I would pay attention to grain orientation. The link you provided showed most of the pieces looking quarter sawn or rift sawn. Flat sawn boards would have more pieces that could be likely to warp badly. This Link Shows the differences between milling types and grain orientation.

Using earthen or cement based products as a 'grout' would likely have low expansion and contraction. Mixing this with a softwood species would probably fail sooner than a hardwood species. The hardwood should be a bit more dimensionally stable and have less expansion and contraction. If you are looking to use locally sourced materials then you may want to talk with a local woodworker for recommendations. They might also have scraps you could use to make your floor.

I would use the ability of wood to soak things up to your advantage. Finding something that soaks into the wood and make it water resistant could be helpful. I have seen a lot of houses locally where wood rots on the bottom because it is nailed in place and then painted, leaving exposed end grain in a humid and rainy environment. I take waterproof wood glue and let it soak in for several minutes and repeat a few times until it won't soak in anymore. Not exactly the most permie friendly solution, but tearing trim off in a few years due to rot is probably less friendly to the planet. You might be able to use something more natural like beeswax and then a surface of beeswax and linseed oil, or beeswax and shellac. I'm sure other wax or oil based products that won't go rancid could also be used and then a harder coating on top to reduce wear.

Attaching this to the floor itself could pose a problem. Anything that isn't waterproof, such materials high in clay or cement, will likely wick moisture. This might not be a big deal if the house foundation is raised up compared to the surrounding areas. If this is on a hillside or someplace where part of the house is below finished grade then you would need extra precautions to keep all moisture away from the house so it can't wick up through the floor and soak into the wood.

What is your hot water source going to be powered by? Solar thermal hot water is much cheaper in the long run than electric or gas, but like all solar it takes an expensive initial investment. That being said, the payback time on solar thermal hot water is much short than solar photovoltaic. This is because using the heat of the sun is generally above 80% efficient while the best PV is around 25%, and more often closer to 15%. The amount of energy the dishwasher itself uses is probably minimal compared to the energy embodied in the hot water it uses.

I've never met a dishwashing machine that actually gets dishes acceptably clean by my standards. The saying "so clean you could eat off it" means it is just below surgically clean by my understanding. It isn't like taking a car through a car wash that still has mud in the undercarriage and trash on the floor and people still call it 'clean', but I guess that is just a personal quirk of mine. I do use my old dishwasher as a large drying rack, which is a good way to divert it from going to the dump.

I don't have exact numbers, but looking at the water heating costs should help point you in the right direction. My ballpark guess would be electric heat - expensive hot water, gas heat - not as expensive as electric, solar thermal (not photovoltaic) hot water would most likely be cheapest per gallon of hot water in the long term.

Another thing worth mentioning would be Paul's thread on washing dishes. In summary, it can be substantially cheaper for grid powered homes to wash by hand, so I would imagine it could be even cheaper for off grid. This would need to be weighed against how much value you place on having harmony with people you live with and how much grief could be involved if you don't have a dishwashing machine that other people have become accustomed to. For instance, an extra solar thermal hot water panel, PV panel, and battery or two might be cheaper than going to family counseling. It would probably be best to take everything into account and decide from there.

I am no authority on the subject, and I don't have much experience outside of a few prototype rocket stoves I have built, but I do have a few ideas on this subject that I have thought about quite a bit. If you have an open space between the walls with exhaust going in then the heat will rise up to the top of the wall. You would still get some benefit by limiting thermal bridging between the inner and outer walls. If the floor is not insulated from the earth then the floor would likely always be much cooler than the ceiling.

Using the rocket mass heater idea could be a good solution, but I would stick closer to existing plans that keep the exhaust inside of a pipe. You could also do multiple exhaust pipes or a larger system with a long run that takes multiple trips back and forth within the wall, although this can make it more complicated to build without having draft and smoke-back issues. The pipe doesn't have to be steel, but could be clay or some other material sourced locally to save money. I would try to keep it well buried in a mass so that the exhaust couldn't easily leak inside the house. Monitoring CO and CO2 levels could be life-saving in any construction method. Having a 'breathing' wall with exhaust in it could be dangerous.

One thing that I have given a lot of thought to in particular is insulation and thermal mass. For a very efficient system it seems like going all mass or all insulation is less than ideal. If you have excess wood to burn then maybe this won't matter so much, particularly if it helps you avoid going long distances for building material. I personally like the idea of a large interior thermal mass that is completely insulated from the outside world on all sides. Essentially having the thickness of walls in your diagram reversed, with a thinner exterior, thicker interior, and some sort of gap that insulates the interior mass. Adding some sort of insulation layer between the mass and the ground, as well as insulating the roof would also be beneficial. My idea is kind of like a picnic cooler where there is insulation all around, ice as a thermal mass, and then food and drinks having their temperature regulated by the thermal mass. The main differences being retaining heat instead of keeping it out, and some sort of covering protecting the insulation which could easily be a stone or brick wall.

I could go on for days, but hopefully that gives you some helpful ideas. Thermodynamics is one of the toughest fields in science. Many things that have been learned about it over the past few decades were only possible with the help of computers. Some things seem to be counterintuitive. I would search around a lot and try to look at what others have done for inspiration. There may be mistakes others have made that you can learn from and avoid.

Jerry McIntire wrote:One more Andean gate (This one is on imgur, why no workee?)

There is something about that particular gate that might not be obvious. The slats of the gate are level, but the top of the hinge is angled in towards the opening. When opening that gate it must be pushed 'uphill' slightly. This means when you let go of it that it closes itself. This function may or may not be desirable depending on the situation. You could also angle the top of the hinge away from the opening for a gate that stays open until it is manually shut. Just something to think about if you are building something similar.

I was doing something similar with a slightly different purpose. I had two ~25 gallon containers that I kept in the shade to avoid heat, and a piece of corrugated steel roofing over it to keep the rain out. My goal at the time was just to finish composting and to add in some biochar so it would acclimate before using it in my garden. I had two small compost piles that I would occasionally sift through. I would pull out all of the biggest chunks and added the rest to one of the containers. From there I would mix in the biochar and then make a hole in the middle to transplant some worms and the soil they were living in.

Because of how tall the containers were (~18" deep soil) the worms could migrate a bit going to the area of preferred moisture. To be fair I had a mix of a few garden worms and worms left over from fishing that were given to me. I didn't have any holes in the bottom and I did have to occasionally add water when the top got dry, but they seemed to be doing alright with this method. I would directly add some things like coffee grounds, banana peels, and leafy green scraps to keep a supply of nutrients going in for the worms. Maybe not ideal, but I winged it and it worked.

It worked out pretty well for me, but I wasn't going for producing worms as much as I was going for producing compost with kitchen scraps, yard waste, and biochar. It wasn't the fastest method but it was a pretty lazy way of doing it. I started to move towards doing the post hole method of composting last year. I let my garden go because I will probably be moving and start growing stuff on my land down in Putnam county. I will probably start fishing a lot more then so I will have to try and get the worm action going again sometime soon.

I had a longer post written out, but I decided to look at the search function again and noticed something. The 'tinkering with this site' subforum is selected by default when I click on the search button from this page. I just went around and looked and found that whatever subforum I am in when I click the link on the top of the page becomes the default subforum field. I probably overlooked this a few weeks ago when I did a search and came up with no results, just to find what I had been looking for after manually scouring the site. I'm usually not that bad with computers either. It seems like this would sabotage anyone who is in a particular subforum and then tries to search something that comes to mind that isn't in that particular subforum.

