine for instance can use up to 1400 litres of water a year and most of that is wasted.” Multiply that figure by thousands or tens of thousands and agriculture in arid areas soon becomes untenable.

One per cent water consumption

In contrast the Groasis uses as little as one per cent of the water used in conventional irrigation. “With the Groasis, water can’t evaporate from the chamber because it has a lid and it cannot evaporate from the ground beneath because it is shaded by the Groasis. So it provides just enough water for plants and saplings to establish themselves with no on-goingcare,” explains Hoff.

It is this shading of the ground that mimics the effects of bird droppings. “In nature seeds aren’t buried they are spread by birds and animals in their droppings and they are sown on top of the soil. The droppings cover the soil, preventing evaporation and creating a small humid patch beneath that encourages the tap root,” says Hoff.

So why, how, could this ‘bucket’ possibly help with global warming? According to Hoff, trees soak up or bind CO2 at an average rate of five tons per hectare per year. “Mankind has cut down roughly two billion hectares of forest in the last two thousand years, and allowed much of it to be grazed by sheep and cattle. This has degraded the quality of land making it hard and less permeable. So when it rains, rather than sinking in, it just runs off.” Studies conducted by NASA have found a link between deforestation in some parts of the world and a lack of precipitation in others.

Reforestation sequesters carbon

As a consequence soils across the world have dried out, making them less receptive to trees. “If we reforest the two billion hectares we have lost, they will absorb 10 billion tons of carbon a year, which coincidentally (and it is a coincidence) is roughly the amount of carbon mankind produces every year using fossil fuels. “

Hoff, who is not a global warming dogmatist and happily lives with the idea that it is not necessarily caused by man even implies that deforestation may have significantly contributed to rising carbon levels.

The main reason forests haven’t regenerated spontaneously is that they face a viability problem in early life. Until trees’ tap roots find what Hoff refers to as the “capillary hang water zone”, (moist soil that lies a couple of meters below the surface), they cant establish themselves. So during the first year or so they are vulnerable. This is what causes huge swathes of land to remain treeless and it is this problem that the Groasis is designed to address.

But what apart from cheapness and huge water savings, does the Groasis add to existing technology? After all there is already highly complex irrigation equipment available that allows farming to be carried out in all sorts of hostile environments. We can already plant trees anywhere if we want to. You might argue that it is the political will, not a clever bucket that is lacking.

Simple, cheap and decentralised

One of its great advantages is that because it is cheap and simple, decisions can be decentralised. If you live on a barren mountainside you can go out and buy a couple of Groases and start growing trees today with no government intervention.

It turns out that bringing marginal land back into productive life won’t be quite as hard as you might imagine says Hoff because surprisingly once they are established, trees can grow pretty much anywhere –including in deserts and on hard rocks .

“Both sand and rock contain sufficient nutrients. Tree roots grow by producing one cell which finds a small moist crack in the rock or soil and then doubles again and again,” explains Hoff. And they are amazingly powerful. Hoff says roots can exert forces of up to 50 kilogrammes per square centimetre which means they can easily grow in rock if they can find water quickly enough. It is even easier for them to grow in the sandy soil of deserts, he says.

The benefits of reforesting poor quality land could be immense argues Hoff. Not only could they sequester enormous amounts of carbon, they could produce substantial amounts food and alter the composition of the soil, making it far more water retentive.

Successful trials

This is all theory so far. But so far it has been trialled successfully in Spain, Morocco and California. In the Morocco tests some trees were grown with the box, while some were grown without, but still watered regularly. In the end, 88 percent of the boxed trees grew up to be strong, while 11 percent were considered weak. With the unboxed trees, however, only 10.5 percent turned out strong, while 89.5 percent died.

But if all goes to plan, there will also be another major beneficiary: Pieter Hoff himself who hopes to sell “billions” of smart with buckets at prices starting at E6 each, which he says he makes one Euro, (roughly one dollar), each. Does he not think this calls into question his enthusiasm and perhaps taints some of his arguments?

