Newbie off the grid

[bilbo7500]

Just wanted to say Hello.  Purchased 5 acres in "off grid" Idaho City, ID.  Will be building in the next 3-4 yrs.  We are in our early 60's and this is our retirement dream.  I have 627 million questions about off grid living (solar hot water, water pumping, electricity, wind turbines, death rays, etc:)and am finding an enormous amount of information here on the net.  I'm sure you'll be hearing from me from time to time as I would like to manufacture as many of these systems as I can myself and some of the 627 million questions I've not found answers to yet.  So, thanks in

advance.

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back and may the Good Lord hold you in the hollow of his hand.

Bilbo

[WXYZCIENCE]

Hello Bilbo, welcome to the board. May the sun shine on your panels. Joe

[Volvo farmer]

Hi Bilbo, Welcome!

I recently finished building my house off grid. Let me tell you one thing I would have done differently. I did not hook up my solar power equipment until after the house was almost finished. We put hundreds of hours on generators and spent hundreds of dollars in fuel for that oversight. If I could do it all over again, I'd build the solar electric system first so that I didn't have a 5000W generator running all day to power something like a couple of screw guns and a radio.

Take care!

[electrondady1]

bilbo,

please be careful, george bush has the ring !

[Nando]

GOOD LUCK on your rest of your life project

Nando

[coldspot]

Welcome-

Idaho City, ID

To far from Idaho falls, for me to be of any help

But, glad you have a place and a plan!

[TAH]

I did the same thing with the generator. I also found out you don't want a chinese diesel generator. If I had to do it again I would put in batteries and inverter power and then recharge as needed with the generator. The generator ran at least 80% of the time powering nothing more than a few watts of radio and battery chargers for the drills. A couple of panels in a temporary mount would have been good too. Having a large bank up ahead of time just makes a dump load run all the time.

[SparWeb]

"...and may the Good Lord hold you in the hollow of his hand."

Wouldn't you rather be up on his shoulder where there's a better breeze...?  :^)

[nailed]

I like to make a power building.  You put your main power panel, inverters, batter bank, and other junk in it.  This will let you have your power for the smaller things and you can run the genny when needed and to recharge.  When you build the house you run 2 4" pipes from the inside of the shed to the main panel in the house.  

I have a thing about keeping the batteries and the inverters in my house.  You need to keep the inverters close to the house.  The building I have is mostly under ground.  This will help with hot and cold weather.  It is 24 X 30 and has my well, DC hot water heater tank (dump load), presser tank, battery bank, inverters, and my spare power stuff.