Halfapint Got Some Land

[Halfapint]

I figure this is where I'll continue my old post. I think I'll link it in my bio and update this first part with the important info.

The wife and I live on a 5 acre plot 20ish miles south east of Seattle. We are inheriting the land from my grandparents who currently also lives on it. They are both 89yo grandma still active and mobile grandpa is able to walk short distances. They built the garage and house by themselves on the weekend over a few years while the both of them worked at Boeing. Grandpa being a the way he is built everything to withstand nuclear blasts. It has central wood heat that when power is on is forced air, but when power is down it still is able to eat by rising through the vents. The house is a very open floor plan so that the heat can move around without getting blocked by walls or anything else.

Our plans for the future are to start removing a few of the large Doug Fir trees around the garden so we can start gardening. Currently we get about 4 hours of direct sunlight. We build an open end hoophouse last year when the pandemic hit. We have taken it down and are starting to rebuild the garden in a way we think will work better. We have currently removed the small raised mounds and made one large huglekulture mound where we have transplanted our herbs. We plan on building at least 2 more hopefully 3 inside the hoop house once we get a frame build for it.

Other projects are to get some wind turbines up into some trees and play with converting lighting in the house to 12v LED and to power a 12v pump for our rain water catchment. Eventually weld like to get one of the 10x10 connex containers and put in our generator, and a batter bank and try to be as power self reliant as possible.

I think that is it for now. I'll update more later and make some posts. It's weird starting this thread all over.

[boskone]

It may be weird, but I'm glad to see you still at it.

...even if the environment's different, I can avoid your mistakes with my own later efforts. 

[Halfapint]

It may be weird, but I'm glad to see you still at it.

...even if the environment's different, I can avoid your mistakes with my own later efforts. 

To be honest I gave up social media I got banned on facebook for the 12th time in 18 months. The last one was for a post on our fireplace in the trailer. Just a few picture and talking about my plans. Boom, "against community standards" appeal and under 2 minutes later, denied. So I'm done. This is where I'll be updating my stuff just as kind of a keepsake, like my social media was.

The next post once I get the pictures uploaded will be what got me banned. Our wood stove setup. Yep a wood stove in a trailer. Some (most) called me crazy!

[sheddi]

Good to see this thread continuing, I'm mildly jealous of your setup! My sister's got a 10 acre smallholding but for economic reasons - living where my job is - I'm on 1/8th of an acre ...

Other projects are to get some wind turbines up into some trees and play with converting lighting in the house to 12v LED and to power a 12v pump for our rain water catchment. Eventually weld like to get one of the 10x10 connex containers and put in our generator, and a batter bank and try to be as power self reliant as possible.

The economics might be different for you - you might have reliable strong winds - but here in the UK. even though we've got some of Europe's biggest and most productive large-scale wind farms, small-scale wind isn't generally viable. There was a lot of interest in it ~10 years ago and you could buy 5kW wind turbines from B&Q (our Home Depot) but the actual output of those turbines once installed was pitifully low.

Solar PV and even solar hot water, despite the UK's cool and cloudy climate, are both much more effective and continue to be installed on residential premises.

[Halfapint]

Good to see this thread continuing, I'm mildly jealous of your setup! My sister's got a 10 acre smallholding but for economic reasons - living where my job is - I'm on 1/8th of an acre ...

Other projects are to get some wind turbines up into some trees and play with converting lighting in the house to 12v LED and to power a 12v pump for our rain water catchment. Eventually weld like to get one of the 10x10 connex containers and put in our generator, and a batter bank and try to be as power self reliant as possible.

The economics might be different for you - you might have reliable strong winds - but here in the UK. even though we've got some of Europe's biggest and most productive large-scale wind farms, small-scale wind isn't generally viable. There was a lot of interest in it ~10 years ago and you could buy 5kW wind turbines from B&Q (our Home Depot) but the actual output of those turbines once installed was pitifully low.

Solar PV and even solar hot water, despite the UK's cool and cloudy climate, are both much more effective and continue to be installed on residential premises.

Thanks for the kind words.

We are on the west side of a downward hill. The good news is we always have winds. Most days it's a consistent 6-10, while most turbines start to produce power at around 8mph (I should say most commercially available), so 6 being the very low end we could have powe most of the day. I actually made for a friend using a very low RPM motor off a jetway (the thing you use to board an aircraft. It was only rated for about 200rpm. I built the turbine using 20' 1" steel tubing that was 1/4" thick walled. While it does bit move fast it produces a lot of power. It was also a vertical axis turbine which I think on a small scale much more efficient of a design.

Bit of a tangent but during the pandemic I actually started climbing trees to help an arborist friend. I've got 150' ish tall trees all around us. My throughly is to delimb one, go up about 120' and drop the top off it, and mound the turbine at to top of the tree, then run the power able down through conduit. Being DC I would either have to have very thick wire or try and get the turbine to price 48V or more so it can run the length I need down the tree to the power shed.

I would MUCH prefer solar. It's kind of a setup and forget thing. But like I said we are west side of a hill with 150' tall trees. We don't get sun to the majority of the property until 1145-1200 around the summer solstice, later the rest of the year. And even then we only get about 4 hours of direct sunlight a day. So sadly, for now, solar is just a dream. As is wind, but it's a goal to work toward!

