Introduction

OSRL is an international group of people who have come together to develop tools and methods that support self-sufficiency and resilient living. All that we do is shared with the world using an Open Source mentality. By sharing information openly, we help to shift the world from a centrally based power structure to a more locally focused one. This empowers us all more equally.

We find ourselves today in a profit/greed based, corporate controlled environment. This system we live under makes wage slaves of us all while profiting too much from our hard work. It promotes anything that creates monetary wealth but at the same time seems to ignore our basic needs and our planets ecology. In the end, the only way to true resilience and sustainability is to integrate with good old Mother Nature. As a society, we need to go there. Our goal is to aid in this transition by using appropriate forms of technology. "Finding a better way" is one of our mottos.

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Mission Statement

OSRL's mission is to research and develop ways and means to free people from the wage slave, consumer styled, corporate controlled existence that saturates much of the world today. We will accomplish this by providing easy to implement transitions from wasteful Urban living practices to more nature based ways of coexisting. This will lead to a free way of life void of most daily struggles to provide for our basic needs. Basic needs like food, water, shelter and Power are our primary focus as opposed to recreating the Industrial Revolution.

There is so much abundance all around us. All we have to do is learn to access it intelligently. The technology to accomplish this is readily available and easy to use. We will produce do-it-yourself modules that are part of closed eco-loops. Module after module will be built and added to the system as a whole.

A major component of our Mission is the direct support of self sustaining Earthship (Mike Reynolds) and Earthship like building methods. Earthship Biotecture's general attitudes towards community building via their EVE Project is a shinning example of the sorts of projects OSRL would be interested in supporting long term.

Furthermore, our main deliverable will be full open documentation of every technical detail needed to reproduce our work. This published information will be freely offered to the world via the Creative Commons license. Any hardware not covered by said license will be considered Public Domain.

Project Highlight - Manual CEB Press

This is our first official project.  It is nearing completion.  With any luck and some funding, we will have a full scale prototype build by the middle of January 2012.  This project will design and build a human powered manual CEB (Compressed Earth Brick) press. Several designs will be used as source material as many good ones have been created over the years. Two designs come to mind right away. One is the original CINVA Ram and the later developed CETA Ram. The later version is superior and will likely be the basis of our more modern design.

As times get tougher, cheap, easy to access building materials will become more and more important.  With a CEB press, anyone can make quality, low eco impact building blocks basically from dirt.  Add a small amount of cement to make them water resistant and you have the answer to your construction needs.

This press like all the other projects at OSRL are a free gift to the world.

More info:

http://osrliving.org/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=57

http://www.osrliving.org/wiki/index.php?title=Manual_CEB_Press#Status

We need YOUR help to keep this good work flowing!

Project Status

- Dec. 12, 2011 - Mechanical Drawings Done

- Nov. 06, 2011 - Prototype designed

- Nov. 02, 2011 - Project accepted

- Nov. 01, 2011 - Proposal made

- Oct. 31, 2011 - Project leader chosen

- Oct. 31, 2011 - Home page initialized