With winter in full swing how many have an alternative heat source? I was talking with sharon about all the fancy homes being built that depend on the power companies. What happens when all the power shuts down and it's cold out side. Pipes freeze,people freeze, everything freezes. Why build a big house for just a few people and not figure in survival. Why not build small and well instead?

-- Nick (wildheart@ekyol.com), December 17, 2000

Answers

The place we just moved to is 4 years old and "all electric". They make that sound like it's a good thing. We've had ice on the wires that looks like corn cob thick. What could they have been thinking? We get ice build w/ power outages pretty regular.

We have a small propane heater and the propane camping stove. Enough to keep you alive, but that's about all. Would have to drain the pipes if we lost power for any lenght of time in real cold weather.....Like now.

-- John in S IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), December 17, 2000.

As you well know there are few people with a 'countryside' mind set. People figure that 'they' will get the power on soon...after all they are a paying customer! Why worry about providing basics for yourself when you have money? After all they have a nice big expensive house...shouldn't they be first priority? I know this is a bit sarcastic but it really is how a lot of people think. People are too busy chasing the almighty dollar to be bothered with stuff like that. I'd a lots rather spend my time cutting up wood to be comfortable by my wood stove than earn the money to pay the electric bill on an all electric house. Not many folks have that attitude though.

-- Amanda in Mo (aseley@townsqr.com), December 17, 2000.

Good place for an update on my requesting a wood stove! Instead of $100 wood stove, he got a generator thinking his company would rent it and he'd make the cost back. Real bad storm out there tonight and I asked if the generator was ready to go: uh, nope and no gas even if it was. sigh What do people do when the electricity goes out for more than a day or two? Throw their decaying meat at the tree trimmers! Seriously, my first hubby trimmed trees along the power lines for a living and after a hurricane, parts of Mass were without power for a week and he had meat thrown at him. The people were swearing at them as they tried to get the limbs off the lines. It really bugged me that my hubby was out there risking his life (A whole crew died when the power company shut off the wrong grid) and these people were plain mean to him. I remember being 8 months pregnant wondering if he'd even come back. He was living off 4 hours of sleep every night, eating fast food, and sharing a motel room with three other guys. OOps, off on a rant-sorry

-- Epona (crystalepona2000@yahoo.com), December 17, 2000.

Amanda, Your not far off the mark, sarcasm or not. We've been here less than a month and the Queen and I have already decided to start saving our nickles for an outdoor wood furnace. I'm also trying to talk my buddy down to a reasonable price on the y2k wood stove he's never installed or used.

Wood is free around here for the most part. Most of the time all you have to do is ask. Or get a friend who works for a tree trimmer company. I left about 3 cords at the old house. it had a nice fireplace. Besides, I like to cut & split wood.

Have all the materials for driving a well next spring. Was going to put it by the garden at the old place last fall. Glad I got behind & didn't get it done!

Don't know enough about solar yet for electricity. Will probably be a long while before I get geared up for that, as I like to do all this stuff myself. That way when it breaks, I know how to fix it.

One thing at a time. Making priorities and setting goals. John

-- John in S IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), December 17, 2000.

John, the thing about solor for electricity is that none of the regular appliances work. You have to sell everything, fridge, washer, stove, all of em', and then get the ones for low energy consumption. During 98 and 99 I was seriously thinking of a way to do this, but ALL my appliances are wrong. I have all the info on solor and those small windmills that go on top of your roof for electricity, but it wouldn't work for us unless we started over from scratch. Which is what we are thinkin of doing. Not even hook up in the first place.

You can get internet with a small satalite dish, my brother has it. Someone in the magizine or on here has internet access without phone line or grid. We have a wood stove here, but need an outdoor one.

Charmaster's Embers is about 2500.00 and it uses forced air and not water pipes. You don't need a shed or anything, just sit it outside the house and blow the air in. I know it is not as good as having hot water too, but it is better than freezing if your power goes out. A welder friend of mine made an outdoor furnace for 500. using the water pipes. I asked him to make us one and he can't till the summer.

-- Cindy in Ky (solidrockranch@msn.com), December 18, 2000.

Cindy, one of the reasons I don't see us doing solar soon is (don't tell the queen this) I don't think we'll be here at this place too long. If that's the case I don't want to expend the $$$ on the infrastructure. I can wait. Appliances aren't a problem. This place came w/ 'em and they'll probably stay here.

