Another interesting Mother Earth News article

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/2007-04-01/Easy-DIY-Solar-Lighting.aspx

A couple things about lighting:

1) The low wattage fluorescent bulbs can cause adverse reactions.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Homes/1977-09-01/Mothers-Heat-Grabber.aspx

As my little adobe addition is nearly finished, it's time to think about solar water heating.

I'm still using the 1 gallon water plastic jugs (spray painted black) to mix mud, it's a LOT more pleasant to work with when it's not ice cold.

So anything a step up from the jugs is going to be great and since it needs to be cheap, I was excited by this article in Mother Jones:

I'm sick and tired of hearing Alex Jones advertise OVERPRICED CRAP.

So I decided to show you how to get a real off grid system with over 3.5 times MORE battery capacity and TWICE the solar watts for 33% LESS than the Alex Jones scam.

I've never seen that much snow here and usually it melts within hours. I took the picture yesterday and now we're on day TWO after a snowstorm with still about 5 inches of snow on the ground. The solar panels were all clear this afternoon, don't like running the generator.

We had over a foot of snow yesterday morning, but since it was a warm sunny day, the snow melts pretty fast.