AHHHH... The long road home....

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Well worth the efforts. I love it when people find out I live off-the-grid. (Some don't even know what that means!)  I get this comment a lot, "Wow that must be rough living like that  huh?"  I reply, " At first maybe, but if you are willing to roll up your sleeves and become apart of the process, the rewards seem endless."  

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Next tour date will most likely be scheduled for May 30th, 2010 when we check everything to see if it needs anything after the long winter months when it works the hardest.  Please feel free to contact me using the form on the contacts page if you have any questions at all anytime.  See you in the Spring!

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Here is the Whisper 200 Turbine up and running since Sept. 08. It has already produced over 149,000 Watt-hours. It is rated to produce 200kW per month but we have not gotten that in over a year. This is explained in more detail at the tour.  Our household demand is on average a daily demand of 4200 watt-hours. So technically it has powered this house for a little more than a month on it's own. We have watched it on those windy nights and days giving out such a strong surge to our batteries that it was equalizing the bank! Equalizing the bank is important, once a month you have to give the bank a hard and rapid charge which before could only be done by running the generator for the whole day and would suck up about 11 gallons of gas in the process. Because solar power is steady and no surges of power occur, it can't do this for the battery bank, but the wind mill can on a windy night.  I have a lot of people ask me how much it cost and our entire system has cost us approx. 11K. We have propane too because starting out, we needed to go with the most cost efficient method. I spend about $650 a year on that and it runs my stove, refrigerator, heats our water through an Aqua Star, we have a propane dryer (if we use it) and two back-up propane heaters and we heat with wood in a Regency wood stove. The turbine and all it's accessories cost about 5K. But, once you design a house like this, you can modify it as you can afford to and make it more and more low impact and remove fossil fuel use down to nothing. Keep in mind both my husband and I are very independently natured and both brought skills to this that made it possible. So given that, you must measure what you are willing to do or hire someone to do those parts of the process. For example, we felt more comfortable getting a licensed Electrician who lives off-the-grid himself to help with major part of the hook-up because we had never done anything like that before. Daniel wired the house okay, but we wanted to be sure that part was done right the first time. Knowing everyday now that no matter what happens with electricity, we are all set and in charge as well as responsible for that system is a comfort and security that is priceless, not to mention no electricity bill and no black outs. But more than that, this process and this house built like this in the woods without opening up roads and installing a line of humming poles in here really makes you feel like you gave it your best shot in lightening our footprint and trying to respect and blend with the natural environment around us as well as continuing to build on that concept and remain conscious of it, is rewarding to me beyond measure.  Have an awesome day!  Carolyn Rae


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