It’s been a long time since I did an update on the house. No, we are not moved in yet. No, I don’t know when we will be moving in. But I hope very soon.
The electrical work is 99.99% complete.
The light fixtures are all installed and working.
The stairs are in and the railing is up but still needs balusters installed.
The cedar bathroom vanity has been built (from scratch by me!)
The kitchen cabinets are installed, the cabinet doors are half done and drawers and countertops are starting soon.
The window trim is 90% done.
The interior doors are just under half done.
The baseboards are about 20% done.
The washer and dryer are in and working!
Here are some photos from Canada Day of the lights after they were installed. Link to Picasa album with larger photos.
How much (useful) energy can you derive from rain falling from your roof? How can you best capture wind energy with many small wind turbines? Are there other options for using solar energy besides PV’s and solar hot water heaters? What are some other small options anyone could use that have cumulative benefits and are easy and cheap to install?
It’s a thought I had the other day when considering energy production for our house in the future. While on the road for my job I passed by an off-grid (even though the grid was 100 feet away) 3000+sf home with solar hot water, solar PV panels and a 100′ tall 3 or 5 KW wind turbine. It was massive and made the property seem very out of place next to smallish 1400-1800sf bungalows all around it. I decided that one large scale device to provide all or nearly all of my energy needs was not a route I wanted to take. I started doing mental calculations and plans to incorporate many small unobtrusive energy production devices into our house and land. We have a hectare so we have some room to play with and it is a former farm field so can plan around future trees, wind rows, etc…
One thought I had was to scale down the wind/hydro concept being implemented in Cape Breton where they use wind power to raise water in elevation and use the stored kinetic energy in the water through a mill to even out the variances in wind intensity. Could we dig a couple of ponds and do the same thing?
Continue reading ‘Energy Production Thoughts and Questions’
