Off-Grid Survival

There are days when I long for the soothing hum of power pulsing from the power lines directly into a transformer and into our house.  I long to flush the toilet just once, without having to plunge it.  I want to wash the laundry without starting the generator.  I want to listen to the gentle sound of the rain drumming on our metal roof without having to block out the constant buzz of a generator running at 3600rpm's.  I want to flip a switch without having to give a single thought to where that power is coming from and how to keep it coming.  I want a little dependence on someone other than us!

But then, I come to my senses.  In reality, I am thankful for the way that we live.  I am, after all, a survivalist at heart.  Had we never jumped off a cliff and gone non-electric, we never would have known how to truly survive if and when the grid went down.  Although it has been challenging, and more often than not, character building, I would not exchange our off-grid experiences for the world.  Our 11 years of off-grid living has taught us a thing or two.  Hopefully, our experiences will be of some value to you as well.

WATER
Obviously, water is an essential element for any homestead.  In a perfect world, an off-grid homestead would have a water system that relied solely on a gravity-fed spring.  When I was growing up, our property had an entire hill-side that bubbled with the sweetest water imaginable.  My mom and dad chose what to them looked like a likely spot and started digging.  They dug a hole about 4 feet x 4 feet square and 6 feet deep.  They lined the hole with cedar boards (to keep the dirt from sloughing back into the hole) and filled it with drain rock.  Then, they dug ditches, laid pipe and put a submersible pump in the spring and called it good.  They did have grid power, so electricity was not a problem, but they were incredibly fortunate to have such a wonderful water source.  That spring served our family (never running out of water) for over 20 years and required virtually no maintenance.  Another benefit of our spring was the fact that because of the size of the hole, the water was easily accessible, even if the power went out, and, had the grid ever gone permanently down, the spring was uphill from our house, making a gravity fed water system highly likely.

Unfortunately, Sir Knight and I don't have the option of a gravity fed spring system.  Our well is deep (435 feet) and our pump requires 220 volts to run.  We have run on two systems, neither of which is optimal for an extended grid-down situation.  For most of the years that we have been off-grid, we have had to run our generator in order to pump water from our well into a pressure tank.  The pressure tank holds about enough water to flush the toilet 3 times and fill the sink for dishes once or twice.  If we conserve (ie. not flushing the toilet very often) we can make our pressure tank of water last all day.  Doing laundry requires the generator to be on so that it can run the well pump.  When we run a large generator (10kw) we can easily run the well pump and also charge our batteries (at about 70amps), however, when we are running a smaller generator (5kw) we can only run the well pump or charge batteries - not do both simultaneously.  The other method we have used for pumping water (which is much more to my liking, not to mention much more tenable) is wiring both of our large inverters 180° out of phase so that they create 220 volts and run our well pump right off the batteries.  I love this option because we are not wasting gas running the generator and we can flush the toilet every time we use it!!!  And, of course, it is completely tenable in a long-term off-grid scenario.

There are currently low voltage pumps that operate in deep wells that were not available when we put our system in.  They run on either AC (alternating current) or DC (direct current).  They are expensive, but definitely worth investigating.  Another viable option, if your topography supports it, is a buried cistern, uphill, that you can pump into by either a generator or solar pump, creating your own gravity fed water system.  This is the best option for those of us without naturally occurring gravity fed water.

REFRIGERATION
When we first moved into our shouse, we were lucky enough to have found and old Servel propane refrigerator at a yard sale and scooped it up.  It was a 1950's model, and really pretty small, but after using a cooler filled with ice, it was enormous.  I loved the propane refrigerator.  It was silent, used very little propane and kept things very cold.  We used our Servel long before we had any electricity at all and proved to be incredibly reliable.  The "freezer" was tiny (it held about 6 ice cube trays) and wasn't capable of keeping ice cream frozen, but it did make ice and that was enough for us.  Being as old as it was, it did ice up considerable requiring thawing rather frequently, but, having refrigeration was well worth the effort.

After using our Servel for about 5 years, the burner began blowing out, forcing us to relight the fridge.  Finally, we were no longer able to keep the burner going, so we contacted a propane appliance repair center to replace the burner.  Our request was met with panic on the part of the repair man.  Apparently, this particular fridge was prone to wearing out after nearly 60 years in service and a few of them had killed some folks with CO2 poisoning.  Servel would not sell the parts required to fix the refrigerator.  The best fridge we ever had now went into the scrap pile.

