frugal living 21

FRUGAL LIVING

UTILITIES
HEAT AND COOLING

One would do well to always remember and never forget that dependence on outsiders providing heating and cooling to you may cause more than poverty, but also ill health effects up to and including death ( the same goes for food, and while land for food production is too expensive to be realistic, storage food can be dirt cheap and will have to be Good Enough Insurance against famine and reliance on outsiders providing- see my other books for better details, specifically “PEE” ).  If you are living in an apartment in Chicago, and in the very near future the grid goes down for a week at a time or a desperately broke city taxes electricity out of your budget, you could die in the summer from heat stroke ( asphalt and concrete retaining excess heat ) or in the winter from the cold as the wind drains your dwelling of any and all trapped heat.  If you are living in Chicago, you are the largest flaming idiot of all time since the stupid bastards looking up at Vesuvius.  However, if you live in the semi-rural semi-suburbs of junk land ( you want to get away, but you need to be somewhat close to pedal to work and shopping ), you have complete control over providing your own heating and cooling.  Cheaply, and with usually no carbon fuels ( or, with a minimal amount you can do without in a pinch ).

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In my case, living underground pretty much takes care of both heat and cooling.  I’d like the summer to be a bit cooler than 75, and the winter to be a bit above 40 ( usually it is 45-50, with 40 after a bought of very cold ).  But it is good enough that in a severe contraction ( economically, shortages ) that I won’t die from the weather.  And good enough with just the slightest fuels added in the winter I’m much more comfortable.  However, if you want to invest just a smidge more, you can live frugal AND more comfortable.  Extra insulation is really no big deal.  Even if you only do one room, taking down the sheetrock and adding a second set of 2x4’s offset from the other wall ( to avoid the heat escaping -I’d even recommend sheets of rigid board set between the two walls as a third layer of insulation ), even if that doubled your interior materials cost for another $700 or whatever, this is not contrary to living frugal.  NOT insulating is contrary.  If you are building cheap to begin with, doubling insulation is affordable enough.  Putting a large window in a room facing south, with heavy drapes for night, should pay for itself in months.  Installing outside solar troughs with a solar fan forcing the air inside is cheaper still and doesn’t loose heat at night.  Try to design or modify with dirt and solar as your primary, with wood as a nice supplement that can be minimized if its use sees too much competition from neighbors with no solar or insulation.  And if all else fails, just make yourself a small dugout for $50 ( GET the book ) for emergencies of short duration or long ( the economy is guaranteed to get much worse, so no doomsday is necessary to need that investment ).

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Without air conditioning, and without water, you must go underground ( with water and a solar panel and a few inexpensive 12v fans you should be able to improvise a drip cooler.  Or just a fan to circulate the breeze.  In Florida for five years I lived just fine not by air conditioning but by tree shade.  Circulating fans did the rest ).  If you can’t or won’t build the home underground, you will need to hire a backhoe to dig a trench ten foot down and at least fifty long ( I’d go 100 unless that really is too expensive ) and lay down sewer pipe in a U.  At ground level away from the house, have an intake at ground level, screened ( otherwise something falls inside, dies and stinks ).  Down, then horizontal to the house.  Up through the floor, that opening screened ( or you drop valuables that will be hard to retrieve ).  Then, at the tallest part of your structure you have another pipe, painted black on the outside.  The sun heats that and pulls air from the inside which draws the cold air through the pipe ( these two pipes are NOT connected so don’t worry about laying pipe through the house ).  Now, should this fail to draw enough cold air, you’ll have to just put a fan on the inside opening of the underground pipe.  I’d go 12v, get them by the dozen or at least multiples because parts makers love discontinuing their wares to make your job difficult, and set the motor directly to an outside small PV panel.  The sun comes up, your AC starts ( you can also use this same system in the winter if drawing 50 degrees is a good start warming your house-just have it set on a battery to run longer.  Even just at night so you have an overnight heat source.  This assumes you don’t have a conventional set up with water pipes you must keep from freezing, cause fifty won’t cut it for that ).

