Building A Pond...

4:50 pm - 47 degrees - foggy, raining...

When we were driving around looking for property 12 years ago, we came upon this near-perfect rural off-grid property... and we were sold!

Our property has a good amount of acreage, gorgeous views, a nice home site, and it’s a nice distance to and from civilization.  It was perfect... except for one small thing – it was missing a visible water feature.  Yes, a river bisects our lot, but we can’t see it from the house.

I have always wanted to live on a lake or have a large pond or some kind of water feature within sight of the house.  It's only taken 12 years, but we finally have a visible water feature – a pond!

A pond offers numerous benefits for landowners: entertainment for the family, water for wildlife, aquaculture, fire protection, erosion control, and aesthetics are but a few. 

And in our case, the pond will also hopefully offer another source of power – hydroelectric power. 

For those of you who don’t know what hydroelectric (or hydropower or hydroenergy) is – it’s a reliable source of renewable energy that runs 24/7 for very little cost.  Power is generated from the movement of water, like waterfalls or streams, water that is stored in dams, as well as flowing in river to create electricity.  The water flows through a turbine to help generate electricity; using the energy of falling or flowing water to turn the blades.  The rotating blades spin a generator that converts the mechanical energy of the spinning turbine into electrical energy that we can use to power our home.

Even though a pond has so much to offer, there are a lot of factors that needed to be considered first.  Factors like:

 - Is the land and soil actually suited for a pond?

 - Can we build the pond ourselves?

 - What size of pond do we want and what size will fit?

 - How much will this project cost?

 - How long will this project take?

While Tony is the researcher, thinker, and planner, I am one to jump in with both feet now.  So when he told me that he was thinking that he could put in a pond and wanted to know what I thought – my response was YES, the bigger the better!

After walking around the designated area he had picked out and visualizing his plan of attack, Tony started digging, and digging, and digging.

The underground springs Tony tapped into, quickly started filling the hole and eventually the big hole started to look like a pond.  Before the pond got too full, he added a 4” pipe that is about 2’ below the water line for our future hydropower source.  

Tony also added an 18” culvert for an overflow.

After getting the edges, top and surrounding area cleaned up, we spread grass seed covered with Turf Mulch.  The Turf Mulch is a naturally organic product that is a ground dressing for the newly seeded area.  It will help the ground retain moisture, form a protective mat over the seed, help the grass seed germinate quicker and help with erosion control until the grass grows in.

And we now have a 10' deep by 40'x50' trout pond!  The water level is currently at the uncapped hydro pipe, which he painted black so it would blend in a little more.  Tony wanted to keep the water at the lower level until the grass starts to grow.  The trout will be coming in about a month or so.  So excited for this project and how it is turning out!  My husband is amazing!!

New Generator...

5:37 pm - 25 degrees - overcast, windy...

This past weekend our generator died.  So we had to run out and buy a new one before the next winter storm hit.  We spent all day shopping and ended up buying a Champion 7500/9375 Duel Fuel generator we picked up at Cabelas. 

Tony was looking at a couple others online, but everything he liked had to be ordered.  Since we were in between storms, we had to pick something out that we could take home with us.

Less than two miles from home, after putting ice breaker chains on the front tires, the rear end almost slid over the edge.  So he had to put another set of ice breaker chains on the rear tires as well.  Whew, that was a close call.

Finally made it home, took the generator out of the box, then had to push/slid/carry it over to the power house so Tony could hook it all up and we could have power again.

So far, we have run the generator on propane and gasoline and it's working great!

Goodbye Cooler, Hello Refrigerator...

1:17 pm - 51 degrees - blue sky, scattered clouds, light breeze...

Last week, we had a life changing event... for the past 6 years we have lived without the use of a refrigerator, and last Friday, we finally pulled our refrigerator out of the storage unit and brought it home! 

You simply cannot imagine my level of excitement! 

When we first moved up here 6 years ago, our only power source was a small Honda generator – not big enough to do much of anything other than run small power tools, charge cell phones and charge our laptop.  So our 2-year-old refrigerator went, with the majority of the rest of our belongings, to the storage unit. 

In the beginning, to solve our refrigeration issue, we went to Costco and picked up an Igloo MaxCold 165 Quart cooler to use as our “fridge”.  It worked, it did what it was supposed to, and we were definitely glad to have it.  I believe that we learned how to function very well using a cooler as a fridge.

