Community Archives - Page 12 of 93 - Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

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Hitting the wall

PB and I have lived off-grid for nearly 10 years now, by Christmas this year it will be 10 years. Have you ever done something for so long that you grow tired of it? I will admit, I have hit the off-grid fatigue wall… I don’t mind living off-grid, I love having few monthly bills, I love being more independent, and I know that I am able to go longer than most at living this way. I hear the comments, usually second hand, wondering how I can stand to live like I do, I suppose they mean living in a more primitive manner, dealing with our own waste (human and otherwise), LOL if they only knew :)

Actually, when I think about it, I’m pretty satisfied with how I live, I couldn’t imagine living any other way, in spite of the fact that I occasionally hit that wall, it just makes me stop and think about just how fortunate I truly am, I am living my dream, even if that dream wakes me up from time to time to review and revise what is going on.

I know that one thing that is bothering me right now, we are in the beginnings of our rainy season. We go most of the year with minimal rain, until about mid July, then we get rain, a lot of rain, often on a daily basis. The SkyCastle is pretty well built, it’s sturdy, but since we used quite a bit of recycled (read:used) materials, some parts of it aren’t as “comfortable” as it could be, the roof is one of those things.

We leak, when we get hard rains, sideways rains, hail and the such, we have a few areas that leak inside the house. The roof is made from lots of other people’s castoff metal sheets, a neighbor would be tearing down a shed or other building, or maybe they were re-roofing their home, we would end up with the used materials, it was good for everyone involved, they didn’t have to take the scrap material to a landfill that is FAR away from here, and we got free material to build with. So there are lots of mismatched pieces of metal, different sorts of panels and all of them came with holes from previous use.

It has been something we have lived with and dealt with for many years, since we don’t get a lot of rain for most of the year, it’s pretty easy to ignore it and deal with it when we do get our rains. This year, it’s starting to bother me more. This evening, PB and I sat on the 3rd floor deck, watching the sun go down and swatting mosquitoes. I asked him to work up a plan along with cost estimates for material to re-roof the main part of the SkyCastle, that consists of the …

July 30, 2017 No Comments

Community

Healing update

On July 10, I posted about getting bit by something, probably a spider, not likely of the recluse variety based on how quickly it blew up, but something sufficient to cause me to go to the doctor. Now nearly 3 weeks later, I’m almost at 100% on how I feel and my leg is looking better, even though there is still a nasty looking sore, and it’s still discolored, the crater is filling in, there is still a lump under it, the skin around it is peeling like I had a sunburn. I call it good. I’m not someone who is afraid or concerned about scars, as long as they are reasonable size (ie I wouldn’t want to be scarred all over my body), I’m not concerned about having small scars here and there, this will most definitely scar and I might end up with a discolored patch on my leg for quite some time, maybe even permanently.

This did make me sick, very sick, the kind of sick that puts you in bed for days. It really zapped my strength, I could really tell it when I would walk around on my mountain, I could take about 5 steps and felt like I had run a marathon, it was physical exhaustion. I would seriously hate to have a chronic condition that made me feel like that all the time, I have a new appreciation for those who have those types of chronic fatigue syndrome and other illnesses that just steal your energy.

Fortunately, it’s all but over for me, I’ve been working, doing longer days with the merchandising company, I’m glad I had a light couple of weeks during the worst of it. I believe the antibiotics that I took also had a hand in slowing me down. It really seemed to affect my digestion quite a bit. I could eat and the next day I felt like I still had that food in my stomach. I took the antibiotics faithfully for the 10 days they were prescribed, well almost faithfully, on about the 7th day, I quit taking the nightly dose of one of them, I still continued taking both of them during the day.

On the 10th day, I had a follow up appointment with my doctor, did I mention that I really like this doctor? It had been about 30 years since I had seen a doctor before finding him, a combination of being healthy enough not to need one, and not wanting to go see one. When I found this doctor, he was treating a friend of mine and spent nearly an hour going over a blood test that he gave her, that and the fact that he is a D.O. and combines modern medicine with food therapy and supplements, he is right up my alley.

