All you need to go off-grid

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Creepy TV Show Alert

Watch out for dishonest claims from Production company Bullseye TV, makers of tawdry shows like “I secretly Hate you.”

They have just been commissioned to make a one-off doc called Preppers UK: Surviving Armageddon, for National Geographic Channel UK. It is a Documentary spin off of US hit Doomsday Preppers, focused on British survivalists.

They will no doubt be telling people it is a serious look at this important movement, but in our opinion they will portray anyone foolish enough to agree to take part as a demented survivalist.…

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October 5, 2012 No Comments
Communities

Freezer to fridge conversion

Living off-grid, I get questions from time to time, mainly about how we live, some even think we must live in a cave and eat dirt and wear skins…  I said I live off-grid, but we don’t live that primitively! :) I do enjoy some of the modern conveniences of life, including having a place to keep perishable foods, aka a refrigerator.

When we first moved off-grid, in Dec ’07, we brought with us a small, dorm sized fridge, but honestly we didn’t use it much, only plugging it up on the occasions when I brought home a gallon of milk or a pound of ground beef, once the perishable food was gone, we unplugged the fridge. What I quickly found out was the standard type of fridge used up a LOT of power and they tend to be very inefficient.…

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October 3, 2012 30 Comments

Group of friends looking to go off the grid

Are you part of a group of people planning to move to living off the grid?  Or part of an existing off-grid group looking for more members?  Or perhaps you know of  a group or community that is making the move off the grid?

We need to make contact with groups that fit this description, in the United States, Britain and elsewhere –  and may be able to offer resources and/or land – please contact nick@off-grid.net

Please send us videos or still photos, showing yourself and your group, as well as a written description of your philosophy and plans.…

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September 15, 2012 4 Comments
Communities

How to build an evaporative cooler

I know that for many of us, it’s getting closer to fall, summer will soon be a distant memory… but I am still intrigued when I see innovative ways to cool our homes and ourselves. I found this easy to do DIY evaporative cooler while surfing the internet today. I like the quirky look of the offset holes in the orange 5 gallon bucket, and the industrial look of the curved elbow duct.…

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September 1, 2012 2 Comments
Communities

Huge off-grid community

Ralph and Mary Johnson (pictured) live in Three Rivers Recreation Area, a 4,000-acre development near Lake Billy Chinook that relies on solar power for electricity.

The  development in central Oregon now includes 625 properties on 4,000 acres in a gated community where everyone is off the grid. Some of the homes sell for several million dollars, and include all of the amenities of modern life, including air conditioning. Others are little more than shacks bought for a few thousand.…

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August 27, 2012 31 Comments
Communities

Whole house vacuum aka Bobbage

PB is such a tinkerer, his ability to take nothing but scraps, often discarded items and make extraordinary and useful things is one of the biggest reasons we have been able to live off-grid while spending very little money, I think of him as my personal MacGuyver. He had been talking about making a whole house vacuum for quite some time now. Normally I really like PB’s inventions, but honestly I wasn’t on board for this one, don’t ask me why, I have no real reason except that I just couldn’t see how it would be better than just running a vac in the sky castle like normal, or could it be the fact that I hate vacuuming? LOL……

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August 20, 2012 3 Comments

Brace yourself: Reality TV industry sinks claws into off-grid

Be warned – a large number of reality TV companies are jumping on the bandwagon of off-grid – our forum has a great thread where a reader called riverrat denounces the spate of misleading TV series that have appeared in the past year. here is part of what he says:-
“I do intend to create a small community of like minded individuals on my property, and I don’t watch tons of TV, but I do watch many Discovery, Animal Planet shows. The reality series that I have seen, especially relating to people living outside of the considered norm are VERY poorly represented, they are misconstrued and there always tends to be a negative spin on things. In other words either complete looneys are chosen to be cast or the whole story isn’t told only leaving the viewer with the idea that the people involved are crazy, angry, unreasonable, paranoid etc. Or the producers stage for them to do things in a way that doesn’t show the real story of what’s going on. There is more focus on the negative and silly than the actual intelligent and positive. It’s almost as if media is trying to demonize or put a negative label on people that choose to be self sufficient rather than praise them for their intelligence, resourcefulness, and self reliance.…

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August 3, 2012 7 Comments
Communities

Mountain Men – TV’s usual trashy take on off-grid living

The love affair between reality TV and the off-grid lifestyle continues with the new series Mountain Men (finale this thursday 8/9pm)on History Channel.

Eustace Conway, one of the stars of Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America
is a lead character. The sales pitch for the series links it unashamedly to off-grid living – “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live your life off the grid?” runs the Web site. “Have you wished you could shed the complications of modern society and live in the wilderness, using only the things nature has provided? ”

And like all reality TV, the cracks are showing as viewers realise that the series is extremely unreal.…

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July 17, 2012 98 Comments
Communities

Hare Krishna UK Eco Farm

A group of Hare Krishna monks in Scotland are pioneering a new sustainable community.

The project, called the Krishna Eco Farm, is based at an eight-acre farm in Lesmahagow, South Lanarkshire, and includes wind turbines, air source heat pumps, solar thermal panels and a biomass boiler.…

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May 30, 2012 No Comments

Cooking under pressure

I often forget how good a pot of pintos can be. This last Sunday, I had to come up with a dish to take to church for our first Sunday after church dinner. I knew the main dish would be enchiladas, so I decided to make a pot of pinto beans. My recipe is simple, it’s dried pinto beans, picked, rinsed and soaked overnight. …

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May 7, 2012 3 Comments