Adventures in batteries!

Well, the time for new batteries has finally come.  Our original batteries have been dropping off one-by-one and although they've been more than adequate throughout the summer (when the days are long and the clouds are few and far between), they have little chance of making it through the winter.  Our current batteries have lasted up to 6 years. I only say "up to" because some have lasted longer than others and some were purchased earlier than others.  I don't know all the details because I didn't do the purchasing. Had the batteries been taken good care of, we may have gotten 10 years out of them...but they weren't.  The previous owners did a number of no-no's associated with the batteries.

• No-no #1: They didn't really have a good idea how much energy they were going to use when they purchased the batteries. It turns out running grow lights uses a LOT of energy and their batteries weren't really sized to handle the demand. 
• No-no #2: When they discovered the battery bank wasn't big enough, they added more batteries in series instead of starting from scratch. Mixing old batteries with new batteries is always a bad idea.  Even if the batteries are of the same type, as batteries age the lead plates get thinner and thinner.  Even when the batteries are resting current flow from the new batteries to the old ones. The old batteries work harder than they should even when they should be resting and the new batteries get dragged down to the level of the old ones. 
• No-no #3: When they added the new batteries, they created 5 parallel strings.  The fewer string the better.  Five is a lot!  With five strings, an equalize cycle is required frequently to keep the batteries at similar state of charge (SOC).  
• No-no #4: They didn't know how to run an equalize cycle!  I asked the previous owners how often they equalized the batteries. I don't remember what they said, but I know the take home message was, "we don't".  

Given all of the no-no's, I guess 6 years isn't so bad.  At last not until you considered they spent about $7000 on batteries.  Ouch.  Lucky for us, we were able to learn from some of their mistakes.

So how did we go about deciding what to get for a new battery bank?  There are a ton of choices out there.  First, we needed to know how much power we use. This varies a bit, but on big days we are at about 3500wh/day.  The general rule of thumb these days is to get a battery that has about 4 times the amount of your daily requirement. This gives you about 2 days of autonomy if you keep your batteries above 50% SOC.  Traditionally, people planned for much more that 2 days of autonomy.  There has been a shift to smaller batteries as of late.  The logic for this has a lot to do with the price of renewable energy supplies.  The price of batteries has remained pretty stable over the years.  The price of solar, however has been going down everyday.  Since batteries don't last very long if they are undercharged, it just doesn't make sense to get a battery that is oversized for a charging system.  Batteries are rated in amp-hours (ah) -- at 24V (our system voltage), 3500wh/24V = 145AH. We use about 145AH per day from a 24V battery bank.  145AH x 4 = 590AH.  So, we were looking for a capacity of about 600AH.

I looked at a number of different options with the following in mind:

• 600 - 800AH capacity
• Lead Acid - I like being able to equalize and monitor the specific gravity of individual cells, so I decided against sealed batteries. 
• No more than 2 strings - preferably one.
• Long life
• Affordability

I finally decided on a forklift from Giant Battery I ended up getting a model 12-85-13.  Fork lift batteries are big and heavy, but can last up to 20 years with proper care.  The model I got weighed about 1100lbs.  Since it weighed so much, putting it in the crawl space was not an option.  Instead, we will built a small (2'x4') extension off the back of the house so we could move it into place with my neighbors backhoe.  The additional bonus of having it up and out of the crawl space is temperature.  Batteries perform there best at around 70F.  We were losing a fair amount of capacity by storing our batteries in the 45F crawl space.

The forklift battery at home in our new mini-extension. 

The new battery has been in place few a few days now. The installation went off without a hitch.  We'll see how it does this winter.  Time will tell!

Evolution of the garden

This year Bill and I tried to green up our thumbs. It was our first attempt at growing a garden (other than the hanging-tomato-plant on the porch variety). The garden was built over about a 12 month period, and is still a work in progress. Our soil here is clay and rock...lots of rock. Our garden went through several variations during the planning period, and impatience and frustration ultimately led to some poorly-thought out decisions, as well as some purchases we probably could have done without. However, we are happy with the final result: we grew some stuff!

