Thread: Self Sufficient Living

Some general comments.

I have lived in a pretty much self sufficient house for sixteen years. Solar power is adequate, but battery replacement is a major cost every ten years or so. Backup generator is essential. I have trackers, but they have been out of service for several years, the control boards having failed. With the manufacturer no longer in existence and no parts available, nobody will touch them. While the extra efficiency looks good on paper, next time I would simply spend the money on more panels, and particularly with the cost of panels coming down, be better off. I would not even consider having part of the property solar and part of the property grid - either one or the other, but by all means add grid feed solar if you go grid.

Use of pumped water sounds attractive until you do some sums. The efficiency of small electric pumps and turbines is about 60% at best, for an overall storage efficiency of less than 40%, ignoring flow losses in piping. This compares with a charge/discharge efficiency for lead/acid batteries of around 80%. I would comment though that I have in effect used this in one area for energy storage. Instead of the usual pressure pump for water, I have a centrifugal pump feeding a large (900gallon, 4000l) header tank. Although this is an inefficient use of energy, it allows me to run the pump only when I have surplus energy available.

Underground tanks are usually much more expensive than above ground storage. There are two reasons for this. One is the obvious one that you have to dig a hole, and you have to make sure the tanks are strong enough to stand the weight of the overburden. But a second reason is that you have to make sure that the tanks will not float up through the soil if they happen to be empty when the groundwater around them is above the base. This involves either arranging proper drainage, which is probably impossible unless the ground is hilly, and will in any case be expensive, or attaching to the tank a weight (usually concrete) that together with the tank weight is equal to the weight of water it can contain.

Before getting any animals, I suggest you investigate state and local requirements, as well as talking to a local rural supplier about costs. The problem is likely to be that a lot of the red tape and costs involved are the same for any number of stock, so they get rather impractical for the small numbers you envisage. When you consider killing and butchering your own animals, bear in mind that even one sheep provides a lot of meat. A steer means that you will need a very much larger freezer (with larger power requirements) than is usual in a normal house. Selling home killed meat legally is almost certainly impractical owing to the red tape you have to comply with.

Hope this helps,

John

This is probably a useless comment but i have lived in a self sufficient house for the past 8 years on a property... Solar/wind for power, rain water and a compost toilet.

Easily achievable and even more affordable today then it was back when my parents set this system up.

James.