Looking to see how our household can stop supporting the fossil fuel shitshow. I've seen enough.
Discussion
Rooftop solar? Composting? Probably many small things that you can do 😁
We compost, already.
Check out wood pellet stoves. They are pretty easy to intall and operate compared to traditional wood stoves.
In Alaska, one ton of pellets costs $400. I would assume that tbey are cbeaper everywhere else.
That produces 16M BTU's of heat. That's roughly equivalent to burning 115 gallons of diesel.
the dilemma is typically energy storage and stability.
You can use an electric car as storage.
yeah
just thinking long term
batteries have to be replaced—pricey
;_____;
Everything carries costs. Still seems better than a generator and makes the solar more useful.
I think a lot of people psychologically rate their ongoing traditional energy expenses as 0 and or not subject to inflation.
Around here grid electric is not free and inflated 10% or more a year for years.
"Green" tends to have 1 off big costs compared traditional energy sources which kill you with 1000 paper cuts.
Set a reasonable time horizon and cheap suddenly swaps places.
as you provide your own panels and cabling and batteries, you also must provide the maintenance, cleaning, upkeep, and replacement.
Well, my husband has a master's degree in electrical engineering, my BIL is a mechatroniker for a big production line, my son is studying informatics, and I am a logistician and informatician. Getting to install and maintain the equipment is one of the selling points. They already did my BIL's house, after all.
That's why there are so many electricified houses out here, in the country: we have lots of land, lots of roof, and lots of techies.
We're the people other people hire, for this stuff.
nice ^_^
A lot less maintenance in $ out of my pocket than my oil furnace over the course of a year.
Keep in mind it is possible to get some pretty amazing guarantees on solar equipment if you hire out.
no doubt. ^.^
it's just an astonishing number of people seem to think that renewables are "free" after the initial setup and don't consider the costs to keep the systems on top-performance.
it's difficult to gauge how aware everyone is on these topics, but #nostr has a smart bunch of users :3
Indeed. I'm a compulsive researcher. Took 2 years from "I wonder" to go live date on my system.
If you do it right you will be amazed how good it can work out for you long term. Of course if you get a lease from the door knocker guys you'll also be amazed how bad it can work out for you both short and long term.
that last part...
💯💯💯
I think that a solar water heater is the way to start. I know we have more sunshine here but still, i think it is a must do.
On a personal level, having a battery bank will be one of the largest expenses.
In order to know how many amp-hours of battery you will need, you need to look at your consumption.
Once this analysis starts (knowing how much draw each appliance has), you might realize that some usages can be obtained without electricity, like using a wood stove. A good item to replace is an electric hot water heater. Heating water 24/7, for the rare instances that it is needed, is ridiculous.
Aside from determining your storage (battery bank), you'll need to determine sources. Solar is great for areas with frequently clear skys. For people that are frequently under cloud cover, wind is a better option. Vertical axis wind mills can also act as a wind-break for garden areas. If you have any running water, a small hydro-power setup can be used. All of these, including bicycle power, can be fed into the same battery bank.
For other areas of energy use, where a motor would be more practical, diesel engines didn't use petroleum until Rudolf Diesel mysteriously disappeared. And, although there's too much propaganda from Big Oil against alcohol for most people to take seriously; it really is a completely viable option that could be obtained and used on the same homestead. You can even use these non-petroleum motors to top off batteries.
Most alternatives to the status quo will be more expensive, and few people are willing to trade that for the freedom it brings.
Energy independence changes everything.
This guy Energies!!
We actually have a large, sunny property with a massive lawn and a huge sun-facing roof, so we're thinking a heat pump and solar panels. We have passive-solar, already, so the water is prewarmed, at least.
We have a big water boiler, but we have radiators and floor heating, that use it.
We have a woodshop stove with a warming plate, in one room, but we might replace that with a modern cooking-oven with glass doors. We have a free source of wood (our relatives own a forests), but not for enough wood to heat the entire house. We just have the stack for the oven.
We also want a home battery and a plug for an electric car in the garage.
You should be able to do this pretty easily and it will be very energy efficient and free to run but will probably only raise the interior temperature by an 80:20 type ratio of what you feel comfortable with so you'll want to top it up with the wood burner occasionally as well. Think of the ground heat pump as "baseload".
Yeah, my BIL has a heat pump and a wood fireplace, and he occasionally needs the fireplace. Winters aren't very cold here, anymore, and modern German houses are bizarrely energy-efficient.
The stove is in a half-finished basement room we want to turn into a den. It warms the basement, which means the main floor doesn't need as much heat. And we barely have the heaters running on the top floor.
Even though you have a basement I would still run the floor heating element through the ground floor, I think it will be tricky otherwise.
I am a bit jealous since here we have only air to air heat pumps, standard for Mediterranean because mostly used for cooling rather than heating but much less energy efficient than ground to ground.
It's good to diversify though and have a number of different solutions that can overlap instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, even if any one solution doesn't provide 100% coverage of your total needs.
the forest handle? -> wood standard