Fast forward six years, I now have a love-hate relationship with the cooler.  I obviously loved it because it was our “fridge”.  I didn’t love it because the cooler gobbled up large bags of ice just about every other day (I don’t even want to know how much money we spent on bags of ice over the past six years), and even though it is a fairly large cooler – space was definitely limited... the dislikes could on, but I’m stopping there.

Back to the exciting news!  Even though our off-grid power system isn’t 100% completed yet, we do now have enough power to run our energy efficient wide-by-side refrigerator and freezer!  We now have a freezer here too!!!  Oh, such a happy day and a complete life changer!!!

Refrigeration is one of my top four things that I have missed most while living off-grid.  I wonder what your top four things you would miss the most would be?

Mine have been an inside flushing toilet (check!), washer & dryer (check!), real refrigerator (check!), and running hot water (coming soon!).

Top 10 Posts Of All Time...

9:58 am - 21 degrees - 25-30 mph winds with 65-70 mph wind gusts...

I’ve written over 487 blog posts, and it’s always interesting to me to see which ones are the top posts.

Today I am sharing with you the top 10 posts from Off-Grid Home Sweet Home.

1. Log Reindeer... from October 2013 {click here}

2. Kids Handprint Stepping Stone... from May 2011 {click here}

3. Board and Batten Siding... from July 2012 {click here}

4. Off-Grid Power {Generators}... from July 2013 {click here}

5. One-Pan Skillet Cookie... from December 2011 {click here}

6. Swedish Torch... from June 2013 {clickhere}

7. Alaskan Chainsaw Mill... from May 2013 {click here}

8. Off-Grid Power {Battery Bank}... from March 2013 {click here}

9. Questions and Answers... from October 2013 {click here}

10. Gravity Fed Water System {Water Storage}...  From January 2012 {click here}

Solar Power...

12:28 pm - 76 degrees - sunny...

Most off-grid homes use a wide range of energy resources, in sharp contrast to the typical all-electric suburban home.  One energy resource that we are using is solar power.

Solar power is produced by collecting sunlight and converting it into electricity.  This is done by using solar panels.  Solar panels are large flat panels that are made up of many individual solar cells.  Lots of small solar cells spread over a large area that work together to provide enough power to be useful.  The more light that hits a cell, the more electricity it produces.

photo source: alternate energy info

Once you have assessed your solar power needs and the amount of solar gain you can expect, the next step is figuring out where and how to mount your solar panels to get optimum light exposure.  There are a numerous ways to mount solar panels, and the best choice depends not only on maximizing exposure over the course of a year, but also cost and practicality.  Depending on city or county code requirements, that can sometimes mean thousands of dollars in engineering and equipment.  When all is said and done, simplicity is key.

Two important things to keep in mind when you’re looking at where to place your solar panels are which direction the solar panels should face and the optimal angle the solar panels should be tilted.

Where to place your solar panels - in general there’s one big rule: if you’re in the U.S. (or anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere), your solar panels should face true south (aka solar south or geographic south).

Identifying true south is not as simple as using a compass.  Due to the imperfections in the composition of the earth, due south rarely matches the compass reading.  A compass points toward the south pole of the earth’s geomagnetic field.  It’s the right general direction – but not exact.  

A simple method to finding true south is to look at your house on Google Earth; after centering the image on your home, you can view the north-south grid lines Google provides.  In the View menu, select “Grid”. 

Another easy way to identify true south is to look in your local newspaper (or Google) for the exact time of sunrise and sunset for that day.  Calculate the middle of these times; it should be somewhere near noon, but rarely right at noon.  Stick a pole in the ground, and at the exact middle time between sunrise and sunset, the shadow from the pole lines up with due south.

Once you have the direction the solar panels should face, next comes finding the optimal angle the solar panels should be tilted to get the best out of your system.  

The optimum angle varies throughout the year, depending on the seasons and your location.  Of course, the sun is continually moving throughout the day and to get the best from your solar panels you would need to angle your panels to track the sun minute by minute.  You can buy an automated solar tracker to do this but unfortunately, the expense of a tracker means that for most systems they are more expensive than buying additional panels to compensate.  The amount of power a solar tracker uses in order to track the sun also negates much of its benefits.

