Off The Grid

But because it is all wired together in a permanent installation, it will still fall under the jurisdiction of the utility company, which was the other reason I suggested it may not be the way to go.

 

Good point. It also falls under the jurisdiction of the town building inspector, and it requires a permit. Failure to get a permit could get me in some serious trouble, particularly if something goes wrong. If you're in a remote location like Alaska, or possibly Northern Ontario, you may not be subject to the kind of rules I am.

 

There are still a very few unorganized townships in northern ontario. Although technically they still fall under provincial building codes, they don't enforce it. And yes, I am in one of them.

That however has nothing to do with the electrical part, if connected to the grid. Anything that is permanently attached to the grid must follow the electrical code, regardless of the status of building codes.

Up here, because of the way deregulation was done, if you are connected to the grid, you have a charge added to your bill called a debt retirement charge, which in theory is supposed to be paying off the old debt from the government run utility company and it really annoys me. The only way to do anything about it, is to be disconnected from the grid.

Then there is the fact that they charge for every inspection they do, and you are supposed to get your system inspected anytime you make any changes to the connected system.

To me it just comes down to avoiding doing anything to the grid connected system that would require it.

I've brought this up a couple of times, so I'll give an example of a bill from them. They are quite proud to say they only charge 5.6 cents per kWh.

Actual Usage: 2048kWh
Adjusted Usage = 2236kWh
1000kWh @ 5.6 = 56.00
1236kWh @ 6.5 = 80.34
Delivery Charge (over the wires) = 77.94
Regulatory Charges = 14.12
Debt Retirement Charge = 14.34
GST (taxes) = 12.14
Total= 254.88

or 12.45 cents per kWh of power actually used... nice way to shuffle numbers isn't it?

It gets even better for the net metering contracts, because it only applies to the power usage, not any of the rest of it. They will pay you 5.6/kWh for what they charge 12.45/kWh to sell you.

 

I imagine grid power is expensive up there partly due to the cost of the infrastructure to deliver it. If you're out in the boonies, there are less customers to shoulder the cost of the lines/etc, but that still doesn't justify requiring new customers to pay for prior debts. Here they take it out of the tax base, so we have the opportunity to vote on whether or not a grid upgrade gets approval for construction.

I live in a fairly rural community by some folks standards, the service entrance to my house is about 100 feet or more to the transformer on the street, but there's a sub station less than a mile away, and I'm near a university, which is about as good as it gets for being on the grid. My power only goes down a couple times a year if that, and when it does it only lasts a few hours.

 

Well, I wouldnt say our power goes out anymore often then that here. A couple of hours was the longest so far, but the issue of power failures has long been one of my interests.

I don't understand why people who live in harsh climates don't prepare. It doesn't take much to set up a small back-up system in a home. A marine battery or two would get most people through 99% of outages.

Have the battery hooked to an automatic charger, a small inverter to power a few LED lights or compact floros, a radio and the power supply for your heating system if it needs it to come on.

I'll clarify that a bit, you wouldn't want to power a furnace fan (or any other motor) off the back up system, but just the pilot sensor or such if it needs it.

This way, when bad things happen (ice, equipment malfunction etc) and power is gone for a couple of days, you still have some light, radio and heat.

To me, that is where everyone should start if going to alternative power on a budget. As you can, add more batteries and transfer more and more stuff over to the backup supply until you have what you would want powered in an emergency with a week or two supply. Add in pv panels, wind-generators or other generation equipment as you go, until you can keep the battery bank charged up on your own.

When you get to the point of wanting to power fridges, freezers fans and such as well, you would need to consider upgrading to real storage batteries, with me suggestion NiFe ones of course.

As a side note, refrigeration as it is in normal equipment is a bad idea, before getting the idea to run them on alternative power systems, consider a few things. Like any chest style is better then any standup model. Removing the outer panels on them, and replacing the crappy insulation they have there in favor of a couple of inches of spray foam, making sure to leave the coils free to dissipate heat. Of course, you could always just use dc cooling units and build your own insulated box in a pinch.