After our Servel, we found a used Sunfrost, 19cf refrigerator/freezer.  It was an older model and looked like it was built in somebodies garage.  It was, however, built specifically for off-grid use, so we gave it a try.  Our refrigerator is AC rather than DC, which would have been much preferable for our off-grid system.  It is the largest user in our entire house, cycling off and on with unending regularity.  Because of the design, the refrigerator portion of the fridge was right on the floor and the freezer was at eye level.  Sir Knight built a stand to raise the fridge, so that the refrigerator portion was easier to get to, which made the fridge much more user friendly.  The freezer does not freeze particularly well, but it too makes ice, and does keep food exceptionally cold, so it serves its purpose.

If we had it to do over again, Sir Knight would build a refrigerator out of a 24 volt DC Nova Kool refrigerator kit.  He would build it using a highly insulated refrigerator body and even go so far as to cut holes in the back of the refrigerator (facing an outside wall), covering the holes with hardware cloth and make a sliding door that could be opened in the winter when the weather was cold, effectively cooling the refrigerator with outside air, possibly even using muffin fans on a thermostat.

Realizing the amount of power, either battery power or propane, required to keep refrigeration up and running, the most viable grid-down cooling option is an old fashioned root cellar.   Properly constructed, a root cellar easily keeps perishable foods at an appropriately cool temperature year round with a minimum of effort or maintenance.  Root cellars require no electricity, no battery bank and no propane.  They are truly an off-grid marvel.

WIND TURBINES
Our family is not the definitive authority on wind power, however we do have experience with wind turbines.  Our very first source of alternative energy (other than a generator) was a wind turbine.  Living in a very windy location, we were positive that wind was the perfect alternative energy source.  We bought an Air X wind turbine, built a tower, hoisted it into place and fastened 4 guy wires to secure the tower.  We dug a trench, pulled the wires through and hooked them into our charge controller.  We were so excited when we flipped the breaker, we ran to the kitchen to watch the Tri-metric (meter), expecting to see massive amounts of power coursing through our controller into our battery bank.  Nothing!  To be fair, there really wasn't much of a breeze, so our disappointment was tempered by the realization that there wasn't enough wind to make power - just yet anyway.  Later that evening, the wind kicked up and we knew we must be raking in the power, yet the Tri-metric only registered 17 amps.  Not bad, we thought - it was better than nothing.  Just then, the wind really began beating the shouse.  Outside, a noise, something akin to a wounded, screaming animal, began emanating from the wind turbine.  It got louder and louder until we thought the turbine might fly off the tower and rip through our house!  In reality, the turbine was secure and the noise we were hearing were the brakes coming on on the wind turbine due to the high wind.  What we came to learn was that although we had a lot of wind, it wasn't the right kind of wind.  Either we had a gentle breeze, producing no power or we had Gail force winds causing the turbine to put on the brakes, also producing no power.  At the very most, in exactly the right conditions, we would produce 20 to 25 amps of power, resulting in little more than a trickle charge to our batteries.

After using our wind turbine for about 2 years, we had an electrical storm and the composite blades built up an excess of static electricity and fried our inverter. Literally.  I mean we had flames and everything!  After spending a whole lot of money to buy a new inverter, we were more than a little leery of connecting the wind turbine back up to our system.  That turned out not to be an issue.  One day during a particularly breezy spell, I looked out the window just in time to see the tower begin to lean to port.  Running outside, the kids and I arrived just in time to catch the tower and gently lower it to the ground.  The guy wires had broken under the stress of the high winds and the weight of the tower and turbine.  We laid the wind turbine to rest, never again to flutter in the breeze.

Our experience with wind power is not unique.  Our local power company put up a testing facility near the airport (a very windy area).  They installed a 2500 watt wind turbine and also put up a 2500 watt solar array in order to determine what alternative energy source was the most reliable.  Completely confident in the fact that the turbine would noticeably outpace the solar array, they were stunned when the numbers were crunched and the results indicated that the solar system made more energy by far!  They, too, found that although they had a lot of wind, they didn't have the right kind of wind.  It was either too windy or not windy enough.  And they also noticed that the turbine required regular maintenance and repair (adding to the cost and reducing the efficiency) while the solar array required none.

We can say with certainty, that for us, wind turbines are not an effective alternative energy option.

SOLAR
We love our solar panels.  They are the only part of our off-grid system that never require maintenance and work no matter what (well, as long as it is bright outside, that is).  Solar panels require a system, complete with batteries, a charge controller and power inverters to work to their full potential.  The solar panels are wired into a charge controller.  The charge controller control the amount of current that goes into the batteries so that the batteries do not overcharge.  The inverter changes the power that comes out of the batteries from DC (direct current) to 120 volt AC (alternating current), which is normal household electricity, thus allowing you to use household appliances, computers, televisions and lights.  Alternative energy systems utilizing a battery bank have limitations.  They are great for using lights, small appliances, computers and televisions.  They cannot power anything with resistive heating, such as electric stoves, electric hot water tanks or electric furnace systems.  Solar systems can be very effective in the long term for household lighting and other small electrical users.  But, as with any mechanic system, things will wear out and things will fail.