Before we moved to Blue Cloud, I read Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle". I've always liked the idea of self-sufficiency and local food dependence, but her book really made me look hard at how we live and decide that we could do it. I have a picture of a "vegetannual" on my kitchen wall, a visual concept Kingsolver discusses in her book to describe the growing season progression. Here's a beautiful interactive rendition of the vegetannual.

We started breaking "garden" ground in October 2010, when we moved here. We originally planned on a modest plot, but with all this land, we couldn't contain ourselves and ultimately measured out a 1400 square foot space. We placed it with full southern exposure, and it sits right in front of our house. We wanted to keep it easy walking distance from our front door, so as not to dissuade us from walking out to take care of our plants or of making daily harvests.

As noted before, our ground is full of boulders. We spent three days digging out grapefruit- and pumpkin-sized rocks and piling them up outside the plot. I ruined a shovel in the process, and Bill flared up his tennis elbow.

The next thing I concentrated on was building up our soil. I never formally tested our soil pH, but our well water is about 8.0, so I think I can safely assume the soil is pretty basic. As mentioned before, our top soil is thin and compact, and heavy on clay. One of the methods of soil-building that I became fascinated with was sheet mulching. The idea is to quickly build soil and suppress weeds. The best information and how-to guides I got my hands on were found in Toby Hemenway's "Gaia's Garden" and Bill Mollison's "Introduction to Permaculture".

My method of sheet mulching was bare-bones. I didn't add any soil supplements, and I really just relied on whatever bulk materials I could scrounge up. I hit up my friends, hardware stores, and local farmers. I must have made 10 trips with the truck to gather and load up my supplies.

I first watered the garden area heavily. Then I applied large sheets of cardboard, gleaned from recycling bins and from hardware stores. Next I applied a layer of cattle and horse manure about 1-2 inches thick. The manure was fresh, but I applied it in the fall, to allow some aging before we planted. I was nervous about inadvertently applying manure with herbicides, but ultimately, I just trusted my suppliers and went with it. That probably could have really burned me, but I think I survived unscathed.  Next, I threw on any materials I could get my hands on: leaves, grass clippings, topped with a thick layer of straw. The mulch averaged about 9-12 inches thick. I covered this with deer netting to keep it from blowing away. Lastly, I watered and waited.

The construction of our garden fence was meant to be deer and bomb proof. I think we succeeded. We ended up with a 6-foot high, mesh-wired fence, running along T-posts, anchored with corner posts in cement. Little did we know, the deer don't really frequent our yard here like they did in town. When we lived in Helena proper, the city deer would frequently hang out on our deck and eat everything; in the mountains the deer are more scarce. Mostly, I think, our deer fence just serves to keep out our dogs.

Over the winter I had time to plan our plot. I went through several sketched out editions and then stumbled across this gem of a planner from Mother Earth. The M.E. garden planner has a yearly fee, but I think it's worth it, not only for the design efficiency, but also for the entertainment value. I spent many nights tinkering around with design ideas, and trying different arrangements of vegetable companion crops.

We decided to implement some raised beds, to extend our growing season and make gardening a little easier on our backs. Bill and I crafted 13 boxes, using this basic design provided by Sunset magazine. We used fir, even though it will break down quicker than ceder. However, the price was right, and our drought-like climate will give our fir structures extra longivity. We're hoping for at least 10 years.

When spring came, I started to worry that the sheet mulch would not yet be ready for planting. I panicked and ordered some top soil from a local garden supplier: 5 yards dumped in our front yard. To stretch out the soil, I combined a straw-bail garden technique I've read about. I first applied 6 inches of straw into each bed, added bone meal and blood meal, then covered it up with just a few inches of top soil. Surprisingly this worked really well. I'll need to add more soil to the boxes next year, as things have certainly compressed, but even my carrots grew great in this arrangement.

We did half of our plantings in raised boxes, and half in the sheet mulch. The sheet mulch turned out mixed results: cucumbers were non-existant. But overall, were impressed with how the sheet mulching turned the compact soil into something that looked like quality garden black gold. The corn and squash thrived in it. The raspberries loved it, and the sunflowers took off.

