I have several wants that I feel are closer to needs for what I expect for my off grid home/farm.
The obviuos things such as solar water power, solar electric and wind I will get into at some depth. I will say at the outside of this project I have been reading about off grid living for several years now and have lived aboard my boat. This by no means has even givin me the insight to take this project on with out building and testing each system.
I have two people that have elected so far to help me construct and live at the (compound) as its beeing refered to. We can only hope that fox news does not reach the farm (compound).
I have decided to try and supply my self with as much substance as possible and maintain my self employment off the farm. I have priced out green houses and looked at many sizes of green houses but have yet to determine my requirments. My guess so far is that a 30ft by 90ft green house with (MTD) Matt trickle down solar panels will just about fit my bill. I may be looking at a green house that is expandable depepnding on the budget at that point.
The house on the farm will be of the earth-in style facing south on a sloped hill side bank. My plan design is 3000sqft home connected to a large walk in freezer refridgerator as well as a indoor swimming pool that will second as storage for the in floor heating water tank. Again the house will be MTD solar panel heated. The house will be earth covered on the roof and sides except the south facing side which is the entrance side. I'm currently working the math out on the mtd system heating the pull then the pool water heating the pex flooring. Some numbers i have come up with so far look promising. the pool is going to be between 25,000 gallons and 35,000 gallons. I found a figure that i belive is correct on water and BTU's. One gallon of water heated 1F is 8.3 btu's. The earth in home should have a average temp of say 55F to as mauch as 60F from what I have read. At 25k gal of pool water raised to 85F holds 17,637,500 btu's and at 35K BTU's thats 24,692,500 btu's. with out question this is a lot of stored heat and the oppropriate temp for pex floor heating as well as swimming pool water for actaully swimming in. After researching the different ways to store water for solar heating I believe that as far as storage tanks go a swimming pool is very much in the same cost range if installed by the home owner. I'm still trying to figure out how to get a idea of how much BTU's the home will need to maintain an average temp of 65 to 70f. My assumption so far is to take a room in the home and use the BTU rating from say the electric heater that is rate for that room size and then install enough pex flooring tube to release that many btu's. of course this is taking into account the temp variotion between the rooms earth in average temp and the storage waters temp. So if the house is 55f and the storage pool water is maintained at 85F that gives a differential of 30f. using the smaller pool number of 25k gallons that gives me 249 usable btu's per gallon of pool water that is above the 55F unheated room temp. for a total of 6,225,000 usable btu's that could be radiated from the pool water to the house aprox. at this point i have no idea of the houses heating requirments but lets say it needs 50k btus per hour. Thats 1.2 million btu's in 24 hours and having 6,225,000 btus available it looks like the house could have more than one day of heat stored if in complete darkness. i realize it actaully is much bigger and longer than that but I'm not adding in the pools losses to teh outside or the sunshine heating the pool during the day time which according to MTD info can heat the pool to way more than 85f if needed. it looks like if needed it can be heated to 160 plus F possibly in good summer sun and winter sun should bring temps around 100 to 120F. The pool itself just like the rest of the structure will be foam insulated between the concrete and the earth to give a maximum R value. The roof and walls will have earth on the outsides as deep enough to avoid the freeze line at 2ft to 4ft thickness or more. The front of the home wiil be very heavy mass concrete or brick to absorb the suns radiation. Since windows are the largest losers of btus the home will have only south facing windows that will not be overly large to stop as much BTU lossage as possible. If you want sunshine open the shades in the pool room or go into the green house i figure.
The barn is going to be about the same as the home in design and heating. I believe happy animals are made from cool drinking water and being warm and cozy in the winter and cool in the hot summer time. Since its not practical to install a pool for the farm animals (except my favorite sheep). I am hoping to use those inexpensive plastic barrels that are 55 gallons and build into the back of the barn a actaul place for them to sit from one end of the barn to the other with double stacking them as a possibilty. The barn is going to have fairly low ceilings to help control heating in winter as it gets very cold. I dont plan on horses in this barn or any other large animals or i should say tall animals. the horses will be in a seperate barn whcich will be smaller in over all size and set up just for them. always keeping in mind climate control for all buildings and animals. The water system and feeding system will be automated with augers and float switches with dump valves on the drinking water to keep the water clean and fresh. I have used automated feeding systems with my dog and have seen the results of perfect health with control of the diet with feeding amounts and times. Its quite amazing and will be fun to build as i am going to copy a design i use now that i purchased a few years back. Goats, sheep, hens, roosters, giant rabbits, maybe ostrich and or wallabees? i think i'll revolve the animals as we harvest to try my hand at ones i have not raised.
Were just not sure on the shop size but we have been thinking along the lines of using ecology blocks and mudding them up as a standard concrete block building. 2ft x 6 ft x2ft and weigh about 2k lbs i believe. Then just poor a floor to the block wall in concrete and build some large insulated doors and a steel roof with two part foam sprayed insulation. Heat this building with a waiste oil furnance using the sanders system which is on this web site. solar just cant keep up with 10f temps and guys bring in and out track hoes dozers tools etc. the sanders can put out more than a thousand degrees in a huge btu delivery for a fast recovery of shop temps. Not to mention welding fans running just to clear the air.
I'm up in the air on the water pump but not to overy worried on what ever i decide. I like the idea of wind mill powered systems and the solar? the wind seems to be where i'm leaning as i read about how many years these systems go with no maintence and they seem to deliver a nice volume and i believe the could keep up with me once i have all my storage tanks filled. Every foot of elevation your water line drops you get .433lbs of water pressure so this will be taken into account and will most likely be a bit high so a pressure regualtor will be added to the water main. Volume will be good in a 1" main line and 50 psi.