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I’m also assuming you are smart enough to heat your body first, with proper clothes, THEN your home.  A sweater ( WOOL!!! Cotton sweaters are mere fashion accessories.  The finer the wool, the less itchy, if at all, it is.  Or just put a long sleeve shirt underneath to avoid itchy ) alone lets you drastically cut your heating requirements.  Add in a cap and long johns and you might not even need any for long periods ( one assumes you can bath while dinner cooks to get a “two-fer” ).  I don’t heat at night.  With two wool blankets, two poly comforters and one feather comforter ( only around $50 at Amazon-synthetic fill is still very warm ) and a thin squishy foam under the sheet to reflect heat, I can sleep in my birthday suite in 40 degrees ( getting out of bed is a little less fun of course ).  Insulate yourself, then your home, and be amazed at how little energy you now need.

END

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survivalism philosophy

SURVIVALISM PHILOSOPHY

I’ve never really understood others fascination with philosophy.  What do you mean, what is the meaning of life?  It’s to replicate our DNA.  I don’t know why we have to throw religion into it, or study paintings with titles “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”.  Why read Voltaire or Enlightenment writers?  It all just seems like flailing about in the dark, and the dark was a hood we pulled over our own head.  A replacement for religion?  Religion, and I mean religious institutions, not religious belief, gave us nothing but trouble and now it seems like finding its replacement isn’t doing much for us either.  My Book Swap Buddy at work, a retired guy who has leftist leanings so our conversations are pretty interesting ( I don’t lean left, but I despise the right ), gave me a hideously overpriced book ( $38, in 2001!!! ) “Grasping For The Wind” by John Whitehead.  Subtitled “the search for meaning in the 20^th century”, the thing makes you a bit dizzy as it “examines the progressive, unfolding, interweaving of religion, philosophy, politics, the arts, psychology, and sociology”.  I mean, it’s interesting ( although I’d be pissed if I had paid for it- the best part so far is new to me information that Jim Morrison was a big fan of Nietzsche which seems obvious in retrospect but I’d never really pondered his background search for his poetry ), but I’m over half way through it and one can’t help but get the sense he should have come to the point by now.  Something tells me it is going to be convoluted and high-faluten ( there was a video series the book is based or-or visa versa- so it might even be on U-Tube by now ), if I even manage to read it all the way through.  It seems to me it is as simple as the modern Industrial Age threw us all for a loop with its continual destruction of culture up to the present day.  I say, why look further than a wish to return to tradition as a cause for all this pointless philosophizing ( of course, one could then get philosophical about what era of tradition we are even talking about.  Immediate pre-Industrial?  Pre-nation state?  Traditional West, or East?  Traditional Iron Age?  Sooner? )?

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Nothing is going to replace what we lost, be it Sadism or Feminism or different religions such as exotic Eastern ones where little fat statues with man boobs are chocked in a cloud of incense.  I wish we could return to a hunter-gather future, but something tells me that that can never happen again.  With seven billion people and more every hour, even a 99% die-off is still going to leave far too many people on a denuded planet to practice our true ancestral occupation.  The good news is that there can always be nomadic or pastoral ways of life.  Let the asparagus growers fight over the few well watered fertile areas ( and by the by, for you good old Southern boys thinking a yeoman farmer future is possible, the Mississippi delta region was home to a centralized indigenous civilization once before.  Geography can be a bitch ), and the rest of us can get by as herders which offers a much freer life ( if more prone to violence ).  But regardless, however your area eats, tradition gives a solid satisfactory background to life.  We become, once again, preoccupied with protecting, providing and nurturing.  The shrinking of the group to the tribe.  What other meaning do you need out of life?  Companionship, a meaningful existence, security. 

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All this other mental masturbation is unnecessary.  We miss what we no longer have, traditional lifestyles, and survivalism is a belief system that intoxicates us into believing we can have that again if we survive.  We don’t prepare just because we believe we are too important to die, but because after the upheaval we think we’ll have something worth living for.  So, if you are looking for a philosophy to explain our present, how about instead one that celebrates the future as the past?  Some damn fool charging you a full days pay to wax philosophically about philosophy and the search for meaning, of course using fully the tools of the Industrial Oil Age to give you a whopping dose of glossy eye candy, just contributes to the problem.