In the 11 years that we have been off the grid, we have had two inverters fail.  The first inverter we bought used, so we can hardly count that one.  The second inverter failed after about 10 years of use, which we have since learned, is about the life expectancy of a power inverter.  Batteries are another weak link.  They require care and maintenance.  They must be watered, kept from freezing and even have their acid adjusted from time to time.  You have to run them low and then charge them up or they will develop a "memory" resulting in the loss of a significant amount of storage capacity.  Charge controllers and power inverters both have electronic components that can fail.

I believe that solar is the best, long-term grid down option, however, it is not infallible.  You have to know how your system works and how to keep it running.  You have to maintain it and, realistically, you have to prepare for it to fail.

Although we have a great solar system, we also have back-up plans.  We have a number of kerosene lamps and a stock of kerosene.  We have wind-up radios and rechargeable batteries (which can be recharged with just the solar panels, bypassing the inverters) and we have books (just in case there are no movies and no computer access).

All in all, there are many ways to plan for survival.  Have a back-up plan for your back-up plan.  We have tried a number of things and have found what works best for us.  You may want to explore what options are available to you and make plans accordingly.  There are all kinds of off-grid, you just need to find the one that is most viable to you.

Solar Panel Maintenance

Contrary to popular belief, even solar panels require maintenance.  At this point, there is no such thing as "plug and play" for an off-grid lifestyle!

Sir Knight built the frame for our solar array.  He put a huge lift cylinder (from a forklift) in the center, with the idea of being able to raise the array to an almost vertical position for the winter and an almost horizontal position for the summer (to maximize the solar gain when the sun was high or low in the sky).  Unfortunately, we have never found the right motor to make the lift cylinder work correctly, so our solar array is stationary - at the perfect angle for summer solar.  Our winter solar gain is rather lacking.  Our panels only produce a fraction of what they are capable of, due to their angle in relation to the sun's position on the winter horizon.  Another irritating aspect of our not being able to re-position our solar panels, is that they gather snow in the winter.  Our already poorly producing panels are further hampered by the fact that, at any given time, they can be covered with six inches of snow and ice.

To improve our chances of charging our batteries with the sun versus the generator, Sir Knight climbs up a ladder and takes a shop broom that we have taped to a large piece of PVC pipe and clears off as much snow as he can.  Once we get down to the ice, we have to let the sun do it's job, which it usually does pretty quickly.

Even solar panels need maintenance.  In the summer, you have to wash the dust and grime off of them and in the winter, it is the snow and ice.  It is all part of the off-grid dream!

Sir Knight has most of the right side cleared off

Miss Calamity keeping an eye on things

Shoestring Survivalists

Industrial forklift batteries
1850 pounds each!

 My recent blog "Lights Out" had unintended reactions.  Many people took the opportunity to point out the flaws (which there are many!) in our off-grid system and the numerous ways in which different equipment or maintenance methods would save us the trouble of a "systems down" situation.  They missed the point entirely.  My reason for writing that blog entry was to bring attention to the fact that no matter how prepared you are, how many systems you have in place and how ready you are to meet the unexpected, things will happen.  They always do.  They always will.  You can meticulously service your generator, water and acid adjust your batteries and have your inverters inspected and yet, at some point, they will fail you.  It is the nature of life.  It is not if something goes wrong, it is when.  My point was and is just this - it is not what happens, it's how you handle it.  Will you panic, fall apart and allow circumstances to raise your blood pressure to unhealthy levels?  Or will you deal with the business at hand and find a way to make do?  Somehow, when you live off-grid, you WILL find a way to make do - and not kill yourself in the process!

The best off-grid tool we own.
Heat, hot water, fresh bread -
all in one beautiful package!

Years ago, Sir Knight and I talked about going off-the-grid.  We had it all figured out.  We would buy solar panels (at least 5000 watts, who could possibly get by with less?), wire the panels into a super do wah tracking system, have multiple true sine wave inverters (nothing but the best, ya know), a solar pump for our well and solar hot water panels.  Our generator would be big, at least 15KW, and silent (read tactical) and would be wired for remote start in our kitchen.  When our batteries reached a certain level of discharge, our generator would automatically start and charge batteries so that we were never without a fully charged battery bank. We would have a water jacket installed in our wood cook stove, 1000 gallons of propane (for alternative hot water and a gas range) and three years worth of dry wood stacked in the wood shed.  Oh, and did I mention that we would have a 250 gallon gas tank full of treated gas, for chainsaws, tractors and our vehicles, if necessary.  That was our plan.