 

I haven't stopped looking into this, but I haven't implemented any of it yet either because I've concluded that the monetary and environmental costs of installing a solar electrical system aren't worth the benefits, unless you're so far from the grid that connection is not an option. Sure there's lots of cool photovoltaic stuff out, panels, even paint, but the footprint of producing the stuff is bigger than the energy you can extract in the life of the unit. Instead I've invested in energy saving appliances and bulbs, and tried to reduce consumption, as well as enrolled in a plan with my electric company in which all my electricity comes from solar, hydro, and wind.

From what I've read, wind power is more feasible, and hydro is the best, assuming you have access to steady wind or a continuously flowing river, that's the way to go.

Right now I'm focusing more on solar heat than electricity, because I can make most of the stuff myself, and I expend more energy on heating than I do on electricity, so I gotta hit the low hanging fruit first. For solar heating you can use hydronics or hot air. I found a design for hot air unit online made entirely of stacks of beer cans connected together and spray painted black, with ply wood and insulation on one side, and glass or plexi-glass on the other. The tops of the cans are slitted to create eddy currents in the air as it flows through, increasing the efficiency. Air is blown in, or drawn in through convection through the bottom of the panel, then the heated air comes out through the top. I'm also looking at solar hot water, though that's more complicated because you need pipes and pumps, or a thermosiphon, to circulate the water or glycol anti-freeze. Closed systems need less maintenance, but are more complicated and less efficient. I'm pretty sure I know enough to be dangerous when it comes to building my own hydronic solar panels, but I'm still trying to fully understand what materials to use for the absorbers. I've installed a radiant floor hydronic system in my house which is pretty sweet. It doesn't work as well for the wood floors, but I put in a suspended slab for the floor of the new kitchen I built, with ceramic tile, and it works great.

 

Do I ever have one for you... lol

In a refridgerator there are aluminum coils with fins on them. As they come out of the fridge (which is just removing a million screws), they are about 2' long when coiled... Uncoiled they are about 20 feet long.



I will be uncoiling and rebending the second one and attaching it to the top of the other. Then I'll put a sheet of wood behind it in the window so the coil is sandwiched between it and the glass. Everything (not the glass... lol) will be painted flat black.

From the bottom of the coil, I will run a line to bottom of a tank that is above it (upstairs), and from the top of the coil to near the top of the tank.

When the sun shines, the water in the tank upstairs will heat up, from there, it will run to our propane water heater.

edited to add...

keep in mind that when you take them out of a fridge, they may still have coolant in them and you should make sure you safely clear them out... OUTSIDE and so it won't blow back in your face.

 

Careful about purging refrigerants...most of them are illegal and harmful to the environment...an old propane bottle will probably take most of it put together a pump that you can compress with...most compressors can be made a close system that you can use to compress gases...again be careful of what gases you compress....if you eat meat you can actually make and/or refill compressed air cylinders for near silent propulsion of projectiles...Japan uses compressed air shotguns.
living off grid really means rethinking the whole power system AND thinking outside the box...few people are willing to reprogram their power concepts to do so (myself included). Have heard of marvelous clockwork systems using water-weights ...long ago there was someone on here who built a whole system for all the power he needed in that manner
I know that Tom is into peddle crankshaft powering too (bicycle)...but so many of us limit ourselves by what is being used which as Tom mentioned is based around selling and making money from it
I do live off grid and have for over 7 yrs. but I run a night route for 4 hrs. every night which is more than enough to charge up batteries of all kinds...have a small inverter running to charge op computer and phone (cell - necessary for communications for company I do independent motor carrying for).
Most important advice is to think out of the box - a must !

 

Refridgerants (here anyway) must be purged before a fridge is thrown out. However, that doesn't mean there are not small amounts that are trapped inside the piping. All that is required is to make sure they are open on both ends away from your face.

If you live in an area where people can throw out refrigerators without clearing them, definitely get it pumped out properly before trying this.

 

Outside the box is where I'm comin' from, lol (I'm actually in CT, not too far from oldwolf). You're right though, factors I once considered important kinda fell by the wayside as I did more research and tinkered, keeping an open mind, and looking at the facts as I observe them, rather than being confined by preconceived ideas. Lately I've been observing the position of the sun in the sky, getting an idea of where the panels should go. South facing panels don't do you much good if there are tree limbs in the way.