[Halfapint]

I mentioned before that one of the first thing we did after living in the RV for a bit was order a woodstove. We moved in just after xmas 2019, so pretty much when it starts to get cold around here. We first were like lets heat this thing up and keep it toasty in here (wife is a reptile). Well after blowing through 3ish gallons of propane in a day, we backed off on the heat. We set the temp to 65, but even at that temp, and the electric "fireplace" going 24/7 we still were burning 2-2 1/2 gallons of propane a day.

I found a company in Canada that made woodstoves for RV's, boats, and tiny homes. I did some research and found overall positive reviews of the stove. It's the Cubic Mini Grizzly, and overall I'm happy with it. I'll explain down below the issues we have with it. We ordered it early January and it was delivered early February. The biggest issue is we didn't/don't want to cut holes in the RV roof to put the flue through. this thing is wired with so many lights and stuff we dont want to mess it up. Plus it's heavily insulated so we didn't want to mess that up. The second problem is this only has 2 windows that slide up, the rest open at the bottom and push out. So we removed the dinette, and set about making a cover for the window. Mind you this was middle of the cold rainy part of the winter and didnt have a lot of time to mess around. It wasnt pretty but it worked (pics below). Well June came and we finally got enough warm weather to take it out, so I set about working on a new area to put it. Came up with the ingenious idea of putting it in the emergency escape window at the back (totally safe I know!!!!). Well this is where it's at currently for our second winter in the RV. ad for our third winter, I've come up with something even more crazy, but you'll have to wait and see for it.
The first year we simply put concrete blocks in the RV and set the stove on those. The second year I had a plate of 3/4" steel cut and I welded legs on to it. Then drilled holes and put bolts through the plate and the legs to make sure it doesn't move.

Now to the issues we've had. This isn't a problem with the stove itself more, the way we use it. See this thing is small, the largest pieces of wood we can put in this is about 8" long and that has to go in diagonally. the optimal size for this is about 5-6" facing door to back of stove. The biggest problem with a small stove is the absolute lack of draft, it doesnt have enough combustion area inside to really draw air. Because of that, the manufacturer say's DO NOT put any bends in the flue. Well the only way to vent out a window is? Yep, put in bends. The only other issue is the amount of creasote the stove makes. It could be our fault because of the bends in the flue, but we have to clean this thing once or twice a week. If you dont, well you're living in a smokehouse then.

again, the stove has run flawless, and the only issues we've had are most likely self made. Though this coming winter. I hope to have rectified the problem, so standby.

You can see the fantastic job I did. Oh yes, peak safety here. Is that flue meant for multi fuel fires? Ha ha.... no. Yes, kitty was in time out.


For size comparison, the stove is about the size of my cats head. Joking around, those are standard cinderblocks.


Next we have the build of the stove stand. Do you notice a trend? Correct, safety 3rd or 12th in some cases!



here is where I realized I forgot to cut one of the legs at the correct angle so it's sticking straight down. It was corrected after picture was taken


And here is the much more professional installation of the flue pass through.


And our little festive corner during the holidays! Awwwww so cute!

[boskone]

Well, I suppose that's one advantage I'll have here: it rarely gets cold enough here for me to even turn on the heater.

I mean, excepting this March. 

[Halfapint]

Well, I suppose that's one advantage I'll have here: it rarely gets cold enough here for me to even turn on the heater.

I mean, excepting this March. 

It's usually high 30's low/mid 40's in winter. Rarely do we get colder than 20's. But it's cool enough that for long long periods of time. We started burning wood this year I believe in late September, and I've got an intermittent fire going this week because it's been in the 50's. So we burn wood 8-9 months of the year it seems in the trailer.

[boskone]

Sounds like your early summer temps are similar to our deep-winter temps. 

[Halfapint]

Sounds like your early summer temps are similar to our deep-winter temps. 

In that case you would be very interested in the dual AC units. Lemme tell you about them! I rarely use them. That's all I got

[boskone]

Sounds like your early summer temps are similar to our deep-winter temps. 

In that case you would be very interested in the dual AC units. Lemme tell you about them! I rarely use them. That's all I got

Oh, hell yea.  One thing I picked up on was that, around here, anything over about 25' you want dual units, 15k if possible.

With my probable model, it'll be a single 15k unit.

[Optimist]

I'm interested in how your hugelkultur mounds work out. I've been wanting to make some as a lot of this area has thin soil and junk trees, plus the main thing is I'm just sick of bending over all day in the garden.

Growing up we had a small wind turbine that was not nearly enough to power the place, but was pretty convenient as it would keep out batteries topped off if we couldn't get back to the house for a while for some reason.

[Halfapint]

I'm interested in how your hugelkultur mounds work out. I've been wanting to make some as a lot of this area has thin soil and junk trees, plus the main thing is I'm just sick of bending over all day in the garden.

Growing up we had a small wind turbine that was not nearly enough to power the place, but was pretty convenient as it would keep out batteries topped off if we couldn't get back to the house for a while for some reason.