Now, for our reality.  We are shoestring survivalist.  When you have five children and one income, you don't have the money for true sine wave inverters, 15KW generators or 5000 watts of solar.  You could never afford to fill a 1000 gallon propane tank and you barely have time to put up one years worth of firewood, much less three.  You may dream of a 250 gallon tank full of gas, but you're lucky to have ten 5 gallon gas cans waiting in reserve.

Trace 3624 Inverters
The top inverter had the charging
relay weld. (they all do it after about
7 to 8 years!)  The board is in for service.

Everything we have done, we have done on a shoestring budget.  Our first inverter was a 1500 watt Trace that we bought used because we couldn't afford a new one.  We bought our first two solar panels (75 watts each) from some hippies way north of us with money I had earned having a bake sale at our local grocery store.  Really!  We bought solar panels with cupcake money.  We have never owned a new generator - in fact, I don't think we have owned a generator that is less than 30 years old.  We did buy 1 new inverter, but the brother inverter we bought used.  All of the solar panels in our 2150 watt array we bought used (through Craigslist, no less) and were BP test panels.  My husband designed our system and wired everything together (he claims that it looks like cats wired it - but I say that it has never let us down).  He even built the frame for our solar array (it would have been $3000 through Backwoods Solar!).

We have found that if you wait for just the right time, if you wait for everything to be perfect, it will never happen.  You have to be willing to deal with the hard stuff and you have to be willing to get your hands dirty and you have to be willing to settle for what you can afford.  And sometimes, you have to be willing to listen to all of the people who tell you that you are doing it wrong.

Tri-Metric meter.  Mounted in our
kitchen.  It monitors our battery condition
and charging current.

Being off the grid or being a survivalist or being prepared does not require a million dollars.  It can be done a little at a time.  It can be done by families with five children and one income.  Although it doesn't require a million dollars, it does require fortitude.  It requires commitment and it requires courage.  Being a shoestring survivalist may look one way on us and another way on you - but our goals are the same - to make our own way in the world.  We are the new Pioneers.  We are the future.

Lights out!

As most of you know, we are an off-grid family, meaning that we don't have grid power - we make our own.  Being off the grid can be wonderful (when everything is working well and you are smugly going about your normal life while the rest of the neighbors are struggling with the inconveniences of a power outage) or it can be a test in sheer grit (when the laundry is piled high, the stock tanks are empty, every dish in the house is dirty and the generator gives up the ghost - leaving you without water, lights or refrigeration).

Last night was just such a night.  Not the smug, wonderful part of being off the grid, but the sheer grit part.  We had had a busy day full of electricity using endeavours.  Maid Elizabeth had been transferring information from one computer to another, so we had two big computers on all day.  We had vacuumed (a huge electricity user), run the microwave, the Hobbes electric tea kettle (twice) and had had no sun for a couple of days.  Normally, I do laundry at least every day or two, so that will keep us in any power we may need when the sun is not shining, but we had been visiting friends over the weekend and Monday was full of business other than keeping house.

When the evening rolled around, we decided to settle in and watch a movie before bed.  Apparently, that was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.   After the movie was finished and children were getting ready for bed, I happened to look up and notice that our fan (24 volt DC) was slowing to a stop.  This is a VERY bad sign!  Our battery bank has to be extremely low to affect our 24 volt fan.  I made a run to the kitchen to check out the Tri-Metric meter (it tells us how our batteries are doing - how many amps we are using, how many volts our batteries are running on, etc.) and the news wasn't good.  Our 24 volt system was running on 18 volts!  We had minutes before the inverter shut down due to low voltage.

Sir Knight made a run to the shed to fire up the generator while Maid Elizabeth and I ran around turning off everything electric.  Our trusty Onan generator started......and then died. Sir Knight pulled the pull start.  Sputter, sputter, sputter - nothing.  Not to worry, we have a back-up generator.  It was out of fuel, but we have extra gas, so
Sir Knight put some gas into it and pulled the rope.  Nothing.  No, really - it wouldn't start.  It always starts, but not tonight.  Remembering that the back-up generator is a little fussy on the fuel pick-up line, Sir Knight shimmed up the front of the generator.  He pulled the rope, and Eureka! it started!  And then it died.  Back to the main generator.  Pull, pull, pull.  Nothing.  Sir Knight drove our truck down near the shed, so that he could jump start the generator (his arm was about ready to fall off from pulling the starter on two generators).  He hooked up the jumper cables and sputter, sputter, sputter.  Nothing.  Back to the back-up.  Nothing.  After about 45 minutes of this craziness, he decided that we would have a lovely, romantic, truly non-electric night.

