Selfsufficientish.com

If you are only after rainwater the collecting surface only needs to be high enough to get the water to run into the barrel.

Air drying - not a problem this year. January temperatures min 24c - max 45c, average RH 25% (lowest 7%), rainfall 38mm (1.5 inch):

About to close up for a few months - the weather is still very hot (high 30's to low 40's) no rain and nothing forcast for the next month at least. What rainwater we have left is designated for drinking only, everything else is running on river water. No pastures so all animals are being had fed I w...

Welcome Tbird. I am also a beginner (laggard?) bumbling my way through the Ishish process so don't worry. I have a hot, dry climate and will need to put up shadehouses to grow in

I have discovered the secret to mowing lawns and you can all have it for free; pay someone

Protecting heritage buildings is a sore point with me (bearing in mind Oz built heritage is only 200 years old). I am in a Heritage Protection Zone which means I cannot do anything with my house that is not in keeping with the style f the zone. However, this only applies to the exterior of the build...

I'm with you Mmm - correct use of the english language (case deliberate) is a skill that is rapidly fading. Essentially it is not taught these days and over reliance on spell and grammar checkers (mostly written by barely pubescent software developers with English as a second language) is leading to...

Not sure! Keep or keep not, there is no "not sure". All my Uni papers, research work, maps and publications recycled I have. Older than 5 years and redundant they are.

Its not just being trendy that increases the price its the scale of production - economies of scale. The big guys can negotiate input material and equipment prices almost half of what I have to pay. Added to that, the processing volume they produce makes it cheaper per unit (eg. Kg of beef). If I wa...

Flo
I offered them to my mechanic who swapped them for two fuel filters for Mrs W's ute.

Houses as landfill! Just down the road is (was) a row of 10 1950's 2 bedroom cottages; timber framed, corrugated iron roof, brick chimney and fibro cement clad. The cladding contained asbestos which was duly removed and packaged by specialists and the cottages industrially vacuumed to remove any pos...

Here's a quirk on organic produce here. (just putting it out there) There is still quite a lot of "undeveloped" land in the far west of NSW (and other parts of Oz) - mostly rangelands woodland that has never had a drop of pesticide or gram of artificial fertiliser put on it; its use has historically...

I agree Ina - people in minimalist houses live at them, not in them. However I do agree with de-cluttering and providing good and sensible storage for all those things not in current use. We are now also offering our children a free service in simplifying their lives (syn - ultimatum) If its yours a...

I recently read yet another article on "minimising"; mainly to do with living (sic) in micro-houses. Amongst many things were advice to get rid of your books, vinyl, cd's, personal photos and paintings and replace them with Ebooks, digital recordings, scanned images and a widescreen TV showing "mood...

No problem with using "second hand" sleeping bags here. For years working in emergency services response (Bushfire, flood, etc.) we had teams of 5 people and camp trailers set up ready to go 24/7 365 days a year - when called out the team would grab the first camp trailer available and go. Sleeping ...

tidy up the house by all means but keep out of my kitchen cupboards, shed and study; I know precisely what's in there and where everything is!