Off Grid Living

Recently a little house (read: shack!) came on to the market that has, once again, piqued my interest in off-grid living. The property is very remote - accessible only by air or water - the small community uses mostly solar and wind to power their homes, and water catchment systems for their plumbing needs. Some also using additional generators, and wood burning stoves to heat home and water.

The seasons are split into two main types: warm and sunny summers, very wet and windy winters.

I'm currently researching as much as possible about options for the various 'services' that I consider must have requirements/desires (please suggest other areas if I have missed any) and will share what I discover here, for others on a similar path!

• Heating
• Generating a sustainable supply of wood
• Sufficient hot water generation
• Food growth and storage
• Soil care
• Water capture
• Lighting
• Transport

I would like to mention that I am not an expert, I'm just a regular kind of person looking for an alternative way of living - one that is mindful of available resources, and one that respects, and understands the difference between 'needs' and 'wants'.

I have lived semi off grid before, with stream fed water and a septic tank waste system, but we enjoyed the luxury of mains electricity. Solar only, will raise extra challenges and concerns and I'm also interested in learning about what those might be.

If others are doing/learning/experimenting with similar issues, please leave a comment and links, or just say 'hello'. I'm a sponge for knowledge at the moment!

Heating

Before considering the heat source - insulate, insulate, insulate!

One consideration is the solid fuel/oil/gas Rayburn/Aga option for space heating and water heating. One downside is that to generate hot water, one must keep the Aga/Rayburn working all the time! And once the water tank has been drained - that luxurious bath - then it might take a while to create another tankful. Another consideration is the potential for the space heater to provide too much heat during summer months, just to maintain hot water.

Reading the Green Living Forum, one person suggests an outdoor wood burning/hot water option - which does seem like a feasible option:

Perhaps these haven't appeared in the UK yet but here in the states there are outdoor wood furnaces. Looks like a little shed with a chimney and heats water which goes via insulated pipes to heat storage and house heating. I believe these mainly used because sometimes hard to retrofit wood burning (and here we often have a lot more grounds than you do; example, in this township houses may be close together in the areas zoned "village" but otherwise minimum housel ot is two acres).

If you have good chimneys and a basement how about a wood fired boiler down below? Might make the basement hot and dry but hey, could string clothes lines 

A hybrid option of this gets me thinking... would an outdoor version hooked up to a DIY underfloor heating system work?

Another person, also in the GLF touched upon wood burner underfloor heating:

I have under floor heating and pump solar heated water in the day and turn over to wood burner back boiler for night
But I am in Spain, so you would probably require a larger collector for the UK
Heat pipe vacuum tubes work very well and I am sure they would ok for the Uk

I've looked into various alternative DIY solutions for generating heat - preferably using wood (managed, grown and harvested at the property) - and will gradually post findings here.

The DIY solid fuel heaters made out of gas bottles are an interesting consideration.

The need to consider some form of coppicing - as I do not want to de-nude the property of wood! I cam across this site that discusses various options for coppicing varieties and their burn, growing and coppicing properties. Included are Eucalypts, Acacia, Casuarina, Cypress, Poplar, Alder and Pine.

Some helpful info from their site (www.mckechnienurseries.co.nz):

Eucalypts – very fast-growing firewood which burns hot and long. Eucalyptus nitens, E. botryoides and E. ovata, are all good coppicing varieties, and will grow in a variety of soils, from dry to wet.
Acacia (wattle) – very hot and very long burning. Acacia melanoxylon (blackwood) is readily available and will usually coppice. Grows in dry to damp soils.
Casuarina – (sheoke), hot and long burning. Grows in dry to damp soils.
Cypress – Cupressus lusitanica (Mexican cypress), a great shelter or timber tree, but also makes good hot burning firewood. It needs a reasonably well-drained site and is non-coppicing.
Poplar – not as hot or as long burning as the others listed here, but light to handle and worthwhile as fire-starters, or for earlier in the season, when you don’t need as much heat. Great coppicers, and excellent for damp or wet spots.
Alders – similar to the poplars for growth, habitat and performance.
Pines – medium hot and short burning.

Another option might be the DIY 'fire bricks' that some are making using recycled paper.

[ongoing as I discover more info - I'm posting this 'unfinished' as others may find this useful in its current form, or have interesting observations and contributions]

Other pretty neat 'wish list' items that I'll write/research about a little later include an outdoor sauna, outdoor hot water shower, outdoor bath tub, making cheese,

Further reading

   

How much is enough?

Often asked, yet difficult to answer: How much land does one person need to sustain themselves?

Many factors come in to play such as climate, diet (vegetarian/meat eater), quality of soil, and preferred farming technique.

