More Gratuitous Political Promotion

Sorry, one more off topic post and then I'll go back to blogging about timber-framing, living off grid, and being more self-reliant.  I promise!  This week, I filed with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance to run as a Republican in our upcoming race for County Judge Executive. 

One of the reason's we moved back to eastern Kentucky (apart from: perfect climate, great people, down-to-earth culture, reasonable cost of living, and awesome scenery) was because it's about the best place on earth to "homestead."  For as long as the land has been settled, the attitude among working people here in Appalachia has been live and let live.  But as I mentioned in a previous post, the situation is precariously balanced as our local government grows, while our economy slips backwards.

Long story short, I've decided to get involved!  My political website is www.thomasmassie.com . The morning after I filed to run, the sunrise looked like this second picture... is this a bad or good omen?

High Tech Red Neck

Geek, hillbilly, and redneck are generally considered terms of derision. But I've been trying to teach my children that they are badges of honor. So eight years ago, when two fellow geeks called me up and asked if I wanted to go on TV as a self professed geek, I said sure why not?! We made an audition video and sent it to the The Learning Channel's popular T.V. show Junkyard Wars. Our team was one of 8 picked from hundreds of applications, and the next thing we knew, we were in a junk yard on the outskirts of Los Angeles with cameras pointed at us, and only 10 hours to build something or look like complete fools. Talk about adrenaline!

Pirated copies of the TV show can be found for download by googling "Thomas Massie Junk Yard Wars" But if you don't want to be a pirate or have a hard time using that video format, you can go to a legitimate web site called "how stuff works" and watch our debut by streaming the video. Our task was to build a working Sand Yacht (aka Dirt Boat) in only a day, using only junk. Here's the legitimate link. I don't have true broadband, so I haven't watched the whole video online, but most of it seems to be there. Our show starts 3 minutes into that video.

We called our team "The Geeks," but I had to use more of my "hillbilly" skills than anything to bring the junk to life. No, I don't get any sort of royalty or anything from the show... like the idiots on Jerry Springer, I appeared on TV to make a fool of myself for practically nothing. It was on eof the funnest things I've ever done.

Finally up to 7.5 Kw of solar

In spite of wind, rain, and visiting friends, I finally finished our solar panel installation. We now have 36 panels on the roof. Each of them is rated for 208 watts, so the total production capacity of the array under ideal conditions is 7488 watts. Today, when the sun appeared between the clouds, I saw the system reach its theoretical maximum of 7.5Kw! The best number I could capture today after getting my camera out was 7.2Kw.

Speaking of clouds, it is possible (and I saw it happen when I had fewer panels on the roof), for the array to put out even more than its theoretical maximum when the sun is peeking around the edge of a cloud. I won't pretend to understand the optics, but the edge of the cloud focuses the sun on the array. The extra power is trivial since the condition only occurs for a brief period of time (clouds move!). But it is important to consider this "peaking" effect when sizing fuses, wires, and battery chargers.

Here's a picture of the cloud obstructed sun earlier today, trying to shine through the timbers and our as-yet-untrimmed windows on the south side of the house.

moh powah

We've been operating with 5Kw of solar panels on the roof, while 2.5Kw sat in the basement... waiting for me to get up the gumption to put them on the roof. I used my 1974 Grove crane to put the first 5Kw of panels on the roof, but this time I thought I would try it w/o the crane... thereby freeing up the crane operator (my wife!) to do other tasks around the house.

My panels are attached to the standing seam roof using S5! clamps. These clamps have kept my solar panels in place for two years through high winds and adverse weather, so I decided to literally go out on a limb, and used them in conjunction with 2x4's to build a chicken ladder on my roof. After reaching the peak of my roof, I was able to attach a rope to my (almost finished) chimney, thereby providing a higher degree of safety. I attached myself to the rope using a lanyard and a rope grab with a ratcheting action, allowing me to scramble up and down the roof fairly easily.

Then I started at the peak, removing the 2x4's one at a time and attaching the solar panels as I worked my way back down the roof. These 208 watt panels are heavy, bulky, and sharp on the corners... so even though my safety was assured, I had a hard time wrangling these panels onto the roof without scratching the painted roof. (I kept a bottle of automobile touch-up paint in my pocket) There were a few times I was genuinely afraid I would drop the panels to the ground. But somehow I managed.

The wires for my solar panels pass through a hole in my roof near the eaves. From the roof surface to the breaker box under the eaves, I used solid metal conduit. Anywhere wires from roof mounted solar panels pass through a habitable structure, metal conduit should be used. (fire safety) I wired my panels so that three panels are in series. In the breaker box, four of these "sets of three" are wired in parallel. Then two wires are required for 12 panels to get power to the basement where my MPPT battery chargers reside. (I know, I know, I need a schematic to explain this.)

As of this writing, I have six new panels (approx. 1250 watts) on the roof and wired into our system! The rope remains on my chimney so I can add the other six panels this week, which will bring out solar capacity up to 7500 watts.

We pause for a brief political statement...

