your own infrastructure 3

YOUR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE 3

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note: if you want one, don't wait.  Since I ordered two weeks ago most offerings are out ( I tried ordering in January from another company-which was my bad, Sportsman's is the only way to go-and never even got a notice the item was permanently out of stock ).  As per our discussion on leather rifle ammo pouches:
surplus ammo pouch
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You’ve super insulated the best you can on the largest size you can afford, built some kind of south facing passive solar gain ( I purposely didn’t cover thermal mass as a heat battery, assuming here we are short on cash.  Want the best, free, temperature battery?  It isn’t black metal water filled drums or something similar, but simply the ground itself.  Building a dug out, then covering that hill with liner with the edges as far away from the structure as you can afford and the minimal openings well insulated, does wonders for regulating the temperatures inside all year long ) and discovered the beauty of cob and rocket stoves for nearly free efficient heat.  The last items are illumination, water and sewage.  With food storage, a frugal lifestyle, a well insulated structure of whatever kind, passive solar, rocket stoves, PV power, rain catchment and composting, you are very close to a complete personal infrastructure only overwhelming armed force or the ravages of Mother Nature ( a vicious syphilitic whore if there ever was one ) can screw up.  You aren’t dependent on other people to somehow have it in their own interests to not screw you.

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And it certainly doesn’t need to be expensive.  I could have buried my travel trailer for just a few hundred bucks in lumber if I had so chosen, rather than building much more than just a roof over the pit.  Had I planed it better, I could have had south facing solar gain if I hadn’t just gone straight down in my digging ( for some reason it didn’t occur to me, and that was AFTER I had set up my trailer for solar heat.  Instead, I placed most of the fill dirt on that side.  In my defense, I busted my ass at work, pedaled home, then dug by hand, so perhaps my brain was shut off as the blood flowed to my muscles ).  Solar gain is just a little glass and some lumber, another few hundred.  Sheet metal for rain catchment is $80-$100 for a eight foot cube porch.  A composting toilet is very little glass and lumber if placed in another pit.  You needn’t even spend $1k.  Food storage, in generous five year increments with some variety is under a grand, as is a decent arsenal.  $3k is barely over two months minimum wage.  I’m living in town paying rent now, still stockpiling a minimal amount, working twenty hours a week on minimum, and I’m STILL saving almost half of my take-home pay.  I could do all the above in less than a year.  And, your excuse is…

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Illumination we have covered numerous times.  Decide what is best for you, 12v or AA, and buy a VERY cheap system to provide plentiful light for many years ( a few bucks could easily see you in light well past your food storage ).  With LED’s, the survivalist is being handed a near free source of near-forever light.  Too bad that doesn’t make up for all the cheap guns disappearing and the grain prices tripling, eh?  Lanterns for internal lights, headlamps for hands free.  Flashlights for nighttime.  All very affordable and you can buy in multiples, plus have plenty left over for rechargeables by the dozens and more than one solar charger.  Enough about that.  Let’s move on to water.  There is nothing wrong with a shallow well with a manual pump, but if you are out West, I would seriously consider only using rain catchment.  The deeper the well, the more expensive it is and far more to break.  You want that kind of exposure?  If you live in Oregon and rain catchment is illegal, you had better be well hidden or packing a U-Haul.

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I always thought a ground catchment might be a good idea.  Pick the steepest slope on my property, leave the sage brush, lay chicken wire attached to stakes around each bush ( with perhaps a slight up swell to channel the water to each side, right next to the trunk so well hidden ), color the cement brown and construct ferrocement.  At the bottom would be a cement trough leading to a buried barrel or a covered cement basin.  Camouflaged and cheap.  Camo because I don’t want to pay property tax on a permanent structure and cheap because that is how I want to roll.  If I went conventional I was just going to construct a screened porch in the back of my junker pick-up truck so I’d have a summer hang-out and a rain catchment ( I’m not going to place metal sheeting atop my trailers as you can NEVER seal holes on a roof well enough.  Which is why my solar panels are on the ground ) with a barrel buried nearby.  Buried for antifreeze and camo.

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A compost toilet used to be just like a pellet stove.  Hard to find and expensive.  You used to have the choice of buying a huge two story unit from Sweden, or buying one small unit ( such as for a boat ) that needed electricity.  And not much else.  Luckily for us, just as there will always be someone who is stronger than you and smarter than you, or prettier than you ( such as myself, with my glorious hair ), there are plenty of people out there who are MUCH more frugal than you.  Without states full of cheap-ass rednecks experimenting with rocket stoves, you’d need two grand for a factory stove rather than under $20 for a BBQ metal grill and a bit of welding ( another $5 to your buddy for beer, to use his rig ).  A solar composting toilet came to me from one such tight ass frugal bastard.  His $20 book was one of my best investments, chock full of passive solar plans.  Simplicity itself.  A hole, with a trash can inside, and glass covering the hole.  Throw in your sawdust toilet contents ( turds, TP and sawdust-available as hamster bedding at Wally for cheap-and NO liquid.  Your urine should be diluted and used for plant fertilizer.  About ten to one water/pee.  Your urine is mostly water to begin with-the dilution is not for health’s sake as much as it is to avoid burning the plant ).

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If you are dumping two partial five gallon buckets in a week, even a small can should last you some time ( it compacts ).  When the sun goes down or it is winter, the microbiological process can stop, but once warmed again it starts right back up.  If you had an insulated cover for the glass at night you could probably speed up the process.  Nonetheless, once full, you stop adding to it and let it sit a year undisturbed, just to be safe.  Start a new hole before that happens.   Easy, peasy, just like everything else on your journey towards off grid everything ( well, mostly ).

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