Wednesday, July 17, 2019

jeriatric junkland 2


JERIATRIC JUNKLAND 2
If you DON'T own an RV, off grid junk land living is much cheaper, cooler in summer and warmer in winter. But as good as any other shelter option is, none of them are “turnkey” like an RV is. As they say, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. Same with shelter. You can build a much better home than an RV. Much, oh so much cheaper, and with improved insulation and a better layout. But if you are an old geriatric humper, that better option might not be available.
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I lived in RV's for many years and I loved it. You could buy one dirt cheap, usually under two months minimum wage. I had no problem leaving one behind, selling it for a quarter of that price, and getting another wherever I moved, cheaper than the cost of hauling the old one. Then, that old game became obsolete. Not in every area, don't get me wrong. But in my areas, the RV's started getting zoned out because cheap living was a threat to the Yuppie Twats who wanted several lifetimes of earning for their McMansions.
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Then, as if the greedy whores trying to warehouse minimum wage workers into the ghetto wasn't bad enough, the RV park owners joined the game of Hide The Salome. Suddenly, they only wanted Social Security flush Seniors in their parks and they started a minimum year model policy. No more cheap 70's or 80's RV's were allowed, only newer 90's plus. Those eligible RV's jacked up in price. Then, the older RV owners discovered they could get more money from the Off Gridders. After Hurricane Katrina, the new RV dealers had huge FedGov stimulus raising the prices.
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If that wasn't bad enough, after the crash of '08 the RV companies consolidated, fired all the old Union dudes, hired Mexicans and crackheads and as prices doubled or tripled ( to pay for the acquisition costs ), quality went into the toilet. Which gave all the older RV owners incentive to jack THEIR prices higher. Suddenly, ANY old or new RV owner was asking way too much money. Suddenly, RV's no longer held the appeal of Po Boy Shelters like they used to. Now you see a lot of Tiny Homes or Conversions, because the RV game is rigged against the poor and alternatives are being sought.
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And BTW, don't automatically assume a horse/cargo trailer is as high of quality as it was just a few short years ago. The in-laws bought a brand new cargo trailer and JUST going from east Nevada to Oklahoma trim was peeling off and the tires were showing steel. By the trip half way back, wires were hanging. Small things, but what large issues are hiding? Anyway, even though I WANT to dissuade you from an RV purchase, again, if you are an old humper and cannot build yourself, that is still probably the best bet to get out to your junk land, an extra cost you must eat.
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Once there, perhaps you can pay someone to build a steel barn over it with a south facing sliding glass door for winter ( and two side sliding doors for summer ), and they thing might be cozier than a house ( at one fifth the cost ). And/or getting a backhoe to dig your earth tubes ( do NOT use 4” pipe which is too small. Use sewer pipe. It can use 12v auto fans to suck in the air. The only longer term alternative to heating/cooling, for very little investment ).
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Now, you could in theory go with those pre-built and delivered sheds, but one, can they deliver to junk land and two, you'll still be needing to insulate and build patricians and such. If the whole idea is Turn Key, sticking with a used RV is your least worst option. You have all the appliances installed and all the holding tanks, giving you some time to get adjusted. If the land isn't barren desert, you'll have to clear out a path to park. If you are completely feeble, you can hire a backhoe with a bushhog.
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If you can do it yourself, buy one of the expensive gas weedwackers that have the circular saw attachment for clearing it yourself. You already have power, with solar panels and a generator. You are cooking with propane. Your crapper will accept your deposits for a little while. Then, buy a pump that attaches to your black tank that chews up and pumps the sludge up into your holding tank in the vehicle. Drive into town to dump it, picking up groceries, visiting the laundromat, going shopping and filling up the water tank that drains into an exterior water tank.
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The 12v pump brings that up into the RV water tank. The same pump that gives you showers ( if you are too feeble to use gravity feeds, i.e. hauling water by hand ). Why is hauling water so problematic when it is hooking up one hose in town, then hooking up a second hose at home? Water pressure, then gravity, do all the work for you. You even now have the option of putting some framing and sheet metal panels up ( a good bet would be to replace the fabric awning ) and having rain catchment.
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To me, and excuse the holy living crap out of me if I'm forgetting anything here, it seems that the only physical work being done here is climbing up and down a few steps to enter or exit the RV. How is this any harder than living in town? How is it any more primitive, or Low Tech? You have all the amenities of home. Sure, the water pressure and volume is lower. Big whoopie pickles! Can't have a lawn? So what. One less maintenance item. My dad is too far gone to mow the lawn ( upper seventies, with the ton of medical issues from the bike wreck and heart attack ), so that is an added expense.