By the time Sir Knight and I returned to the house, Maid Elizabeth had turned the inverter off, lit candles and ushered children off to bed.  We spent the evening reminiscing about the "good ol' days", back when we had no electricity at all.  We remembered how romantic our shouse had always looked by candlelight.  We enjoyed the absolute quiet of a house with no electricity.  No inverter humming, no electric refrigerator cycling off and on, no computer buzzing - just silence.  It was wonderful.

This morning we were back to business as usual.  Sir Knight headed off to work and I headed to the shed to do battle with the generators.  Our trusty old Onan still refused to start (Sir Knight is going to replace the carburetor) and the back-up took a little sweet talking, but in the end sheer grit paid off.  I got the piles of laundry washed, the dishes done and the batteries charged.  The refrigerator is now cycling off and on, the computer is buzzing and the inverter is humming.  And the shouse doesn't look nearly so romantic in the harsh light of compact fluorescents.

It is nice to have electricity (even if we make our own).  But if the lights all went out tomorrow - that would be O.K. too.

Non-Electric Lighting

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Non-Electric Lighting

I had a comment recently inquire about non-electric lighting...

"I was hoping that perhaps you'd be willing to answer a preparedness question for me. How do you prepare for emergency, non electric lighting? We had an extended power outage this winter, and I found we were totally unprepared in this area. I ended up burning all my decorative candles!! And there was not one drop of lamp oil, nor a flashlight, left in our small town, which was kind of creepy. We were snowed in for about 5 days, so there was no leaving town for more supplies. It was quite an interesting experience, and I learned a lot about how unprepared we really are!

So specifically, what kinds of lights do you recommend? Oil lamps? Kerosene? LED lights and batteries? Candles? Any specific types or brands you recommend? I went to the camping department at WalMart and was totally overwhelmed! Then I went to Lehman's website and was even more overwhelmed!

And also, what is the shelf life of lamp oil, kerosene, batteries etc? I am totally ignorant in these area. Thanks!"



Isn't it wonderful when God gently shows us areas that need attention?  After living for a year and a half with no electricity, here are a few things that we have found about non-electric lighting.  1)  Kerosene lamps.  Kerosene lamps work about the best, but only for mood light (you will hurt your eyes trying to read by these lamps).  Real lamp oil is paraffin based and has an excellent shelf life.  It is expensive.  The paraffin can get waxy, so don't store it in your lamps.  If you buy crystal clear kerosene, you can use it in your oil lamps.  Shelf life is about the same as gasoline.  It will get discolored.  It will still work, but will have more of a kerosene smell.

2)  Aladdin lamps.  Lehman's sells these, among other folks.  They are the prettiest lamps on the market and put off the best reading light, however, if left unattended, for just a few minutes, the mantles will turn black at flames will shoot out of the top of the lamp.  Some friends of ours almost burned their house down with an Aladdin lamp.  We had three.  We sold them all.  The mantles are very expensive to replace, and quite fragile.  Not conducive to a household full of children.

3)  Coleman lanterns.  They don't recommend using these inside, but if your house isn't airtight or if you crack a window, you shouldn't have a problem.  We used these for over a year and found they were the BEST gas powered lamp.  They were inexpensive, easy to use, easy to fill and the fuel (white gas) will last until the can rusts out.  We put one in our kitchen and one in our living room (hanging - better light and the kids can't knock them over) and were able to read, work and function very well with them.  We even liked the humming sound - very comforting.

4)  Petromax (multi-fuel pressurized lantern).  Without a doubt the best light was produced by this lamp (200 watts).  Without a doubt, the fussiest lamp we ever owned.  The learning curve on this lamp was steep.  After one of the fittings blew off the main pressure tank (it was soldered on) and set our kitchen table on fire (again) I took it outside (on fire - with three foot flames) and threatened to shoot it with the shotgun.  My husband finally fixed it.  He rewired it for electricity.  It is one of my favorite lamps now - and has given us no problems since!

5)  Candles.  I have a thing for candles anyway - so I love them. My theory is "buy them cheap, stack them deep".  Of course, with children, you do have to be careful because of the open flame.  They are not good to read by and really are strictly mood lighting.

