Thoughts on the Climate Crisis as well as possible solutions as seen through the lens of eco building.

Learn to Build Outside the Box!

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 20:57:48 GMT

We’re not promoting one solution. We’re promoting all the solutions at once.

Cob. Adobe. Earthbag. Rammed Earth. Tire walls. Aircrete. Hempcrete. Strawbale. Light Straw Clay. You’ve probably heard of some of these, maybe all of them. These materials represent the spectrum from ancient techniques to cutting edge technologies, it covers thermal mass building envelopes, insulated ones, and ones that use both mass and insulation. Some of these types are more human labor intensive and some rely more on machines, some are relatively quick to construct, some take more time, some are easy to permit, some much less so, some can be used as transitional housing, some can be recycled back into the earth, some are built to last thousands of years. But what they all have in common is they are not typical boxes built with typical materials and a typical layout and look . They all are a rejection of the status quo, saying, “Hey, this conventional way of building is not working, the world is in trouble, we need to change the way we build, right now.”

We’ve been in the off-grid/sustainable building industry for many years and have seen how difficult it can be to build alternatives to conventional, stick frame boxes. We’ve seen how building codes and local design regulations are biased against new methods, how financing can be difficult to obtain for anything different from cookie-cutter housing, how the public sometimes holds preconceived ideas about what a house should look like that conflict with the way a house could ideally function, as well as other roadblocks and challenges. This path is not well worn and many times the early-adopters are breaking a sweat, breaking trail and hoping that others will follow.

During our own journeys we have noticed that the alternative building world is divided into different camps, each trying to convince people that their solution is the smartest, fastest, easiest, greenest, most cost effective, most comprehensive, etc… There are not many good resources for newbies to learn about all the different possibilities in one place, to learn how to differentiate between these building types and choose what is the best fit for their project, their climate, aesthetic, time frame, skill level, and budget. We have built this resource.

We’ve gathered experts in 12 different natural and alternative building solutions into one place. We have built the Build Outside the Box Mastermind as a resource to educate, inspire and empower you to move outside the box. To build something better for you and the planet.

We’re not promoting one solution. We’re promoting all the solutions at once. People can gain the tools to choose what works best for them. We’re also building a community where we can learn from each other, connect, encourage, assist, refer, and discover what is adjacent possible. We hope this Build Outside the Box Mastermind will help exponentially increase awareness about these incredible options. Individually, it can be easy to feel deflated in the face of so much dire news about our future on this planet. But together, collectively, we can address what the world needs right now , all the solutions, all at once, on a massive scale.

12 Reasons Why Earthen Walls Are Awesome!

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 22:16:44 GMT

And are way better than traditional frame construction

Photo: SIREWALL USA

Earthen walls have been around for centuries, and earth is the most widely used material in construction around the world. (⅓ of the world’s population lives in an earthen home). Here in Taos, New Mexico, our Pueblo (made out of adobe mud bricks) has been continuously inhabited by the indigenous Tewa people for over a thousand years!

There are so many reasons why earthen walls are fantastic to build and why earthen structures are so amazing to live in:

1. They are wonderful for the environment! Earth is a plentiful, renewable resource, and the materials (dirt from the site, sand, clay) can be sourced locally– reducing the number of miles needed to ship building materials.

2. The walls they create are soundproof, pest-resistant, and fire-resistant.

3 . When utilized properly they can regulate their own temperature. More on this below…

4. They require up to 30% less energy than concrete block or wood frame to heat and cool.

5. They use significantly less cement than most other methods of modern construction. Unlike many conventional buildings, earthen walls do not off-gas any toxic chemicals.

6. Cell phone / radio / electromagnetic frequencies are inhibited by most mass earthen walls. This can be a real plus for people whose health is negatively affected by these invisible energies.

7. Earthen materials are alive! They react to the air and to their environment. Adobe bricks and other earthen mass walls can self regulate humidity– they breathe.

8. Earthen walls can help alleviate allergies and create a better indoor air quality, because a little known fact is that clay absorbs toxins. They can be part of a much healthier home to live in.

9. From a lifecycle / footprint perspective, earthen homes will return to the earth in a much more natural way–leaving behind much less waste. They are from the earth and can be returned to the earth.

10. They FEEL better. When you’re in an earthen home, there is a feeling that cannot be easily explained in words. You know it when you’re in one. They are cozier, quieter, and more comfortable. Not only that, but they feel safer and healthier.

11. They are also (subjectively) more beautiful - with thick window sills, curving walls, and other architectural elements (like a nichos - a shelf-like opening carved into adobe walls to display pottery, store firewood, and so on) that aren’t always possible to achieve with other materials and wall systems.

12. Cost. The skyrocketing price of conventional materials (the cost of lumber is crazy high as we write this) is making building with earth more appealing, even less expensive / cost-competitive in some areas.

Photo By: Ashton Wolfe of Alice Ko's adobe brick build in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico

Circling back to earthen walls regulating their own temperature: More is required than just simply having earthen walls. You will need for those walls to be the appropriate thickness and density to store temperature. When the walls are thick enough and dense enough, they will achieve thermal mass and will maintain a steady temperature of 55°F to 65°F. They will also allow for temperature transfer (insulation will block temperature transfer and so this layer will need to be located on the exterior of the building - more on insulation and how it can work with thermal mass in future posts). So when the room is hot, the heat will want to travel into the cool 60°F walls. When the room is cold, the heat will be released from those walls, into the cooler room. Creating a kind of temperature equilibrium. When you live in a cold climate, sun-facing glazing will help warm the interior temperature up from 60°F to a nice comfortable 70°F. In the summertime, cooling tubes and natural ventilation will aid the thermal mass in cooling down the interior temperature.

In addition to thermal mass and insulation for temperature regulation the home will also need:

To be oriented properly for the climate
The appropriate amount and placement of window glazing for the climate
To consider the room depth and configuration to maximize the heating and cooling benefits

Photo: By Ashton Wolfe of her adobe home in Taos, New Mexico

All in all, earthen walls are sturdier, longer lasting, will hold up better against climate disasters (especially fire), and are a lot healthier to live in! And with the cost of lumber being what it is, earthen walls are now more cost effective (especially when the home is designed to heat and cool itself) than traditional frame construction.

Side note: here, in Taos, New Mexico, earthen homes also command a much higher resell price than frame construction.

Photo Courtesy of SIREWALL USA

We hope you will consider buying or building an earthen home so that you can experience all of their many benefits for yourself!

Off-Grid Value Per Square Foot

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 21:00:28 GMT

Let’s take a look at what’s important beyond price.

Photo: Gasper House SIREWALL .

One of the most common ways to compare homes is to look at the price per square foot. This is determined by taking the total price of a house and dividing it by the total square footage. There's a range, as you can imagine, and the price per square foot can vary from under $100 for older fixer uppers, modular housing, and foreclosure properties in unlivable condition, to over $1000 per square foot for star architect design, luxurious finishes, and affluent and desirable neighborhoods. This is a vast array, millions and millions of homes, all very different in size, aesthetics, desirability.

But there’s a few things houses in this wide range have in common.

1. They are rarely designed to utilize the natural elements available to them (sun, rain, earth, wind).

2. They do not function (power and water) when the grid goes down.

3. They are typically made out of unhealthy (for you and the planet) materials.

4. They are not built to last more than a few decades (at most) without spending a lot of money over the years for maintenance (essentially rebuilding / reinforcing the home over time to ensure its continued safety and functionality).

Photo: Gasper House SIREWALL.

Why is this the case?

One problem is people usually want the biggest bang for their buck: the largest house for the least amount of money (lowest cost per square foot) at every price point. Meaning that construction is a race to the bottom to churn out the largest enclosure for the smallest budget with the cheapest (and unhealthiest) materials.

Another problem is we live in the current paradigm where we seem to have forgotten that nature is our partner and we can work with her to help provide some of our basic needs (and give back to her in a regenerative way by the way we live ). Most housing being built today does not relate to nature. Orientation of the building, type of wall construction, roof design, number and placement of windows, are not optimized to accept help from the elements, heat from the sun, light from the sun, natural airflow, rain, the stable temperature of the earth, and materials choices. In fact, most housing seems to ignore nature completely and rely exclusively on man made systems to function.

Thirdly, we have this massive blind spot when it comes to how we relate to the grid. In our conscious mind we know it is vulnerable, we’ve experienced it letting us down, we know it is costly for us personally, for taxpayers generally, for the planet absolutely, and yet we rely on it implicitly for all of our comforts, to keep us alive, and our society functioning.

And yet, almost exclusively, we continue to build houses that rely on the grid for heating, cooling, electricity, water and sewage. We don’t build houses that embody their own infrastructure. We build boxes that are only able to function by connecting to the grid.

What’s the value per square foot of a home that does not function when the grid goes down? Practically nothing. In fact, some houses can kill you when the grid goes down (heatstroke, hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, fires).

We find that off-grid/alternative/eco homes have value beyond just the simple measure of price per square foot, value that includes: a healthier living environment, peace of mind, independence from the unreliable grid, freedom from ever-increasing utility bills, and the opportunity to live a life more aligned with nature and more kind to our planet.

We want to see this idea take hold like organic food or Fair Trade goods. These movements have educated consumers on the value (beyond price) of these purchases–value for the planet, the people who work to produce the goods, and for the consumer’s own health and conscience.

