The internet is chock full of articles glowing about biochar's potential, but I seldom find any useful, hands on information.  The Abingdon Biochar presentation we attended delved into the nitty gritty.

Today's video highlights methods you can use to make biochar on any scale.  I was especially intrigued by the idea of modifying a rocket stove to produce biochar while cooking your dinner.

I thought the drying season had left us behind, but this week the sun came back out and let me test a few tomatoes in our automotive dehydrator.  It tickles me pink to be drying vegetables in a totaled car, even if it is running fine and useful for ferrying supplies back and forth rather than being up on blocks in the front yard.  My test tray dried nicely, so today I'll add more tomatoes to the drier.

My goal is to make Mark stop talking about our movie star neighbor's sun-dried tomatoes and start talking about mine.  Hollywood sun-dried tomatoes (as I've decided to call the delicious concoction) are so tasty you can't keep them in the fridge or they'll be gone overnight. 

Part 1 of the recipe is simple --- slice plum-sized romas or other small, meaty tomatoes in half, sprinkle the cut side with a hint of salt and pepper, and dry until slightly moist (like a dried apricot).  Stay tuned for the taste explosion of part 2 once I have enough tomato morsels dried to show you the steps.

Zimmy and his wife rounded out their energy efficient home by producing some of their own power.  They live in northern Ohio where it makes sense to supplement solar power by capturing the wind blowing down off the Great Lakes. 

The couple has been building their homestead infrastructure for about as long as I've been alive, so it's no surprise they've been able to snap up good deals.  "Almost everything we buy, build, install, is seconds. We live in the world of surplus," Zimmy emailed when I asked him the cost of his alternative energy system.  He went on to say that he has two different sets of solar panels as well as the wind turbine.

The solar panels on the ground put out about 3kw.  They came from a demonstration solar power plant in the south California desert.  After being cooked in the sun with concentrating mirrors they were dumped onto the surplus market.  I installed them in 1994. I don't remember the cost, but it was cheap at the time.

The panels on the roof were installed last year by Mary and I.  They are a 1.6kw array, and they came from http://www.sunelec.com/ as seconds.

The [17.5 kw] wind turbine....well that's another story.  It was installed in 1984.  The turbine was bought as a damaged unit that was damaged in a wind storm.  The tower was bought from a scrap yard and they bought it from the local airport.  I also found other sections of  the same type tower from another person.  The tower is 150' tall and I have 20' left over to be used for my water tower when I get time.  The turbine has been hit by lighting several times, mechanical failures, electrical failures, modified and upgraded several times.  I have lost track of the cost, but I have a spare alternator, gearhead, governor, blades, and spare inverter boards.  The turbine had some damage over the winter that cost $3,500 for repairs but insurance paid for it. 

Whenever I consider alternative power --- beyond our simple solar backup --- I get caught up in the disposable nature of batteries and whether the unit will really pay for itself.  Unfortunately, Zimmy wasn't really able to answer my questions about the economics of his grid-tied system.  He noted: "I don't keep track of power produced and power used.  We use every bit of power we produce, and have some amount of electric bill to pay.  The utility co. is happy and so are we."

Whether or not Zimmy's system is cost-effective, I can tell he's had a wonderful time tinkering.  Keeping our eyes open for salvage and seconds is a good lesson for everyone to learn.

I can just hear Roland now --- "All of this talk about insulating the home is great, but you shouldn't be using electricity for heat anyway.  What did Zimmy do to lower his non-heat electricity use before going off the grid?"  Well Roland-in-my-head, I'm glad you asked that, because Zimmy went all out.

Zimmy installed aluminum bars on his baseboard heaters as a thermal heat sink and bought a Geyser heat pump water heater.  In the kitchen, he put in a Sunfrost refrigerator, an induction cook top, and a vent to channel excess heat to the water heater (or outside.)  He switched over to Energy Star appliances, buying a new freezer among other things.  Finally, he installed a dual flush conversion on the toilet to help save water.

I wasn't surprised to see fluorescent and LED lighting on Zimmy's list, but I did get hung up for a moment on what a solar tube is.  These special skylights use a combination of a domed "daylight capturing surface" on the outside of the house and a lens on the inside of the house to maximize the amount of sunlight you receive through a small skylight.  Solar tubes are sure to warm the inventive cockles of Mark's heart, but at a few hundred dollars apiece, we won't be installing them anytime soon.

Although I usually think that buying insulation for the ceiling is the quickest and cheapest way to improve heating efficiency, one article I read suggested that I was on the wrong track.  They noted that infiltration and air leakage are the most problematic causes of heat loss in the winter, making up around 35% of all heat lost from the average home.  Windows and doors followed behind at 18 to 20%, then floors at 15 to 18%, walls at 12 to 14%, and finally ceilings at 10%.  Clearly, fixing any holes or cracks should be your first priority, closely followed by dealing with windows and doors.

We installed double-glazed windows in our trailer, but even the air gap between those panes of glass is a drop in the bucket.  Double-glazed windows tend to have an R-value around 2 --- compared to a preferred R-value of at least 13 in walls.  Is there a way to make windows more efficient without living in a cave?

Zimmy made some quick and easy window coverings to insulate his windows when they aren't in use.  He used foam board on basement windows and some upstairs windows (top photo), then bought quilted window blinds for windows in his main living space (second photo.)  The quilted blinds run on a track and seal all around the window.  I estimate that Zimmy gets an additional R-6 from his foam board (although the gaps at the edge of the foam board may drop this down some) and perhaps as high as R-7 for his quilted blinds.

Maine Home Energy has a very well put together page about different window insulation options, including price per square foot and R-value of each.  They recommend quilted blinds like Zimmy's (which they call "insulated Roman shades") on south-facing windows since they are easy to open for passive solar gain on sunny days, then seal shut for the night or on cloudy days.  Insulating windows has always been on our priority list, but after reading the statistics on heat lost through windows, then seeing simple how-to instructions for making our own insulating blinds, I think this project will have to move closer to the top.

Adding a roof and basement to his mobile home made it much easier for Zimmy to insulate his house.  We've tried to wrap our minds around insulating our trailer better, but since Mark's head already almost brushes the ceiling, we would clearly have to follow a similar route and we're not quite ready to embark on such a huge project.  Still, it's great to see how a trailer can be insulated relatively cheaply once you have a roof and basement in place.

Zimmy didn't give me figures on how much it cost to build his new roof and basement, but he did say that the subsequent insulation job cost about $500.  He managed to insulate so cheaply because he spent some time scrounging for materials:

With his supplies compiled, Zimmy and his wife ripped off the inside paneling and installed 6 mil plastic as a vapor barrier, putting drywall over that.  They tacked an additional two inches of insulated foam board to the outside of the trailer and coated it with 1/2" of plywood.  The resulting combination of insulation in the walls now reached R26.

"The roof already had R19 of fiberglass insulation in it and the company I worked for sold me at cost bags of rock wool insulation," Zimmy wrote.  It was simple to add more insulation under the roof, bringing the insulative value up to at least R60.

Zimmy made sure that I knew he still planned to put vinyl siding over the outside walls of the mobile home.  I could tell that the insulating project had been a lot of work, but I'll bet he and his wife consider that $500 a very wise investment.

Since our own solar experiments are so low-key at the moment, I thought you might enjoy hearing from one of our regular readers who has built an extensive grid tied solar and wind alternative power system.  Zimmy and his wife live in a 1974 mobile home (14 X 60 feet):

I was intrigued to hear more about Zimmy's project since we live in a similar trailer (although ours is a third smaller and a decade older.)  We thoroughly approve of starting out with a living situation that is as cheap as possible, then improving the efficiency of your space over time.

Mobile homes are usually barely insulated, but Zimmy proved that you can turn even an old model into an efficient and beautiful living space.  This week's lunchtime series follow's Zimmy's journey to insulate his home and then provide a good proportion of his own power.

I got so excited when I read that you can buy a plug-and-play grid tie inverter and pump the electricity from your solar panel directly into the grid for less than a hundred bucks that I snatched up the first one I saw on ebay.  The theory is sound and would make small-scale solar fit into the average person's price range...if it wasn't illegal and potentially hazardous.

The dream is that you can simply plug a solar panel directly into one of these small inverters, and plug the other end of the inverter into an electric socket in your house.  On the level I'm interested in, there's no way you'd actually be feeding energy back into the grid since continuous loads in your house (like the computer, fridge, etc.) will suck up all the juice you've created.  But you would lower your electric bill, and would also remove the most disposable part of a solar power system --- the batteries.  Without the repeated purchase of batteries, I figured even the solar panels you can buy at Harbor Freight for less than $200 would pay for themselves before they began to seriously lose efficiency.

The problem with the dream is that utilities require you to jump through such a series of hoops before tying into the grid that you might as well not even think about it unless you're willing to sink a few thousand dollars into the project.  I contacted our local electric company (Appalachian Electric Power) and found out that in order to plug in a grid tie inverter, we'd need to:

The employee I emailed with (who went to great lengths to make his emails understandable by the layman) explained that the existing disconnect below the meter is not sufficient to fulfill step 3.  In addition, more extensive reading on the internet shows that a certified inverter costs around $2,000, putting grid tie-in completely out of our league.

The electric company has a few valid reason to squash cheap plug-and-play inverters.  The biggest hazard from these inverters comes during power outages, when the electric company shuts down the juice on a line so that it can be repaired.  Without the proper precautions, your solar panels would continue feeding electricity into what is supposed to be a dead line, and you could fry the linemen who come to fix the problem.  Granted, even the cheap power jack grid tie inverter we found on ebay has anti-islanding protection, so presumably this problem wouldn't occur.

I read an excellent point on a forum that our grid tie inverter is inherently unsafe since it has live electricity on the male end of the plug rather than protected within a female plug.  This is where my (very mild) libertarian leanings come out --- we live in a household of two adults who can remember to unplug the solar panel before yanking the inverter out of the wall.  We're not going to fry ourselves.

Many people buy these plug-and-play grid tie inverters and surreptitiously put them to use in their own homes.  Chances are, no one at the electric company would ever find out (although if you go the illegal route and have a fire in your home, your fire insurance will probably refuse to pay for the damages.)  Unfortunately, breaking the law would keep me up at night, so we've wasted $90 on a useless grid tie inverter and will have to figure out a better way to harness the extra energy that doesn't go into charging our power packs.

Harbor Freight in Johnson City is an awesome store!