END

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frugal living 20

FRUGAL LIVING 20

UTILITIES

ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES

CONTINUED

I know that the ongoing doctrinal brainwashing these days is that you should never ever, EVER watch television but instead go down to Bobby-Lee’s Super Ninja Training School and learn some rockem sockem martial arts to balance your center ( wash on, wash off ) or learn some old timey skills to save money or garden to be healthier or whatever.  And none of that is necessarily a bad thing ( although some believe American martial arts are close to worthless and not much more than guys ballet, or at least in the beginning years ), but I can learn that crap AND watch an hour of TV at night.  Not because there is a whole lot of good stuff on-it is usually a fight to avoid a reality show or singing-but because after four to seven hours of reading and an hour of writing, my damn brain needs to relax.  I rarely read fiction, so while I’m being entertained because I only read what interests me, it is still learning.  I need to turn my brain to mush to counter that.  Moderation in all things, from work to play.  So, from the start I wanted a travel or camping TV.  But the decently priced $30 black and white five inch TV I had in storage was the old analog signal.  The only good it ever did me was to use as a base I strapped my new digital flat screen TV to ( I did find a trash picked WatchMan with a two inch screen but it got one channel, poorly, and this was about the time the switchover to digital became mandatory and the analog signals were retired so that didn’t last long and was no big loss ). 

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And of course, I would never dream of paying $30 a month for a satellite dish.  For one thing, it’s a two year contract and ever since the Internet got started up and I got roped into one of those ( at the time, the only way to get an unlimited minutes package ) I refuse to ever do so again ( don’t even get me started on cell phone contracts, were you keep picking and choosing between companies for the privilege of getting screwed a tiny bit less ).  And more importantly, it uses friggin 50 watts an hour pulling down the signal.  Then, after I’ve humped myself with a contract, had to buy more solar panels, then I still have to watch just as many commercials as I do on broadcast stations?  Who the hell ever thought cable or satellite was a good idea?  A nation of morons, I’d imagine ( who love those sports packages- sports who you subsidize through taxes ).  I’ll take my $50 rooftop antenna  any old day of the week.  I still get 20 channels, no sports but one Latin and one country music so almost as bad ( the one great part about digital signal is the extra channels, but you have got to love 70’s shows or there won’t be a lot to pick from ).  And the antenna doesn’t draw any juice.  The TV, 12 watts. 

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Like we saw with the 12v refrigerator, just because something says travel, 12v or the like doesn’t mean you can indiscriminately use them.  Some draw a lot of power.  You still need to know the watts you draw compared to the watts your panels produce.  Never ever take the stated watts from a panel seriously.  Subtract 10% for Real World Application.  AND a few percent for the cost of charging the battery.  If you have a AC power appliance, like a DVD player or a pair of hair clippers or even your computer, when you turn on that inverter, expect it to use up 10% extra of what you are drawing.  So a 30 watt panel is delivering 22 watts while your 30 watt appliance is using 33.  That’s what the battery is for, right?  To draw more juice than what the panels produce, which you replace later ( how else do you get light at night? ).  Just beware the true electrical cost.  And in the winter, the sun delivers even less to the panel- my best guess is about half that in summer.  So your 30 watt panel is really only a 12 or so in winter, less any battery performance degradation and inverter use.  But even with all that, remember that you are getting free electricity from the sun.  Okay, $3 a year per 30 watt panel and about $3 a month per battery.  The bigger price is you must relearn how to use the stuff, from just thoughtlessly flipping a switch to always calculating how much you are going to get the next day.  My feelings are that I’m not bound to a corrupt utility company, nor am I bound to a greedy municipality which basically thrives by enslaving all those who “need” to be hooked up to utilities, so the price of using less appliances is easily the correct decision.  I look at city living like it was living in a trailer park.