What’s the value of a house that has great air quality and natural light?

What’s the value of a house built from materials that are healthy for you and the planet?

What’s the value of a house that is built to last for generations?

What’s the value of a house that still has lights, water, toilet and heating when the grid goes down?

A beautiful, solid, off-grid house for you and your family?

Priceless.

Photo: Gasper House SIREWALL.

5 Tips for Lowering the Cost of Your Off-Grid Build

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 21:55:35 GMT

While the majority of the world lives off-the-grid by default due to lack of access to electricity, water and sanitation, there is a preconception that modern off-grid living is only for the wealthy and we are starting to see more examples of expensive off-grid homes that are out of reach for most people. Part of our mission as Eco Build Lab is to help make off-grid living more affordable and available to everyone. A few ways you can do that are:

1. Assess your wants vs. your needs. We all need shelter from the elements, comfortable temperature, clean water, food, and safe sanitation to survive. And though it is possible to live without electricity, as much of the world does, we think that electricity falls in the category of need as it does so much to improve quality of life. While there are many things you may want, no one needs stainless steel appliances or granite countertops to survive. Make a list of your needs and a separate list of your wants. Come up with a plan to address your needs first. Living off-the-grid fits well with the ethos of a living simpler life with fewer things. If you are able to downsize your possessions, pare down your wants and look at how to provide for your needs, you may realize that you can live in a more modest, less expensive home yet still be comfortable.

2. Start small. If you are an individual, could you live in a small but well-designed off-grid tiny house? If you are a couple, or a small family, ask yourself if it would be possible to live in a small studio or one-bedroom home if it meant it was more affordable and you could add on to it in the future as time and money allow? Starting small is less expensive and less resource-intensive. It also takes a lot less time!

3. Build it yourself. If you have the itch to build your own home, there are fewer things more rewarding than building your own OFF-GRID home. You can save on labor expenses if you do it yourself. You can also spend extra time looking for free, inexpensive or repurposed materials to incorporate in your home. You can be your own project manager, ordering materials, scheduling subcontractors, organizing your jobsite. BUT there’s a whole world of considerations before you start on this path. Sign up for our newsletter and keep an eye for our soon-to-be-launching podcast for future posts and advice about the off-grid owner/builder experience.

4.Learn as much as you can first . We can’t tell you how many failed/unfinished off-grid house projects we’ve seen due to the owners rushing in, all inspired, without a realistic idea about what they were getting themselves into. It’s easy to underestimate the amount of time things take to build, especially if you are new to construction. It’s also easy to look at your budget with rose-colored glasses, even when you are paying someone else to build the house for you. Building is expensive, especially these days. Wishing that your budget is going to get you the finished house of your dreams is not enough. It’s also important to understand the interrelated nature of off-grid power, water, and wastewater treatment systems. Please don’t rush out and start pounding tires, or ramming earth, or stacking straw bales, without having a comprehensive plan for your off-grid systems in place!

5. Help others. A great way to learn is attending a natural building workshop or jumping in to volunteer on a project. If you have a friend, family member, or acquaintance who is also building an off-grid home, offer to lend them a hand. Sweat-equity can be accumulated with a work trade. You help someone, they help you. Start banking work trade hours before you even start your house. You can learn so much in the process and the energy created by teaming up is super motivating!

WWOOFING is also a great way to travel around the world, discover possible places you would like to live all while learning more about farming!

Have you already built your own off-grid home and have more tips to share? We’d love to hear from you!

How Much Does an Off-Grid Home Cost?

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 21:17:00 GMT

A few of the Factors that will influence the cost of an off-grid home...

This is almost always the first question people ask when they get excited about the possibility of going off-the grid. We completely understand this question and know what people really want to hear. Just a number. “ It costs (insert number of) dollars to build an off-grid home.” The problem is there are so many factors that influence the cost. Factors that really only you can make decisions on. Off-grid homes are not off-the-rack cookie cutter buildings in a huge development where you can walk into a model home and say, ”Yes, I’ll take it for that price.” Off-grid homes are not fast fashion, they are couture, built to fit you, your climate and your lifestyle.

Let’s take a look at some of the factors that can determine how much an off-grid home will cost to construct.

1. Off-Grid Systems

Many people ask, “How much does an off-grid home cost compared to a conventional home?” We do have a quick answer for that, off-grid homes are incomparable, like comparing apples to oranges. It’s not fair to compare them to on-grid homes because without the life support systems of the old, vulnerable, expensive, flailing, carbon-spewing grid, on-grid homes simply DO NOT function. When you build off-grid you are paying for your utility bills in advance for the lifetime of the home. These system components include (but are not limited to): solar panels, batteries, water storage tanks, water pumps and filters, and materials for grey and black water treatment. These components represent a large portion of the construction budget of an off-grid home. (On-grid homes don’t have any of these items.)

So, yes, while off-grid homes can sometimes be more expensive at the time of construction than on-grid homes, you are paying to become your own utility company, with all the mechanics that are required to do so. You now own a car with an engine instead of just a chassis sitting in storage. You have a body with a pumping heart, air-filled lungs and a functioning nervous system, instead of a lifeless corpse, which is what an on-grid home is when the grid goes down, a decomposing body, in the dark with moldering food inside. Off-grid systems bring a house to life so it can sustain you and your family!

2. Size

Obviously. Generally the bigger any building is, the more it costs to build.

There is one interesting caveat to this that is specific to off-grid homes. Sometimes the cost per square foot can go down as the building gets bigger. How is that possible? Well, off-grid homes contain a number of components that make up the power, water, and sewage systems that provide the functionality of the building, lights and appliances turn on, water flows hot and cold out of faucets and fixtures, your poo is resolved with some sort of system, all without plugging into the electric grid, connecting to water mains, or hooking up to the sewer system.

So say you want to build a one bedroom off-grid home, you are going to need all these components (and more) to make it perform and take care of your daily needs. But if you want to expand the same house to 2 bedrooms, you are adding square footage but maybe not adding much to the budget for the systems you need. Adding a bedroom will add cost in materials and labor, but the room itself, in terms of systems, only needs some wiring for lights and electrical outlets. Adding a bathroom will cost more per square foot than adding a bedroom as there are more fixtures and plumbing needed.

3. Type of off-grid home

There are many different types of off-grid homes made from different materials. They vary in cost and performance from simple hand-built cob construction to structural insulated rammed earth ( SIREWALL ). Some types use less expensive materials but are more labor-intensive, some use more expensive materials but less labor. Contrary to popular belief, houses built from earthen materials are not necessarily “dirt cheap” because they can take more person hours to build than something like poured pumice-crete where the walls can be formed and poured in a day or so, but the materials cost more. When you are deciding on what type of home to build you will want to consider: a building envelope that works well in your climate, a type of construction that uses readily-available materials and experienced builders in your area, a structure that is code-compliant if you need to obtain a building permit.

4. Location

What’s the climate like? Do you want your off-grid home to heat and cool itself without backup systems? You can get away with using less insulation and less glazing in a milder climate, making the materials budget less. In an extremely cold climate you will need to bulk up your building envelope so that it can regulate itself thermally, making the materials budget more. The climate will have a big influence on the cost of the home.

Is the site in an extreme location, on a mountainside, on an island, on a slab of solid rock? Is it in a remote area and you will need to add to your budget for the cost of getting materials to the site? All these scenarios can add to the cost of construction.

5. Who is building the house?

Are you building it yourself? Yes, it is possible to save money by doing this, many off-grid homes have been built by their owners, some of whom were experienced builders when they started, some were complete novices. How much money you can save on labor costs by doing it yourself will depend on how valuable you are as a builder and if you are okay with paying for your own mistakes. That is not to say that professional builders do not make mistakes and you may end up paying for those as well. One hybrid way to approach a project is to have a professional crew build the structure and you come in and do the finishes. Whoever you choose to build your project, we recommend having all electric and plumbing systems installed by a licensed professional.

6. Level of finishes

Is the house finished in a simple, modest way or is it filled with expensive tile and stone? Does it have oodles of custom cabinets? Should the bathtub be sitting in the Museum of Modern Art? What types of finishes and appliances you choose will have a big impact on your bottom line. If you are looking to save money on finishes, you have to get creative, inexpensive finishes are sometimes the more natural ones, earthen plaster walls, poured adobe floors, canvas as a ceiling finish. You can also search for repurposed items like reclaimed barn wood, vintage bathtubs, assorted broken tile for mosaics, and even used tools at places like the Habitat for Humanity Restore, Craigslist, garage sales, flea markets, and demolition sites.

7. Who is living in it and what’s their expectation of the performance?

This factor, perhaps more than the others above can influence the cost of an off-grid home. If you are expecting unlimited power and water, taking 30 minute hot showers twice a day, firing up your electric kiln at midnight, a hot tub with 24 jets, a “back kitchen”, the cost of your systems components is going to be correspondingly higher. If you are willing to adjust your lifestyle to align with your climate and have an awareness of your consumption, then the cost of your home will be less because you don’t need the systems to be as big.

These are just some of the factors that influence the cost of building a new off-grid home. While building fully off-the-grid can be more expensive than conventional on-grid, stick frame construction, more and more people are choosing this alternative due to the unreliability of the grid, the cost of utilities, and their personal desire to live a less carbon-intensive lifestyle.