The sun is at its highest at solar noon each day (this occurs exactly half way between sunrise and sunset) and by using a Solar Angle Calculator {Click Here} you can find out the angle at that time of day.  At solar noon, the irradiance from the sun is at its very highest and you can generate the most power.  In the northern hemisphere, the sun is due south at solar noon.

photo source: gogreensolar.com

If you want to get the best performance during the summer months, you would angle your solar panels according to the height of the sun in the sky during these months.  If you want to improve your winter performance, you would angle your solar panels towards the winter months in order to get the best performance at that time of year.  If you have the opportunity to adjust your solar panels throughout the year, you will benefit from having the optimum angle on a month by month basis.

After all that has been said, here is what we did – simplicity is key after all. 

We picked up 8 solar panels that are roughly 2’6” x 5’6” for free.  We know nothing about them other than they were for a 12 volt system.  Free is a very hard price to pass up especially when to buy them new would be a minimum of $1,600.

Not knowing anything about the panels and how well they would perform, we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a mounting system.  So Tony came up with a design using scrap materials that we had lying around the house.

This simple design allows them to be moved around on the forks of a tractor if we deiced we want to place them in a different location.

The orchard crates will be partially filled with large stones found around the property to counter weight the solar panels and anchor them down for high winds.

This simple design also allows the solar panels to be adjusted for optimum positioning in any direction and angle. 

They are facing due south and still need to be tilted to the proper angle for this time of year and are easily adjustable for the winter months.  Just after 7:00 pm last night the panels were producing 19.2 volts to 19.5 volts each.

We're half way done.  Need to build two more racks and then onto the wiring.

We Have Power...

11:55 am - 63 degrees - gorgeous day...

I am beyond excited to finally be able to say... we have power! 

It has taken a long time to get to this point - reliable 24 hour power.  The end of May will mark 5 years living off-grid with only a generator for our occasional power needs.

For the past several months, after Tony got home from work, he would go straight to work again on our “control room”.  Some concrete, framing, plywood, insulation, sheetrock and the room under the stairwell was enclosed to house our power system.

Once the control room was enclosed Tony was busy making battery cables, connecting the 16 deep cycle batteries together, connecting the batteries to the inverter, wiring the inverter, numerous trips to different stores to get parts, and several phone calls to Magnum Energy to get questions answered.  

There are still a few small details that need to be finished or worked out, but for the most part... our battery bank and inverter are finally hooked up and working!

Last night was the first time we were able to turn on a lamp without having to run outside to turn on the generator first.  It is amazing how exciting it is to be able to turn on a simple lamp.  

This morning, as I'm tying out this blog post on our desk top computer that is being powered by our own power system... I am in awe of my amazingly awesome husband who I believe can do anything and is Superman in our children's eyes.

Winter Readiness...

3:02 pm - 54 degrees - scattered clouds, windy...

The first week of October, we were having 70 and 80 degree days, but according to the latest weather report that’s all over for the year.  Fall is finally here.  

The cooler temperatures and rainy days are on their way.  That means old man winter is just around the corner.  Literally, winter could be here in a month!

This summer and beginning of the school season, we have been swamped with project – unfortunately most of those have been off the mountain.  So we’re running behind on our winter prep.

We bought our property back in 2005, and every winter has been different.  We have had everything from little to no snow up to over 10’ deep snow with 14’ deep snow drifts.  It is hard to determine what type of winter will be in store for us this year.  Regardless of what Mother Nature brings our way, it is best to prepare for the worst. 

To get ready for winter we have been cutting and stacking firewood and kindling, which is a never ending project, and we are way behind on our firewood supply this year.

Our kids and my dad picked grapes so my mom, sister and I can make some more grape jelly.

We’re still working on getting our electrical system up and running.  This has been a slow process...but we’re getting very, very close!  Actually having a real fridge will be life changing! 

16 deep cycle batteries are in place and hooked up.

Power cord is installed that will run from the
batteries to the generator shed.

Building up a rock foundation for the generator shed.

Drainage ditches need to be cleaned out, so the yard and driveway won’t flood.

The freezer (which is in our storage unit) needs to be filled so Tony went out and shot an elk during muzzleloader season.

Yard debris after the latest wind storms needed to be picked up, but we waited to do this project until the burn ban was lifted so we could sit back at the end of a long day to enjoy a campfire and the gorgeous view.