On 11/30/2012 8:03 AM, Edgar Owen wrote:
What's your water source?
A small stream whose watershed lies on NF land abutting our northern
boundary. I pick up the water in a roll-pipe somewhat more than 100
vertical feet above the house so we have pressurized-water. A bit of a
nuisance to keep the pick-up clear and it freezes, in spite of letting
it run full force, if we get down around zero, but that has not been
happening much the last few years.
Obviously you are on the grid. Do you have backup power?
Gas generator, which suffices for short outages, and I need it anyway
for operation of tools away from the house, but I have a solar system on
my 'to do' list. I figure the dems will throw money at solar now, and
may make us a subsidy deal we can't refuse.
firewood is my almost exclusive heat source. With all the forest
around I should never want for firewood and thus heat and cooking...
same here
What I'd like to find is some practical solar system I could run
communications off of at least.
no expert, but if you are satisfied with a system /that/ small (rather
than one that powers the house and uses the grid for 'ballast') you
ought to be able to use one or more deep-cycle batteries, with a
charging system and an inverter. Systems like that have been around a
long time, and should be a trivial expense. I am putting together
something like that, (only using house current to keep the battery up on
standby, and the generator+auto battery charger in an outage) to run the
fireplace blower.