What are YOUR reasons for wanting to go off-grid? We’d love to hear from you !

How Making Your Own Power Empowers You

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 20:39:29 GMT

Start to Make your own power to Make your Own POWER!

More than ever it feels like there are so many things that we cannot control. Pandemics, inflation, civil unrest, war, climate change, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Sucked into doomscrolling or entertaining ourselves to death as an escape. Maintaining a positive outlook requires a Herculean effort and reminding ourselves that we should only focus on the things we CAN control.

One thing we can control is how we get our electricity. Going off-grid with solar power can provide a sense of independence and security in these unstable times.

Solar power, generated with PV panels, has been around for decades. President Jimmy Carter had panels on the White House which, sadly but unsurprisingly, Ronald Regan had removed. There was a small window of time during the mid-1970s when it seemed that alternative energy and building with concepts like passive solar and thermal mass might have a chance at widespread adoption. There were problems, though, with early solar systems. The panels themselves were wildly expensive and the battery technology was not capable of storing large amounts of power for long amounts of time.

Fast forward to the present and solar electric power is cheaper to produce per watt than burning fossil fuels and battery technology is vastly improved and potentially entering a renaissance, in part spurred on by the uptick production of electric vehicles. Community and large-scale solar projects are being built. Grid-tied rooftop solar is being incentivized with financing options and tax credits. A planned neighborhood in Florida made headlines when it took a direct hit from Hurricane Ida but did not lose electricity (like 2 million other people did) because it was powered by 700,000 (!) solar panels in a huge array .

All of this is cause for celebration. Solar power kicks butt! Woot! And yet...we don't think this is the best use of its potential. Way back when NASA was first putting solar modules on equipment it was shooting into space, their scientists advised the federal government that solar were most efficient when they are used directly on the thing they are powering rather than off in a distant solar farm connected to the grid.

That's what we're advocating for: having solar panels generating power for your home, BUT not connecting to the grid. Becoming your own utility company, not beholden to ever-climbing rates, and keeping the lights on (and everything else in your house) when the grid goes down for one of many reasons like extreme weather (cold, heat, wind), wildfires, demand being too high like for AC during a heatwave, computer malfunction, hacking and ransomware attacks, unfortunate animals interacting with it, and on and on... The grid is fragile, antiquated, and just not modern. No good reason to keep supporting this system when there's an alternative available that will put the power in your hands, literally.

Advances in battery storage, inverter technology, Energy Star appliances, and LED lighting combined with the exponential drop in cost per watt for PV panels, mean that it is now possible to operate a modern house with high-tech features and conveniences with a home solar system independent of the grid.

When you produce, store, and use your own electricity you take control of one of your most basic needs. You are paying for your system upfront but you will never have to pay another electric bill, never bumble around in the dark looking for candles when the power goes out, and never rush to eat all the food in your fridge before it goes bad. And this one thing leads you to consider the other ways you could become more resilient like collecting your own water and heating your house without fuel.

So what's the first step to becoming your own power company? We believe that lightening your power load is important for everyone, even if you are not quite ready to make the switch to solar power. Switching to LED lighting, getting rid of phantom loads, and improving the thermal efficiency of your home are all great places to start! For more on how much energy you could save check out our page Lighten Your Power Load .

Stay tuned for more great reasons to go off-grid with power, water, sewage, and thermal comfort!

And if you just can't wait and want to get started learning more today check out our course OFF-GRID JUMPSTART!

Who is off-grid-living for?

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:18:26 GMT

There are a lot of preconceptions about the "kind of People" who live off-the-grid

OK, close your eyes and say the words "off-the-grid" to yourself. What images pop up? Dirty Hippies? New Age Crackpots? DIY Mountain Men? Gutter punks? People have very strong opinions about who they think are living off-the-grid. Even before they know anything about the person, the house, or the lifestyle, the very idea of living off-the-grid can elicit strong opinions from the public. They are often taken aback, somewhat confused and/or exceptionally curious to the point of being invasive. Living off-the-grid seems to be a lifestyle so out of step with the majority of society as to be akin to polygamy. They may perceive it as a rejection of civic duty and a refutation of modernity. It is an idea that is visceral. It smells musty, looks dirty, feels crunchy, tastes earthy, and sounds like a sad guitar. The idea also feels dated, "Yeah, I heard they tried that back in the 70's and it didn't work". Examples in popular culture reinforce these misconceptions.

The generalizations extend to several stereotypes:

• Stereotype 1

Hippies living in wooden shanties with glazed eyes, ripped ponchos, bare feet, Mason jars, quilts, dirt floors, chickens, goats, outhouses, and aprons.

• Stereotype 2

Survivalists in camo pants living in underground bunkers with generators, wall-to-wall MREs, their own surgical and dental equipment, high-tech filters that turn urine into drinking water, iodine tablets, fluorescent lighting, ammo and guns, guns, guns.

• Stereotype 3

Fugitives of all kinds. Deadbeat dads, conspiracy theorists, convicts, the mentally ill, tax evaders, etc…

• Stereotype 4

Cult Members chanting in lotus pose. Robes and drape-y clothing. Incense. Tambourines. Dynamic male leader with a harem and a HumVee. Devotees swaying with eyes closed and hands raised. Daisies. Transcendental meditation. Bunk beds. Tragic endings.

• Stereotype 5

The Super Wealthy who are not permanent residents but have their multimillion dollar escape palace built in an abandoned missile silo with marble floors, endless entertainment options, a fresh air exchanger, elevator, wine cellar, and rooms for servants (the lucky few plebeians who get to hunker down with them).

No matter which stereotype is depicted, there's a general sense that people who live off-the-grid are escaping the current politics and rejecting popular culture. Also, that these smug folks think they are better than everyone else because they have found "the answer" and are creating their own utopia.

One seemingly acceptable way for people to live off-the-grid is if they are testing out living methods for the colonization of the other planets. For some reason this is not "crazy" like all the above. It is serious science involving penis-shaped rockets, billionaires, jumpsuits, and celebrities.

Who exactly is the brainwashed cult member? Maybe it's everyone living ON the grid? Everyone who truly accepts that the government and private corporations are going to supply their most basic needs indefinitely. For a price, yes, certainly we all accept that. We accept the constant connection to the life support of the grid. We accept the industrialization of our food supply, the dominance of the automobile, the contamination of our air, the privatization of our water, the continued construction in flood zones, the loss of biodiversity, and the very real destruction of our natural world.

This is the cult of the "real world.” The world of the non-escapists. The world of the sane, rational, clean, and scientific. Every day we continue to live in this world we say, “yes.” "Yes" through our acceptance and unquestioning fidelity to the System. "Yes" to believing that the modern world has evolved by natural selection, in the most efficient, safest, and most beneficial way for 99.9% of humans. We are agreeing that everything works the way it was designed to work, and that any global environmental threats can be eliminated with a yet-to-be-developed-but-most-certainly-on-the-horizon-we-put-a-man-on-the-moon-and-a-smartphone-in-every-kid’s-pocket-“Dammit!-OF-COURSE-WE-CAN!"-technology.

Living off-the-grid is not a marginalized concept because it does not work. It is marginalized because of faulty preconceptions that prevail in our society, and the dominant forces that uphold the grid-connected status quo of the conventional building industry.

And while some of the people who fit the aforementioned stereotypes, do live off-the grid, off-grid living can be for anyone.

People who move off-grid feel they have only gained from the experience instead of sacrificed. They have learned about their home and themselves, they feel more comfortable and secure than they ever did in a conventional home and now can never imagine going back. There are simple, low-cost approaches and high-tech, luxurious applications and everything in between. We are here to help you develop a personal set of values for your off-grid home that will guide you through the process.

Do you wanna go off-the-grid but don't know where to start?

Lessons Learned from Living More than Half a Lifetime Off-the-Grid

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 15:52:07 GMT

8 things I learned li ving off-the-grid

As of this year I will have lived more than half of my life off-the-grid.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, end of the world prepper, utopian dreamer or in the witness protection program. I'm just someone who thinks that getting my electricity from the sun, my water from the sky and my comfort from the natural temperature of the earth makes sense. Like most Americans I grew up in a conventional home, lived in conventional apartments as a young adult, and like most Americans I did not know how my electricity was being produced, where my water was coming from or how it would be treated after leaving the house. I didn’t know how my dwelling was built, what materials it was built from and their impact on the planet during their manufacture, installation and eventual disposal or breakdown. I had no clue that it could be built differently, better, more natural, more efficient.

I came to off-grid living through a series of chance events but it immediately resonated with thoughts I'd had since childhood, but had yet to put into words. The way we are currently living on this planet is fundamentally wrong and against nature. We are poisoning the air, water, and ourselves. Chopping down all the trees and killing all the animals. Modern houses are built crappily, from crappy materials, not made to last. Power plants are ugly and smell bad. The grid is an unattractive, dangerous, and inefficient jumble of wires and poles.

Humans lived for millenia without the grid. There has to be a better way for us to provide for our needs and satisfy our wants.