This is one of several threads, along w/ the new issue, that have gotten me thinking a lot lately. John

-- John in S IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), December 18, 2000.

John,that's the problem we've had over the years-moving every 5 years or so.We pretty much stuck with woodstoves we could take with, and raised beds that we left to encourage the next inhabitants.

We've collected alot of information! But we did make the houses we finished as tight as we could.Put effort there to save you some energy money and be something you can point out when you go to sell.

And,as appliances are needed, choose an real energy miser.If you can't find them locally, go surfing. I just got a energy efficient dishwasher off the net that I've been trying to track down for years. Yeah, I know, a luxery. But I simply refuse to do dishes after a youth misspent cleaning up after a horde of hungry athletic siblings who ate constantly. Nick,despite being responsible for inspecting the kitchen facilities with a white glove when he worked, doesn't keep it clean in there.Kinda like the carpenter's house always needing repairs.

And it uses less water than handwashing. Hey,I measured!

Want to make your own outside furnace? Plans are available for the HAHSA unit at www.darbyindustries.com.

By the way,I've seen people hypertext website postings on the forum. How you do that?

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 18, 2000.

Sharon, The darby industries site has an extenda bed for trucks. Nothing else. Maybe it's not that one?

No idea on how to post up the links.

Would be interested in building a furnace. Maybe I'll post an inquiry about info.

The 5 year move about is a problem. It gets to be a habit after a while. I promised the family when we got here 6 years ago, we wern't going to make another cross country shot. If we move again. It will be another local move. Cold & snowy tonight. JOhn

-- John in S IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), December 18, 2000.

Our only heat source is our masonry heater. It does fine keeping the whole house (1600 sq. ft.) toasty. The power around here is not too dependable, especially in winter, so heating with wood and cooking with wood and/or gas is the best way to go. We do have a full walkout basement, but the house is banked into a very steep hill and it seems to stay just a little below 50 down there, even when it's in the teens outside.

-- Jorja Hernandez (jorja@color-country.net), December 18, 2000.

Since I am still in my planning phase, I don't have a great backup source. But I do have a gas fireplace that is lit with a match, not an electronic ignition. So, unless there is a problem with the gas, I have heat.

In the future, I would like to have a very well insulated, passive solar heated dwelling, in order to minimize any heating that I would have to do. And I would like to have a masonry heater -- but who knows what I will actually end up with. Unless I chuck it all and move to Hawaii, in which case I wouldn't need heat!

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), December 18, 2000.

OK let's try this- www.darbyindustries.com/hahsa That should get you to the site.

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 18, 2000.

Cindy: It just ain't so. You can operate ANY appliance off solar or wind produced electricity. The real issue there is cost and efficiency of the appliances.

-- john leake (natlivent@pcpros.net), December 18, 2000.

Our alternative heat source is the cental propane furnace. We only heat with the wood stoves(2). We have kerosene lambs in every room for backup light source. In reality we could not afford to heat this old home with propane for the entire season. Many good ideas here in this thread.

-- Joel Rosen (Joel681@webtv.net), December 19, 2000.

I didn't know that John. But 220 does zing the meter, you'd need allot of energy I would imagine. And if we move to start over, we will just sell all of these energy wasting things.

Here's a question on energy. Say you are off the grid. Outdoor wood stove for heat and hot water, solar and maybe small windmill on roof for lights and computer and such. I really don't want my wood cook stove inside as it clogs up my head,(I want an outdoor summer kitchen) so what do you cook on inside? And I know we would need to rig up something to pump water if we dug a well eventually at another place.

-- Cindy in Ky (solidrockranch@msn.com), December 19, 2000.

Cindy, I would think a small propane stove would work. Any gas stove can be adapted to propane or LP gas. Lots of real good "food for thought" here. john

-- John in S. IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), December 19, 2000.

Cindy, we bought a gas stove and had it switched to propane. Before we got our gas hot water heater, we used those small propane tanks, like the ones that come with a gas grill. We would use about 3 a year. With the hot water heater, we had to go to a bigger tank. I'm interested in solar power, but need more information too. Hope this helps.

-- Lena(NC) (breezex4@go.com), December 19, 2000.

