Tag Archives: Micro Wood Stove

Guide to Off Grid Living

Living-Off-Grid.com Magazine Unveils New State-by-State Buyer’s Guide Detailing Where the Best Places Are to Buy an Off Grid Property in the United States

In addition, Living-Off-Grid.com also offers a “Guide to Off Grid Living” that provides over 100 chapters of information on producing solar power, rainwater collection, growing gardens, raising livestock and everything a family needs to build a self sustaining homestead

Living-Off-Grid.com - Rustic Log Cabin in the Mountain Forest

Living-Off-Grid.com – Rustic Log Cabin in the Mountain Forest’s Fall Foliage

Austin, Texas (May 26, 2020)Living Off Grid Magazine announced today that it is now offering a State-by-State Directory of the Best Off Grid Properties for Sale in the United States as well as a Free Guide to Off Grid Living that details what is takes to start living off the grid for every state in United States.

The State-by-State Off Grid Land for Sale Directory and Guide to Off Grid Living were created to meet the pent up demand from city dwellers who are now actively seeking to buy rural ranch or farmland properties, then build an off the grid homestead due to these recent events:

  • California PG&E utility shutting off electricity to more than 2 million customers without warning and threatening to do so on a regular basis in the fture; and
  • News stories airing on the Coronavirus and COVID19 by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and other TV News networks that provoked panic buying in grocery stores that first stripped grocery stores of toilet paper and cleaning supplies and then quickly followed suit with stories on meat processing plants closing across America, which led to panic buying of beef, chicken and pork; and
  • And, last but not least, ruthless Democrat state governors issuing mandatory police state quarantines ordering all Americans to cease going to work and not allowing people to earn a paycheck causing the loss of more than 20.5 million jobs throughout the United States.

These events have caused many quick thinking Americans to start shopping for the “best places” in United States to buy an “off grid” or “rural” piece of property so they could head for the hills to start setting up self-sustaining homesteads that would survive even if utility companies started shutting off critical services such as electricity, natural gas and water services and grocery stores were suddenly sold out of meat, vegetables and other food supply items.

Offgrid homesteads can replace on-grid electiricty with solar / wind power, and on-grid water with rainwater collection and grocery store food with homegrown gardens and live stock so that there is no need to be dependent on civilization to make ends meet.

“Regardless of whose fault it was for causing the COVID 19 pandemic, Americans are now frantically searching for 10 to 100 acre parcels of off grid raw land where they can distance themselves faraway from police state governments that are now threating to go door-to-door enforcing mandatory COVID19 testing and forcing citizens to inject unproven vaccinations, which may kill more people than the actual Coronavirus itself,” said Robert Hoskins, Living-Off-Grid.com’s Editor. “We’ve seen our Facebook (FB) Off Grid Homes Discussion Group’s membership numbers increase significantly. In the past 3 months, we have seen growth rates of more than 60% rising from from 2,800 members in March 2020 to 4,624 members in May 2020. Our actual increases were 15% in March, 22% in April, and another 25% forecast by the end of May.”

Facebook Off Grid Living: Prepping to Live Off the Grid Growth Stats 2020

Facebook Off Grid Living: Prepping to Live Off the Grid Growth Stats 2020

“Our website’s Guide to Off Grid Living traffic also saw significant growth. For the entire year in 2019, we attracted around 2,690 readers that generated 5,230 page views.”

“Looking at the numbers for the first 5 months of 2020, our circulation has increased from 2,690 to 17,973 readers who have generated approximately 36,331 page views, up 6,930%. If this trend continues the magazine will have more than 41,000 readers generating 87,000 page views by then end of 2020.”

Living Off Grid Magazines’ Guide to Off Grid Living Website Annual Stats

“As a result of the massive pent up the demand for ‘Off Grid’ information we’ve even been getting calls  from TV reality series program directors asking us to help them put together reality TV show treatments and story ideas for them to begin producing new off grid reality TV shows,” Hoskins added.

“After surveying more than 6,640 off-grid FB group members, we’ve found that our members would be most interested in helping TV producers and program directors putting together an Off Grid version of PC Magazine, but with editorial targeting off grid homesteaders, which would include Off Grid Product Roundups, Off Grid Buyer’s Guides and Off Grid Equipment Bakeoffs to help off-gridders make educated purchase decisions for big ticket items such as rainwater collection cisterns, aquaponic garden setups, high-end wood-burning stoves and solar power arrays that can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000.”

In addition, members stated that the off grid industry lacks an organized supply chain of value-added resellers and distributors or rural area buying cooperatives where off grid customers can see live demonstrations of working products and take education courses to help them make better purchase decisions.