Living off-the-grid means freeing yourself from the wires and pipes that carry electricity, heating, cooling, and fresh water to your house and carry wastewater away from it. Living off-the-grid means still having a house that functions even when the power gets cut after a natural disaster, or because of a planned brownout, or any of the other myriad of reasons why the grid fails.

I've been heating and cooling my home naturally without backup, producing my own electricity, collecting my own water and treating my wastewater for more than half my life. It's been exciting, empowering, rewarding, financially-beneficial, and sometimes challenging and I've learned a few things along the way.

1. You don't have to drop out of society (unless you want to).

I have a bank account, pay taxes, drive a car and watch Netflix. I am not trying to escape from the "real world". I don't have a stash of MREs or a "bug out bag". The stereotypes about the "kind of people" who live off the grid are pervasive. The media loves these stereotypes because they make good entertainment: the smelly hippie, the tortured loner, the militant survivalist, the brainwashed cult follower. Where do we see depictions of happy, healthy, lucid individuals and families choosing not to connect to Big Power, Big Oil, and city water? Living off-the-grid is not about sacrifice, deprivation and hardship. It is about common sense, technology and hope. It's about living a comfortable, "normal" life without continuing to plunder the earth.

Living off-grid can by definition be a little isolating because the places where these types of homes are currently allowed to be built tend to be more rural, on the outskirts of smaller towns and communities. After living in a major city for many years, I first found this difficult and felt like I was "missing out" on "the action" but now that I'm acclimated to small town life, I wouldn't trade it. I sometimes feel like I'm looking at the world from the bottom of the sea. The rest of the world is on the surface of the sea as viewed from fathoms deep. I can see light, shapes and colors, and even hear noises, but everything is muted, soft-focus. Everything but the stark urgency of the climate crisis. That blares in my skull and creeps over my skin. The only way to calm myself is to keep searching for, living in, and sharing solutions.

There is a disconnect from the "real world" in Taos that can happen when you live there for a while. Fashions come and go. National news stories flutter by. But the land and the sky, the wind and the sweet, baked smell of sagebrush, the extremes of temperature, the chores of frontier living, these all are in the foreground.

The internet has been hugely beneficial for off-grid homesteaders and communities. There are critics who complain about the "cognitive dissonance" of living off-grid while being connected to WiFi. How else do we share our stories? I feel like, if a beautiful alternative to the current self-destructive path we are on exists but no one knows about it, what's the point of all of our hard work? The internet has allowed individuals and groups to share their experiences and knowledge, connecting with others off-grid and blazing trails for more people to follow.

2. Humans are adaptable. Get out of your "comfort zone".

Modern houses are designed to put you in the "comfort zone" when it comes to temperature, around 72 degrees, day in day out, any season, any climate in any type of building. Conventional homes don't magically maintain a comfortable temperature by themselves, you have to heat and cool them, mostly by burning fossil fuels for electric heat or directly burning fuels like wood, heating oil or natural gas. When living in a conventional home, I didn't really give this too much thought. I took it for granted that this is just "the way things are '' and that I'd always have some kind of heater or AC and a utility bill to go with it.

Living off-the-grid in a home designed to heat and cool itself naturally, I've learned to pay more attention to the operation of the house, close the thermal shades at night to keep the heat in, correct any cold air drafts, operate the windows and skylights to cool off the house in the summer. My house does not stay 72 degrees year round, no matter what the weather. It varies between 60 and 78 degrees, for me a little chilly and a little too warm. But I've learned to adapt, with a big fleece robe and fluffy comforter for the winter, and an electric fan and icy drinks in the summer. And it's certainly a matter of relativity. When it's 10 below zero outside, 60 is practically tropical. When it's 101 outside, 78 is blissfully cool. If you think about all the different climates humans have called home around the globe, you realize that we are highly adaptable as a species and the "comfort zone" is much wider that a homeostatic 72 degrees. That is not to say that you can't achieve the comfort zone in an off-grid home and many newer buildings do so through design or back-up systems. But if you reach outside your "comfort zone" you can build more affordably and in more climates.

3. Something isn't precious until you are responsible for it.

In the "modern", "developed" world we have been riding the wave of cheap, available fossil fuel for over 100 years. It has transformed industry, transportation, agriculture, housing, and virtually every other aspect of life. "Power" is just as much a belief system as an economic system, so huge, so pervasive, as to become almost invisible. Most people in the "modern" world don't chop wood for heat, burn cow dung for cooking, haul fresh water on foot from miles away, or sit quietly in the dark after the sun goes down. "We" have frothing Jacuzzi bathtubs, giant monolithic refrigerators with built in cameras and led monitors, we have cheap gasoline, cheap junk food, cheap clothes, blazing bright, glittering metropolises, where you can feel the heat from the glow on your face at night, we poop in drinking water, throw away 1/3 of our perfectly good, uneaten food. We have hot and cold water at our fingertips, we flip a switch, press a button, or program an app and our homes come roaring to life. We pay for it. We expect it. We expect to pay for it. Pervasive and invisible.

Living off-the-grid forced me, for the first time in my life, to think about where my resources come from, how they are manufactured and how I use them. As I built my own house, starting with and living what now might be called a Tiny Home, a 120 square foot earthen and plaster dome, I lived for a time a lifestyle closer to most people in the majority world: no electricity, no running water, a pit toilet outside. As my project progressed I slowly could afford, and add amenities. My electric system started as one solar panel, 2 batteries, a charge controller, a DC outlet and one lightbulb. My first solar-powered light bulb was a revelation. After living for months with no lights after dark, struggling to read and function at night by candle, headlamp and lantern light, the illumination from one bare bulb in my tiny hut was tranformative, thrilling. Not only could I cook, clean, read and relax without fumbling around in the semi-dark, I was giddy just knowing that the energy was coming from a clean and renewable source. I had harnessed my little fraction of the energy that hits the earth each day and put it use. It was mine for free and forever.

4. If you learn how to work WITH the abundance of nature, it will provide more than you need.

Any off-grid electric system, no matter the size, requires the respect and engagement of the owner/operator. You must live with an awareness of the limits of your system. You must design your home to be as efficient as possible. You must consider the seasons and the weather, how many cloudy days you've had in a row. Your electricity isn't a seemingly unlimited resource being produced elsewhere, in someone else's backyard, rather it is collected and stored in your system, for your exclusive storage and use. If you leave every light in the house on all night and do 10 loads of laundry and run your blender for 5 hours and binge-watch the Great British Baking Show on your 50" TV, after 3 days of cloudy weather, you're probably going to run out (temporarily) of electricity. If, on the other hand, you choose awareness, engagement and respect, you will never run out of electricity and will feel especially smug when the grid power in the area goes out and your town and neighbors are now the ones sitting around in the dark and fumbling with candles.

The same holds true for water. If you are choosing to live strictly off water collected off your roof from rain and snow, you are going to have a very different relationship to water. You are going to design your building for maximum water efficiency, hopefully installing systems to reuse and treat every drop more than once. You are going to choose the most efficient appliances. You won't absentmindedly leave the tap running. If you notice that you have a leaking fixture you're going to fix it immediately. You're going to check the water levels in your storage tank, monitor your usage, consider the seasons, watch the weather forecast, consider when to shower and when you can splurge on a bath, assess how many loads of laundry you can do.

5. You can align your daily life with your values.

So much of being seen as "green", " eco-friendly" or "sustainable" these days has been commodified and greenwashed to the point that driving a new $100,000 Tesla, paying to do a carbon offset for your flight to Europe, sporting a $50 metal drinking water bottle, covering your roof with tens of thousands of dollars of solar panels while tying in to the electric grid, are ways of expressing your ethics through conscious consumerism. All these choices are better than driving a gas guzzling SUV, flying with abandon, quenching your thirst with bottled water, or burning coal to produce all your electricity. If you have the money these choices are all very easy and comfortable, sexy even, especially since they do not challenge our consumerist culture.

But what if your daily life, including just spending a day in your most comfy sweatpants binging a new series, in and of itself was reducing the strain on our environment and resources? Would knowing that when you turn on the lights you are no longer burning fuels feel good? Would showering in solar heated, filtered rainwater that you collected from your roof help you feel like you've done your part to reduce strain on our dwindling freshwater resources? How amazing would it be to know that heating your house with the sun isn't putting any additional power (or money) in the hands of warmongering despots and morally bankrupt fossil fuel corporations?

Though I've lived so long off-the-grid that feeling good about my lifestyle is something that's just normal everyday life, recent world events have given me fresh eyes and renewed zeal about my choices.

6. There is no such thing as perfectly "green".

It seems that when you make a concerted effort to live a more eco-friendly life, some friends and acquaintances feel entitled to cross-examine your lifestyle, pointing out perceived contradictions. "Well, you still drive a CAR!" "But you get your food from the GROCERY STORE." "That pen is made out of PLASTIC." Well, yes, if I could live off-the-grid in a walkable green city and purchase all my food from a local organic farm and buy artisanal fountain pens made from sustainably harvested vegan feathers, yes, of course I would. But I don't live in utopia, yet, and I am choosing what I believe is the best path available to me at this time. Sometimes you need to spell it out for people, "Please support my efforts by not constantly pointing out where they are (in your mind) lacking or even contradictory".

7. "They" don't make it easy.