One of the interest elements of building the garden was creating an herb spiral. The idea is to create mircro-climates for different herbs (oregano on the sunny south side near the top, parsley on the wetter side, near the bottom on the north, etc.), and to grow a large amount, in quantity and variety, in three-dimensional small space. In a five foot wide mound, you can grow about 30 linear square feet of herbs. To build my herb garden, I piled up some top soil, and used our boulders to make a spiral design, outlining the growing pattern.

Another interesting growing technique I learned from a fellow off-gridder, who lives in conditions with poor soil, involves straw and potatoes. (I had no idea how useful straw is; I've used it routinely throughout this whole process). To grow our potato crop this year, I placed the potatoes on top of my sheet mulch, and covered them with straw, about 6-8 inches. I was a little skeptical, but this method worked amazingly well, and the straw kept them from drying out. Best of all, the spuds were easy to harvest; all I had to do was pull back the straw, and there they sat. No digging!

When the days got long and hot, we were forced to face our watering conundrum. Our well produces 10 gallons per minute, but our off-grid, solar-efficient well pump produces far less than that. For most of the year, an undersized breaker caused the pump to shut down any time we ran more than one sprinkler at a time.  A little research fixed that, but we are still limited to two impact sprinklers at a time.  We also struggled with the constant wind, which blew away a lot of our water from the overhead sprinklers. A lot of the initial watering was with buckets or hose, by hand. Eventually we installed a cheap drip system which was a disaster from the start. If you're going to "go drip", put some money into it. Finally, we settled on a system of some overhead sprinkler and some hand watering. As a result, our watering was inconsistent and our produce showed it. Eventually, we'd like to like to incorporate a gravity-fed/rainwater system, but for now sprinklers are the cheapest and easiest solution.  We'll tackle it again next year.

My favorite things to grow included a dwarf blue curled kale variety. Also, the straw potatoes were a satisfying experiment. Another favorite were the beets; they grew like gangbusters. (For something delicious and new, try this beet recipe. It's Bill's favorite. He modifies it a little by subbing maple syrup for the brown sugar, and by doubling the glaze to beet ratio. Yummy.) 

Other than our disastrous cucumber crop, my biggest flop surprise was the strawberries. Only three plants survived my huge plot. I also planted a strawberry barrel, using this design, which did OK, but not as well as I'd hoped. One more puzzle to work on next year... 

Improvements in the Works: 

1. Wind was a big factor for us. We're in a perfect corridor for our wind turbine; but it sure sucks for the garden, especially the tomatoes. We'll implement a wind block (fence for the short term, but we will be planting trees in the coming spring for a more permanent solution). 
2. We're making plans for a greenhouse/chicken coop. The idea is to someday implement a solar hot water system to keep it warm. More to come later...
3. Bees! Adding a hive or two to our farm would sure benefit our garden and orchard. I'm still getting up the courage to invest in these amazing, but finicky, creatures. 
4. Indoor seedlings were a problem for us. Grow lights weren't realistic, given our limited energy in the winter and spring. We have great southern exposure windows, but as the sun got higher in the sky in the spring, we just couldn't get enough solar energy to grow with much success. I think next year we'll stick with just growing from seed, buying local plant starts, and perhaps implementing some cold frames. 

We still have a long way to go before reaching our desired level of self sufficiency, but we're motivated and working on it.

How We Get Our Energy

Well, we're one year in and...we've learned a lot and we're not ready to give up yet.  I must admit, the engineer (a.k.a. geek) in me has really gotten a kick out of studying and maximizing the efficiency of our energy system.  There are several ways to survive/thrive off-grid.  Here are few in no particular order:

1. Hire a company to design/maintain a state-of-the-art renewable energy system designed to meet all of your needs.  
2. Buy a lot of propane.
3. Scrape together what you can to get by and go to bed when the lights go out.  
4. Use less energy.

Most people I've met that live off-grid in Montana do a combination of #2 , 3, and 4. Not many people get by completely with number 1. The people we bought the house from tried to get by with #1 and a fair bit of #2.  They bought a good system.  Unfortunately it wasn't designed very well for them and they never really embraced the idea of energy conservation.  I feel like we've done pretty well on the energy conservation side things (more on that later).  We have also learned that you're better off learning how to maintain your system yourself than relying on any company to take care of it for you.

So here are the nuts and bolts.