6)  Flashlights.  LED are the best.  There is no end to flashlights.  We try to standardize on battery size.  All of our flashlight only take AA or D size batteries.  They are much less expensive than AAA or C size.  One word of caution with LED flashlights - the LED's draw so little current and the batteries last so long that I have had two mini maglites (AA) and one Streamlite (two D batteries) ruined because the batteries lasted so long that they leaked all over the flashlight and ruined them.  You might want to keep the batteries separate for storage.  Only buy good batteries (Duracell, Energizer) for your battery supply.  They can last up to 10 years in a controlled environment.  Store them in plastic bags, 3 to 4 to a bag.  That way, if one battery leaks it doesn't destroy the whole pack.

7)  Rechargeable Batteries.  There are two basic rechargeable batteries.  NiCad and NiMH (nickel metal hydride).  The NiCad batteries have memory problems.  If you charge them all of the time they will not hold a charge.  They need to be discharged fully and then recharged (or they get a short memory).  NiMH batteries do not have the same memory problems, however, they discharge themselves in 30-60 days, making them difficult for emergency use.  If you can get a solar powered battery charger you could be way ahead of the game (if you have sun).

Let me know if you have any other questions.  Keep your powder dry.

Enola and Sir Knight

The Evolution of an Off-Grid Life

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The evolution of an off-grid life

As you know, we live off the grid. We live a pretty posh and comfortable life now (most of the time), but it hasn't always been that way! I thought I would take a minute and tell you how we got from "there" to "here".

When we first moved into our shouse, almost 10 years ago, we had no electricity, no running water, no drains - nothing that would resemble "normal". We had an 11 year old, a 4 year old and a 1 year old. We built our shouse as a shop, and with no foresight at all and neglected to put windows in it - mostly. We did have two windows... one in our "bedroom" and one in the "bathroom". I use the words bedroom and bathroom loosely because we had just one big room, with areas divided by group of furniture. We had no sheet rock on the walls, just insulation. No electrical wiring, no plumbing. It was pretty rustic! We hauled water from the neighbors (even though we had drilled a well - we still had to put in a pump and a pressure tank and get a generator to pump the water). We had a milk cow, so we went through about 35 gallons of water a day just for her! That didn't include drinking water for us or water for laundry, cooking, dishes and cleaning. We used a bucket with bags (located in our shed) for a bathroom. I did laundry on the wood cookstove and hung it in front of the stove to dry. In the beginning, we used Aladin lamps for light, but found they required CONSTANT attention! They provided good light, but I couldn't leave them unattended for a minute, or they would catch fire and a $7.00 mantle would go up in flames! We also had a Petromax multi-fuel lantern that was made in Germany, and was supposed to be the best. It was fussy to say the least. I would light it when I was schooling the children, because it was the only light we could see by and not get headaches. It was complicated and dodgy and it leaked like a sieve. One day it caught my kitchen table on fire and I threatened to take it outside and shoot it with the shotgun! Finally, my folks brought us two Coleman lamps. Joy!!! We could see and didn't have to battle the Aladin's or the Petromax.

After hauling water for about 3 months, we put a pump in our well, got a generator, (a Chinese diesel - that is another story) plumbed the house (after a fashion) and had cold running water. I was in heaven! I even got a sink and drains!!! I still had to heat water on the stove, but that was nothing! We could take baths in our bathtub, wash dishes in the sink and I didn't have to haul water for laundry or for watering the animals. We did have to start the generator any time the pressure tank was out of water, but that was a pleasure after the months of hauling water.

The first Thanksgiving in our shouse we were thankful indeed! My folks spent they day with us, helping my husband install a window in the living room and another one in the kids' room upstairs. We had a turkey dinner, cooked in the wood cookstove, fellowship by lantern light and hearts overflowing with thankfulness. It was truly a Thanksgiving to remember.

After about a year and a half, my husband wired our house for electricity and we bought a used Trace inverter. My husband arranged for his buddy (with a boom on his truck) to deliver our first battery bank - two HUGE forklift batteries. Our lanterns were on their last legs, it was getting dark, and the guys were in the shed fiddling with hooking up the batteries.  My husband came in, flipped on the inverter and.....nothing. He went to the bathroom, adjusted the inverter and suddenly light, electric light, flooded the room! I looked around in horror - my house was filthy! By the light of the Coleman's it had looked romantically cluttered, but by the light of harsh fluorescent shop lights, it was hideous! I almost cried "turn of the lights", but refrained. Instead I started cleaning. If your were to ask my kids, they would say I haven't stopped!