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Before I moved to my own land, $125 a month for four years ( plus a lot of my tax returns ), I lived five years in a trailer park which was about $325 a month.  Fifteen grand for five years, over twice the price of my land ( true, a five minute walk commute from the park, but that was still a stiff price ).  Why?  Because I was on city utilities.  There was almost no ground devoted to our parking space-you could actually hit your neighbor if you spit out the window.  Fifteen grand to have a hookup to AC electric, city water and a sewer connection.  So now, I have 12v electricity with limited appliances, a composting toilet and I haul water in jugs on my bike.  And I save $3k a year.  Half of my pay, saved, by foregoing extra appliances.  True, an hour and a half commute daily, but that is exercise to keep me healthy.  I’m fifty, I need to stay fit or I’ll decline faster than Rome after 400 AD.  So the commute is just a side benefit, not a cost. 

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Get plenty of extra panels to stay in lighting regardless of what the weather does, first and foremost.  Bright overhead lighting is one of the best things you can do to feel you are living rather than camping.  After that, any electrical appliance is just gravy, a luxury.  Trust me, going from camping/squatting when you first go off grid where you live primitive until you recover from a traditional debt serf existence, any extra appliance will be a treat and appreciated. 

You won’t feel you are depriving yourself, but pampering yourself.  I know, now, you are thinking of giving up your wall size TV to move to the boonies, your big fridge, your Fry Daddy, your thumping stereo, all will be too sorely missed.  Go camping for a month, and the most pathetic comparable appliances will be manna from heaven afterwards.

END

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long distance

LONG DISTANCE WAKE UP CALL

Modern Americans have close to zero perception of distance.  For century and millennia distance had hard and cold limits- how many miles a food fueled entity could travel in a day.  The settlements of occupation ( Spanish Missions on the California coast ) were a day’s travel afoot apart.  Military campaigns had hard limits built around absolute limits for infantry and horse.  Not to mention if there was even a way to police land areas others tried to traverse.  Many times there were no roads and waterways were the only considerations ( Viking raids up river, the American Revolution hinging on navel supremacy due to nearly zero north-south roads, Arab economies taking advantage of African and Asian trade which were almost entirely naval ).  Today, autos make miles irrelevant with travel decisions reckoned in time.  No one thinks a thing of produce from Mexico ( stop placing too much importance in California production- outside a few specialties the whole sector is now a zombie ), toilet paper from Canadian Artic trees or $1 retail gee-gaws shipped over from China.  Now, this will NOT be a tirade against oil dependence.  Here is my point.  As distance means nothing in reality ( or, the perception of reality so same thing for most ) I have grave doubts anyone who matters is planning now on how to negate the disadvantage of distance come the time.  In the future, if a military conflict erupts between the federal government ( with its lapdogs in many local governmental entities ) and civilians, say, I don’t know, when the poor humpers are starving, distance is definitely going to work against the feds.  Be prepared to take strategic advantage.

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Again, I do NOT advocate armed rebellion.  Best to hide away and let them implode on their own.  If you have no choice and are forced into it, don’t be a stupid martyr.  Try to survive by being a sneaky hiding skulking shadow rather than throwing yourself against the enemy with macho grunts as you wildly spray your semi-auto carbine, filled with nothing but thoughts of liberating a By God Full Auto Carbine, secure in the knowledge that the mighty roar of a mag emptying itself in three seconds will send fear up the enemies spine as his bowels loosen in unbridled terror.  Try to only engage things, not people.  People shoot back.  It is all about logistics, not tactics.  Washington DC is going to try to monopolize all production for its own military and luxurious rewarding of its ruling members.  To do so, it is going to have a supply chain from the Atlantic coast to near the Rockies and from the West coast to the Sierras ( with the middle largely empty of desirable targets.  And the West coast might be abandoned depending on Chinese control of Panama, or even if the coast is invaded.  In the end, the eastern sector is where most of the targets are ).