Cindy in KY- you can get a bunch of info and ideas over at ASPI (Applied Science For the Public Interest) site over at Livingston Ky,outside of London,Ky. It's worth your while to make a little trip down there.Demo solar home,compost toilet,greehhouse,organic gardens,cordwood structure,electric car,Cordwood modified mobile home.They got alot to look at, and a library full of info. www.kih.net/aspi/ should get you to there website.

And,here's what we will be doing at the old house:

Homebuilt HAHSA outside hotwater wood furnace with infloor lines in concrete slab for heating half of house, then radiatiors for other half. This also provides winter hot water supply.Solar hot water heater,homemade for summer hot water.Backup Jotul woodstove in one half of house just because we already have it there in the old fireplace.Probably will use it on milder days when you just need a little heat up in the AM.

Remote composting toilet unit.No not an outhouse,although that is what is there. This house has never had running water.We will buy this unit,prob from Sunmar, bc we don't have the room in the crawlspace for the owner constructed unit.

Drilled well and electric already there,so we will stay on grid for lights and water pumping and refrigeration.Abt.$20/month

The MAIN thing is to get your house as tight and insulated as you can.Spend your money there,FIRST.The old house had not a spec of insulation or caulk in it.So now it does.Blew insulation in the walls, and put batts in the ceiling when we tore off the roof.Caulked every place we could.

Passive & active Solar not feasible for heatind & powering the the old house bc it is in a hollow and get little light in winter when you need it most.But that's also great feature in summer! Old house in 10 degrees cooler than trailer site, in summer,plus has great shade trees.

Wind power prob not feasible either,for same hollow reason.Not as windy down there either.But that helps cut down on winter energy needs,as well.

Now we do have a great windy site on the farm.It always blows there! How do we know? We have a tree stand there. Why do we persevere in hunting out of it? Buck Hill. 4 bucks taken out of it the last two years,with two more seen from it.EVERYBODY wants to hunt out of it, even if you do freeze your patooties off.But it's way too far from the houses to do any good windpowerwise.

Pond we had put in is spring fed and below house for emergency water, fish, dipping, irrigating the garden and enjoying the spring peepers.

Well, there's more we do, but that's enough for now.This is the 5th & 6th house we've worked on. Fixerupper Addicts.

For Lena in NC, you have a sister facility outside of Asheville.Long Branch Environmental Education Center. main.nc.us/LBEEC/ should get you to their page.

For Central PA, there is SEDACOG out of let's see if I can remember. I think it's in Winfield, south of Lewisburg.Don't know if they have a webpage.

And in western Colorado there is of course the Rocky Mtn. Institute of Technology.

It is great to be able to go to one of these places and see these things first hand, plus talk to the wonderful people there. So if you are close to any yourself, put it in your schedule to make it a daytrip

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 19, 2000.

Thanks Sharon, I can't wait to visit.

-- Lena(NC) (breezex4@go.com), December 19, 2000.

We are in the same league with Joel. Has anyone checked the price of propane this year? We heat with wood and have the propane furnace as backup. Right now we are cooking with propane and also heat our hot water with it. Refrigeration is electric. Most of the Amish in our neighborhood are building really neat ice houses and have ice all year long. (one of the real advantages to living in the northland- lots of wood and lots of cold to make ice) We have an artesian well that pumps enough for us and our livestock. We have lived here in the winter after an ice storm for over a week without electricity. We keep coleman lamps for use in the barn and kerosene lamps in each room of the house. Never had the computer before, and would really miss it if we lost it, but otherwise would do fine off the grid.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), December 19, 2000.

Sharon, found the stove on the 2nd try. Thanks, looks good. John

-- John in S. IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), December 20, 2000.

Nick and Sharon, Outdoor wood furnaces need electricity to run the pump and thermostats. We have a back-up generator that we can plug into in case of a prolonged power outage. We also have hot water heated basement slab and highly recommend it.

-- Peg (wildwoodfarms@hushmail.com), December 20, 2000.

Peg.You are right on needing electric.But hahsa has a gravity flow model that does not need any-don't know how well it does, though.

We have a old generator too,but I figure it won't start when needed!

If we had to, we could also hunker down in the one half of the house that will have the jotul for emergency backup.That little stove heats pretty well.I stayed there, before any insulation, and it was bearable.