Energy Producers:

• Solar: We have ten 150w solar panel with a total energy producing capability of 1500w in full sun. They are mounted on a stationary pole and no, they don't "track" the sun.  We could add a sun tracker and may at some point.  The concern is that it may be more trouble than it's worth since we get so much wind.  

• Wind:  We have a 1000w Bergey wind turbine.  Bergey is a reputable company, but the wind turbine never really functioned properly for the first winter of use.  It produced very little power and was extremely noisy.  Enough so to keep us awake at night.  By spring, the power production dwindled down to zero and we knew that it was time for maintenance.  With longer summer days (and plenty of solar input), we opted to lower the tower in May and perform repairs over the summer.  Turns out the rectifying unit (the part that converts the AC to DC current) inside the wind generator completely burnt up.  The turbine blades were also in need of replacement.  We contacted Bergey and they replaced all parts under warranty.  We finally raised the tower again last week.  So far it runs like a champ and is a lot quieter.  It will be nice to have this winter.    

I suckered a group of friends into helping me lower the tower.
We got the tower about 10% of the way down before raising
the tower back up and running away with our tails between our
legs.  100' is a long way up!  Some things are better left for the professionals.  

• Generator: Kohler 12 kw propane standby generator.  Our goal is to use this as little as possible, but some use is unavoidable.  Having enough solar and wind to account for every day of the year in Montana is an expensive proposition.  A more realistic solution is to size the system to meet your needs for the majority of the year and use a generator to get you through the darkest of days.  Last year, we used our generator about a total of 75 hours.  Just for comparison, the previous owners put 3500 hours on it in roughly 4 years.  That was after they burnt up their first (undersized) generator.  The generator comes on automatically when then batteries get down to a certain voltage.  Once it comes on, it generally runs for a couple hours and shuts itself down after the batteries get back into a comfortable range.   

Energy Storage:

Batteries and lots of 'em.  (This part gets a little technical.) When we first moved in we had twenty  6-volt batteries. Each battery has about 400Amp-hours of storage.  To put this into perspective, an average car battery has about 100 Amp-hours of storage.  Since our batteries are 6-volt, however, it takes 2 batteries, wired in series, to make a 12-volt circuit with 400Amp-hours. So, 2 of our batteries have about 4 times the amount of storage as a car battery -- we have 20.  However, since our system is designed to run at 24-volts, it actually takes 4 batteries wired in series to make a single 24-volt circuit.  Since we "had" 20 batteries, we had 5 sets of four batteries, each set was wired in parallel which increased our total capacity to 5 x 400 = 2000Amp-hours (or 48,000 watt-hours). What does this mean?  Well, since we use about 4000 watt-hour per day, we should have 12 days of storage, right?  Nope!    

• Problem 1:  Batteries should stay above 50% at all times.  That drops us to 6 days.
• Problem 2:  Batteries like to be fully charged every day or at least every few days.  We don't generate enough power to charge that many batteries.  Here are all the details if you want to know why.  

So we have lots of good batteries, but because they haven't been taken care of, they are dying young.  Based on my recent calculations, our current system and our needs, we are much better off with only 8 batteries.  I am in the process of pairing down our batteries to the best 8 and we will give that a try for a year.  Hopefully we can keep them charged and make them last a little bit longer.  A few of the batteries have already expired.  The rest we will keep in storage, and charge a couple of times of year, cycling them into duty as other batteries die. Eight batteries should give us roughly 2.5-3 days of storage.  We rarely have a 3 day period where the sun doesn't come out or the wind doesn't blow.  Even if that happens, that generator will come on automatically anyway.  We can live with that.  

Energy Use:

Since our batteries are wired for 24-volts DC, do we need 24-volt appliances?  Nope. Our house is wired just like everyone else's, with both 120V and 240V AC outlets.  Two, 3500-watt inverters convert the electricity into AC current.  Having 7000 watts of capability means we have roughly 50 amp service.  Most people who are connected to the grid have 100 amp or 200 amp service.  To be honest, we rarely use more than 1000 watts at any one time, so this really isn't a problem for us.  It does mean I can't run woodworking tools with large motors, but that's about the only downside so far. 