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Worried you can't have a freezer or deep fryer? You don't need those Fake Foods at that age anyway. I can see wanting to buy meat in bulk on sale. Surely, even old pukes can pressure can? Or, Mountain Guerrilla uses a freezer at his solar powered doomstead ( don't tell him I called it that, he is a HOMESTEADER, by gum ). He takes that plug in gizmo I tell you to use for a solar refrigerator ( HERE ) and sets it at 20 degrees ( as opposed to the standard freezer zero ) which keeps food frozen but the power consumption way down.
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Have the chest freezer ( or the chest freezer turned into a fridge, or both ) insulated and in the shade and the power consumption is even lower. My old neighbor ( who was old as dirt ) didn't even run anything 12v or energy efficient in his off grid mobile home, but instead had a big battery bank ( still limping along eight years later ) charged weekly by a cheap generator. Normal fridge, regular coffee maker, regular lights. He just used on-grid home appliances for zero stress power use ( one shudders to think of his battery cost, but with zero solar, living on a crappy lot right next to the rail tracks, and a used mobile home, he did it all cheap ).
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Off grid living is dirt cheap, the only difference being you pay up front rather than paying monthly. I lived five years in Carson City prior to moving to Elko, and all but two months were in an RV park. I spent fifteen grand in rent, to be “on-grid”. My land out here, which I paid extra as it is closer to town for a bicycle commute, plus close to the river, was about seven grand. The truck, land, the RV, solar and everything else was WAY below that fifteen grand and I got seven years use out of it ( I still own the land and the RV is still there, I just moved into town to live with my new honey. The solar and other items were stolen, but I'm a six mile U-Haul trip away from a fully functioning off grid home again ).
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Now, you noticed this article was NOT on how to live on junk land cheaply. It was how to live a lot cheaper, but without sacrificing in any meaningful way your standard of living, and even if you are physically challenged. You can easily live for almost nothing. Land far from power, a ferrocement dome, camping appliances, a sawdust toilet, a bike trailer for hauling water. Two months minimum wage, easy. But even going Full Retard Crippled, you can get away with less than one years minimum wage.
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Even paying high interest rates, you can make payments on the land, and a older used RV and it will most likely be under half what an apartment costs, or about the same as an RV park rental. But the light is at the end of the tunnel, just a short period of payments before everything is free, shelter wise, other than property taxes ( always look for extremely low taxes, then buy enough silver to cover that the rest of your life ). Why wouldn't everyone want to do this? The cheapest land is in the desert, and old bastards love heat.
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If the old lady will complain about the RV being too small, have a shed or two for your crap, and leave the RV totally uncluttered. It makes a huge difference in standard of living, believe me. If you are worried it is too far from a hospital, don't be. Call the ambulance ( have road signs up. Even the county ambulance drivers don't know the dirt roads even close to town ) and they send a helicopter. Then, you make payments based on income and die shafting the taxpayer. Easy.
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When I lived in Carson, my RV park payment went up without fail 10% a year. The asswhore had the only park in town that accepted 80's RV's ( the rest were 90's up. This was '03-'08 ), and could charge what he felt like. I was paying way over half my take home pay. That was overtime, working seven days a week, AND my writing income. Do you REALLY want to be in that situation when you are retired and medical costs skyrocket each year? Go off grid, granny.
( .Y. )
( today's related Amazon link click HERE )
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note: if you didn't read this as a "free for today" book, you can still get it on KU ( HERE ).  Told from a non-prepper standpoint, a grid down.  Well written.  Since there are no hero's, super ninja's or crystal ball gazers, this has a great feel for how normal Shmoe's go through a collapse.  
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note: luckily I needed some Super Glue for around the house, and found my bike bag kit glue had dried up at the nozzle ( never an issue the first few times I needed it ).  You never think of the simple stuff. Now I have a sewing needle taped to the container.  You probably aren't as absent minded as I am, but a heads up regardless ( remember the bike tube fix with glue and paper I told you about? ).
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*** Pay your author-no one works for free. I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.*** junk land under a grand *  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio* my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
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24 comments:

  1. Insulating FreezerJuly 17, 2019 at 8:46 AM

    I thought that chest freezers dissipated their heat through the sides of the freezer. That's what I was told when a repairman came to fix my regular fridge.

