Backups for our Backups - REAL Preparedness

This afternoon, as I spoke with my friend, Lady Anne of Providence Lodge, she told me that their generator had up and died (Lady Anne and her Husband, along with many children live off-the-grid also).  I sympathized with her as only a fellow off-grid homesteader can, encouraging her in her distress.

I began telling Lady Anne of the frequent comments I receive - well meaning people telling me how they would set things up if they were off-grid.  They tell me how to install back-up systems and how to properly maintain our equipment.  They give me instruction on which inverters I should be using and why wind power is superior to our solar system.  Often I am reprimanded for taking "short-cuts" or not "not being very prepared, for being a prepper"!  And by and large, these comments have come from people who haven't lived off-grid.  Ever.

We exchanged stories - stories of shattered solar panels, broken generators and bursting batteries.  We talked about the axioms we live by - "if it's yellow, let it mellow - if it's brown, flush it down".  We talked of reading by lamplight when the batteries were too low to run LED lightbulbs and turning the refrigerator off during the night to conserve electricity.  We talked about the often harsh realities of real off-grid living versus the romantic off-grid dreams of many.

Truthfully, Lady Anne and I would both love to have backup systems.  Actually, we'd love to backups for our backups!  But, the reality is that both of our families have chosen for she and I to stay home and raise our children rather than hold outside jobs, meaning we each only have one income.  We have chosen to not go into debt, which means everything we buy has to come out-of-pocket.   We have chosen to run our own utility company, which means we provide our own water, sewer, power and garbage services.  And, unlike every other utility or municipality, we pay for our own capital improvements and absorb our own costs of doing business.  We have no taxing authority and can't lobby for a rate increase.  We've had to learn to make do or go without.  And that, in a nutshell, is REAL preparedness.

A long time ago, Sir Knight and I dreamt of going off-the-grid.  We read magazines and newspaper articles.  We perused off-grid catalogs and built the systems of our dreams - in our heads.  We would read Backwoods Homes articles and American Survival Guide, and shake our heads at the solar systems cobbled together on a wish and a promise.  We would discuss how we would do things, how our systems would never fail.  We would build our system right the first time, maintain it meticulously and sit back and reap the benefits of autonomous freedom!  And then, we went off-the-grid and ran headlong into reality.

Reality is much different than intellectual construct.  Intellectually, I know we need a backup to our solar system, our water system our heating system and every other system that makes our lives easier.  The reality is that all of those systems costs money, require time and demand maintenance.  In a perfect world we would have ample ability to meet those needs, however, we don't live in a perfect world.  And therein lies the rub.  No matter how many backups you have, no matter how "prepared" you are, no matter how much money, time or maintenance you put into your systems, at one point or another, they will fail.  And that is where REAL preparedness come in.....

Real preparedness is being prepared to go without.  It is about thinking outside the box and learning to work your way around a situation instead being stymied in the middle of it.  Real preparedness means figuring out how to do your laundry when your generator goes down and your James Washer handle breaks.  Real preparedness means figuring out how to turn your 24 volt battery into a 22 bolt battery when you lose a cell.  Real preparedness means figuring your way out of difficult situations rather than buying your way out of difficult situations.  REAL preparedness comes into play when you run out of other options - it has more to do with attitude and aptitude than with perfectly streamlined preparedness systems.

Off-grid living is an amazing adventure.  I love the thought of a perfect system in a perfect world but that is not our reality.  We live in an imperfect world with limited money, time and knowledge.  Sir Knight and I make the best decisions with the information and resources we have at the time.  However, because we don't have unlimited resources, we've had to build the skills needed for real preparedness.  We have learned how to think outside the box, to make do and to work around faulty systems.  We have been blessed with NOT having enough to do everything "right".  Instead, we've had to exercise our REAL preparedness muscles.  We have prepared to figure it out or do without!

Battery Power!

As most of you know, we live off-grid.  We rely on our generator and solar panels to charge our batteries, which in turn, power our life. 

Because Sir Knight fixes electric forklifts, we use industrial, deep cycle lead acid batteries in our system rather than the Trojan LT 316's most commonly used in off-grid applications.  These batteries provide us with a huge amount of storage and have worked well for us for many years. 

About a year ago we began to notice that our battery didn't last as long as we would have liked, and that it took a charge too quickly, indicating that it had a severely reduced charging capacity.  We limped along with our dying battery through last winter, with the intention of replacing it in the spring.  Spring came, and with it, the sun, which kept our battery charged to full capacity, lulling us into a false sense of battery security.  And then, the bottom fell out of our off-grid world - our generator died and the sun sank into the autumn sunset and our battery slowly faded into powerless oblivion. 

