Off Grid Utilities

Sand Filter Diy

Filtering water is obviously very important. We started out with a Berkey water filter, as it was the best one we could find. Six years later, we still use it, but want to make the routinea little smoother. Let’s setup a sand filter. The water that goes into this filter …

Cooking
1

Cob Rocket Stove DIY: # 2

The cob rocket stoves we built last year were our first try with the cob. They worked pretty well, but we wanted to try and make them even better this year. Here goes: The rocket stove that we built out of fire bricks worked wonderfully.  It cost $60 though.  In …

Food Forest
1

5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services

The fifth permaculture principle is use and value renewable resources and services.  I know what you’re thinking, solar power! but it is so much more than that. We always try to make the most of our renewable reources here on the homestead for a few reasons.  Anything we can gather …

Off Grid Utilities
1

Mini Cordwood House Plans: Energy Efficiency

Being energy efficient is a must for us here on the homestead.  We don’t have the time to waste energy.  This is going to be very important to keep in mind when we build our cordwood house this spring. The most important energy in our home build is heat.  We …

Materials
1

Bushcraft Wood Storage

On the first day of autumn, we built a bushcraft hut for the kids to play in.  They got a ton of use out of it, but are now bored with it.  They were bored of it until we decided to use it. We had discussed adding a small structure …

Building
5

Cob Rocket Stove Build

We use our cob rocket stove outside half the year for all of our cooking.  The other half of the year it’s cold out so we cook on the woodstove inside.  We really love the rocket stove, but we could really, really, use another burner.  I decided to try to …

Off Grid Utilities
1

Washing Laundry Off Grid

We normally have to use the laundromat for clothes washing, we just don’t have the room in the tiny house to dry all the clothes we wear.  But now that it’s nice out, I can start doing laundry here. First you get the water.  If we used the rainwater to …

Building
3

Tiny House Interior: Kitchen

This lovely kitchen was put together much like the other projects in my house.  Built around all the junk that has no where to go and filled right up before I painted, or even finished building it.  I also used 2x4s and 2x3s like I have been doing, and scrap …

Off Grid Utilities
1

Keep the Fire Burning

Much of the winter is spent keeping the wood stove hot. We rely on the wood stove for our heat, hot water, cooking, and anything else we might need some fire for. We try to keep it going all the time so we aren’t constantly restarting it, but we don’t …

Off Grid Utilities

Simple Rainwater Collection Setup

We have been hauling water from the stream much of the time we have been living here.  Over the winter, the plan had been to melt snow on the constant burning wood stove.  We thought winter would be much easier for water collection.  This plan was baffled twice.  First, we …