Major Challenges

Getting Food

GARDENING!

Trading for food

Wild Animals

Traps

Farming

Aquaponics: See book
Straw Bale Garden Beds -- good explanation, but beware EXTREME hippieness!
- Not quite at the alternative medicine, crystal levels, but close... I like hippies, but not pseudoscience and mystic bullshit

Hooved animals like goats and cows are good for turning over the ground. I think. (Aim)

Getting Water

Water Collection
Preventing Stagnation of stored water
Water purification (tablets?)

Clean (Drinkable) Water

Rainwater - issues arise in areas of high pollution (air / ground) as this contaminates the water. Also need to be careful of collecting water off things like roofs as bird poo etc contains disease. => Need to boil / distill. (No enemas thank you Mr Grills!) (Aim)

Laundry/Shower Water (To be grey water)

Rainwater? Running Rivers?

Garden-use Water

Rainwater.

Toilets

Composting Toilet

(good if the diet is not hugely rich in meat.)

A worm based toilet sounds like a good bet, but it's tricky to keep and requires a stable environment for the worms. Also needs liquids to go elsewhere so as not to harm the worms.

So, we'd need to have a working wormery as a proof-of-concept before we could do this ;P

Aerobic toilets also sound like a good idea, though this requires physically moving solids to an external compost bin and covering it everytime with sawdust. And turning over. Not as pleasant to think about, but also good.

These methods would provide us with good fertiliser for the garden :)

Washing Laundry

Welp!

Maybe that's why hippies are stereotyped as smelly.

Washing People

Can also make our own soap, but we'd need a source of NaOH - AKA Lye
- (can be made by electrolysis of dissolved salt [NaCl in water] ) and oils (animal fats are good as they are solid at room temp). Can fragrance with lavender/rose petals etc.

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Own-Soap

Some sort of awesome shower design

Solar heated?
Collected Rainwater?
Uses heat pump?

Electricity

Energy Generation

Solar Panels
- Consumer prices currently appear to be £1.20 to £1.50 per peak watt of solar panel
Wind Turbine
Fuel-powered Generator (Engine)
Bicycle Generator (PowerGym!)
- Brushless DC motors can do it
- Need to be very low RPMs - 100-1000RPM
- Bicycle drive is about 400RPM I THINK
- Alternators from a car would actually be ok if they weren't built for 6000RPM+
- they already have stuff built-in to convert the AC generated (from the engine's crank-shaft) into DC
  - See this video for an example

Energy Storage and Logistics

Leisure Battery
- A Car battery which doesn't mind being heavily discharged - car batteries are designed to be kept topped up at all time
- Current consumer cost: ~£70-90 for 110Ah (amp-hour) 12V, (1320Wh), or 64p-82p per Ah of capacity
Charge Controller
- Manages electricity going into battery
- Prevents all manner of highly-dangerous electrical accident eg over charging, backflow
- Current Amazon Price: £10-20+
- Solar Energy generated is very constant, apparently need more robust charger able to handle peaks and troughs if using wind or bicycle
DC 12V wiring system
- existing appliances need their built-in AC to DC converters (rectifier, filter: resistor, capacitor...) circumvented

Home Heating

Heat Pumps

(Real-life Carnot Engine)

Ground Source or Air Source
Opposite of a fridge:
- Condenses low levels of heat from large volumes of warmer-than-thee air and pump it into a smaller volume of hot air
  - Incidentally fridges also generate heat: they have a heatsink all down the back side, but nobody is talking about that... Mumble mumble dangerous CFCs mercury etc
Get about 3W of heat for every 1W of energy you put in - very efficient
- Generates lots of cold air too
- Could also be used for cheap refrigeration/freezing
See this site for sales and examples

Stoves/Woodburners

Rocket Stove
Seebeck effect (let's not forget electricity generation from all that heat!)

Cooking

Really just a composite problem

Heat (highly concentrated)
- Vortex Tube
  - Apparently not super-efficient, but good for spot-heat, eg heating a pan
- Parabolic solar mirrors
  - Probably only work on sunny summer days in Wales :/
Water(drinkable, or at least when boiled)
Food to cook/eat

Internet Access/Communications

Essential for advice, education, contacting friends/relatives, and emergency help

Amateur Packet Radio
- Not internet access, and more of a doomsday scenario, but basically "data over CB"
Wireless Mesh Networks
- Wirelessly pass messages between peers
- Decentralised communications

Long Term:

Land

Location	Benefits	Downside
Wales	Lots of sparsely populated land	Little public transport infrastructure
	Good* climate	mardy local councils ("whinge whine planning permission")
	Labour(Llafur) stronghold	Difficult to find farmers selling land

Good Climate:
Sunny: It's nice, and good for solar panels and growing food
Rainy: good for growing food, gathering water
Fertile: Proven agricultural land

LONGLONG Term (After setup):

Education (Schooling)

Healthcare

Aspirin - essentially willow bark, but JUST willow bark as side effects of bad stomach cramps (bit complicated) - http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-955-WILLOW%20BARK.aspx?activeIngredientId=955&activeIngredientName=WILLOW%20BARK

Penicillin - http://www.howtodothings.com/health-fitness/how-to-make-penicillin

My Permaculture/Offgrid Plan