I learned the hard way during some recent insulation work that a pair of scissors is painful.
The standard method of using a utility knife on a hard surface is good if you have plenty of room.
An electric meat carving knife is much better and quicker. It’s light enough to use with one hand while you use the other hand to hold on to the insulation.
In my last post, I shared my brother’s journey to upgrade his off-grid home from the multi-decade-old original solar system to a new one that meshed with his needs in the modern age. But what did he do with the old panels?
The trouble with utilizing ancient solar panels is that they’re so much less effective than new ones that it often makes more sense to just replace them than to add them into a larger array. The panels don’t have to end up in the trash, though.
Instead, Joey came up with a clever hack that takes advantage of the panels with almost no supporting equipment. What’s the solution? He uses the old panels to pump water from his spring up the hill into a pair of large tanks. The result is free water pressure combined with enough storage to carry him through the dry summer and fall.
The system starts when water gravity-flows from Joey’s spring into a 500-gallon tank. On the right, you see the original spring box, which he’s bypassed.
Inside the plastic tank is a float switch and a pump intake. The switch turns on the pump when water reaches a certain level then turns it off when the water drops to another level. Zero management!
Of course, the pump is fueled by the sun. That doesn’t happen quite by magic, though. Instead, Joey made a pump house out of an old cooler that keeps everything dry while also channeling noise away from the house. A more traditional electric box connects the solar panels and pump.
Water is pumped up the hill through pex tubing and into two 550-gallon tanks connected together. Then the water gravity-flows back down whenever Joey turns on his faucet.
The hill just happens to be high enough to provide 30 PSI!
Joey installed his old solar panels on swivel mounts. Now, he wouldn’t bother — solar panels are so cheap, he doesn’t see the need to add fancy infrastructure to soak up every last bit of sun.
Otherwise, his water system is running perfectly! It’s even cat-approved.
How do we cut up those long wood mill discards in just the right size for firewood?
We now use a fence post next to some porch steps.
Anna pushes the board up against the fence post where I cut a piece that drops straight down.
Slowly but surely we are filling up the greenhouse woodshed.
Remember my brother, Joey’s, underground solar house? Thirteen years later, I dropped by for a tour to see how it’s aged…and been reenvisioned.
Five years ago, Joey took out the old panels and installed a 1-kilowatt solar array.
It cost him about $2,000 at that time to pay for the panels and racking to install the new panels on the roof, although he notes that prices have gone down considerably since then. (More on that later.)
This allowed him to add on a satellite internet system (1.2 kwh) and a fridge/freezer (0.5 kwh).
A couple of years later, he spent $3,500 on four lithium-ion batteries, in part to bring him up to speed for the new panels and in part to prepare for further upgrades. Since then, he’s started adding in all of the associated wiring for upgrade part 2, the goal of which is to let him add a hot-water heater (6 kwh), an electric vehicle (variable, depending on how much you drive), and an induction stove (2 kwh) while never again dealing with low-power days.
The new system, which he hopes to bring online within a year or two, will involve completely covering the roof in solar panels (a roughly 10-kilowatt array). The solar panels aren’t anywhere near the most expensive part since he’s planning on buying them by the pallet-load, which will cost anywhere from $2,700 to $5,200 for 25 to 30 panels adding up to 10 kilowatts. He hasn’t pulled the trigger on this because, as we learned, delivery of a pallet to a rough-drivewayed homestead can be tricky! (Plus, he needs to change out his roof first.)
Other parts of the new system include about $500 on wires, $550 on charge controllers (about which, more shortly), $1,000 on combiner boxes/breakers/lightning arresters, and a whopping $3,200 on roof mounts. Total estimated cost (including the recently purchased batteries): $13,500.
(Of course, the full math also includes the federal tax credit he’ll get back as well. In some areas, there are )
Sounds like a massive investment, right? That price tag still represents a huge savings over hiring an installer to come in and build the system. Joey estimates the installer cost would have been at least double what he plans to pay.
Joey wanted me to mention that his choice of charge controllers is very off-beat. He loves living far away from civilization, where birds and crickets are the only noises he has to deal with. He wasn’t willing to disrupt that tranquility with the usual charge controllers, which run a fan constantly.
Instead, he chose a cheap Epever charge controller that’s silent…but only handles one or two kilowatts. For upgrade 2, he installed more controllers, but will still lose half his power.
He’s okay with this because it ensures that, on a cloudy winter day, he’ll still have enough power. Since solar panels are so cheap, it’s now okay to overdo that part of the system.
During the first upgrade, Joey changed over from a 12-volt to a 24-volt system, which required him to change out the lights in the house. (You can decide whether you’re running a 12-volt, 24-volt, or 48-volt system based on the way you wire the batteries.) The benefit of a 24-volt system is that it lets him use industrial automation equipment, versus the automotive equipment you’d use with a 12-volt system. It also lets his charge controllers handle twice as many panels as they could otherwise.
I’m so glad you asked! That’s the topic of another post. Stay tuned!
If you’re on our email list, you’ve probably seen a lot of these photos already. But the truth is, I’m about to leave Mark holding down the fort while I travel south for yet another mini-vacation, so I don’t have much homesteading substance to share this week. Instead, I thought you might enjoy fun photos from other mini-vacations instead.
Starting with, above and below, Mark and my houseboat experience in Canada — more stressful than expected, but beautiful and mind-expanding.
Below: Creekwalking with my older sister in the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky. The Rock Bridge Trail is not to be missed!
Totally out of order, the image below is from this past Saturday in which I attended a Centennary Scottish dance ball in Dayton (bringing along six of my students who’d just started dancing this year and who aced their first event!). No, you can’t find me in the picture — I was behind the camera.
