Solar and wind are the future

[MachineGhost]

How does this concept fit in to the recent discussion about building materials?

https://passipedia.org/basics/what_is_a_passive_house

[Pointedstick]

How does this concept fit in to the recent discussion about building materials?

https://passipedia.org/basics/what_is_a_passive_house

Not well. Passivehaus is a German standard that's at least 200% overkill for most people and results in excessively high costs. They totally ignore the 80:20 principle. It also becomes even more expensive if you try to implement it in most of the USA, which has much higher summer cooling loads than nearly all of Germany does.

[vnatale]

I like this line of thinking PS. I did a complete gut flip, and the way you wrote it up makes it seem like building a completely new house out of durisol would be easier than messing with all the insulation/drywall/paint/siding that I did! Very neat.

I'd love to hear more about this (maybe start a new thread? This one is rapidly veering off topic). My house is across the street from a foreclosure that I am very strongly considering buying and flipping, capturing extra value by remodeling it from a 2-bedroom house into a 3-bedroom. At a certain price it's worth it to demolish and rebuild from scratch but I'm not guessing that I could get a price that low from the bank or that the much higher value of the result would profitably sell in my neighborhood, where most of the houses go for $125-175k.

Haha, that sounds exactly right, mine was a a 2 bed 2 bath bank-owned foreclosure, that had been vacant/squatted for 2 or 3 years, that I turned into a 3/2. I was originally going to rent it out, but the numbers in the end favored flipping. I'd never done it before, but my dad has done work on every house we've lived in, so he taught me how to do all the things. It was a great learning opportunity though. I like when I can make money from an educational experience. Let's see if these pics come through...










This is a weird hallway that I made into the third bedroom.



Master bath... other one was in similar condition.

Wow! WHAT a transformation! Great work!

Vinny

[dualstow]

Beautiful work! I just looked through all the pictures thinking it was you, Vinny. So is it kriegsspiel’s work or PS’s?

[vnatale]

Beautiful work! I just looked through all the pictures thinking it was you, Vinny. So is it kriegsspiel’s work or PS’s?

It is DEFINITELY kriegsspiel's work. I am extremely un-talented in all the talents he used to accomplish what he did.

Vinny

[dualstow]

Beautiful work! I just looked through all the pictures thinking it was you, Vinny. So is it kriegsspiel’s work or PS’s?

It is DEFINITELY kriegsspiel's work. I am extremely un-talented in all the talents he used to accomplish what he did.

I cannot even caulk my tub well.

[vnatale]

Beautiful work! I just looked through all the pictures thinking it was you, Vinny. So is it kriegsspiel’s work or PS’s?

It is DEFINITELY kriegsspiel's work. I am extremely un-talented in all the talents he used to accomplish what he did.

I cannot even caulk my tub well.

You probably still do it better than if I attempted to do it!

I do better in anything I can do via computer keyboard compared to things that need to get done in the physical world.

Vinny

[dualstow]

Except softball?

[vnatale]

Except softball?

Although I am still playing both softball and basketball, from when I first start playing sports around the age of 10 my athletic skills have always been marginal. Certainly on a sub-optimal level compared to my intellectual skills.

VInny

[stuper1]

You should try pickleball. I just got back from a 3-hour session. It's a great sport for anyone. Everyone has fun no matter their age or level of athletic ability. It's a sport for all ages and for people from awesome athletes to uncoordinated geezers. The key is to find the right level to play at so you are playing with people of similar ability, but once you find your level, it's hours of fun outside getting good exercise, or inside in the winter if you live in a cold place.

[stuper1]

Great to hear! I'm still a working man for the next 10 years or so, but I play PB as much as possible. It's really fun to look around the courts and see people from teenagers to in their 80s, and from people who are obviously extremely athletic to ones who are not coordinated at all, and everyone is having a blast. If you just want to have fun and get a little exercise, you can do that. Or if you want to take it very seriously and try to win tournaments against ultra-competitive people, you can do it too. It takes about 10 minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master. It's a thinking person's game too. I've seen a lot of people win who were less talented athletically but had a better mind. Patience is rewarded. A typical tennis rally might last 4 shots. A PB rally can go for 50 shots.