Little by little, other things come on line. We put in a toilet, installed a hot water tank and even bought a wind turbine. The turbine killed our inverter, so we upgraded to a larger one. We eventually bought a second inverter, and my husband wired them so they would run the well pump. We sold the turbine and bought two small solar panels. They were fun, but didn't do much. We killed a number of generators - the Chinese diesel, two 10KW military diesels, a 5KW military diesel, and finally a little Honda 5KW. We learned a lot. We decided to put our money into solar panels instead of generators and stepped up to the plate and bought 2150 watts of panels. This year we didn't start our generator from May until October! We now have a 5KW Onan generator (it is old, and built like a tank, and we love it) that we bought on Craigslist for $200.

We have learned a few things about being off the grid and about being prepared in general. Some of the biggest lessons we have learned are:

1. Redundancy. We like to have 3 ways to do everything! Solar panels, wind turbine, generator. When trouble strikes, it is essential to have more than one way to deal with it.

2. Use your back-up plan. A lot of the things we used when we were first off the grid, we bought in anticipation of Y2K. Some worked. Some didn't. The Aladin's, the Petromax are a case in point. If we had depended on these, they would have let us down.

3. Change your expectations. I had it in my head that certain things would happen by a certain time. They didn't. My first reaction was to become discontent and mad at my husband. I learned that I just had to change my expectations. I had to live were I was, not were I thought I should be.

4. These are the "Good ol' days". I learned to enjoy our hardship, because that is were memories are made and thankfulness is generated. Our first winter, we read the entire "Little House on the Prairie" series, "Swiss Family Robinson" and "Heidi" together as a family. Every evening we would snuggle under blankets, sip hot cocoa and I would read. Those are memories of a lifetime. With every improvement in our circumstances we had an opportunity to be truly grateful for things that most people take for granted. A toilet that flushed, a light switch that worked or a hot bath were true causes for celebration.

5. Life isn't supposed to be easy. It isn't in the good times that God molds and shapes us into the likeness of His son. It is when the generator breaks, again. It is when you are 8 1/2 months pregnant and the water pipes break and your husband is at work and you have to get on your hands and knees and do a temporary repair. It is when you don't think you can take one more crisis, and your milk cow sinks in mud bog when it is 28 degrees and sleeting and you have to lay on your stomach in the mud to get a rope around her belly to haul her out with the tractor. That is when God is doing His work. And that is exactly where I want to be!

The Simple Life...

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The "Simple" life

Everything is more difficult when you don't have grid-power. You have to deal with things "normal" people never even think about. When we didn't have any power at all dishes were a 3 hour ordeal. First, I had to haul the water. Then I had to heat it up on the wood cookstove. Next, I had to try to get it to the right temperature - which is an art. For some reason, the dish soap seems to disappear ridiculously fast when you do dishes this way, so it always appears that you are washing dishes in dirty non-soapy water. Of course, the minute you are "finished" with the dishes, it is time to make lunch or dinner, or somebody has to have a drink, so you are never really truly finished. I'm pretty sure that I spent about 6 hours a day trying to keep up with the dishes back when we were living the "simple" life!

We have made progress. After a generator to run the well pump, and a hot water tank for hot running water (we were living the life!) dishes became pretty normal. Normal, that is, until the pressure tank ran out of water, and I had to run outside when it was blizzarding with a 20 mile per hour wind (reducing the temperature to -32).

My husband recently (within the last 6 months) hooked both of our 3600 watt inverters together so they can run either 120 and 240. Revolutionary! We now run our well pump off our batteries. We can do really neat things like take showers or baths, do the laundry, flush the toilet (the kids are having a hard time with this one) and do dishes any time we want! We do have to keep an eye on the battery voltage and charge if the batteries are too low - otherwise the inverters make a hideous noise and want to jump off the wall. I feel so spoiled. And to think, some people can't do the dishes when the dishwasher is broken!

That brings me back to my point for today. Our batteries were pretty low (22.3 volts - we have a 24 volt system) and I needed to charge. I had laundry to do anyway, so we filled up the generator with gas and got laundry started. We happily went about our business getting the house chores taken care of , the outside chores done and had started school. The generator was chugging away, we were pumping water and suddenly the inverters quit charging, the lights started pulsing, all of the appliances started turning on and off. I had to run into the bathroom, turn off the inverters, wait a few minutes, turn the inverters back on. Nothing. Turn the inverters off again, flip the DC disconnect, check all of the breakers, turn the inverters on again. Nothing. Put my boots on, go outside, check the breakers on the generator, go back inside, turn the inverters back on (again). Eureka! It worked. Finally, back to charging as usual. Being off the grid requires you to think. No simple turning on the light switch and having light. We make our light. There are times that I have to be an electrical engineer, a diesel generator mechanic and a plumber all in one day - that on top of being a school teacher, home-maker, small business entrepreneur, wife and mother. Who has time to "work"? And they say we live the "simple" life!
Please don't think I am complaining. I wouldn't change a minute of my life. I do have moments of weakness that I think how easy it would be to live a "normal" life, but then I regain my sanity. It's the simple life for me.