If the 'all available' selection was always the default I bet it would help very many people to find what they need and perhaps reduce the occurrence of questions being repeated.

EDIT - This is from Firefox in Linux if that makes a difference.

I'm not sure where others got the 'trash can' notion from, but I believe the OP was referring to 55 gallon drums when they mentioned 'barrels'. They do have food grade plastic barrels which can be used for rain water collection. I have 3 chained together. They were given to me that way by a neighbor and I will likely move them down to my land sometime this year. I will have to cut the pipe and get new couplers if I want to put them back together, but that isn't a big deal. You could always get pipe unions that are specifically made to couple pipes together in places where the pipes are not free to move around. This would allow you to daisy chain as many barrels together as needed. IBC totes are another option. They should be relatively easy for two people to move around empty and I have seen numerous permaculture and aquaponics vieos on YouTube with them chained together.

As someone who does not like to put 'all of my eggs in one basket', I would recommend you keep your drinking water and washing water separate, even if they come from the same source. Currently at my house in civilization, I have a makeshift version of the Berkey water filter system and several gallon glass jugs that I store my water in and go through a rotation. If another hurricane blows in like it did in October, I have gallons of water stored and can filter water from my rain barrels if I run low. I wouldn't go without the separate water storage, because if a storm sent debris into my barrels or piping and spilled all of my water storage out then I would have no water. Having at least a couple gallons per person in reserve can save you from making a run back to civilization at an odd hour, and in an extreme case, be a life saver.

I got my acre for pretty cheap on landandfarm.com earlier this year. I had been looking around for a while and saw most places with smaller parcels of land were in deed restricted communities. I use the term communities loosely, as it seems many people bought land decades back with the intention of striking it rich making a subdivision, and still have most or all of the plots unsold. Some of the laws are pretty outrageous too. I was shocked when I learned that some of the more relaxed laws were right here in Florida!

I had intended on buying more land for more money at a cheaper price per acre, but I couldn't pass this up. It is a 1 1/2 hour drive south of where I live currently and has a significant amount of slope to the land as far as it goes in Florida. I guess the prior owner bought it before the economic downturn last decade and never paid the taxes, so he ended up paying more in taxes than I paid him for the land. I had seen it sitting for a while and I finally called after it had been up for 180 days. I was told the price had dropped $400 that morning, so I immediately got a ride out there to make sure I wasn't buying a swamp. It turned out to have a ton of benefits and all the lots around me are wooded and unbuilt like mine. I called back and told the real estate agent that it was sold!

Even though it is small, I didn't spend all of my money. The point made above about moving in with family and saving up is a good one. If that isn't an option, then maybe starting small and getting/building a tiny house with solar panels can reduce your monthly bills so you can expand to new land down the road. That's my plan. I told a bunch of people a few years ago that I would get land in a few years and many people were interested, but no one else followed through. I'm sure they didn't believe me. Many people partied and did lots of fun things and enjoyed themselves, but I managed to make it happen. There were many, many months of sitting at home with the internet as my only entertainment, and a great deal of that was researching and learning.

The hardest thing for me was finding a surveyor. For some reason most of them were lazy and were used to land that was flat and cleared. My land was 'too far away', less than an hour from them. No one wanted to do the job at any price. I offered some of them double the money and they turned me down. I think I called 36 different surveyors before finally getting someone to agree, and it sounded like he regretted it afterwards. There were a bunch of ticks when I walked the property after he did the survey, so I can imagine it wasn't a fun day for him and his helper. He sent his paperwork to the title company and I got my land paid for in full.

Definitely check the local laws in the areas that you are looking. I had narrowed my search to a few counties in Florida that had laws I could live with. I specifically want to get land in Putnam county because of the laws and proximity to my current place and family. Once I finally saw the piece of land I wanted, I didn't have to think twice because I knew what I was getting into in that area.

I wish I had known years ago that I could get land so cheap and not terribly far from civilization. Fortunately I was already working construction and spent around half of my expendable income on tools for several years. If you don't have a lot of tools and knowledge, then you may want to look into a maker space/hacker space, charitable work to learn from like Habitat for Humanity or similar, or maybe find a farm or homestead that you can donate time in exchange for learning. You don't necessarily need to spend a lot of money to learn (plus you are saving for land), but showing up is more than half the battle.

Wofati? It seems like the wofati construction method could be a good candidate for a root cellar. If someone has different plans then they could probably still recycle many of the ideas of wofati building since underground structures in general will likely have similar dilemmas to overcome. You could also look into thermal storage to augment the temperature of a root cellar to last through warmer seasons. I am interested in using earth for mediating temperatures, but things are quite different for me in Florida.

While some of the alternative options are certainly not permie friendly, there are a few that will work well. There is a metal casting forum that has a list of homemade refractory compounds that can give some ideas:

Alloy Avenue DIY Refractory Compositions

It took me quite a while to hunt it down, but it turned out there was a pottery supply store in a small hole on the rear side of a strip mall where you would never find it on your own. The lady running the place was very nice, and although confused with what I was doing (making an aluminum melting furnace) she was very helpful. I picked up a 40 pound bag of fire clay, 10 pounds each of bentonite clay and alumina, all for something like $50 several years ago. You can find cheaper online, but then the shipping makes it much more expensive. It may take a lot of digging through numerous sources (masonry supply, pottery supply, heating oil furnace supply) to find a place close enough to be worthwhile to drive there. I know of one place online that sells smaller quantities of refractory cement for reasonable prices with shipping here:

High Temperature Tools and Refractory

I haven't used them but came across them in the Alloy Avenue forums from the first link. There are lots of people doing casting or knife making that use castable refractory, so it would be a good idea to seek these people out locally if your other efforts fail. The people at those forums are a friendly bunch and there might be someone with more local information to point you in the right direction.

There is a lot of info on those forums about hot faces, insulation, flux, and other things that can be directly applied to both a furnace and a rocket stove/mass heater. I would strongly encourage anyone interested in using homemade refractories or making multiple rockets to go there to learn of other people's successes and failures to save yourself a lot of money and grief. For a one-off rocket you are much better off using a commercial product and following the instructions as closely as is reasonable in order to have the best chance of success.

I don't know precisely, but from what I understand, the solar leviathan uses 250 watt panels and these appear to be similar in size. They certainly look slightly taller and much wider than my 145 watt panel. Larger panels like these are often higher voltage than the nominal 12V seen in smaller panels. A high end MPPT charge controller should be able to use higher voltage panels on lower voltage batteries. This would require research into particular charge controllers, panels, and battery systems to make certain they are compatible.

For a mobile system, getting monocrystalline panels and a quality MPPT charge controller are a good investment because it will give you a superior power to weight ratio than other commonly available products. Monocrystalline panels will take up less area for a given wattage than polycrystalline, amorphous, or any of the thin film panels I have seen so far. The size and weight savings is why they are used in aerospace. It would be a good idea to look up different wattage panels and take note of the dimensions to get an idea of how big panels are in given wattage ranges. The panels pictured appear to be polycrystalline and probably over 5 feet tall and around 3 feet wide each.

