savingdogs
Queen Filksinger
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Looks awesome!
Sunsaver, Livining Off-Grid In Suburbia- Happy Taconight America!
dragonlaurel
Improvising a more SS life
Those scuppernongs are beautiful! Good pics.
TanksHill
Super Self-Sufficient
Very cool thanks for sharing!!
What the heck's a "scuppernongs"??
What the heck's a "scuppernongs"??
- Thread starter
- #204
S
sunsaver
Guest
The Fridge Must Die: How My Off-Grid Lifestyle came together.
There were fits and starts, a gas powered generator that was more expensive and polluting than the grid, but at least i was making some progress in my war against the evil, powercompany monopoly. I bought some LED light bulbs off the net. They were like shiny toys at first, the future in my hand. I got the same sense of Easter Sunday morning joy, like the Tooth Fairy had just popped a silver dollar under my pillow and ended world hunger at the same time. It was the light at the end of the Global Warming Tunnel: ultra low power and miniature devices that will let me keep my high tech toys, while moving towards a slowfood, enjoy your wine while the wood oven heats up, old world type of lifestyle. A renewable, sustainable, more spiritually acceptable way of living within God's great creation.
For years i had dreamed of being completely ss, especially since 911 and Katrina had showed me the fragility and vulnerability of a corporate, slave based economy. Recent events and new scientific discoveries have convinced me that the environment is already damaged beyond repair, so all i can do is try to live the life that i think God wants me to live. I call it living by example. I've given up trying to convince my friends that global warming is real, that anyone who says otherwise is deluded or on the NMA or NAPR's payroll. My life as an environmental activist is over. My childhood dream of science as an apolitical arbitrar of the broken dichotomy of our "democracy", is but a vague memory of saying things like "it's a free country!" Funny how children never say that anymore, but just bicker along partisan party lines. Real journalism is dead, and our government has become a sideshow of foreign-owned, corporate puppets, who read the corporate memos like robots. I can go for months without watching the news, and when i return from my island: same old side show. Everyone ignores the giant pink elephant in the room: record highs and lows, record storms, peak oil, giant deficit, no jobs, record heat wave every couple years.
"Pride cometh before a fall": and it didn't take too many years for me to learn that the spiritual facts of the Bible are born out by physical experimentation. I can't name the number of times i was all happy and excited, so full of myself, then fell and slammed an elbow, or smashed a knee cap into a coffee table. "Ouch!" Was that just a lack of faith that made me so clumsy? Or was it my massively inflated ego? "So you want recognition? Here's a cast for your leg!" God says.
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Get too happy, be equally sad later. This is bi-polar reality "disorder not!" I've learned to temper my emotions. I prefer a more uniform reality. These days i never seem to get too excited, nor sick or injured. My clumsiness is almost completely cured, and i only seem to get injured when i'm in a hurry. I try to limit my euphoria in anticipation of the bad news that will follow, and i always say a prayer when severe storms are predicted. I know just enough of modern physics and ancient religion, to be convinced that the former is just a study of the latter. Modern physics and astrophysics is the study of the body of God, the universe. "He is everywhere and knows all things." In science terms, God is the set of everything, and we are just trying to come up with a unified field theory, like "42".
So enough with my rant/sermon! How much vodka have i had so far? Sorry if i offended any fellow Christians or Scientists. LED light bulb technology has improved dramatically in the last few years. The equivalent of an old school 40 watt bulb, now uses only 2.2 watts.
I could tell that my work was dropping off like tears of sweat from my forehead on a hot summer day. I saw the solar panel and new LED bulbs as an investment against a failed economy. I eagerly put the bulbs in their sockets, and climbed a rickety, old wooden ladder into the attic. I knew i couldn't run any major appliances from the bathroom or living room, so those were the first circuits to get broken from the breaker box mains and spliced in a junction box to the 120VAC from the inverter in the power shed. Free lights from that great, glowing orb that this planet revolves around! I started to wonder how much of my electric life was "can't live without"' and how much was "luxury consumption of electricity". Wouldn't it be great to have no electric bill? I had already ditched cable for free, over the air digital tv, (OTA DTV). That was a difficult, worthy of a full paged novel transition. But my old Magnovox Analog TV was hogging a full 300 watts of power. Time to get OTA DTV on my computer.
There were fits and starts, a gas powered generator that was more expensive and polluting than the grid, but at least i was making some progress in my war against the evil, powercompany monopoly. I bought some LED light bulbs off the net. They were like shiny toys at first, the future in my hand. I got the same sense of Easter Sunday morning joy, like the Tooth Fairy had just popped a silver dollar under my pillow and ended world hunger at the same time. It was the light at the end of the Global Warming Tunnel: ultra low power and miniature devices that will let me keep my high tech toys, while moving towards a slowfood, enjoy your wine while the wood oven heats up, old world type of lifestyle. A renewable, sustainable, more spiritually acceptable way of living within God's great creation.
