Tag Archives: Oregon

Searching for information on off grid living in the Oregon? Click here to read more about Living Off Grid in a shed, cabin, house or home in Oregon.

Off Grid Solar Installer Directory

The purpose of this page is to help people in our Off Grid Discussion groups find a solar installation company in the state where they reside.

Solar Installation Companies:
If you would like to add your solar installation company to the list, then please contact Robert Hoskins via Facebook at => https://www.facebook.com/robert.hoskins.188

We will add new states and countries as needed. All we need is your company name, telephone number, and website address:

Customers Wanting Solar Installations/Free Quotes:

Want to get free solar installation quote? Click here

Arizona

California

Colorado

Florida
Lithium RV Service, Timothy Michael Pfeiffer, Phone: (440) 453-3232

New Mexico

Oregon
Cascade Solar Electric, Eddie Owens, Cell (541) 219-6834

Texas

Guide to Off Grid Living Launches New https://livingoffgrid.home.blog/ Website to Complement Its Facebook Discussion Groups and Business Pages

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The Facebook pages/groups and the off grid website provide info on building off grid homes, producing solar power, growing organic gardens, raising livestock and harvesting rainwater in Arizona, California, New Mexico, New York and Texas

SACRAMENTO, California – The Guide to Off Grid Living announced today that it has launched a new website to educate people that want to buy a rural piece of property and build an off-grid homestead in Arizona, California, New Mexico, New York or Texas.

“Today’s world is full of high-technology gadgets, computers, cell phones, cloud-based services that are all dependent on electricity, but as more than 2 million people found out in California, that can change instantly overnight and without warning,” said Robert Hoskins, Editor, Guide to Off Grid Living. “Our living off grid guide is written specifically to help beginners learn how to survive as long as the sun is shining and the clouds are raining.”

“Even if you live in a suburban or a downtown urban environment, almost anyone can prepare themselves and their family to live in a world without water, gas or electricity from local utility companies, which might vanish overnight, whether it be just for a couple of days or many months at a time,” Hoskins continued. “On the plus side, imagine what it would be like to live in a home with zero utility or grocery bills.”

The site is located at Living-Off-Grid.com and covers a wide variety of off the grid subject matters, how-to articles, video tutorials and guides for beginners, which provide top tips, tricks and strategies for off grid living and homesteading.

Building an Off Grid Shelter

For shelter, the site provides insightful information that beginners can use to research, plan and build their first off grid home, cabin, shed, tiny home, container house, earthship, steel building, terraced homes, yurts, glamping tents, Indian Tipi, underground bunker or wilderness shelters.

Living Off Grid – How to Turn a Shed into an Off Grid Cabin or Home

Installing an Off Grid Renewable Energy Power Source

For energy, the site details how to harness solar, wind and hydro energy to produce solar electricity, solar hot water, passive solar window furnace, solar lighting systems and solar ovens for cooking as well as the best backup generators.

Guide to Off Grid Living – How to Select between Mono-Crystalline vs Polycrystalline Solar Panels

Planting an Off Grid Garden and Raising Livestock

For food, the site details how to plant organic raised-bed gardens to grow vegetables, grain, medicinal herbs; how to build aquaponic gardens/fish farms; and how to raise chickens, ducks, rabbits, goats, bees and other live stock to put food on the table.

Off Grid Living – How to Build a Predator Proof Chicken Coop to Protect Against Foxes, Skunks, Opossums and Raccoons

Providing an Off Grid Source for Fresh Water

For water, the site details how to collect water utilizing rainwater harvesting systems using rooftops and collection barrels/cisterns; how to build fresh water ponds for raising fish/aquatic plants; and how to drill your own well if the water table is close to the surface.

Off Grid Living – How to Install Rain Barrel Cisterns to Collect Rainwater and Store It to Provide Water

Providing an Heat Source for an Off Grid Home, Cabin or Shed

For heating, the site details how to select wood stoves, micro stoves, stove top blowers, small rocket stoves or large rocket mass heater/masonry stoves and tutorials on selecting the best chainsaws and how to build a firewood shed to keep wood dry.

Living Off Grid – Using an Efficient Wood Stove to Heat an Off Grid Shed, Cabin or Home

The Best States to Start Living Off the Grid

In addition to its first five business pages on Facebook, https://livingoffgrid.home.blog/ provides information for beginners that want to learn more about what it takes to live off the grid in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming or anywhere in the United States.

