Now, Hurry Up and Grow

The Tree Team: Dad, Jo, Bill and Me 

As I'm sitting down to type this, it is down-pouring outside and the thunder is rumbling. Rain couldn't have come at a better time. Over the past four days, "The Tree Team ," Bill, myself, my dad and my step-mom Jolynn, planted over 300 trees into our rocky, cement-like front yard. It was, admittedly, exhausting work, and we all ended up with some aches and blisters, but we are pretty proud of those beautiful rows of new little plants...that are now soaking up all that wonderful rain!

We moved efficiently; but those concrete-like clods and ever present melon-sized rocks were something to reckon with. We didn't add any supplements to our soil as we planted, only a few scoops of "topsoil" from a local sand and gravel company (which looked a lot more like organic-starved fill dirt) when we sometimes needed something finer to work with alongside all those clumps and rocks. My dad was a machine, and the farmer in him came busting out, ready to tackle anything and to keep us all moving our shovels.

A Doug Fir, bright green and ready
to grow!

The trees and shrubs came mostly bare-root from DNRC's nursery in Missoula. As I mentioned in the earlier blog, the windbreak consists of 7 rows:




Outside row: Caragana
6th row: Juniper and Honeysuckle
4th and 5th rows: Ponderosa Pine and various shrubs
3rd row: Douglas Fir and Nanking Cherry
2nd row: Green Ash and Snowberries
Inner row: Serviceberries

We pre-dug the holes with the mini-ex a few weeks ago (see last blog post), so the holes were extremely dry and hard to work. Bill and I hadn't planned to put up any deer-fencing, as it truly is rare to see deer (mostly Muleys) hanging around by our place. However, after working to get those trees into the ground, we decided we'd rather not risk it, and we plan to put up an electric fence shortly, in hopes to deter whatever deer are in search of some yummy new growth.

The watering system is not yet in place, but will consist of a series of PVC, black plastic water hose, and emitters for a drip irrigation system.

Other updates: 

We finally conquered the relocation of the hen house! It took some scheming, but Bill figured it out.

The Hen House on rollers.

How to move a shed with an 18V cordless drive...
...oh, and a winch!

We rolled it about 100 feet south, away from our generator and sewage drain field, to a flatter pasture area. Using a 2-ton car jack, we elevated it and stabilized it on two 4x4's.  Then we lifted it again, high enough to slide in sections of 2x4 track and several 5"  "roller" logs. With the roller logs sandwiched between the 4x4's and the 2x4's, we pulled the house forward using a hand winch attached to the back of the truck, leap-frogging the track and rollers as we moved the house along.  Easy peasy!  Thank you YouTube!
We even managed to turn the thing 90 degrees by slowly shifting the angles of the logs and pulling from one corner.




The main reason for the shed move was to accommodate our newest farm addition: pigs!

After the building was in place, we put up fencing to enclose about 1000 square feet of pasture. We opted for cattle panels instead of hog panels to save a few bucks; the hole spacing is a little wider, but it's small enough to contain our 50lb "piglets".  We used some recycled house logs for the corner posts and some left over t-posts to break up the 16-ft panels. To help build the fence we finally bought an iron tamp bar, which made all the difference in digging rocky areas and securing posts. Should have had that in hand when we first moved in.Bill framed in a wall/door to split up the hen house, to accommodate the pigs as well.

Building fence around the "new" hog/chicken house.

We brought our  little piggies to Blue Cloud late last night. They weren't too pleased about the bumpy truck ride to our house and squealed to let us know it, but they seem to be getting along nicely now in their grassy pasture. All we need to do now is build a feeder, and we're set.

We purchased the pigs from a Hutterite colony near Choteau.  I guess the price of pork has gone up drastically since last year, increased from 1 to nearly 2 dollars per pound for wiener pig. But we're sure happy to have them on the farm. After we unloaded them late last night (a tricky affair from the back of our pickup truck), Bill and I stood at the fence panel, awe-struck that we finally did it, and smiling to hear their little grunts as they munched on the grass. Butchering time should be around August. Yum, bacon!

 

The Blue Cloud Bunch

Tractor Week....you dig?

A boy and his toy. 

We've been pretty quiet on the blog front for a while.  I guess we've been too busy with projects to write about any of them.  Unseasonably warm weather brought on a bad case of spring fever.  We've been outside working in and around the garden for the past few weeks.    The trees are budding, the tulips and daffodils are up, the asparagus is popping, and most of our cold-hardy seeds are in the ground.

Last week we jumped in with both feet and rented a mini-excavator.  The main motivation for the rental was the 400 bare-root trees we have coming in mid-May, for use in a wind break.  Just the thought of digging 400 18" holes by hand made our backs hurt.

The break will be made up of 7 rows of of trees and shrubs formed in an arc around the northwest of our house.  We purchased the trees, mostly bareroot, from DNRC Conservation Nursery in Missoula. Our intent is to introduce enough variety to protect us from infestation wipe-out in a particular variety (ie: pine beetles, bark beetles), to attract various wildlife, and to provide various color and beauty to the landscape throughout the year. The holes are now dug (thanks to Bill's skills on the mini-X), and the plants will be collected from the nursery shortly.

Putting in the water line to the garden.

