Self-Sustained
Living in a self-sustained, independent and environmentally friendly way.
Solar Food Dehydrator
Shortly after your garden starts giving fruit you will be wondering how to preserve it so you and your family can enjoy it during the whole year. Drying food is the oldest method for preserving the harvest for later use and it’s benefits are that the dehydrated food gets smaller and weights less due to the lack of water in it and unlike freezing you don’t need constant power to prevent the food from spoiling.
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Honey Bees and Beekeeping
Honey bees and beekeeping is a highly relevant topic when talking about a self-sustained person, family or a community. As honey is an invaluable natural product that is not only a natural sweetener and nutrition source, but also a well proven medicine which has a long storage life, it’s high on the list of the prepper.
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Manual Water Drilling / Well Drilling
While researching various ways to drill for water I discovered this interesting video demonstrating how one can build a hand drill form plumbing parts and drill for water to substantial depth. This method allows manual drilling for water to depths up to 100m for 3 to 4 days, while the 30m mark can be reached on the first day. While this drill cannot penetrate hard rock and the encounter of larger stones will certainly obstruct the drilling, it is a very cheap method to drill for water and it will work for almost any type of soil.
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Emergency survival rules – Murphy’s edition
This is the Murphy’s edition of the emergency survival rules that are circulating the Internet. While there is a certain amount of humor integrated, they are quite accurate. Please feel free to amend the list with comments.
Lead-Acid Batteries – All you need to know
This article covers all you need to know for the lead-acid batteries in the context of solar, wind or off-grid use – from the different types and applications, through the various factors that have effect on battery life and capacity, to the basic maintenance activities that can prolong battery life.
Building an outhouse / outdoor toilet – Part 1
If you have a cabin or a small house in a remote location, you are by all means already familiar with the issue of disposing human waste from defecation and urination. If you still haven’t built your cabin, you might want to delay it a bit and first build an outdoor toilet, which will provide you with more comfort while building you cabin. This article provides information on how to build an outdoor toilet (also referred as outhouse or latrine), in conditions where there is no sewage and building a septic system is not feasible.