Living Off Grid- sort of

[Walks with dogs]

I don't want to hijack the other threads so I'll start a new one.

I'm trying to make my home as efficient as possible, I have cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, use energy saving lightbulbs and am very energy conscious. Our heating is turned down low enough that whilst we find it comfortable, we have to turn it up for visitors . We collect rain water in water butts to use on the garden etc and in a pinch, could make that water potable. I'm hoping later this year to install a wood burner to provide heating and possibly the option of cooking if it became necessary. I also want to get started on a small veg patch.

I'm trying as much as possible to reduce my own reliance on "the grid", partly for financial reasons, partly for ethical reasons and partly because every year we see more and more headlines about countries withholding enrgy supplies from each other ( eg Russia and Ukraine's spat).

In an ideal world I'd live somewhere I could have my own wind turbine , solar panelsand an electrical system designed to run from renewable energy. But I'm nowhere near rich enough to do that. I'e read somewhere that whilst getting an entire house to run on solar energy is both difficult and costly within the Uk, that getting a smaller sytem , able to run a few , lights and maybe a laptop can be done relatively cheaply. Has anyone any knowledge or better yet experience of this sort of thing? Or does anyone have any tips for other things I could be considering?

Cheers all.

 

[In Wood]

Sorry I cant help with the techno stuff, but we have 6 hens and a greenhouse to help us be more self sufficient.

The hen muck works wonders on the garden after being composted and you get plenty of free range eggs.

Look at getting rescue hens if you can as they are only £1 each and still lay plenty, plus youare saving them from an early slaughter.
check out the Battery Hen Welfare Trust for locations in your area that will help you out.

Do you syphon your bath water rather than sending it down the drain, this can be used on the garden if you use eco soaps (not that we need any more water on the gardens at the mo)

Have a look on the Dick Strawbridge web site (BBC's "Its not easy being green") for loads of helpful tips and hints.

Hope that helps you.

 

[tommy the cat]

I think that we can all do better on the ecological front. My missus really feels the cold and as we live in an old house with tall ceilings it takes alot of heating.
I hope to move at some point to a smaller type cottage where we could be more enviromentally friendly. Got to say I have a friend who went through a nightmare with a company who installed tubes on his roof.......just do plenty of research.
It amazes me we dont do more with grey water can never understand why we use drinking water to flush our loos!
Dave

 

[deeps]

Strawbridge ...pah

That programme is one of the top ten reasons for me to shout at the tV these days. Far too superficial.

I have recently run around this and in a reasonably hard nosed way. (ex nuclear engineer see)

1) Insulation absolutely gets you the most bangs for your buck.
2) Wood burner is good especially if you can tie it in with your HW system. Wood pellet boilers make less sense as you have to buy in the processed fuel and the handling kit is too big.
3) Solar HW heating provides reasonable payback.
4) Photvoltaic doesn't currently make economic sense with the payback being way beyond the life of the kit. Market has been muggered up by the europeans handing out megga grants which has just kept the price up. Buy more insulation.
5) Small windmills are not that smart from the payback situation. Buy more insulation.
6) Always remember that the most wasteful/expensive thing you can do from the domestic energy point of view is to heat something with with electricity.
7) Don't delude yourself by thinking your green score is way up there by disregarding the energy that was required to make your windmill/PV cells in the first place !

I fitted a solar HW panel from this lot http://www.viridiansolar.co.uk/index.htm who talk a lot of sense and have an informative websight. Tied into this I installed an HW tank with three heating coils from this lot http://www.newarkcoppercylinder.co.uk/cylinders/solar/ , one for oil fired CH, one for solar and one for the wood burner. Both excellent British companies who know what customer service and vfm mean - couldn't fault them and they were in sharp contrast to many other time wasters dabbling in this market. In addition I fitted a small standby diesel generator to give me security of supply that is patched into my switchboard via a make before break c/o switch, runs off the c/h oil if needed.

If you are on gas the technology to watch in the next year is microCHP

http://www.baxi.co.uk/docs/Baxi_microchp_leaflet.pdf

Havent seen anybody doing this for oil yet.

Finally read this to get a good overview.

http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=661&storycode=3083843&c=1

as well as this

http://www.building.co.uk/story_attachment.asp?storycode=3083843&seq=8&type=T&c=1

 

[British Red]

I'e read somewhere that whilst getting an entire house to run on solar energy is both difficult and costly within the Uk, that getting a smaller sytem , able to run a few , lights and maybe a laptop can be done relatively cheaply. Has anyone any knowledge or better yet experience of this sort of thing? Or does anyone have any tips for other things I could be considering?

Cheers all.

Yup, I have exactly that sort of set up which I built primarily to teach myself about solar power (PV panels). As stated in the previous post if your motivations are wholly financial, or even if carbon emissions , then there may be other, more cost effective mechanisms. But given your thread title and original post it seems that you, like me, are interested for a broad spectrum of reasons.