[vnatale]

You should try pickleball. I just got back from a 3-hour session. It's a great sport for anyone. Everyone has fun no matter their age or level of athletic ability. It's a sport for all ages and for people from awesome athletes to uncoordinated geezers. The key is to find the right level to play at so you are playing with people of similar ability, but once you find your level, it's hours of fun outside getting good exercise, or inside in the winter if you live in a cold place.

I'm still actively playing basketball from September to May twice a week for 2.0 to 2.5 hours a night (not playing all during that hours - we have subs and teams sit out every third game) and was in three leagues of softball last year from mid-May to 1st week of November.

Just recently at one of the fields where we have two fields for softball playing they created next to one of our fields a pickleball place and dog park (and upgraded the basketball court and pavilion area...but no improvements at all to our softball fields (which are also used in the fall for a football league)).

In the two or three years since those improvements when we have games at those fields I can barely remember ever seeing anyone playing pickleball! It was supposed to have been popular which is why the money was spent to build it. But it seems to be severely underutilized.

Vinny

[stuper1]

I find it hard to fathom also. Around here, the PB courts are always crowded, and there are nowhere near enough courts to satisfy the demand. Maybe you just aren't there at the times when PB is being played. Or maybe PB hasn't taken off yet in your area.

[vnatale]

In the two or three years since those improvements when we have games at those fields I can barely remember ever seeing anyone playing pickleball! It was supposed to have been popular which is why the money was spent to build it. But it seems to be severely underutilized.

Vinny

I find this hard to fathom. PB is the fastest growing participation sport in the US. The courts here are always crowded...at PB times, which tend to be 7-11 AM for the retired crowd and then 6-9 PM for the still working. But the morning is always waaaay more busy.

For our games I'd be at the fields from around 5 PM until around 8 PM (or until dark if we hang around longer after the games). Don't know how many people that are there during any other times or on weekends, when we do not have games.

Vinny

[vnatale]

I find it hard to fathom also. Around here, the PB courts are always crowded, and there are nowhere near enough courts to satisfy the demand. Maybe you just aren't there at the times when PB is being played. Or maybe PB hasn't taken off yet in your area.

You'd think our time for softball games - starting time 6 PM week nights -- would also be prime time for those games?

I know the town recreation director for where they are and I can ask her if she knows how much they get used.

Vinny

[Kriegsspiel]

Coming back full circle to the ideas of renewable energy and building houses, I've been thinking about how cool it would be to go in and revamp a cheap, neglected neighborhood/small town into something like an eco-village as a long term project. So fixing up small houses in a well-located neighborhood with good insulation, solar, composting, edible landscaping, solar water heating, maybe some kind of community garden/event area, that kind of stuff.

I wrote up some thoughts about doing this and I'll repost them here, slightly edited (it was for a guy who bought land in Alaska):

----------

I would rather have a small, single story or 1.5 story house. I've read a couple books with designs, both by Rowan (Compact Cabins and Compact Houses) that had various layouts. I would look at something with a loft, or a more conventional 1 or 2 bedrooms, bathroom, and a big space with a kitchen (sharing a wall with the bathroom) where you could have a couch, desk, table or whatever else. I'd have a vestibule at the front door for taking off muddy/wet/dirty shoes and clothes that was easy to clean. Or maybe I'd just have a large entryway where you could do that outside... I'd excavate a small root cellar for storage. I'd build a fair-sized patio off the side of the house for grilling and outdoor workouts and chillin.

I think a composting toilet/outhouse is a cool idea. I'd attach the composting toilet room to the main house with a breezeway or short hallway or something, on the opposite side of the house as the patio. Then have your shower/tub and sink in a separate room inside the main house, like the way the Japanese set up their bathrooms.