I'm looking to use as much material I can get from the dump or from my own stock pile of junk I can, screw the commercialism. Lotsa companies out there looking to capitalize on the emerging renewable energy market, but you don't need to buy into the hype if you're resourceful.

So if I understand Tom correctly, the absorber is basically a copper pipe with fins, like what you'd find on a baseboard heater, right? Only instead of generating heat it absorbs heat. I've got an old air conditioner I could probably salvage, and I'm sure there are a bunch of old water heater tanks and baseboard heaters at the dump they'd be happy to get rid of.

I think the main thing to consider is it needn't be an all or nothing proposition, you can supplement your energy use gradually as you have the time and materials. Besides, I've already got an oil furnace that cost thousands, but I'm sure I could ween myself off of it, maybe use it as a backup on those cold cloudy winter days.

I'm also looking to get slabs of soap stone for the top of my wood stove, which I understand is a great medium for heat storage.

I recently insulated my basement using studs and reflectix insulation, which is fairly cheap, but it made a huge difference. The basement's warm, and the furnace doesn't kick on nearly as often, because now it doesn't work as hard to keep the pipes warm. Then there's plastic on the windows, and thermal curtains, which pays for itself quickly when you consider the energy savings.

Then of course there's the big picture, the fact that the less energy we use collectively, the less power the energy companies have, particularly those that drill for oil or use fracking.

Down the road when my kids move out and I'm a "Retired Asshole" like Tom, I'm hoping to move out into the sticks in Vermont and build a smaller more sustainable place. By then I should have the knowledge and tools to do it myself and have more to live on.

 

Depending on how technical you want to be... You can look at this and do the calculations;
http://www.superstrate.net/pv/illumination/seasonal.html

Or you can do what I did...

Our front window (south facing) has a deep frame. Within a week of the longest and shortest days, Each sunrise, I drew a line on the frame where the sunline was, both on the vertical part and on the horizontal... From there, its just a simple matter of extending and comparing those lines to the surroundings.

These are aluminum ones. Whatever you use will work to some degree, but the reason I think these will do so well is that there are very light aluminum tube and fins, which means little lost time heating them up when the sun hits them. I did wonder if it will produce enough heat to cause them to fail in some way, but I don't think so... but don't quote me on that... lol

Soapstone first.... it is a great idea... and if you get a piece that is polished (as in smoothed, not had polish added to it), you can cook straight on top of the stone... better then any nonstick frying pan you will ever buy.

The first part... You have just hit on something that almost nobody seems to realize, even the so called 'professionals'.

Using my water system as an example... I don't expect the window solar heater to give me unlimited free hotwater... But anything it does give me is less the propane has to do... The wood stove part I will be adding, also wont replace the propane... nor will the energy dump from the windmill...

All together, they may reduce my propane use to almost nothing (or even nothing for long periods of time, but to expect them to do it all for free always is ridiculous....

The same applies to every aspect of doing these things... You don't need to do anything that is a complete solution in itself... a whole bunch of little projects combined to work together is the way to go.

That's why although I am still not impressed with the current technology of PV panels, I think you should have at least a couple... have a wind plant, use systems that convert composting into heat... hell, if you have a spare donkey, hook it up to a turntable for an hour a day... every little bit that you produce or otherwise reduce your dependence on from the outside is a good thing.

The absolute main thing people should worry about is air infiltration... It doesn't matter if you have r-9999 walls and ceilings, if you have even a few small holes that let air through.

The thing that set this into my mind the most firmly, was on seeing a hunt camp on a property we had been looking at.

It was just 4 poles stood up in the ground (I assume they used a post hole digger), in a square about 20'x 20'. There was a tin roof on the place... The interior space was sealed off with two layers of plastic, one on the outside of the logs (including the ceiling) and a layer on the outside.

They had a very small wood stove in that place, and they could sit around pretty much naked in the coldest of winters (and here, that is damned cold), and be comfortable.

On making plans to move in the future... Here's another one for you.