I've also been on the prowl for a small wood cookstove to put in the other half,for winter cooking and backup,but haven't found the right one yet.

I pretty much have to go with outside furnace for primary heat bc of my athsma.Even ash cleanout inside affects me.Otherwise I'd be stuck with electric.No basement at this place.

The outside furnace will be located really close,like 3 feet, to the house in the remnants of an old stone foundation that probably was a smoke house.So we have the start of the structure.Walls are abt.18" rock. We thought we'd also put a shed on top,for a little heated workshop.

Lot's of plans.Right now we're still tearing out part of the back half and finishing the ceiling in the oldest half.Plugging away.

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 20, 2000.

We have a ventless propane heater with a 200 gallon tank as supplement / back up heat right now, but we just bought a slightly used Franklin wood stove for $40 (guy I bought it from said the wife wouldn't let him use it since it smoked too bad in the house. Why did it smoke so bad? Instead of buying an adapter to go from 6 to 8 inch pipe, he slit the 8 inch pipe and squeezed it down to 6 inch!) and will be installing it after the holidays (wife would kill me if I messed up her holiday hosting plans and made a mess in the house!).

For cooking, we have a propane campstove (with 20 propane bottles out in the shed), as well as the gas grill, and a charcoal smoker / bbq.

For lights, I have 1 propane lamp, about 100 candles, a couple dozen boxes of matches, 4 alladin lamps, and 2 keorsene lanterns. 5 gallons of lamp oil, and 5 gallons of kerosene in same shed as propane.

Solar hot water is in the plans, but probably not this year.

-- Eric in TN (eric_m_stone@yahoo.com), December 21, 2000.

Nick, good topic.

We built our bunkhouse with specs that maximize non-electric opportunities. For example, the building is ~15' x 20' with the axis of the long side running east-west. We have a shed roof with the short side on the north and the tall side facing south. We have transom type windows over big glass windows facing south. We put a porch along the front, with Lexan roofing over it (lets the light through and provides shelter from rain). I hang my laundry up under this roof. We insulated with something like R48 in the ceiling, and maybe R36 in the walls. We also insulated below the flooring.

Inside, we have a wood cookstove (circa 1936) and a double basin sink with a pitcher pump. The pitcher pump connects to two filters that collect 1) sediment and 2) other nasty stuff from our 1000 gallon water tank (which if you read another post I did this a.m., know is currently empty!!) The water tank collects rain run-off from our garage. We have a method of switching from gutters to the tank. Anyway, we have a small passive solar space with a backup wood stove for cooking and a sink that processes drinking water. The water tank also has a spigot for sending water to the garden and to the animals tanks. (Although the ewe tank has it's own water collection system off the ewe barn.)

If we lose power for a long time and then run out of gas (for the genset, which we bought mostly to run the fan on our wood stove in the house b/c it heats the rooms more thoroughly if on) etc., we can move out to the bunkhouse and sleep/cook, etc. out there. Two things we would like to do eventually: design a cold storage system off of this (a root cellar or ice house will do)and a MUCH better latrine than the edge of the porch!

I use the bunkhouse most of the time as my "office" (which means it has all my wool/spinning/? supplies in it and where I go when I am in the "doghouse") but I have to get it set up again for winter. Guess I had better get out of this chair and go do it!! Nice chattin' with you all....

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), December 21, 2000.

Sheepish, your bunkhouse sounds way cool! It appears to be even better insulated than the small space my son is in, next door to me. My house, at about five or six times as big, is really easy to heat, and keeps its heat all night pretty well. His cools off faster, since it's smaller, but it COOKS during the day, on those rare days of sunshine, here in sw oregon.

Are you interested in having gravity water to your sink, shower, etc in your bunkhouse? You can, you know. Since the water is collected on the roof, you can raise your tank, or put in another tank, higher than the sink, but lower than your collection point. If you plumb the sink and shower with slightly oversize stop valves, it will work well. I had a spring at my last place which was barely higher than my roof. I used one inch supply pipes, and got an old shower valve, with larger orifices than the new washerless varieties. I had plenty of flow, not with great pressure, but not bad. You can also skip normal shower control valves, and use ball valves. They aren't as pretty, but they are full flow, with no significan pressure reduction. That's what I used on my solar shower, outside.

Are you guys having a drought up there or something? The rivers looked way low, when I cruised over Thursday...

