Community Archives - Page 28 of 93 - Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

Community

Spring is near

20160221_173117

Spring is just around the corner, I am noticing the oak trees, which keep their leaves all winter long, are beginning to turn, they fall off and are replaced in very short order. Most other locations, the leaves turn in fall/autumn, but not our oak trees. I am also noticing the other trees, which have lost their leaves are starting to bud, just little bumps on the branches right now, but will soon bust out into a riot of bright green leaves.

20160221_172812_DROSRC

Another sign of spring is the days are getting longer, something I appreciate, I find I can get more done during the daylight, when it gets dark, I just want to crawl in bed and relax.

I am looking forward to the green grass and spring flowers, I love taking pictures as I drive all over west Texas doing merchandising, I get to see some very pretty country, much of it is harsh and hard, but there is a beauty if you are willing to look. I am building up a portfolio of pictures I can use for making cards, (greeting and post cards), mainly to sell to the tourists who pass through on vacation, also to sell to the locals who wish to see something pretty all year long.

The SkyCastle is growing, slowly, but still moving along. PB has been working on the room under the house, we are built on a hillside, so the front of the ground floor room is tall, but as it goes back, the “floor” slopes up, so PB has been digging out the floor, one section at a time, then pouring concrete walls to support the back of the house. Once it’s complete, it will be our bedroom, it will be partially underground with thick concrete walls, there will be two doors but no windows. The idea is to have a protected space that is easy to heat in winter, and stays cool in summer. It will also free up the room we use as a bedroom now, we can use it as a dining room or perhaps even another bedroom when we have overnight guests.

20160221_173535

The other project around here is the lawn tractor, PB is working on making it a half track vehicle, it will be better able to get up and down the steep and rocky terrain, and to help preserve the land. Regular tires tend to dig ruts in the dirt, smoother tires can’t get a good hold, and aggressive tires tear up what they go over. You can see the teaser article about this here: https://off-grid.net/56795-2/.

A couple of weeks ago, PB hurt his knee on a ladder, the hardest part about this injury was keeping him off that leg, he wants to work, he needs to do chores, but every time he used that leg, it hurt, a lot. It is healing now, …

February 21, 2016 No Comments

Community

Is it too late?

toolate

What are your skills? Everyone has something they can do and do well, something that you enjoy doing, hopefully you are making your living doing it.

If TEOTWAWKI were to happen, assuming you have your food, water, shelter and other necessities taken care of, (you do, don’t you?), if we were to go back to a life like yesteryear, what could you contribute to your society? Unfortunately, all too many are skilled in spending money, or using technologic gadgets, that just will not get it if the power were to go out for an extended amount of time.

For me, I know how to cook from scratch, I can cook on a woodstove, I am familiar with our local plantlife for medicinal purposes. I can also cut hair, it’s funny that in the olden days, barbers were also the local medicine folk, you went to the barber to get minor, and sometimes major medical help.

I am well practiced at living in more primitive ways, choosing to live this way on purpose. PB is well versed at taking junk and turning it into useful things, he has a knowledge of electricity, gas (propane and other cooking & heating gas), engine repair, welding, building, he is an all around handy man.

Between the two of us, we have the skills to survive and the things we don’t have or can’t do, we can barter our skills with other people who have skills we don’t have. You don’t have to know how to do everything, but the more skills you do have, the better off you will be, both in this life, and in a potentially radically different world.

A neighbor and friend up the street is versed in leathercraft, another friend is a plumber, yet another is an EMT so can take care of medical issues, our small community is far ahead of many other towns because of the diverse knowledge and we all know each other.

As I asked in the title, is it too late? If you are reading this and you are still upright & breathing, it’s not too late, figure out what you are good at, what you enjoy doing, and learn more about it, get some practical experience, figure out what sorts of things that might be handy to know and do it.

…

February 16, 2016 No Comments

Community

Half track, full genius

The last couple of weeks, PB has been watching lots of track wheel vehicle videos on YouTube, I just thought he was on another rabbit trail, he travels those quite often, and sometimes something really interesting comes of it.

