Off-Grid

A self-sufficient production space

Off grid energy and water installations enable us to function on temporary plots where it is difficult to make these facilities. We learn about local resource cycles and how to close them.

Lack of housing and workspace is an urgent problem in Amsterdam. Even more so for local civil organisations and neighbourhood centres that want to support the neighbourhood in this economic and climate crisis. But we observe at the same time that there are lots of land and water not used and unattended for years.

Offgrid technology is also a huge opportunity in helping out the problem of over-demanded regional energy and water networks. With the present state of technology it is more efficient and ecological to introduce or expand local energy, water, food and sewage networks than increase the capacity of regional networks. We want to use the vacant lots in the city for experimenting in this kind of more autonomous and self-sufficient ways of living.

The KasKantine is like a self-sustainable ship that can land anywhere with a surface of 10x30m2! You can see and participate in our designing on our open source ENA platform (Experimental Network Autonomy)

Building materials

The architecture of the KasKantine depends on what building materials are available, as waste, like pavements, insulation material and iron, or on the second hand market, like greenhouses and containers, or as abundant local natural resource, like maintenance wood, polder clay and sand. You can see the greenhouse design in detail on our ENA platform!

Off-grid Solar

The Kaskantine is equipped with enough solar panels to power the whole project.
We try to install as much as possible applications directly linked to a solar panel to limit the amount of batteries. They only run when there is enough sun! This concerns water circulation pumps, irrigation pumps, air pumps and air ventilation. In the summer this mounts up to more than half of the energy use.

The other half of the solar panels are connected to a 5 kW solar inverter and a battery pack of 600Ah. We are looking to extend our solar project. Hands-on help, experts and students are very welcome to join. If you have left-over material, the Kaskantine can find a good destination for it!

Heating

We experiment with different types of rocket stoves. These stoves have insulated burning chambers so the temperature rises high enough to burn all smoke, making it into ecological and economical heat source. Our pizza oven is equipped with two rocket stoves. The large mass of clay and stones accumulate heat and radiate it out for up to two days after using the oven, helping keep the greenhouse warm in winter times. Furthermore we are working on an air scrubber, that will filter out fine dust from the smoke and cool it down so it can be used as CO2 fertiliser in the filter greenhouse.

Rain water use

Water shortage is something that we have to face everywhere more and more with climate change. So the question is what can we do against that fact. More droughts in the summers make it more clear that that is a problem that we have to face. With the greenhouses of the Kaskantine we can collect a lot of water, easily 1000 liter with an average rainfall. Sand and active coal filters purify the water. Excess rainwater goes in the ponds and can be used for the garden.

Grey Water Filter

All filtered waste water from the kitchen is used for plants in a special greenhouse. Filtered waste water from the toilets is used for the production of biomass. We use helophyte filters is a closed loop, so there is zero output and no sewer needed.