Hurricane party! I evacuated the beach when hurricane Mathew rolled through here. We were extremely fortunate that the storm moved out a bit and that it sped up, coming at low tide instead of at high tide as had been predicted. I find it amazing as a non-native Floridian just how unprepared everyone around me is for these things. Death and taxes aren't the only certain things in life; tropical storms are always coming.

Besides having other people freak out it wasn't too bad for us here. The neighbors' roof peeled back and a lot of it landed in our yard. It sucks for him, but with poor roof design (and implementation in his case) it was bound to happen. Many people lost shingles but we didn't sustain any damage. The 'hurricane proof' pier at the end of the street got taken by the ocean. Most of the damage I saw was from trees. It has been so long since we have had a proper storm here that there were millions of trees ready to shed some wood. There are piles of branches in front of houses all over the place and it will probably be that way for a while.

On the positive side, I managed to get a bunch of nice Red Maple and Southern Red Cedar logs within walking distance. It's insane how the local Woodcraft store charges more for plain hard maple than it does for exotic South American species of wood. I knew a time would present itself for me to get some more free maple and I was prepared to jump on it. The cedar should dry pretty quickly, which means I can make some outdoor furniture with it next spring. I need to go down to my property and see how many trees are down. There are no houses at my end of the street there, and no one drives through, so it will be up to me to clear the road. The standing dead trees are probably on the ground which saves me some hassle. Overall this hurricane was a net win for me!

You can get a cup or bucket of water and dunk them in there after taking them out of the small pot. This will help remove most of the soil. If you shake it back and forth in the water it will loosen up a bit and make it easier to pull apart. It might require you to do this before they get too big in order to get good results. Of course this also leaves you with a bare root plant which is harder to plant and can affect overall growth.

It might be better to try and use even smaller pots. If you can find something smaller, perhaps paper towel rolls or egg cartons to start them out, then move them to slightly larger pots. Even if you have to put them together in larger pots due to lack of space they will still be easier to separate since each plant will have their own root zone. It isn't ideal, but can be made to work.

The idea of growing things together is also a good one. You could mix complementary plants or ones that grow in a different manner together. Perhaps something that spreads mixed with something that grows upright. Plants that hit their stride at different times could also work. Start some seeds of fast growing plants and after they germinate put in seeds of something with a longer growing season.

The only other option I can think of is to go vertical. If your potting area is limited then buying or making some sort of racks to maximize the use of the space could yield more seedlings. Just throwing around some ideas. Good luck!

Geoff Lawton Videos

It looks like they go through YouTube from his site. I wonder what ever happened with the ordeal on the old site. I know he was having problems with another person, but I wasn't sure if he still owned the rights to the videos. There was something like 40 or so high quality videos. I'm sure you can find a good deal of his work on YouTube via his site or by searching.

*cracks knuckles* Thread necromancy!

I've been away from the site for a while and while digging around here today I was reminded that I have done a few things recently that might be useful to people here. One of those things involves making a water filter system similar to a Berkey. I had been using a cheap, store bought, all plastic, rather low quality system that was certainly better than drinking straight out of the tap, but had room for improvement. It had served its purpose and after the last filter I had on hand had been through its useful life cycle I decided to upgrade.

I had seen a few times in the past on youtube where people used plastic buckets to recreate the Berkey system using replacement filters, but I didn't want that. I knew I could dig around and find some cheap stainless steel stock pots to do the job and I had eyed a few on Amazon, but held off at the time. Then I saw in a Harbor freight ad that they had a 4 pot set for $25 + tax at the time. I picked up the set when I was near one of their stores and ordered a pair of Doulton Super Sterasyl 7" ceramic filters for $49, and a total investment of under $80.

I used the largest pot of the set (16 quarts) as the base and cut a hole in the lid to accommodate the next smaller pot (12 quarts) on top. This removes the handle and allows the water to drain from the upper pot into the lower. I just arbitrarily marked out where the filters would be in the top section (I think I drew a line across the bottom and then came in 2 1/2" from each side and drilled holes) and then cut out the hole in the lower lid to leave clearance for the filter retainer wing nuts while allowing plenty of material to hold up the weight of the upper pot when full. A person could also just remove the handle and drill out holes to allow for the filters.

That is pretty much it! My camera ate the batteries again so no pics, but it was very easy to make. The riveted handles will leak if you fill it up beyond that point, but it can still hold over 2 gallons which almost completely submerges the filters. I set up a little stand with my water system and a few accessories on top and glass jugs to hold water on the bottom. I use an old plastic bowl to set the top section on since it won't sit flat with the filters sticking through, not to mention trying to avoid contamination. There isn't a spout, although I imagine one could be added rather easily. No sight glass either. I figure doing 1 batch at a time is plenty for me and I am the only one who uses it. I use a funnel and pour the water into my jugs.

The first batch took the better part of a day to run through, but after that it has been under half a day to filter 2 gallons. I was going to get 4 filters but I have been purging money and decided to just get the 2. It works perfectly fine for me as it is and I am very glad I finally did it! The water is much cleaner than anything I have ever had before. If you can't afford the big system and want to get the same level of filtration then this is a great way to go. Those Harbor Freight stock pots are on sale for $22 right now if anyone is interested.

I bought a set of those stock pots for a different purpose that does not involve any heat. They are really thin material. I have heard of people complaining about these and similar thin pots warping under use on top of a stove, so I would guess that the new 5 gallon 'paint' can would probably serve you better. It would probably hold up better and has a larger holding capacity. They do work great for my purpose as part of a water filter system. It looks like they are on sale even cheaper than when I bought them. It might be worth a try given how cheap it is, but you might want to open up the box in the store and see for yourself before buying them if you go this route.

That's a very good point about using both color lights together. I do the same thing in my house currently, but I haven't gotten that far yet with my small LED's. While the first set of LED's I bought work very well, even with little heatsinks added, the heat they produce is at the absolute threshold of what I can tolerate to touch. This is in contrast to the new set I got that barely have any noticeable heat coming from them. I think I will have to pick up another set like these in cool white and see what kind of fixtures I can come up with. The other lights are good by themselves but I wouldn't want to put multiples of them together in a fixture and risk any heat issues.

The LED strips are also a great way to go. I haven't used them personally, but I have seen them used for countless projects and they are very affordable. Having the flexibility to cut them into segments means you can either separate them for small jobs or bunch them together for better lighting in one area. I've had a lot of setbacks this week, but I'm hoping to get things sorted out and tinker with a few light fixtures this weekend. First I need to get batteries for my camera!

Looks like the start of a cool little house! If you are plumbing water to the exterior then I think it would be wise to recess the fittings and add insulated covers to avoid problems in the event of a hard freeze. Or perhaps you could add an interior shut off valve that is higher than the exterior outlets and let them drain out to avoid having issues with pipes freezing.

Another thing to keep in mind is weight. Just because a trailer is capable of handling X number of pounds doesn't mean it is always wise to push it to that limit. A heavier trailer will consume more fuel to move as well as increase the braking distance for the towing vehicle. If the trailer is driven off pavement then it will be significantly move difficult to move around and should it get stuck then it will be REALLY stuck. I doubt it would be any fun having your home stuck in a less than ideal location. If it won't be leaving the pavement then this is less of an issue.

