Not so long ago I wrote here about my new deep cycle batteries. I also got a solar charge controller and two 10 W_p solar panels. One of those I am giving away on my other Polish blog to readers, the other is going to be used on my property for the composting toilet.

Almost 1,5 years ago I bought two 30 W_p panels. One such panel is now connected to the batteries via the charge controller. It means I have my own photovoltaic system, with large battery capacity and single small solar panel. Read the rest of this entry »

Having a week off I finally managed to read one of the books I got for Christmas — “The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love” by Kristin Kimball.

It is a pleasand to read book written by 30-something-yo woman from New York, who met Mark — an interesting man running a farm, and moved with him. They both started a large and modern farm, having several acres of land. Read the rest of this entry »

Who said you can’t have your own alternative energy source for emergencies if you’re living in an apartment?

Having some cash at hand at the end of december, I bought online two large deep cycle batteries, of capacity 140 Ah and 100 Ah.

The larger one was a bit broken (piece of plastic broke, but was glued by the shop who sells them), and because of that cost almost the same as the smaller battery. Read the rest of this entry »

The least I wanted to have done by the end of the year was to close the building, something we call here in Poland: raw closed building. It should have all the walls, windows and doors. But not necessarily ale the stuff inside.

I was not able to spend 2-3 weeks in a row during the fall, so that I could build the walls using straw bales, and cover them with clay plaster. Because of that, I changed the idea significantly and decided to do something else.

What I wanted to do exactly is shown on the video below. And below the video you will find the translated transcript of the video. Read the rest of this entry »

In the middle of august I spent a couple days near Łódź in a place called Cohabitat Hackerspace, where the workshops called “Do It Yourself 2.0″ took place.

During that workshop several different things were built, including:

• a single wall and an entire small building of clay and straw bale,
• a wall made of so called “light clay” (bricks made from mixture of clay and straw),
• cordwood wall,
• solar thermal air collector for heating,
• solar thermal collector for domestic hot water.

Read the rest of this entry »