Who here thinks about living "off the grid" , AMAZING discovery!

hey there dudes and dudettes!

as we are 3D animators etc, we tend to have 300-700W machines rendering for hours on end.
but has anyone thought about going 100% green?

yeah keep the computers, but buy solar panels etc to “make up” for the extra use?

in the UK the average person releases 10,000kg of carbon emissions into the atmosphere per year!
(the US is 19,000kg)

the conclusion about what we should do:
i found out about a website today, http://earthship.com/
all i can say is bloody amazing!

on top of this we should import yeast and start a brewery, making ethanol fuel for your generator.
plus some corn and a chicken pen.

then just freelance with blender and do 2 small projects a year :slight_smile:

what are peoples thoughts on going green? 100% GREEN!?!

yeah throw away the clothes the tech
wear skins make a spear catch food (no more GM stuff for me )

yeah I WISH
maybe in my next life :wink:

Live in the grid, or off it…

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this is the way to go.

this is our house in south france:
http://www.arbohaus.com/

I’m completely off the grid. All my power comes from a wind turbine and solar panels. We only have wood burning stoves and the only thing that we really get is water - how’s that for off the grid?

These people are going off the grid…

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on a boat you kinda have a combination - if the batteries get really low, you can run the engine and charge the batteries (there is a generator built around the engine), but otherwise you have 6 solar panels and a wind generator and it works :wink:

I lived in a van for years with the dog and had more money then. If I did not have a wife and a kid I would sell the paid for house now and go right back. I do not even want to answer the phone any more. I do have some chickens but solar power is too much money. I was waiting for the price to drop when production went up but the seem to still be very high.

not sure how 15K is alot of money for 25+ years of electricity?
id make my money back in 5 years lol

£60 a WEEK i pay!!!

i like the boat idea but i prefer an actual off the grid, self sustaining house :slight_smile:

where water/electricity/heat/food is all provided for!

(though id love to learn to hunt with bows i craft myself)

I love it when this subject comes up. There’s always one person who thinks changing our use of technology means living in a cave. LOL

I don’t think a whole lot of people in this country will care about going off the grid unless we start noticing the leading figures in ‘climate change’ awareness leading by example.

Al Gore for instance has many mansions with a combined carbon footprint dwarfing that of the average American and at the same time flies around the country in a hydrocarbon spewing jet. These leading figures who don’t walk the walk in their beliefs that we need to ‘save’ the planet don’t really encourage people to go green.

I’m skeptical of the idea of mankind slowly turning this planet into an inhospitable wasteland, but I don’t find anything wrong with conserving power and water so existing resources can be stretched further (which would save billions in terms of not having to build near as many new power plants or reservoirs).

Is it to save money, or give the finger to marketing of the way of life, or for spiritual growth?

I do not have 15 K. 15 K has always been alot of money to me. It would take me 30 years to pay that off, no lie. I pay $45 a month.

this idea was not for profit, or spiritual reasons.
its so i dont have to conform to red traffic lights, to not let kids throw strops because they dont like dinner, to not work in a boring office, and to not worry working when ill or you’ll lose your home…

my mum fractured her ankle and went to work a few days later, the second day at work she snapped the bone where the fracture was… she cried for about 5 hours straight cause she honestly believed that she had lost the house due to no money…

what kind of life or “freedom” is this world pretending to give us?

why cant we smoke weed, stroll about naked and build eco buildings in our field…
because theirs rules built on rules built on rules…
theres so many rules that it takes lawyers YEARS to learn them all :slight_smile:

thats right, we have to conform to rules we dont even know about!!!

Hehe, I’m just happy there are these rules, don’t want to be here when there’s anarchy!
I don’t want to imagine a world with people running around “natural” and people building strange things in there back-garden.
Yeah, I have to agree, rules and laws sometimes don’t make sense, that’s why we have lawyers, here in the UK I notice some weird laws as well, but everywhere laws sometimes don’t make any sense.

Enough politics, living off grid would be interesting but, I like to take it the easy way, just pay the bill. :smiley:

Cheers,

I think solar could be damn cheap,
So,

Step 1 No inverter , inverters are bad M’kay.

Typical solar

Sunshine ->solar panal->battery->inverter(loss)->wires->Ac power supply(loss)->DC->DEVICE

The more efficient route, get 12volt power supplies for everything or replace them with 12 volt versions(look at RV parts)

This is not only more efficient, its also cheaper and easier to be modular.

You can buy a few panals, a battery and a 12volt power supply or 12 volt device every few months (low initial cost).

With LED lighting, and efficentcy, you will need much less power.

the conclusion about what we should do:
i found out about a website today, http://earthship.com/
all i can say is bloody amazing!

I did their apprenticeship thing … well they have their $100 apprenticeship and their $2000 apprenticeship… I did the $100 one… I was a great experience and I learned alot… like for instance… it is 100% doable to build a house that is %100 utility free… that is no cabled in electricity… no piped in water… the house all the normal house hold conveinces… flush tollets… shower… sinks… Refrigerator… cook stove… wood burning stove… Television… internet service… what else do you need…?

the earthship right now today debunks anyone who thinks we can’t go off grid… we do have a choice… and the earthship is just one of those choices…

They hold ‘builds’ everytime they put one of these up… here in the states and else where… you pay $100 and go spend a week helping them build the house… they teach you everything you want to know about it while your there and get to meet people from all over the world who are there to learn about how to do it…
If you haven’t gone on one of these builds you should… it is absolutely a great experience…

also you need to understand that the Old system is trying to outlaw these things…
“we can’t have people not wanting to not connect to the grid and avoid paying their bills can we?! Those bills pay my paycheck for sitting in this office and doing nothing!!”…
LOL! :rolleyes:

So if you live here in the states you had better go do one and learn about it before it’s made impossible to learn it…
Remember what they did to Tessla…

Also I highly recomend some other off grid stuff… like
The Global Village Construction Set… or GVCS…
google it… it’s really cool too… and I hope to go do one their workshops too sometime…

Have you seen anything about Gasifiers?


With a solar gasifier, and a biodigester feeding a solar bioreactor,
You can proccess waste water and make carbon neutral bio-deisel

A generator burning this fuel could feed Co2 to the bioreactor.

Light + water + algae + waste water =biomass

Biomass + solar gasifier= Hydrogen and C0

H2 and C0 go into catylist = fischer tropsch fuels or

A generator can burn the “syngas” directly but this is not practical for solar gasification.

However if you heat your home by burning algae pellets, you can also gasify using fire during the winter.

@BluePrintRandom

This is the first I have ever heard of this kind of thing…

well…
I once knew a guy who was generating heat using piles of old cow manure in a large Concrete tank… (seriously) ( I mean it sounds funny as hell but…) it certainly was a Sustainable Technology (especailly here in Texas) LOL!.. and that’s about the closest thing I’ve seen to bio energy…