I would be happy to offer whatever insights I can - a small set up need not be expensive and its certainly a fascinating subject to look into

Red

 

[BorderReiver]

I think that we can all do better on the ecological front. My missus really feels the cold and as we live in an old house with tall ceilings it takes alot of heating.
I hope to move at some point to a smaller type cottage where we could be more enviromentally friendly. Got to say I have a friend who went through a nightmare with a company who installed tubes on his roof.......just do plenty of research.
It amazes me we dont do more with grey water can never understand why we use drinking water to flush our loos!
Dave

You could try putting up false ceilings with lots of insulation. This would be a lot less hassle than moving house.

 

[Walks with dogs]

Some really interesting replies there so far..

In Wood : We thought about getting chickens, my brother keeps some , but in the end a combination of dogs and concerns for the neighbours stopped us. Good for you though, bet them eggs taste good.

Tommy: Can't agree more about flushing drinking water, thats just bad design. Seems to me that we haven't really changed the way we desing housing for the last few decades, despite the moves in technology etc.

Deeps: Some interesting sites there, I have to agree that insulation, along with designing the building to minimise the need to heat / cool it are far and away the most cost effective.

Red: We've agreed on a few things now. The environmental and financial aspects interest me, but there is a big part of me that just wants to ensure that me and the missus still have the basics covered should the infrastructure society takes for granted collapse. I'd be absolutely fascinated to know what you did and how you did it. Please keep it simple though, I'm not great with technology .

 

[tommy the cat]

Be interested in hearing too Red.
D
Ps I have dropped one ceiling but its just not doable to do more and it would seriously alter the value of the house. To be honest I would live in a caravan /shack which makes nmuch more sense for heating

 

[Jusali]

Shh you 'aint seen me but in 4 words.

Air Sourced Heat Pump


(and of course insulation as mentioned above)

 

[suburban bushwacker]

Strawbridge ...pah
That programme is one of the top ten reasons for me to shout at the tV these days. Far too superficial.

Oh I don't know, i was rather taken with the way he has thatched his upper lip
cunningly combining a tea strainer with insulation
SBW

 

[British Red]

Hmm okay.....do you have any knowledge of electrickery at all or do I need to explain the basics to work out power, current, voltage etc. before we get into a component level?

Red

 

[gregorach]

Strawbridge ...pah

That programme is one of the top ten reasons for me to shout at the tV these days. Far too superficial.

Did you catch the segment on the most eco-friendly way to heat your giant outdoor swimming pool? That sparked some shouting from me...

Back on topic:

PV is currently dubious (at best) from the payback point of view, but that could change pretty rapidly depending on how the price of grid electricity moves in the next few years. However, there's nothing quite like having power when all around you are suffering a power cut.

 

[Mikkel]

What is the british government's current plan for sustainable energy?

Here, we are apparenrly supposed to have 50% covered with renewable sources by 2020.


While I live in an apartment and therefore have fewer options for eing more 'green', I certainly is aware. For example, to reduce the energy consumption is simple way to do a difference. For example an old CRT monitor with a 21" size consumes around 150W of enery, while a LCD monitor of the same size only use around 40W, the same goes for televisions, except for plasma screens which also use quite a lot of enery (and are to be banned in the EU by 2012).

An very interresting idea that have come up (recently I think), is that to focus heavily on electric cars. The idea was then that they mainly charge at night, the same period of time when we use no energy at home (or very, very little at least), because we are at sleep. The windmills and such, generate power all day long, and the energy produced during the night would normally be wasted. But by using electric cars, we could charge them with the energy that would otherwise be wasted. I think that idea is extremely interresting.
sorry for going a bit OT

 

[British Red]

Red: We've agreed on a few things now. The environmental and financial aspects interest me, but there is a big part of me that just wants to ensure that me and the missus still have the basics covered should the infrastructure society takes for granted collapse. I'd be absolutely fascinated to know what you did and how you did it. Please keep it simple though, I'm not great with technology .

Easy as anything. I need to get you to understand some terms though before I describe (and if you like photograph) my rig

We need to understand Volt, Amps, Watts and Watt Hours

Lets think of it like plumbing

Amp measure current - the amount of electicity flowing. So in plumbing terms think of Amps as the diameter of the pipe - little pipe, little bit of water, big pipe, lots of water.

Volts are a measure of electrical "force". In the plumbing example Volts are water pressure. Lots of pressure, water flows fast, low pressure, water flows slow.

Watts measure electrical energy. How much electricity moves through the circuit. It is the product of Volts times Amps. How much water goes through the pipe is the measure of the diameter of the pipe times how hard you push the water (and hence how fast it flows). So you can work out if its a 1" bore and the water moves at 10 metres per second how much water flows. If its a bigger pipe, or a faster flow, more water moves each second.

