Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.: Solar Power

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Spring, 2012

The internet has really been bumming me out lately so I've been avoiding it. Instead, I have made a lot of art and music. I almost quit writing the blog, but I was convinced by friends that that was a preposterous idea. I'll just have to keep on trucking.

This entry will be filled with both house and life, since it's been so long, and we've been living in such a vivacious style. Rewind to late April when we took a trip into space. My favorite place on earth, which is a few hours drive away. Unless you get lost on back roads, and then it will take about eight hours to get there, and your horn will eventually vibrate out from underneath the hood and onto the washboard gravel road.

From April, May, June 2012

We took a field trip to the Ghost Ranch to learn about the dinosaurs who used to claim these lands as their local stomping ground. We collected dinosaur bones that were scattered all over the ground. A bit of enchantment is actually a constant out here. Luckily for my mother, a friend was with us and he took some pictures of me. Here you go, Mom. Thank you, Joshua.

From April, May, June 2012

We were attacked by gremlins in late May. This is why the blog never got updated. They ate my hard drive and ransacked our house! I knew we shouldn't have fed them after midnight but Dain wouldn't listen to me. We won the fight, but I'll spare you the gory details.

From April, May, June 2012

Here is the front of our house one month ago, and two months ago, which will help you understand that we have been doing something out here...

From April, May, June 2012

(This is actually February, when Nora visited, but you get the picture.)

One month ago:

From April, May, June 2012

Earlier today (it's actually even more done now):

From April, May, June 2012

The western wall of our attic is still made out of the good old fashioned plastic/carpet/rope combination. This is a challenge that we are going to have to live with for quite a while longer. We made a tarp that can be raised during rain storms. It has a real nice boat feel to it. The boat aesthetic is one we have been enjoying and are planning to continue to incorporate it into our decor.

From April, May, June 2012

We have been busy, closing in the entire front, in order to get our gutters up and our water catchment started. Here are some up-to-date pictures. It's been frustrating and slow. We somehow managed to get every last pane of glass for free. The frame of this greenhouse is made out of redwood, and it's turning out beautifully. You may notice the two little windows that still have to be put in, we did that earlier today, but this picture was from this morning. Damn it! It's already out of date!

From April, May, June 2012

The bottom of the house is now closed off with cement. It will be buried with dirt up to the bottom of the cement. All of those cans will eventually be HIDDEN FOR ETERNITY. You can see the mosaic we made in the front of our house with broken ceramics we've collected over the past two years.

Finishing up the cement and mosaic:

From April, May, June 2012

Cans flattened and used for siding (work in progress/we need to get more cans/eat more coconut milk):

From April, May, June 2012

We've also been able to use as much power as we want. We are rich in power. We've been able to make music, digital art, non-digital art under BRIGHT LIGHTS, watch movies on a huge old completely energy inefficient tube TV, and use the sewing machine that was Dain's Great Grandmother's. After some re-wiring this old Singer has been godly. I'm just now learning how to use it, but I'm not lying when I say: IT HASN'T JAMMED ON ME ONCE! It is amazing. I am in love.

From April, May, June 2012

Here is a dress I made: My 2012 summer look is a synthesis of comic book attire, post apocalyptic dress wear, and the desert discomfort.

From April, May, June 2012

Inspirational look.

From April, May, June 2012

Making art, playing music...

From April, May, June 2012

Our band, Single Moms, will have recordings available soon.

We have been at it for two years on July 4th. You can rewind like a archeologist and click back to the first entry, July 4th 2010 and check out of "ground breaking" explosion.

A new thing we are trying out is something called... what is it? How does it go? Is it called... taking it easy? I can't really remember what that is.. but the vague memory of it sounds so appealing.. it gives me a warm bubbly feeling inside.. I'll let you know how that works out for us when it comes into action.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Is your refrigerator running?

Mine is.

MY REFRIGERATOR IS RUNNING. I still haven't fully grasped the concept of owning a refrigerator. I have lived out of a cooler for about two years now, and that is over, over, over. R.I.P. It's over. I had a bad falling out with Coleman.

In the past month and a half, we have done quite a bit. The house building never seizes to stop. We installed our stove! That was exciting. If you live off grid, you can only have one brand of stove, and I love it. I bought the ridiculous huge one, and haven't regretted it yet for a second. It is a Peerless, and it uses almost NO power, just propane. It only uses 2 watts to light the flame. This is important, for people who have "limited" power. I'll get to that.

The stove has six burners, a griddle, and a gigantic amazing oven that has so far made beautiful quiches, cookies, breads, pies, and more. I am in love. But it's ugly, we're going to have it painted at an auto body shop!

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

I hate to admit that the six burners are most awesome because: You can keep so many dirty dishes on them! It came with a griddle for the middle burners which is pretty awesome. You can make six pancakes at once! So, first was the stove.. Then hell broke loose when we moved onto our next task: Power.

I'm going to try to keep this a short update. One without too many details. I've been so stressed out with solar power, wires, thousands of dollars being spent, thousands of hours being burnt out, and the never ending project we found ourselves knee deep in. This has probably been the most insane month of work we've had yet.

Now it's over. Mission accomplished. We have power. We are going to go to a museum on Friday. I swear. And maybe I'll have time to get my camera fixed this month!

We now have enough solar power to do basically what we want, when we want, and run our refrigerator off of it, too.

Phew.

We started with our panels: We installed four 240 watt Canadian Solar panels onto our roof using an Albuquerque companies "professional installation materials." This company called DPW and they are totally rad. You can go visit them, they know everything and extremely helpful. This was the easiest part of our project, getting these huge, heavy things up onto the roof. (I'm not saying that this was easy, just the easiest thing we did in the past month).

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

Each of these panels is about 50 pounds. They are about 3 x 5 feet. They have been working awesomely! They get an incredible amount of power in cloudy weather, and they are about $1.20 a watt. We bought them at Affordable Solar in Albuquerque. The people there know next too nothing, but the equipment they sell is the cheapest. Recommended only if you know what you want before you show up.

We had to build a completely enclosed structure with a completely sealed box to put our four L16 fork lift batteries. Here's the batteries before we installed them:

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

We then started digging. And building. Same old thing we do when we have to build just about anything at this point. I somehow managed to be too stressed out to document very much of this. And it really happened pretty fast. Picture nothing here, because that's what what there, and then this, our new UTILITY CLOSET!

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

An adobed structure, that will soon be decorated to resemble a rustic cottage. We built this closet to hold our solar equipment, and our water set up. Right now it's only holding the solar stuff, because, well, the water stuff has yet to be installed.

On the outside of the "cottage" cabin, drum roll please... the FRIDGE!

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

It's only been plugged in for a day, but it's amazing so far!! It uses what seems like no power at all, though it does use a some. For a fridge it's incredible! This Hotpoint (model HTH18GBC) is totally huge and quiet enough. It's ugly, as almost every fridge I've ever seen is ugly, but we'll paint it.

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

Ice cubes! What a revelation!

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

Cold food! That's not in a cooler! That's not 40 feet from the house, outside, in a blizzard!!!

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

Buying all our solar stuff, inverter, batteries, charge controller, cables, wires, etc, etc, etc, around 6k.

Making this salad for lunch without having to go to the cooler once? Priceless.

From Building the Utility Closet, solar power, Fall 2012

My operating cost? $0/year. The only thing we'll for sure have to replace is the batteries, once every 10 years or so. Knock on wood we don't have too many mechanical failures. We'll see. It'll be worth the price. I can't believe I lived so long without a refrigerator.

After a gazillion hours of research...