I went to see him on the 10th …

July 28, 2017 No Comments

Community

Going old school batteries

The Achilles’ heel of every off-gridder has got to be the battery bank. It is generally the most expensive part of the system, especially if you are going big, but for even those of us who run a small system, the batteries are the part that are the most problematic as well as expensive.

I am hard on my batteries, I freely admit it, I run them down on a regular basis, I have gone though 3 sets of deep cycle batteries in 9 years. I have never had a large system, 2-4 batteries at most, fortunately we have never needed a large system, we run a few lights, radio, laptop, tablet, cell phone, router and internet antenna, a 12 volt water pump, a few fans and the biggest energy eater is our converted freezer to fridge unit. There are the occasional power tools that are used, but for the most part, on a daily basis, it’s just the first set of items listed.

I am on the poor side of the financial scale, I am in fact considered at poverty level, but since we have so few bills, the property and vehicle are paid for, we do pretty well on not much money. I generally don’t have the kind of money to put out all at once to get a bigger battery bank, I would also need to upgrade our solar panels (bigger and more) before even considering getting more batteries.

I did a search on YouTube for off-grid batteries just to see what would come up, I know that battery technology is getting better and better as well as cheaper to buy, but to my surprise, an old technology came up in the search, Edison batteries. From what I have read, they are pretty indestructible, it’s even claimed that they would be the last batteries you would ever need to buy.

There are a couple of companies that are making and selling those batteries now, of course they are not cheap, especially since they claim to be essentially forever batteries. Watch this video and let me know what you think.
https://youtu.be/-nlD2NCJGXk
…

July 13, 2017 3 Comments

Community

What bit me?

Being sick or injured is one of the things that you still have to deal with when living off-grid. This summer we had a lot of insects, many of which bite or sting. Most of which aren’t really a problem, more a nuisance than anything else, but on occasion a tiny little bite can turn into something really nasty. This happened to me, I spend last weekend in bed with flu like symptoms, aching joints, headache, 0 energy, I couldn’t even walk up my hill without feeling exhausted.

The reason? Something bit me. It happened while I slept, it wasn’t a painful bite, it apparently didn’t even wake me up. I suspect it was a spider, but honestly I just don’t know what it was. This bite was on my shin, it started out looking and feeling like a mosquito bite, small, red, itchy… then it blew up, almost literally. It swelled into this hot, painful, red purple lump going in two different directions. I did try some home remedies, I’m usually successful at taking care of my own ailments, but this one turned into something that was becoming life threatening over the weekend.

By Monday, I had determined I needed to go to the doctor, the bite had really turned bad, growing into something that isn’t recognizable as a normal leg, I was running a fever, going between shivering cold and dripping with sweat. I wasn’t going to go in, almost had myself talked out of going in, then I saw the red spots that were popping up all over my body, it was almost like chicken pox all over again. That was the deciding factor for me.

Everyone who saw my leg was convinced it was a brown recluse, and it certainly had that look, but fortunately the doctor didn’t agree with that diagnosis, saying the reaction happened much too quickly for it to be that. But we are still unsure of exactly what did bite me.

Now, 3 prescriptions later I am on the mend. I still don’t know exactly what bit me, it sufficiently horrified the doctor and his staff, they took blood to find out if I have staph (they are treating me as if I do for now), lyme disease and no telling what else, I did hear something about a full CDC panel, whatever that means.

I’ll know more next week about what they find. I am already feeling better, I’m past the worst of it and will be able to go back to work in a few days. Fortunately it’s a lite week at work this week, so I was able to push my jobs to the end of the week.

It’s amazing to me that something that started out so tiny and insignificant could turn into something potentially deadly in just a few short days, of course these things almost always …

July 10, 2017 No Comments

Community

Prosnowboarder’s golden ratio

It took a little over 5 years for pro snowboarder Mike Basich to build his 225 square foot off-grid cabin, the work during the winter was the hardest because of the cold. Basich designed the cabin himself based on the Golden Ratio, everything grew from that.