While many entrepreneurs might bristle at their integrity being questioned, Hoff takes it easily in his stride. “I am not a puritan ideologue. I am a business man and I am not ashamed to say I hope to be successful, very successful. There’s nothing wrong with making money providing it is done with integrity and honesty. “

Besides, he has invested millions of Euros of his own money in the Groasis and despite the fact that he thinks it is a game-changing invention, there is no guarantee of success. “There are many brilliant inventions that have come to nothing. Invention is just ten per cent. The other ninety per cent is marketing.” ENDS

Biomimic Nick Brown

In early 1990 Nick Brown, the British entrepreneur behind the Paramo clothing brand, was struggling with the problem of how to make waterproof, outdoor activity clothing last longer. Sweat and condensation tends to rot conventional gear at the seams and once that happens the jacket usually has to be scrapped. As he already sold a water-repellent wax for clothing, he was particularly interested in the idea that more could be done to prolong the life of outdoor clothing using  water-repellency.

He grappled with the problem for three years before turning to nature for the answer. But he didn’t have a team of physicist and biologists on hand. He had no expensive analytical equipment to help him. He finally found it with the help of a wet dog. And it cost him nothing.“Clothing”, explains Brown, “keeps you warm by trapping a layer of warm air next to the skin. But it also needs to keep you dry. So the conventional solution is to keep water out by making clothes waterproof  from the outside, creating what is effectively a highly engineered plastic bag.” That’s fine as long as you don’t move. But when you are hiking or climbing or trekking through snow, the going gets hard and invariably you sweat.

“The problem is that water transmits heat 25 times more efficiently than air. So the moment you start sweating, the layer of dry air close to your body becomes moist and in the short run your clothes lose their ability to keep you warm. In the long run the seams are degraded by your sweat, “  says Brown. That doesn’t matter too much if you are running for the bus to work. But when you are camping out in the Andes, it could be fatal.

Damp dog insight

So the question he pondered was how could he design a fabric that would push moisture –(sweat and condensation) away from you, keeping you not only dry, but warm too. He chewed it over for a couple of years when one day he realised that animals share exactly the same problem. “Water off a duck’s back’ is a common enough phrase,” he says. So he started looking at sheep and dogs to see what happens to them when they get wet.  “You see droplets running through their fleeces as coalescence brings it to the surface. You can actually watch it happening.”

That was his Eureka moment. “I spent a bizarre evening thinking and not sleeping and worked out that dogs stay dry and warm because their fleeces actively push water outwards.” How so? “Mammal hair is not all the same length, it is of varying lengths and that is the key,” he explains. “So on average, as you get further away from the skin, there are fewer hairs. That means the average distance between hairs increases. Thanks to natural oils, hair is water-repellent, so droplets form. Because of the laws of surface tension, droplets minimise their surface area as they get bigger by forming a sphere. To do that they have to move to where the gap between the hairs is greatest.”

Surface tension

Moving water by the natural physics of surface tension had to be better than trying to move water vapour by conventional means, concluded Brown. It was radically different from using breathable membranes or ‘moisture vapour transfer’ but not radically different from the way bird feathers work, he says. “Effectively mammal fleece and bird feathers works like a pump. Provided that less is coming in than going out, you’ll remain bone dry. Conventional jackets deal with 20 per cent of moisture. Our jackets can deal with 100 per cent,” he claims.

A major additional benefit is that this process works independent of humidity levels. When humidity is very high, there can be no evaporation with conventional clothing and you are basted in your own sweat.  “Firemen call it boil in the bag syndrome,” says Brown cheerfully. But he says that cant happen with his system.

Brown believes that it was only by closely observing nature that he could finally came up with a product that (he thinks)  is functionally superior to those of his rivals. “I now realise that very often problem solving is about using the right analogy.”

Vested interests

At this point the obvious question is, if this design is superior to conventional ‘breathable membrane’ products why is it not more widely adopted and why is Nick Brown not a very rich man indeed? Brown’s response reveals why much of the learning from biomimicry may be painfully slow in manifesting itself as useable products. There are often powerful market forces obstructing innovation he argues.

“We are commercially successful,” he says. “But the interest of the industry is vested in breathable membranes. And their business model is based on producing garments that have to be thrown away after a few years. Ours are designed not to become obsolete.” There needs to be a paradigm shift before his idea is more widely accepted, he argues. “I believe our system will win in the end.  It took 30 years before front loading washing machines established themselves in the US even though they were technically superior to top loaders in almost every respect.”

Rousson and friend

A low tech, man-powered  yellow submarine may not be high on the list of requirements for la vie off-grid, but French adventurer Stephane Rousson and designer Minh-Lôc Truong have gone ahead and made one anyway. In Rousson’s garage.

