Onfoot and his new RTV900 and snowblower!

That's one chilly looking turbine!!! Yours sounds and looks like a really great system, mine is a work in progress.</p>


I hear you about where to put the snow, this is our lowest snowfall year since we got here about 5 years ago. I have a Cat 416 backhoe to buck it back when the Kubota gives up.</p>


I'll e-mail you in a couple of days,I have to get my cousin to the airport in the early AM. I couldn't quickly figure out how to attach images I know I did it beforebut......</p>


Talk to you soon </p>


Wade</p>


</p>
 
Onfoot and Toothy:</p>


Youbring another dimension to the RTV Forum. Glad you are both here, as well as others, to share lifes experiences.</p>


Keifer, a RTV wannabe</p>
 
</p>
<div>Hello all


I was going to talk to Onfoot off board, but some of you seem to have some interest in our northern off-grid activities.</p>


Here is a picture of my panels, they are not quite finished yet, but I'm close. I'm building a house between where I stand and my panels starting this spring. That is Resurrection Bay in the background. The town of Seward is off to the right of the picture.</p>


Onfoot have you used your Tarm and heat tank through the summer yet? If so how often did you have to fire the Tarm to keep your domestic water up to temp? I am thinking of putting in a Temp cast masonry heater, with a pizza oven,as my main heat source</p>


I bought the camo model RTV with the atv tires, they were OK but I have a steep driveway, so I went for chains. The chains seem to get in between the tire lugs but are still very much superior to the tires alone. Chains may actually work well on the turf tires. If I were buying chains for it again, I would go for ones with the v-bar and make sure there are plenty of cross-links.</p>


As far a firewood hauling goes it does a great job. I built a bracket that fits in the steak bed holes to keep from throwing firewood through the back window. I also added a remote control winch to help with single handed log skidding. </p>


How are you liking your Proven? I heard they were noisy, but that could just be a case of people bashing other turbines? I went with a freestanding 3 leg tower from Anwireless. I'll probably build a 15-18 foot turbine in the future, the 10 foot 1.4KW unit made great practice. Does the Proven have a dump load that heats something?</p>


Wade</p>
</div>


</p>
 
Great pic! What a view! Thanks for sharing!</p>


Your panels seem to be well-situated. Like mine, they appear fixed permanently with south exposure. I found that it was considerably more economical and far less complicated to go with a fixed mounting and a few more modules than to have a tracker. However, I am able to tilt my panels on the Southern access, ranging from near vertical in the winter to about 40 degrees in the summer.</p>


With respect to the Tarm, before adding my solar thermal tubes, I could get two to three days of domestic hot water (dhw) from one good burn, depending of course on number of users, etc. Mind you, I have a bit of a drain on the dmw side in that, because the main bathroom is more than 80' from the heatsink, I have put in a dhw loop, with a small circulating pump operating on a timer to ensure that there is instant hot water when you turn on the furthest tap. This avoids wasting gallons and gallons of water (we have to haul our water from town, and store it in a 1500 gal. tank in the garage/utility/shop building), but does waste some heat, even though all the pipes are well insulated.</p>


Interesting about the Tempcast heater! We had initially planned to have a Tempcast masonry heater as well. Indeed, I have the footings for it under the space it would have occuppied in the great room. But economics were pressing in at that point and we ended up going with a lovely Vermont Castings stove in the greatroom. It actually works really well, though of course there is nothing quite like the masonry heaters!</p>


As for the Proven, I am shocked to hear it described as noisy! It is the quietest turbine I have yet encountered--with friends who have Whispers and Southwest Wind (the 'screamer' we used to call it). When there is a wind, you cannot hear the Proven over the sound of the wind in the trees. But what I really like about the Proven is its solid(!) construction. It is a heavy metal machine, with real (and easily maintained!) bearings and brushes and etc. Moreover, unlike any other of the turbines I investigated, it produces power no matter how strong the wind is. All turbines have some sort of governing mechanism to prevent overloading in heavy winds. For most this involves turning out of the wind and the loss of power generation (the power curves climb up with wind speed and then, at a certain point, abruptly drop off as the governing mechanism kicks in). But the Proven is a 'pusher' turbine, with the generator part facing into the wind and the blades on the downwind side. The blade speed is governed by the blades deforming into a cone shape. I have seen photos of Provens in 140mph winds with the blades almost on a horizontal plane--still only turning at 300rpm and still producing full power. As you can see, I am a Proven fan! (No pun intended!)</p>