Sir Knight, realizing our precarious position, brought home a beautiful "new" battery!  One of his customers bought all new batteries for their fleet and discarded the old batteries.  One of the discarded batteries was only about a year old and hadn't seen much use so Sir Knight discharged and charged it and loaded it into his van and brought it home. 

One Saturday morning, our neighbor arrived with his self-loading log truck to help us remove the old batteries out of the shouse and install our new battery.   Switching batteries is not my favorite task because it requires moving nearly every piece of furniture in our shouse!  Our batteries live in our bathroom/utility room, which is on the far end of the house, as far away from the front door as you can get!  The batteries are huge (ranging from about 1500 pounds to 3000 pounds each) and require a decent amount of room for maneuvering.  After we cleared a path through the house, we brought in our pallet jack (doesn't everyone have one?) and put a special "roller tray" on it that Sir Knight fabricated for moving our batteries.  We rolled a battery out of our bathroom, through the shouse and to the front door.  From there, Sir Knight chained the battery and hooked it onto the grapple of the logging truck and our neighbor pulled the battery off the pallet jack and through our front door.  After moving both batteries from the bathroom, we were ready to bring the new battery in - a far bigger chore than we had anticipated! 

Miss Serenity wheeling out an old battery

Using a self-loading log truck to drag the battery out

Because we have an arbor in front of our door, we had to jerry-rig a couple of battery roller trays outside to get the battery to the front door so that we could pick it up with the pallet jack.  A pry bar, a couple of oak beams and a wish and a prayer later, we had the battery on the pallet jack - at an angle because the new battery was 1/2 and inch wider than the old batteries and wouldn't fit into the roller tray!  Finally we rolled the new battery into place, plugged the SB connector into our house system and flipped the switch.  Let there be light!!

Ready to move the new battery into the "Shouse"

Miss Serenity and Sir Knight guiding the new batttery

"Shouse" Surfing - it's a new thing!

We have been running on our new battery for about three weeks now and are in constant amazement!  Because our old battery had been slowly losing capacity, we didn't realize how terrible it was.  This new battery holds an incredible charge, rarely dropping below 24.9 volts, and takes a nice long, hard charge.  Our gas bill has plummeted because I rarely have to charge the battery and I am thoroughly enjoying a well-lit shouse!

One new battery in position

I take the tablecloth off of the battery when charging so
that the hydrogen can gas off the battery

Running your own power company has its challenges, but it also has great rewards - and a nice, full battery as winter envelopes us in her frigid embrace is just such a reward!

Off-Grid Chronicles

On September 16th, Sir Knight and I marked our 16th year of living in Little Shouse on the Prairie.   What we had intended to be a one year adventure living in a shop has become a sixteen year undertaking in off-grid ingenuity.  It has shaped our family and pushed us to our limits.  We have learned how to overcome and how to be content.  We have learned that "self-reliance" doesn't exist, only heightened dependence on one another versus dependence on the established infrastructure.  We have grown stronger and closer and more capable.  We have experienced life as few people in our generation have had the opportunity to experience.  And yet our daily life is still a challenge, replete with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

Our most recent off-grid hiccup has been generators (again).  Generators, along with our solar array are the foundation of our power supply.  We always keep two generators in our shed - one main generator and one back-up generator.  Both of our current gensets are older Onan generators, which have become our generators of choice.  Our main generator is a 6.5 KW and the back-up a 5 KW.  We have been relying solely on our main generator for the last year because our back-up generator had carburetor issues, along with a few other problems.  About two months ago we sent our back-up generator to my Dad's small engine mechanic so that we could have both generators up and running before winter.  After our back-up generator had been in the shop about two weeks, our main generator up and died.  What timing!  We limped along, relying on solar energy alone, while waiting for our back-up to be repaired.  In the meantime, we hauled our main generator in to Dad's small engine mechanic to add to his repair list, and waited, hopefully, for our back-up generator to be brought back to life.

Onan 5 KW (Needs a good scrubbing, doesn't it?!)

Yesterday my parents brought us a wonderful gift - our back-up generator repaired and ready for work!  After over a month of making do, we fired up our back-up generator and flipped the switch!  Oh, the relief!  The generator ran flawlessly, pumping our water and charging our batteries with ease.  We are back!!

Our main generator is still in the shop.  We are having the mechanic look at it before repairing it, then we'll decide if we're better off replacing or repairing - one step at a time. 

We have found that maintaining an off-grid lifestyle requires constant creativity and tenacity.  It requires ingenuity, perseverance and a hardy dose of rugged individualism.  Not to mention a liberal draught of blood, sweat and tears.

Oh, to live the off-grid life!

