Comments on: How To Live Without Electricity – Part I

By: LC

LC — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 02:13:57 +0000

Wow! Excellent article!

By: Silke

Silke — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 07:07:19 +0000

I recommend a STOVETEC burner heated with wood or charcoal. This little stove is amazing. Only for outdoor use.

And I recommend a chafing dish and candles, both available at Sam’s Club, for indoor use.

By: Chuck Findlay

Chuck Findlay — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 06:37:29 +0000

I don’t see it as living without electricity, but more as living without the grid.

Why I say this is that today we have solar lanterns and flashlights that charge themselves. and while I have grid power I use solar lights every night and they work well.

I also have solar panels (not as many as I would like) to run things and supporting hardware like batteries and charge controllers (I have spares of these in a metal garbage can)

I also have a propane demand water heater that uses 2 D batteries to ignite the propane and heat water as needed. I live in Northern Ohio so water is all over.

And also I collect rain water but need more storage as I only have 4 barrels to collect it. It rains all the time where I live and I have never ran dry but more storage would be nice.

And I also have wood heat as a backup to natural gas.

I have the parts to make a Rocket Mass Heater (as soon as I reinforce the floor) and plan on building it next summer.

A few years ago I bought a book at a garage sale ($1.00) “How to live without electricity and like it” by Anita Evangelists. While it’s not got all the answers and technology has passed it up a bit, it’s still a good book to have for anyone planning to move to an off-grid life.

By: Tom Beck

Tom Beck — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 05:38:11 +0000

Well, we really never lost everything. We went 28 days without electricity at the house. We had a couple generators though. City water pressure came back after 5 days. Natural gas we never lost but the line to the house busted so we couldn’t use it. I snaked a hose over the roof we still had and the sun heated up the water in it. It really wasn’t a big deal. This was in South Florida after hurricane Andrew. Clean up was a big deal. Especially the swimming pool. Kinda annoying but my wife went to work every day 30 miles north of the house and I went to work every day at the nuclear power plant right in the middle of the hurricane’s path (we had plenty of power there).

We had an ice storm here last year at our retirement home in east central Tennessee. No power (all the poles were down). No problem. We drove over to my mom’s house in a retirement community with backup generators and stayed there for a few days. It’s only a few miles away. But this stupid house we live in dropped down to like 40 degrees in like 12 hours. Couldn’t buy gas for the generators because the gas stations also didn’t have power. Guess what I’m buying next week…