The Scubster  is the world’s first pedal powered submarine and it has recently successfully finished its first test in the Mediterranean off Nice.

beautiful yellow submarine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKQFmLqW1nQThe yellow carbon fibre mini sub is about fourteen feet long, eight feet wide and five feet high. Steered by two pedal-powered directional propellers, it can reach a depth of twenty feet. Depending on the fitness of the pilot, Rousson claims  it can hit a maximum speed of 16 kph  –although only in very short bursts. A more sustainable top speed would closer to 8kph and even that would be tough, he admits.

That may not sound terribly impressive. But the Scubster is designed primarily for speed. Rousson and Truong are hoping to enter their submersible in next year’s International Submarine Race at the Naval Surface Warfare Centre  in Bethesda Maryland, between June 27 and 12 July.

If it can replicate this performance, it has every chance of winning. The race is now in its twentieth year. Although speeds are gradually creeping up, last year’s winner managed just 6.298 knots over the 100-meter course.

Scubster is a strangely beautiful object –sufficiently beautiful to have appeared as a photo of the week in Time magazine a couple of months ago. But it is all the more remarkable for being essentially a DIY project.

“We have financed this by raising money from friends, borrowing equipment from local companies  and doing all the construction work ourselves ourselves in my garage,” said Rousson. “I know how to do carbon fibre moulding and we have had help from local students.”

The design of the machine is loosely based on the nose of the Sword Fish –the fastest creature in the sea. And it has all been put together in months. “I heard about the competition last year. In August I asked Minh-Lôc Truong to design a pedal powered version which took three months. I have spent the last nine months or so building it in my garage,” said Rousson.

Mind you he has form in the area of pedal powered transport. In 2008 he attempted to cross the English Channel on a pedal-powered airship. But after four years of preparation he was forced to cancel the crossing at the last moment due to high winds.

“Once you have built an airship, the submarine operates on nearly the same principles,” he explains. The main learning was to use twin propellers on the side of the craft so they steer it. “It makes it very manoeuverable, up, down, forward and even backwards are easy this way.”

The year before that Rousson was involved in the Theolia Windream One Project, which aspired, perhaps unrealistically, to cross the Atlantic with a small 2 person airship. He says the purpose of his sub is for study. “Its a low impact exploration tool for scuba divers and scientific research.”

But yes, he supposes it could be sold as a recreational vehicle. “We haven’t worked it out yet, but I think it would cost between E40,000 and E60,000. (USD 50,000-75,000). “Mind you,” he says, “its still a bit dangerous. Really its an adventure and great fun.” ENDS

A new solution to off-grid living is making its way towards the Florida Keys.

As his geodesic houseboat meanders south along the Intracoastal Waterway, Roger Drowne — candidate for President of Earth — is promoting his platform:
End war.
Clean the planet.
Paint all government buildings rainbow colors.
Apparently unopposed in the at-large President of Earth race, the 69-year-old artist set out from Wilmington, N.C., in his quirky watercraft last November.

“I’ve solved the housing problem,” Drowne proclaimed, as he docked behind The Miami Herald building on Wednesday, eager to detail the environmental advantages of his peat moss-based composting toilet and rainwater-collection buckets.“I want to show the younger generation that there are other ways to live . . . It’s a lifestyle choice.”He’s headed for Key West, where he hopes to connect with people who want to build more Earth Balls: a low-cost, off-the-grid, dome-like housing option that he adapted for the water.The Earth Ball is 12 feet in diameter, made of 32 fiberglass-coated plywood panels: 20 hexagons, 12 pentagons, some that flip up to become windows. It sits atop a raft, trails a dinghy, cost $1,000, and is properly licensed by the state of Florida.“Very sturdy,” Drowne said, even in rainstorms. “People come up to me all the time. They don’t know what to make of it.”Propelled by a 9.9 horsepower, four-stroke Honda outboard motor — the carbon footprint of which Drowne regrets — it features a foam-mattress bunk, a camp stove, a car battery-powered laptop, hula-hoop-and-duct-tape peace symbols, rooftop seating, lots of candles, and a modest larder of peanut butter, salsa, and sliced whole wheat.Drowne, from Boston, worked for an MIT-affiliated electronics firm in Cambridge, Mass., and  vents his anger about how some folks choose to live.
“They’re fenced in, in their multimillion-dollar properties, with their prim-and-proper grass. They don’t grow vegetables. They don’t share their 100-room houses with homeless people. They’re sick! They’re insane!”