I like stone or masonry houses, but maybe in Alaska you'd go with wood. Whatever the material, I'd insulate it as much as I could. Regular rectangle or square house, with either a shed roof or a regular central ridge roof of standing seam metal. I'm thinking something like this:



I'd have separate buildings for doing dirty/messy hobbies like the trades or agricultural processing, with space for a gym inside. I'd just make these simple structures with no plumbing, and minimal heating abilities, if anything. I'd also build a small sauna like you'd see in Russia and Finland, both for hot/cold therapy (boil in the sauna, then roll around in the snow), and also to not freeze to death if your house caught on fire or some other kind of emergency. Another thing I'd think about building is some kind of in-ground greenhouse with geothermal, like profiled here. I'd have to look more into whether that would be a workable feature in Alaska like it is in Nebraska.

As far as utilities, I'd try to implement schemes that work with the seasons of Alaska as much as I could. The utilities I'm concerned with are electricity, space heating, cooking, water heating & water pumping.

Winter
For general heating, I'd go with a modern wood burning stove. I've never used a wood stove but from what I've read they are very effective at heating up small areas. Furthermore, you could use the top of it to cook/boil water on. In addition, I'd rig it up to the hot water tank as described by Falk in The Resilient Farm And Homestead; when his wood stove was burning, it was also heating up water for a shower, so his gas would not kick on. The water tank is inside, of course, so that extra thermal mass would help your place stay toasty. You could probably run a radiant floor heat with the same idea. For electricity, aside from being on the electrical grid, I'd look at installing a thermoelectric generator into one of the walls, so that it would take advantage of the extreme Alaskan winter cold, and the high heat from a wood stove in a small cottage. I also wonder whether a turbine would be effective with high wind speeds in winter. I believe both the thermoelectric and wind power generation were discussed in Green Wizardry by John Michael Greer. A gas oven could be used for baking.

Summer
Since you won't want to have the wood stove burning when it's warm, you'll need a separate cooking method. I'd get a propane camp grill and use it outside on the patio (or inside if it was raining, of course). I'd also try to use a solar oven as much as possible. For electricity I'd have a small solar setup, like 3k or 5k or thereabouts. In addition to the solar electricity, I'd install a solar water heating tank on the roof to take advantage of all the sunlight, with a small solar panel operating a pump to get the water up there (with a hand pump as backup). AFAIK AC is unnecessary in Alaska; in the summer I'd just run a fan or two, in addition to having transom windows at a high point in the house that could be opened so that heat could escape.

NOTE: A few of the systems are multiply redundant, like the water heating/pumping and the space heating. Between the solar water heater, woodstove tie-in, and propane water heater, you'd need some kind of automated switching system with a thermostat to cycle the water around or whatever. There might be an analog system I'm not aware of, or you could run it with a Raspberry Pi. Having multiple ways to beat freezing to death (woodstove, sauna, outdoor fire pit) is also probably smart in an extreme environment like Alaska.

For electricity, being able to use mainly renewables in a cost effective way is obviously about using less electricity in the first place. I think it would be feasible to

• illuminate with LED lamps & batteries, like described here
• charge laptop/phone/power tools
• an internet connection?
• water pumps and other simple home automation
• run a dorm-size fridge that fits under the kitchen counter, and/or a
• chest freezer (Sun Danzer)
• run some fans if it's hot.

In the wintertime, when your PV panels aren't kicking out electricity and you're relying more on your other methods, you probably don't need to be running the fridge, freezer, fans, so the other methods like thermoelectric or wind might be enough. Or if you're going to be grid tied, all the renewables would just be peak-shaving, but hey, you did say dream home.

I'd use some kind of hand operated apparatus for clothes washing, and dry them outside in the sun in the summer, or inside in the winter when the fire is putting out a lot of dry heat.

----------

Come at me bros

[Kriegsspiel]

Great

[Kriegsspiel]

A different approach that I've been thinking about lately has been to forego a grid tied system, and utilize supplementary systems. So, instead of having PV installed with ties to the grid, you could have a system without batteries or grid tie, ideally connected to a DC appliance to sidestep the need for an inverter. I believe this is how PV works with RVs and boats.

My aim would be to avoid unnecessary costs and complexity associated with grid-tying, if the thing I want to power with solar (air conditioning) can give me the results while only running when the panels are exposed to sunlight.

More research is necessary to see if this is cost-effective.