The rock work by itself is impressive, along with the native and natural materials incorporated in the build, this is a blend of engineering and beauty.

The cabin is wired 12 volt, mainly for the most efficient use of the battery power he uses. Basich says being attuned to nature means that he is able to keep his solar system smaller, going to sleep at dark, waking at dawn meant that his solar setup cost him around $500 instead of the amount he would have spent to be able to keep the lights on into the night.

I hope you enjoy this video of Basich’s cabin as much as I did.
https://youtu.be/J73GTfj0x-E

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July 7, 2017 No Comments

Community

Cooking with the sun

There are several different ways to use the sun in cooking, aka solar cooking or solar ovens. If you live in a sunny place, the desert, anyplace with unobstructed sunshine, you can use a solar oven to cook most meals.

There are parabolic cookers, these are like using a hot grill, you pretty much have to be right on top of it all the time to cook with these.

There are panel cookers, these use a silver (usually mylar) foil covered cardboard, the DIY ones are often made from a window shade made for vehicles. The nice thing about these are they are very portable, light and easy to set up. The bad thing about them is they don’t reach and maintain a very high temperature, and being light weight, they can blow away in wind.

The third major kind are box cookers, these work just like a small oven, they can be made of a cardboard box, or for a more permanent solution, made of wood or plastic. It is essentially an insulated box with a glass top and to make them work even better, reflectors are added to the top. This is the kind I like best.

I have scoured YouTube in search of the best build, I see many mistakes being made, mainly in the materials used in building them, you don’t want to use anything that will off gas or become toxic when it becomes hot, using styrofoam, some types of glue, some kinds of wood even will out gas toxic fumes when heated, I cringe when I see these being used.

I found one video that really jumped out at me, though I’m sure there are many more, I liked this one. The first video shows how it’s built, I will admit that my ADD struck and I had to move the video along a bit, but the build is solid. The second video shows a whole chicken being cooked in this solar oven. Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/yPRkwnpv-C8

https://youtu.be/uMh3N8lq1Ik

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July 3, 2017 1 Comment

Community

Huge tiny home!

This has to be the biggest tiny home I’ve seen to date, it’s 37 feet long and 8.5 feet wide, 13.5 feet tall, it weighs in at 19,000 pounds. This is built on a goose-neck trailer base, with a triple axle setup (3000 pound each). It would take a larger truck to pull this.

This thing is a monster! A beautiful monster though, it doesn’t look for feel like a tiny home, I suspect this would be one that you would place somewhere and leave it instead of traveling around with it.

The bathroom is huge, it contains a full size tub & shower and even has a washer/dryer unit built in. I love the stairs, mainly because of the drawers built into each step, and the bottom step can accommodate a full length broom.

One area that is small is the closet, it is very small, there are built in shoe racks, but that’s the best you can say about that. I suppose if you live in a tiny home, even one this grand, you will still need to be a bit of a minimalist. :)

Watch the video and let me know what you think about this tiny home.
https://youtu.be/9FqHINIs4Rc

…

July 2, 2017 No Comments

Community

It’s solar, what could possibly go wrong?

troubleshooting

When you are doing your own solar system, the key words here are “doing your own”, you will have to be in charge of troubleshooting if things go wrong.

Sometimes, often you can recognize there is a problem but can’t quite figure out what or where the problem is. You test each separate component and each of them seems to be working, but altogether there is a problem somewhere and it’s frustrating.

I am the unofficial “Geek Squad” tech person in my neighborhood, I can’t tell you how many times I have been working on a computer, taking everything apart, putting it back together and have it work, and I have no idea what I did to make it work, the same thing happens with solar systems. Perhaps it was just a loose connection, or who knows what, call it a happy accident.

I recommend building your system yourself rather than paying someone to do it, mainly because you will have a better understanding of how things go together, the hows and whys. The only exception I can think of is if you have the money to pay someone to come out and fix things each and every time things go wrong, of course then you are at the mercy of someone elses time schedule. There is nothing better than being able to do it yourself.