So far so good. Our soil is only about 6" deep where that gardens are because under them is hard pan. So these mounds should really help give us some depth. They have kinda shrunk down, so even rough I've got herbs in them I'll probably be building them up a bit more. I'll make a post either today or tomorrow. We haven't had any real hot days, one or 2 in the 80's but when I went down there under about the first 1/2 of soil it was really moist. So that gives me hope that we won't have to water as much.

Wind can go either way, you really have to scale up. My cousin actually build is own, 3d printed the motor housing wound the copper, build the housing and blades. It's not great but it's a proof of concept. He's a hell of a lot smarter than I am and will probably bring him down here to help me build mine. I usually use large slow spinning (2-300 rpm) motors. That way you rely on the load and the slow nature of the motor to make sure it doesn't go crazy and spin too fast.

A buddy of mine is running his house off a turbine I built him. He averaged about 1.3Kwh and has a MASSIVE battery bank. He actually is using 6 or 8 of those huge forklift motors.

[boskone]

Have you built VAWTs or HAWTs?

[EBuff75]

Glad to see this thread being continued! Reading these sort of posts let me live vicariously through you, given that my current location is in the Detroit suburbs! Someday I'm hoping to be able to move to a nicer (larger) location, but for now I'll just follow along to get ideas for the future!

[Halfapint]

Have you built VAWTs or HAWTs?

VAWT, with the motor I used it was simple just a direct attachment of the pole. I put some bearings on the pole and guylies attached to the bearings for stability. Sadly I lost the pictures when my old phone was destroyed.

[Halfapint]

Glad to see this thread being continued! Reading these sort of posts let me live vicariously through you, given that my current location is in the Detroit suburbs! Someday I'm hoping to be able to move to a nicer (larger) location, but for now I'll just follow along to get ideas for the future!

Thanks! I'm glad you like it! Yeah for years I was living in downtown Seattle then the burbs. Now thst im out here it's so nice and relaxing. I'm busy as hell, but it's a busy I like.

[RoneKiln]

[
To be honest I gave up social media I got banned on facebook for the 12th time in 18 months. The last one was for a post on our fireplace in the trailer. Just a few picture and talking about my plans. Boom, "against community standards" appeal and under 2 minutes later, denied. So I'm done. This is where I'll be updating my stuff just as kind of a keepsake, like my social media was.

W.T.F.!?
Was this a specific group you were in that you were banned from? Or was this a normal post on your own wall and you were banned from Facebook as a whole?

I'm glad to see this saga continue here. I'm comfortable working at heights. If I don't have too much going on when you put up the turbine, I'd love to come down and help.

[Halfapint]

[
To be honest I gave up social media I got banned on facebook for the 12th time in 18 months. The last one was for a post on our fireplace in the trailer. Just a few picture and talking about my plans. Boom, "against community standards" appeal and under 2 minutes later, denied. So I'm done. This is where I'll be updating my stuff just as kind of a keepsake, like my social media was.

W.T.F.!?
Was this a specific group you were in that you were banned from? Or was this a normal post on your own wall and you were banned from Facebook as a whole?

I'm glad to see this saga continue here. I'm comfortable working at heights. If I don't have too much going on when you put up the turbine, I'd love to come down and help.

Fun story, it was on my own wall. They came back after their usual iron fist and said they made a mistake. They said the post would still be be taken down, but I was no longer banned. Well I made a comment on a farmer losing cattle to eagles and said, we should do what we did to wolves and eradicate them. Oops, that's against community standards as well. Well I got reinstated, then got banned again for a post I made 9 years ago.

All that in less than 2 hours. These were on my "wall" except the eagle post, which after review, was found to be against standards, then was overturned because of "context"

I'm not one to ever complain against immigrants, but they (Facebook) admitted that most of their English reviewers were non native speakers. They past a test, and they are considered proficient. Sarcasm isn't on the test. So if you make a smartass comment, expect to get banned. I've been banned so often that even though I can no longer request a review of my material they do anyways. But they always, and I mean ALWAYS will find a way to ban me again. This time for a 9 year old post. Last time it was because I said "hoe much did you pay for that, minus the Uncle Sam tax"

I was first banned because of the hoe, that's hate speech. Then after they realized it was a typo, they banned me again for the "uncle sam" which is racists. So banned for that.

[Halfapint]

Once a month we are hosting a little BBQ get together for friends and family on the property. We were showing a couple of friends around and we were down by the well. Well (heh) I noticed at the time there was a wet spot on the ground. I thought that's odd maybe its a spring coming up. Then earlier today it dawned on me, there's never been a spring, and the wet spot was about 40' from the well..... SHIT!

So yeah, went down there with the tractor and took the top foot or so off and broke up tree roots, started digging..... Houston we have a problem.



Could be worse, could be a huge section that burst, as it is it's actually the coupler that fractured. I'm guessing a tree root or something put enough force on it that it split. I ran down to the hardware store and they of course didnt have any schedule 80 1 1/4 PVC. They had some flexseal tape that I'm going to give a shot just for today and tomorrow so I can find if any of the other stores have some...... Great way to start my vacation.