Off-Grid Chicks

One of the challenges of living off-grid is caring for animals without the convenience of modern electricity.  Stock tank heaters are a thing of the past, making winter a constant battle against frozen stock tanks.  Although it may sound easy enough to keep the ice chopped with an ax, it is actually a form of farm ballet, an exercise in perfect control.  You must chop with enough force to effectively break the ice, while controlling your exerted energy so as not to render the stock tank incompatible for use due to massive ax-inflicted trauma.

Although spring is welcome after a long winter (no more frozen stock tanks!) it brings with it it's own set of animal burdens.  One of the challenges we have had to overcome is adequately nurturing baby chicks without the use of a heat lamp.  Chicks have to be kept warm and in the past we simply plugged a heat lamp in, hung it in the brooder and walked away.  Easy!  Now, life is not that simple.  Our solar/generator system will run most things effectively, however, it cannot support anything that that involves resistive heating - meaning no heat lamps!

The last time we got chickies, we waited until late spring/early summer, when the temperatures were warm enough that we didn't need a heat lamp.  The problem with that method of chick rearing is that it generally takes nearly a full year before the chickens begin to lay eggs.  They spend their summer maturing and by the time they reach the age for egg production, the days get shorter and they just don't get into the habit of laying eggs.  That means that you have to suffer through an entire year of spending money on chicken feed with little or nothing to show for it!

We have had abundant eggs for a number of years, but our hens were getting up in years and their egg production had dropped significantly.  We went through the winter with no hens cackling in our henhouse, but knew we had to restock before summer arrived - we want fresh eggs!  And so, we visited our local feed store, picked out a variety of good layers and brought fluffy little chicks home.

A few of the chicks were really tiny.  By the time we got home, three of them were nearly dead.  Actually, when we were unloading them, I honestly thought they were dead.  Maid Elizabeth picked one up, looked at it and determined that it was only "mostly dead".  A few warm breaths as it lay cupped in Elizabeth's hand brought a flitting to the poor little chickies eyelid.  The other two were also "mostly dead" but not completely gone, so Maid Elizabeth grabbed a cookie sheet, lined with it an old wash cloth and laid the limp chick bodies on the towel.  They didn't move a smidge.  She slid the cookie sheet into the oven of the wood cookstove and closed the door.  The stove was just bubbling along with a slow fire, so it wasn't super hot - just right for incubating baby chicks.  Within an hour the chicks started moving around and by an hour and half we had to remove them from the oven - they were up walking around.

"Mostly Dead" chickies, warming in the wood cookstove oven

Rejuvenated chicks getting a little extra attention

After reviving the "mostly dead" chicks, we turned our attention to creating a chickie habitat behind our wood cookstove.  We brought in a wooden box that was small, but not tiny.  We laid newspaper on the bottom of the box (easy to clean) and added a layer of pine chips.  We grabbed our trusty Dietz lantern, filled with Kerosene, lit it and placed it in the corner of the box.  We turned it down pretty low, but not low enough for the flame to extinguish.    We did put up a small piece of cardboard to keep the chicks away from the lantern, however, we have come to find out that the chicks like it right next to the lantern and they hop back out when they get too hot.  We added food and water and a heavy towel that we placed over about 2/3 of the top.  We didn't want the towel to lay over the top of the lantern and we wanted the chicks to have adequate ventilation.  For the cooler nights, when the wood cookstove is stoked, we add a hot water bottle for the chicks to cuddle on.  That, along with the kerosene lantern keeps the chicks cozy and content.

Our make-shift brooder box has worked incredibly well.  The chicks are happy and warm and growing nicely.  We fill the lantern every evening and it easily burns for 24 hours with no problems.  We keep the brooder box behind the wood cookstove so that we don't need to burn the kerosene lantern particularly high.  Our lantern if far enough away from the stove not to be a problem and there is no (uncovered) open flame as we are using a Dietz.

Being off-grid is an exercise in ingenuity.  You have to be creative, finding new (old) ways of doing things.  We are happy to have a whole flock of off-grid chicks.  Now is the time to think of creative ways to go about the business of life.  Don't wait until you have no choice - choose to think outside the box today.

This is just another day in the life of "Little Shouse on the Prairie"!

Off-Grid Ingenuity - Fire Bricks

As most of you know, I adore my Pioneer Maid wood cookstove.  I have cooked on it and we have used it to heat our home for over 15 years.  It has an enormous firebox and oven and with the addition of the water reservoir, the stovetop is gigantic.