For years i had dreamed of being completely ss, especially since 911 and Katrina had showed me the fragility and vulnerability of a corporate, slave based economy. Recent events and new scientific discoveries have convinced me that the environment is already damaged beyond repair, so all i can do is try to live the life that i think God wants me to live. I call it living by example. I've given up trying to convince my friends that global warming is real, that anyone who says otherwise is deluded or on the NMA or NAPR's payroll. My life as an environmental activist is over. My childhood dream of science as an apolitical arbitrar of the broken dichotomy of our "democracy", is but a vague memory of saying things like "it's a free country!" Funny how children never say that anymore, but just bicker along partisan party lines. Real journalism is dead, and our government has become a sideshow of foreign-owned, corporate puppets, who read the corporate memos like robots. I can go for months without watching the news, and when i return from my island: same old side show. Everyone ignores the giant pink elephant in the room: record highs and lows, record storms, peak oil, giant deficit, no jobs, record heat wave every couple years.
"Pride cometh before a fall": and it didn't take too many years for me to learn that the spiritual facts of the Bible are born out by physical experimentation. I can't name the number of times i was all happy and excited, so full of myself, then fell and slammed an elbow, or smashed a knee cap into a coffee table. "Ouch!" Was that just a lack of faith that made me so clumsy? Or was it my massively inflated ego? "So you want recognition? Here's a cast for your leg!" God says.
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Get too happy, be equally sad later. This is bi-polar reality "disorder not!" I've learned to temper my emotions. I prefer a more uniform reality. These days i never seem to get too excited, nor sick or injured. My clumsiness is almost completely cured, and i only seem to get injured when i'm in a hurry. I try to limit my euphoria in anticipation of the bad news that will follow, and i always say a prayer when severe storms are predicted. I know just enough of modern physics and ancient religion, to be convinced that the former is just a study of the latter. Modern physics and astrophysics is the study of the body of God, the universe. "He is everywhere and knows all things." In science terms, God is the set of everything, and we are just trying to come up with a unified field theory, like "42".
So enough with my rant/sermon! How much vodka have i had so far? Sorry if i offended any fellow Christians or Scientists. LED light bulb technology has improved dramatically in the last few years. The equivalent of an old school 40 watt bulb, now uses only 2.2 watts.
I could tell that my work was dropping off like tears of sweat from my forehead on a hot summer day. I saw the solar panel and new LED bulbs as an investment against a failed economy. I eagerly put the bulbs in their sockets, and climbed a rickety, old wooden ladder into the attic. I knew i couldn't run any major appliances from the bathroom or living room, so those were the first circuits to get broken from the breaker box mains and spliced in a junction box to the 120VAC from the inverter in the power shed. Free lights from that great, glowing orb that this planet revolves around! I started to wonder how much of my electric life was "can't live without"' and how much was "luxury consumption of electricity". Wouldn't it be great to have no electric bill? I had already ditched cable for free, over the air digital tv, (OTA DTV). That was a difficult, worthy of a full paged novel transition. But my old Magnovox Analog TV was hogging a full 300 watts of power. Time to get OTA DTV on my computer.
Marianne
Super Self-Sufficient
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And then?
I like the idea of doint the conversion in steps- the easiest first.savingdogs
Queen Filksinger
- Joined
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Yes! (answer to your question, wouldn't it be great not to have an electric bill?)
You write well, sunsaver....
You write well, sunsaver....
- Thread starter
- #208
S
sunsaver
Guest
The analog to digital TV conversion law was a real gifthorse for big cable, and a slap in the face to poor people. For years i had gotten free analog TV with nothing but rabbit ears. Soon i would be in the dark. So i bought a $70 DTV conversion box. Still no TV. I used my grocery money to buy a $40, 30db amplifier from Radio Shack. Still in the dark. I used my electric bill money to buy a $120, 13ft wide, roof-top antenna, with mast. Finally i had TV. Crappy TV that would freeze or pixelate during storms or windy weather. TV that was worse than early dish TV. I thought, 'how are poor poeple going to afford this transition?" I later realized that i had an early version of the DTV conversion box, and later models and digital TVs work much better. I still hate it when the show freezes in the middle of the climax. I'd rather have analog static and snow, and still be able to hear the conversation, than to have my hearing go in and out. It must be terrible for SD to live like that all the time. Ultimately, i know that DTV is better. I enjoy having free HDTV. But at the time, i was furious at how the transition was handled by the government. They should have perfected the converter boxes and DTV antennas before pulling the plug on analog TV.