Go to trucking companies and find cheap retired refer units... Get one delivered to your place now... Spend your free time while waiting til you can move, converting it into living quarters, all set up to be off grid of course.

Once it's done, get another one, set it up as a workshop, then another, and a small animal shelter... and so on, as you can.

That way, once you are ready to go, you hire a trucker to move them to your new location, and you are 100% set up from day one...

 

Good idea on recording the sun lines. That's a lot easier than going through the math analytically. I imagine that if you record the position of the sun at sunrise and sunset, the optimal position will be approximately between the two, such that the panels will be perpendicular to the sun's rays in the middle of the day. Of course, there are constraints, like the pitch of the roof or whatever surface you're mounting the panels to, and how far you can deviate from that pitch using mounting brackets.

I agree so far PV isn't very impressive, though it seems to be coming along, and may be viable one day (I'll wait).

After having trouble finding soap stone, I ended up stacking a few ceramic landscaping tiles on my wood stove, and that made quite a difference, because they absorb enough heat to provide a source for hours after the fire's burned out.

Heat loss can be thought of in terms of conduction or convection, the latter of which is much more important, as you point out. The R-value of insulation degrades rapidly if there's any means of air exchange within the walls, which is why it's so critical to seal windows, doors, and electrical outlets to prevent drafts. However, as I discovered in my basement, the conduction effect can be pretty substantial as well when all you've got between your furnace and the cold outside is a hunk of concrete. You can find the problem areas throughout your house by touching them with your hands and feeling how cold they are. Window glass is a major heat sink when the sun's not shining, so curtains are key on cold winter nights. During the construction phase it's critical to have a wind barrier both on the outside and on the inside of the wall. My building inspector said I didn't need the plastic on the inside because the insulation was backed, but you can't tell me air can't flow between the gaps where the insulation backing is stapled to the joists. Besides, plastic is cheap.

And you know how I feel about "professionals," the definition of the word being that they take your money, which isn't necessarily a good thing if you can do it yourself. The jerk-off from the heating company said I'd need to remove my radiant floor heating because it wouldn't work, but he conveniently had some radiant baseboard heating units he wanted to sell me. He was full of shit. The radiant heat works great. Now my feet are happy when they hit the warm floor in the middle of winter, and I saved a bundle on the installation.

And yeah, when people look at renewable energy as an all-or-nothing proposition, they're a lot less likely to implement it. If instead they look at it as something to be implemented in stages, the low hanging fruit being improving your insulation and sealing up windows and doors, they're more likely to do something about it.

Thanks for the info on the absorbers. You can find tubing with aluminum fins in all kinds of appliances, from air conditioners to refrigerators to baseboard heaters.

 

An easier way to do that is to go to this link, put your info in and print out a solar noon calender for your area;

http://www.solar-noon.com/

Put a nail in the center of your window frame and mark the shadow at solar noon.

Also, you are by far better off mounting anything solar so that you can manually set the pitch of it (a notched brace) and mount the whole thing on a turntable. A drive shaft works great for it, whenever you walk by it, just turn it so its straight on the sun. Efficiency goes way up, and you dont have to worry about solar tracking motors and such.

Just for heat absorbtion, the big concrete 24" square patio tiles work too although some will crack as the heat up. Of course, if nothing else is available, you could just use rocks, or even an earth clay.

You wait til the coldest part of the winter, and in almost any stick house, you can walk along exterior walls and mark the studs just by the cold spots.

If I were ever to build a stick house (which I won't) it would be a double staggered stud design to break the thermal transfer.

I find it funny when people spend all sorts of money to build a 'super insulated house' and use single stud walls...

Radiant heating in the floor is absolutely by far the best way to heat a house. If its a house with high internal thermal mass and passive solar heating as well, you will never be cold.

There is one issue that bothers me about most in floor systems though. Its the same issue I have with ground (or water) source heat pumps... That's the pumps.

Thats why when we build the new place (straw bale construction), we are building it on top a north facing slope. Behind the house, part way down the slope, we are building an outdoor wood furnace to heat the water for the radiant floor system. We will still have a pump on it of course, but it will be set up to work without it just from the thermosiphon action.