It is not the easiest thing in the world to finance and build an off-grid home that will receive an official certificate of occupancy and be eligible for homeowners’ insurance. All these systems, county planning, the mortgage and insurance industries are inherently biased towards conventional construction and utilities. Even selling a perfectly functioning, beautiful off-grid home can be challenging with realtors and appraisers who are not familiar with them and the lack of "comps", comparable homes in the area.

I wouldn't say a conspiracy exists against off-grid and alternative construction but it is rare to find municipalities that are taking the time to understand and validate these approaches. Taos, New Mexico is one of the rare exceptions and I feel thankful to live here.

8. I want to help make off-grid living more accessible for everyone.

I want to share the benefits, drawbacks and victories that off-grid life provides. I want to help people understand the systems that support this type of existence. I want to help people decide if this is right for them. I want to share mistakes so you don't have to make them. I want to continue to learn about all the different ways to live off-grid and share success stories from all over the world. I want to build a supportive community where we share knowledge, inspiration and the latest technology.

Actually, I AM doing these things right now, from my solar powered computer in the comfort and quiet of my off-grid home.

Yes, that's a different house from the other photos. It's also off-the-grid.

It's Time to Cancel the Grid

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 19:42:49 GMT

Sorry, grid, you've let us down one too many times.

It's Time to Cancel the Grid

The fierce winter blast that brought snow and record cold tempertures to much of the US in the past week has also exposed the grid for what it is: outdated, vulnerable, inflexible, and unreliable. The state that produces the most fossil fuels has the largest number of people suffering without heat, light, or running water. People are sleeping in their cars, risking carbon monoxide poisoning by blasting their gas ovens, crowding in with family members during the pandemic, and burning their childrens' toys to stay warm. This situation, here in the 21st century, in the wealthiest nation on the planet is unacceptable.

"The unfolding power emergency is a reminder modern civilization depends on easily disrupted systems."

CNN: The Texas crisis is not how modern life is supposed to work

Is this the best we can do? In this high tech world, should we be relying on analog, centralized systems to meet our most basic needs? We don't rely on landlines for communication and information any more.

We've known for many years how storms, fires, computer glitches, surging seasonal energy demand and other factors can interrupt the delivery of energy through the grid. Perhaps some of this week's suffering could have been avoided if power operators had been better prepared (a cold snap in 2011 was a warning), but for many reasons it's time to cancel the grid.

There's already talk of putting massive amounts of money into the existing grid to strenghten it. To make these emergencies less impactful. But calamities like this are going to keep on happening because we can't possibly prepare for every anomoly in every location that climate change is going to throw our way. It's a waste of resources to try to prop up this fundamentally failing system.

NYT: A Glimpse of America's Future: Climate Change Means Trouble for Power Grids

Homes that provide their own electricity, water, thermal comfort, and sewage treatment are being built right now. They do not rely on outdated infrastructure. They do not have utility bills. And, when the grid goes down, they still have lights, running fridges, working internet, heat, flushing toilets, hot water, and pipes that won't freeze. Each home in every community could do this, be independent. A failure of systems at one house would only affect one house. This is where we should direct renewable energy money and funding for green technologies. This is resilience. This is modernity.

Let's cancel the grid. If you want to learn how, our online courses will become available this Spring. LEARN MORE.

Learn more about going off-the-grid and why you should do it.

If you want to learn how, our online courses will become available this Spring. LEARN MORE.

Building With Adobe Bricks

ashton@eflowcreative.com (Elizabeth Wolfe) — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 23:17:49 GMT

An ancient technique that is still super relevant!

Adobe is more than Photoshop and Acrobat. It’s a building material that has been used for thousands of years! Adobe is a mixture of high-clay content dirt, course sand and long straw. It has excellent thermal mass qualities. The adobe mixture is put into brick forms (standard size is 10”x14”). With the right mixture, the forms will slip right off and the wet bricks are left to dry out in the sun. After the bricks are fully dry, they can be used for construction using typical bricklaying methods. The best mortar to use with adobe bricks is composed of the same materials used to form the bricks- dirt and sand. The mortar mixture is simply a wetter adobe mixture- minus the straw, which is not necessary. In many Southwestern states in the U.S., adobe meets building codes as long as your first two courses of brick are reinforced with a stabilizer (Portland cement or asphalt are commonly used). Adobe works best in dry climates since it does not hold up well against water infiltration. If your building is covered with adobe plaster on the outside, you will, most likely have to re-apply the mud plaster on the exterior of your building every year. One way to not have to re-apply as often is to have large roof overhang to help protect the adobe mud plaster. You could also finish your mud plaster with a lime plaster which is more waterproof, and still allows your building to "breathe". Yet another way to get around this maintenance is to cover the exterior with a cement stucco mixture. Hairline cracks can develop with stucco, so you will need to re-stucco every 5757706203 years, but it will keep the water out, and you will have to reapply much less often than mud plaster. Another downside to stucco is that your bricks won't breathe as well, and your walls may fail or need to be repaired if the bricks are too suffocated. Really, adobe bricks can be finished in a variety of ways! We recommend insulating the exterior of the bricks to take full advantage of their thermal mass capabilities on the inside -this will help you stabilize your interior temperature and possibly help you heat and cool your home under the right circumstances.

Pros

Adobe is a wonderful code-compliant “green / natural” material that will help keep your home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It is a natural and relatively cheap material. You can make the bricks yourself using dirt, sand, staw, a wheelbarrow, a hoe, some buckets of water, a simple brick form, and either a lot of time or a lot of friends. Another plus is that you can build your adobe bricks completely without grid power! Adobe is also great at deterring rodents (as they can not live inside the dense walls). Adobe walls breathe well, and have a good passage of air which deters mold-causing condensation.

Cons

Adobe doesn’t work well in a wet or humid environment. Adobe walls with mud plaster exterior finish will need yearly maintenance unless you opt for another finish. Adobe can be heavily damaged by water if there is a leak, so it is paramount to make sure your building stays water-tight.

What's a Greywater System?

ashton@eflowcreative.com (Elizabeth Wolfe) — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 23:14:19 GMT

Greywater can be reused to water plants and flush your toilet

Almost two-thirds of waste water produced in a home is classified as greywater. Greywater is water left over after it has been used for bathing, dishwashing, and laundry, basically any used water in the house except the water from the toilet. This water, while not drinkable, has a much lower volume of pathogens than the black water coming out of the toilet. It is much easier to treat greywater than black water and make it available for landscaping or toilet flushing and it’s legal to do so in states that use the International Plumbing Code. While many states still classify greywater as sewage, some municipalities (especially in desert environments) are looking at the advantages of greywater re-use as it relieves some burden from already overworked sewage treatment plants and reduces the demand for precious fresh water.

For the autonomous homeowner those advantages also apply as treating and re-using greywater can reduce the burden on alternative waste water system, potentially improving performance and reducing the frequency of required maintenance. Greywater is also packed with desirable nutrients for plants such as nitrogen and phosphorous which act as fertilizer. Greywater is an amazing source of irrigation for exterior plants. It can also be used to grow food both inside and outside the home.

Source separation is the key concept that makes greywater available for use. Conventional plumbing ties all the waste water lines together, mixing the not so dirty greywater, with the very dirty black water and sending it all to either a municipal waste water treatment plant or to an on-site septic system. A house that has alternative waste water treatment systems would be plumbed to separate the water coming out of your bathroom sink, tub/shower, and washing machine drains, and plumbing them to a greywater treatment system. Greywater from the kitchen sink has a high volume of organic matter and either needs to be pre-filtered or sent directly to your black water treatment system.

Planning Your Greywater Treatment Solution

When it comes to selecting and planning for a greywater treatment system either inside or outside your home, there are several factors you'll want to consider. Wait let's back up one second...if you want to build an off-grid home you basically HAVE to have a greywater system of some sort as you will not be hooked up a to municipal sewer system and the tens or hundreds of gallons of greywater your household will be producing each day need to go somewhere. Of course you could just send it all, along with your toilet water, to a conventional septic tank with a leach field. However, these systems can get quickly overwhelmed dealing with a high volume of water and will need to be pumped out frequently to the tune of a few hundred bucks each time. If you've built your little paradise way out in the sticks, or on a steep slope, or at the end of a difficult dirt road, it can be that much more expensive to get someone out to evacuate your tank. Greywater is bonus water, really, utilizing it is essentially multiplying the number of inches of annual precipitation by two or three times, which is crucial if you are living off a roof water harvesting system. So, greywater, yes! Let's do this!

Our favorite greywater system is the one employed by Earthship Biotecture because it is an elegant system that takes the rainwater harvest and uses it 4 times for 4 different purposes. After the water is filtered, pumped, and pressurized, it can be used for drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing, and laundry. After the water is used for those reasons, it becomes known as “greywater” and is fed into planter cells. These cells range in depth and have several layers of rock, gravel, sand, etc. that filter the water as it travels from one cell to the next growing plants and sometimes food along the way. This ingenious design is watering plants and filtering water at the same time. By the time the water reaches the final planter cell, it is clean enough to flush your toilet! The used toilet water, known as “ black water ” is then piped outside into a black water botanical cell. This exterior botanical cell is perfect for fruit trees and berry brambles. Any human excrement eventually ends up in what is basically a traditional septic system. But unlike a traditional septic situation, you will be sending way less wastewater, so you won’t need to pump your septic as much. And don’t worry, we don’t recycle the water from there. You will not be drinking poo or pee water. This final cell is the end of the line.

