Dream Off Grid System

The one thing I always wanted when I had a house of my own was a towel warmer. Since we live off the grid and plan on continuing to do so,  I assumed I would never be able to have one.

Then I discovered this on 86'n it and all my dreams of true luxurious off grid living came into sight.

These babies are connected to a closed loop hot water system, like radiant floors and would integrate perfectly into my dream system.

First a little background:  Our solar hot water system is a closed loop system which means the water does not circulate out to the panels, an antifreeze solution called glycol does. This keeps the panels and pipes from freezing, but also the glycol can hold more heat than water hence storing more heat and keeping our water hot for longer. The glycol is circulated through a huge water tank, heating the water and then circulates that water out and into our regular hot water tank ( the one hooked up to the boiler) when it reaches 185 degrees. Once both tanks are up to temperature it dumps excess heat into the radiant heating system in our basement slab. This system is awesome expect for one thing. In winter the sun is not out long enough to heat both tanks, so we have to waste the cold water in the boiler connected tank in order to receive the hot water from the solar tank. There is a brilliant valve to fix this which we hope to upgrade to shortly. Making it dream system component number one.

We don't use the boiler unless we need to heat water. The boiler is actually disconnected from our radiant to save propane.  A new feature we have just implemented this winter. We will see what affect it has on our propane usage. (the radiant can be easily reconnected if it is ever needed). This is also the reason I could not add the towel warmer to this house.

A wood fired masonry heater (which is basically a wood stove in a huge masonry box) containing heating coils connected to a closed loop system which would circulate through our radiant floors, hot water tank and of course the towel warmer.  I forgot to close the loop in the my crude illustration but you get the point.  We would still need backup boiler for times when we would be gone in the winter and also for heating water during the fringe seasons, when we won't get enough sun for solar, but temperature is too warm for the masonry heater to be burning.

The final piece of the dream. A small residential scale wind turbine to complement our PV electric system. From mid November to March the generator runs about once a week, due to the short days and cloudy weather. We generally put about 100 hours a year on our generator, the wind turbine would at least cut this in half.

Swift Wind Turbine

All these components would allow us to virtually eliminate the need for propane and the generator. We currently have a propane range and clothes dryer, so we would still use a small amount.

How's the Water?

A commom question in our house is "How's the Water?". As I explained in the last post. We rely on our wood stove to heat our house and the solar hot water panels to heat our water. If we don't get enough solar hot water we turn on the boiler to bring it up to temperature. However we don't like to do this, so we frequently take less than hot and sometimes very cold showers. Our rating system goes something like this:

180- Glorious- Solar heated (it just feels better when it comes from the sun)  way too hot to touch your body- you actually have to turn it down.
140-120ish -Nice- normal shower temp
120-100- alright- not Lou Reed's alright which really mean excellent, but the alright as in acceptable
100-85- tolerable- you can get your business done but it isn't pleasant and don't even think about shaving your legs, and you most likely won't condition your hair, shampoo is good enough.
below 85- you might cry. I do sometimes.

It does not help that our master bathroom is only about 60 degrees. Since the bathroom downstairs is finally finished we have been showering down there, where it is a balmy 70-75.

By finished I mean that it still needs towel bars and hooks,  shelf, TP holder, art, different vanity knobs, more interesting rubbish can, dual flush conversion knob and an appropriate shower curtain (current one is way too short). It does have a mirror and bathmat- impressive right? (only cause we had guests coming).

Propane: A Journey

A little history. We closed on the house on the Thursday, November 19th 2009.  My parents came up the next day and we took down about 30 trees between friday and saturday night to make way for the excavator coming monday.  The house had obviously no electric, no heat and no plumbing.  My parents actually spent the night on a mattress in front of the wood stove insert before we ever slept in our own house. Sunday we worked from sunrise to well into the night to block up and move all the wood out of the way. It was an exhausting and cold weekend, but we got it done. Monday the excavtor arrived and we poured the footings on Wednesday  The next day was thanksgiving. We got a significant amount of snow and it was there to stay. We got those footings in the ground just in time. We didn't move into the house until December 15th, when the plumbing was repaired. We lived off a portable gas generator until early january when the propane generator was put in.  (Also about the time the mattress moved from the living room into a bedroom ) We then lived off that until the end or january when the battery bank was installed.  We were using the generator to recharge the batteries about every three days. It took until close to the end of February for the PV panels to get up and running.

There that was exhausting just typing the saga. It has officially been three years since we closed on the house. We have been monitoring our propane use closely. Currently we use propane for the generator,  range, dryer, boiler for hot water and heat to supplement the Solar Hot Water System.

 Year One- Winter- 974.5
                   Summer- 178.4
                   Total: 1152.9

As you can tell we were quite concerned that we made a huge mistake and that this off the grid thing in a house that was not specifically designed for it was not going to work.  Keep in mind that we were living on just the generator for almost two months of winter.  That winter was a sparse one for us. We spent a lot of time wrapped in sleeping bags, staring at each other by the soft glow of an oil lamp.

Year Two- March- 356.8
                  Dec. 272.7
                 Total: 629.5

That fall we installed a large wood stove in basement, and used that to heat instead of the radiant floors. It significantly reduced our reliance on propane, and actually keeps our house much warmer than we than when we were using the radiant and the wood stove insert to supplement. We only turn on the boiler when we do not get enough hot water from the solar panels. In addition we made some lifestyle changes, and in general learned how to use the system a little more efficiently, as well as embracing the luke warm shower. However we actually were able to start living a little more of a normal life (not so much oil lamp time, other than the shower issue).

For Some Reason I have no Pictures of the new Wood Stove, I do however have a large number of pictures of the stove pipe

Year Three- Filled in April- 219.3
                  Filled Dec 6th- 240.0
     total: 459.3
*Update I added the lasted fill up amount.

Basically the majority of winter we only used 219.3 gallons of propane. Even though it was a light winter, I am calling that a success. We made some tweaks to our septic system ( found out some pumps were not working correctly) and moved the control box inside eliminating a small heater, and switched the priority of our boiler from heating to hot water, allowing it to run more efficiently for our purposes.  We really were living quite lavishly as far as off grid-ing standards are concerned. (ie we watched some night time TV, baked more things in the oven )

I know there are a lot of off the grid folks who use much much less, but most are living in houses that were planned to be off the grid.  Our house was designed to be connected to the grid. I have a dream system that would virtually eliminate the need for propane that I will share later, but it just wasn't practical to retrofit this house.