Let me backtrack just a bit, about 3 years ago, we were gifted an old (but still working) Craftsman lawn tractor, a very small tractor with 4 wheels, it has been sitting in our shed waiting to become useful.

PB wants to turn it into a half-track to make it easier to get up and down the hill and do as little damage to the land as possible. Here is a mock up of what he plans to do. More to come :)
half track

Here is a video showing what someone else did
https://youtu.be/jQs25GH-hTw

…

February 12, 2016 2 Comments

High end tiny house

Most of the tiny homes I have seen are built on a tight budget, this one was built with more high end features in mind, it looks fantastic, coming in at around $77,000, it certainly doesn’t disappoint.

I love the stairs in this one, and the loft, it just looks very comfortable and well built. Jeff Hobbs has taken his skills a cabinet maker and boat builder to make this tiny home a masterpiece of beauty and efficiency.

https://youtu.be/CELFsKLkKbI

…

February 10, 2016 No Comments

Community

Nassau plans energy independence

Microgrids to make small town self sufficient…

February 9, 2016 No Comments

Community

Would you live in a yurt?

yurt01
In the next town over from where I live, quite close, nearly in town, there is a yurt on a hillside, I don’t know who owns it or if anyone even lives there, but it looks interesting, if nothing else because it’s different.

A yurt is a semi-permanent tent structure, round, with a slightly cone shaped dome top. They are usually made of canvas, are roomy but there is only one room inside, unless you add some sort of walls inside to divide up the spaces like they did in the second video below. They are usually insulated so you can live in them year round. I wonder how long the canvas holds up though, and the plastic sheeting windows, I suspect at some point the covering would need to be replaced.

Never the less, they look quite interesting and would make a fun living place. Have you even stayed in a yurt? If so, let me know what you think of them below.

Here are 3 videos showcasing yurt life, enjoy.
https://youtu.be/CKG2LKYCb6g

https://youtu.be/RmlcxdGgK9A

https://youtu.be/5BMJQeaXHtM

…

February 6, 2016 2 Comments

Three things this week

First thing, as I sit here tonight, sipping herbal tea that tastes like a sugar cookie, it’s quite a different night from last night, for one thing, it’s quiet, all I hear is the hum from the inverter fan and the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard.

Last night, the wind blew, it blew really hard, at some points I wondered how the roof would stay attached. I’m certain we had gusts of near 70 MPH, as I lay in bed watching videos on my tablet, it was loud enough outside that I had trouble hearing the tablet’s tiny speakers. PB was under the SkyCastle, I heard a loud crash on the roof of the bedroom. It sounded big and it sounded as if it broke up into pieces when it hit. We never did figure out what it was, there was no visible damage the next morning and nothing laying around that looked like it could be the thing that hit the roof.

It’s difficult for us to have a fire in the wood stove when it’s that windy, the wind tends to blow the smoke back into the house, fortunately it was a rather warm night, well warmish, I had the windows open but was wearing my cold weather nightwear, 2 layers, thermal underwear and flannel PJs. This morning we discovered new items in the yard, things that blew in from the neighbor’s properties, I found out that some of my neighbor’s didn’t fare as well as we did, one lost a carport, another lost their trampoline. Yet another neighbor wrote on Facebook about how we can’t leave things out like ladders leaning against the building or anything else that can become airborne.

We are supposed to have another couple of high wind days coming up, it hasn’t hit yet, but there are fire dangers because of the wind and how dry it is, a spark is all it would take and we could be in real trouble.

Second thing, work has been picking up, as promised after the first of the year, our bigger merchandising projects are starting to show up. I had been trying to find someone to take one of the two farther towns I travel to each week, Presidio. We have hired several folk over a period of time but none of them seem to work out for very long, this seems to be the type of work you either love or hate.

I learned that the lady who used to work with me expressed an interest in coming back, she wanted Presidio, that is perfect, I can happily hand that town over to her, there will be no training time and no worries about her ability to do the work, it’s a win-win situation. She will either start this week or the following week.

The third and final thing that has happened …

January 31, 2016 No Comments

Off-Grid crock pot

I love the idea of cooking low and slow, but being off-grid means I don’t have the electricity to spare to run an electric crock pot, nor do I want to cook on my propane stove for hours and hours even on a low flame, I do use a pressure cooker to make things such as soup, stew and the such.