Over the past couple of years I have been wondering about this very same question - how much land would be enough to maintain a healthy and sustainable lifestyle? What skills might I need to learn, and what preparations might I need to make? Would a small cluster of family and friends be more appropriate, or an entirely individual approach? Is there a ratio, per head? Is it related more to land yield and local resources? The sun, the availability of water? The soil health and the ability to grow food?

The simple answer is 0.07 hectares of land per person. Based on a largely vegetarian diet, on arable land with little or no degradation, adequate water supplies and a good working knowledge of farming techniques such as planting, fertilizing and irrigating.

On small lots, the farming techniques chosen can greatly enhance and improve productivity.

Many of the techniques that comprise the biointensive method were present in the agriculture of the ancient Chinese, Greeks, Mayans, and of the Early Modern period in Europe. Alan Chadwick brought together the Biodynamic and French intensive methods, as well as his own unique approach, to form what he called the Biodynamic-French Intensive method. The method was further developed by John Jeavons and Ecology Action into a sustainable 8-step food-raising method known as "GROW BIOINTENSIVE."

John Jeavons wrote a book called 'How to grow more food than you thought possible on less land than you could imagine'. He included estimates on yield per square foot for a wide range of crops using his french intensive biodynamic approach (compost, double dig, clean cultivation, frequent irrigation etc..). His system assumes unlimited nutrient, carbon, and water inputs. He figured 1/4 acre for vegetarian diet with grains and legumes as the core and yearround vege production in central california, (USA zone 9?). The vege's don't take up much space. You could get you vitamin needs off of weeds if you had to, but 1 year of protien and complex carbos (grain and dry beans, maybe potatos) is the hurdle.

So... in short... the footprint is inversely proportional to the amount of energy/nutrient/water subsidy you can gather from your neighborhood. Contemporary permaculture designs on small sites typically takes advantage of your neighbors waste.

But if everyone is scavenging nutrients and organic matter, then the game changes. I recently read that your urine contains enough nutrients to produce a grain crop to feed one human for a year.

The biointensive method is an organic agricultural system which focuses on maximum yields from the minimum area of land, while simultaneously improving the soil. The goal of the method is long term sustainability on a closed system basis. It has also been used successfully on small scale commercial farms.

Permaculture Principals

1. Work with Nature, Not Against It
Permaculture landscape design aims to consciously create agriculturally productive ecosystems that have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. As such, Permaculture systems are designed to mimic natural ecosystems, and work with nature, not against it. It is a recognition that nature knows best, and understanding her ways and cooperating with them is essential.

If we throw nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork. Masanobu Fukuoka

Working with nature reduces the reliance of the system on inputs of energy and materials thus promoting self sufficiency and sustainability. In contrast, conventional agriculture has virtually waged war on nature and so requires energy intensive and environmentally damaging inputs to maintain control and productivity.

As one example, consider weeds:

Weeds are conventionally controlled with herbicides: poisons that are expensive, climate unfriendly, and ecologically damaging.

Permaculture recognizes that weeds are nature’s way of improving conditions to favor the gradual succession of degraded landscapes to mature, productive forests.

They are ecological bandaids over otherwise bare soil to protect and feed soil life. Weeds add life energy in the form of biomass and nutrients. They provide ecology and wind protection, and restore structure to compacted soils.

We can use weeds to provide microclimate, nutrients and wind protection for the plants we want to establish while seeking to rebalance soil conditions so that weeds are no longer nature’s imperative for the site.

2. The Problem is the Solution

Everything is potentially a positive resource just waiting for us as Permaculture designers to work out HOW to use it!

Trying to impose a predefined concept of “how things should be” in your system is very expensive of energy and resources. Working to optimize benefits and yields from what you have only requires a change in the way we see things.

A Permaculture perspective allows you to recognize and harness the assets all around, so that they become solutions rather than problems.

For example, a strong cold wind can be funneled to a wind power generator or directed into a house to chill food.

You don’t have a snail problem, but a duck deficiency!

3. Make the Smallest Change for Greatest Possible Effect

For example, when choosing a dam site, select the area where you get the most water for the least amount of earth moved.

4. The Yield of a System is Theoretically Unlimited

The greatest determinant of system yield is the creativity and resourcefulness of the designer!

Even when you think you have fully optimized a Permaculture system another innovative designer might see opportunities to add more productive elements or recognize useful yields you overlooked.

For example, a shed roof can be utilized as space to grow pumpkins; flies can be trapped as food for fish; damaged fruit can provide a marketable seed resource…

5. Everything Gardens

Every living thing interacts with and impacts its environment. In natural systems, the impacts of one species create the ideal conditions for many others.

Through careful observation such impacts can be harnessed to provide suitable habitats for supporting desirable elements in your Permaculture system.

For example, rabbits make burrows and defecation mounds, scratch for roots, keep grasslands trimmed short, and create favorable soil conditions for weeds such as thistles.

