How to Start a Fire With Water

If you’re ever lost in a survival situation here’s a little trick you’re going to be so glad you know.

All you need is 2 things:

• a water bottle full of water 
• and some material that ignites easily, such as dry paper, leaves, pine needles, or grass. 

This is how you do it:

How to Make a Cheap, Long-lasting Survival Candle

Image: YouTube

With three simple items, you can make this homemade candle that will last many hours during a power outage or emergency.

You'll need:

• Vegetable shortening
• Newspaper
• 1 Glass jar

This short video shows you how to put these three household items together to make this simple candle:

Awesome Pallet House Built For $500

The Pallet House. Reclaimed pallets can be used for constructing shelters, cabins, and homes. Building a pallet house from reclaimed pallets is an inexpensive way to build your off grid home or cabin. Get out there, get some pallets, build something!

Image: www.i-beamdesign.com

The Pallet House prototype designed by I-Beam Design was featured in HRH Prince Charles’ Royal Gardens as part of an exhibition on sustainable design, organized by Prince’s Charities, Start, along with The Earth Awards, The Financial Times and IBM. The interior was decorated by Wallpaper magazine.

The inspiration for the Pallet House Project came from the fact that 84% of the world’s refugees could be housed with a year’s supply of recycled American pallets. With one and a half year of pallet production in the US alone, 33 million refugees can live in a Pallet House.


Nearly 21 million pallets end in landfills each year which can house over 40,000 refugees. Pallets are specifically designed for transport and delivery – so cost is negligible when carrying shipments of food, medicine and other types of aid to refugees. A 250 square foot ‘Pallet House’ requires 100 recycled pallets nailed and lifted into place by 4-5 people using hand tools in under a week.

This pallet home could easily be built using your own plans, however I-Beam offers a how to guide for $75 which can be found at i-beamdesign.com/products/pallethouse, if you want to build this exact one.

Source: i-beamdesign.com via offgridworld.com

Heat Your Room For 15 Cents a Day

Natural Cures Not Medicine

Image: YouTube

The following video shows us an ingenious way to heat a whole room for under 15 cents or possibly even cheaper if you find cheaper candles or maybe larger ones. It's simple, here's what you  need:

1. Small candles such as the ones seen is the video which are found at Ikea
2. A metal cake pan
3. Two clay planter pots, one smaller than the other
4. A lighter to light the candles

This awesome idea works on convection, which is accomplished by the air moving around between the two clay pots. This helps create a forced air effect which pushes the hot air around the room. Watch the video below to see how it's done:

How to build an underground greenhouse that you can grow in all year

DIY Underground Greenhouse - #OccupyTesla

Image: www.treehugger.com

In Ground Greenhouses have many benefits; the surrounding Earth provides excellent insulation, it's not an eyesore on the surface and most of all protecting plants from frost. Links to learning below.

The underground greenhouse method allows for natural insulation, while optimizing solar absorbance. These partially subterranean greenhouses appear to be the best for growing winter horticultural crops, and have been adopted in numerous countries, such as Japan, Russia, Korea, and now even the United States. These underground greenhouses can be something built very small for an individual or family, or it can be much larger to accommodate for more commercial needs. But it has proven to be more beneficial for growers than conventional methods which are at the mercy of varying weather conditions. Cheaper than aquaponics, but more effort than urban homesteading, an underground greenhouse is almost universally viable, more than affordable, and ecologically smart.
http://www.exposingthetruth.co/underground-greenhouse/

Underground greenhouse diagram via #OccupyTesla

Oehlers method utilizes a coldsink to help keep warmer while Greigers plan utilizes insulation between bags and earth. All 3 plans utilize a form of thermal mass to retain warmth.
http://naturalbuildingblog.com/earthbag-pit-greenhouse-plans/

Here is a video of a tour of the Walipini underground greenhouse:


Directory pertaining to the Wallipini underground greenhouse method.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Walipini_Underground_Greenhouses

Mike Oehler book to purchase
http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Sheltered-Solar-Greenhouse-Book/dp/0960446400/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357419115&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=earth+integrated+greenhouse

"Earth Sheltered Solar Greenhouse" - pit construction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hV8Teiskfo

How to harvest drinking water from fog without using electricity

Natural Cures Not Medicine

Image: inhabitat.com

Coming up with ways to find water when the grid is down has become one of the hottest topics in the off thecondensing air into water have proved promising, but have drawbacks such as using a large amount of electricity. They are also too expensive to purchase or build for anyone who isn't rich. I was researching these types of water collection systems when I ran into some information on turning fog into drinking water.
grid community. Many techniques such as

I've compiled as much information about how one would go about building a DIY fog into water collector here in this article. Technical data and know how on this subject is fairly scarce so if you plan on building one at home, some improvisation and experimentation will be needed. We have compiled all the basic steps you will need to take to build one of these water harvesting 'fog traps' for less than a few hundred dollars. An efficient fog collector could produce more than 3 liters of water per square yard of surface area per day in an area with a lot of fog and decent wind!

