Scott and I have dreams for our little paradise. We hope to have an organic garden and a mini orchard on the property. Scott has always wanted to raise chickens.
The house itself needs a lot of work and we will completely redo both the interior and exterior. Our plan is to make the home energy efficient and to try to get 'off the grid' as much as we can. How will we do this?
The easiest start is with the fireplace. We will place a woodburning stove insert into the fireplace to make optimum use of all the wood we burn. The stove will be able to burn coal as well, which is a common product in this area. We may put a catalytic converter in the chimney to scrub out pollutants. We plan to purchase Energy Star rated appliances and will probably install a propane tank so we can have a gas range instead of electric. Double paned windows will reduce heat loss. Fiberglass batts in the attic will make our little home snug. Scott is thinking about installing motion detectors on light circuits so lights will not stay on unnecessarily.
The big projects will be our alternative energy sources. Scott plans to install a passive solar water heater, also known as a batch heater. This is essentially glass tubes in a row in a black box tilted toward the sun at a 45 degree angle. This won't work all the time, but the other big project will. As the property is on a stream,
we plan to build our own micro hydroelectric plant, which is a slow speed 12V DC system running from a paddle wheel into a used tape drive motor. Scott says this will provide 1 - 2 amps or about 150 Watts of power all day and all night, making it more reliable than solar or wind power. The power will be stored in deep cycle marine batteries that you can buy at a warehouse like Sam's Club. There will be a controller on the batteries to keep them from overcharging. All power we use from the batteries will go through a square wave inverter that will convert it to 120 V Alternating Current for household appliances. We intend to use a windmill as well, probably for hydraulic pumping - essentially to pump water from the creek to the garden or to be filtered for our own use in an emergency.
The final dream to share today is that we will make an outdoor enclosure for Roughy to use during the summer. He needs to be a wild lizard for a few months at least!
