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Mini-Grids
Two experimental nicro-grids in the South African outback prove the concept can work anywhere…
October 30, 2008
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Two experimental nicro-grids in the South African outback prove the concept can work anywhere…
Isn’t it funny that the first sentence is always the hardest to write? But here goes, first an introduction, my name is Wretha and I live 100% off-grid. I live in a small cabin with my hubby Bob and my little dog Pekoe, a 9 year old, long hair Chihuahua. We live on a 5.75 acre tract of land on the side of a mountain in the high desert of far west Texas.…
I thoroughly enjoy cooking, I am very passionate about it, to the point that going to restaurants is a bit of a challenge to me. I can’t just enjoy the meal, I have to know how it was made, and then I am thinking about what I could do to make it even better.…
The new solar incentives favor the wealthiest buyers of solar panels and give off-grid homes no help at all. But the solar industry doesn’t care.…
Everybody should try it A 72-year old woman has switched off ALL power in her home in protest at ‘crazy’ energy bills. Anne Myall refuses to use electricity in her home after receiving massive bills she claims were incorrect. The electricity company, NPower has promised her a full refund, but Ms Myall continues to live by candlelight and use a wood fire for her heating report several British newspapers.
In protest at the cost of her energy bills, Myall no longer spends her evenings watching television in front of an electric fire, instead the grandmother listens to a battery-powered radio wrapped up in bed.
She has dispensed with hot water and all her hot food comes from a local takeaway restaurant. For lunch the pensioner has been tucking into pre-cooked supermarket chicken and plenty of cold salads and both her laptop computer and mobile phone are useless because she is unable to recharge them.
She has spent more than a fortnight living a life more akin to the Victoria age after Npower sent her a series of large fuel bills.
Mrs Myall, a widow who has lived alone since the death of her husband eight years ago, said: ‘They have been bullying me and browbeating me for three years with silly, inaccurate bills upwards of £700 a quarter.
‘I only have a one-bedroom flat and I’m very economical. It’s just crazy, my electricity bill should be about £18 a quarter.’
She moved into the flat in Pocklington, North Yorkshire, three years ago and claims she was immediately hit by a bill.
Mrs Myall, a retired journalist, said: ‘I received a demand for £53 just days after arriving. I have tried many times to contact Npower with no success. I even got one bill for £758.
‘I’m often away in the winter and I never turn my heating on so I feel that they have just been using guesswork based around an incorrect meter reading they took when I moved in.’
The final straw came when Npower staff replaced her old meter system with a pre-payment system while she was abroad.
Unhappy that the work was undertaken without her knowledge, she felt the new meter used more energy than the old system and decided to pull the plug.
Protest: The widow has restored to living without modern comforts in her one-bed home She said: ‘It’s amazing how one can manage, I can’t believe how well I feel for doing this. The biggest loss is being able to eat fresh vegetables because I love them but I’m getting by with eating salad.
‘I love reading so I’m not really missing the TV, although I do miss my hot water bottle and I’m now looking for a gas camping stove. I’ve not been able to run my computer or recharge my mobile phone either.’
She added: ‘This is really a protest against the …
Nick Rosen invites suggestions, places and people for his new book “Off-Grid America.” Call Nick on 1-877-706-7423 or nick at www.off-grid.net. …
CBS implies the Earthship movement is a weird hippy cult, but still gives them plenty of prime-time.…
More questions from you and my answers.
Rick
Thanks for your comment & question! In answer, yes, we have thought about building into the hillside, and it’s still an option, the reason we didn’t do it right away was time, it was faster to build the cabin like it is, for the future, it is something we would like to do, but it takes equipment, something we don’t have readily available to us. It could be done by hand, it would take a lot of time, and we have big (huge) rocks to contend with. We will be digging a root cellar for cold storage, hopefully this winter.
I’m glad you have had fun reading my blog, it’s been a joy living it and writing about it.
Wretha
seth said…
Hey Wretha, thanks for Q&A session.