Here's the game plan:
First row: Serviceberries
Second Row: Green Ash, alternated with Snowberries
Third Row: Doug Fir, alternated with Nanking Cherry
Fourth Row: Ponderosa Pine, alternated with Honeysuckle
Fifth Row: Ponderosa Pine, alternated with Snowberries
Sixth Row: Juniper, alternated with Honeysuckle
Seventh Row: Caragana

While we had the mini-X at our disposal (for a one week rental), we also put in a permanent extra water line to the garden, as well as some seasonal water lines to run to the orchard and to our eventual pig pen. (The piglets should be here in a couple of weeks!)

Attempting to move the chicken coop. 

Also, while we were feeling invincible with the tractor, we did attempt to move our existing chicken coop to a new location nearer the garden. We were able to get the coop up onto a sled, of sorts, but we attempted on the eleventh hour on the last day of rental and just didn't have the time or energy to get it set up properly for relocation. We'll try that again when we have more energy.

Blondie back in action with the rest of the gang!

Other spring updates: we had our first exposure to a full-blown broody chicken. "Blondie", our only Buff Orpington, was really determined to hatch those unfertilized eggs, and she would not willingly get out of the egg box to eat, drink, or even poop. It took locking her in the dog kennel for three days to "break her". Now she's happily pecking with the other chickens and looks to be her normal, happy self. The physiology behind "broodinees" lies in the increase of day-light hours, and the associated increase of prolactin in a chicken's blood stream. A broody chicken's body temp increases, and she is determined to bring baby chicks into the world, even it means bringing about her own death through starvation...and even if those eggs will never, ever hatch. Anyway, what a relief to see her back. In our research of how to "cure" her, I came across an old fashioned method of dunking the chicken in ice-water to bring down core body temperature. Luckily, we didn't have to resort to that.

Stewie in the Collar of Shame.

Other animal woes...Stewie gave himself a gigantic corneal ulcer, probably brought about by running down a tennis ball through thick grass and shrubs and getting whacked in the eye. He's improving, but slowly. He's back in the collar of shame to keep him from scratching at his eye, but seems to be maneuvering with it much more patiently than when he was a freshly neutered, crazy-with-energy pup.

Gooseberry Bush!

The garden is in full swing. The peas, onions, leeks, spinach, kale, and lettuce have been put in. The strawberries and tulips are blooming. We've plumped up the orchard by adding a pear tree (Chadwick Pear, which is actually a newly-named cultivar discovered growing native in the Helena valley) and a gooseberry bush! This bush, the Hinnonmaki Red, came highly recommended from Chadwick Nursery. It's a total flashback to childhood...picking berries off the volunteer bush in Grandma Cox's back yard.

A battery monitor for Christmas? Just what I wanted!

Update:  Well, it looks like I did more damage than I thought.  The energy monitor worked for about a week. Now the numbers are all over the board.  I talked with Outback about getting it repaired.  They "might" be able to repair it, for 90% of the original purchase price. I've decided not to replace it with the same model.  I'm not a fan of black box electronics that are not repairable.  Instead, I'm going to build my own.  The electronics behind are actually relatively simple, the parts are affordable, and I can build it to my own specifications.  It won't integrate directly with my outback power system, but I will get over that part.  More on my progress later.

Original Post:

OK, I did not actually ask for a battery monitor for Christmas, but I am really glad we finally have one.  A couple of weeks ago we bought a Flexnet-DC battery monitor manufactured by Outback Power.  The bulk of our energy system is made by outback, so it seemed like an appropriate brand. 

Getting the monitor hooked took some work (and one rather significant mistake) but we finally have it running and collecting data.  I think I have mentioned before that not having access to system performance data has been driving me nuts.  This is only partly due to my own neuroses -- there are also valid reasons.  First and foremost is that fact that we will likely need to replace our battery bank in the next year.  The current batteries are dropping off like flies.   They have been undercharged for there entire life which is a common cause of premature failure.  Before we drop a few thousand dollars on new ones, I want to get a better idea exactly what we need so we don't make the same mistake again.

Hooking the monitor up turned out to be quite the challenge.  The original wiring was a bit of a rat's nest, so I took the opportunity to clean everything and make sure every wire had a purpose.  It was debatable on a few of them.   Overall the install went well, but I did make one significant mistake.  On connecting the windmill back up to the battery, I shorted the wrench across the battery leads.  This seems to have rendered one of the three monitoring ports useless - a major bummer.  What it means overall is that I can't monitor the wind mill and solar separately.  I can live with that.  I didn't cause any more damage than I think.

So what have we learned so far?  Well, the windmill has been burning about as much energy as it has been creating.  The problem is, it has a dump load connected to it so the batteries don't get overcharged.  Well, the charge settings for the solar are high enough that they trigger the wind mills dump load even if there isn't any wind.  I talked to the wind mill manufacturer about it.  They recommend disconnecting the dump load, so I'm going to give that a try.  The wind mill has an alternative mechanism for avoiding overcharge - it slows itself down.  Between that and the fact that I have never seen the wind mill come close to over charging the batteries makes me pretty comfortable running without the dump load.  The monitor has only been active for a few days.  We'll see what else we learn as time goes on.  

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!