I'm just Livin' the Dream!

The Reality of being off the grid

Friday, January 15, 2010

The reality of being off the grid

As you know, we live off the grid. By off the grid I mean that we are not hooked up to the power lines - no power grid electricity. This was not exactly on purpose! My husband and I had talked about going solar, being off-grid for years, but never seriously. We loved the thought of the independence, but wanted to have it all. We wanted the perfect system, set up so that we would not have to change our lifestyle at all. We wanted to be the ones that everyone flocked to when the power was out, because we had it so together. Ha! That is not at all how it worked out.

10 years ago, my husband and I decided to sell our beautiful home (with the big mortgage) and buy bare land. Our romantic dream was to build a shop, live in it for a year, then build a log house. We had a budget, a plan, a dream. We bought the land. It was perfect. 1/2 hay fields, 1/2 large timber, a year around creek, backed up to a large state park, surrounded by large, empty tracts of farmland. We hired a friend to punch in a road, put in a pad to build a shop and level out an area for the future house. Then reality hit! We had a well drilled, 465 feet - only a pocket of water that was pumped out. It only produced 1 gallon of water a minute! We were sick. We had to have water, so we had another well drilled. We hit water this time - a lot of it, and only had to go 435 feet. Right off the bat, our budget was shot! Next, we paid someone from the power company to come out and give us a quote for power, which was only 750 feet away. When my husband called to tell me what the quote was, I started hysterically laughing! When I stopped laughing I said "well, I guess we live off-grid now!"

For the first year and a half, we had no power. We did have a generator so that we could pump water into our pressure tank. For the first 6 months we didn't have running water, a flushing toilet (that happened at about 1 year) or a washing machine. I did laundry in a washtub on the top of our wood cookstove. I would start with the darks in cold water and move quickly to the whites. You wouldn't believe how fast 5 gallons of water heats up over the fire box! I didn't have a wringer, so I would wring the clothes out over the bathtub with my hands. I was amazing how much water I didn't get out! I had a number of wooden clothes racks that I would put in front of and behind the wood cookstove, to dry the clothes. It took about 3 days, and we had puddles of water on the floor constantly. Finally my husband hooked up our washing machine! I am positive that is one of mans greatest inventions!!!!  My husband also came up with the cleverest clothes dryer. He built it in about 15 minutes, and hung it with a pulley from our roof, over the cookstove!!! My clothes now dry in about 6 hours!

Eldest daughter is hanging clean laundry. Our dryer holds about 2 1/2 loads. It is always tucked nicely out of our way!

Every step of the journey of our being off-grid has been a learning experience. We never did built that log house. After about 6 years of running only on generator power, we bought a wind turbine. It was small, made a lot of noise, and didn't produce much power. Its blades were made out of carbon fiber. We had an electrical storm it surged and burned, I mean with flames and everything, our inverter! Out went the turbine. Next we bought two small (75 watt) solar panels. It was cute, but did little to charge our HUGE batteries. A year and a half ago, we took the plunge, and bought 2150 watts of solar panels off of craigslist. It changed our world. We did not run our generator from May through October! My husband wired two inverters together to run our 220 well pump. I can do laundry without starting the generator!!!! We can flush the toilet any time we want!!!! (Although we still can't get the kids to flush!) We can take showers and baths without having to go out in the howling wind to start the generator.

People tell us that we are living the dream. My husband and I exchange knowing glances. Little do they realize we have been without lights, woken up in a 42 degree house, dealt with frozen or broken pipes until 3 in the afternoon, foregoing school and every other chore, worked on generators when it is -10 with a 24 mph wind, chopped two foot thick ice in the stock tanks, milked a cow in the pouring rain while up to our knees in mud, shoveled a 750 foot driveway that has been drifted in. We are living the dream, but it is not the romantic dream we originally had planned. It is the get tough dream. It is the realization that we can do anything! We can and will survive whatever this world, economy and government can throw at us. We have learned that our battles are won on our knees. We have learned that God, not us, is in control. We have learned that we are responsible for us, that things worth having are worth working and waiting for. We have learned contentment.


And yes, we do live the dream. Just look at what we see out our windows.....