Watch this video about troubleshooting a solar system.
https://youtu.be/7zOodG3F_Ds

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June 24, 2017 No Comments

Showering felt so good today!

When one lives off-grid, you are generally your own fix it person, not always, but often. That is certainly true for us, we designed, built and maintain our off-grid system, all the utilities that would normally be in the purview of the utility companies or a commercial repair service company, we take care of ourselves.

One of the big things we take care of has to do with our water system. When we first moved out here, before our water system was really set up, I would walk to my neighbor’s house to collect 3 gallons of water per day, why 3 gallons you ask? Simple, it’s how many empty one gallon water containers I had. We learned during that time how to really REALLY conserve water. Before you think we moved out here to leech off of our neighbor, we were set up to get water from the community well, several miles from us, but since our neighbor very kindly offered the use of his tap, we gratefully accepted.

Since then, we have greatly expanded the water setup, we have several large water storage tanks, some are set up to collect water from the roof, that is something that will be improved upon in the very near future, to the point where we will get 100% of our water from the sky.

On the inside of the SkyCastle, we have a 12 volt water pump, the original one we had came out of an RV, we liked it well enough to continue with that line when it came time to buy a new one. The nice thing about the 12 volt system is even if the batteries that store our electricity are too low for the inverter to work, there is still enough power to run the pump.

In the beginning, we just used the pump, it was (and still is) inside the SkyCastle, just under the sink, every time we turned on the faucet, the pump came on making our home sound like a gas station air pump. We eventually installed a second hand pressure tank. The water pump would pressurize the pressure tank, which meant the water pump didn’t come on as often but ran for longer periods of time.

Eventually that pressure tank failed and we purchased a new one, a spiffy shiny blue tank that sits under the sink in the kitchen. The reason we have so much of our system inside the house is to keep things from freezing in winter.

Now that we had our water, sink and shower plumbed for use, we needed to be able to heat the water. Enter the Eccotemp L5 portable propane powered water heater, honestly it’s designed to be used OUTSIDE, not inside, but since our home isn’t what you would call tight, I don’t mind running the one in the kitchen, installed right over …

June 23, 2017 1 Comment

In Norway hiking is a big part of the everyday life.

Community

Unlocked: Traditional Norwegian Free Huts

From ancient times, simple households and traditional huts located in rural Norway was kept unlocked, so people could seek shelter in case of bad weather. Statskog wants to keep this tradition alive.

Provides over 100 huts
If you are happy with sleeping on a “brisk” – a wooden bench, going to the toilet outdoors and drinking water from the creek, this is perfect for you. Statskog provides over 100 arches and “koier” – tiny, traditional huts around the Northern-European country.

“They can be a destination goal for a break or act as a shelter for wind and weather. There are also a few wooden benches if you want to rest or stay overnight,” Nils Aal, head of outdoor activities in Statskog says.

Simplicity is key
The cabins have an oven, but not water and electricity. It is not a matter of luxury, but four walls and roof over your head over a few square meters. Most of the huts was used as shelters for loggers and people working with timber floats in earlier days. Others were built as hunting and fishing booths or are set up in recent years as tourist destinations.

Many of Statskog´s huts are old and contains a lot of history about Norwegian forestry and farming. Everyone is welcome to use the households for a short stay, but it is expected that you will make an effort to leave it in the same condition as you found it. A good rule is to bring in dry wood and take the trash with you when you leave.

Open for everyone
No booking is possible and no membership is required, but you should have a Plan B (like a tent) in case the huts are full. You also need to bring your own sleeping bag, and of course food.

Another way off staying off-grid for free is in a camper van.…

June 22, 2017 No Comments

Community

Missing my dad on Father’s Day

Today is Father’s Day, a bittersweet day for me. My Dad was instrumental in my interest in living off-grid, as well as actually getting to live off-grid.

I grew up in a very tight knit family, we had a few close friends, but mostly we depended on ourselves, the family, to get through life. We would gather around the TV and watch Nature, Jacques Cousteau, NOVA, we also enjoyed watching Grizzly Adams. Those shows molded my love for nature. We walked an odd line though, one of loving nature and one of being conservative, we were definitely not tree huggers (not that there is anything wrong with that, said in my best Seinfeld voice).

