Energy Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

Power-up bag

By Jeffrey R. Yago, P. E. During any emergency or related power outage, the most important electronic device you need to keep operating is your cell phone, at least as long as cellular service is...

Solar-powered water purifiers

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #146 • March/April, 2014 Most of us can stay alive up to a month without any food if stranded, but we could not live longer than three days without water...

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Photos by Patrick Redgate Issue #118 • July/August, 2009 With continued shortages of wood for home heating, the Greeks built the North Hill section of Olympus in the 5th century B.C. This...

A small creek provides plenty of power for this off-grid home

By Scott Gentleman Website Exclusive • November, 2007 For eight years, Tracey and I lived in a solar powered home and for eight cloudy winters, we ran a small Honda generator every week to recharge our...

Design calculations for overshot waterwheels

By Rudy Behrens Issue #18 • November/December, 1992 (For good background information for this article, the reader should read "Waterpower for personal use" in Issue No. 16 and "Design calculations for overshot waterwheels" in Issue No....

Solar Building Design

By Steven Heckeroth Issue #63 • May/June, 2000 Solar building design has been used since ancient times. In the more recent past, it has been more or less ignored as impractical, complicated, or too expensive. Incorporating...

Keeping your food cold — Solutions to refrigeration when electricity is scarce

By Michael Hackleman Issue #56 • March/April, 1999 Many readers of this magazine live in remote settings and generate their own electricity, often through solar, hydro, wind, or generator machines, storing the electricity generated in batteries....

Job site solar power

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #144 • November/December, 2013 Regardless of your favorite brand, standardize all battery-powered tools to use the same battery pack. If you are planning to live off-grid or are building something in a...

Emergency solar power for $950

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #73 • January/February, 2002 For less than the price of a desktop computer you can have the piece of mind that your lights and small appliances can operate for months...

Energy class: Part 1

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #111 • May/June, 2008 Each fall when my dad took us to the State Fair, we could always count on this fast-talking salesman standing next to his car with a...

Solar Power 101: Inverters

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #89 • September/October, 2004 This article is the third in a series of our beginner's course in solar electricity. Simultaneously we have instituted a Home Energy Information (www.homeenergy.info) section on...

Build a community assistance recharging station

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #152 • March/April, 2015 Many preppers are starting to realize they cannot do it all on their own. True security during a major disaster or civil unrest is much more...

Our journey to modern off-grid living

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson Issue #177 • July/August/September, 2019 We’ve lived off the grid for decades. Throughout the years, we’ve traveled the path from living a very rustic lifestyle with few amenities to our current off-grid homestead...

Energy class: Part 3

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #113 • November/December, 2008 In Part I of this series of articles, we reviewed how home utility costs will be the next energy source expected to have major cost increases...

Build a passive-solar food dehydrator

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #143 • September/October, 2013 The finished passive-solar dehydrator maintained a fairly constant temperature of 150° F throughout most of the day without any repositioning, which shows that this design can...

Why you need to addsolar to your emergencypower backup plans

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #149 • September/October, 2014 Click Here to listen to an interview with Jeff about this article. Most of the electric substations, transmission lines, and electrical switchgear for any given utility are...