If people would put the same thought into building (or buying) a house as they do into a pair of shoes, they would find life was much easier.

The same guy I got the first ones from is a recycler (home based), I just keep adding to his list the specific things I want... lol

 

That's the rub with a lot of commercially available systems and the "professionals" who install them is the complexity and expense of the systems. Pumps and controls are expensive, as are expansion tanks and valves. Not to mention solar tracking devices.

The thermosiphon concept entices me, the fact that you can rely on the heat itself to act as a pump. Are there constraints or tricks to making a thermosiphon more effective? I understand that in such a setup the water storage tank you're heating should be above the level of the solar panel, but I don't know how important this is. It seems to me you're basically just creating a loop, so it shouldn't matter where the panels are relative to the storage tank if you're using a closed system with an indirect water heater. A direct, open system might be a different animal, and maybe that's the way to go if all I'm doing is heating a space in my house. I could just use antifreeze for the entire system, maybe run it through an indirect water heater for domestic use.

I must admit I live in a "stick house", lol, and you're right, I would expect cold spots at the studs, but wood isn't a bad insulator, though I doubt it's as good as straw bales.

I've read a lot about using straw bales as a basis for constructing the walls, but I'm skeptical of the fact that they're an organic material, subject to decomposition, and potentially spontaneous combustion. How do you prevent that, or is it a concern? Then there's the plaster you cover it with, what material do you use for that?

I envision myself building a sort of linear house into the south facing slope of a hill, with windows all along the southern wall, straw bales for the other three walls, and maybe a "stick" roof with solar panels on a metal roof. Then the straw bale northern wall, which would be dug out of the hill, would passively absorb the sun's heat. My mom's got a place like that, and when it's sunny in the middle of winter it can be zero degrees out, yet hot as hell inside.

Don't get me started on the senselessness of the housing market when it comes to construction materials. One reason I've done all my home construction myself is to avoid the "cookie-cutter" phenomenon, where you end up with an industrial looking shit box. I used tongue-in-groove wood paneling inside and out, knotty pine on the inside, cedar on the outside, which looks great. I built a vaulted ceiling with huge stringer beams across the ceiling to give it that log cabin feel. Then, instead of sky lights (holes in the roof that hemorrhage energy), I put a bunch of windows across the southern wall, up high to capture the rays. I've got a maple tree in front, which lets the winter sun in when the leaves are gone, yet blocks the hot sun of summer.

 

I could probably write an entire book with an answer to this... lol

I will try to be brief... lol

I'm a lazy, procrastinating stoner who never remembers things... Therefore, the less maintenance there is, the better... If it moves, it will break... less moving parts, less breakage, less labor, more stoner time...

It's best to have the collector's top, below the bottom of the tank. The line (hot) coming from the top of the collector (going to the middle of the tank) has to be extremely well insulated right to the tank. The line (cold) coming from the bottom of the tank to the bottom of the collector should not be insulated except where it is outside... The idea is you want it to lose no heat from the collector up to the tank, and you want it to lose heat into the tank AND from there down, this gives the thermosiphon enough force to circulate well.

Also, when the sun goes down, having the collector below the tank, shuts the whole system down... As there is no heat going into the coils, everything (except the insulated tank) loses heat, the cold water (or other fluid, all tries to flow down into the collector from both top and bottom effectively stalling it til the sun comes up. It means you don't continue to pump water and waste the heat you collected in the day with no switches or valves to fuck with.

Straw does not 'spontaneously combust'... if it is stored with a high moisture content, it will start to rot and build up enough heat to catch fire.

It also only decomposes if it is subjected to moisture, either from not drying the straw properly in the first place, or by letting it get wet during the building process, or from sealing the walls completely and not letting them breathe. I'll get back to that during the covering part...

See the connection between all those things? USE DRY STRAW ONLY.

Now, for the covering, an earth plaster is best, because it will not trap moisture and condensation inside it, causing the straw to rot.

If you were to use concrete for example and spray the straw bale walls, in a few years, the straw would be rotted completely into a mass of black goo...

