Category — WATER

Urban survival - a good exercise

If the power in your area suddenly failed,  would you have a backup plan for your family’s food? A power cut will also shut the local water utility – so what source would you use for clean drinking water?

Ever looked for a way out of the maze of food chemicals and air pollutants that is modern life?  For your children’s sakes, if not your own -here’s a few tricks to reduce the long-term effects or even avoid them altogether.

Its not enough merely to reduce or eliminate toxic chemicals.  You need to adopt a more positive and decisive strategy involving proper nutrition, survival skills, and understanding self-sustaining living systems if you want to be ready for whatever may come your way.

From currency crisis to eco-disaster to Iran or China inspired conflict, political and economic threats can lead to social upheaval, jeopardising the everyday systems of living that most of us take for granted.

Here are 5 tips that will prepare you to survive in the event of life-altering changes: (more…)

Whether you are trying to save a few dollars on your water bill, are concerned about water conservation, or you just want to be independent and off grid, Rainwater harvesting and storage is viable for almost any situation and amount of water needed.

Choose a site for your storage vessel, be it a large tank holding thousands of gallons, or a single 55 gallon rain barrel.The tank should be placed a short distance from a roofed structure with a gutter and downspout. Once the site is chosen you level the tank. This video shows using gravel to level the tanks. Other methods include a concrete slab foundation or a wooden frame. (more…)

These days, with so many builders touting themselves as green, the whole idea of a green home can seem like a marketing ploy.  Instead of stepping into someone else’s business plan,  your home can be your own financial survival tool – that is what you can learn from looking at the off-grid way of life.

When a builder markets his homes as environmentally friendly because they feature water-saving toilets and high-efficiency gas furnaces, that’s a problem: You’d be hard-pressed to find a new home without these features. But here’s the thing:  the relative improvements in resource consumption compared to the wasteful old ways are still way out of whack with the way you live if you are harvesting your own power and water, off the grid.   You can live a comfortable off-grid life on 25% of the water and electricity that people regard as normal.  But LEED standards are more like 50% or more – ie half what is “normal” but double what off-gridders would consume. (more…)

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. (more…)

BEWARE RENEWABLE ENERGY SCAMMERS

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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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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…)

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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