I have wonderfully fond memories of sitting with the family and watching these shows, then heading straight out to emulate what I had watched, building tent forts, digging holes in the dirt to see what lived there, saving the baby sparrows that always fell out of the nest built over the porch… neither of my parents made much of a fuss when I brought home a grass snake, toad or horned lizard, and believe me, I brought home everything I could find.

We lived in the suburbs, though we all dreamed of moving to the country, plans were always being made that would end in us buying some acreage out in the middle of nowhere. I remember when my dad and I discovered the Monolithic Dome Homes located in Italy Texas. We took a day and visited the site, they are very friendly folk who don’t mind people wandering around. We spent years after that drawing out plans for the dome home we were going to build, I can still see it in my mind. Life would be perfect.

Unfortunately our family never fulfilled those dreams, at least not until I had my family and they were grown up. Most of my family is familiar with how I live now, my mother was the only one who never got to see my current home, she passed away 15 years ago. My dad did get to be part of it though. He came out for his first visit before there was anything built on the property. We set up tents on the lower part and spent several hot days enjoying the peace and quiet, meeting the neighbors and getting the lay of the land.

After that, he would come out and spend a month in the summer with us, his first extended stay was the impetus to build a separate bedroom, I loved my dad but we needed some separate space (LOL). He enjoyed helping us, both financially as well as keeping us stocked up in goodies. About a month before his impending visit, he would call and ask me what we needed. Dad would buy up toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex, can goods, dry goods, he …

June 18, 2017 No Comments

Nate has plenty of room in his camper van.

Community

Camper Van Featured in UK Tabloid

The Sun is featuring Nate Murphy, a Brit who decided to turn his white van into an RV in just 17 days to travel the world. These kind off adventures have gotten very popular over the years and this featuring in Britain´s most -read newspaper is a sign that more people would like to live an off-grid life!

“I did an interview for a media organisation that sold my interview. It was really cool that The Sun wanted to write about my van”, Murphy tells.

A world adventure
Nate is a professional rock climber and uses the camper van to travel between climbing destinations around the world. The camper van has been turned into a fully functional leisure vehicle, with sleeping room for two, seating space, running water, LPG Central heating and electricity from a 300 watt solar panel.

“It is designed so I do not have to plug in anywhere. It is a very comfortable way if living as I do not rely on anything else than the van”.

The rock climber says the biggest challenge in the process of building the van is that if you are going to do it quickly, you have to make sure you have everything delivered at the right time.

“I worked 15 hours every day and I would say the whole process took me about 250 hours work,” he tells.

Living on a shoestring
Nate´s nomadic life style has taken him to some of the most expensive cities in Europe, where he avoids accommodation costs, saving a fortune in hotel bills.

He has lived out of the van for a year and travelled through Europe, Asia and the United States, where he just returned from.

His plan for the summer is to sell the van if he can get a reasonable price for it. With the money he wants to build a new van.

“I really enjoyed the process of designing and building the van, so I would not mind doing it again”.

So far Nate has not made any big plans for the summer yet, but is looking into doing rock climbing in Norway. Initially the plan was to spend up to three years in his van, but the climber has realised he enjoys the lifestyle so much that he wants to continue for indefinite time.

Makes money from his Youtube-channel
As well as doing rock climbing and living nomadically Nathan Murphy is a Youtuber with more than 80,000 subscribers. You can see more of his adventure here.

Want to go on an off-grid adventure? Check out this farm stay in Central Vietnam!…

June 14, 2017 2 Comments

All you need to go off-grid

Community

Hitting the wall

Healing update

Going old school batteries

What bit me?

Prosnowboarder’s golden ratio

Cooking with the sun

Huge tiny home!

It’s solar, what could possibly go wrong?

Showering felt so good today!

Unlocked: Traditional Norwegian Free Huts

Missing my dad on Father’s Day

Camper Van Featured in UK Tabloid

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