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Supply chains are vulnerable.  A natural gas pipeline can’t be manned by armed guards every quarter mile ( and that is the plains.  In heavier foliage you need even more ).  When a quarter of all petroleum products are distilled in a small area in Louisiana, disruption is easy.  How do you patrol every shoreline of the Mississippi river or Erie canal ( I’m not sure if that one is still operable, but you take my point )?  When almost all our grain is grown in the Midwest, first having artificial fertilizer brought in from the ports-as half is from overseas-to the fields, then the yields taking just a few railroads back to where the inputs came from, you face a very easily disrupted food supply.  This countries military is a fiercely perceived mighty entity, but entirely dependent on expensive training, vast imported oil, deficit spending linked to PetroDollar supremacy, and imported computer chips, plus too much high tech reliance.  Mostly thinly held together by fragile supply chains and past monopoly positions.  A paper tiger.  Not to say rebels will have free reign, but to point out that guerilla operations are local.  They might face the same supply constrictions, but they are not fighting with a distance handicap.  Local food production might be problematic, but it is a possibility without far away supplies.  The feds will be fighting a conventional war, needing globally or at least continentally ( although I have my doubts there is enough local oil ) transported supplies, and so even if they camp and steal local food, they are still tied to the present way of war fighting and long distance logistics.  Their heavy mechanized movement needs petroleum from several states away.  To support more warriors and security personnel, to even closely approach the level needed to suppress local heavy populations, they will need lots of grain from far away as locally is too condensed and settled.  With supplies going both ways to the farm.  They can’t clear and depopulate the East fast enough.  Long distance will be a non-negotiated aspect of their plans.  Be ready.

END

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frugal living 19

FRUGAL LIVING 19

UTILITIES

ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES

One of the bad things about living off grid is that you can’t have a lot of electrical appliances.  One of the good things  about living off grid is that you can’t have a lot of electrical appliances.  You don’t need as many as you think, and when every watt counts, you’ll give up both unnecessary ones ( electric carving knife, deep fat fryer ) and what you thought were necessary ones ( microwave, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, 60 inch flat screen with X-Box game console ).  Actually, thanks to both semi-truck drivers, Chinese mad dog capitalists, microchips and the propensity of young and old alike to live in their cars more than their homes, your list of sacrifices will be pretty short due to relatively new 12v electrical appliances.  Okay, granted, a 12v vacuum is like a two inch mouth with the suction power of a 90 year old prostitute, but in theory it will clean your floor on a sunny day.  And while 12v televisions are barely bigger than your cell phone screen, hey, at least you can still watch a little TV and barely use more electricity than a very efficient light bulb.  You can still get some refrigeration, even if it isn’t much more than a 1920’s ice box ( the last one isn’t 12v.  You can in theory have a regular fridge by converting a chest freezer [ they sell a converter unit to knock down the power draw ] and having about $500 in solar panels, or you can just use actual blocks of ice [ to make ice in the summer, for about 200 watts, get the book Sunshine To Dollars ], but you can forget those crappy 12v fridges sold to truckers as they take a lot of juice ).  Actually, with a grand in panels you could have both a microwave AND a modern fridge, and it would be prudent to buy all the Chinese panels you can while they are still cheap at $1.50 a watt, but you don’t NEED all that much.  It can be a future luxury ( like, in the future before the wife divorces you ).  For now, living on almost no electricity.

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When I went off grid, they had just started offering bayonet bulb LED lights, TV was just changing over to digital and they were just introducing “netbook” computers to replace “notebook”.  Depending on how you look at it, I was either very lucky in having new and improved choices, or I had to waste a lot of money upgrading.  The incandescent bulbs that RV’s came with draw 18 watts each.  Within a month or three of moving, a cloudy Fall met with 30 watts of panels, those bulbs and two high amp batteries and I was in the dark.  I’m talking, it was cloudy for two weeks or possibly three.  Let me tell you, and Birkenstock wearing, Volvo driving, armpit hair braiding tree hugging stupid son of a bitch who ever theorized that candles are good illumination never lived with them as their sole light source.  I was lucky at the time to have a reader who clued me in to the new bulbs, which more than anything else ensured I’d never need to light another candle ( they use four to five watts each, and are brighter ).  Shortly after that, I bought my new computer which used 30 watts of power compared to my old 60 watt notebook ( the old one also had no USB slots, which in itself assured its eventual demise-try using floppies anymore, and I’ve NEVER had luck with recording CD’s ).  And the prices were a lot better than ever, although this would more than likely be my last Windows machine which is quickly pricing itself out of dominance by demanding ever shrinking time frames between obligatory OS upgrades-I’m liking the look of Google Chrome a lot these days, and by passing docs around in PDF I can say goodbye to Windows word processor.
CONTINUED NEXT POST