Other than an occasional rant against inane building codes, I've tried, with some success, to suppress my political leanings on this blog over the years. My mission for the house blog has been to provide some entertaining, if not sometimes informative, content about our quest to build an off-the-grid timber frame home. What started out as a means of keeping friends and family informed of our house building progress has turned into a chronicle of the house that is likely to live on as long, if not longer, than the house itself. (centuries we hope)

My wife and I love being green, but an incurable condition of rugged individualism motivated our decision to use our own trees for lumber, our own stone for flooring and siding, a 4+ year dose of our own labor, slate (natural, made in USA, with a lifespan of 150+ years) for roofing, a wood gasification boiler for heat, solar panels for electricity, and SIPs for insulation. When looking for building materials free of Kharmatic reprisals and unencumbered by negative moral entanglements, we've always preferred "local" to "sustainable." (the former being less ambiguous and often a truer representation of the latter.)

It's no coincidence that we built this house in Eastern Kentucky either... for it is one of the few places on earth where land is cheap, man has not yet outstripped nature's ability to produce resources, and the government hasn't yet unduly shackled individual pursuits. I feel we're at a precarious point though... land is getting more expensive (or is it that our currency is becoming worthless?), the irrational push to switch from coal to biomass could change our forests forever (a la "The Lorax"), and the federal governtment's push to homogenize America is conspiring to bring onerous building codes and zoning laws to our region. The window is closing... and not for any rational reason.



This is the backdrop for my decision to support Rand Paul for Senate. Please listen to this man speak. If we had 100 Senators as honest and as smart as this man, I feel strongly that our country would once again be on a path to greatness instead of a path of dismal decline. Whether you live in Kentucky (where we are fortunate enough to be able to vote for this man!) or whether you live in California, please consider that it might be in your interest to support this candidate. He has a steep, but by no means insurmountable, hill to climb to overcome the beltway establishment in the primary.

We're In Hot Water!

What happens when an MIT engineer designs his own domestic hot water system for use off the grid? Read on...

In our doublewide, hot water is simple... turn the knob and hot water pours out of the cheesy plastic shower head, thanks to grid electricity and a typical electric hot water tank. There are just three major problems as I see them: (1) after 15 minutes in the shower, I start thinking about all the coal that had to be dug up and burned in the power plant to provide me with that cozy hot water (2) after 20 minutes the tank runs out of hot water and (3) a bill shows up every month from the electric company with taxes, surcharges, and gratuities added on. I have succeeded in solving all of these problems in our new house... to some degree.

The neatest part of our new hot water system is the desuperheater on our heat pump. This gizmo taps into the FREE heat that is been sucked out of our house when the air conditioner is running. Few things in life are truly free, but this my friends is as close as it gets. If it didn't go into our hot water tank, the excess heat from our air conditioner would otherwise be dumped into the ground. As it is, the heat pump can only efficiently reject about 10% of its heat to the hot water tank, so 90% of it still goes into the ground... but still... that 10% is free, and it is subtantial. I have already taken a shower with the hot water from our air conditioner (heat pump) and I can tell you it feels great!

What happens if the air conditioner is not running? Well, if the geothermal heat pump is in heating mode (as in the winter time), it can devote about 10% of its heating capacity to the water heater. This heat is not free, since it diminishes the room heating capacity of the heat pump, but 75% of the heat going into the hot water tank is sucked out of the ground, so it's almost free. For every watt of power we put into our ground source heat pump, about 4 watts of heat are generated thanks to the earth's contribution. That's 4 times as good as a typical resistive element hot water heater! Furthermore, all of our power at the new house comes from solar panels, so there's never a bill for hot water generated in this fashion.

OK, but what if the sun is not shining? Well, in the winter on cloudy days, our house will be heated with a wood gasification boiler (not shown in this picture). The boiler's primary mission is to generate hot water for the radiant heat floors (that's the bulk of the plumbing in this picture), but I also plumbed it to our domestic hot water storage tank (through a heat exchanger, so that boiler water and potable water don't mix). Whenever we're heating the house with wood, there are plenty of BTU's to spare for heating hot water. In fact, I can heat the water in the tank to 160 degrees and then use a tempering valve to mix with cold water so that 60 gallons of really hot water is like 120 gallons of regular hot water. This would last several days and could be handy in the fall when the boiler is fired infrequently. (I haven't implemented the tempering valve yet though, so I'll keep the temps below 130.)

So what if the sun is not shining and/or the temperature in the house is already a comfortable 72 degrees, so the heat pump doesn't need to be running? (a common situation in the spring and fall?) Or what if 4 kids and the wife have beaten me to the shower and taken all of the free hot water? Ah, not to worry... in that case I cheat. Downstream of the sustainable hot water systems is a 200,000 BTU propane-fired on-demand hot water heater that can endlessly supply all the hot water I want until my wallet cries uncle. I ease my conscience a bit by calculating that at $1.39 per 80,000 btus, propane is half as costly as grid electricity ($.10 per 3,000 btus) for making hot water. My independence isn't compromised because I can always burn wood if I get fed up with the propane company. And... some day... I hope to put my cows to work producing methane, which I might be able to substitute for the propane in this or a similar hot water appliance.

This is a chart of the various ways of making hot water in our house, and in typical households...