Off Grid Living – How to Buy Raw Land Parcels for an Off Grid Homestead

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How to Build a Rocket Mass Heater to Heat the Crawl Space of Your Off Grid Home, Cabin or Shed

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Heating the Crawl Space of Your Home, Cabin or Shed with a Rocket Mass Heater to Keep Your Home Warm During the Coldest Polar Vortex

What is a rocket mass heater?

A rocket mass heater a hyper efficient wood stove that uses far less wood to get a far more effective result, whether it’s heating or cooking. It grew out of efforts in developing countries to build a more fuel efficient, safer cooking stove and it has since morphed into an idea that could eventually replace your furnace.

When building your first off grid cabin, one of the chief concerns is what is the best to heat it. Most people rely entirely on wood fuel. A regular wood burning stove will make a big dent in the precious wood pile. But not with a rocket mass heater. For those who haven’t encountered one before, the rocket mass heater (RMH) is a well proven though not widely used way to burn wood very efficiently, and then capture all the heat produced, in a mass – normally a bench or bed – by passing the flue horizontally through it. (see below)

Off Grid Living – How to Build a Rocket Mass Heater to Heat a Home or Cabin

First it burns small fuel, which we typically don’t use in our range cooker. Secondly, it burns very efficiently and thus cleanly, so less fuel is required. Most people are a little skeptical about the claims made for RMHs, especially the cleanliness of the exhaust and the temperatures that could be reached inside the burner, but they are indeed very true.

Most will require a 20ft horizontal flue, heat retaining bench that snakes its way around the crawl space underneath the cabin and a 50 gallon steel drum needs to be designed as part of a building as outlined in the diagram above. It would be smart to build this at the same time your build your home or cabin.

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How to Build Chicken Nesting Boxes So That Eggs Roll Out Automatically

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Off Grid Living – How to Build Chicken Nesting
Boxes so that Eggs Roll Out Automatically

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Off Grid Living – How to Build Chicken Nesting Boxes so that Eggs Roll Out Automatically

How to Build Chicken Nesting Boxes so that Eggs Roll Out Automatically

Oregon – If you’ve ever raised chickens, you know that walking into a chicken coop and shooing chickens out of the way can be a time consuming task.

But if you build your nests to tilt slightly forward or backwards, the eggs will roll out where they are easy to see and collect.

Please join our Off Grid Living Discussion Group on Facebook

To learn more and discuss off grid topics, please join our free Facebook group at:
Off Grid Living: Prepping to Live Off the Grid
Or, read more topics in our “Guide to Off Grid Living” at:
https://LivingOffGrid.Home.Blog/Guide-to-Off-Grid-Living/

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#Cabins #Chicken #Coops #Chickens #Eggs #Homes #OffGridLiving #LivingOffGrid #NestingBoxes #OffGridLiving #News #Oregon #Sheds #UnitedStates

How to Heat Water with Solar Hot Water Heaters and Stove Water Heating Jackets

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The Benefits of Using Passive Solar Heating and Wood Stove Water Heating Jackets to Heat Water for an Off Grid Shed, Cabin or Home

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How to Use Off Grid Solar Collectors to Product Free Hot Water

How to Use Passive Solar Collectors to Product Free Hot Water for Off Grid Properties

Various Types of Solar Hot Water Heaters to Heat Water for Off Grid Homes

United States – There are many options for solar water heaters that range from inexpensive home-made jobs to high-end state of the art commercial models.

If you switch to a solar water heating system, your use of electricity or propane will drop significantly; that number will approach zero rapidly if your backup heating system is a wood stove or firebox with a water jacket rather than occasional use utility electricity.

The home-made options are typically not suited for use during times of the year when temperatures dip below freezing. You would need to winterized them before any threat of fall or winter weather arrives. There are probably hundreds of variations that may be found on the internet. They range from coils of black plastic pipe on one’s roof to coils of copper inside a box with outer glass cover (creating a greenhouse effect).

Some of these utilize a DC electric circulating pump. It pushes the heated water into a storage tank and bring fresh cool water into the heater. This pump may be activated by a switch that is temperature controlled. But some are directly connected to a solar panel and only run when the sun is shining (precisely the same times that the water is being heated and needs to be circulated).