END

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rich preppers 2

RICH PREPPERS 2

As I’ve said before, I was researching survivalism all through High School, starting in the late 70’s.  At first it was mostly guns but after I was loaned a copy of Clayton’s book, it was all nuclear fallout shelters ( plus, still guns ).  Also being a Dungeon & Dragon geek, I had plenty of graph paper.  So, when I wasn’t designing game worlds, I was designing shelters.  These were my first improbable probing thoughts  into how I was going to survive the stab in the back the savage Reds inflicted on their way to global domination.  By the time I got into the military, these old infatuations started to slowly be replaced by reality.  I tried playing D&D a few more times before giving it up, I got my first subscription to Soldier Of Fortune but never renewed it, and I moved on from playing on graph paper after realizing the costs associated with even the most rudimentary shelter ( let alone the mansions I had created at times ).  Didn’t some poet say something about Giving Up Childish Things?  Not that those activities were immature or foolish, but the childish expectations that went with them were.  As an adult, you shouldn’t have the free time necessary for role playing campaigns, not if you are looking for a mate, a career and a family.  One would hope you outgrow the mental age that gun magazines target ( it really is rarely much information after a certain point and more picture porn ) eventually, and pining after a sports car or a fallout shelter are teenager fantasies.  Or should be. 

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I must say, it doesn’t seem like that many people in the prepper field have advanced beyond Childish Things.  They are playing at third world banana republic general-hood,  dreaming of too expensive cars ( still the pimply lad proclaiming by golly he’ll get the girl if he just had a hot rod! ) and just know, both consciously and subconsciously that when they grow up and go out on their own they’ll have a billion dollars and all their problems will be solved, can I get an Amen?!  Money is a necessary tool but it never solved anyone’s problems beyond short term basics ( in the long term, all money becomes worthless, and in the long term all associated problems that went along with money creation destroy societies ).  Every prepper site that caters to the gun magazine levels of fantasy, and the fallout shelter level of preparedness does a long term disservice to its readers.  We all need money to live and to prep.  But needing THAT level of money leads one down the Rabbit Hole of binding dependence, and far worse, it blinds people to their own abilities.  If you can’t make a lot of money, you won’t survive.  So making money comes before surviving.  ALL survival equipment could be replaced by skills at some point, negating the need for money ( Stone Age tools, anyone? ).  Granted, no one has the time or inclination to do so, needing a whole new life skill set and just surviving in a computer chip Petroleum Age post-industrial economy takes twelve hours a day for most of us.  But the point is, there IS a survival strategy beyond just earning money.

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How much longer do you really think our money is going to be worth more than a square of toilet paper?  Beyond your lifetime?  Sure, if you are already on Social Security.  Perhaps.  You read about Weimer Germany, you read about modern Zimbabwe, and you go back to worrying and struggling to make even more money for your survival preps.  I don’t hate rich people because they have more than me.  They chose a life of wealth creation and I chose one of silent contemplation.  Each was correct for that person.  I don’t hate guys that are “players”, getting laid all the time.  That is literally their life’s work and I have no time for that nonsense.  What I hate rich people for is their snobbish attitude, as if dollar bills are a scorecard to who is smarter.  Really?  You think having more money at this point in history is a GOOD idea????  Who is going to be more intelligent when the infrastructure holding up that currency collapses?  You?  Now, tell me, are preppers living in a large urban area smarter than one living in the boonies?  Why?  Because they are making more money.  So simple, how could I not see the obvious correlation?  Nothing is about survival with rich preppers.  It is still all about money.  Some stupid ass eight grade graduate in a ball cap and torn jeans ( a set of cammo’s are too expensive ) and a beat to crap twelve gauge can set a trap for a bug out vehicle with a shovel and an ax and have all the supplies he needs-without money.  But don’t mind me.  I make below middle class wages, so I must not be too smart.