You will need some screen: usually fine-mesh nylon or polypropylene netting shade cloth. According to research the best cloth to use would be nylon shade cloth or polypropylene netting that provides 30-40% coverage similar to this commonly available greenhouse shade cloth, double layered.

From oas.org

"After testing the efficiency of various mesh densities, the fog collectors used at El Tofo were equipped with netting providing 35% coverage, mounted in double layers. This proportion of polypropylene-surface-to-opening extracts about 30% of the water from the fog passing through the nets."

Next you will have to build posts or a tent like structure to suspend the screen over. Remember that you want the screen to be fairly taut for highest efficiency.  You can use a simple technique that would be similar to making a fence post, then suspend the screen between the posts. You can also make a hoop style structure out of piping or plastic PVC, similar to what you see in the picture posted here:

From oas.org

"Full-scale fog collectors are simple, flat, rectangular nets of nylon supported by a post at either end and arranged perpendicular to the direction of the prevailing wind." 

Finally, you will have to build some kind of trough or gutter at the bottom of the netting to collect the water that has been captured from the fog and then drains into a storage container. The trough will have to be shaped as too take advantage of gravity to collect the water into the storage tank.

From oas.org

Here is an example of a trough or gutter design that can be used 

"As water collects on the net, the droplets join to form larger drops that fall under the influence of gravity into a trough or gutter at the bottom of the panel, from which it is conveyed to a storage tank or cistern. The collector itself is completely passive, and the water is conveyed to the storage system by gravity. If site topography permits, the stored water can also be conveyed by gravity to the point of use. The storage and distribution system usually consists of a plastic channel or PVC pipe approximately 110 mm in diameter which can be connected to a 20 nun to 25 nun diameter water hose for conveyance to the storage site/point of use."

Make sure to secure your fog collector down if needed. If you used the fence post style structure further support may not be needed, but with the PVC style you will need to.

Here is a time-lapse video showing the fog condensing and turning into water:

Example of a simple water storage setup

Once you have to water collected it is ready to use. If you plan on drinking the water you should check the quality of it to make sure it's potable. You can treat or filter the water if needed before you drink it, or perhaps you can use this DIY water distiller that we wrote about that requires no electricity.

This 'fog trapping' is being implemented in many third world countries where water is scarce, but could be used by anyone seeking to have a backup water supply in case of emergencies or to get off the water grid.

DIY, shipping container home

For anyone out there that thinks it's too expensive to live a life of luxury... Think again.

These are simple and cheap to make. If you like this idea share with your friends!

Natural Cures Not Medicine on Facebook: www.facebook.com/naturalcuresnotmedicine

If you like that you might want to check out these other videos of shipping container homes below:

DIY Non-Fluoride Toothpaste

Natural Cures Not Medicine on Facebook: www.facebook.com/naturalcuresnotmedicine

Are you aware of the health dangers of fluoride? Fluoridation (adding fluoride chemicals into public water supplies) began 68 years ago in hopes to eliminate tooth decay, lower dental bills, and put dentists out of business. But just the opposite happened. The creation of fluoridated dental products and tooth decay have become multi-billion dollar industries.

Many countries including China, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary, Japan, and nearly all of Europe have banned water fluoridation. However, the addition of fluoride in water supplies, juice, soda, wine, coffee, soups, processed foods and baby formulas is widespread in the Americas.

Fluoride enters our system through multiple means:
- Toothpaste with fluoride
- Water
- Baby formula
- Foods cooked with fluoride
- Canned soup, or restaurant-made soups
- Food cooked in Teflon cookware
- Coffee and tea made with fluoridated water
- Packaged and processed foods
- Fruit juice from a box/glass container
- Soda pop and soft drinks
- Beer and wine
- Anesthetics
- Cigarettes

Dangers of fluoride:
1. Known to cause dental fluorosis (defect of tooth enamel caused by fluoride’s interference with developing teeth) – dental fluorosis is characterized by yellow or mottled teeth.

2. Associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. It has also been associated with low IQ and mental retardation in children.

3. Known to cause skeletal fluorosis (crippling bone disease – aka. chronic joint pain, very similar to what those with arthritis experience). Could also be the cause of rising numbers in arthritis cases.

4. Impairs activity of the thyroid gland. Fluoride can depress activity of the thyroid and can result in an under-active thyroid, a common cause of obesity.

5. Disrupts normal hormone function. Fluoride can reduce melatonin levels (because fluoride likes to accumulate in the pineal gland), leading to disturbances in sleep-wake cycles and chronic insomnia. Fluoride also destroys the male reproductive system.

6. Interferes with brain function; interferes with learning and behaviour and another cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

Make your own Fluoride-free Toothpaste!
Ingredients:
- Coconut oil
- Baking soda
- Peppermint or spearmint essential oil
- Stevia

Instructions:
1. Take 1/4 cup coconut oil, and 1/4 cup aluminum-free baking soda (like Bob’s Red Mill)
2. Mix together, and add a few drops of peppermint or spearmint essential oil (optional) for flavour, and a bit of stevia (1/4 tsp or so) for sweetness.
3. Mix the above, and put into a glass container with a lid and use as needed.

Source: http://livelovefruit.com/2013/06/fluoride-in-the-water/