The manager was in a good mood and gave us the additional 2 year warranty on each solar power kit along with the portable power packs.

Stay tuned for more details as I unbox and set up this new technology.

We still think that plug and play is the way to go for our cheap solar backup, but we've tweaked the specific components a bit.  We wanted to find a powerpack that we could pick up at a physical store since powerpacks bought online have often been stored in warehouses for years and have dubious longevity.  We figure that by picking one up locally, we can easily return it if it turns out to be old.

The 5-in-1 power pack at Harbor Freight is the best we could find at a physical store --- it's only two thirds as voluminous as the Duracell 600 watt power pack, holding 216 watt-hours of energy, but the price commensurate.  And the reviews are quite good --- one user notes that his powerpack is only starting to lose its gumption after five years of use.

The 45 watt solar panel kit is really too big for our system, but it's irresistible at the current sale price ($170 on Harbor Freight's website --- print out the price page to use as a coupon at local stores.)  Since we've oversized our solar panel, we have to throw in a $26 charge controller, bringing the total cost to just under $300 for the entire backup system.

On a sunny, summer day, our 45 watt solar panel will probably be wasting quite a bit of juice, since it should pull in 135 watt-hours of energy a day even in the dead of winter.  I suspect that there will be a way to capture that excess, perhaps by plugging an inverter directly into the included power center to run electronics while also charging the powerpack.  Or, better yet, we might buy a (roughly) $100 grid tie inverter, which would allow us to plug our solar panel directly into an electric socket in the house and sell power back to the grid --- no muss, no fuss, and easily detachable to plug the solar panel into an inverter when the power goes out.

We'll update you as we experiment, but Mark is currently on his way to pick up our components, so this phase of the project is now set in stone.

It would be great if all the downed trees would fall like this one.

Being elevated off the ground makes it so much easier to cut and avoid letting the chain dip into the dirt, not to mention being safer.

I start at the far end and just let each log fall to the ground, and then let Anna load them up in the truck.

This round of firewood cutting reminded me of a saying my uncle Art once told me.

I think I've cheated myself out of one of the warmings by cutting on a day like today, but I think it's still worth the effort nonetheless.

My last trip to BFR Mulch in Norton gave me a chance to ask the guy about delivery options.

It seems they have a small Mitsubishi 4 wheel drive dump truck that can haul 5 times what we can do in the truck. The delivery fee is 30 dollars from Norton to Coeburn, which is about the half way mark for us and why the guy guessed the charge to be around 60 bucks for our zipcode.

Marcus Sabathil is a glass artist and furniture maker who managed to modify his Toyota Previa in such a way to increase highway mileage from 20 to 36 mpg.

I've often wondered how much of a gain we might get from our Toyota Previa if we fabricated a similar boat tail.

Thanks to everyone's great advice, I'm starting to narrow down our choices for our power outage solar backup system.  First of all, Joey and Roland (and the web) helped me figure out what size system I should be looking for.  I added up two hours run time on our laptops, router, and two lights and came up with 150 watt-hours per day.  Using Joey's math, or just dividing by the 3 peak sun hours our area is rated to receive in the dead of winter (from the map above), we would need a 50 watt solar panel to achieve our goal.  Since it's bad business to discharge your batteries more than halfway, we would need to buy two Duracell Power Packs and two 25 watt panels to reach this level --- total cost roughly $450.

For comparison's sake, I followed Daddy's advice and gave Backwoods Solar a call.  The salesman there was happy to walk me through my choices, even though he clearly wasn't going to make much money off me.  Here are the components and prices he quoted me for a 50 watt system:

• 50 watt solar panel - $275
• charge controller - $33
• 400 watt inverter - $45
• 2 RV or marine batteries (bought locally) - $180
  

He also mentioned buying a tilt mount ($68), which would let us adjust the panel's orientation seasonally for slightly higher output.  Assuming Mark could make our tilt mount, but that we would have to buy some connectors not on the list, the total would come to around $600.  On the other hand, I suspect I could shave around $100 off the cost by hunting down the components elsewhere on the web.

In other words, the plug and play version and the real DIY version have a comparable price tag.  But do they have comparable longevity?  I asked the Backwoods Solar salesman what he thought of using a 600 watt Duracell Power Pack as our battery, controller, and inverter.  "That would probably work," he said (and I paraphrase), "if you're just going to use it very ocassionally as a backup.  However, if you'd like to take the laptop and lighting loads permanently off the grid and run your solar system daily, you would be better off with a different battery."

Now, I trust that he knows what he's talking about, but I don't quite understand why he would be right.  My research shows that AGM batteries have a rated lifespan of 4 to 7 years while marine batteries have a lifespan of 1 to 6 years.  In addition AGM batteries are sealed, which means no need for us to fuss over them, worry about fumes, or freak out when I accidentally knock them over.  Finally, they can be shipped, so we can shop around and buy the ones at rock bottom prices on Ebay.  As far as I understand it, the main disadvantage of an AGM battery is price, but the cost of the Duracell Power Pack seems to be roughly comparable to a marine battery when you consider that the former includes a charge controller and inverterter.

So, I'm opening up to questions and answers again.  Can anyone think of a reason that the Duracell Power Pack would have less longevity than a different system?  Currently, I'm leaning toward trying out one 25 watt plug and play system, doubling it later if all goes well.

Mark and I are in the research stages of putting together a very small solar backup for use during power outages, and I'm hoping that some of the more technical folks among you can give us the benefit of your wisdom.  During three power outages over the last few months, we've figured out that running the generator for an hour a day keeps the farm ticking along, but that we miss two major creature comforts --- lights on winter evenings and more steady access to the internet.

Luckily, these gadgets don't draw much juice --- about 25 watts apiece for our laptops, another 23 watts for the router, and 13 watts for a CFL.  We figure that if we increase efficiency by buying a car charger for the laptops (deleting the inefficiencies from converting DC to AC to DC) and buy a couple of DC LED lights, we could coast along on very little electricity, allowing us to work and play online for perhaps 3 hours per day on a solar system costing less than $300.

A simple solar system that doesn't seem to require much technical know-how consists of a 600 watt Duracell Power Pack (basically, a 12 volt, 28 amp-hour, AGM battery; a controller; and a 600 watt inverter combined into one unit, costing roughly $125) along with a 25 to 30 watt solar panel (roughly $150.)  Many solar panels come with the right connectors, so the system would be basically plug and play.

The flaw I see in the combo above is that the solar panel might not fully charge the battery in a single day of sun --- some websites say the system will charge up in 5 to 7 hours, but other sites think the system will take 16 to 18 hours to charge.  We can't just add a larger solar panel for quicker charging since the manufacturer notes that you can't hook a panel larger than 30 watts directly to the power pack without adding an external charge controller.

So here are my questions:

• Is it okay to shop around and find the cheapest 30 watt solar panel, or are cheaper solar panels going to burn out quickly?  Are there solar panel categories I should be aware of in the low end, consumer market?
  
• We're willing to pay a bit extra for plug and play (and portability), but don't want to be seriously ripped off.  Would it be smarter to do more research and buy the battery, inverter, and charge controller separately?
  
• If we bought an external charge controller and a 50 watt solar panel, would the larger panel charge our power pack faster?  My very vague understanding makes me think it wouldn't, that the charge controller would just filter out the extra power from the larger solar panel since it's more than the battery can handle.
• One website notes that this system would give us around 160 watt-hours per day.  I'm not actually sure where people came up with that figure --- does it make sense?  Does that mean that I could run a single 25 watt laptop for 6 hours?

Basically, these questions all come down to one major one --- is this a bad idea?  We like the modular nature of the system, especially since Mark thinks we could use the power pack with pedal power, a bit like this article describes.  But we don't want to spend a few hundred bucks on a dud.

I first discovered permaculture pioneer Sepp Holzer when I posted about do it yourself aquaponics back in the spring.

The guy from Richsoil.com got a chance to spend 12 days with Sepp and he did a great job of documenting his visit with pictures, videos, and detailed descriptions of the Sepp Holzer style of permaculture.

Richsoil.com also has an in depth section on his experiences and observations with raising chickens that I found informative and useful.

In searching for more low budget do it yourself cooling options I came upon this cooling tower design.

It seems like one of the more expensive solutions out there, but might end up saving money in the long run. The tower should be at least 6 feet square, 20 to 30 feet tall with as much insulation as you can muster.

I wonder if this concept could be scaled down for just one room instead of an entire house?

Image credit goes to the thefarm.org which has a well written article on this method of sustainable cooling. They've also got a good section on permaculture in Tennessee.

I've always thought the traditional pop up style campers had room for improvement.

The Yurtle will put an end to your square lodge blues with a nice circular structure to rest within. This portable model will run you about 6800 bucks, which seems comparable to other new pop up campers. The Yurtle will take at least an hour to set up compared to seconds on the pop up.

Seems like this might be a great alternative to the FEMA trailers we heard so much about after hurricane Katrina?

Go to Laurelnestyurts.com for more round options and details on their small community of 14 yurts. They've got a few sections to their blog where they discuss permaculture and gardening, topics that drove me to their site in the first place.

When we first moved to the farm here one of the chores was to haul water from the creek in 5 gallon buckets to a small raised bed of baby apple trees.

This was before we were living here full time and pre-electricity. I remember trying to run a small pump off the power of the truck in desperation. This produced a small trickle and seemed to strain the engine to the point where I figured it wasn't worth the risk of blowing a fuse or worse.


Pictured here is the Q-Drum, invented by Hans Hendrikse in 1996. It can carry 20 gallons with ease thanks to the rolling nature of it's design. From what I can gather it's only available in South Africa and cost around 500 Rands. This invention might have been enough to hydrate those poor little apple trees. The unusaully dry summer was a problem, but the real mistake was not mulching. A couple of Q-Drums might have saved the day.

I've often tried to imagine what would be the ultimate water storage container for a possible future where energy is scarce. This might be it.

I wonder how much it would take to make the inner walls glass or copper?

The Champion generator started on the second pull Monday night when the power first failed here.

Tuesday rolled around and I made a big mistake by topping it off with some old gas. I thought the fuel was fine due to just using some in the lawnmower, but I guess this generator is more sensitive.

My first solution was limited by our local hardware store and the Dollar shop. They only had STP and Gumout, which I think is the same thing. I added both with very little results to show for it. It would start up...but putter and stall due to what I assume was the bad gas or water in there somewhere? My second mistake was not deleting as much of the old gas as I could before adding the supplements.