Many feel that establishing off grid buying cooperatives would be a great way to generate economic development in very poor rural areas and counties where jobs are extremely difficult to find and where off grid communities are beginning to see rapid growth and expansion. Buying cooperatives are the perfect way to generate loans and grants requests for the USDA, which can be the driving force in rural economic development.

Specialized training classes are esssential for helping educate a local workforce  installers, dirt movers, septic system installers, home builders, rainwater collection and solar installation experts that newcomers can turn to for expert installation of off grid products and services that every rural homestead will need. This process will generate a workforce of installers that can start news businessses that will would create good paying jobs as well as provide lots of installation companies that compete for new land owners business. Competition for these new products and services helps drive prices down and makes it very affordable to build new off grid homesteads.

About Living Off Grid Magazine

Living-Off-Grid.com provides a magazine with circulation of ~18,000+ readers and two Facebook Discussion Groups with ~ 6,640 members and business pages that allow people to follow, like and share information about what it takes to start a living-off-the-grid lifestyle anywhere in the United States.

Click on the links below to learn more:

Living Off Grid Magazine => http://living-off-grid.com/

State-by-State “Off Grid Land for Sale” Directory => https://livingoffgrid.home.blog/blog/

Facebook Discussion Groups:

Facebook Business Pages:

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Contact:
Robert Hoskins
Living-Off-Grid.com
512-627-6622

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Building a Cabin from Light Weight Pallet Wood Is a Cheap Way to Build an Off Grid Homestead

How to Build a Cabin from Light
Weight Pallet Wood Deep in the Woods

We built this cheap off grid cabin using free pallet wood. We saved money building the pallet wood cabin by using recycled pallets. This is a great off grid wilderness project as pallet wood is light and easy to carry into the forest. It is also easy to work with using hand tools.

Many people do not have the space, time or money to build a log cabin. But building a tiny home off grid is still achievable using cheap or even free materials, and that is where pallet wood works so well.

Although only small, this one man cabin has a raised bed, folding table, bookshelf and chair – all made from pallet wood.

This small hut in the woods has no electricity or power, but that isn’t needed. To begin with, we started to break the pallets down into useable timber to build the foundations and the frame of the cabin.

For the roof we used recycled tin from an old barn roof. We then used an old garden shed window and fit this to the western wall of the cabin.

Once the framework and structure of the cabin was complete, we began to some pallet wood projects and focused on building furniture for the inside of the cabin. We cooked our food over fire using a tripod lashed together bushcraft style until we installed a wood stove.

Then we used cast iron cooking gear and the oven to cook up bigger meals. We learned many building skills on this project and it was great to build with hand tools. The pallet cabin still stands to this day, and we use it as a bushcraft camp to practice wilderness survival skills, primitive technology and as a base camp to create more off grid films for you guys.

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Using a Thermo Electric Fan to Harvest Wood Stove Heat Junkyard Style for an Off Grid Home or Cabin 

New York – Anyone who heats with a wood stove knows that the experience is completely different from typical central heating. It’s not for everyone, though, and it’s certainly not without its trade-offs. One of the chief complaints is getting heat away from the stove and into other areas of the house, and many owners turn on an electric fan to circulate the heated air.

That’s hardly in the green nature of wood heating, though, and fans can be noisy. So something like this heat-powered stove-top fan can come in handy. Such fans, which use Peltier devices to power a small electric motor, are readily available commercially.

The Peltier module was salvaged from an old travel fridge and mounted to a heat sink from a computer to harvest heat from the stove. The other side of the Peltier needs to have a heat sink to keep it cooler than the hot side, and chose an unconventional bit of salvage for the job — the cylinder of a chainsaw engine. The spark plug hole sprouts the mount for the fan motor, and the cooling fins help keep the Peltier cool. And to prevent overheating of the device, he added a surprise — a car cooling system thermostat to physically lift the device off the stove when it gets too hot. Genius!

Read more => https://hackaday.com/2018/04/27/thermoelectric-fan-harvests-wood-stove-heat-junkyard-style/

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Best Tips and Tricks for Using a Wood Stove to Heat an Off Grid Home, Shed or Cabin

Watch this Video on How to Add Heating Conduit Pipes, Fans, Bricks and a Damper Plate to Greatly Improve a Stove’s Heat Production

Why heat with a Wood Stove? The answer is simple-comforting, economical, and environmentally-friendly.  Whether it’s the warm glow of the fire, the crackle of the wood or the deep penetrating warmth, wood stoves have a way of making people feel relaxed and right at home.

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Click here to join our New York Living Off Grid page on Facebook!