There are a number of methods you can look into which can yield a strong frame without using as much wood as the conventional North American platform framing method. This Blog On Swedish Platform Framing shows a few methods to save wood, weight, and increase area for insulation. I personally wouldn't use full size studs 16" on center. Double-wide trailers tend to use 2"x3" framing members which is a substantially larger structure than a tiny house. While having only ~2 1/2" for insulation could be problematic, the point I am trying to illustrate is that it doesn't take huge amounts of wood to make a very sturdy tiny house. If you are using 2x4 or 2x6 studs then you could drill a bunch of holes up to 1/3 of the width of the board without sacrificing structural integrity.

You can also use much thinner wood for the interior and exterior and add metal brackets to the corners to increase rigidity. It really doesn't take all that much material to make a very sturdy structure when the dimensions are of a tiny house scale.

Your plan to avoid a vapor barrier is a good one! I have fixed numerous houses that were ~2 years old that had paint and vapor barriers trap moisture inside walls. By the time the leak was detected it was far too late and cost thousands to repair. Having breathable materials will help avoid mold problems and make leak detection easier and far less costly to fix. Using thinner wall sheathing can help it breathe a little better without greatly affecting insulation.

If the original layout is off then the whole thing will be skewed. Getting the perimeter laid out properly will be extremely important. I used scrap pieces of tile and brick in a few locations and measured from all sides to help with some inconsistencies. If you thing the area is 60 feet across but measuring from both sides adds up to 64 feet, then something may be out of square. It's fairly common for property lines and fences to be off by more than a few degrees at a corner.

I would definitely get a 100' measuring tape and get physical numbers as opposed to using satellite data. I used to do house framing and I don't ever recall seeing a set of plans that didn't have at least one discrepancy from one page to the next. They measure from one side one one page, the other side one the next page and the two numbers are no where near the length of the side. If the professionals and their multi-thousand dollar programs have difficulty with this then you shouldn't feel too bad if you run into a few problems. Try to take a few measurements from one side to the other at intermediate points instead of just at the corners. Once you get numbers that are within your margin of error then the SketchUp model should work without any issues.

SketchUp. It is free to use and you can make 3D drawings. When I first planned out stuff in my backyard I went into detail with the shed, but I just drew circles or cylinders where plants and trees were going to be located. There is a rather steep learning curve, but if you just want to make a 2D flat design to start out with then it isn't bad. I would suggest looking up videos or books such as 'SketchUp For Dummies' as well as A Series Of Videos At Woodgears that has helpful information.

The thing I like most about SketchUp is how precise it is. You can create several objects and then measure different distances between each part, angles, and clearance while still in the planning phase before spending any money on a failed venture. If you have more time than money then it is an excellent tool. If you have more money than time then it might be worth spending a few hundred dollars to pay someone else to make the 3D drawing for you. You can always save the file to modify at a later date or use it as a reference to measure clearances for future projects.

If you get serious into this, the best thing I learned was from one of the Woodgears videos - turn every piece you make into a component. It is amazingly frustrating trying to move or modify something and have it get skewed out of proportion because it acts like it is still 'attached' to a different object. Some of the functions are not intuitive and need to be learned from some source such as YouTube. You can easily waste a lot of hours doing things the hard way (ask me how I know).

You can also use graph paper, but you might want to use the metric system as it is easy to make mistakes trying to divide things up in tenths of a foot as opposed to inches. Getting good measurements of the area and not assuming things are perfectly square (checking with the 3-4-5 rule) should help you make a scale canvas to which you can plot things out.

That is one of the great things about solar - people aren't as afraid of low voltage. The cost of components going down over time makes the cost of entry pretty low. I see a lot of people getting caught up with things that are less than optimal, such as the Harbor Freight kit. I know some places are putting together kits that are a better value than the one from HF, and I'm sure that trend will continue to grow. With this and other movements such as the Maker movement, and the so called 'Internet of Things' (I strongly dislike that term), it has been opening the door to many people to use and learn about low power devices. I think there can be a lot of great things in this space for homesteaders and permies to learn.

One thing that really gets me is the cheap solar powered walkway lights. It seems there are millions of people buying these things and most of the time they don't get a year or two out of them before tossing the whole set in the trash. For people who want to create less garbage and get better value, you could buy a small panel, battery, charge controller, and lights for probably ~$250 or so and have something that isn't a disappointment. It would take more money and effort up front, but probably less in the long run (maybe 15+ years), and you would only have to replace the battery and possibly some bulbs every several years or so. It would double as an emergency power source.

I will be back at my property again this week and hopefully I can test out my LED lights some more while I am there. I will try to get some pics of the lights in action.

I know it is a bit silly, but I find great satisfaction making light fixtures. I usually refurbish and repurpose old fixture parts or sometimes just take old tomato sauce jars and other containers to make new fixtures. When I bought my 145 watt solar panel to experiment with solar energy, one of the first things I did was get some LED lights and make a few light fixtures. I leave these on in my shed 24/7 since I rarely ever tax my system and have the energy to spare. Also, I had bad luck with much older LED products, so I was really interested in the light output and longevity of newer surface mount LED lights.

I ordered some cheap LED bulbs on Amazon that were made as automotive replacements. Since 12V nominal solar power should generally fall within the range of a 12V automotive power system, as well as having more stable voltage, I figured these would be great for task and emergency lighting. I installed 2 cool white 4 watt festoon base bulbs which are typically used in car dome lights. They worked pretty well, but would get quite hot after a while. Since this was inside a shed that gets a fair amount of Florida sun, I decided to cut up some old computer heatsinks in the hopes of extending their lifespan. I first turned these on in October 2013 and they still run fine today after being on virtually the whole time. They have only been off briefly when doing a little rewiring.

Since that was a success, I decided to hunt down some warm white LED bulbs. I figured the warmer color would be good for certain tasks and to help avoid disrupting sleep cycles which can be a concern with bulbs that put off more blue light. I ordered These Warm White LED Bulbs from Amazon, and they work well. I only chose those because it said 'fulfilled by Amazon', which means it wouldn't take a month to ship in from China.

They have half the number of surface mount LEDs, so I am guessing they draw half as much energy, or about 2 watts @ 14V. They don't get nearly as warm as the 4 watt LEDs, so I didn't feel the need to add heatsinks to them. They were only 36mm as opposed to my other bulbs that are 42mm, but I was able to make them work in one of my fixtures for testing. I have one attached to my desk in the shed to illuminate my keyboard. It obviously isn't quite as bright as the other bulbs, but I like using the warm white bulb at my desk and it works great for task lighting. I'm going to string a few of them together and bring them with me the next time I camp out on my land. Once I get my shed built out there I will probably make some small fixtures and install them there.

There are lots of different options for LED lighting. I really can't see spending several dollars a bulb and using an inverter to run LED lights off grid when I can use cheap automotive LEDs. I have had great luck with the surface mount LEDs running for a long time and not having a drastic drop off in light output after running a few hours like some of the other LEDs out there. The Festoon base bulbs are good for making your own fixtures because it is easy to bend a piece of solid copper wire into a shape that holds the bulb, plus they send light mostly in one direction for task lighting. Other bulb styles would probably be better for general illumination. It can be slightly time consuming making your own fixtures and running wires, but I'm less than $20 poorer and I have 20 bulbs to take care of most of my lighting needs.