I had burned up two cheap inverters from the car parts store, so i decided to paid about $200 for a nicer one at the local truck stop. It has a digital readout that alternately flashes the voltage reading from the battery, and the watts of power being used. I turned off everything that i had wired up to the solar panels, except for the TV. The reading on the inverter was 300 watts. My solar panel was only 130 watts, so i knew that the big ol' gas guzzling tube had to go. I went to the electronics store and got a TV receiver USB device for my computer. When i hooked it up to my computer and roof-top antenna with 30db amp, i found that i had six local network channels, three LPB channels (Louisiana Public Broadcasting) and four AETN channels (Arkansas Educational Television Network), and two local Christian broadcasting channels. Fifteen free channels, many in HD! I was all happy and excited again, thrilled with the marvels of modern technology. I was all set to tell my powercompany enemies to go stick it, when the lights cut off! 'Pride cometh before a fall,' i thought. Grudgingly, i fumbled around in the dark, found the breaker box, and cut on the main breaker to the grid. I was still just another slave working for the powercompany. But my early success in solar power spurned me on to a new resolve. I was determined to fulfill my promise to that powercompany employee who had come to reconnect my power the year before: "The next time you come here, it will be because i'm cutting y'all off!"
I had burned up two cheap inverters from the car parts store, so i decided to paid about $200 for a nicer one at the local truck stop. It has a digital readout that alternately flashes the voltage reading from the battery, and the watts of power being used. I turned off everything that i had wired up to the solar panels, except for the TV. The reading on the inverter was 300 watts. My solar panel was only 130 watts, so i knew that the big ol' gas guzzling tube had to go. I went to the electronics store and got a TV receiver USB device for my computer. When i hooked it up to my computer and roof-top antenna with 30db amp, i found that i had six local network channels, three LPB channels (Louisiana Public Broadcasting) and four AETN channels (Arkansas Educational Television Network), and two local Christian broadcasting channels. Fifteen free channels, many in HD! I was all happy and excited again, thrilled with the marvels of modern technology. I was all set to tell my powercompany enemies to go stick it, when the lights cut off! 'Pride cometh before a fall,' i thought. Grudgingly, i fumbled around in the dark, found the breaker box, and cut on the main breaker to the grid. I was still just another slave working for the powercompany. But my early success in solar power spurned me on to a new resolve. I was determined to fulfill my promise to that powercompany employee who had come to reconnect my power the year before: "The next time you come here, it will be because i'm cutting y'all off!"
- Thread starter
- #209
S
sunsaver
Guest
The next few months were repeated attempts at going off-grid. I soon realized that with everything turned off but the fridge, my electric bill was still $30 per month. The fridge had to go. So i started looking up plans for an ice box. I found a set of plans for a marine ice box, and i adapted them to make my chest type ice box. It has a drain with a p-trap, to release the melting ice water. I was glad to get rid of the fridge. The side rack on the door kept breaking loose, dumping condiments on the floor. It would fill up with left-overs that would go bad because i couldn't see them, buried behind other left-overs. The new ice box forces me to keep it cleaned out. I can see everything in it because i'm looking down into a chest, and nothing ever spills out of it. I love my ice box!!
At some point i saved up enough money to buy another solar panel, and two more batteries. A propane camp stove, wash tub plumbed in with running water and a drain, clothes line, wood-burning oven, fire pit with grill, and LED light bulbs for every room. I stopped paying my electric bill in the fall of 2010. Surprisingly, the very same guy came to cut my power off. I quickly closed the door to my power shed. None of my electrical work was inspected or approved. Even though i treat this place as my home, it's more like the government's home, and the powercompany monopoly of Louisiana is the owner of that government.
"Hey! You're that guy who was talking about getting solar panels! Did you ever do that?"
I acted cool: "Well... i'm still looking into it." Not a lie, nor an admission of guilt.
"Yeah, it costs seventy thousand dollars to get enough panels to go off-grid. And it doesn't work in cloudy weather, and the battery technology hasn't been perfected yet either. It's cheaper to just stay on the grid."
I had heard these exact words before from a troll/owner of a solar forum site. 'He's quoting the energy industry propaganda verbatim!' I thought. He must have asked his supervisor about going off-grid, or went to the same controlled discussion group that i had been on. I just smiled and said, "Yeah, solar power is expensive. I should just move up north to save on air conditioning." He seemed to like my answers:
"Yeah, better insulation, caulking doors and windows, setting your thermostat higher in summer and lower in winter can save you on your electric bill!"
