Posted on 02/08/2011 7:55:56 AM PST by MsLady
My hubby and me are thinking about going solar. Basically because we feel society is breaking down and things are getting very unstable. Obama seems to be h*ll bent on making our lives more costly to the point of ruining everything. And because we like the idea of being as independent as possible.
At any rate, we live way up north. Snow levels usually run 200" or more. Long winters from oct. through march/april. We probably have seen the sun 2 or 3 times since the beginning of the year. Lots of cloudy days from about dec. till feb/march. I wanted to know if anyone had experience with them, especially if you live in the north.
We will be building our own.
I don’t have it anymore, I got rid of it in the great purge of 08.
It was a simple affair, a 30 gallon metal barrel with a bottom that looked like a funnel. There were air holes and a lighting port near the bottom of the funnel. and a grate at the bottom. The whole thing is air tight as you can get it except for the airholes. The top was held on with tool box latches. Fuel is loaded at the top then sealed. You light the bottom. The fire burns at the bottom cooking the chips above making smoke. The smoke is pulled off at the bottom under vacuum, the more smoke you draw, the hotter the fire in the bottom which cooks off more smoke from the top. It has to be hammered from time to time to get char and ash to drop through the grate. The smoke has a lot of steam that will react with the char making hydrogen and carbon monoxide making the smoke even more flamable.
That was as far as I got.
You need to filter the smoke before using it in an internal combustion engine. That can be done either by using filter material or bubling it through water. I have plans somewhere but they all came off the internet if you are interested.
You can also make your own charcoal and use a charcoal gassifier, it makes pure syngas (CO and H2) which does not need filtering but the gassifier is more complicated.
Forgot one thing, all of the gassifiers are going to burn chips or otherwise pretty small chunks of wood.
Today, my local paper here in NC ran a story about about a guy who recently installed some solar panels.
http://www.salisburypost.com/News/020811-Ken-Clifton-Solar-Power-qcd
Apparently, there is some new technology called ‘micro-inverters’ that are a cheaper way to convert DC to AC.
The guy who the article is about has a blog detailing the steps he took:
http://www.kenclifton.com/wordpress/?cat=14
Thanks, I found the Fema plans online. They were free. I printed them out and gave them to my hubby. Him and his brother I’m sure could make one. They seemed to have used them a lot during WWII.
Thank you so much for the links. I’ll go take a look and have my hubby check it out too. My hubby keeps telling me they have newer technology. That the solar panels are better now. I don’t know about that but, we will see. I know you can make a solar panel pretty cheaply. We might invest a little money into one and see what happens. I’m most concerned with having enough electricity to keep our fridge going and our water pump working. When we lose power, we have no water.
No problem, good luck to you and your husband.
On closer examination of the article I posted, I’m not sure that the figures they present add up. They say it cost him $12K and he would save $720/year and it pay for itself in seven years. Something obviously doesn’t add up. The salisbury post has an obvious pro-environmental bias (see their homepage).
We were really thinking about making a solar panel on our own. They are pretty simple to make and not to expensive. From my understanding you can make one for under $100. Might only light a light bulb for a minute...lol Who knows. I think it would be worth a try anyway. I wouldn't sink 27,000 into a solar system anyway. That's way to much money. We had also thought about running some lamps through out the house that run off of propane, seeing we have propane back up. We still might do that. That wouldn't solve the problem with the well pump though.
True, but they could advice on what type of power plant they’d use for electricity; windmill, solar, or something I’ve never heard of. They’re a pretty cool bunch.
No I won’t be digging on my land...lol I do however pick up the pieces of copper I find. Winters, the freeze thaw, push the copper up to the surface. Every year we find some.
In my sales career, I called on paper mills and other industry in the UP. Always found the people friendly and the chow first rate.
Yes they are, the people here are a very friendly bunch. The food is to bland for my liking, except a couple of hole in the wall restaurants. One is my fav, it’s Italian, run by Italians and the food is awesome homemade Italian food.
I have a fist size chunk of copper ore from the Copper Range mining area. Is the company still active or closed ?
I’m not sure. Most of the mines shut down here in the 70’s. There are only a couple of so still up and running. Although with the price of copper and if the envrio’s will but out, there might be a few that open again.
a couple or so, not a couple of. I think there is one near Marquette, and one or two others not sure. There isn’t any local where I’m at anymore. Which is to bad. This area is in desperate need of jobs. There is an iron ore mine somewhere. Someone mentioned that China buys it up, ships it back to China to their mills and then ships it back here to sell. That’s just stupid. To bad they don’t open a mill right where the iron ore is mined. I’m sure the envior’s stopped that. And I’m pretty darn sick of those people.
I remember back in the early 90s, a cargo of copper ore from Indonesia came up through the St. Lawrence and delivered it via trucks to Copper Range. Think about how far that is...
There is an operating iron mine near Quinnesec. I sold them some heavy oil way back.
Wherever you are, you might want to mimic the way the Amish generate their own electricity - generally a combination of roof mounted solar panels and one or two residential sized wind turbines, all charging one or more banks of storage batteries. They tend not to draw a lot of electricity in the house, but they have barns, milking parlors and shops with demands that are comparable to the English.
I blame the government and the enviro’s. It’s just beyond stupid.
Yep you guessed right. That’s sort of what we are trying to figure out. We have a windmill. I’m of the mind of trying to build one, this windmill we bought and had set up. I want one for our well pump. Not sure how it’d work so I’m looking into that too. I’m not so sure about solar. But, we’ve been thinking of at least making one panel ourselves. The cost is pretty small if you build yourself. As for the battery back up. We are looking into that to but, it costs a fortune. We have a source of good used batteries that would work and we can get them cheap just not sure how long they would last.
We have surface coal here, I have dug up limestone to use, I have dug up clay to use, are you saying that if I scooped up some coal, suddenly I’m a felon?
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