The next shot is from a writing retreat I attended in the Hocking Hills this spring. The photo was taken with a timer while drenched through after a downpour — the only way to get those busy trails to myself.
Going further back in time, in March Mark and I met up with Mark’s cousin and cousin-in-law-to-be on Lake Erie. Birding the Magee Marsh boardwalk (birdwalk?) was almost as good as spending time with such good friends.
More recently, Mark’s been on multiple mini vacations learning to sail in Cleveland. But the image below is from close to home as he takes those lessons to the dinghy scale.
And here I am photographing mushrooms in the amazing Heart’s Content old-growth grove in the Allegheny National Forest. If you’re a mycophile, this place is not to be missed!
Looking back at all of these adventures fills me with gratitude and makes me so aware of how much I’ve changed since starting this journey. I’m gradually learning that an imperfect garden combined with a joyful life is far better than vice versa.
You’re all quite clever, so I’m sure you’ve figured that out already. Which brings me to my question — what are you grateful for right now?
We started cutting up and stacking our neighbors’ wood-mill throwaways.
A new problem cropped up. How to stack unconventional sized firewood?
This is what we came up with.
Is there a better way to stack these pieces of wood?
When Mark and I went to pick up more waste slabs of lumber for firewood, I talked our neighbor into letting me pick his brain about what it’s like to own a homestead-scale sawmill. I figured several of you might dream of setting up your own operation, so here are his top tips:
Richard admitted that he started out trying to pay back the cost of the sawmill selling beautiful wood products. However, he soon decided the sawmill was better as a hobby rather than a business.
The biggest benefit he finds to sawing his own lumber is being able to save live edges and be an artist in a way you can’t when working with industrial wood. It’s also a plus that the sawmill allowed him to build most of the required infrastructure. Speaking of which…
The sawmill itself, of course, requires a shed.
Then there are the boards, which need to be stacked in a drying building for a year per inch of thickness. (Be sure to plan the length of this shed around the length of the boards you intend to mill if you’re going for peak efficiency.)
Next up, there’s the planing area, which Richard prefers to keep in the open air but still under roof to prevent dealing with massive amounts of sawdust inside.
Finally, he has a workshop where he turns homemade boards into stunning works of art. He’s also been known to utilize the local makerspace when he doesn’t have all of the tools he needs at home.
Richard told me that most new sawmill owners probably get started thinking of the beautiful things they can create. But it’s also essential to plan for the inevitable waste products.
In addition to the slabs he gives to us for firewood, Richard turns his massive pile of wood shavings into top-notch mulch in the garden. Next, he uses small pieces of wood to create cutting boards and butcher blocks, arranging different colors and patterns to create works of art.
In the end, there’s actually not as much waste as you’d think when you try to use every part of the log.
Finally, Richard mentioned that owning a sawmill can be an expensive, noisy, space-consuming hobby, so it’s essential to get the whole team on board. He won his wife over by using the wood to create beautiful interior furnishings, by donating finished products to be auctioned off for a cause they both believe in, and by creating lots of gifts that build connections with family and friends.
I chose 2×3 over 2×4 boards in an effort to make our caterpillar tunnels lighter.
We now know this makes them a little too heavy and prone to decay faster than expected.
I was able to fix the problem with some brackets but needed a whole new design.
The new version takes advantage of the light and strong steel rails used to support ceiling tiles in big buildings.
I also decided that a smaller structure is easier to move and less prone to damage.
Stay tuned for a more detailed post on the smaller and better caterpillar tunnel after we’ve finished driving it around the block a few times this year.
In 2012, Mark and I invested in two solar flashlights for camping and power outages. They lasted an amazingly long time, but eventually the batteries stopped holding a charge. Rather than crack open the plastic to try to replace the batteries, I decided to see how much a decade has improved the technology.
After poking around on Amazon for a while, I settled on the TOMETC Solar Power Bank. It had a lot of good reviews, a large battery capacity, and a large solar panel…all for under twenty bucks. Sounds like a winner, right?
Wrong! I’m guessing something about the frosting they put over the solar panel to waterproof it blocks light. Whatever the reason, two full days in the sun resulted in absolutely no change in the charge level of the battery. When I dug deeper into the reviews, it turned out I wasn’t the only one who had this problem, so it wasn’t a defective unit.
Meanwhile, the flashlight is way too bright for what I usually use it for (reading in my tent). An overpowered light drains the battery faster than it should. I estimate I got about eight hours of use out of a full charge. To cut a long story short, I sent this one back.
Next up, I decided to return to the model that served us so well for eleven years. Unfortunately, the original flashlight had been discontinued, but HybridLight has a replacement available. Their offering doesn’t look as flashy as some of the alternatives and costs $10 more than the competition. But they wisely included the option of a low-light setting so I won’t drain the battery bank too quickly while reading and their longevity track record speaks for itself.
How did the actual flashlight do in the field? I wasn’t as thrilled as I’d hoped to be. On low, I estimate I’ll get about twelve hours of use out of a full charge, far less than the fifty hours they promise but still better than the competition. Meanwhile, a day in the sun did little to top the battery up.
I’m starting to suspect that my goal — being able to set a flashlight in the sun for the day then read for a couple of hours at night using that solar energy — is a pipe dream. But perhaps I just haven’t found the right solar flashlight yet. Have you tried a different model with better results?
(For the record, I decided to keep the HybridLight flashlight. It works well charged from the wall and will presumably help us through power outages if left in the sun to trickle charge when grid electricity is available.)
We got a late start on our deck grown tomatoes.
A bit of a mix up on which variety this is but I really like the sweet taste and easy harvest.
This is the second year our deck tomatoes seem to be healthier than the ones we planted in the garden.
I like to split them down the middle to add a sweet dash of color to our salads.