Offgrid for 20 May: Low-Draw Cooling Workarounds, Basement Rainwater Backup, Off-Grid Land Scorecard

Offgrid is a daily audio summary of the latest ideas, innovations, products, and hard-won lessons for living autonomously and becoming more self-sufficient in energy, tech, food, water, shelter, and everyday systems. This 3-story episode draws from OffGridLiving, OffGrid and moves through low-draw cooling workarounds, basement rainwater backup, off-grid land scorecard. 1. Low-Draw Cooling Workarounds One of the most practical threads today comes from someone four months into solar living who has learned the hard way that even small window air conditioners can outrun a modest system. They are already limiting the load by running a single 6000 BTU unit in eco mode and planning to hang a curtain across the doorway so they cool less space at once. Source link Discussion thread Source subreddit: OffGridLiving 2. Basement Rainwater Backup A homeowner dealing with weekly water outages is trying to build a small rainwater backup around a 250 gallon basement tank, and the real question is where the pump and filters belong. The proposed layout is gutter to tank, then treatment, then a tee into the house line with shutoffs so the backup supply can stay isolated from city water. Source link Discussion thread Source subreddit: OffGrid 3. Off-Grid Land Scorecard Another thread today is less about hardware and more about decision support: someone is building a free scorecard to help people compare off-grid land using scraped public data and a state by state scoring model. The idea is to start broad, rank states, and eventually drill down into county records, government land sales, and parcel level constraints that matter before a purchase. Source link Discussion thread Source subreddit: OffGrid