I have dump circuit on the Proven, and planned for some electric elements in the heat sink to take advantage of it. But we do not get enough wind to make it worthwhile. So the charge controller will dump to a small heating element in the shop and, if the batteries are fully charged, eventually just let the turbine freewheel. Again, because of the governing mechanism, this works OK.</p>


Finally, agree with you about chains. I have the worksite tires. They have an aggressive tread, but nothing works like chains.</p>


Fun to compare notes! I have a brother in Wasilla and a bro-in-law in Palmer, so maybe can get down your way someday.</p>


Cheers!</p>


Onfoot</p>


P.S. Aerial photo of our spread below.</p>


/cs/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.36.14/Aerial-of-Homestead.JPG</p>
 
</p>
<div><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Arial;">


My panels are fixed at about 75 deg. I figured that would make the most of our winter sun and I'm hoping there will be plenty in the summer. I can modify the mount easily to drop the angle if need be.</p>


About the water have you considered the roof? I'm putting a 12,000 gal tank in the basement. The neighbors have drilled 200 ft ad gotten 1/2 gpm for about 8K. I didn't like the sound of that and am going to try the roof first, the creek second and the drill last. It might wind up being a combination of the first 2 and some hauling.</p>


I really wanted a Tulikivi but the prices are a bit scary. With the temp cast I can do most of it myself.</p>


The Proven sounds great. I hear you about the Whisper/helicopter. I'll check them out if my home built unit turns out to be too much trouble.</p>


What kind of batteries did you go with? I went with Rolls 1350Ah 4 volt units. I have one that's not quite up to snuff. Out of 12 batteries it's the only one with the date punched and the only one that's always low.</p>


The arial shows a really nice spot. Our trees are a bit more jungle like but it looks similar.</p>


Looking forward to seeing you.</p>
</span></div>


Wade</p>
 
12,000 gallon tank? That is quite the storage capacity! You might want to think about using some of that for solar heat storage. I know that there are some new homes being constructed in Ontario with effectively a swimming pool-sized heat sink underneath them, very well insulated. They collect heat all summer and then use the stored heat to keep them warm all winter. You should talk to my solar heat guy, Chris Weissflog at EcoEnergy (www.ecoenergy.ca and chris@ecoenergy.ca). Tell him that Barrett sent you! :-) If I was doing it over again, I would give serious thought to this option.</p>


Drilling wells in this neck of the woods is a risky operation. Easy to go 300' with no water and drilling costs as much as $100 per foot, whether or not you end up with water. So a no-brainer when it comes to well or hauling. I have a 300 gal. tank on my old F250 that takes all of 2 minutes (literally) to fill up at the firestation in town. They have a high pressure outlet and I have a key from the city to access it (a common arrangement) for which I pay $35 a month for up to 8000 gallons a month. My son (whose house is also on the property) never use anything like that much water. When I get home, I have a 5hp pump to with banjo fittings on all the hoses, so it is not more than 5-6 minutes of work to unload the truck.</p>


I simply get water when I need to make a trip to town, typically on Sundays as a part of our church run. So it really adds nothing to the workload. And the tank, pump, and assorted hoses cost less than $1000. Lots of folks in Whitehorse have water delivery, with commercial truck coming and filling your tank as often as you need it. But they wanted $200 a trip for me--so again, a no brainer. The $35/month we pay allows both my son and I to get all the water we want/need as we want/need it. Have thought about roof water, but we do not get enough rain or snow to make it viable. Yukon is semi-arid climate, officially. I could pump water out of the river, of course. But too much trouble with the firestation being so convenient. You get a lot more rain than we do!</p>


Oh yeah--batteries. I have 24 2v. Surrette KS27 lead acid batteries (1708 AHr). I am marginally happy with them. There are some new Surrettes that I wish had been available 6-7 years ago! (2KS33PS--3426 AHr for 100 hours) My system is powering two houses, ours and our son's. In winter we can go about 20-30 hours between generator cycles if there is no wind and no sun.</p>


