I'm going to get an old gas hot water heater as the boiler and put a corn burner in it.

The output steam will go to a steam engine that turns 5 home-brewed alternators that will be bridged in series (24 x 5 = 120VDC) to charge a car I'm going to convert to electric power.

I will then take the exhaust steam and route it into the house and run it through a radiator for heating the house.

I will then route the condensed steam (water) back to the boiler to be re-used.

Any excess electricity generated will go into powering a couple breakers off my mains to reduce my electric bill, most likely my shop/garage.

But with gasoline going up by 200%-300% by the end of the year, the primary concern is changing the car over to electric.  It's also going to be the most expensive part.

I'm still researching the components, but I will be posting here what I do and with what so that maybe someone else can do the same.

With all other sources of fuel going up in price, I figure the corn burner will be my best bet (especially since I live in an area where corn is grown commercially :p ).

I need something that will have a continuous output of power as the wind and sun around here isn't reliable enough, and mains electricity is expensive once you go over the base rate.  To put it in perspective, my summertime monthly electric bill is somewhere around $50-$75.  My January bill was $551 running my electric baseboard heating.  So if I transfer my heating over to the steam, I figure I'll be spending about $300 twice a year on corn, saving myself about $1200 a year on electricity and gasoline.  My savings will only increase as gas prices go up, too.

If anyone has any suggestions, comments, or questions, please feel free.

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http://www.stanleymotorcarriage.com/

http://ghlin2.greenhills.net/~apatter/Sitetoc.html

http://phoenixnavigation.com/ptbc/home.htm

I was planning on running the steam line at about 100-125psi.  I would be putting a pressure relief valve on it so as to avoid explosion.

But if everyone thinks this is still a bad idea, maybe I will scrap the hot water heater idea.

If anyone has any plans/directions on how to build a good boiler for my system, any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm still at the R&D stage and haven't fully worked out all the kinks yet (probably never will :p ) so if any of you have any ideas as to how to improve on my "invention" here, I'm not too proud to admit I'm no expert!!  

I'm definately trying to keep expenses to a minimum (especially since I've been unemployed for over 8 months and we're down to under $100 total ANYWHERE), so if any of you have any idea as to how I can make any of the components (like the home-brewed generators), please feel free.  I've got a pretty good electronics background (ex-navy elec tech), so I'm going to be making my own rectifiers and inverters (I have Digi-Key (www.digi-key.com) within 10 miles of me, so components will be fairly easy and cheap).  I also have a neighbor who's pretty good at welding and fabricating.  There's two metal recycling facilities close by as well, so tubing and such will be fairly easy and inexpensive to locate.

I think my most expensive parts are going to be the actual steam engine (I don't want to go turbine as the reduction gears are EXPENSIVE!!) and the battery packs.  Well, actually I guess the 80 or so magnets I'll need won't be all that cheap, either!!  :o

Then of course once I start getting into the electric car conversion we're talking some serious bucks, but that's a secondary project to the home generation.  I've gotta get this house warm for next winter.  It just plain SUCKED around here the last few months.  Every heater I could find going full blast, the oven open and on, and the house STILL dropped below 50oF for days at a time!!  We're going to be re-doing the insulation during the summer ($800 ouch), and at the absolute least I'll be setting up the burner and boiler with the heating circuit.  That'll take care of heating for next winter ($1800 savings) because I'll be able to remove the electric baseboards altogether.

But I eventually want to become fully self-sufficient on power.  I'll be keeping one gasoline powered car for trips to Grand Forks and beyond, but the electric car(s) will be for all the in-town crap.  The farthest we've driven in any one day in the last 6 months has been 30 miles.  So even an inefficient electric car would still have enough charge to limp home for dinner.  The only thing I'm not looking forward to with an electric car is keeping the battery pack warm in the winter.  We quite often see -40F around here in Dec and Jan.  The conventional cars ALL have block heaters and built in battery chargers so they'll at least ATTEMPT to start in the morning!!  :D  I guess I'll just have to finish the garage and park the electric cars in there with the steam setup.  Won't help me at work, though.  Maybe keep a small weed-eater motor or something running a small generator to keep things occasionally warmed/charged up.....