I just wanted to touch back on this topic with a small update. I pulled the slow hard drive and installed an SSD for better performance and lower power consumption. While I was in there I saw the internal battery which has a nominal voltage of 11.1V (typical of similar devices), and 12.6V charging voltage. I installed Linux and the information there told me it was charging at 12.59 volts, which is close enough for me. I am not terribly with Windows, so there may be a way to get this information in Windows, but it was readily available to me in Linux by clicking on the power icon on the panel. There was also a charge rating listed, when the battery was at 80% the charge was at ~25 watts, at 95% it was at ~7 watts, and at 98% it was at ~3.5 watts. I just glanced at it while it was charging to see these numbers.

It is pretty common for laptops to have an input voltage of 19V +/- 5% or something similar. Obviously these voltages are purposely higher than the voltages used by the motherboard and the battery so the internal power supply can control the power with enough overhead for the margin of error given for the external power brick. Again, this is not a modification someone should do if they do not completely understand what they are doing, but it does work and I have charged my laptop a few times with my small PV power system this way with no issues. This is definitely an option for someone looking to go solar. Minimizing your energy needs and avoiding unnecessary energy loads and power conversions will reduce the cost and bulk of equipment required to provide your energy needs with off grid renewable energy systems.

Yes, you would have to measure the rough area of the sections of roof feeding different gutters. I believe it would be a bit more accurate to measure how much ground that area covers. If you have a low roof pitch then it wouldn't be too far off measuring the roof itself, but a steep roof would have a much larger surface area as opposed to how much area of ground it covers. Then again if you have a lot of strong wind from one direction then a roof facing that way may catch more rain and a roof facing away from it may not get as much rain as it would be blown over (less surface area facing the direction the rain comes from). It is usually better to underestimate and have extra than to expect much more than is realistic.

I just got done posting this on another site, so I will give the link and reiterate what I did below:

Dell Laptop Charger Mod

This goes without saying, which is why I have to say it: Any power supply modifications can cause injury and/or property damage. Please leave these modifications to professionals and fully understand what you are doing before you start a project like this.

Most of Dell's products don't seem to have car chargers. They also use proprietary connectors and circuits to tell the computer if it is using a 'Dell Certified' power supply. After doing a lot of searching, I found one person who took apart a dead Dell power supply and repurposed the circuit used to tell the computer the brand and wattage of the power supply. Since this circuit runs off of the DC voltage that provides charging power to the laptop, it made sense to me that I could connect any power supply of proper voltage and amperage to the DC power wire between the power brick and the laptop, and that this would provide power to this proprietary circuit inside the power brick as well as charge my laptop.

I'm waiting on some connectors to come in so I can clean it up a bit and make it a bit more travel friendly, but it works great. I am able to plug a car charger into a cigarette lighter socket connected to my solar charge controller and charge my laptop. The charger I bought takes 12-16 VDC input which means I can use any power source in this range and of sufficient amperage (it has a 10A fuse, so somewhere less than that at minimum). It also has a USB charger built in, and I was able to charge my laptop and dumb phone at the same time while it barely got warm in one small spot. I figured that was pretty good considering the warm temperatures in my shed (somewhere in the 80's F). I'm slowly moving things in my life over to solar and minimizing my overall power consumption, and this cheap modification worked as well as I could have hoped!

I put warnings in my post in the link and will touch on it again here: I don't know if plugging in both power sources will cause one or both to fail or other issues, but it sounds like a bad idea that I wouldn't recommend. I won't make any recommendations on which power supply to use because this is not for beginners and if you can't choose a power supply then I don't want anyone blaming me for any problems that can arise. This is a fairly straightforward modification where you connect the DC power of a car charger to the DC wire of the AC charger; positive to positive and negative to negative. Please use due diligence and properly test your car charger for compatibility with the power needs of your laptop before making any connections.

One other quick note I have for anyone looking to power a computer or home office directly from DC - many computer monitors out there use a power brick very similar to laptops; ~19V and often under 30 watts power consumption. It should be fairly easy to convert one of these monitors over to car or solar power with the right power brick. It should be pretty easy to make a small office in a tiny house, RV, or other off-grid situation using off the shelf parts any perhaps a little modification.

I think it is a bit insane to convert DC to AC just to go back to DC to power devices. Some chargers don't play nice with some inverters and it is rather inefficient. With this cheap mod I am able to use AC or DC to charge my laptop; be it a house, a car, solar, or whatever I can find that works with either of these two power supplies. I have also been testing out a desktop computer on solar using a power supply made for the task. You can do a search for Pico PSU or check out what they have over here at mini-box.com. I have the M3-ATX which is a bit overkill for the computer it is powering, but I have used it for years in different projects and it is very small and efficient. The low power segment of the computer market has been rapidly changing, and the amount of work you can do per watt of energy used has increased greatly. I would definitely recommend anyone interested in this to look into the options I have listed or other devices similar to the Raspberry Pi for some affordable methods of working with computers that don't use much energy.

Octane rating is more of a measurement of how fast a fuel burns and the auto-ignition temperature. The higher the number, the slower burning/higher auto-ignition temperature. Many people think high octane means hotter or more powerful and that isn't quite true. It is capable of being used in a higher compression engine without reaching auto-ignition (pinging, detonation) which means you can make a more powerful engine (higher compression ratio - higher performance), but it doesn't work magic on an engine vs using lower octane rating (note: rating, pure octane is supposed to burn at 100 and the rating compares the gasoline to this, depending on the testing method of course).

Using fuel with too high of an octane rating would be more likely to cause incomplete combustion which would mean more pollution, more deposits of unburned fuel sticking to components, and lower combustion temperatures. Having these deposits build up can cause engine problems, and cause the engine to retain heat if you do get the engine running hotter using a lower octane rating fuel at a later time. I would look up the specific information for the engine online and follow those guidelines. Going with fuel that has a slightly higher octane rating will likely only have the negative effect of being more expensive. Going with too low of an octane rating can cause pre-ignition/pinging/detonation and bust the piston or other internal engine parts.

If you have a race track or drag strip near you then it might be an idea to look there for ethanol-free fuel. Ethanol increases the octane rating of fuel, but it and other additives can have drawbacks such as being incompatible with certain fuel systems and causing damage, not as friendly to being stored for long periods, and problems in extreme temperatures. It honestly might be cheaper to offer some of your fuel to a neighbor and go through it more frequently than to have it sit around for a few years and damage your equipment. Being certain to empty the fuel system before extended periods of storage/non-usage will help keep the fuel system clean.

The heating occurs at the time of compression. The molecules being jammed into each other creates friction and therefore heat (as well as friction in the compression device). Decompression will cause cooling. Where I live it is extremely humid, and when I was framing houses we would unhook an air tank from the compressor and it would ice up. The point at where the decompression occurs works just like an air conditioning unit, and moisture in the system can turn to ice which can cause problems.