The next round of repairs involved a longer trip where one can find a proper auto parts store. I went right for the Seafoam and after a short consult with one of the clerks was off to the gas station for some premium grade petrol.

Dumping out the old gas and adding the Seafoam helped, but it continued to putter and eventually stalled due to what I'm guessing is some sort of blockage. I think it's going to take running it a while for it to smooth out.

Luckily the electric guy showed up with a chainsaw and a smile and cut down the offending tree that was hanging on one of our power lines. It was touch and go for a while as I watched the line hold the entire weight of the tree and finally allow it to fall without  breaking. I let out a loud enough cheer so he could hear me and we had power restored within the hour.

If you live near a lake or some other source of cold water you could pump that water through an old radiator and then blow the coldness out with a simple fan.

I found this clever solution at the Straw Bale Retreat blog.

Now I'm wondering how much cold air I could harvest from our nearby creek using this method?

I've been interested in taking advantage of geothermal energy for heating and cooling since I first heard of the idea.

The main problem is the high installation and material cost.

After several hours of research I finally found some comprehensive information on tackling a project like this from an angle that won't break the bank.

Free home air conditioning is a simple website that covers several details I wouldn't have thought of. Like how important moisture control is and if you select the wrong material you might create favorable conditions for mold to multiply.


I would not try to dig trenches like this by hand unless it was an emergency situation. The time and energy a Ditch Witch can save is what makes this project practical.

When we first started this irrigation project the budget was a bit limited.

I'm sure it breaks every law of proper electric wiring, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do.
                                                                                                                                            

It's basically four 100 foot extension cords cobbled together and wired so each pole is carrying 110 volts. I'm pretty sure this is close to the maximum distance you should think about stretching these cords. Electrical tape works well for sealing up the junctions where each cord is plugged into.

We're going on the third year of this setup. There was a problem in the beginning with the pump connections, but I solved that by figuring out how to make the contact points waterproof.

If you feel like you're testing the limits of safety try picking up the cord in question to see if it's giving off much heat while you have your pump working. It's this heat that can be dangerous and must be dealt with by making the distance shorter or the electrical cord thicker.

If you had chickens 100 years ago in America you would've most likely used a hand cranked corn sheller every day to keep your flock fed.

Thanks to Global Cycle Solutions now you can give your hand a rest and get all your corn shelling done with pedal power.

The device can be unattatched so you can operate the bike for transportation or hook up another clever gadget to charge your mobile phone or flashlight or whatever else you can imagine that needs a little power.

The cost is 60 dollars plus shipping which seems like a bargain.

I think we've finally found a product that will help Lucy figure out that she's not allowed to steal food scraps from the chicken pasture.

Just minutes after the new chick made it back to mamma Lucy went sniffing around the fresh chick trail. It didn't take her long to follow it to the chicken pasture. I just happen to be watching when she got too close to the Zereba K9 lawn and garden electric fence controller. The backward leap she made seemed to break a few laws of doggie physics.
 

It's easy to set up. Just wrap each end of the perimeter wire onto the wing nut at the bottom. It uses something called direct discharge technology which eliminates the need for a grounding rod. With a maximum range of 1500 feet the K9 electric charger makes an excellent solution to keeping unwanted pets out of sensitive areas. Expect to pay about 25 bucks for the unit and maybe another 20 to 200 depending on how long of a perimeter you're protecting and the quality and quantity of the fence posts used.

Mike Turner tells the story of hitting a deer with his AeroCivic in this short video.

If you're inspired to learn more about homemade aerodynamic automobile modifications then you'll want to check out the Ecomodder.com website. It's a community of above average people taking fuel effeciency into their own hands by experimenting with aero modifications and sharing their results.

The removeable boat tail project for a Geo Metro looks very promising.

I first blogged about Mike Turner towards the end of July of last year. Imagine my surprise when I saw him and his AeroCivic at a farmers market down in South Carolina this past Friday.

Turns out he's got some new ambitions on adding an electric 5th wheel to push the car under certain road conditions. At the moment it's not economically feasible due to the high cost of good batteries, but it might not be too long before some clever engineer comes up with a better and cheaper battery that perhaps is somewhat environmentally responsible to produce.

If you'd like to learn more about Mike check back in tomorrow to see a short video interview I did with him where he describes what happened when he hit a deer with the AeroCivic and how it just dented the hood and flipped over the top.

He's also got an excellent website which has a generous supply of construction images while the AeroCivic was being born.

We had a close call today. The electricity went off, which prompted Anna to make some adjustments to the do it yourself table top brood box to keep the heat in. Once the juice came back on I went out to set the light back up, not knowing the new upgraded light can not be closer than 18 inches from anything flammable.

Fast forward about 20 minutes and I'm smelling smoke. Luckily I got there in time to remove the smoldering wood chips and adjust the lamp accordingly.

The chicks are fine, and I learned a valuable lesson about heat lamp safety.

I found this car seat heating pad at a thrift store a couple years back thinking it might come in handy for something farm-related in the future.

There's an interlock switch that tells the heater if anyone is sitting on it or not which needs to be bypassed for this application. Hook up a 12 volt DC power supply and you've got yourself a homemade do it yourself heating pad for sprouting sweet potatoes and anything else that needs to be kept warm during these cold spring nights.

Water

Very simply put, everything that sits at a higher altitude in a gravitational field has potential energy. The trick is to convert that potential energy into something we can use, like e.g. kinetic energy that we can use or convert into electrical energy. Kinetic energy is the energy embodied into something that is moving.

Water is a prime candidate for tapping potential and kinetic energy, because of its abundance and the fact that it is usually a liquid under normal conditions. Either we use the flow of water directly (e.g. low head hydro, or wave power), or we use the height of a body of water (the "head") to create a high-velocity stream of water.

The crux of the matter is how do you get a flow of water or a large body of water, since water doesn't flow uphill? This is what is called the water cycle, or hydrologic cycle. Our friend the sun (again) heats water and vaporizes it. The water condenses at cooler (higher) places and runs downhill. So hydropower is indirectly solar power as well. The water (sitting higher-up in the gravity field) is just a storage medium and carrier for the energy.

Wind

Again it is ultimately the sun that drives the wind. Very simply put, sunlight heats earth and water, which heats the air. Hot air rises, causing a flow of air from colder parts. Of course there are lots of other phenomena at play; the aforementioned hydrologic cycle has a large part in it as well.

Geothermal energy

The temperature of the earth increases with depth. This is known as the geothermal gradient. It is mostly caused by the aforementioned nuclear decay happening inside the earth. So ultimately this is also solar energy.

Now a peculiar property of heat is that the higher the temperature, the more efficiently you can convert heat into mechanical energy, which is the most used form to provide transportation and is the most-used precursor to electric energy. In most places the gradient is between 25 to 30 degrees Kelvin (or Celcius) per kilometer depth, which means you've got to drill a pretty deep hole to get at the really hot stuff, unless you're near a geologically active area. Of course you don't need a very high temperature for heating your house. If you've got enough water of say 27 degrees Celcius (80 F) you could very well heat your house with it. Of course, drilling a hole over a kilometer deep is quite expensive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Remember how energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one type to another?  The primary sources of energy in the stars are transformed on earth into the various energy carriers you are probably more familiar with.

Fossil fuels

These are (hydro)carbons (i.e. chemicals mostly built up out of hydrogen and carbon) formed by anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, over geological timescales. Organisms can be plants, or creatures that feed on plants, or creatures that feed on other creatures. If you follow the chain back, you'll come to plants collecting solar energy and using it (via a process known as photosynthesis) to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds, mainly sugars.

So essentially, fossil fuels are chemically stored solar energy! The problem with fossil fuels is that we're currently using them at a much faster rate than they are formed. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide released by burning them influences the climate.

Wood and other plant matter

Since these were the basis for fossil fuels, they hardly need explaining. If they aren't dried before burning, a substantial part of their energy will be consumed by evaporating the water in them. The energy in this water vapor is usually not captured and is lost.

Ethanol

Ethanol can be made via fermentation or as a petrochemical via the hydration of ethylene. Of course, only ethanol produced by fermentation can be considered carbon-neutral.

Fermentation is the process where sugars from plants are converted into ethanol by yeasts. The sugars in the plants, again, are formed by photosynthesis.

The problem with this process is that it results in a lot of biomatter that is of no use to the fermentation process. For example only the grain seeds can be used for ethanol production. Most of the plant is useless in this way. Producing cellulosic ethanol would make this process much more sufficient. Another worry is that growing plants to produce ethanol might hurt food production.

But again, the root source of the energy embodied in ethanol is the sun.

Biodiesel / vegetable oil

These are lumped together because biodiesel is usually made from vegetable oils or used cooking oil, via a process called transesterification. These oils are pressed from seeds or fruits or beans of plants. The main reason to make biodiesel is that diesel engines usually require modifications to run on straight vegetable oils, while biodiesel requires little to no modification of a diesel engine.

As with ethanol, only a small part of any plant can produce oil. And the same oils that can be used for biodiesel are also used as food. The process uses a strong base like NaOH or KOH as a catalyst, and produces glycerin as a by-product.

Since it is made from plants, the real energy source is again the sun.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

So where does the energy we use actually come from?

Radiation

In stars, hydrogen atoms undergo fusion producing helium. A very small part of the mass of these atoms is converted into energy which emanates from the sun as radiation. This is one of the two basic energy sources.

Fissionable elements

The other primary energy source is also formed in stars, but in a different way. When a star substantially bigger than our sun runs out of fuel, its core collapses and the star explodes in a process called a supernova. During this process, very heavy elements can be formed that release energy when they are split. These are called fissionables, and they are the second primary energy source. One should realize that nuclear fission happens naturally in every fissile material. This is known as nuclear decay. Without this process we could not exist, since it is this process that is largely responsible for the fact that the earth's core is still liquid, which helps to keep us warm and generates a magnetic field that protects us from cosmic radiation. The heat flow from nuclear decay inside the earth is around 30 [tera][]watt. (30 000 000 000 000 Watt!)

At least one instance has been found where a natural nuclear fission reactor has existed and run for a few hundred thousand years.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Before we speak about energy, it is useful to lay some groundwork to understand it better. Most people, when talking about energy sources, are really talking about energy carriers. Think about gasoline, coal, ethanol, water, wind. Where does their energy actually come from?

The conservation of energy law and the first law of thermodynamics state that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change form. Einstein showed that mass and energy are equivalent, leading to the famous equation E=mc².