Today I ran across this video showing how you can use tea lights (small candles) to create an off-grid crock pot or slow cooker. I was intrigued and watched, I can see how it can be a really good thing, I can also see where some improvements can be made to make it safer, I would use metal to line where the candles touch the base, that way there would be little chance of the wood there getting hot enough to combust and if the candle wax were to escape, it would be less likely to catch anything on fire. I would perhaps want to line the entire thing with metal to keep things safer.

He said the meal took about 2 hours to cook, different tea lights last different amounts of time, from 2 hours up to 4 hours, you would have to check it as time went by to know if you would need to add fresh tea lights.

Watch and let me know what you think?
https://youtu.be/3aVKYFT14Ro

…

January 26, 2016 1 Comment

What does your wood stove say?

If your wood burning stove could talk, what would it say to you? Is it happy with the way you load it? Is it happy with the amount and type of wood you use?

Most off-gridders are using wood to heat our homes, open fireplaces are pretty to look at, but aren’t efficient. We prefer to use a wood burning stove, a metal box that contains the wood and fire, they use much less wood and give off much more heat.

I found this video with lots of tips and tricks to help you use your wood stove more efficiently, the biggest tip I got from this video is to learn your wood stove, they each have their own personality and burn differently, some like being filled, others prefer less wood more often, experiment and learn what your stove likes best and what works best.

https://youtu.be/su6znyIVxBA

…

January 24, 2016 No Comments

Community

What’s your backup plan?

backup
It used to be that big storms caught us by surprise, now it seems that more and more we have several days up to a week’s warning, but even with these longer lead times, it’s still a good idea to have a backup plan, a way to survive, at least for the short term while the emergency plays itself out.

It has to be very disheartening to be greeted with empty shelves at the stores when weather emergencies happen, whether local or regional or even statewide. Most, if not all grocery stores have, on average, a 3 day supply of food & stock, that is if there isn’t a run on food, when that happens, the shelves will be stripped in hours, not days.

If you were stuck in your home right now, if you couldn’t leave, how long would you be able to survive with the food you have in your home now? How many days before you are in real trouble? Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck, some of us live in small apartments with not much storage space for extra food.

It’s possible to put up extra food on even the tightest of budgets, you might have to give up some “extras” for a while, but it’s possible to have some extra money to spend on buying foods for emergency backup. What do you do that costs money you don’t have to spend? Maybe downgrade your entertainment bills, things like your TV (cable & satellite), your internet, save that money you would spend on eating out or going to Starbucks… Drop your gym membership for a couple of months and sock that money into extra food to put back.

Curtail your driving, that is money you are putting into the gas tank, only drive when you absolutely have to, combine trips and stop joyriding, carpool to work if you can.

Now that you have a few extra dollars put aside, what kinds of food should you get? That all depends on what you will eat, there is no point in buying cans of baked beans if you hate baked beans. Buy what you will eat, but make sure it’s food that will last, especially without refrigeration, a freezer full of food is of no use if the power goes out. Buy dry foods, canned foods, you can get those foil packs of food like tuna, rice, chicken, even milk that doesn’t need refrigeration.

Your ability to cook may be curtailed because of the power going out, if you are really thinking ahead, you will have alternative ways to cook, propane is good for that. You can get food that doesn’t need to be cooked or needs very little in the way of cooking. Recently I saw quick cooking dry rice in the dollar store, it’s precooked and only needs to have water added to it, …

January 24, 2016 No Comments

Living in a greenhouse

I’m sure I’m not the only person who ever wondered how it would be to build a greenhouse around your house, these folk in Stockholm Sweden did just that. It looks quite ingenious, and even pretty. I love the plants they have growing, the fig tree for example, there is no way they could grow that without it being inside a greenhouse, and the tomatoes look fabulous! Most people don’t know this, but tomatoes can be an perennial plant if the weather is mild enough in the winter.