I did have a couple of other questions in regards to Texas. Do vehicles need to have a inspection sticker? What is the sales tax(vary from county to county?) State income tax? Am getting really anxious about all that is going on and looking to get out of here asap. I bought another 5 acres not far from my other property, but this one is paid for in full, so if and when i can bug out of here i can. Thanks, Seth
Seth
Thanks for your questions. Yes you do need an inspection sticker for your car in Texas, here is the site for the info: https://www.txdps.state.tx.us/vi/Misc/faq/insp_faq.htm
If you have an older car (I can’t remember if it’s 10 years old or 20 years old) you don’t have to have the smog test, just the safety inspection, it’s cheaper and easier. Sales tax in the DFW area is 8.25%, that is the maximum you will be charged in any city, you might get lucky and find it less. https://www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/local/index.html
There is no state tax in Texas. You will pay income tax (of course) and if you own property, you will have property and school tax.
Paid in full, that IS nice isn’t it! I am soooo glad our property is PID, just have to pay the taxes.
I believe that in the state of Texas, you are required to own a minimum of 5 acres in order to have a well AND septic on your property. Just something to keep in mind.
Wretha
Anonymous said…
- Hi Wretha,
- Look into Ferro cement. Basically, dig a
Toni Tanskanen: not religious – spiritual I’m living in the countryside in a community in Southern Finland. We live in a 150-year-old log house. Our goal is to be as independent of society as possible. This is a life long project for me. We have now 12 square metres land in organic agriculture, and soon we will have two finn-horses and one pony. also two sheep.
Our community works very well. here is three adults, three children (they’re all one person’s of our community), two dogs and two cats. In the spring we’re buying also three base’s of bees.…
Here are a couple of questions from my wonderful readers, and my answers, enjoy!
I’d like to know the background story to how y’all wound up where y’all are. Where did y’all live before, how did y’all get from there to where y’all are now, and how much better is life now versus “the old life”…..
Mayberry
Thanks for your question, I’m not sure how far you want me to go back, let’s see, I do want to maintain privacy, but I can tell you some things… we used to live in the DFW area (Texas), we both pretty much lived there all of our lives. We have both been married previously (to other people obviously), I had one child, Bob had 2, they are now all grown. We met just before Y2K. When we met each other, we had no idea that the other wanted to live off-grid and everything that goes with it. I certainly wanted to but didn’t know that he did, he had his own business, plus his family was nearby and I didn’t expect that he would want to do such a thing. I had been getting “itchy” about the way the world was going and was wanting to get out of Dodge before the SHTF. One of my “secret” pleasures is listening to Coast to Coast am, many of the people who are interviewed on that show talk a lot about the year 2012 and the changes that are supposed to happen then. Good or bad, things are changing, and like many changes, it can get pretty rough before it gets better. Either way, I wanted to be in a safer place, somewhere where we can survive for longer period than we could living in the city. Little did I know that Bob also wanted to get away, not necessarily for the same reasons (he isn’t into C2C am).
Bob knew about the area where we now live since he was in his 20s, had a friend out there and spent many summers exploring the deserts and mountains of west Texas. He was a desert/mountain man in training.
I too had my training, from my early teens, I had been learning about solar cooking, canning, cooking from scratch (really from scratch, like our grandmothers did), organic gardening, surviving, all the things I would need to to survive where we are now.
About a year before we moved, Bob started making comments about wanting to move to west Texas, I didn’t think he was serious, or maybe I just didn’t take it seriously, at first… but once I realized how serious he really was, I agreed to check it out. We looked on line for quite some time to find property and had a couple of likely places lined up. We took a week off and left out for west Texas. …
More evidence emerges that tap water contains pharmaceuticals. So maybe bottled water is better after all?…
This is what to expect Off-gridder Lamar has researched the great depression and “gleaned much info from my parents that lived through it” to come up with some useful tips for what, thanks to our great leaders in Washington and New York, will be some real tough times:
1. Don’t worry that your savings and checking account will disappear. FDIC banks are guaranteed for $100.000 per person. …