So physically, there are no "sources" of energy, because it doesn't just come into existence. It just looked that way to us before we understood what energy is. What we see as an energy source is just energy being taken from a carrier and transformed from one sort into another. But since the use of the word "source" is so ingrained, I'll not confuse you be being a stickler for accuracy.

While it is possible for most kinds of energy to be transformed into other kinds without loss (e.g. dropping something converts potential energy into kinetic energy perfectly), it is impossible to convert thermal energy into other forms with 100% efficiency. This is usually called the second law of thermodynamics; systems tend to evolve towards larger entropy.

In mechanical systems, friction usually consumes a part of the energy put into the system, and dissipates it as heat. That is why machines are not 100% efficient. The ubiquitous ball bearing uses rolling resistance to reduce friction. But by using fluid bearings it is possible to reduce friction considerably more. Small machines are usually less efficient than big ones.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

One of the most popular topics among homesteaders is alternative energy.  We've done some thinking in that direction ourselves (and recently posted a series on assessing your site for microhydro.)  Unlike gardening, though, which is largely intuitive, really understanding alternative energy requires some grounding in physics.  My high school physics is unbelievably rusty, and I suspect many of our readers may be equally out of practice, so I thought it would be a good idea to bring us back up to date in a lunchtime series.

This is where Roland came to the rescue.  Regular commenters have probably noticed lengthy, well-thought out comments by Roland in the past, often correcting our engineering mistakes.  (Oops.)  Roland is a design and manufacturing engineer in the Netherlands, and when I asked him if he might be interested in writing a lunchtime series about energy, he quickly whipped off a primer on the physics of energy sources.  I have to admit that I'm beyond impressed at his writing skills since English is not his first language --- I barely cleaned up what he wrote at all.  If you're similarly enthused, maybe we can tempt him to write another series for us in the near future.

 

Total cost on this home made golf cart dump box was just over 5 bucks thanks to using scrap wood from the old house.

It expands the back hauling capacity of the golf cart from 2 buckets to 7, with about 3 buckets worth in between the cracks.

Next up is a wooden rack to take advantage of some space up front.

This short video provides an accurate yet boring picture of how the rental chipper cuts a rug.

Our share ended up being 1/3 of the weekend time which worked out to be 65 dollars.

It was a great opportunity that would not have been possible without our neighbors' suggestion of sharing the time and the aid of their tractor to pull the thing all the way back here. Well worth waking up early tomorrow morning to drive it back to it's home in the big city.

I imagine this might be the closest thing we have to participating in an old fashioned barn raising which is too bad because this neighborly cooperation thing is a pretty darn good feeling at the end of the day.

The final step of assessing your stream for microhydro is doing a bit of math to determine the creek's power.  I'm simplifying a bit here because you will lose some power due to friction as the water rubs up against the inside of your pipe, but this formula is good enough for estimating whether your creek is worth looking into further.

If you'd rather have your estimated energy output in kwh/month so that you can compare it to your electric bill, continue on to this formula:

So, it's finally time to see if our little creek passes the test.  She puts out 20 gpm of water and has a head of about 3 feet.  So:

Sadly, our little creek failed miserably --- that would be enough to keep the lights on in our house, but nothing more.  As a rule of thumb, you need either a large head or a large flow to make microhydro appealing, and our little creek had neither.

On the other hand, we have several other possibilities on our property that look more appealing.  If we were willing to pay a lot for a run of the river system, or to build a big dam, our primary creek would definitely provide all of our power.  On the cheaper side, it's possible that it would be worth our while to tap energy from the spring that comes out way up on the hill, although it does stop flowing during dry weather.

Finally, I'm curious whether there would be a way to make electricity from the water running off the barn roof if we installed gutters.  I envision using tanks as a storage system and just letting the water leak out slowly, rather than buying expensive (and environmentally unfriendly batteries.)  I estimate that nearly 4,000 gallons of water flow off the roof each month, but I guess that's only 0.09 gpm.  Back to the drawing board....

The other important measurement to take when assessing your creek for microhydro is pressure or head.  The two terms are different measurements of the same thing --- potential energy just waiting to turn your turbine and make some power.

Many homesteaders pipe water from a spring down to their house, and the energy in the water line can be tapped for microhydro power.  To measure pressure directly in such a situation, install a gressure gauge in the line and read the dial.

If you don't already have a water line in place, you're better off calculating a stream's head rather than measuring pressure directly.  Head is simply the change in elevation between the highest and lowest points of a stream, and it can be measured in several different ways.  If you have a gps or watch with an altimeter, this can give a rough measurement of the respective elevations, but I found the water level method (outlined in the embedded video) to be the simplest.

To measure head using the water level method, find an inflexible length of pipe and start at the stream's highest point.  Completely submerge the pipe, then slowly lift the downhill end out of the water.  Creek water will flow out of the pipe's downhill end until it is raised level with the uphill end, at which point water will stop flowing.  Measure the vertical distance between the downhill end of the pipe and the ground and you have the change in elevation between the two points.  Now scoot the pipe downstream until the uphill end rests where the downhill end used to be, and repeat your measurement.  Lather, rinse, and repeat until you run out of shampoo...er, reach the end of the stream.  The head is the sum of all of the elevations measured along the creek's length.

The downfall of our property's creeks is their valley-bottom flatness.  Our small creek has the largest head, and even there the total change in elevation is barely over three feet.  Granted, microhydro applications can work with as little as 2 feet of head, but the setup becomes much pricier if your head is less than 50 feet.

Last year, a couple of friends teamed up and bought us a dozen beautiful blueberry plants in honor of our wedding.  We were sorely unprepared, so we only managed to whack down box-elders and open up the canopy, then roll the logs out of the way and plant the bushes in new ground.  This oversight caused a lot of problems since I couldn't really get the lawnmower around the logs, and by the middle of the summer, our blueberry patch had turned into a weed patch.  Luckily, the blueberries survived the neglect, and I promised them a more weeded existence this year.

We spent the morning Wednesday clearing up the tree carcasses in the blueberry patch to make this year's mowing much easier.  Mark's hard work with the chainsaw netted us half a cord of firewood, now drying in the woodshed, and my branch piles are growing too.  Our chipper rental date is tentatively set for this weekend, but Lucy didn't want to wait --- she did her part to increase the farm's wood chip supply while we cleared the brush.

Despite wanting to consider energy efficiency first, I was still curious whether the copious water on our farm would be a good fit for microhydro power.  The first step in assessing a site for microhydro is to measure stream flow.  Scott Davis suggests two easy methods.

The weir method is used in large streams or rivers.  The water flows through a notched weir that forms a waterfall.  You can use various tables or formulas to determine the flow rate of your creek based on the width and depth of the water in the weir's notch.  I didn't feel like constructing a weir, so I moved on to option 2.

The container method consists of finding a spot where all of the creek's water runs through a culvert or pipe, then sticking a five gallon bucket underneath.  Time how long it takes for your bucket to fill up, then use the following formula to determine your stream's flow:

As you can see in the embedded video, I found a spot where a huge root mass had channeled all of our smaller creek's water into a waterfall, so decided to try out the container method of estimating stream flow.  I couldn't fit a five gallon bucket under the waterfall, but a one gallon cook pot slipped right in between the roots and filled up in 3 seconds.  Our flow in that creek is approximately:

Our smallest creek's flow is pretty low, but is definitely within the realm of microhydro power.  In fact, Scott Davis notes that you can get power from streams running as slowly as 2 gpm (gallons per minute.)

Power usage numbers were the first part of Microhydro that caught my attention.  Scott Davis considers a system rated at 50 to 100 continuous watts to be the bare essentials level (running lights and small appliances).  This equates to only 35 to 70 kilowatt-hours per month!  The amount of juice put out by even the so-called modern conveniences level seems inconceivably low at 75 to 125 kwh/month.

For comparison's sake, the average American household uses 936 kwh/month.  During our lowest energy month ever (this past June), we came in at 270 kwh.  Running a household on 75 kwh/month seems almost inconceivable to me.

But Scott Davis makes the excellent point that artificially low electricity prices in North America have led to extremely wasteful behavior.  Specifically, he notes that electricity should never be used for making heat --- since you lose a lot of power every time you convert energy from one form to another, burning coal to make electricity to make heat is a bad idea.

His example household that runs all of the modern conveniences on microhydro deletes any heating appliances from the mix.  Clothes driers, of course, are replaced by the good old solar clothesline.  Rooms are heated with wood or passive solar while water is heated with solar hot water heaters in the summer and coils around the wood stove in the winter.  Finally, cooking is done on propane (or, I would add, on a rocket stove.)

As always, the best and cheapest way to save energy is to become more efficient, so I think we'll do some basic efficiency tricks before saving up for an alternative energy system.  Our biggest energy hogs are clearly our electric stove (which heats our water as well as cooks our dinners) and our back-up space heaters, so these seem like a good place to start.

Microhydro: Clean Power From Water by Scott Davis is written at a sixth grade reading level...and that's a good thing.  I'm far from ready for an installation guide; instead, I just wanted to know if microhydro is feasible on our farm.

Although most people with an interest in alternative energy go straight to solar cells, microhydro can be a much more economical option if your terrain is right.  I've read estimates suggesting that consumer-level microhydro systems are between 5 and 40 times as cost effective as photovoltaic systems, in large part because water is much less intermittent than the sun so you don't need as many batteries.

Scott Davis divides microhydro systems into five levels, only two of which are of interest to me.  The bare essentials level will run lights and small appliances (like a microwave, radio, telephone, blender, stereo, and laptop) while the modern conveniences level adds in efficient refrigerators, freezers, and well pumps.  A microhydro system running the bare essentials can be put together for as low as $2,000 (or possibly even less if you scrounge some parts) while the modern conveniences level can cost two to three times that much.  Finally, an alternative energy source that wouldn't put us into debt!

Somewhere in the middle of the morning Thursday, the homemade storage building began to feel like inside rather than outside.  I could tell because Mark went outside, leaving the door ajar, and I came along behind him and closed the door to keep the room warm.

And it was warm inside.  Despite being snowy and barely above freezing outside, once Mark fired up the wood stove, the building heated up surprisingly fast.  We don't even have the insulation up in the ceiling yet, but within an hour we were shedding our coats and working in our indoors clothes.  I guess we've been losing a lot of heat from our exterior wood stove to the outside!