The area where they live is normally just a summer getaway for most, but with the greenhouse around their home, they can stay there year round in comfort. I imagine it was not a cheap venture, but the money they save on heating in the winter will eventually pay for itself, and the fact that they are more self sufficient with growing food (plants) year round, it must all add up.

Here is a video showing this home, enjoy!

https://youtu.be/30ghnDOFbNQ
https://faircompanies.com/videos/view/family-wraps-home-in-greenhouse-to-warm-up-stockholm-weather/

…

January 18, 2016 No Comments

Airbnb, holiday let, vacation rental, tree house, offthegridnews

Community

Airbnb’s hottest properties – yes, they are off-grid

Airbnb has just released it’s 10 most wished-for properties on the vacation web site. Quirky, unique properties are most in demand. Four out of the ten properties are tree-houses and three of those are located in California.

The top ten roundup of wish-listed abodes on the property site shows that quirky, unorthodox residences are the places where most people wish to stay.

From a secluded treehouse with rope bridge in the woods of Atlanta, Georgia to a ‘seashell’ house in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, to a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’-themed guest house in Topanga Canyon, California, the properties that were the most popular were strange and fanciful.

It is also number one on the site’s list of most popular property types. This author has his own https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/2589762″ target=”_blank”off-grid property on Airbnb – in Majorca Spain – Check it out here: https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/2589762″https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/2589762
The U.S. was the most represented country on the list, with three of the four properties represented in California.
The second most popular destination was Italy, with three locations in the top ten. Mexico, Canada, and Bali rounded out the list.

PICK OF THE OFF GRID PLACES

No. 10: ($380 per night) This off-the-grid solar-powered house in the high desert of Pioneertown, California does have heat, hot water, and a washer, but of course no TV or Internet – Joshua Tree National Park is nearby

No. 8: ($76 per night) This ‘mushroom villa’ as the locals in Bali call it, comes with a beautifully lit private swimming pool with ocean view and garden where you are free to pick your own fruit and veranda where you can watch the sunrise – there’s a hot water shower and Wifi spot

No. 7: A Pirates of the Caribbean themed tropical guest house contains a deck with a teepee for lounging (not overnight sleeping!) N($95 per night/two nights minimum/$225 for one night)Guest house contains a Jacuzzi and BBQ fire pit – the property contains waterfalls and ponds.

No. 6: ($110 per night) A mushroom shaped dome cabin in in Aptos, California is called a ‘geodesic dome loft’ and it has a large outdoor deck shaded by oak and madrone trees and abutting a redwood grove on ten acres of prime forest chiming with birds – there’s also a nearby beach – there’s a flatscreen TV with DVD player but no television reception

No. 5: ($157 per night) Another treehouse, this time in San Salvatore Monferrato, Alessandria, Italy – it contains one bedroom, one bathroom, a garden solarium and swimming pool on the property – and a cat

No. 4: ($100 per night) This unique cob cottage in Mayne Island, British Columbia is sculpted of local, sustainable natural materials – guests have access to all of the surrounding lush property, including the small private vineyard

No. 3: ($281 per night) This glass paneled treehouse in Tuscany, Italy is only only twenty minutes’ …

January 17, 2016 No Comments

All you need to go off-grid

Community

Spring is near

Is it too late?

Half track, full genius

High end tiny house

Nassau plans energy independence

Would you live in a yurt?

Three things this week

Off-Grid crock pot

What does your wood stove say?

What’s your backup plan?

Living in a greenhouse

Airbnb’s hottest properties – yes, they are off-grid

OFF-GRID.NET

PUBLICATIONS

CODE OF CONDUCT

REGISTER AND MANAGE ACCOUNT

ORDERING

PRIVACY POLICY

LINKS DIRECTORY

LANGUAGES

ADVERTISERS

POWER MANAGEMENT

POWER MANAGEMENT LANGUAGES

WORK FOR US

Sign-up to our newsletter

Community

OFF-GRID.NET

For films about individuals and technologies for living off the grid

PUBLICATIONS

REGISTER AND MANAGE ACCOUNT

ORDERING

LANGUAGES

ADVERTISERS

POWER MANAGEMENT LANGUAGES

WORK FOR US

Sign-up to our newsletter