Land
The Woodland House
Ben LAw, Woodland Way, Ecohouse, Woodland House, permaculture, living in the woods,…
June 8, 2005
No Comments
Ben LAw, Woodland Way, Ecohouse, Woodland House, permaculture, living in the woods,…
The Ramblers Association will be leading five huge guided walks next weekend to take advantage of new rights of access in the UK. The detailed routes are at the end of this story.
The new Freedom to Roam over mountain, moor, heath and downland will soon apply across England and Wales. This Saturday, several regions win their freedom, opening up long miles of Northumbria, Cumbria and North Yorkshire, plus every inch of Welsh access land, to walkers. The southeast, the Peak District, the northwest and the West Country have already gone live, while Devon, Cornwall, the Midlands and the east of England will follow later this year. That adds up to 5,000 square miles of new views you could never explore before.…
Josh Tickell vs Maria Alovert – with thanks to Maxim Online
In the blue corner: Josh Tickell, has been featured in these pages before. He’s a skinny, blond, motor-mouthed Louisianan who moved himself to L.A. in an RV painted with sunflowers and butterflies and powered by biodiesel, an alternative fuel source made primarily of vegetable oil that can be poured directly into diesel engines after it’s mixed with methanol and lye to separate out the glycerol, which isn’t good for engines. Biodiesel is based on materials grown, not mined, making it, in theory, sustainable, and thus, Tickell will gladly tell you, one step toward energy independence, clean air, and a shiny, happy planet free of wars for oil.
The trouble is, biodiesel isn’t available at the local filling station. If you want to scarf down some French fries and then drive your car home on the grease that made them crispy, you’ve gotta make it yourself.
In the red corner: Maria Alovert has not been written about here before, but we must be one of the few sites on the web to have forgotten to mention her. Alovert is also on a mission to promote bio-diesel, but she does it in a very different way to Rick Tickell, and that’s the cause of the problem.…
A property developer has launched an energy self sufficient block of flats in London. Yorklake Homes said the four flats generate all their own energy from non fossil fuels within the site boundaries.
Designed by Bill Dunster’s architecture firm, the main source of energy is a Swift silent wind turbine, one of the first domestically available near-silent wind turbines, it generates power at mains voltage. It was commissioned by Renewable Devices and supplied by Scottish and Southern Energy plc. When combined with solar panels it enables the development to generate as much electricity as it consumes.…
Wildlife millionaire Paul Lister bought the Alladale Highland Wilderness Reserve after a 10 year search. He was looking for somewhere isolated, private and with vast, uninterrupted views to fulfill his dream of reintroducing indigenous predators to the Scottish Highlands. He is now offering students an ecology holiday, but at a price.
Set within 11,000 hectares of truly dramatic and stunning Highland landscape, the reserve covers 5 glens, 10 hill lochs and 2 river systems. Alladale is the site of one of Europe’s most prominent ecological restoration programmes, conserving native wildlife whilst reintroducing once native Highland flora and fauna in a controlled environment.…
This comprehensive guide to building your own home is written by someone who has actually done it. All the pitfalls and delights are laid out in over 500 pages. And there are plenty of pitfalls.
The time, money and effort involved in self-build has blown many marriages apart, and busted many a bank balance. The first thing to decide is whether self-build is really for you. Have you got the money? Whatever you think you will have to spend, double it. Will you find the land? That can be time-consuming. And assuming you are not actually doing the building work yourself, are you able to organise the many professionals you will need — from architect to builders to craftspeople?…
Materials needed for 28 x 15 foot Greenhouse (thanks to Laspilitas):
*5×20 foot pieces of 5/8 inch rebar (cut in 1/3’s to about 6 foot lengths)
*7 x20 foot lengths of schedule 40 PVC with a small (3/16- inch) hole drilled dead center, at 10 feet
*2 x20 foot lengths of schedule 40 PVC (cut into 20 inch pieces)
*84 feet of schedule 40 PVC cut into 4 foot lengths.…
BBC Radio had a great dive into the archives tonight (Saturday), with a show about our past visions of the Future House.
From the 1970s it featured the first well-developed idea for an off-grid home — The Autonomous House designed by Brenda and Robert Vale. And from the 80s – Biosphere 2. Both were off-grid ideas that were ahead of their time. The Vale’s ideas are just coming to fruition all over the US and the UK
Jules Dervaes and his family who live an almost completely self-sufficient life are about to be featured by the New York Times, with their own video on the newspaper’s web site.…
Don’t go shopping, go gooshing. The Ethical Company Organisation (ECO) has launched a new ethical products web site, listing products sold by ethical companies that care about animal rights, human rights and the environment. Look out for the sign on the right, to tell you that a company has joined the scheme. Buying their stuff sends a message to the companies that are not ethical as well as to ones which are.…
Alex Benady guides you through the maze of UK government payments to reduce your dependence on the grid.
After promises from the Prime Minister to take climate change seriously, the UK government has ended its solar panel subsidy programme seven years early. The pot of 31m lasting until 2012 was intended to offer cheap electricity and green electricity with grants of up to 50% for building solar panels.
The decision to end the grant was intepreted by many as anti-environmental backsliding. No such thing claims the Department of Trade and Industry which administered the programme. There are still plenty of cheap loans and grants for saving energy in your home. It was a spot of much needed house-keeping designed to tidy up the higgeldy-piggledy system of grants and subsidies and that has sprung up around the areas of energy conservation and alternative energy.…
Daryl Hannah has a massive commitment to the environment, and unusually amongst the Hollywood A-list, she puts in real time and effort to forward her beliefs. In this exclusive interview she spoke to Off-Grid’s Steve Spence. Off-Grid 2005
Actress Daryl Hannah is often referred to as the Blonde Goddess of Hollywood, but as far as we’re concerned she’s the Green Goddess of the Rocky Mountains. Hannah lives there, off the grid, and she spoke to us about her setup and why she got into that life. The details were fascinating, from the technology of her farm-tractor to the soft couch in her living room made of moss covered stone.
She was in New York with Charris Ford who has lived off-grid for the past 18 years. They are on a tour to promote use of bio-diesel fuel, one of the issues that most concerns her. She started learning about the environment as a pre-teen, and she found nature to be the thing that has centered her, where she can think about things.
Charris, who runs Grassolean Solutions , got Daryl into bio-diesel as a way of reducing energy consumption on the planet, and now, as is well known she drives a bio-El Camino as well as running a bio-truck, and a bio-tractor on her farm in the Rockies.
But Hannah is not a one-issue campaigner. Her whole way of being is all about the interconnectedness of things and her favourite saying is on that theme:…
2023 © Off-Grid.net
9b Audrey St. London E2 8QH
email news@off-grid.net
call US office: toll-free 1-877-706-7423
OR
UK: +44 207 729 2749
How to register – Coming Soon
How to Manage your off-grid account
How to use the off-grid map – Coming Soon
Coming Soon