Earthship greywater systems have been in use for dozens of years so there are many functional examples. In these systems water is treated in interior "botanical cells" which are designed to run along the sun-facing side of the building next to the wall of glass. These cells are large planters lined with a heavy rubber membrane and contain layers of rock, gravel, sand, and soil. Used water travels in to the planters where plants drink up some of the water to grow but also aerate the water with their roots. The system is sloped below floor level so that water travels through with gravity to a deeper well at the end where it’s collected and pumped, on demand, to the toilet tank to be available for the next flush.

Over the years many different plants have been tested in this system. It has been observed that when a new system is first planted it is best to start with plants that you know are going to grow and establish roots quickly and start using and aerating the water. These plants should also be hardy and pest-resistant, and require minimal maintenance. Once your planter is thriving with these initial plants, then you can start experimenting with more exotic or food-producing plants.

Wetlands Is Another Cool Way To Filter Greywater

Another way to filter greywater is with constructed wetlands systems, using biomimcry to recreate water filtration as it happens in nature. Wetlands have been used in large-scale applications to treat industrial and agricultural wastewater as well as storm runoff and partially-treated municipal septic effluent. These systems may also be built on a residential scale and are comprised of rubber, clay, or cement-lined cells filled with gravel or soil and planted with water loving plants like reeds, cat tails, and willow.

There are two types of wetlands: surface flow - where greywater pools up like a pond and subsurface flow - where greywater enters the system below the level of the plants and growing medium. For our purposes, we will talk only about subsurface flow as there is potential for exposure to pathogens, as a result these systems may be more easily accepted by local building code officials. As in nature, constructed wetlands slow down the flow of water giving plants time to use up some of the water through transpiration and to oxygenate and filter it. Plant roots and the spaces between the gravel create homes for microbes to move in and get to work cleaning the water.

Exterior constructed wetlands may be used for treating black or greywater and there exist many functioning examples of both. Interior greywater wetlands may serve a similar function to Earthship-style planters in a building where you want to recollect the treated greywater to use for toilet flushing. The differences between wetland greywater planters and Earthship-style ones are: the cell is filled only with gravel rather than sand and soil, they are not as deep (a potential advantage if you are building on a site with a lot of below grade rock). if you wanna know more, read / buy our friend, Dan's book .

Keep ALL Your Systems In Mind

When you are in the process of constructing your home you'll always want to keep in mind the interconnected nature of your systems. Though it might seem sometimes like the process is chronological (i.e. build your structure, install systems, apply finishes, install appliances) in reality, a few or all of these phases may be happening or being prepared for at the same time. For example, from collecting the first drops of rain water that land on your roof, to taking a shower in filtered, solar-heated rain water, to collecting a bouquet of flowers growing in your exterior black water cell, the winding path of every drop of water needs to be planned out and accounted for the during build process.

Water Catchment - What It Is and How To Do It

ashton@eflowcreative.com (Elizabeth Wolfe) — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 23:06:26 GMT

AKA Water Harvesting

Water is one of the most important things to consider when you’re going off-the-grid. There seems to be a lot of emphasis on power: solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc. but no one is really addressing water. Even in post-apocalyptic movies, somehow people always have clean drinking water (and gas for motorcycles and dune buggies to get them around a wasted desert landscape). I guess they’ve figured out all of the water problems in the future? But for right now, dwindling freshwater resources is one of the main problems we are facing today.

We can live weeks, and even months without food, but we can’t go more than two or three days without water. Furthermore, we need water for not only consumption and food preparation, but also for bathing, cleaning, and sanitation as well as food production.

Ok so let’s get down to it. Water. The best way to ensure your house is getting water when you live off-the-grid is roof-water catchment. You can also have a private well, but you will need to be hooked up to the grid or have a solar pump to the get the water out of the well and up to the level of your home. This can be fraught with problems like: 1) if the grid goes down and you only have a grid-tied pump for your well, you will have no water. Or 2) if your well is super deep, your solar pump might not have enough charge to continually bring water up, aaaaaannnnd you will have no water. So even though a well is a good idea, and we totally suggest having one as a backup, we are going to focus on water catchment as your main source of water because it’s smart and works awesomely.

Oh, btw, there are also systems that take humidity from the air and create drinking water, but the amount of fresh water isn’t enough to address bathing, and food production. So we will also rule this system out for now…

Water Catchment - What It Is and How To Do It

Water catchment (also called water harvesting) is how you catch rainwater from a surface (most likely your roof) and store it in barrels known as cisterns. The catchment water is then pumped or gravity fed into a filtration system that will address any contaminants before it is pressurized and fed into the various plumbing lines throughout your home.

So, basically, there are 4 main parts:

Collection surface (roof)
A storage facility (cisterns),
A way to get the water from the roof to the cisterns (gutters)
Filtration - you need to filter before the water hits the cisterns and when the water is making it's way from the cisterns into your home.

From there, the water will be pressurized and pumped through your home, just like a conventional system.

Our favorite water catchment system is the one employed by Earthship Biotecture because it is an elegant system that takes the rainwater harvest and uses it 4 times for 4 different reasons.

After the water is filtered, pumped and pressurized, it can be used for drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing, and laundry. After the water is used for those reasons, it becomes known as “ grey water ” and is fed into planter cells for growing food. These cells range in depth and have several layers of rock, gravel, sand, etc. that filter the water as it travels from one cell to the next. So this ingenious design is watering your plants and filtering the water at the same time. By the time the water reaches the final planter cell, it is clean enough to flush your toilet! The used toilet water, known as “ black water ” is then piped outside into a black water botanical cell. This exterior botanical cell is perfect for fruit trees and berry brambles. Any human excrement eventually ends up in what is basically a traditional septic system. But unlike a traditional septic situation, you will be sending way less wastewater, so you won’t need to pump your septic as much. And, don’t worry, we don’t recycle the water from there. You will not be drinking poo or pee water. This final cell is the end of the line. (unlike in cities like Las Vegas that use waste water reclamation, but we won’t get into that for now...).

The Best Roofing Materials To Use

Every building has a roof. So every building has the potential to catch rainwater. BUT be careful! Not all roofs are created equal! There are appropriate and inappropriate roof systems for water catchment. Your roof will be the first thing the rain water hits, and, if you're not careful, it will take all the stuff on your roof with it along with any chemicals leaching from your roofing material strait into your supply. That’s why choosing the proper material for your roof is essential. Water collected on asphalt roofs is really only good for non-edible plants (like bushes and grass). Therefore, any kind of traditional asphalt will not do for in-home use water harvesting. You need a material that will catch clean water. You can use EPDM, but it will need to be coated with a special paint to keep the rubber membrane from leaching contaminants. EPDM is also very tricky as it can get a small hole or puncture and water will find a way into your house very easily, but you will have a very hard time finding that hole! Another option is TPO - this is a newer roofing system similar to EPDM. It could also be decent for water catchment as long as its coating is addressed, however, I have heard mixed reviews on this material - especially if you live in an extreme climate. Slate or tiles roof are an interesting choice if you have the money and your structure can take the weight, but then you need to consider all the little crevices and areas between the tiles where water can get caught and sit for long periods of time, creating the perfect breeding ground for bacteria. YUCK.

When all is said and done, we think the best roofing material is Propanel. This coated metal is relatively light-weight, durable, and has a coating that is safe for catchment. They are also extremely long-lasting and are very reasonably priced roofing systems. The only thing about Propanel is that your roof will need meet the minimum slope requirements (which should be fine because you need a decent slope to catch clean water anyway). Yes indeedy. Propanel is the best!

Cisterns

A cistern is a storage tank for water, and there's a huge array of sizes and material to choose from. No matter which one you choose, it needs to be made out of an inert material - food-grade heavy duty plastic, reinforced concrete, fiberglass, or even tires rammed with earth and lined with cement and rubber are suitable materials. Basically, it needs to be watertight and safe to drink out of while being strong enough to withstand being buried or standing out in the sun.

Your cistern can be buried, or free-standing - either close or further away from your house. Check with your local planning department to see if there are any guidelines for placement or material.

Your cistern doesn't really require a whole lot of supervision, but it will require occasional maintenance. The main concern, of course, being contamination of the water from dust, bird and animal poo, insects, and air pollution. Most of these things can be taken care of with clean materials, proper maintenance and cleaning of your gutters, and filtering the water before it ever hits your cisterns.

You should also look into a system that allows for “flushing” the first part of the rainfall so that it doesn’t go into the cistern funnel. You should do this because the first 10 minutes or so of rainfall are the dirtiest! That’s the time when all those contaminants will be the strongest.

You will also need to check and clean your tanks. It’s sucks, but all tanks need cleaning. Every few years you will need to scrub the inner walls and floors of your tanks, and you might even need to use a tiny amount of chlorine. Make sure when you design your tanks, that they are easy to get in and out of and that there is the least amount of sunlight getting into them (this will keep bacterial growth to a minimum).