JOJ

-- jumpoffjoe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), January 07, 2001.

enjoyed reading all of your comments. im studing science passive and active solor engery, and i am glad to see these things put in to practice, thank you justin of w.v.

-- justin willam chambers (kphillips@citlink.net), April 23, 2001.

News flash: I've actually been looking at solar electric this week. It's not cost effective at all right now, since we get really cheap electricity. It is just beginning to get cost efficient though, in parts of California, and I suspect other areas as well, if there are rebates, and if your power costs are up over ten or fifteen cents per kwh. (and if you opt for a battery free system, and hook up directly to the power grid in place of the batteries)

But the bottom line is not always the only thing to look at. There is also the pride and satisfaction of doing your part to produce your own power as cleanly as possible.

If power rates go up as much as many folks are predicting, I am expecting that many more people will start getting with the solar program.

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), April 23, 2001.

HI, I Stumbled on your post by accident and thought i'd respond.i've been all electric and without power it's pretty bad.last year i built an outside woodheater.gto a recirculating hot water pump and a radiator grill to go in the duct work.the heater is a 500 gallon fuel oil tank wth a fire box welded to the bottom.i also ran a coil thru it for preheating our hot water.so far i've burnt about 5 loads of wood.(ford ranger size) our electricity bill went from 180 or so to 110-130,depending on how well everyone keeps needless items cut off.total cost was less than $700 including an 18 inch chain saw.presently looking for options to have power to run this system in the event of amajor power failure.i have a generator backup at present but don't like the cost of prolonged running.all the best chuck ps how do i signup to get this forem.thanks

-- CHUCK CASSEL (CJCASSEL@WEBTV.NET), January 28, 2002.

CHUCK, you've got the Countryside forum. To find it every time, go to http://www.countrysidemag.com , bookmark that or add it to your favourites, then follow the "forum" link. Bookmark the result of that as well. That gets you into an enormous forum on "homesteading". From there, there are four things you can do.

One is to read the current threads (simple - click and read).

Another is to page through to the end of the current threads, and find the "Older Messages" (also known as the "archives". There is an enormous amount of information in there - much of it good, some of it rubbish. "Older messages" are divided into categories: each category may have one or more or less hundred threads, each thread may have some tens of responses (or less). The saving grace here is that LUSENET (the system which maintains the forum) is one of the original forum softwares, and hence largely text-based (no big bandwidth- hogging graphics), and hence fast. HOWEVER, there is so much information that there is weeks of reading to absorb it all: be selective at first, but any time you have a question, search the "Older Messages" first. This avoids having the regulars having to answer the same question for the 20th or 200th time, and it makes you look good when you eventually ask a question saying "I've searched the archives, but...". Incidentally, as a traditional thing, LUSENET is so old that the term "Archives" doesn't show in any of the headings: thus it's good form to use "Older Messages" even though everyone else who's ever used any other forum software uses "Archives".

Another thing you can do is to "Ask a Question" (top line). PLEASE don't do that until you've looked through the "Older Messages".

A fourth thing you can do is to select "Recent Answers" at the top of the first page. That shows you the active threads. That, for instance, is how I found your addition to a thread that was started a V..E..R..Y long ago.

Another thing you can do (that's the fifth of the four) is to NOT do a search. LUSENET is so "original" that it doesn't have a search facility. Phil Greenspun (developer of LUSENET) never envisioned a forum having over one million and now rapidly closing on two million individual posts. What he did made it possible, but there are problems with searching it. To do that, one way (assuming Microsoft software) is to use the "CTRL" and "F" (for Find) key combinations, then search for a particular word in what's displayed on the screen. Another is to use a search engine (there is, in my experience, none better than google (http://www.google.com) and search on any of the words you want. If you want to more-or-less limit it to the "Countryside" forum, also include "greenspun" in the search words. This method also has the advantage of finding related forums: the "Countryside" forum is enormous, and it's generated offshoots as people have decided the restrictions imposed by having to limit themselves to a single major theme are not acceptable (read "politics" or "tantrum" or "overly restrictive"). However, they've generally started their offshoot forum under greenspun/LUSENET.

And, of course, when you're viewing a thread, you can also post an answer to it - you know that - you've done it already.

-- Don Armstrong (from Australia) (darmst@yahoo.com.au), January 29, 2002.