I wonder if, rather than saving up for an efficient wood stove, we should instead make another small building and install two small wood stoves, relegating the trailer to summer use.  Not this year, though!  The garden is already starting to pull at my brain, begging me to finish up winter chores and start the pruning.

(The photos above show what I've been up to while Mark was putting in the door --- covering the walls with a nice, smooth plywood.  I find myself getting lost in the swirls of the wood grain.)

Remember our huge pile of firewood?  We ran through it unbelievably fast --- first the power was out for two weeks and we had to keep a big fire going just to keep the trailer above freezing due to lack of a fan.  Then we had two weeks of below freezing temperatures and again had to keep the fire raging to keep us warm.  The result is that the 1.75 cords of wood that we thought would last all winter lasted a mere month.

So in January, we went back to electric heat.  I hated to give in to the coal-fired power plant, but our firewood supplier took our $50 down payment and dropped off the face of the earth.  Due to major environmental guilt, I keep the trailer between 40 and 50 degrees when heating with electricity, which is really quite comfortable if you wear layers (and are used to it.)

That's all a long explanation for why Joey came in his truck last week instead of his car --- he wanted to drop off a load of firewood for his poor, freezing baby sister.  The firewood was much appreciated, but the truck got stuck due to completely treadless tires.  Rather than calling a tow truck to haul Joey out, we called our mother and begged her to come pick Joey up so that Mark and I could take advantage of this opportunity to haul gravel for our driveway.  (We ordered some of that from our hauler too, but we really haven't heard from him in over a month....)

On Monday, Mark babied the truck out of the mud (now thawed and thus a bit less precarious) and took her to town to get new tires.  We thought the two back tires we needed to replace would come to about $300, but Mark came home with a receipt for only $140 --- he had discovered the wonder of retread tires!  If you, like me, have never heard of retreads, you're in for a treat.  Old tires end up in a factory where they're tested for safety and have the old tread buffed off, then a new tread is is applied.  The end result is nearly as good as a new tire (and every bit as safe), for a fraction of the price.  Apparently, at this time, only big tires (R16 and greater) are retreaded, so most of them end up going to large-scale trucking and bussing fleets, but farmers are also retread fanatics.  If you have a truck that needs new wheels, retreads seem like the way to go!

 

We've had a really good test for the storage building roof today thanks to a steady stream of rain. No leaks so far while we begin the process of measuring, cutting, and installing the plywood that Anna worked so hard to bring in yesterday.

 

A perfect complement to yesterday's solar powered automatic chicken coop opener would be this portable hyrdogen generator.

Kristie Lu Stout has an interesting post about this exciting new product that will allow everybody to generate their own hydrogen from water and store it in a safe, low pressure battery-like container. No word yet on how much it might cost, but plans are to have a tabletop model available by the end of 2010.

Getting off the grid with solar or wind has always come back to battery storage. If this technology improves, it could replace most of those expensive and toxic chemical batteries and bring alternative energy within the reach of the common homesteader.

As part of  my continued obsession with lower-energy cooking, I decided to try to make a haybox to cook my chicken carcass down into stock Sunday.  Someone (Heather?) had emailed me in response to my Dutch oven post, telling me that you can bring a pot of incipient soup to a boil, wrap it in towels, and leave it alone for the afternoon.  The cast iron and towels will hold in the heat, and the soup will cook itself.

While researching rocket stoves, I stumbled across a mention of hayboxes, which seem to work on a very similar principle to Heather's idea.  You fill up a box with hay (or other insulation), put in your boiling pot, and leave it alone for several hours.  I've seen figures suggesting that using a haybox with long-cooking recipes like chicken stock will save 80% of the energy you would use to simmer the stock on the stove.  You should leave the pot in the haybox somewhere between once and twice as long as you would have left it on the stove.  If you're worried about bacteria, bring the whole thing back to a boil for a few minutes on the stove before serving.

So how did my experiment go?  I brought my carcass and water to a boil and tucked it into an old comforter in a cardboard box.  (The image on the left shows the pot before I bundled the rest of the comforter over the top.)  Our house temperature was low on Sunday --- 50 degrees Fahrenheit --- but when I peeked in six hours later, the pot was still steaming and the stock was a lovely yellow.  Success!

A few of you were as intrigued by the rocket stove concept as I was, and Roland's comments sent me searching the web for more information.  Basically, I wanted to know if I could design a slightly modified rocket stove made out of found/bought materials to simplify construction.  I was also interested in any updates to the design that might maximize efficiency.


Preheating the combustion air

The drawing shown here is Roland's suggestion for preheating the combustion air to increase efficiency, in much the way that efficient space-heating wood stoves work.  A search of the web turns up contradictory pages --- folks who have tried similar methods are split on whether it increases efficiency or not.  Many sites suggest that the conventional design already preheats the combustion air by passing the air intake underneath the burning fire, so I think I'll stick with that.


Insulation

Insulating the burning chamber is another important factor in rocket stove efficiency.  The official Aprovecho design calls for making your own fire bricks, which are rated at about R10 when fully assembled.  Roland's suggestion --- perlite --- has an R-value of 2.7 per inch, so four inches of loose-filled perlite placed between an inner and an outer wall could be a much easier option than making our own fire brick.  (For future reference, other folks mention using materials such as vermiculite (R2.08 per inch) and pumice (R2 per inch).)


Body materials

I've seen various DIY rocket stove options using found or bought materials, and the ones that caught my eye used nested stove pipe.  The image shown here is my revised version of the official design made out of one big stove pipe, two pieces of smaller stovepipe, and an elbow to connect the smaller stovepipe pieces together.  As Roland mentioned, the bigger stovepipe might be replaced by a metal bucket --- otherwise, I'd have to add some kind of cap to keep the perlite from coming out the bottom.  I'm envisioning the pot sitting on pieces of rebar stuck through the exterior walls rather than welding anything together.

There's a bit of math involved in deciding how high the interior chamber should be and how much air space should be left between the pot and the skirt -- more on that later!

Our homemade storage building continues to be a learning experience.  When we started out, I blithely said, "Let's put in as much insulation as possible despite the cost," and Mark agreed.  What I didn't realize is that you have to plan for your insulation needs from the get-go.

The map and chart at the top of the page show EPA's insulation recommendations for new wood-framed homes when heating with gas, heat pumps, or fuel oil.  (They recommend more insulation if you heat with electricity, and don't even give you an option for heating with wood.)  We're in their zone 4, which means we should have at least R30 in our ceiling and R13 in our walls.  The latter is easy, but the former is a bit of an issue.

Assuming you're using fiberglass insulation (which fits our wallet and our remote setting), you need thicker wall or ceiling cavities to fit more insulation.  A typical 2X4 wall will hold up to R15 --- if you try to cram R19 in, you compress the insulation and, I believe, actually get less insulative value than you would have with a lower rated batt of insulation.

Our original rafters are 5.5 inches deep, which would only allow us to put in R19 insulation up there --- makes me chilly just thinking about it (although I think the trailer ceiling has about R13.)  So we extended our rafters with some two by fours, giving us the space to increase our ceiling insulation to R30.  For future reference, here is the cavity depth you need for some common insulation r-values:

• 3.5 inches --- R13
• 6 inches --- R19
• 9 inches --- R30
• 12 inches --- R38

Most of our building project has been very forgiving of my learn-as-we-go mentality, but insulation requires some forethought.  For those who might want to try their own hand at building --- shun the fault I fell in!

While I'm on the subject of more efficient stoves, I wanted to do some research into efficient wood stoves for space heating.  Our exterior wood stove is a good choice for heat on our farm since wood is a renewable resource (and is cheaper than most other options), but I'm still concerned about the pollution that comes out the chimney.  Luckily, scientists have been plugging away at building a better wood stove and have developed models that can eliminate 90% of the smoke and use only about half the wood.

The new, energy-efficient stoves come in two categories.  The first, shown to the right, is a non-catalytic stove that increases its combustion efficiency using firebox insulation, a large baffle that extends the gas flow path, and pre-heated combustion air (which is actually a lot like the reasoning behind the design of the rocket stove.)

Wood stoves with catalytic converters (shown on the left) can cut emissions of even the most efficient non-catalytic stove in half, but they don't seem to use less wood.  Although I'd love to be polluting less, catalytic wood stoves aren't the best choice for most homesteaders.  The $100 to $200 catalytic converter wears out within two to six years, and you need to be relatively adept at tinkering to keep it in prime operating condition.  The startup costs are also higher

So how much does a new, energy-efficient wood stove cost?  From what I can find online, it seems like new non-catalytic wood stoves start around $1,200 and go as expensive as you can imagine.  In 2009 and 2010, there's a 30% tax credit in effect for buying wood stoves with at least 75% efficiency, which is a great deal if you can use it.  If you buy and burn a lot of wood, a more efficient wood stove might pay for itself even without the tax credit --- I estimate that we'd start saving money after about 4 years if we bought the cheapest model.

Although efficient wood stoves seem like a good idea, I'm still not ready to take the plunge.  I'm very curious about whether our current wood stove could be retrofitted to increase its efficiency.  Has anyone tried that out?

Rocket stoves are currently being introduced to several third world countries to help lower the pressure of firewood harvesting on native forests.  The stoves are designed to need very little wood in order to heat up your cook pot, so trees get left in place.  I love the concept, but can't help wondering --- why don't we promote rocket stoves in the U.S. too?  I'd never tell someone in a third world country to institute environmentally friendly measures I wasn't willing to put into practice in my own life.

Before I knew it, I'd penciled a rocket stove onto our ten year plan and started researching.  First, I discovered that you can't use rocket stoves inside because they're basically an efficient hearth.  So, in practice, they'll probably be part of a summer kitchen in our long term plan --- something I want anyway because I always dread turning on the stove on a sweltering summer day.

The video I've embedded above is well worth watching if you'd like to build your own rocket stove.  It looks like we could probably make one quite cheaply, though it would take quite a bit of trial and error to figure out certain parts.  The sheet metal looks an awful lot like a stovepipe to me, suggesting that we might not need welding skills (the part that scared us off building our own initially.)  Alternatively, we could buy one pre-made for around $125.

Have any of you built or used a rocket stove?  What did you think of it?

It's been a beautiful week of spring, with temperatures above freezing and highs in the low fifties, but winter is returning this week. 

Until finishing our water line moves its way to the top of our list, we've instated a new rule --- fill the thousand gallon tank as soon as it empties halfway.  This is harder than it sounds since there are usually only a few days a winter month when the ground is thawed enough to pump water and the creek is clean instead of flooded brown.  We got lucky and stocked up on Sunday.