Sizing Your Cisterns

A good calculation to use is this:

Harvested Water (gallons) = Catchment Area (sq ft) x rainfall depth (inches) x 0.623 (conversion factor)

A good rule of thumb is to oversize your roof catchment are and your cistern storage capacity if you live in a climate where the rains only come during one part of the year. For instance, in New Mexico, where Kirsten and I live, the majority of or rain comes in the summer. That rain water has to last us throughout the rest of the year. Even though we get snow in the winter, there is only 1 inch of water catchment for every foot of snow. So, we need to have a lot of storage to make sure we are capturing every inch during the summer months to last us for the rest of the year.

For More Information On Roof Water Catchment Check Out These Resources:

Roof Water Harvesting for a Low Impact Water Supply

SurfRider Foundation

Water From The Sky Book

The Difference Between On-Grid Solar & Off-Grid Solar

ashton@eflowcreative.com (Elizabeth Wolfe) — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 22:47:59 GMT

“In a single hour, the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth is more than the entire world consumes in an year” - Business Insider

Solar Power is the way of the future! Clean energy is more available and more affordable than ever! Your electricity bill will only get more and more expensive and the unseen costs of that bill (pollution, climate change) are becoming more and more frightening. The clear path forward is renewable energy. We believe that small scale power production on an individual level will lead to less vulnerability, more financial freedom, and healthier relationship with the natural world.

On-Grid Systems

There has been growing interest in solar power systems over the past decade as photovoltaic technology has improved and the cost of solar panels has dropped drastically. Large-scale solar power installations are being built and connected to the existing grid. Also, many utility companies offer their customers the opportunity to install solar panels on their homes and connect them to the grid, using the grid to backup their electricity needs when it is nighttime or they have a larger draw than their system can provide for, and letting their customers sell back to the grid when they are producing excess power. This is called a grid-tie electrical system. This system is not preferable because if the grid goes down, you won't have any way to store the power you've collected, so when the sun goes down, you will have no power!

Off-Grid Systems

Though we applaud all efforts to meet energy needs with clean, renewable energy, the most efficient way to use electricity generated from solar panels is with an off-the-grid home power system. Personal solar systems for a home can be built in many different sizes to accommodate different demands but they all have the same basic components: photovoltaic panels, charge controller, batteries, inverter, DC load center and AC load center. This system is preferable because if the grid goes down - you will still have power!

Benefits To Installing Off-Grid Solar

Reasons to choose to install an off-grid solar system include:

No more electric utility bills
You won't loose power when there is a blackout or interruption in the grid
You will be making a personal contribution to reducing carbon emissions
You can easily build on an un-improved or remote parcel of land without having to run new, expensive electricity lines

Calculating The Size Of Your System

To calculate the size of the system (number of panels) you will need you can refer to an online calculator like this one that lets you add up the power draw of each of your appliances an multiply by the number of hour used. The calculator will total up all of your usage and give you your Watt Hours per Day. You’ll then use a map to determine how many Peak Sun Hours you get in your area and it will give you your minimum system size.

https://www.wholesalesolar.com/solar-information/start-here/offgrid-calculator#appliancePowerTable

Don’t be surprised if the calculator tells you that you will need a huge, expensive solar system to supply your current demand. Going off-the-grid means meeting nature halfway, reducing your needs (while not lowering your standard of living). To downsize your needs here are a few basic tips that will help:

Try to meet your heating and cooling needs with non-electric systems.
Take advantage of daylighting when available.
Avoid phantom loads or trickle drains on your system (electronics that are on all the time using a small amount of power when plugged in).
Use super-efficient LED lighting.
Avoid appliances with electric heating elements.

Once you have an idea of the size of system you’ll need, you will want to find a local installer who can help you design, build and install the system. The system can be designed to accept power input from multiple sources should you choose to add a wind turbine, micro-hydro or other alternative power generation method.

Best of luck!

On-The-Grid vs. Off-The-Grid

ashton@eflowcreative.com (Elizabeth Wolfe) — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 22:38:45 GMT

Why go off-the-grid? And what does it mean anyway?

You might have heard the phrase “going off-the-grid”, but might not be sure exactly what it means. For this book we're not talking about spending a long weekend on an azure blue beach with an actual book, turning off your cell phone or not checking your social media for a week. When we refer to the grid we are talking about the network of pipes and wires, power plants, sewage treatment facilities, even giant wind farms that create an interconnected maze providing our homes, businesses and institutions with heat, AC, water, electricity, and septic. These grids are so pervasive, so integral to day-to-day life as to be rendered invisible (though the bills they produce, air and water they pollute, etc. are not). The only time we really notice the grid is when it's not there anymore - a city gone dark, rotting food in a warming fridge, and a toilet that won't flush. We've all experienced this or at least seen it on the news.

Though the power and water grids are the lifeblood of the modern world, their infrastructure is depressingly analog and vulnerable. It is physical and static, if a wire is severed the thing it's attached to will stop working - whether it’s a TV or an entire city. If a water source is contaminated it affects everyone attached to that source. We are all essentially patients on life support. These tubes, pumps, catheters, and conduits connect to us everywhere we go, and keep us alive.

There are many reasons for interruptions to the grid. Weather, solar flares, maintenance, computer glitches, planned brownouts, overuse of electricity on hot summer days, etc.. Furthermore, we know we can expect more frequent and longer interruptions as much of the US infrastructure is aging and outdated.

Only 150 years ago humans lived, learned, created art, and loved without the grid. Now we have become addicted to it and are in danger of experiencing paralyzing withdrawal without it. When the grid goes down for one day, neighbors break out the BBQ and share their thawing bounty. Three days without the grid, people start getting hungry and things get tense. Longer than a week? Not pretty.

Wait! Don't stop reading! This is not intended to be a scary survivalist screed found in an underground bunker next to 5 gallon tubs of almonds and dry beans. There are many more reasons for considering going off the grid other than fear of outages and the zombie apocalypse.

Going off-the-grid can:

Help you do your part to off-set climate change
Help you to align your lifestyle with your belief system
Connect you more intimately with the seasons, weather, and the natural world
Provide a sense of self-sufficiency and independence
Reduce or eliminate your utility bills
Allow you to buy a less expensive (unimproved) parcel of land on which to build a home.
Allow you to build on an island or remote location not currently on the grid

Going off-the-grid does not mean you are living without water, electricity, temperature control, or sewage treatment . There are many ways these necessities can be provided on an individual, cellular basis and this book will introduce some of these system concepts. It will also be a personal guide for your journey to move in the direction of living a more sustainable lifestyle. While some people have been inspired to hastily pack up their modern lives and move to a cabin in the woods, many times they fail and come back to the real world with their tail between their legs. We recognize that forethought and preparation can smooth the transition, realign expectations, and increase the odds of success.

We are not advocating escapism or some romantic Walden Pond ideal. This is for people who want to live comfortably off the grid with as many of the modern amenities they absolutely do not want to live without. This book is for people who want to live in the current paradigm, but in a more responsible, sustainable way.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution that is globally applicable for making these changes. We are here to help you figure out (or at the very least help you rule out) some of the many off-grid options. Whether you are wanting to build your dream home, a retirement dwelling, an investment property, a vacation home, or your Plan B getaway house for when the "s" hits the "f"? Our goal is to help you understand the overall concepts so that you will be able to make intelligent decisions and navigate the sometimes confusing and often difficult world of off-grid building & living.

Cool, but what are grids again?

Grids can be physical, digital, or ideological. Most of us in the "modern" world are connected to multiple grids at once.

Let's look at some examples of grids:

The electricity grid
The water grid
The sewage grid
The internet/communications grid
Food manufacture and distribution grid

As the world continues to become more industrialized, grids are growing bigger and more centralized (political and economic power, information storage and analytics, industrial agriculture, and transportation). These big, centralized grids are subject to service interruption, price manipulation and privacy breaches. Yet we still tend to rely on them exclusively for meeting our basic needs and providing a sense of identity. The old adage "the bigger they come, the harder they fall" applies to most grids. We know that one small failure in the system can bring down the whole thing - affecting thousands, even millions of people. We need to become less dependent on large, faceless entities, more community oriented, and more self-reliant when it comes to meeting our basic needs and understanding who we are in the world. The amazing thing is that we already have the technology and know-how to live in decentralized, stronger, greener, and more resilient ways.

Knowing that you want to start this journey is the first step. Knowing why you want to make the journey will inform all the other steps and decisions on your path to a comfortable and independent life.

We are currently developing tools and processes to help people, like you, determine if going off-the-grid is the right step for you. Our courses are in beta testing at the moment but will be released in the Spring of 2021. Please check our website soon to see when they are available.

Bernie Sanders Climate Change Town Hall - Reactions.

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 17:05:32 GMT

Watch the video before you read this post. Click the link just under the photo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0IgDgyHEfc

I just finished watching Bernie Sanders Climate Change Talks at The US Senate, and I’m left with a similar feeling as the guests: Fear and depression hit first because the tasks ahead are so daunting. But, overall, I’m left with an overwhelming sense of positivity and optimism. We are now faced with the opportunity to create a new, sustainable World. Hopefully, with an educated population and a cooperating Government. For the first time, people are starting to realize what those of us in the sustainable movement have been saying for decades. These crucial conversations about climate change are finally being spoken about in homes all over the Country and World. There is a long way to go and we only have 12 short years to make the changes necessary, but if we can get the majority of people engaged with this topic and excited to make the changes that need to be made - we will win, and, in our lifetime, we will be able to build resilience in the face of natural disasters, reduce our impact on the earth's resources, reduce our carbon emissions, and provide equitable access to clean air and water for everyone. This is going to take a lot of hard work! We are all going to need to inform ourselves on how to live in a different, less consumptive way. But the tools and technology are available right now. We can do this if we really want to.