Watt Hours is a measure of storage capacity. A big 12 Volt Battery may have 110 Amp Hours. We know that Watts are Volts times amps so it is 12x110 so 1320 Watt Hours. In water terms its the size of the water tank running water through the pipe.

If you have a 1320Watt Hour battery it will run a 100watt light bulb for 13.2 hours or a 1000 watt electric fire for just over an hour

Does that all make sense?

Red

 

[wilekayote]

Red, you should be teaching physics. That's so much clearer than the way it was taught to me at school.

 

[Walks with dogs]

Been offline for a day while the bloke in the computer shop fixed my laptop so the wireless would work - and it still doesn't so I'm deeply unhappy.

But!! Yes that all makes sense Red. Thanks for explaining that . Sorry it took me two days to reply.

 

[pete79]

Hello. Never posted before (normally snoop on other posts), but I have experience of off grid living. I live in Yukon, Canada, and spent most of last year living off grid. We had a 12V system on the shack. We had a photovoltaic cell on the roof, a set of batteries (4), and an inverter (which was connected to a generator and the photovoltaic system). The inverter converted the power from the generator and cell to 12V to charge the batteries, and converted the 12V from the batteries to mains power. Worked well enough, but the name of the game was conservation, and basically every appliance we used we had to check the power requirements before we used it (appliances which generated heat would drain the batteries in no time at all), but it produced enough power to light the place for a long time between generator uses. The larger the number of batteries you have, the better.
As for water. Simple gravity fed water system was what we had. Pumped river water into a holding tank in the roof with a honda petrol powered pump, and 1800 litres would last for ages. Lots of people here drill a well to ground water and have a pump linked to their 12v system as an alternative to gravity fed (and it seems to be more efficient).
Hope that's a bit of help for you. All I can really say is, if you want to live off grid, be prepared to live very simply.

Pete

 

[British Red]

Yes that all makes sense Red. Thanks for explaining that . Sorry it took me two days to reply.

Good, I'm glad we have some terms we both understand.

Right, lets build a system one piece at a time. Right Solar panels. There are lots of sorts - some make electricity, some heat water etc. The sort you are interested in are "photovoltaic" panels. Photo meaning light "so "Light volt" panels.

These things turn sunlight into volts and by creating the "pressure" push out current (Amps)

Now the panels are rated in both Volts and Watts. A small panel could be say a 25W panel (they go much larger but cover a larger area). It will also have a Volt rating - normally in banks of 12V (so 12, 24 or 48V). Clear so far? This is because they will use to charge batteries in the 12 V range. It is quite possible to have 24V batteries but this is often achieved by wiring up two 12V batteries in a certain way (in series) but we will come to that later.

Its also important to note that panels are often rated slightly higher than the notional amount (e.g. 13V). This is because no system is 100% efficient. We'll also talk more about that later.


The key point is you must match the panel to the batteries. A 12V panel needs a 12V battery set up (easiest for the beginner)

Is that clear so far?

Red

 

[Nelis]

Ok, this is turning out to be a great thread. Hope to learn more soon Red,

Thanks so far....

 

[swyn]

Solar to heat water. Fantastic! Lots of choice, but there are a lot of companies who will willingly and gently take a LARGE sum of money from you. £6.5k for a two panel and tank system costing 1/2 that!
Do your own legwork as has been suggested, It WILL pay in the long run and it doesn't have to be done yesterday! This system can be backed up by an instant gas water heater like a Rinnai heater. These are 95%efficient so you really do get a bang for your buck!

Lighting. Again lots of choice. The Boat/caravan world has been on this one for a long time. There are plenty of simple systems there. Panels or windybitz

Heating. Air source heat pumps are now available over the counter and have come a long way now microchip tec is the norm. These contraptions are now half the size they were in the late 70's! You can almost plug in and play! Some folks don't like the noise the fan makes though.
Ground source heat pumps are the best, although you really need a large capital sum and a reasonably big garden to extract heat from be it by bore or surface area + this is not a simple installation! This rules out a large majority.

A word of warning though here with tap water. Leigonella spores thrive in an environment of warm water. This is overcome by heating above 60 degrees or using UV light. Luke warm water direct from your solar panel/ heat pump will be a potential hot spot for this. The large heat pump companies solve this by having a cycle of heating to 60 degrees on a regular basis.
Solar water is usually a glycol mix and this should not allow spores to thrive.
I would still seek advice on this though before comissioning. I know Rinnai have a system too against Leigonella and this is available on the web.

Back to the warning on existing companies. You will find this perhaps on your research. Addresses that do not match the 'phone companies numbers. Fantastic web pages and another funny 'phone number. Un-answered calls. No address on the web page and no names either! BEWARE!!
Finally as this is the only boom market supply and demand is at top notch. Lots of demand.... No supply! Even established companies are having supply problems.

Good luck though!

Swyn.