It is doable, but there are a lot of drawbacks to consider. Using an ice box would be a great way of making it work, but I wouldn't repurpose a conventional refrigerator for the job. Their insulation is woefully inadequate. The same really goes for the chest freezer as well, but at least in that situation the cold air doesn't spill out when you open the door. It would probably be best to build your own ice box. I would use no less than 4" of insulation all around in a chest configuration. It would be advisable to have a table, stand, cabinet or similar to get it off the floor and save your back. This will make it easier to get in and out of quickly which would help things stay cool longer. Perhaps even 2 smaller chests side by side that you can keep more ice in one for 'more perishable' items and less ice for things that merely need to be kept cool.

If you keep the ice out of the melting water it will last a lot longer. I have heard of modified picnic coolers that have held ice for over a week, so I am certain a well insulated ice box can be made to work. It will probably work better with one or two responsible adults using it as opposed to guests/children/elderly or other people known to not be completely reliable about things like keeping it closed and well loaded with ice.

Using a generator daily for ice seems like a recipe for disaster. I have heard of smaller ice machines that are supposedly faster and more efficient at making ice than a chest freezer. If you were planning to store perishable things in the freezer and not just ice then it would require Herculean willpower to avoid a disaster. The cost of constantly fuelling plus one ruined freezer load of food would probably come close to the cost of going DIY solar for your refrigeration. If you get sick, injured, have some sort of crisis, or simply want to stay out for a night or go on vacation then it would require multiple contingency plans to keep things operational. Perhaps if you were using some sort of battery setup with an automatic system to start the generator then maybe it would be different, but that seems about as complex and expensive as going solar.

As I mentioned before, chest freezers also have pretty bad insulation. You may be able to find some videos on making a chest freezer more efficient. At the very least you can add some styrofoam to the bottom of the freezer and add insulation to the lid/door on top. If you can locate your refrigeration in a building that is kept as cool as is reasonable then that would help. Perhaps an earthen structure or thick walls with adobe, earthbags, or some other thick thermal mass shaded from the sun would be ideal. This would reduce the temperature difference between the inside and outside of your freezer and icebox which means less energy to keep things cool. I wouldn't just walk into any house and try to implement this system in their existing kitchen because chances are it would be more of a hassle than it is worth.

It's in Putnam county. I plan on doing some swales toward the middle of the property and hugel berms lower down towards the road, and I will have to measure all of these things out anyway. It's only 1 acre, so it should be pretty easy to do with mostly hand tools.

Right now my main goals are to get a shed built so I can store some tools out there,buy/make a cistern, and use the shed roof run-off for rainwater collection. Unfortunately it will be a bit difficult getting started doing this by myself, especially since staying overnight isn't much of an option with the tick infestation. Once I can get a better camp site established and mitigate the tick problem I will be able to get more done. With the oppressive summer looming I don't plan on getting a lot of work done until mid fall or later.

I chose 6'x16' because it is well below the 120 sq. ft. limit. With the possibility of hurricanes and certainty of strong tropical storms, I like the idea of my rafters not being any longer than necessary. Also, a long thin building has more perimeter than a roughly square building of equal area. Most people would build a shed 10'x12', but that doesn't really suit me. My current shed where I live now has two rooms to it, one 9'x8' and the other 9'x10'. I find there is wasted space in the center of the rooms. Ideally I would have long thin corridors lined with shelves like a warehouse. I plan on having a door at one end so I can store long pieces of lumber and get them in and out easily. Cost is also a factor.

I might set up a pole structure that is roughly square for my outdoor kitchen, and another one to keep sun and rain off of my saw horses. Not having walls means the further the center is from the edges the better your protection from getting wet. We get quite a lot of rain here (about 5'), so that will be an important factor for those areas. I have worked doing framing and hurricane tie-down, so I am capable of building a solid hip roof and strapping it to the foundation to minimize wind related issues. I'm hoping stuffing those structures downhill a fair amount will reduce the amount of strong wind gusts those roofs will have to endure.

I intend to get more solar panels this winter. I'm hoping to slap together a small generator next week which will be good for getting me started out there as well as an emergency power source in the future. I plan on clearing out some space in the center to allow enough light for my solar panels and garden. I will try to remember to take pictures of all of the stuff I am making so I can post it here.

I finally did it! I found an area with reasonable land prices (no jobs available) that I can use to start growing fruit trees and vegetables. It is about a 1 1/2 hour drive from my current location at the beach in Jacksonville which makes it bearable to travel. I'm planning to build a shed and get some rainwater collection going before the tropical storm season hits. This should set me up for growing this winter, which is my best growing season.

The property is off of a dirt road and roughly 1 acre in size. It has a good amount of elevation change for Florida (in excess of 20 feet, not sure exactly how much) that should be great for running drip irrigation. I plan on removing some standing dead trees and making some hugelkultur mounds, and starting them off with a bit of drip irrigation in the dry (winter) season. I have some fruit trees (mulberry, fig, pomegranate, loquat seedlings, a Key lime) as well as a bunch of native trees I can bring down there. The road is to the North and has a slight drop off from the road before going uphill to the south. I plan on leaving most of the trees at the top of the hill alone, and building a shed and cistern up there. Even though it is a wooded lot, there is plenty of room between the trees to build some work spaces without cutting down anything bigger than my arm.

I have a few projects planned for this year, although I probably won't be there much or at all this summer. I definitely want to spread some seed mix to get random edible growies going. I figure since I have a ton of sweet potatos escaped from my garden that they should do pretty well there. I have bought some cheap 15-16 bean soup mixes that are also doing well in my garden, so those should be particularly helpful in getting some hugel mounds growing. An outdoor kitchen is critically important. Cooking inside a house in the evening in Florida most days of the year creates a very uncomfortable atmosphere. I might even do a tiny house on wheels in the future since it is legal to live in a trailer/camper/RV there. I could probably do everything by the book as far as a well and septic and just pay for one thing at a time when I can afford it.

I spent the night camping there this past weekend and it wasn't a lot of fun. I set up camp at the back of the property on top of the hill and learned someone has a dog kennel. Drunk people antagonizing the creatures had them howling all night, and then a rooster in the distance got them howling throughout the early morning hours. Later I noticed the sound was much quieter at the bottom of the hill, so I will have to relocate my camp there. It was also loaded with ticks. I need to clean up some areas and find some permie solutions to the tick issue.

I can build sheds under 120 sq.ft. without a permit, so I am planning to do one 6'x16' to start. This will give me plenty of storage space and I can camp there on occasion when I need to get work done. I can also put on a gutter to collect rainwater. The land is really close to some great fishing, so I can also head down there and get all kinds of fresh and salt water food within a few miles. I have even kicked around the idea of building a small cabin to rent out for people travelling to the area to fish. I could set aside an area for a cabin and parking and use the rest of the land for growing food. Lots of possibilities!

My camera is old and horrible, so I didn't get many good pictures. It's just woods with mostly live oaks and some long leaf pines, hardly any of the other tree species are of substantial size. I do intend on planting specimen trees of every type of native tree I can get my hands on. Right now it looks like this:

How expensive are the land taxes and upkeep? If it is worth your while then maybe you could try and do small improvements when you can and have her hold on to the land for a year or two until you can get things a bit more established. You could perhaps work out a deal and take on the burden of some of the tax and upkeep costs. It would also allow you to 'test the waters' with a much smaller investment, as opposed to spending all of you money and finding out it isn't the dream situation you had hoped for.