Energy Conservation:

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average American household uses about 29kw hours of electricity each day.  We don't really have a good monitoring system, but we estimate the we average about 4 kw/day.  We are going to invest in a monitoring system as soon as we can fit it into our budget, so then we'll have a much better idea.  Here are some steps we've taken to lower our energy usage:

• Lighting: All of our lights are compact florescents and we turn them off when we're not using them.  In the grand scheme of things, lighting accounts for a very small percentage of our total energy usage. 
• Deep well water pump:  We have a very efficient water pump for our well that runs directly off our batteries.  Although it doesn't have very high capacity, it meets our needs and uses very little energy.
• Refrigeration:  Our refrigerator and freezer are certainly unique.  A standard stand-up fridge uses about 2000watt-hours per day!  This varies widely.  If you're interested in lowering your energy usage, take a good look at your refrigerator.  We don't have a stand-up fridge.  Instead, we use a chest-freezer and regulate the temperature using an external thermostat designed for beer coolers.  Packing a chest freezer took a little getting used, but the benefits in energy savings are significant.  Freezer are inherently well insulated and since the door is on the top, the cold air sinks to the bottom when the door is opened.  In a stand-up fridge, much of the cold escapes when the door is opened.  This freezer-converted-to-fridge design uses about 300 watt-hours per day.  We also have a solar-specific chest freezer. It is super-insulated and runs directly off our batteries.  It runs on about 600 watt-hours per day.  So, we use under 1000 watt-hours per day on refrigeration, with a lot of food-space capacity.
• Space Heating: First of all, our house is very well insulated.  A central wood stove easily keeps the house in the 60's even on the coldest of winter days.  The house is equipped with in-floor heat, powered by a propane boiler, but so far we haven't used it very much.  Firewood is plentiful and we just don't really like the idea of burning propane if we don't have to. We used roughly three cords last winter to keep us warm and happy--not too bad for a Montana winter. In the long run we are hoping to incorporate some solar hot water heaters.  If we design it right, we will be able to pump the hot water through the floors on sunny winter days.  
• Water heating:  We have an on-demand propane hot water heater.  The on-demand aspect of it is efficient, but we hope to limit our use of propane once we install solar hot water heaters.   We also hope to install a hot water heating coil in our wood stove which will help distribute the heat through the floors. 
• Cooking:  Our stove and oven are propane.  OK, not really energy efficient, but we sure like it.  This is a luxury that we are unlikely to give up. 

Otherwise, we live pretty much like everyone else.  We have a computer (with satellite internet), a big screen TV, and most modern appliances.  We are a lot more conscious of the energy we use and both like that aspect of it.  We also feel like we are much more in tune with the weather and what's going on outside.  It's been a great experience so far!

Turkey Harvest

Earlier this year, I came home from Murdoch's, the local ranch supply store, with 10 baby chicks and high hopes for self-sufficiency, at least in the egg department. However, to Bill's chagrin, as if the chicks weren't enough, I also got suckered into picking up three baby turkeys as well. I thought, what the hell, why not?

We'd come to enjoy the soon-to-be giant gobblers, who, when allowed to roam, basically followed us around like they were our pets. Whitey, the only female, really had a thing for me, while the two Toms basically flirted with whatever walked by.

So, this morning, Bill and I both awoke with a certain feeling of dread in the pits of our stomachs, as today, at 23 weeks old, our turkeys were facing harvest day. None the less, we were resolved to having three birds in the freezer by nightfall. Getting the damn things out of our crafty turkey/chicken arena proved to be one of the most difficult, as we didn't build a gate into the 6 foot high fence that made up the bird corral, and by now, two of the three turkeys were too big to fit back through the chicken door into the coop, which we had access to.

We managed to wrangle a ladder over the fence, and somehow were able to lift the big birds up and over without falling and breaking our own necks. We both sustained a few flaps to the face in the process.

Thanks to a tutorial on turkey processing (kudos to Howling Duck Ranch), we managed to proceed with our own turkeys fairly efficiently. The dunking tank, to prep the birds for de-feathering, is a drum that we hope to eventually turn into the stove to heat a wood-fired sauna.

The dogs stuck close all day long, and were rewarded eventually with some cooked up gizzards.

Here's our final product! All dressed out, the big ones came in at about 32 lbs each, and the small one at 18.