How to Select a Wood Stove Based on the Size of Your Off Grid Cabin

The 6 Essential Considerations for Buying the Right-Sized
Wood Burning Stove for Your Off Grid Shed, Cabin or Home

By 30X40 Design Workshop

The video above presents a comprehensive buying guide for wood stoves – a primer on exactly what you’ll need to know before buying a wood stove for your off grid shed, cabin, container home, earthship, steel building, tent, tiny house, yurt and/or any other type of off home.

Top Stove Buying Decision Include:

  • Steel vs. Cast Iron Cost
  • Stove Output (BTU vs. Size)
  • Firebox size
  • Efficiency Catalytic vs. Non-Catalytic
  • Flue (Interior and Exterior)
  • Hearth Protection
  • Wood Storage Ash Pan
  • Aesthetics Maintenance

Checklist of Items to Consider when Buying a Wood Stove:

It may be summer now, but winter is coming and its going to be a cold one. Here are some simple considerations to think about when buying the right wood stove for your shed, cabin or other type of off grid home.

1. Decide Between a Fireplace and a Wood Burning Stove

There are two main types of wood stoves.  A fireplace, which is usually imbedded into a wall and a free standing stove, which sits in an open air space somewhere in a room. Fireplaces are usually open and waste a lot of energy and are prone to fires outside the fireplace as popping wood can send sparks flying out onto the room’s floor.

Free standing stoves are usually better because they can control the burn rate of your wood. They are much safer because they keep the fire enclosed inside a door. And, they radiant heat on a 360 degree basis, which is really important in very cold climates. When combined with masonry stone walls, they will heat up stone that will do a great job of efficiently heating up your home and keeping it toasty warm.

2. How Large Should Your Heat Source Be?

Picking the right sized wood stove for your living space is critical. A number of wood stoves for sale come with huge fireboxes, 3, 4, and sometimes even 5 cubic feet. But with modern insulation and the supplementary heat that most houses have now, these are usually overkill. A home between 2,000 and 3,000 square feet usually calls for a wood stove with a firebox between 2 and 2.5 cubic feet. If you’re heating a smaller space, like a garage or a cabin, you might want to try looking for even smaller wood burning stoves – 1 to 1.5 cubic feet.

3. Efficiency, Efficiency, Efficiency – Meeting EPA Standards

Higher efficiency means less money spent on wood, less work chopping and hauling wood, and a product that is better for the environment. Older wood stoves tend to be inefficient and waste wood and many companies don’t publish their efficiencies as a result. Look for wood stoves for sale that have EPA listed efficiencies of 70% or above to get the most bang for your buck. Some new stoves, like MF Fire’s Catalyst, also come with smart thermostat technology that helps to cut down on overheating, giving a real world efficiency boost of 20 to 25%. Buying a wood stove from MF Fire means less chopping, less stacking, and fewer trips to the wood pile during winter storms.

4. Clean Air and the New EPA Regulations

Gone are the days of smoke belching potbelly stoves. New clean air standards have set a high bar, restricting wood stove smoke emissions to only 2.0 grams/hour by January 2020, making nearly 85% of currently available wood stove illegal to sell. But some manufacturers are still trying to squeeze out their old units before the deadline. To get the cleanest and most efficient burn, look for wood burning stoves for sale with EPA listed emissions below 2.0 g/hr.

5. Catalytic or Non-Catalytic Fireboxes

When they were first introduced in the 80’s catalytic stoves, or wood burning stoves that use a catalytic combustor to reduce emissions, got a bad reputation. These initial poorly designed wood burning stoves were impossible to get started and used catalytic combustors that fouled and went bad after only a few seasons. New catalytic stoves don’t have those problems.

Most catalytic wood stoves for sale today are significantly cleaner and more efficient than their non-catalytic counterparts and those catalytic combustors can last for 10 years or more. When they do need to be replaced, the replacements generally cost less than $100. Some catalytic stoves can be harder to start, but buying a wood stove with new smart stove technology like automatic igniters or MF Fire’s TurboStart technology makes them easier to start than ever.

6. Smart Wood Burning Stoves

Technology is in everything nowadays: phones, cars, even refrigerators. Modern wood stoves are no exception. Some new wood stoves include features that make it easier to start, remotely control your burn, and even to protect your family from chimney fires. Buying a wood stove with these modern features help those of us who are getting up in years to do a little less work and have a lot more peace of mind. While smart wood stoves frequently cost a bit more, buying a wood stove with the added features are usually more than worth it.

7. Gathering and Stacking Wood

Acquiring, stacking and moving wood will become a part of your life. I personally embrace these as part of my choice to live in a cold climate, and I feel like the added effort is good for both myself and the environment — but it’s certainly not for everyone.

Source: https://mffire.com/ 

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