Evacuated Tube Solar Hot Water Heaters

Evacuated tube models are composed of numerous rows of glass tubes with another smaller tube inside each of the larger tubes. A vacuum is pulled between each of the two tubes which greatly lessens the loss of heat to outside weather. Water or an antifreeze solution is then circulated through the inner tubes.

The advantages of evacuated tubes lie in greater efficiency and less heat lost. So they work quite well even during surprisingly cool temperatures. However they are somewhat fragile and may not be as suited to areas with a great amount of snow and ice due to the potential for breakage from buildup.

Flat Panel Solar Hot Water Heaters

These heaters look much like solar electric panels but contain tiny water passages which enable a great amount of surface area to come in contact with the heat from the sun. While not as efficient as evacuated tubes, flat panels still work very well and are certainly more rugged when faced with heavy snow and icy conditions.

Typically an antifreeze solution is circulated through the tubes or panels and the hot fluid is routed inside to a heat exchanger which transfers the heat of the fluid to the home’s hot water. There are some varieties of evacuated tube heaters that are called drain down systems, which do not require the use of antifreeze because the water drains away from exposed areas once the water cools off.

Thermo-Siphon Solar Hot Water Heaters

It is possible to set up a solar water heating system that doesn’t require an electric circulating pump. This would be called a thermo-siphon system, operating on the principle that heat rises.

This was the type of system we planned to install for our cabin in the summertime. The disadvantages would be the amount of work involved in installation, significant cost of commercial systems, and reliance on an electric circulating pump (unless it is set up as a thermo-siphon system).

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Solar Powered Lighting Systems for Off Grid Cabins and Sheds

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Off Grid Living: Solar Powered Lighting
Systems for Off Grid Cabins and Sheds

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Solar Powered Lighting Systems for Off Grid Cabins and Sheds

How to Install Off Grid Solar-Powered Lights

One of the first things you’ll learn when camping or off grid living is that without electricity, it gets dark quickly.

But solar power is a great way to provide a wide variety of lighting and security systems that will let see what is making that big bumping sound in the backyard at 2:00 am in the morning.

How Off Grid Solar Lights Work

Solar spotlights are powered by photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight to electricity on the atomic level. Each cell contains a thin, flat semiconductor panel with a positive charge on one side and negative on the other. Sunlight causes the semiconductor’s atoms to blow apart, releasing electrons; the electrons are recaptured as electric current between the positive and negative charges. The electricity then travels through a cable to power the spotlight. Solar energy is also stored in the interior battery for use at night or on cloudy days.

Uses for Off Grid Solar Security Lights

Solar spotlights are particularly useful in illuminating outdoor spaces where traditional extension cords or bundles of wiring aren’t practical, such as in formal gardens, large open lawns or residential entrances. Newer models offer light emitting diodes (LEDs), which illuminate more effectively and efficiently than old-fashioned incandescent bulbs. Whether you choose to light a wide area from above or train the beam from ground level on an individual object, such as garden statuary, you can easily install individual spotlights without hiring a professional contractor.

Best Places to Install Off Grid Solar Lights

The foremost concern with installing solar spotlights is ensuring that enough sunlight reaches the photovoltaic cell. Spotlights today usually feature a long power cable between the cell and the actual light, so you can place the cell in a sunny spot that receives about eight hours of light a day, and position the spotlight where you want it.

For ground-level lighting, stake the cell in the ground so the cell faces the brightest sun, and then stake the light in the ground a few feet away from the object you wish to illuminate. Train the beam upward to focus on the object.

Mounting solar spotlights over entrances, garage doors or decks involves screwing the light’s baseplate into the vertical wall or post over the area you want to brighten, then angling the light’s beam downwards. With these types, the solar cell may be attached to the light’s hood or via a power cable; in both cases, the cell still needs to receive sufficient sunlight for operation.

Source: https://homeguides.sfgate.com/install-solarpowered-spotlights-79769.html

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

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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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Homes for Living Off Grid in Oregon

Searching for Information on How to Start Living Off Grid in Oregon? Our Living-Off-Grid.com Site Provides Everything You Need to Research Before Building an Off Grid Cabin in Oregon

How to Start Living Off Grid in Oregon

Have questions about what it will take to live off the grid in Oregon? Visit Living-Off-Grid.com to learn how to buy land in Oregon, select the type of home you want to build, size your solar power array for electricity, build a rainwater collection system for fresh water, provide heat with a wood stove, grow a raised bed garden, and more.