June 16, 2013

Community

Freezer-fridge conversion update

Had to clean out my fridge today, while that’s not such a big deal to most, to me it’s (almost) a pleasure to do because of the kind of fridge I have. Living off-grid, using solar panels and batteries, on limited power, one looks for ways to use as little power as possible, one of the things I found that really ate up my power was my little, tiny dorm sized cube refrigerator, the kind that opened in front, had a tiny tiny tiny freezer, in fact I couldn’t even put a full size ice tray inside it, they make micro-ice cube trays.

Most of the time I didn’t even plug in that cube fridge, we just learned to live without refrigeration for the most part, honestly it just sucked up too much precious photon juice from my system. So on the odd occasion when I brought home a gallon of milk, or some meat that didn’t get used up quickly, I would plug in the darned thing and wonder how much time it was taking from my surfing the internet…

With the cube fridge, it ran 15+ minutes at a time, a couple of times an hour, more if I actually opened the door, think about it, when you open the door on a standard fridge, all the cold air drops out of the box onto your feet, feels good for the moment but the compressor kicks in immediately to compensate for all that lost cold air.

I’ll not go into detail about this because I’ve written about it (in detail) in previous posts here… this is really just a follow up on how well I like (love) my chest freezer-fridge conversion. :)

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Hot Water Rocket – review

From regular contributor Corey Naughton
I have a quick kitchen/prep related product review for you.

The “Hot Water Rocket”

There’s many ways to heat water when living off-grid. At the Bleu Cheese Ranch we use a batch solar hot water heater for the bulk of our needs. Others opt for pump driven systems. Still more bite the bullet and burn propane in hot water on demand systems. While these methods are great for heating large volumes of water we tend to overlook the needs for smaller quantities. In doing so we end up wasting energy, time, as well as convenience. During the winter months I can heat water for tea on the wood stove in a matter of minutes but the rest of the year leaves me wanting.

But then I found the Hot Water Rocket …

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CNN profiles Graham Hill off-grid project

CNN devoted an hour to one of the hero’s of off-grid living, Graham Hill. The TV Channel visited his place on the Hawaiian island of Maui’s north shore. (Our thanks to Claudia Rothschild for making the edited transcript)

“My vision is to try to create a fully off-grid, luxurious, sustainable way of living that doesn’t cost too much, and then try to get friends and maybe even make it a bed and breakfast and have people come through and understand how incredible it could be to live off-grid,” said Hill.
“Off-Grid means you have a water catchment, there is enough rain that you can get all your water from the sky. Solar and wind are really good on Maui, so basically, make it entirely energy independent.
Because I design my life virtually, I am able to work from anywhere. So when it is freezing cold in New York, I am able to come here for two or three months and work from here. So it is a fantastic setup.

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Available for Amazon Prime