Independent living - Gobar gas

[Ed]

so apparently a lot of people up there are interested in living "off the grid", not my thing but far be it from me to deny anyone information

heard about this thing that can make cooking gas for you independantly of any infrastructure - basically it's just a large underground, anaerobic biomass fermenter

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/gobar-gas.htm
then go to the next pages

from what I remember reading the article (it was a while ago), it is technically illegal by federal regulations prohibiting the release of biowaste into the atmosphere or something - but realistically on a day-to-day basis that shouldn't be a problem (feds have no real enforcement mechanism on the local level)

building it, well, I'd just go for it. If the building regulations are as sparse up there as I've been told, you can just do it, and it'd be legal. your biggest legal problem/risk would be disposing of the waste when you need to empty out the vessel - but again, you can just do it - if you've got enough land and enough trees to block people from seeing and few enough neighbors to care about the smell you could just compost the old waste.

myself, I'd install a natural gas tank. But if you're willing to rent and operate a backhoe, go for it. I'm betting that instead of building forms yourself and then pouring concrete, you could simply convert some precast underground land improvement thingy, like a septic tank, or a box culvert, something like that

[MaineShark]

Already being done by several folks in NH.

Joe

[KBCraig]

And by some governments. The Mt. Carberry landfill in Berlin has a methane capture system.