You also would want some things in writing. Family and friends who have known each other for decades are also known for getting into irreconcilable differences over money situations or living arrangements. Put the two together and you have all your eggs in a basket that you don't own. It would honestly be a lot better if you spent a smaller amount of time and money looking into it and perhaps buying the land for yourself and renting it out to her. If she was laying out the cash to build or buy her own house then it would be a different story. I wouldn't put too much money into a house on another person's land. I don't know if the laws there would allow that size parcel to be divided, but that is another option.

There are a lot of places to look for land. You can go to landandfarm.com, landwatch.com, or one I found out about recently, trulia.com. The last one you can just punch in a zip code and sort by price and find land lots available in the area. I ran across this by mistake while searching for things in a specific zip code recently. Obviously it will vary in price depending on the area, but you can also see how long it and other properties in the area have been up for sale. If many places have been up for a long time then they aren't selling. This is good for negotiating a better price and bad because there is probably an issue with finding jobs or some other aspect that makes it less desirable to live there. This can certainly work in favor of some permies if their living situation allows it.

The circumstances described of how your wife's friend got the land seems questionable. If people in the area are hostile for whatever reason, then it may be better to just pass on the offer. It only takes one individual to ruin the lives of many people. You might want to find out the circumstances before investing your money there. If people in the area feel you are stepping on their toes then you may be forced to abandon your efforts before you have serious problems.

This seems to be the same issue that people in the free software world deal with. Some of the problem stems from the nomenclature of how our language equates freedom and no cost as both being 'free'. The philosophy page at gnu.org goes into detail about the difference between freedom and cost:

Free software means that the software's users have freedom. (The issue is not about price.)

Replace software with permaculture or any other form of knowledge you think should be available to all people for the benefit of mankind.

Specifically, free software means users have the four essential freedoms: (0) to run the program, (1) to study and change the program in source code form, (2) to redistribute exact copies, and (3) to distribute modified versions.

Again, very similar to the freedoms people should have in other areas of information. I don't remember exactly where I heard it (I think it was Richard Stallman in an interview) where the information is presented as a cooking recipe. If you see a recipe then no one can really stop you from using it, changing it, or redistributing exact or modified copies. There is the issue where some people make copyrighted recipe books, but with something like cooking (or making furniture, or growing plants, or may other things humans have been doing for eons) it seems awfully naive to think you are the only human being in the history of the species to ever have the idea to put together a handful of components to create something.

This does NOT mean you should find copyrighted material and break laws redistributing someone else's work. But there are certain things you cannot get a patent on because they are common knowledge, such as cooking food, building a chair, or planting a group of trees together. If you want to reiterate an idea in your own words, then you are free to give that information away or charge a million dollars for it.

Another page at gnu.org goes into detail about selling free software. Once again, this could be any kind of freely available information. For me, the takeaway point of the article is this:

Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!

It is important that people with the skills of creating or distributing free information (be it individuals or collaborative efforts) are able to earn an income doing their work. If they can't then they will be busy earning an income elsewhere and have little or no time to devote to creating more free information. If someone has worked hard and you are gaining benefits from it, then it might be nice to donate to them, buy things from them, or spread the good word so that others might be able to benefit and help fund the effort.

I wouldn't till it into the soil. If you can cover it with straw, leaf litter, wood mulch, living mulch or whatever then that will help keep the sun off of it so it can retain some moisture. Having a contiguous layer will also help wick moisture from areas of high moisture to dryer areas, at least to a small degree. If you are digging holes to put plants in the ground you can add some amendments to the soil in the hole, but it seems like it is less beneficial to mix it into all of the soil.

If the soil isn't that great and doesn't have much life to it, then it seems to kill off the life in the amendments when you till it in. Eventually the soil below it will absorb some of the nutrients of the stuff laying on top, and the root zone of the plants will make it more habitable for insects, bacteria, and fungi. I made the mistake of mixing things into my sandy soil at first, but mixing the whole area at once seemed counterproductive. I have been digging small holes to dump fruit and vegetable scraps and doing a chop and drop method with beans which seems to be doing a good job of increasing organic matter in my soil. There are a lot of methods you can use, but mixing higher quality amendments into a large area seems less beneficial than if you were to use it in targeted locations or layering on top. If anything, it probably helps the weeds when you mix it all in, as it slightly improves the soil but not enough to make a massive difference for common garden vegetables. This is just my opinion.

That outdoor kitchen is turning out pretty awesome! Is that the first outdoor kitchen structure at the lab?

If this were a purpose built community and not just designed for temporary stays then I would really want to see someone make 1 or 2 trailers and all of the houses able to slide on and off said trailer to be attached to permanent foundations. I think it is a bit extreme when people buy expensive trailers and have no intention of moving around in their house or a vehicle to do such. I have no problem with people who want to travel, but a lot of people do this to skirt around local laws and I wish this wasn't necessary.

The 2 towns I have come across that are willing to legalize tiny homes want homes attached to a foundation for tax purposes, and the added expense of buying a trailer to use it one time seems counterproductive. I wish all the money spent on these trailers was used to lobby the government into accepting the tiny house movement. This would go double for a community, as I am fairly certain the cost of 25+ new trailers is enough to get the attention of politicians at the state level.

Multiple cooking areas would be on top of my list. Having rocket mass heaters and plenty of wood fired stoves and ovens on top of other kitchen tools and preparation areas seems to go hand in hand with food growing spaces and a community. Both large shared areas and some smaller spaces out of the way for private functions would likely be appreciated by people.

A central utility station with electricity, water, internet, firewood, and any other shared resources would be a great idea. It would be nice if it was located near the community kitchen area. People could charge phones and laptops, grab water for drinking and cooking, grab firewood to cook with, and kick back after a meal and go online or perhaps look up recipes before cooking. All of this without having to make a dozen trips back to their tiny house. It would require people to be in charge of replenishing firewood supplies and I can easily see some less than careful people causing issues with the power and water, but if done right it could create a community hub built around mostly renewable resources.

I am personally of the belief that my living space should be as small as is reasonable (smaller than the average tiny house) and my work spaces should be several times as large. Storage sheds for supplies and separate work spaces for each tiny house would be important for people looking for a homestead lifestyle. People with more money than time or energy might not need the workshop area, but probably could use the storage area. This is where I think modern homes went wrong; It doesn't make sense to me to keep thousands of square feet of buildings heated or cooled when people rarely occupy many of those areas.

I have been interested in the tiny house movement for a handful of years now, so I could go on for days. All of this depends on what type of community you are looking to create. One geared towards homesteaders might want more infrastructure and growing spaces. One geared towards the elderly might have everything closer together and ready to move in. Tiny houses can be as individual as the people that inhabit them.

An outdoor kitchen is something I want to build for myself soon. I have put a lot of thought into it, but for me it will likely be a bit different since I am in Florida and only need to feed myself and maybe a few guests on occasion. Since you mention being in PA, one of the first thoughts that comes to mind is a rocket mass heater. I'm sure there are numerous ways the structure around it can be built, but it won't be much fun going outside on a cold rainy or snowy evening, especially after coming home from work. Without adequate heat it will likely be abandoned in the winter. A rocket mass heater can be used to both heat the space as well as to do some cooking.

