Going off the Grid!

[Shadow]

 Yesterday was the big day, We got our house moved onto location!

      The house is 1530 square feet,We could have maybe built it on location but we were not sure if we could provide enough electricity so it was built about 5 miles away. They build about 6 at a time at that location.

     First picture you can see the basement at the top of the hill,

The inside of the basement currently has 8 inches of gravel but a wood floor will be built once the house is on. I cleaned 3 foot snow banks out of basement after the last storm,so was glad to see the house arrive.

 



       It takes a bit of maneuvering to get things lined up straight. It was melting too so slippery and muddy.



        Once things are lined up,its jacked up level with basement walls and 1 foot lengths of 3 inch pipe are layed out and the house is rolled onto the basement.



          They keep turning the first 3or4 pieces of pipe to steer the house as it moves along.



         When it reaches the end, 4 long hydraulic jacks are placed in the basement and lift one side at a time to remove the rollers and let the house down.



              Now comes all the work of getting things hooked up.Our battery house includes about 1000 amp hours of wet cells,(along the wall) and 990 amphrs of AGMs.A rectifier sits on the floor that is wired 220 volt to the generator. I lucked out on Ebay and got 2 Nova inverters 48 volt 1500 watt pure sine wave. So I've been using those to run all the power tools.



            The generator is a 2 cylinder Lister SR2 with a 7.5 kw gen. This shed also has a set of 180 amphr batteries and the other Nova Inverter.(Paid $100 each for the Inverters, he sold 3 or 4 before that for$40.00!!)



         So we are hoping we have enough power to be off grid. I have an Outback 3648 for our main inverter and I'm considering using one of the Nova inverters just for the basement. Kids can have their own power system  down there.

           So now I better get to work!

[AbyssUnderground]

Nice work! Everything is so neat in your power shed. I wish I could get mine that neat! Time will progress though and Ill make things more permanent...

[fungus]

Wow! Very Nice! Love the power room. How big/what power are yer mills?

[harrie]

Wow Shadow, You make me tired just looking at all the work you have done, its nice to see everything layed out nice and neat. Your foundation looks like just treated wood framing, without concrete. I have saw a few put in in my area, and they seem to work just fine. I am wondering about a wood floor over gravel tho, maybe your area doesnt have the moisture problem that we would have??  Im sure you probley have installed a drain field around the bottom of your footings. Anyway, good luck with the off grid. Thanks for sharing.

[Volvo farmer]

WOW, that's a lot of battery, over twice what I have. One thing about using two inverters is each one will have some draw 24/7 unless you plan on letting them sleep. My 3524 draws about an amp (25W) idle, all night long when we're asleep. My HW heater has a circuit board in it so I can't let the inverter sleep.

I think you have plenty of battery. Are you doing solar at all or only wind? We've been getting along fine on about 2KWH/day. Get yourself one of those tri-metrics, they really help you to figure out how much power you're using.

[SparWeb]

Shadow,

If that's not eastern Alberta or western Saskatchewan, then I don't wear cowboy boots!  Your pictures show me the set-up that I want to have, 10 years from now.

It CAN be done!

You don't have to live in a mud hut to live off-grid!

Inspiration!

[TomW]

Steven;

You don't have to live in a mud hut to live off-grid!

Where is the fun in that?

Sorry couldn't resist!

Oh, nice place, shadow.

Cheers.

TomW

[Shadow]

Thanks for the comments. The wind turbines are both 48 volt, The tall one is 12 foot,dual rotor, N50 magnets 12/9 140 turns of 17 gauge wire. The other one is 14 foot, dual rotor, 12/9, N40 magnets that are 3 inches long by 1 inch, by 1/2 inch. It has 110 turns of 15.5 gauge coils.They are both very comparable in performance.But neither have really put put to the test of running 24 hours a day 7 days a week. I shut them down when were not working as we never needed all the power. But thats about to change.

[Shadow]

Thanks Harrie, Yes youre right all treated lumber. The walls sit on a concrete footing, 20 inches wide by 8 inches thick. And we made a utility room 9x14 that has concrete floor, the rest will be all wood.When pouring the concrete footing we install 2 inch pipe crosswise in the bottom of the cement every 4 feet all the way around the perimeter. then both sides of the footing is filled with 8 inches of gravel. So any water that finds its way down the side of the house will run under our footings and under our basement floor to a lowered trench that runs lengthwise in the center of the basement where it will follow the lagoon trench 250 feet away. Everything is sloped accordingly to dispense water away. Apparently with this system you dont try to fight water from coming in, you let it come if it wants to, then you control where it goes.In our location I dont ever see it being an issue as were up fairly high. The gravel now gets covered with a heavy plastic, then wood sleepers are laid down and floor gets built on top.Wood basements are very popular here, they have been using them since the 70's and have very few issues. Soo hopefully.

[Shadow]

Hey Volvo, Yes for the time being we are just using the two wind turbines. But by next fall we hope to start adding solar. I would like to have about 1600 watts of Solar but need to get alot organized first.

          I do have a Tri-metric, everything will get hooked up in the next while. But with us not living there yet I was very hesitant to install too much expensive things in case something went missing. We have been very fortunate so far tho.

[Shadow]

Thanks Steven,

           Yes Its South western Sask!Its funny over the past year whenever you mention going Off grid to people, they immediatly think you have to go back to the pioneer days to live.We get asked the dumbest questions, like if we'll have lights?...and if we'll have a TV..and a computer. We are located about 2 miles from the city, and can see the City all lit up every night. But I cant wait until theres a power outage in town, I'm gonna intentionally turn on every light I can, our house will look like the Griswalds at Christmas. Even if I have to run the generator!..LOL But I'm sure there will be lots of times when WE wont have enough power for certain things no doubt..

[commanda]

I'd be interested in a few details of what you have in the way of insulation and heating.

Amanda