Meanwhile, I've doubled the number of milk jugs of drinking water we keep on hand --- now we've got twenty eight gallons.  We should be okay on both drinking and washing water for at least two or three weeks regardless of flood, freeze, or lack of electricity.

The temperatures rose above freezing at last, and the month-old snow began to creep back toward the hill.  The first daffodil leaves peeked through the soil in the sunniest spot, and an amorous cardinal started to sing.

I celebrated by washing our laundry, pumping water down the hill from the thousand gallon tank since our water line is still frozen.  Then I turned off the pump...and water kept right on flowing.  Gotta love capillary action!  Now I know that I only need to use electricity to get the suction started --- after that, water will flow four feet up out of the tank all by itself!

 

The team at KMS woodworks has made some interesting progress in bringing together a compact solar charger that can be used for several low end power needs like a lap top. They are still in the testing stage, but it looks like they might make them available for sale in the 300 to 350 dollar range in the not too distant future.

It would be worth that much to me if it could power our modem and both lap tops for a few hours per day, especially during a power outage.

I really like the idea of having a portable off the grid option, especially one that can be taken on a back pack to provide the power for blog posts in some random ancient megalith site or more Mayan ruins.

Using this utility pump to fill a proper water container feels like a huge improvement over last year's 5 gallon bucket method. The biggest downside was lifting the bucket back out once you filled it as full as you dared.

 

10 years ago I found this hand cranked radio in the discount bin of a Radio Shack just after the Y2K hype was settling down. Most hand powered devices use a small dynamo that charges an even smaller battery that will eventually stop holding a charge over time. This unit uses a medium sized spring that slowly releases its mechanical power after the energy is stored in the form of hand cranks. It will hold up to 40 cranks, which equals about 20 minutes of power.

The radio is very basic and also works on a little solar cell that is embedded in the top, but only if you place it directly in the sun. I like to have it on hand as a back up power source and someday dream of building a larger version that might be more capable of powering something like our modem and router and maybe a laptop or two. It only produces enough electricity for a small flashlight, which can be considered night time entertainment during a power outage.

The University of Michigan has made some impressive strides in the area of human generated electricity.

Their latest prototype is a knee brace that harnesses the energy normally lost when the knee is bent. It can produce up to 5 watts of power, which would be enough juice to run 10 mobile phones.

It would be interesting to see how much electricity the average person generates over the course of a day?

(I know Mark has already told you some of this, but it's so momentous I wanted to post about it too!)

Mark and I finally got away from the farm Wednesday to visit my family in Bristol.  When we got home, we were thrilled to see the powerline back in place atop its poles!  We scurried into the trailer...only to discover that the juice was still off.

Remember how I lost faith on day 1 of the outage?  Now it was Mark's turn.  When the electricity was still off on Thursday morning, I could see his spirits plummeting into his (cold, wet) boots.  It was too rainy outside to heat anything up on the wood stove for lunch, so we shivered in the kitchen, eating cold chicken sandwiches and bemoaning our fate.

Then I gasped.

"Oh, no!" Mark responded.  "What's wrong now?"

Speechless, I pointed down the hall to where our CFL had flickered into light.  "Look, Mark!  Electricity!!!!!!"

We stared in rapture at the glowing bulb for a couple of minutes, then jumped into action.  Mark plugged in the stove fan and freezer while I started up the fridge and internet.  I turned on the drinking water pump and filled up our emergency milk jugs of water, then we headed out to pump water from the creek to fill the thousand gallon washing-water tank.  (We'd been caught, very unfortunately, with it nearly completely empty, which really made the outage more difficult than it should have been.)

Next, Mark plugged in the golf cart while I filled pots of water to heat on the stove.  Near instant hot water, and plenty of it!  After skimping for nearly two weeks, washing each day's dishes in a scant gallon of melted snow, I was so excited that I filled our sink with gallons and gallons worth, even though there weren't really that many dishes.

Before I was able to calm down enough to check my email, I had to twirl around outside in the snow, singing at the top of my lungs, "Elec-tri-ci-ty!  Light!  Heat!  Water!"

My weather-forecaster buddy warns that bitter cold weather is on its way tonight, with all next week slated to stay below freezing.  Right at this instant, though, I can't muster any doom and gloom at all.

 

We got our 5th visit yesterday from the electric company. I tried appealing to this guy's sense of duty by casually mentioning that we've had four other visits, each ending with a bit of looking around and head scratching at how deep our creek is.

"I didn't come all the way from North Carolina to just look around," he calmly stated. His confidence filled us with with a newfound hope and sure to his word the lines were back up before he headed back home last night.

We spent the morning waiting, trying not to think of all the obstacles that could be keeping the flow of cheap electricity from coming back to our trailer when all of a sudden the hallway light came on and the power outage of 2009 was officially over.

It's good to know we can get by without the grid, but this has been a wake up call for us by pointing out a few areas we can improve upon for a more streamlined approach to off the grid living.

 

I spotted this small crew off in the distance while I was working outside on the do it yourself storage building project. It gave me a glimmer of hope that something was going to get started today, but that was not meant to be.

Maybe they're getting everything ready for an early start tomorrow?

After a week of hunkering down and getting by, we went back to work on Monday morning.  The first order of business was to clear the rest of the driveway of fallen limbs.  Last week, we just cut through the ones between the car and the road, but I wanted to be ready to drive the golf cart from the cars to the trailer to ferry in supplies.  So we pushed and pulled tree-sized branches out of the way to clear our path.

Later, we scooted across the creek on a log to keep our feet dry.  In the neighbor's field, we ran into two more power company employees, scouts who promised that the chainsawing guys weren't too far behind.  I'm not quite sure why it takes two separate on-foot scouting expeditions and a helicopter to assess the damage, but I'm not complaining as long as the real workers aren't too far behind!

The Ford Festiva stalling issue came back when the gas tank hit the 1/4 level point. Something the chainsaw repair guy said after he tuned up our Stihl recently got me to thinking. His comment was that he had to use his special carburetor bath 4 separate times to get all the gunk cleaned out. This prompted me to give the Festiva another Seafoam treatment, and it took over half the tank before the problem finally went away, but it's running like it should now and it's all thanks to Seafoam.

The snow is almost gone, which means mud, mud, and more mud.

My mom gave us some baby crib pieces back in the summer left over from an emergency turkey transport she was constructing which have really worked out well as a catch for my wood splitting station.

It was a real bummer to watch a nice dry piece of firewood split its way directly in the mud.

 

We had a visitor from the sky come out this afternoon just before dinner. It seems like this iron bird was inspecting our downed power lines, which gave us hope that we might get our power turned back on before next year.

Someday, we'd like to be off the grid by choice, so we've considered this extended (and still ongoing) power outage as a useful dry run.  It's been very helpful in giving us an idea of infrastructure we need to be adding to the farm, and reminding us which aspects of our electrified lives are really just optional.

Here are the top electricity-free items we've added to our wish list for next year.  Some are to buy, but a lot can probably be made from the parts at hand.

• DC fan to keep the wood stove blowing hot air while the generator's off.  (Daddy suggested that we look into the fans that cool off car engines --- we might be able to get one cheap at a junkyard.)
  
• Alternator setup to get juice out of the golf cart so that we can run low electricity items (like the fan and maybe a router!) for much longer periods.
• Solar charger for the golf cart so that we can fill the golf cart batteries back up.
• Rocket stove (which we might be able to build) and a real Dutch oven for easy cooking.
• A second sub-zero sleeping bag so that we can both stay toasty during short-term emergencies.
• Solar LED lighting.  You'd be amazed at what a difference it makes to have enough light to read by on long, dark, electricity-free nights.  Flashlights have served us well, but we'd really like to take some of those solar yard lights you can get so cheaply in the big box stores nowadays and turn them into indoors lighting with the solar panel outdoors for charging.  Even though our current bulbs are CFLs, I suspect that this would lower our electric bill during our on-the-grid times too.
  

I also need to remember to keep more library books on hand --- I'm starting to run a bit low, which is a pain since the creek has flooded as the snow starts to melt so I can't get to the library.  We would have had a much easier time with water, too, if we'd had the water line completely buried and the big tank all the way full.  Still, all told, I think we've done pretty well so far.

When Mark mailed our week's chicken waterers (made without the benefit of electricity) this week, he overheard a lady in the post office complaining about how difficult the power outage was since she couldn't do her dishes.  I feel so lucky that Mark's ingenuity has enabled us to want for very little during this power outage!

Despite the phone dying again on Monday night, Tuesday was an outstanding day.  By mid morning, the sun started to poke through the clouds that had kept the sky white for the last three days.  Solar radiation quickly started melting the snow, and it only took a bit of hoeing to work our way out of the driveway.

On the one year anniversary of our marriage, we ended up in the parking lot of the same courthouse...but this time we were poaching wireless.  Our goals for this trip to town were really quite simple --- we wanted to fill up some big jugs of gas so that we could continue to run the generator an hour a day and I wanted to upload all of my past posts (thus the poaching).  While we were out, I figured we should also stock up on some other essentials --- citrus, chocolate, and flashlights.

Back home, we thawed out the top of our wedding cake on the wood stove and ate it along with some chicken cooked in my homemade Dutch oven.  And then two miracles!  First, an electric company employee came wandering through our yard.  He was lost and needed help reaching the road, but the mere fact that he was scouting the downed power line gave us hope (even though he said it may still be a week before we get juice.)  Finally, halfway through our generator hour, I picked up the phone and heard a dial tone.  Internet at home!  Rapture!

You all have been astoundingly patient with my shut-in, run-on blogs.  Now you're up to date!  Starting tomorrow, we'll be posting in real time (and will hopefully have a video to share with you.)  Meanwhile, check out our microbusiness ebook for some Christmas reading.

Monday night as we read by solar flashlight, the telephone rang!  I'm a confirmed phone-o-phobe, but that sound was the nicest one I'd heard in days.  I leapt up and pounced on the receiver, then enthused in my father's ear, called my Mom and sister, and even talked to my equally phone-phobic brother.

Earlier that day, I'd resorted to putting a letter to my mother in the mailbox to assure her that I was alive.  When I got her on the phone, it was clear that Mom had been worried, but she also told me how she'd often been snowed in at my childhood farm and unable to contact her own mother for a solid month.  "No news is good news," Mom said...then admitted that she'd emailed two of my neighbors to check on me.

