Articles · Topic
Articles about Rural
29 articles across 3 sections
Section
Self-Reliance
Backup Transportation, Bikes, E-Bikes, Carts, and Alternatives
Every household transportation option that is not a car. Bicycles, e-bikes with range and cargo data, folding utility wagons, hand trucks, scooters, public transit, and a decision matrix by household type.
MURS and CB Radios: The Other License-Free Services
MURS for wooded rural property and CB for the highway: channels, power, antenna rules, realistic range, when each beats FRS or GMRS, and how to set them up.
Biogas Digesters
Anaerobic digestion at property scale, and why hydrogen sulfide disables the sense of smell at the concentration where it becomes immediately dangerous. The feedstock threshold, gas conditioning as permanent infrastructure, digestate, and the confined space pattern that kills rescuers.
Biomass, Wood Gas and Heat Conversion
Turning what a property already grows or discards into power and useful heat. Eight guides covering feedstock assessment, thermoelectric modules, Stirling engines, combined heat and power, and the three higher-risk pathways covered under the understand-not-build standard.
Generating Your Own Power
Track 3 of the Energy domain. Continuous power generation at property scale across six areas: solar, micro-hydro, wind, biomass and heat conversion, continuous-duty engines, and site-specific sources. Written for a property that intends to produce its own electricity as normal operation rather than for a household sizing backup.
Horizontal-Axis Turbines
The conventional small wind machine explained: lift rather than push, why three blades became standard, tip speed ratio, upwind and downwind rotors, yaw and gyroscopic loading, and the furling and overspeed protection that decides whether a turbine comes through a serious gale intact.
Is Your Biomass Worth It: Measuring What a Property Produces
The three feedstock streams a property can carry, measured separately and converted into kilowatt-hours. Sustainable woodlot yield against the household's own heating claim, the EPA screening threshold that rules manure out for most smallholdings, and the stove hours already being burned.
Is Your Site Worth It: Assessing a Wind Resource
The cube rule, wind shear and hub height, and the four ways to estimate a site's wind resource ranked from worst to best. Includes the Department of Energy screening equation worked end to end on a 12 foot rotor, the 30 foot clearance rule, and why a year of logging at hub height beats every shortcut.
Is Your Water Worth It: Measuring Head and Flow
The two measurements that decide whether a stream is worth developing, taken with a garden hose, a pressure gauge and a tape measure. Head by pressure at 2.31 feet per psi, flow by bucket, float-area or weir, with the surface velocity correction most homeowner guides omit. Worked end to end on one creek.
Land and Self-Reliance
Your household's relationship to land determines its self-reliance ceiling. Guides for renters, urban lots, suburban yards, rural acreage, water rights, zoning, and buying land.
Micro-Hydro and Water Power
The Hydro track of the property-scale Generation section. Eight guides on generating power from moving water, which unlike solar and wind runs continuously. Measuring head and flow, the three system configurations, turbine selection, civil works, load control, and the water rights and permits that decide whether any of it is lawful.
Small-Scale Steam
Biomass-fired steam power and the stored energy that needs no ignition source to release. Low water condition as the dominant failure mode, the ASME and jurisdictional framework that makes a homemade boiler a nonstandard vessel, and the attention the system demands.
Towers and Maintenance
The tower decides how much a turbine produces and most of what it costs to keep running. Guyed, self-supporting and tilt-down structures compared, the land each needs, what a foundation actually resists, and the maintenance arithmetic across a twenty year life.
Understand How Small Towns Work
Understand how small towns work through municipal government, county services, volunteer organizations, local institutions, and regional networks.
Vertical-Axis Turbines
How Savonius and Darrieus rotors work and the real difference between drag-driven and lift-driven designs. What vertical-axis machines are genuinely good at, the generator at ground level, lower tip speed and noise, and an honest examination of the claim that they suit turbulent low-altitude sites.
Water Rights and Permits
Three separate bodies of law govern a micro-hydro project: the state right to use the water, federal energy jurisdiction under the Federal Power Act, and Clean Water Act permitting. Federal jurisdiction turns on where a project sits rather than how large it is, and there is a formal process for finding out where you stand.
Waterwheels
Overshot, breastshot and undershot wheels reach 75 to 85 percent hydraulic efficiency, better than their reputation and traceable to a mathematically incorrect 1704 analysis. The real drawback is rotational speed. Where a wheel beats a turbine, and why direct mechanical work suits it better than generating electricity.
Why Most Homestead Biomass Disappoints
The four patterns behind abandoned biomass projects: feedstock counted optimistically, labour that recurs daily, reject heat with nowhere to go, and a thinner equipment market than it appears. Set against residential solar costs that fell 65 percent while biomass physics did not move.
Why Most Residential Wind Disappoints
Measured capacity factors against advertised figures, real installed cost per kilowatt, and the four failure patterns behind the gap between what small wind is expected to produce and what it typically does. Closes with the conditions under which it genuinely works.
Wind at Property Scale
The Wind track of the property-scale Generation section. Seven guides on small wind, opening with the honest position that it is the most oversold source on the site. Site assessment, why most installations disappoint, horizontal and vertical axis machines, towers and their maintenance burden, system control and braking, and the zoning that decides most projects before a turbine is ever chosen.
Wood Gasification
What a gasifier does and why the risk is structural: producer gas runs around 170 times the concentration at which carbon monoxide is immediately dangerous, with no odour to warn of a leak. Tar as the dominant failure mode, engine derating, and what qualified execution looks like.
Section
Preparedness
Rural Emergency Preparedness
Rural households face longer EMS response times and unique risks. Build a preparedness plan that accounts for road access, well water, fuel, and distance.
The Best States for Preparedness and Self-Reliance
All 50 states ranked for preparedness and self-reliance. Water, affordability, food production, hazards, and legal access scored and explained, with a parcel due-diligence checklist.
Where You Live Shapes What You Can Do
Before you pick a state, learn the questions experienced buyers ask first: dependable water, legal use, usable acres, true cost, and community. A calm starting point for thinking about where to live.
Section
Gear and Buying Guides
IBC Tote Water Storage (1,000 Gallons): What to Know Before You Buy (2026)
IBC tote water storage guide for emergency preparedness. Food-grade sourcing, cage inspection, previous-use verification, UV protection, and the four things to check before buying used.
Land & Homesteading Books
The best books for land-based self-reliance, from the suburban quarter-acre to the rural homestead. Buy a copy, or find it at your local library.
Large-Volume Water Storage Tanks: 160, 250, and 500 Gallons (2026)
Large poly water storage tanks for rural and suburban properties. 160-gallon, 250-gallon, and 500-gallon options compared. Installation, UV protection, treatment, and cost per gallon.
Pesticide Water Test Kits
Test for agricultural chemical runoff in well water and collected surface water. What field kits detect, their limits, and when to use a certified lab instead.
The Home Water Supply
Stu Campbell