Kirsten and I feel like our contribution with Eco Living Matrix will be in the building sector. 40% of all carbon emissions come from buildings. Our time at Earthship Biotecture taught us how to think of buildings as their own power, water and sanitation plants. Each building, individually giving you everything you need to be comfortable without taking too much from the Earth. Living within our power and water budget is sometimes tricky, but always rewarding! You feel more self-reliant, and more connected to nature when you live this way. I think that’s what the “modern” world is missing. We are almost finished with our book about how to live off-the-grid, and are about to start formulating a course curriculum that will help us to teach anyone who wants to learn how to choose the right building envelope and the basics of off-grid systems. Additionally, we will soon be adding courses on: how to retrofit existing structures and how to build from the ground up using the appropriate materials and utility systems available for any climate, area, or budget.

We’ve been learning about all of the amazing structures and solutions available today. It has been an informative journey so far, and we’re really excited to put our research to good use. I can’t help thinking though, what are we missing?

The amount of solutions and materials is so huge, and there are pros and cons to each. We’ve found numerous solutions for waste management, power, water and food, and are currently researching various insulation materials, and how all of these things can work together in different areas. WHAT ARE WE MISSING? WHAT NEW (OR VERY OLD) SOLUTIONS ARE WE FAILING TO LOOK INTO? Please let us know if you have any information that we might not know about - email us here.

Thanks so much for all that you do - for staying informed, for talking to your friends and family about climate change, and for implementing solutions in your life! If we remain informed and united, we got this!

Thoughts on The IPCC Report and the UN’s desperate call for carbon-zero housing

Sat, 08 Dec 2018 01:10:58 GMT

Hi, I'm Ashton, co-founder of Eco Living Matrix and this is our first Blog Post!

Kirsten and I were hoping that our first blog post could be kind of a casual hello, and this is what we’re doing, here's some cool stuff, etc. But unfortunately, we don’t have time for the casual, funny banter. We just read the IPCC Report. Most of you probably know this Report contains some pretty grim predictions for our future. If you haven’t read it yet, or don’t know what I’m talking about, please check out the links below and come back to us.

IPCC Report

Building Green, Urgent: Zero-Carbon Buildings Needed

FOURTH NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENTVolume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States

The New York Times, Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040

New York Intellegencer, UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That

Huff Post , New UN Climate Report Dims Hope For Averting Catastrophic Global Warming

Basically, we are running out of time. The report states that we have 12 years (probably more like 10 to be safe) to completely change the way we are living and building on this planet. If we fail to make these changes, we will take climate change past the point of no return. This will cause incalculable damage to our environment, our economy, and our species (as well as every other species). Already, we are seeing MASSIVE devastation from wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes, and earthquakes, and it’s only going to get worse. We are at a crossroads. Do we continue to burn fossil fuels until we bring about our own extinction? OR do we make the changes we need to make? Do we take responsibility and choose another path?

I know it sounds cliché, but there are a lot of things each of us can do individually to make a difference. Here’s a great video that describes those things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q48BvprCFr0

BUT these changes will only account for 40% of the overall goals we need to meet (and that’s if we all make them). SO, we need government involvement, we need policy change, and we need individuals to organize and demand these changes. BIG Oil and BIG Water are coming for our resources. They are coming to pollute and destroy because our current market demands that they do. Humans invented these markets, we invented money and the profit motive. These things aren’t real in the natural world. What’s worse is that hey are ruining our real world habitat and the things we NEED to survive: clean water, clean air and good soil. WE invented these greedy government and monetary systems. WE can invent something better!

Kirsten and I are choosing to not be depressed or worry about where we are heading. I hope you will join us in advocating for a greener future. It’s going to be a lot of work. To get started, here are some links to organizations we think are heading in the right direction:

The Years Project

Citizen's Climate Lobby

The Sunrise Movement

The UN is calling for sustainable housing and retrofitting of existing buildings with green-energy solutions. To achieve this, they will need architects, engineers, and journeyman that know how these systems work and how to install them. Kirsten and I plan on helping them meet this challenge by educating these individuals in sustainable and off-the-grid systems and principles.

Unlike other builders, we are not advocating for just one type of sustainable building. We are advocating for all! Right now, we have the knowledge, spread across many ancient and modern building techniques, to be able to prescribe different building solutions for different areas and budgets. In some areas, a simple yurt or platform on the beach with some water catchment and simple solar system will work well. In other areas a Rastra block, Pumice-crete, Earthship or Earthbag building envelope might be called for. In a commercial structure, geothermal heating and cooling along with water catchment, solar and wind power might be be the answer to a successful retrofit. The point is, there is not just one answer. There will always be different answers depending on the circumstances. We are proposing a sort of eco à la carte training that will act as a kind of green tool kit that each professional or individual homeowner will be able to pull from to make the best decisions on their projects (whether that be retrofitting an existing structure, or building new from the ground up).

Kirsten and I have been busy researching the best way to bring our school into existence. We are excited to say that we are making progress on this front! We just recently toured a structure we think could be the perfect location for our first campus! We are also planning on a couple of trips this year where we will travel to build. We will be documenting these trips and hope you will follow us on this journey.

We are going to needs everyone’s help. We ask that you please get in touch with us if you would like to volunteer or get involved, or if you have any information on new building types we need to research, or new green innovations we should be incorporating into our designs. We will not be a top-down school. We envision building a collaborative environment where we can all learn from each other to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. Really, it’s now or never. Let’s UNITE!

Thoughts on the Climate Crisis as well as possible solutions as seen through the lens of eco building.

Learn to Build Outside the Box!

We’re not promoting one solution. We’re promoting all the solutions at once.

12 Reasons Why Earthen Walls Are Awesome!

And are way better than traditional frame construction

﻿ There are so many reasons why earthen walls are fantastic to build and why earthen structures are so amazing to live in:

We hope you will consider buying or building an earthen home so that you can experience all of their many benefits for yourself!

Off-Grid Value Per Square Foot

Let’s take a look at what’s important beyond price.

But there’s a few things houses in this wide range have in common.

What’s the value of a house that has great air quality and natural light?

What’s the value of a house built from materials that are healthy for you and the planet?

What’s the value of a house that is built to last for generations?

What’s the value of a house that still has lights, water, toilet and heating when the grid goes down?

A beautiful, solid, off-grid house for you and your family?

Priceless.

5 Tips for Lowering the Cost of Your Off-Grid Build

﻿ Have you already built your own off-grid home and have more tips to share? We’d love to hear from you!

How Much Does an Off-Grid Home Cost?

A few of the Factors that will influence the cost of an off-grid home...

Let’s take a look at some of the factors that can determine how much an off-grid home will cost to construct.

1. Off-Grid Systems

2. Size

3. Type of off-grid home

4. Location

5. Who is building the house?

6. Level of finishes

7. Who is living in it and what’s their expectation of the performance?

What are YOUR reasons for wanting to go off-grid? We’d love to hear from you !

How Making Your Own Power Empowers You

Start to Make your own power to Make your Own POWER!

Who is off-grid-living for?

There are a lot of preconceptions about the "kind of People" who live off-the-grid

• Stereotype 1

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﻿ • Stereotype 3

﻿ • Stereotype 4

• Stereotype 5

Do you wanna go off-the-grid but don't know where to start?

Lessons Learned from Living More than Half a Lifetime Off-the-Grid

8 things I learned li ving off-the-grid

It's Time to Cancel the Grid

Sorry, grid, you've let us down one too many times.

Building With Adobe Bricks

An ancient technique that is still super relevant!

Pros

﻿

Cons

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What's a Greywater System?

Greywater can be reused to water plants and flush your toilet

Planning Your Greywater Treatment Solution

Wetlands Is Another Cool Way To Filter Greywater

Keep ALL Your Systems In Mind

Water Catchment - What It Is and How To Do It

AKA Water Harvesting

Water Catchment - What It Is and How To Do It

The Best Roofing Materials To Use

Cisterns

Sizing Your Cisterns

For More Information On Roof Water Catchment Check Out These Resources:

The Difference Between On-Grid Solar & Off-Grid Solar

“In a single hour, the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth is more than the entire world consumes in an year” - Business Insider

On-Grid Systems

Off-Grid Systems

Benefits To Installing Off-Grid Solar

Calculating The Size Of Your System

On-The-Grid vs. Off-The-Grid

Why go off-the-grid? And what does it mean anyway?

Bernie Sanders Climate Change Town Hall - Reactions.

Watch the video before you read this post. Click the link just under the photo.

Thoughts on The IPCC Report and the UN’s desperate call for carbon-zero housing

Hi, I'm Ashton, co-founder of Eco Living Matrix and this is our first Blog Post!

There are so many reasons why earthen walls are fantastic to build and why earthen structures are so amazing to live in:

Have you already built your own off-grid home and have more tips to share? We’d love to hear from you!

• Stereotype 2

• Stereotype 3

• Stereotype 4