Your 75 degrees may work fine. It's a bit of trial and error--so good that you can adjust. But you may find it worthwhile to explore putting some kind of hinge on the bottom and a means of adjusting the height.</p>
 
12,000 gal, I know, but the wife said there is no way she wants to run out of water.</p>


Your hauling option seems fairly easy. </p>


As far as using it as a heat storage tank, like you said we get more rain than you do and that means many more clouds.</p>


I'm hopeing to get more time between run cycles on the gen. We are building with power consumption in mind at every step.</p>


The panels have the hinge already. I just have to make sure I can lower them without droping them. In the summer we get a daily breeze from the south in the afternoon and from the north in the morning.</p>


Wade</p>
 
One thing about solar thermal is that they work even on cloudy days, picking up the infrared. But talk to Chris. The biggest issue typically is having someplace to store the excess heat that potentially is generated.</p>


As for gen cycles, I was hoping for more, too. But with two houses and such, we rarely are drawing less than .3 to .6 kW, and often more like .7 or .8. Mind you, the generator typically will not come on at all between mid March and mid September. So I don't complain. Much.</p>


And my raising and lowering my panels is a two-person job.</p>


I am jealous of your wind! :-)</p>


Onfoot</p>
 
Hey Onfoot...been following this thread with great interest. Although I live in a conventional dwelling eg..hugh oil/electric billswith heating costs augmented by a couple wood pellet stoves, I'm intrigued with theOff Grid systems and the way they function. Did you say .6 or .7kw. Heck I think my distribution panel (200 amp) uses this alone just sitting there. What means do you use to transfer the heat from your"sink" into the living area. Also things like stoves, washers tv's etc consume the juice. Whats the off grid solution to these power pigs.</p>


Finally, Thanks for the welcome onmy new post</p>


Kanook</p>
 
Another Canajun, eh? I figured Kanook had to be a Canuck! :-)</p>


Glad to encourage your interest in all matters off-grid. Was just down in the electrical room (batteries, inverters, charge controllers, etc.) and was pleased to see the demand down to .2kW--best I have seen in a while. As I have indicated in this thread, we power two houses from the system. And we have been very careful to do all we can to reduce loads. So, for example, all our lights are the new low wattage flurescents or LEDs and so on. And while we have all the 'modern conveniences' like microwaves, toasters, coffee makers and such, we are quite careful how we use them. So the coffee maker, for example, is the kind that brews into an insulated carafe instead of sitting on a heating element.</p>


And our stoves are gas stoves and our clothes drier is propane (though hardly ever used). We have a dishwasher and each house has an electric refrig, but all are very efficient, 'energy star' appliances and we tend to be careful about when we run them--either when the generator is running (so not pulling on the batteries) or when the sun is bright. But there are inevitably a number of background loads that tend to demand some power. There are the 'ghost loads' of electric clocks (we have a couple) and the display on the stove and the wireless router and etc., each of which only draws a tiny wattage but draws it 24/7 and it adds up. There are also a number of 1/25 hp circulating pumps in my heating system (7 at last count) which take some power and the 1/3hp water pumps for each house. So it all adds up, even though we have been exceedingly careful and weighed every contributor to the load. But it can be managed with a bit of thought and planning.</p>


Our objective was to have an off-grid house that did not 'feel' like an off-grid house to those who visit. So if you came you would not notice anything out of the ordinary unless you were paying attention (and got my little lecture about not leaving lights on if you did not need them!).</p>


With regard to transfering heat from the sink to the living area, we heat the house with in-floor hydronic heating--pex tubes running under the floor. The heat comes from the copper coil heat-exchangers in the heat sink (photo earlier in this thread). So when a thermostat calls for heat, one of the circulating pumps kicks on and water is circulated through that loop (there are four zones, including one for the 1000 sq.ft. above the garage), drawing heat from the heat sink as it passes through the 100+ feet of copper coil in the heat sink. Altogether we are heating about 3800 sq ft if you count the garage space (which one must do, as it is heated too!). Below is a picture of the 'great room', showing the space and the flooring. It also shows the Vermont Casting stove that we tend to use every day for the cozy warmth that it provides. (And taken in the wee hours of the summer, explaining the Norfolk Pine next to the woodstove!)</p>


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