Daddy gave me equally good words of wisdom.  "Isn't it nice to go without so that you'll really appreciate power when you have it?"  I have to admit that in the past I've wished my ancestors hadn't opened up Pandora's box of industrialization.  But living without for just three days, I can completely understand how we ended up in our current era of modern conveniences.

Tuesday morning, the phone was once again dead.  Farewell, civilization!

One of these days I'm going to get up to date, really....  For now, though, enjoy reading our backstory, then check out our microbusiness ebook.

When we learned that electricity was a long way off, I decided it was high time to start really cooking rather than hastily heating up leftovers and hot dogs in the wood stove.  Our exterior wood stove is singularly ill-suited for cooking, with a sleeve around the stove providing hot air to be blown indoors and also preventing the surface from reaching cooking temperatures.  The inside is generally far too hot to cook in without charring.

But I had nothing else to keep me busy, so I decided to create my own Dutch oven.  I dug up an old roasting pan out of the barn, set it up on a cinderblock, and filled it with hot coals shoveled out of the wood stove.  A pizza pan fit well on top, and a big lid enclosed the heated surface.  I had moderate luck "baking" chocolate chip cookies but great luck frying up bacon.  Maybe the latter tasted so good because of the bit of leftover chocolate melding with the bacon juices?

Meanwhile, I was starting to get worried about our water situation.  We still had seven jugs of drinking water, but I could easily see us running out and the dirty dishes were stacking up.  I was pleased to discover that packing a pot full to the brim and then half again as high with clean snow melted down to a nearly full pot of warm dish water in three hours on the wood stove.  I added a bit of bleach for safety and revelled in the feel of warm water on my hands as I cleaned up the dishes.

In a pinch, we probably could have gotten away with drinking the melted snow, but our generator made that unnecessary.  We've allotted ourselves an hour and a half of generator time every evening, plenty of time to turn on our drinking water pump and UV light to fill up another dozen or so milk jugs.  And time to feed my blogging bug!

This is the last installment on the Monday CD.  Stay tuned for more details soon (I hope.)  Meanwhile, check out our microbusiness ebook.

Monday morning, I was bound and determined to get to town, if only to let my mother know that we hadn't been wiped off the map.  Mark and I both geared up and filled our backpacks and hands with the bare essentials --- chainsaw tools, mixed gas, empty gas jugs in case we made it to town, my laptop for the same reason, two oranges in case we got stranded on the way, and the chainsaw.  We only have one pair of waders between us at the moment, so Mark had to cross the creek, change into his work boots, then toss the waders back across the cold water to let me cross.  I was very glad that he has a good throwing arm.

The driveway was just as much work to clear as we'd thought.  It took a couple of hours of hard sawing and dragging to move the pines that had fallen across the road, but the work was for naught.  We got in the car...and watched as its tires spun vainly on the icy snow.

My next thought was to walk to the neighbor's house a quarter of a mile down the road and beg the use of their phone.  The public road had been plowed, but was seriously icy, making me glad that our little car hadn't made it out of the driveway.  Along the way, we ran into another neighbor who gave us the bad news --- everyone in the area has no power or phone.  The electric company is hoping to restore the juice by Christmas to those on the main road, which I figure leaves us looking at New Years.  Time to hunker down for the long haul.

Stay tuned for part V soon.  Meanwhile, check out our ebook that gives the secret of not worrying that your boss is going to fire you while you're incommunicado for a week or two.

We bought the Champion 3000 watt generator about a year ago for back up power. I took it out of the box, made sure it was all there, and installed the wheels and handle and pretty much forgot about it till this past Friday when our power went out.

It was a great relief to feel its gas-powered throaty engine come to life. We only have about 4 gallons of fuel on hand, so we decided to ration our generator time to a few hours in the evenings. This way we can alternate between the freezer and refrigerator, giving them each about an hour of cooling off time, charge our laptop batteries, and power the blower fans that send heat from our exterior wood burning stove to the inner sanctum of the trailer. The new stove configuration is able to keep the back room heated during the night without the fan as long as we keep it fed with fresh firewood.

We've got a bit of kerosene, and nearly a full tank of propane as back up for heating and cooking, but I don't think we'll need it if we're able to get out tomorrow and top off our generator fuel.

I was most impressed with how easy this generator started. I barely have to pull on the rope and it springs to attention.

I'm not sure when we can expect to have our electricity fixed, so I guess I'll be expecting nothing and gearing up to be ready for anything.

Our first full day without power brought us back to basics: animals, water, food, and shelter.  The animals, luckily, weren't too hard.  Huckleberry and Strider came bounding up to the trailer through snow over their heads (nearly a foot deep now, but finally slacking off) and Lucy pranced and played in the drifts.

The chicken tractors were completely covered, and one had half-collapsed under the weight of the snow.  I brushed the tops clear and saw hungry hens eager for their breakfast...once I'd shoveled out the tractor so they wouldn't get their feet wet.

Without electricity, the fan on our exterior wood furnace doesn't run, which means that most of that heat dissipates into the great outdoors.  Mark first rigged an ingenious setup using a DC fan and the golf cart's battery banks, but the plastic fan quickly melted out of whack and stopped running.  At this point, I gave up and curled myself under a sleeping bag on the sofa with Huckleberry and a book.  But Mark wasn't deterred.  He dusted off the generator, and soon we were back in business!  Lights, power, action!  Heat!  Even electricity to top off the cold level in our fridge and freezer and keep our food safe.

Luckily, we had drinking water stored up, but food was going to be difficult since we cook on an electric stove.  It took most of the next day for me to figure out how to cook in and on the wood stove, ending up with food that wasn't charred at one end and cold at the other.  But at least we had the basics we need to keep the farm rolling along.

Stay tuned for part III soon.  Meanwhile, feel free to check out our ebook about starting your own business and quitting your job.

The trees started splintering before sunset on Friday.  Heavy snow weighed down their limbs and kept falling, heaping up four inches deep.  By dark, the wet snow took down an electric line somewhere, and suddenly the trailer powered down.  Off went the furnace fan, the computers, the fridge.  I called the phone company and was informed that power is off all over the county and that they expect it back on by Sunday at midnight.

The snow kept coming.  When we went to bed, it was already six inches deep, and all night gunshot-like cracks heralded trees crashing down.  I slept fitfully and was out at dawn to assess the damage.

During power outages, I'm constantly expecting a miracle --- the lights will flicker, the fridge will hum, and we'll be powered again.  At first light on Saturday, I discovered that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.  Our powerline was down straight up the floodplain, across the garden, and then up the powerline cut going the other way.  I called my mom to share the excitement, hung up, and then picked the phone back up.  It was dead.

I don't want to overwhelm you with the whole story at once, so stay tuned for part II soon.  Until then, feel free to check out our ebook about starting your own business and quitting your job.

These new peel and stick solar panels are more efficient than the fragile glass panels and cost about 300 bucks less. This new design allows for more robust applications, such as on the roof of a golf cart without the fear of your expensive panel breaking. Having the sun constantly charging your batteries prevents the sulfates from building up and extends the life of the battery bank by a minimum of 25%.

Since a golf cart is sometimes considered an electric car by the IRS you can deduct a nice 30% of your solar investment and you may even qualify for a few hundred bucks per year as a battery credit. These kits usually cost about 1600 dollars, weigh about 4 pounds and take about 15 minutes to install.

Add an inverter and it can double as an emergency back up power system for your home if you can manage to park it close enough to reach an extension cord to.

Since Mark now has our wood stove up and running, I figured it was high time to gather some kindling.  The windy days last week knocked down a lot of dead, dry branches out of trees in the floodplain, and it only took a few minutes to pick up a heavy hauler load.

Last winter when the chainsaw wasn't working, we discovered that the miter saw makes short work of small and medium-sized branches.  First, I broke all of the small branches over my knee, then I sawed through the larger branches.

I was a bit shocked at how small one heavy hauler load of kindling becomes once sawn to size --- the resulting pile was only about knee high.  That should be enough to start a week's worth of fires, though.  Warmth sure does make me happy!

Fire.

We now have the exterior wood burning stove operating in the half finished storage building. This must be what it felt like when early cave men figured out that keeping your woman warm equals keeping her happy.

Although people used to live on our farm during the Depression, the farm's only drinking water supply is a shallow, hand dug well that tested positive for coliform bacteria.  Granted, many people drink from shallow wells and springs just like this around here.  You build up a tolerance and tend to do just fine, but if you give water to unsuspecting visitors, they get sick.

To avoid this problem, we spent our first year or two lugging drinking water back to the farm.  My mom would rinse out empty milk jugs and save them for me, then we'd fill them up at her house when we went to visit.  Other times, we'd fill up our milk jugs at various other friends' houses closer to the farm.  Sometimes, we were able to haul the jugs of water back to the trailer in our four wheel drive truck, but a lot of the time the truck wasn't working and we'd just carry them in --- it's not too hard to haul a jug of water in each hand while walking Lucy in the morning.

Water feels more precious when the supply is limited.  We cooked and drank the special water, going through about a gallon a day between us.  For everything else, we used creek water, treated with some bleach when we did dishes, but plain for other tasks.

Then we splurged on our water filtration system and were blessed with unlimited, safe drinking water.  I felt like we'd moved from a third world country to a second world country!

The only flaw is that we still haven't quite gotten our water line all the way buried since my wrists can't take much heavy digging and I tend to set Mark on tasks that seem more important.  So this week we fell halfway back to our third world country.  I dragged all of the old milk jugs out of the barn, rinsed them out, and filled them up with our treated water.  By Friday, the freeze set in and we started dipping into stored water.

It's funny to read on other peoples' blogs about disaster preparedness --- people filling up empty milk jugs just in case the world comes to an end or a heavy storm knocks out their power for days on end.  It doesn't really feel like a disaster to be pumping our drinking water during thaws and drinking out of jugs during cold snaps.  I guess it's all a matter of perspective....

In addition to lacking space, China has a serious shortage of wood.  Even a hundred years ago, King noted that trees were scarce and small, and even those trees were heavily utilized by cutting the lower limbs for firewood.

As a result of the wood shortage, most buildings were traditionally made out of straw and clay.  Although the straw and clay tended to need frequent replenishing, the old building materials were perfect for throwing in the compost pit. 

Farmers were also very good at utilizing other types of plants for fuel.  Woody vegetable stems (especially rice straw) were frequently burned.  Although I approve of making full use of the resources at hand, King's description of the cooking fire requiring one person to constantly feed it small bits of straw sounds like a bit too much work.