The burrows can form habitat and shelter for native animals, the lawn trimming action used as an aid to fire protection, and the soil conditions utilized to grow edible thistles such as globa artichokes.

Decisions regarding control, management or toleration of system elements therefore need to first carefully consider their “gardening” impacts and how these might be utilized to create useful system yields.

6. Wise Resource Use

Throughout human history, failure to use resources wisely has been a consistent cause of collapse of civilizations.

“The key principle to wise resource use is the principle of “enough”. Today’s luxuries are tomorrow’s disasters.”

recycling and lifestyle and sustainabilityBill Mollison

To be sustainable, sane people and their societies must therefore:

1. Use resources efficiently, thus reducing waste and hence pollution.

2. Oppose the usage of any resource that leads to pollution or destruction of sustainable resources. Such resources include pollutants, persistent biocides and other poisons, radioactives, ocean outfall sewers and large areas of concrete and highways.

3. Only use resources that are either increased by modest use (e.g. regular grazing of fodder shrubs maintains production of fresh, palatable fodder), unaffected by use (e.g. sunlight, wind, rocks, rainfall), or degrade if not used (e.g. ripe fruit, annual crops, grasshopper swarms and roof water runoff during rain).

4. Non-renewable resources are reduced by use (e.g. oil, coal, mature forests, clay deposits). These should only be used if such use results in a proportionally greater, relatively permanent and sustainable improvement in ecosystem yield (e.g. construction of a dam or home).

Permaculture Yield

In Permaculture landscape design, the designer’s objective is to store, direct, conserve, and convert to useful forms any energies that exist on or pass through the site.

This is basic to self sufficiency and sustainability and is achieved by analysis of energy ZONES and SECTORS. Once the needs of the system have been met for growth, reproduction and maintenance, the surplus energy usefully stored is the system yield.

The only sustainable way to capture energy flowing through a site and usefully store system yield is in the form of life. While batteries expire and leak, heat escapes or insulation breaks down, living things like forests increase their energy store in the form of reproduction and growing biomass.

So it is the sum and capacity of life forms that determine total system yield and surplus… you could say its LIFE ENERGY!

Theoretically there is no limit to yield

There is always room for another innovation to increase the number of life forms or the productivity of the existing elements in the system.

Here are a few examples of Permaculture strategies we can use on small farms to boost yields:

• Increase water storage (ideally 12-20% of landscape) and usage in your landscape

• Utilize strategic land forming to conserve and optimize soil and water resources

• Recondition and fertilize your soils so they reach their productive potential

• Establish windbreak and forage forests (ideally 20-30% of landscape)

• Establish wildlife corridors

• Value add through strategic processing and marketing

• Formation of community and financial cooperatives

• Low tillage cropping to save soil, energy, moisture and growing time

• Crop diversification strategies such as different species, genetically selected varieties, ripening-times, growing microclimates, trading relationships and forms of yield storage and preservation

• Overcoming cultural barriers to yield utilization such as irrational reluctance to keep poultry to make productive use of waste, slaughter excess stock for meat, or eat snails

• Reduce competition by non-beneficial species

• Better integrated and strategic crop timing, harvest and utilization

• Increase the number of beneficial connections between elements (life forms, structures, etc) within the system, so that the products, behaviors and wastes of one can be utilized to create yield by others.

• Encourage natural cycles. Life itself cycles nutrients giving opportunities more species to find niches and produce yield. Geese recycle grass as feces and feathers, which provide niches for fungi, bacteria, grass roots and foliage to flourish, re-metabolising it back into life.

Interrupting cycles (e.g. through drought and other climatic factors, the use of biocides, or extinction of a species) diminishes yield, reduces life (order) and increases entropy (disorder).

Oil and Water

Came across this beautiful video recently, by environmental photographer, Ed Kashi, which I find powerful on many levels. The work (photography) is jaw dropping, and the concept/projects are a sharp much needed prod!! The almost humble delivery of narration is extremely powerful not so much an 'in your face' journalistic style, more of a 'here's the facts, now you decide what you want to do about it' which I find much more powerful!!!

Seeing him promote the handing down of knowledge and action and choice to the next generation by way of activism is a beautiful dimension, and one that fits in with previous discussions I have had about myth, and the whole area of narrative
and storytelling and lore! The exploitation of tradition and ch!!

I watched it a couple of times, I need to watch it more. What I particularly liked was the two projects being portrayed back to back, which serve to blast our misconceptions about 'Africa is all the same' by showing the Niger delta, so polluted and so overly industrialised, against the much more destructive (in my opinion) Madagascar version, where the people are *choosing* to cut down that pristine wilderness!!!

A commodity much more valuable than what they ultimately seek to trade!!!!