    So insulating it will keep the heat in and make the chest freezer work harder...

    Anyone have experiences with this?

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    Replies
    1. Oops! That throws a wrench in my advice. I just thought there was a vent at the motor location. Better informed minions? Bueller?

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    2. Mine has a vent on the one, and same side where there is a hump into the interior space that the lower area there contains the compressor, coils, etc. Do 3 sides and a mattress pad flip off type lid it would help. Just spiff balling a plan.

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    3. Jim this is a good dirt squat series. I would only like to ad that the set up of one's hovel or rv, etc they have to assess the terrain and situational positioning. Some is tactical, opsec-secrecy, etc. Mostly it is for ingress egress ease with trucks or equipment now or in future. Yes, may be even chugging it along mid collapsing. Winds can be a bitch, and break your things, know the harshest directions. Rain run offs, flood plains, etc. Sometimes just standing somewhere and looking around, and thinking, and thinking, will help formulate a good plan.

      Stay Frosty.

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    4. That is true on the chest freezer that I have. If you hold your hand on the outside you can feel the temp difference. That blew me away as well. My wife made a quilt like cover for the lid which does not get hot so that will work and help with the cooling cost.

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    5. re:
      where goes the fridge/freezer warmth?

      Heat is extracted from the coolant by expansion during its loop from the compressor through the plates inside the insulated box, and around.

      For the TinyHomeOnWheels I designed and built in 2003, I insulated an aluminum box, then ran refrigerant lines to the inside plate. I mounted to compressor remotely to isolate it from my chilled food.

      So, the warmth in the air in the insulated box is extracted by the coolant, then is moved outside the box by the coolant, then the warmth is dispersed by the system on the outside of the box.

      I grew-up on a farm; fridge or freezer break-downs were handled by my grandparents and aunts and uncles.

      For an example of the amount of heat released during compression, put your hand near an air compressor in a shop. Compressing a gas releases incredible amounts of heat. In a fridge, expanding coolant absorbs warmth from inside the fridge through the plate. And the coolant cycles back through the loop to the compressor.

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  2. "...perhaps you can pay someone to build a steel barn over it with a south facing sliding glass door for winter ( and two side sliding doors for summer )..."

    This is exactly my plan. A piece of inexpensive, flat land near a small town. Put up a 40'x40' pole barn (with sides, a few windows, and a roll-up vehicle and a personal entry door) to protect a 30' fifth wheel with slide-outs (actual living/sleeping space) and a 20' shipping container (for secure storage) from prying eyes and the elements. A roll-up garage door in front of the space where I park my 15 year old vehicle (sorry, LB)that I use for occasional trips when I'm not riding my bike. In the pole barn build a small room (10' x 12') for "normal" activities (laundry. dining, visitors, etc.). While still more expense than the bare-bones Bison junk land strategy, it's still far more affordable than a conventional house for a soon-to-retire person like me who has accumulated a small nest egg over the years.

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    1. Some years back now, I looked at a property up in the high Sierra Nevada, east of Arnold CA (Near big prather meadow to be specific). It was a beautiful 20 acres, and instead of the traditional cabin, the dude had a big metal warehouse. The roof had to have been heavily engineered, because it snows like you wouldn’t believe up there! This thing must have been 30’ feet wide, and around 60’ long. In either event, I like the plan. You could have a mini Eco-village of sorts, within the confines of the big metal building.

      Should have bought it, but even at $70k, which was cheap at the time for most folks, it was out of my price range. That, and it’s snowed in 8 months out of the year up there. But that’s okay, because I never planned on leaving :D

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    2. Plenty of big metal buildings around, cheaper. In the ghetto.

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    3. re:
      shipping containers

      We have a pair of 40s. We are getting two more to stack. They are cheap, and they are never enough.

      The neighbors own a rough-terrain tele-handler, so stacked is easy.