Fires from external sources... Can only happen in the presence of oxygen... if you have at least 3 inches of a mud/earth plaster over (and embedded into) the straw bales, there is no oxygen that gets to the straw... still feel paranoid? Add another 3 inches of mud plaster... lol

Can you build using straw bales as the structural component? Yes, but I wouldn't.... Use post and beam for the structure and use straw bale infill.

Pictures speak a thousand words they say, so here is a 5000 word explanation.

Sounds great. Got pics?

 

Oh, and one more, just cause it's colorful... lol

 

hey. dont have much advice for you, as far as building and such. i do live in an off the grid solar house. we had 6 panels and maybe 20 batteries? we also have a back up generator for when the sun dont shine.
we have learned to live with the sun. we do have most luxeries that all home have, a washer/dryer etc. the washer is HE and the dryer is mostly propane. the fridge is powered by propane as well. plus we have an instant hotwater.
when i leave, i make sure everythign is unplugged or turned off. we dont have a microwave (never cared for them much anyway) got rid of the electric coffee maker and use a french press. using the gas stove. plus we have 2 woodstoves and for backup heat, propane. this place has definitely made us more conscience to the electricity we use.
also, when we run the generator, it charges the batteries for us in a few hours so it doesnt have to run all the time when its crappy out.
and i live on a mt between a bunch of mts. i see mt washington from my deck so we do get hit with a lot of weather and wind. people at the bottom lose electricity all the times, for days even. i have power all the time which rocks.
good luck. i love living this way!

 

How often do you run the generator MaryJeanne?
Is it also propane?

 

MaryJeane sounds like she's got an enviable setup in the mountains of northern New England, where I'm looking to move eventually. I think the key to comfortable off-grid living is energy storage and backup sources of energy when conditions limit energy production.

OK, this all makes sense now, thanks. The straw acts as an insulator, much cheaper and easier to work with than fiberglass batting, plus it serves as a thermal mass for capturing the heat from the sun shining in the south facing windows.

That first picture you posted is very cool because it shows the difference in angle between the summer and winter sun's rays, something you can capitalize on by building a soffit that blocks the rays of summer while letting the winter sun in. I did that in my kitchen, pics forthcoming.

You and me both brothah, lol.

As an engineer I design systems with a focus on simplicity, which isn't always the best practice when it comes to job security, but that's my philosophy. In the age of technology we're misled into believing that we should let the technology do the thinking for us, but what happens when the technology fails us? We're screwed if we don't know how the system works, but hey, that's what "professionals" are for, right? I'm of the school of thought that instead of dumbing down the controls by adding complexity, the end user should know how the system works, and should play an active part in controlling it.

 

Yes and No...

It doesn't act as thermal mass, or at least not enough to consider. The earthen plaster that you do over the straw on the inside is the thermal mass (along with the floor and large objects around). When you are building with pounded tires (which most of those pictures were), then the rammed earth/tires plus earth plaster IS the thermal mass... but they don't provide much insulation. The best of both, would be building walls with rammed earth tires for massive thermal mass, then cladding the outside in straw bales for insulation.

The more mass you have on the inside, the longer it will take to change the temperature either up or down. With massive amounts of thermal mass, you could open your windows in the middle of winter, let all the warm air out and within a few minutes of closing the windows, the air would be back to normal temperature...

By the same token, if you were gone for a few weeks and a window was broken and you came home to a cold home, it would take days before the house would be comfortable, let alone warm.

For me up here, I don't think it is worthwhile to go to all the extra work of pounding 2000 tires when an extra inch or two of earth plaster will work for me.

Now, if I had a dozen pairs of hands here, I may think differntly... but for now... just strawbales... lol

Everything I do around here is aimed at making life easier... Gardens are awesome things, grow your own food and herb, know what went into it and so forth... But I don't know about you, but bending down to pick weeds is hard on my back and I dont expect it to get easier... Therefore, raised beds for the gardens, with walls thick enough (and the right height) to sit on. Keep them all 4 feet wide, so its easy to reach the whole bed (from one side or the other).

No more bending down... Sit down, set your coffee cup down, pluck weeds, move a bit, take a sip of coffee, light a smoke, pluck some more... etc etc... Lazy I tell ya... lol