Off Grid

[Lisa Young]

Hi everyone. I am new to your site and wanted to share my Going Off Grid story. My DH and I bought our land a little over 1 year ago and we built our own off grid home.

We designed the house and our solar system ourselves and learned many things. I started writing our story a year ago with many pictures. If anyone is interested in reading it or has any input please visit:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/tennessee/359683-going-off-grid-east-tennessee.html


I hope this is OK to post. I am not advertising for anyone I just want to share a unique story for anyone interested.

Have a great day.

Lisa

[Paul Bailey]

Welcome to the group Lisa : Lots of neat stuff in here from "greenies" from all walks of life, some on, and some Off the grid as well. Your property has an Amazing veiw.... keep us posted as your quest for a much greener life develops. Paul:rolleyes: Oh that culvert looks real safe compared to the old bridge!!

[Lisa Young]

Welcome to the group Lisa : Lots of neat stuff in here from "greenies" from all walks of life, some on, and some Off the grid as well. Your property has an Amazing veiw.... keep us posted as your quest for a much greener life develops. Paul:rolleyes: Oh that culvert looks real safe compared to the old bridge!!


Thank you for your response. Keep reading there is about 168 pages to my story and about 1000 pictures, lol.

[Rob Beckers]

Welcome to the forum Lisa!
It's going to take me a while to read through your whole building story. What a great place though! Beautiful!

-RoB-

[Lisa Young]

Welcome to the forum Lisa!
It's going to take me a while to read through your whole building story. What a great place though! Beautiful!

-RoB-


Thank you. I goofed. It's only "149" pages, lol.

[Rob Beckers]

Just finished reading your building thread on the CD forum. All I can say is "Wow"! You sure got a lot of work done in just one year. Great house, and of course the views are priceless (as the commercial goes). We used to live in Durham, NC for 11 years before moving to Canada, and regularly went to the mountains. Mostly the area around Boone, along the Blue Ridge Parkway. So, we likely have come through your neck of the woods. Definitely one of the prettier spots on this globe!

In case you or Mike have any renewable energy related questions or problems you came to the right place. Lots of off-grid people on this forum. Then again, what I take away from your story is that Mike is not the kind of guy that asks questions... :D

How is the garden coming along?

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

Lisa,
I have been reading your house building story (absolutely great by the way) but only got to page 40 and haven't been able to get back. I thought of a few things to consider if you haven't already and I want to suggest them before I forget. If you have thought of this stuff just ignore it. You may have gone way past this by now but I don't know how long it will take me to finish reading and find that out.

1.) Kitchen sink:
Nice Kitchen sink. I had one of those double ceramic sinks in my kitchen and hated it for the same reasons you hate the one in your mobile home. I went to Home Depot and found a single sink that fits into a double sink hole. It is the entire size of the double sink with no divider and it is 1" deeper. It is huge and I love it. If you change your sink again for any reason this is the one to get.

2.) Outdoor lights:
You mentioned outdoor lights. When I moved into my house there was a set of those outdoor landscape lights by malibu already there. When I started playing with solar I needed something to do with the power so I used these. I made a circuit to turn them on and off based on sunlight coming and going. They are tied right to my 12V batteries. I further improved them by purchasing little replacement lights made of 8 LEDs in a base that plugged right into where the original bulbs go. Very efficient. First picture here shows a light fixture with the LED replacement lamp in it and the cover off.
http://home.comcast.net/~bigvid/mylights.html

3.) Solar charge controller:
I notice you have an Outback solar charge controller. This is an MPPT controller. I also noticed you ran a set of wires for each panel into your combiner box. One of the biggest advantages of an MPPT controller is it will take a higher voltage than your battery voltage and convert it to battery voltage at higher current. For you this means you could wire several panels in series and run into the house on an existing wire at higher voltage but the same current so your wire size would not have to change. This charge controller likes this because it will convert higher voltage and lower current to lower battery voltage at higher current. It will extract much more power from your array by doing this partially due to the fact there will be less loss of power due to the lower current actually flowing through the wires from the panels. You could concievably get more power out of those panels than they are rated for with this controller. I can explain more if you wish but the bottom line is you could get much more power without having to add any additional wires. I only mention this because you already own the equipment and would only need to adjust some wiring. This also means when you add more panels you would not need to run more wire into the house since you could just use the existing runs.

4.) Heat.
You mentioned you were going to heat the place with a gas fireplace burning bottled gas. I think you also mentioned having a generator for use sometimes. In the New England states there has been introduced a unit called micro combined heat and power. This unit is basically a small 1.2Kw generator that is in the house and runs on natural gas but they also scavange the heat from the engine and exhaust to heat the house which amounts to about 28,000BTU/hour so you get both heat and power which amounts to a more efficient use of your gas up to maybe 92% efficiency or more. They also provide a backup heater that kicks in if you need more than the 28,000BTU provided by the unit. You already have the fireplace so you don't need that part. In your case this may be too much but I had another idea. You might have read my "storm story" post where I used a lawnmower engine hooked to a car alternator to keep my batteries charged while I ran various items in the house from my inverter. I know people that are doing this using an engine converted to burn bottled gas like you are going to use. I don't have natural gas so my idea is to eventually get a small 4-6HP water cooled diesel engine and run it on vegetable oil to generate power and run the cooling water into the house so I can use the heat from it. For you a small engine turning an alternator could generate backup power to charge your batteries and heat from the same quantity of gas you only get heat from now. That is the general idea and I can give more info if you want.

That's all I have for now.
Your house is great. Wish I was reading this as it happened instead of so late.
Brian