I also agree that some things may or may not be particularly useful together. As previously described, the rainwater catchment vs living roof issue. You may want to set up an area next to the kitchen with solar panels and some rainwater collection or use another area like runoff from the roof of the house. The biogas digester seems a bit complicated. I'm certain people can make this work, but I personally wouldn't use one for cooking food when ample amounts of wood are available. I have played around with a few prototypes of rocket stoves that were clean burning and fuel efficient. The stoves were easy to build and I just have to provide fuel and heat to get it going. It's pretty hard to mess it up whereas I could easily see something going wrong with a biogas digester and ruining your outdoor cooking plans for the evening (or longer). It would be one thing if it was a demonstration site where people were paying to see things like this in action, but it is a different story if you want something to simply work on a daily basis.

Getting the structure built and sized appropriately will be the first goal for my outdoor kitchen. Once I have a roof and adequate protection from weather I can work on stoves and ovens. I really like the idea of a rocket mass oven. It is similar to a cob oven but with a rocket stove heating the mass. I have seen a few that were made with the fire going directly into the oven, such as at This Site with a Rocket Kitchen. I also want to build one with the exhaust separate from the interior of the oven. Something I can fire up and get a weeks worth of cooking done with while enjoying the outdoors. In my case, I don't want to heat my living space up. It is pretty insane to me how houses here are designed like solar ovens, and people cook inside their homes with their roof radiating heat into their house and running huge A/C systems to combat poor design.

Keeping the refrigeration well insulated and away from the sun and the stoves or other heat sources will help it to be more energy efficient. I personally am looking to go solar with a chest freezer. I am going to build a small platform to lift it off the ground a bit to make it easier to reach the bottom. I have a chest freezer at my current place and I left a blanket on top of it one afternoon. It was ice cold underneath it when I moved it that night. There is a lot of efficiency that can be gained from additional insulation. I also added some styrofoam that came with some packaging across the bottom of the freezer to minimize losses. You have to look at the type of unit you are using to determine where it can be insulated.

Some of the off-grid based freezers seem prohibitively expensive. I am going to just invest in an A/C unit with an inverter, a few panels, and batteries. The batteries need to be able to carry it through the longest amounts of cloudy days you get and the panels need to be able to charge it up enough to carry you through such an event. It is always a good idea to oversize things when powering refrigeration. Making short runs for the wiring and oversizing the cables will ensure you don't have significant voltage drop.

Only teaching logic doesn't necessarily prepare people to defend themselves against crazy 'spin'. Understanding that people pull these stunts to get their way is almost as important as understanding logical methods of how the world around us works since crazy people are a part of this world. My mother does some of this to me, but in her case she is legitimately loosing grip on reality and really can't help herself. I guess it is half my fault because she knows if she whines at me I will do what she wants to get her to stop whining. At least I am cognizant of it and don't let other people treat me that way.

I think sometimes people are raised in these environments and are never taught that it is unacceptable behavior. Other times people live in these environments and recognize this craziness and rise above it. Some people see this happen in schools, stores, in the media and other places and figure it out while others don't. Anyone not going with the flow is labeled and outsider and many people have been trained to believe that is always a bad thing. I don't see the tide changing any time soon, but making people aware of the games people play can help them to avoid these pitfalls.

Car alternators are made to spin at higher revolutions than hydro and wind power typically generate. You can change the gear/pulley ratio, but this compounded by the need to generate an electric field in order to create energy and starts to become problematic and fairly inefficient. Permanent Magnet Alternators/Generators (PMA's, PMG's) do away with the need to create a magnetic field electrically. Missouri Wind and Solar sells a bunch of these for both wind and hydro power generators. They have a bunch of videos on YouTube that are worth a look.

There are also other places online that sell both custom PMA's as well as ones made from old car alternators. You can even buy kits to rebuild an alternator you may have on hand to save money. I haven't looked at it in a while, but MWandS had a bunch of them still for sale on ebay. They usually have lots of things on their ebay store on sale if you are willing to wait and keep an eye out there. There are other brands out there, but some of them take significant shortcuts to shave a few dollars, so it is worth investigating before throwing down any cash.

Also, the amount of power you can create will be determined by the amount of flow and head your water source has. A PMA would need a sizable water wheel to create power and an alternator would need an even larger wheel to produce the same amount of excess energy.

I bought a Brown Turkey Fig tree on clearance for $7 a few years back and now have about 30 trees. It is the easiest thing I have propagated by cuttings. I cut off pieces, stick them in sand (my native soil at the beach), and keep them moist and in the shade. It is a good idea to remove most/all of the leaves, otherwise they will fall off on their own and possibly suck the life out of the branch in the process. I have done it with cuttings 3" long to 3' long and had few failures. My only issue has been an occasional white grub attack on trees in larger containers or after planting them in the ground.

I agree that it would make sense to find a donor tree to take a cutting from if you can find one. Otherwise you can check out the clearance racks at the big box stores or perhaps become friendly with a local nursery that has figs and maybe score one for cheap/free that has been damaged or similar. One tree I planted was about 3' tall when white grubs ate the roots and I managed to pot it up, take the leaves off, and get it to grow again! They are really tough trees! Some things wouldn't be worth it to try and save if it is root bound or severely damaged, but a fig would be one of the easiest to save from a disaster.

Missouri Wind and Solar has a number of charge controllers and they have videos of using a pond aerator without batteries. It would take a bit more energy to pump water uphill, but it can be done. They do have some programmable charge controllers for wind and solar which might work well for this. The one is designed to run a dump load once the batteries are fully charged. It probably won't work without any battery, but you could likely use a much smaller battery such as the type used in tiny computer UPS's or car battery booster packs to keep the electronics running. Then adjust the settings (engage dump load at a lower voltage, disconnect load from battery at a higher voltage) to run the pump as the dump load from the solar panel(s) instead of the small battery.

From what I understand, a lot of DC motors are not built to withstand a continuous load (3+ hours a day run time). I would either get a good brand DC pump like a SHURflo, or get an A/C motor rated for continuous use and an inverter. It might be more expensive initially, but burning up a bunch of motors not up to the task would be far more expensive and frustrating in the long run.

The starting amperage of a motor is much higher than the amount of current used after it starts running. It might only be a few seconds, but without a sufficient amount of current being supplied it will never start. One interesting thing I have seen is This Video on Supercapacitors. While that particular video shows it being used in a car, he has numerous videos about the supercapacitors and solar energy which are very interesting. If you were to use a programmable charge controller or design your own based on a microcontroller like an Arduino or similar, you could set it up only start once you have sufficient energy and it would allow a small amount of run time in case a few puffy clouds shade the panel for a bit. I personally think this is better for mobile uses instead of stationary because it is lighter and much more expensive to implement, but it is noteworthy as the prices of supercapacitors go down over time.

You could go much further with this and look into systems such as ones available at Open Sprinkler. They have systems based on the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and more. This takes a bit of learning, but it can make a system that is cheaper and more reliable in the end. Also, there are millions of people out there using these devices and you can usually find someone trying something close enough to your plans that it can be easily adapted.

There are lots of places you can ask for help on this. There are tons of forums and websites that cater to microcontrollers, small computers, off grid gardening and so on where you can find people doing very similar things. I have seen too many YouTube videos on this topic to list here. Do a search there for your keywords like solar, irrigation, and similar. I'm certain you can get a better idea of exactly what you need by checking out those places and most of the people doing it are glad to help.