Our stove is very utilitarian and quite easy to maintain.  It does not have a lot of bells and whistles (it is, after all, a wood cookstove) - its strength is its simplicity.  The one complaint we have had with this stove is the requirement for custom firebricks.  Rather than building the firebox around standard firebricks, the Amish built the stove and then fashioned firebricks to fit.  The bricks are unique sizes and interlock with each other so as to form a "solid" firebrick wall.  Although easy to install, they are very expensive (as firebricks go) and require shipment from Ohio, adding to their cost.

In the 15 years we have used our stove, we have replaced the firebricks 4 times.  We order them from Lehman's Hardware at a cost of about $160.00 with an additional $60.00 shipping.  Due to the high cost, we often limp along with broken firebricks until spring, when we can order a new set.

Because of the way the firebricks sit in the firebox, they are easy broken during the normal course of loading the stove with wood.  Our firebox can only be loaded from the top of the stove and the wood clunks down on the top of the bricks, cracking and breaking them.  Ouch!

After studying the problem, Sir Knight came up with a possible solution to our firebrick dilemma.  Knowing that our bricks break when wood slams into them (on the top of the bricks), Sir Knight welded a couple of pieces angle iron together, snaked them through the top of the stove and set them on top of the firebricks to protect them from flying firewood!  Ingenious!

Angle Iron "Firebrick Guard" on top of the firebricks

The angle iron will burn out eventually and Sir Knight will have to make another "firebrick guard", but that is simple enough.  Hopefully, this little invention will keep our firebricks from breaking and crumbling and save us from having to replace our bricks so often.

Don't you just love "off-grid ingenuity"?

Off-Grid Ingenuity - Toast on the Wood Cookstove

O.K., I'll admit it.  I'm a little slow.  For the past 15 years, I have been making toast in my wood cookstove oven.  Well, it can't really be classified as toast - more like razor sharp slabs of bread - but I call it toast, nonetheless.

The thing with wood cookstove toast is that by the time it is nicely browned, it is dried out, hard and brittle.  Eating wood cookstove toast is an explosive experience.  By an explosive experience, I mean that when you take a bite, your toast explodes into a million microscopic crumbs.  Due to the fact that I am an unapologetic toast lover, I overlooked the wood cookstove's toast deficit and assumed that I would eat dry, hard toast for the rest of my days.

And then I had a rather illuminating conversation with my mother.  We were waxing eloquent about the charms of our cookstoves and how pleased we were that the weather had turned, allowing us to fire off our beloved stoves.  We talked about all of the things we missed about our wood cookstoves during the hot summer months - things like putting food in the warming oven while we finished cooking so that everything was delivered to the table hot and always having warm plates (out of the warming oven) with which to set the table.  And then my mom said something that caught my attention - she said she missed browning hamburger buns on the top of the cookstove.  She opined that there was nothing as perfect as a bun, buttered and placed on a piece of aluminum foil to brown to perfection on her wood cookstove surface.

Really?  She has been toasting hamburger buns to perfection on the top of her stove for all these years while I have been eating toast that is roughly the same consistency as croutons?  Oh, the inhumanities!

Of course I had to put my new found knowledge to the test immediately!  I placed a piece of tinfoil (I assume you could use a thin cookie sheet also) over the medium/high setting (almost over the wood box) on my cookstove, placed three slices of bread on the foil and let the stove do its magic.  Almost immediately the toast began to brown.  I moved it around a bit (to make sure the bread was evenly browned) and turned it over a couple of times.  It only took a few minutes (rather than the 15 minutes, at least, that it takes in a hot oven) and, oh, my goodness, it was wonderful!  No more hard, dry, crumbly toast for me!  Now I can enjoy perfectly browned, yet tender, toast every morning with my tea, all because of my mothers Off-Grid Ingenuity!

Slices of bread placed on tinfoil over the wood box

Browning nicely!

Off-grid ingenuity

The iron on the stove

When you rely on the sun and a generator for your power, you have to think outside of the box when doing things other people take for granted.  Take ironing for instance.  I used to plug the iron in, complain that it was ironing day again, and commence ironing our piles of clothes.  Now, without grid power, ironing in no simple task.  Any appliance that uses resistive heating is a huge power user and we forgo their use on any but the sunniest of days.  The task of ironing, which I used to view as drudgery, is now done over the wood cookstove.  What's old is new again!

Getting wax out of a shirt

After trying to plug in my iron a number of times, only to hear the inverters whine loudly in complaint, I coiled the electrical cord around my iron and put it over the fire box on the wood cookstove.  It worked perfectly!  The iron goes over the wood box when I need a hot iron and is positioned closer to the water reservoir when I need a cooler iron.  Of course, this system only works in the winter when we are not making a ton of power from our solar panels.  In the summer, I can plug the iron into the wall and not blink an eye - we have plenty of power.

Little tricks make all of the difference.  It just takes a dab off-grid ingenuity.