      Thinking ahead, we might get six more, stacked in a 32' x 32' fort. A metal roof, a chaise lounge, a book, and a few dogs. I'm good.

      Over at Rawlesville, somebody said they are so self-sufficient, the only way they would know about the end of this collapse would be to read about it on the satellite Internet.

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    4. I thought containers were cheap twenty years ago. Now? Have they come down in price? I can't see paying $2k for a twenty foot box that is banged up and rusted. What am I missing here? Seriously.

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  3. Another good post from Woodpile Report:

    "More about topping off our back room supply of commercial canned food. Recall it's intended to be provisions for two, for six to eight weeks, without getting into our freezer or deep larder. You know how it is. Go to the kitchen cupboard for this or that, it's gone, take it from the back room fully intending to replace it. Then one day you look at the shelves and notice the "six to eight weeks" would be more like five weeks of austerity. Doesn't happen in the winter when my food anxiety metastasizes into clinical paranoia. So, it's restocking time, which is always rethinking time as well."

    http://www.woodpilereport.com/

    ReplyDelete
  4. In addition to earth sheltered, I’m kind of keen on the hexayurt idea that another minion originally came up with some time back. The only drawback that I’ve come across is the number of people that you need to lift the roof cap onto the base unit, which was around 18. I don’t think that if I were to combine everyone that I knew that I could come up with that many people. That, and my land is in a different state from where I currently reside.

    In terms of defensive positioning, try to place it up high on a hill to prevent the opposition from firing down into it through the roof, circumventing your sand bags. A concrete pad would be the best for this I think, and you’re not talking about a big area, so one could conceivably do it with concrete bags, hauled water, and mixed by hand. It would be ideal to have an escape hatch, and of course, you would want to have enough food and water stay put for longer periods if necessary.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Yeah, you’d be humped if they happened to have mortars :D According to that article posted a few days back by the other minion, on the upcoming commie take over, the leftist troops will be supplied with such weapons by the elites when the time comes, but I pray that this will not be the case.

      It seems that the Afghani’s do quite well up against our PC forces with small rifle fire and RPG’s alone. But that does not surprise me in the least. The girl scouts in these other countries are tougher than the average western millennial male :D

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    2. One of the reputable vault construction companies has a faq that answers "Will this survive an artillery shell"

      I'll choose fighting Emu over arty barrages anyday. But on second thought Australia lost a war against emu even though we had the use of machine guns. Not even joking.

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    3. 5:58-unless their Girl Scouts were infiltrated by Diversity Boys, of course.
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      Dingo-it isn't the weapons, but the mind behind them, yes?

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  5. re:
    RecreationVehicles quality

    My hobby is reading posts on IRV2 forum, a mega-site dedicated to new owners of RecreationVehicles and their complaints about their life-savings investment in staples into particle-board, the leaking holes in their roofs, the spontaneous fires from their new brand-name residential-size fridge. And then, the tires disintegrated because they were sitting for a decade.

    I delivered RecreationVehicles from manufacturers to dealers, and dealers to shows. Every trip is:
    An earthquake plus
    A hurricane plus
    A flood plus
    A riot.
    I'm amazed they last as long as they do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And yet, the older ones are still functional. I hate to draw this correlation, but I swear as soon as Mexicans take over an industries labor, the quality takes a huge hit. I know it isn't their work ethic, and is just a reflection of management/corporate policy, but it is still a good guideline for consumers.

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  6. re:
    buried tubes for temperature stabilization

    I like the YouTube video of the Nebraska farmer and his greenhouses. As I typed 'greenho...', my telephone suggested his site:
    greenhouseinsnow.com

    The way I remember it, he buried twelve-inch tubes... twelve-feet deep... running three-hundred feet from intake to the greenhouses. Three-hundred feet is the size of an American football field, so this takes planning.

    Or, as the millennials say, 'advanced planning'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, citrus in the winter. If you downsize the diameter and length, it will be just fine for a house. Mike O, $50 underground house guy, in the sequel book talked about a Colorado business ( can't remember what kind ), up in the mountains, that did the 6 inch for 200 feet. So, definitely, an insulated house in a regular climate doesn't need fancy or expensive earth tubes.

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    2. greenhouseinthesnow.com is the url.

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    3. Thank you, for those spitting on ScrewYouTube.

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