Sometimes....

Sometimes..... trees fall in your road and you have to remove them. Well I don't but someone does. I sat in the warm truck listening to the radio and watching. I did help pick up the blocks and throw the branches off the road when he was done. Oh and I baked two loaves of bread and dipped some stool legs earlier in the day, while I was trapped at home (Completely unaware of my capitivty). So I did my part.

I am calling this unpleasant off grid task #2. Removing fallen trees, not being trapped at home. Which has happened about three times for various reasons. That would be unpleasant off grid task #3.

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.

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.

The First Winter

I think it is safe to say we have officially survived the first winter here in between trees. It wasn't as tough as i expected, mostly due to the mild winter the 802 had this year. Although its wasn't tough, it didn't go smoothly either.

Our system is designed to power the house for three days with no sunshine. Due to some unforeseen problems the generator ran almost every day. Translation: We went through a lot more propane than anticipated, plus the addition wear and tear on our battery bank and generator.

I know what you are thinking, but "we" weren't the problem. Our daily electricity use was actually much lower than we predicted. The house, or more the systems to run the house, are the watt hogs.

I will be going through each problem in separate posts as we hopefully find solutions.

The Facts

This picture was taken last June when we first saw the house. Currently it is snowing and we have an accumulation of about four inches.


The House: It is a 2500 square foot kit log cabin that was planned to be grid tied. The power lines end about a 1/2 mile from the house, also the location of our nearest neighbor. We don't want to pay the man so we are attempting to live off the grid in a house that wasn't designed for it.


The System (a brief summary): We have a 2800 watt off grid system with a 1050 amp hour battery bank (two large arrays in back) and a backup generator (tan box in center). We also have a solar hot water system ( horizontal array in foreground) that heats our hot water and dumps excess into our radiant floors once both storage tanks are heated to maximum temperature.