END

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frugal living 18

FRUGAL LIVING 18

UTILITIES

WATER, CONTINUED

Another thing you are not going to need water for is a flush toilet.  This might be a deal breaker for the spouse, but if that is so more than likely the move wasn’t going to happen anyway and that is just an excuse.  Composting your waste is not all that much more nasty than the actual act of making the waste and cleaning the residue off, and is far better than changing a baby.  If you place a plastic bag in the bucket ( I use a cut down bucket so I can use free shopping bags ), there is far less in the way of cleaning ( dump the sawdust/waste from the bag then throw the bag away in your regular trash.  The dump people are getting disposable diapers, Depends, and dog crap giving to them every day so one of your bags which may not even have one fecal smear-because the sawdust might have kept it from hitting the bag-on it is no big deal ).  For more details than you could possibly want, The Humanure Book is online for free, just search it. 

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When it is time to wash your hands after soiling the sawdust, you need to work around having no running water.  I trash picked a beer brewing barrel, but you can make your own if you don’t want to buy one.  It is just a five gallon bucket with a plastic spout on the side near the bottom.  You push the handle down to run the water, rather than it being a twist.  I prefer dish soap to wash my hands, using my non-wipe hand to pop open the top and squirt a bit on the other, lathering first without water then adding just a few drops to really get the suds going.  Then wash off under the spout ( I have the water perched atop another overturned bucket and a catch bucket under the spout ).  Sanitary and using almost no water. 

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To wash your body, you need very little water.  Now, I’m only a trim 190 pounds and I have a crew cut, so fat boys and gals with long hair are going to use a smidge more.  I use a quart to wash three times a week and a half gallon on the forth.  On alternate days I don’t wash I use baby wet wipes for my head, another the pits then crotch ( plenty of drinking water and whole wheat means I use a few wipes on my ass every day ).  On my Saturday wash I go head to toe with soap, using a half gallon, but on the other wash days I use soap just on my head ( greasy head, another reason I dislike longer hair ), pits, crotch and butt and use the soapy water last to swish my feet, using a mere quart.  The rest of the body is just a hot water on a washcloth vigorous scrub. 

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I use Mason quart jars in my hot water heater so it is easy, each one being filled 16 ounces because they lay at an angle and will leak with any more, figuring out how much water to allocate to bathing ( in the winter, I either forego the heater entirely if too cold or use the heater to pre-heat and finish up on the propane stove.  But you’d be surprised how often solar alone is hot enough-but more on that in its own section ).  I started out using a pressure spray jug like you’d use in the garden, but stopped using them both because the quality went down and they broke too soon and because using a large thick washcloth in a container of water allowed me to scrub my skin which seemed to clean better than just spraying off soap.  You could call it a sponge bath or a whores bath, but it works for me and it worked for the whores I’ve visited who were nice and clean ( this was Korea, not some nasty crack whore here ).  Even once you get to the last of the bath when the water is pretty soapy, it is still a refreshing feeling bath.  And start out at the top and work your way down as it allows a bit of water to be double duty.  I bend over the tub to first clean my head, then get in and have the container at my feet where I go from neck down cleaning ( torso, skip middle to do legs and feet, crotch and ass last ).  This also allows you to towel off each part for when it is cold and you are trying not to freeze.   For gals, I’d alternate days between hair and body.  I’m not sure how much you’d need but it shouldn’t be more than a couple of gallons a week extra.  And remember, this is for a desert dweller on a bike.  Your location might have plentiful rain and even a small shed roof would have enough catchment square footage to generously supplement your hauled water.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
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The Old Bison Blog on CD 
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I                         

Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu

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Contact Information

 Links To Others,

 Top 20 Survivalist Fiction,

 Land In Elko,

 Lord Bison,

 my bio & biblio
*
My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.