Living Off The Grid

A simple method that can be used to make very high quality charcoal lump, which is free of impurities and without the need for expensive apparatus or advanced skills.

When you make biodiesel you need some equipment. Most of it is buckets and assorted little stuff but you’ll also need a processor.

When I decided to make biodiesel I had certain notions. My experiences have been unexpectedly different yet better in many ways. Here are a few things worth mentioning.

One thing about property out in the country is that it always seems to be changing. Here are a few pictures of our flooded property in Virginia.

An easy to understand guide to making a batch of biodiesel, including the ingredients, the process and some simple safety considerations everyone should know about when making biodiesel.

Composting toilets provide a low-water, or even water-free, alternative that also allows you to close the poop loop by turning bodily wastes into organic material ready to go back into the soil. They are perfect for off grid homes, cabins, RVs and boats!

Guerrilla gardening is different from traditional gardening because instead of cultivating a home garden, guerrilla gardeners transform neglected public spaces. By beautifying abandoned parking lots, schoolyards, and alleyways, guerrilla gardeners are the Johnny Appleseeds of the urban landscape.

Just over 5 years ago I moved to Spain with my partner. We live in a remote area with no chance of ever getting mains electricity so we run our home using solar panels and a back-up generator.

Biodiesel is sometimes presented in an oversimplified or misleading way. I’d like to cut through the fog and establish a few simple ideas as factual. This brief article, the first in a series, should start things on the right track. Later articles will talk about how to make biodiesel and how to use it.

Successful off-grid living means constantly monitoring and adjusting the energy efficiency of your home’s systems and of your personal habits. You’re living on battery power, constantly playing the balancing game between power consumption and power generation. That means a life of watching the electrical fuel gauge.

The following features are suggested for any off the grid home. Most of these features are well known and widely used in energy efficient homes – some are not!

Can a fireplace be as good or perhaps better than a wood burning stove? That’s the question Fred Roensch asked himself not along ago, and his answers can be found below. I have also provided a few pictures of our own fireplace insert replacement.

In this post Mr. Roensch discusses some of the problems you may encounter while searching for off-grid property, including water rights, land orientation and the unavailability of proper real estate search tools.

Once I realized how important oil was I decided it would be well worth the effort to figure out a way to make it myself. With a bit of searching I found a hand crank oil expeller and have been making all of my own vegetable oils ever since.

The active ingredient in Draino and similar drain cleaners is sodium hydroxide. It sounds scary – and it can be – but most of us know this stuff as plain old caustic soda or lye, which I use in my homemade soap since it saponifies (turns into soap and is no longer lye) once mixed [...]

Every family should have an emergency preparedness kit. In fact, we should all have several kits: One for the home, one for the car trunk…

What is it about Berkey Water Filters that makes them so popular among survivalists, off-grid folks, and even third-world aid programs?
I asked myself that exact question not long ago. I wondered if it was just good marketing, or if the Berkey (I thought they were called Berkley water filters at the time for some reason) [...]

To be snowed-in without phone or power and to see that I have season’s worth of dry wood; several months worth of multi-colored jars of home-canned and dried food in the pantry; a root cellar stocked with potatoes, cured cheese, carrots and apples…

If you live off grid, have lived off the grid in the past, know a lot about renewable energy, or just have a story or how-to you think our readers would like – let us know!

Looking for online solar training resources? Look no further – here is a list of some of the best websites and companies offering PV design and installation courses online.