Otherwise, King made the Chinese traditional agriculture system look so rosy that I find it hard to remember that, a century later, farming looks a lot different.  If you're interested in what's happened in the last hundred years, you should check out the overview on Wikipedia.

The refrigerator root cellar suffered a set back last night during a heavy down pour.

It should only take a few hours to dig back out, and the new plan is to add a small roof like the one on our home made firewood shed to prevent this from happening again.

We had a slight problem with one of the retaining walls for the refrigerator root cellar. It seems like a sturdy metal bracket will be needed to secure the wall to the side of the refrigerator.

You might notice a faint circle of melted snow around the chimney output. This was more noticeable a couple of hours ago, which is a nice way to illustrate how warm the air must be that's coming out.

 

It's time to begin framing up the walls of the new storage building.

We decided to fill the wall that gets the most sun with windows we've managed to salvage from a few different places. Thanks Bill B.

The landfill can be a good place to find used windows for a project like this if you don't have generous neighbors who've cleaned out their barn recently. New construction sites have also been known to provide the frugal builder with discarded windows if you know where to look and who to talk to.

 

The refrigerator root cellar is now generating a cool and damp atmosphere which needs to be protected from insects looking for the perfect home to ride out the winter.

It was easy to secure down the lower vent screen with several small dry wall screws. They drive straight into the plastic without the need for a pilot hole.

The top vent was just as easy. Cut some scrap screen material to the desired length and use some electrical tape to fasten it down.

 

The gaskets on the refrigerator root cellar are old and don't quite seal up the two doors. A simple screen door latch is all it takes to solve that problem. I installed them a little on the tight side in order to pull the door firmly closed with no gaps. The refrigerator latch required a piece of scrap wood behind the handle for the eye to bite into.

This might work for a low budget fix to a working refrigerator that has a weak gasket. I've often heard a new gasket can cost nearly as much as a good used refrigerator.

I was almost going to buy one of those heavy PVC caps for the refrigerator root cellar chimney, but when I walked past a foam faucet cover I stopped in my tracks, looked at the PVC cap in one hand and the foam cover on the shelf and weighed the coolness factor of the foam geometry along with the fact that it was only a buck compared to the 6 dollar price of the PVC.

Anna thinks it adds a sort of mother ship look to it and I agree.

The next step will be to drill some holes in the side towards the top of the chimney and then attach some screen material to keep out any unwanted bugs.

We dream of someday leaving the mainstream electricity grid behind and becoming energy independent.  Although solar panels or hydropower have been top of our list in the past, Jerry clued me in to the Jean Pain method --- a technique of converting wood chips into methane, heat, and compost.  We're nowhere near taking the plunge to that level of production, but maybe it would be a loftier goal than saving our pennies for solar panels?

 

It took both of us to lower the refrigerator root cellar into its new home below the earth. Once it was in place I decided to make some side panels from a couple of 2x4's and some scrap wood. It seems to be helping by keeping the dirt away from the hinge and door opening as I begin to bury it.

 

Two drill holes and a few minutes with the jig saw was all it took to create the new chimney hole for the refrigerator root cellar.

I also removed the foam and plastic barrier that separates the freezer from the rest of the refrigerator. One of the metal shelves slid right into its place, which will provide plenty of open space for the cool air to flow while at the same time working as a sturdy surface to store apples on.

 

After thinking about lowering the refrigerator root cellar into our new hole I decided to see just how hard it would be to strip off the metal coil from the back of the unit. It turns out it only took about a half hour to take everything off including the compressor and wiring harness. I think it's going to make sliding down the hole a bit smoother and safer.

I'm planning on mounting some screen material over the new holes in the bottom. The good thing about this approach is that it will be easy to add more holes if we think the air flow needs to increase.

 

We decided to dig the refrigerator root cellar down a bit deeper to accommodate a large cinder block in each corner. I thought two post holes in the middle might help to increase the cold surface area that will hopefully stream a steady flow of cool air up through the refrigerator and out the soon to be installed vent pipe.

The new chipper/grinder seems to have a problem with sticks and branches any bigger than what you see here in this short video. It's sort of a hassle to stop everything and flip it on its side to reset it once you send something through that's too big.

It still might find a place here on the farm, but today the verdict is too small and wimpy for the level of mulch production we are looking for.

 

The old gas powered chipper/grinder got moved up to the front of the get fixed line this week in an effort to increase our mulch production. Its 50 year old Briggs and Stratton engine won the first battle yesterday afternoon, but today I figured out exactly what to do with that stubborn motor.

Delete it.

The first step was to remove the four bolts that hold the engine to the frame. Then it's easy to lift out. Next fabricate some sort of vibration plate for the electric motor to be attached to, I used a scrap piece of 2x6. Once you get the pulley lined up secure the whole thing down to the frame and wire up a switch.

 

The Spud Buddy is a device that gets mounted to the side of an old broken freezer or refrigerator and uses a fan and a steady supply of water to keep the inside temperature and humidity where it needs to be in order to function as a root cellar.
 
I've never seen one of these in action, but the concept seems solid enough to work. Expect to spend about 160 bucks on the unit, and maybe some extra pennies per day for the additional electricity.

A clever solution for someone with limited time and space who wants to turn their old broken refrigerator into a functional root cellar.

I was experiencing some power trouble with the Ford Festiva last week. It stalled out three separate times during a short trip to town. My first thought was that the repair last year with a dab of silicone to the ignition coil was giving out, but then I decided to try a 10 dollar can of Seafoam. You put this stuff right in your tank and top it off with whatever fuel you usually use and presto...I noticed an immediate improvement. I could now get up hills with only dropping down to 4th gear instead of 3rd or 2nd. Technically speaking something happens that cleans some internal stuff to make things run smoother. No more stalling! I'm now a believer in Seafoam.

This week's theme has been biomass transport.  Mark, the innovator, tripled our leaf productivity by changing our collection method.  I had been raking up leaves that fell on the driveway, stuffing them into our leaf bag, and driving back to the garden to spread them one bag at a time.  Mark figured out that we could put two to three leaf bags' worth of leaves into the heavy hauler with some judicious smooshing and a tarp tucked on top.

He also figured out that we could rake the leaves down off the hillside above the driveway and get scads of leaf matter for very little effort.  There's a chance the bared soil will erode some, but I have to weigh a little bit of erosion that will never reach the creek against extra transportation (aka, coal burned in the nearby power plant to pollute our air and water).  Some days, it feels hard to be human --- no matter what we do, it causes harm somewhere.

The good thing about the hillside leaves is that we get some duff with them, which helps solve our nitrogen problem.  Meanwhile, Mark has started peeing on some of our leaves to give them an influx of nitrogen and help them decompose faster.  Suddenly, the garden feels under control!  We topped all of the beds in the mule garden this week, which means we only have about two to three times that much garden left to put to bed for the winter.

Want a free golf cart?  Move to Oklahoma!  A federal tax rebate currently allows people buying street-legal golf carts to write off $4,200 to $5,500 of the cost.  Add in the state rebate in Oklahoma and your golf cart is free.  (Although Oklahoma may have figured out this loophole and be working to fix it.)

Even if you don't live in Oklahoma, now might be a time to buy that golf cart for your homestead.  We've been thrilled at the way our electric golf cart acts as a utility vehicle on the farm, hauling leaves, firewood, and bodies (living, of course.)  It runs through the mud with ease, only has to be charged every month or two, and hardly ever breaks down.

Right now, I believe the only types of golf cart that fit the federal subsidy are made by Tomberlin and Star, the cheapest models of which can cost as little as $2,000 once you take your tax credit.  It sounds like a great deal, but some folks suspect these cheaply bought but sturdily constructed golf carts will be available used starting next year for extremely small sums.  So maybe it'd be better to wait and save even more....

Now, use the money you saved to buy Mark's homemade chicken waterer.

At the end of last winter, Huckleberry tore apart the air pipe that channels heat from our exterior wood furnace into the trailer.  Then the stove pipe rusted out.  We were trying to hold off on lighting our wood stove until the end of the week when we would hopefully have the floor of the shed up and could just move the stove there, rather than fixing it in its current location.

All weekend, I shivered in a house that barely reached 50 degrees, baking large dinners to warm up the kitchen.  Mark had a space heater in his room, but I didn't want to break down and use electricity.  Finally, Monday morning, the interior temperatures were in the thirties.  Yikes!

So sweet Mark threw together some short-term fixes on the wood stove and lit us a fire.  By mid morning, I took off my winter coat, sweater, gloves, and second pair of pants.  Ah, wood heat!

As a side note, you can see that our wood shed is already halfway full.  It looks like we may run out of space before we run out of wood and will have to build a second shed.  A good problem to have!

The Club Car continues to be a work horse for hauling in heavy loads, even during this wetter than usual spell we've been going through.

I think it's time to consider building a frame towards the back to upgrade the carrying capacity from 2 full golf club bags to something more farm appropriate.

Mark wants to live in a round house some day, and I have to admit that the idea has merit every time I go visit Joey's yurt.  The circles and lines in the yurt always capture my interest and I end up taking photos that could almost be abstract, like the one on the left.

Joey considered taking the yurt down for the winter, but instead he bought a Two Dog Stove, specially designed for safe use in tents.  The stove is so small that Joey was able to carry it in by himself soon after our most recent flood.  Setup took mere minutes with the ultra-cool telescoping stove pipe --- no need to laboriously fit pieces together; just grab both ends and puuuullll....  I'm curious to see how well the stove keeps Joey warm during his wintry visits to the farm.

I was struck by a throwaway sentence in Good Farmers, a book about traditional farming practices in Central America and Mexico.  The author noted that traditional farmers usually lack heavy equipment and funds to pay for lots of hired help, so they have to take a process-oriented approach to big tasks rather than being project-oriented.  For example, if they have a steep hillside that they'd like to terrace and create farmable ground, traditional farmers are more likely to put in a spare afternoon here and there building the terrace bit by bit rather than renting a bulldozer to get 'r done.

Homesteading is slowly teaching me to slip out of my project-oriented mindset and enjoy the journey.  For example, the wood we bought was delivered to our parking area, half a mile from our house.  At first, I was considering just taking a day and making golf cart trip after golf cart trip to bring the wood back to its shed.  But instead I've been taking in a load of wood whenever I need to drive the golf cart out to the cars anyway.  A week later, our shed is already a third of the way full!