Are these drones, some sort of human robots? So is this the green movement? Burn less coal, but don't ever stop burning it? What ever happened to original thought? Even our congress people are quoting corporate dogma. Does anybody care about poor people? What about property rights? What about Human rights? Yeah right! What about global warming, the greatest threat to humanity, behind nuclear war and a rogue asteroid. We spend billions on war-making, or landing a man on the moon just to scare the Russians, but we can't cure cancer, or even the common cold. There is something fundamentally wrong with the current system. I am very disappointed with this nation, and not feeling very patriotic at this time of my life.
"Well, you have a good one!" Said the chatty and well paid corporate.
"Thanks! I'll probably just move in with my parents, until i can sell this old house." A total lie. I intend to fight to the death like an old Tomcat trying to get laid. Even if there was a court order for me to go back on the grid, i would just wait around for the arrest warrant:
" Are you Sunsaver?"
"Yes Sir."
" I have here a warrant for your arrest, for trying to be free and avoiding corporate slavery."
"Guilty Sir."
"You don't understand. I'm just here to arrest you. You must make your guilty plea before a federal judge. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, "
More robots! Where are the real people? SS forum? lets check it out!
At some point i saved up enough money to buy another solar panel, and two more batteries. A propane camp stove, wash tub plumbed in with running water and a drain, clothes line, wood-burning oven, fire pit with grill, and LED light bulbs for every room. I stopped paying my electric bill in the fall of 2010. Surprisingly, the very same guy came to cut my power off. I quickly closed the door to my power shed. None of my electrical work was inspected or approved. Even though i treat this place as my home, it's more like the government's home, and the powercompany monopoly of Louisiana is the owner of that government.
"Hey! You're that guy who was talking about getting solar panels! Did you ever do that?"
I acted cool: "Well... i'm still looking into it." Not a lie, nor an admission of guilt.
"Yeah, it costs seventy thousand dollars to get enough panels to go off-grid. And it doesn't work in cloudy weather, and the battery technology hasn't been perfected yet either. It's cheaper to just stay on the grid."
I had heard these exact words before from a troll/owner of a solar forum site. 'He's quoting the energy industry propaganda verbatim!' I thought. He must have asked his supervisor about going off-grid, or went to the same controlled discussion group that i had been on. I just smiled and said, "Yeah, solar power is expensive. I should just move up north to save on air conditioning." He seemed to like my answers:
"Yeah, better insulation, caulking doors and windows, setting your thermostat higher in summer and lower in winter can save you on your electric bill!"
Are these drones, some sort of human robots? So is this the green movement? Burn less coal, but don't ever stop burning it? What ever happened to original thought? Even our congress people are quoting corporate dogma. Does anybody care about poor people? What about property rights? What about Human rights? Yeah right! What about global warming, the greatest threat to humanity, behind nuclear war and a rogue asteroid. We spend billions on war-making, or landing a man on the moon just to scare the Russians, but we can't cure cancer, or even the common cold. There is something fundamentally wrong with the current system. I am very disappointed with this nation, and not feeling very patriotic at this time of my life.
"Well, you have a good one!" Said the chatty and well paid corporate.
"Thanks! I'll probably just move in with my parents, until i can sell this old house." A total lie. I intend to fight to the death like an old Tomcat trying to get laid. Even if there was a court order for me to go back on the grid, i would just wait around for the arrest warrant:
" Are you Sunsaver?"
"Yes Sir."
" I have here a warrant for your arrest, for trying to be free and avoiding corporate slavery."
"Guilty Sir."
"You don't understand. I'm just here to arrest you. You must make your guilty plea before a federal judge. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, "
More robots! Where are the real people? SS forum? lets check it out!
- Thread starter
- #210
S
sunsaver
Guest
"Stone Rockman here, with a news flash! A man from northern Louisiana was arrested by the the FBI today, for trying to be free and going "green". Being self sufficient results in a maximum penalty of twenty years to life in prison. His only defense strategy was to blame corporate slavery and the all-mighty dollar. If only he had been wealthy enough to afford a real lawyer, instead of representing himself. He might have gotten away with his freedom crimes
Here is his mugshot:
"This man should be considered as wordy, and verbally armed! He is very opinionated, and thinks our fossil fueled gods are actually Demons. He believes in only one God, and worst of all, he thinks that people should be FREE!" If you see this man, please stop him from ending our dictatorship of you, by dialing 1-800-love capitalist slavery. Your foreign owned corporate bosses thank you!
Here is his mugshot:
"This man should be considered as wordy, and verbally armed! He is very opinionated, and thinks our fossil fueled gods are actually Demons. He believes in only one God, and worst of all, he thinks that people should be FREE!" If you see this man, please stop him from ending our dictatorship of you, by dialing 1-800-love capitalist slavery. Your foreign owned corporate bosses thank you!
