Andrew Burger at CleanTechnica blog reported Monday [September 26, 2011] that Westinghouse Solar has introduced new plug-and-play solar panel kits for do-it-yourselfers, which can be purchased off the shelf at Lowe’s. These kits come with built-in AC inverters, brackets, roof flashings and panel splices, connecting easily to each other. Each panel is rated at 235 watts, making the basic 4-panel kit (~$1500) come in at just under a kilowatt.

Homesteaders are nothing if not do-it-yourselfers, and most of us would dearly love to be supplying our own power. Maybe even selling clean green energy back to the electric company by generating more than we normally need! And since we tend to live out in the boonies… er, countryside, we are often last in line to get our outages taken care of after storms or other problems cut electricity. It would be great to have alternative on-site sources for at least some electrical demands when the commercial power’s out, preferably not a gasoline generator that uses petroleum, contributes to global climate change, and is loud enough to be a public nuisance.

The price of solar panels has been coming down steadily over the past few years, as more companies get into producing the materials for them, and with China investing heavily to develop their domestic industry. There are still state and federal rebates and incentives available in the U.S. to help cover the cost of going solar, so now would be a good time to buy. Those rebates and incentives won’t last long once the price comes down to honestly competitive.

About the most expensive part of these DIY kits is the licensed electrician recommended to do the actual wiring into the home electrical box, or the grid feed-in. Our electricity company is Duke Energy, and while they will facilitate a tie-in, it has to be done by one of their own electricians, and those make $30-$50 an hour. Pay-back depends entirely on how much your utility supplier charges per kilowatt hour. That cost isn’t coming down with fossil fuels or nuclear, so a homesteader could see pay-back in 6-10 years. If you’ve enough money (or credit) to install DIY panels on your barn and outbuildings as well as your house, you could be a net energy producer through the feed-in and almost break even right from the start.

Your own needs will of course come first. Check out your most recent electric bill. It will tell you how much you’re paying per kWh for juice and give you a feel for how much electricity you use per month (round high). Our conservation efforts here will make a big difference in how much roof you’ll have to donate to the generation project. It can take up to 64 panels to cover the “average” homeowner’s electrical needs, and given the size of these panels, you’d have to have several roofs or donate some land to the effort. But of course, homesteaders aren’t “average,” always aware of our consumption habits and trying to lessen our carbon footprint.

Thus to go completely off-grid you’d still have to be independently wealthy. And solar panels only generate when the sun shines, so while you could make a good dent in your own draw on the grid during the day, you wouldn’t be selling back to the grid while you sleep at night. Better bets for a grid tie-in would be wind and/or micro-hydro, both of which would generate ‘trines 24-7. The 4-panel solar kit from Lowe’s could be used to power a dedicated circuit in the house for a specific appliance – like, say, an energy efficient refrigerator or chest freezer – and a 12V battery charger. That way when the electricity goes out you could still maintain refrigeration and household lights, maybe your computer.

At any rate, this is great news. Solar is finally coming into range for the average property owner, even just as an assist to offset continual price hikes in fuels the utilities use for generating electricity. The more people who take advantage of on-site generation, the fewer new big plants – coal or nuclear – the utilities have to build. Check out some of the links below and start dreaming!

Links:

Westinghouse Solar
Westinghouse Solar Introduces Low-Cost DIY Home Solar Kits
Everything Solar: How Much Energy Do You Need For Your Home?
Energy Matters: Wesinghouse’s DIY Home Solar Kits

I was somewhat surprised on one of my web surfing jaunts to see a blog dedicated to ways of saving money weigh in against the notion of doing odd jobs and building projects yourself. Because for my homestead – and very likely yours as well – if we didn’t do our own odd jobs and building projects, then no needful jobs or building projects would ever get done. So I’ll take the opportunity presented to offer a rebuttal to some of the objections logged in the Money Bucket blog.

The article is Saving Money – Or Not – With DIY Projects, and it’s worth a read if you’re genuinely unsure of whether or not you’ve got the ability to tackle a project on your own. Of course for big projects it’s very important to understand going in exactly what will be necessary – time, tools, materials and a certain degree of skill. Homesteaders already know about budgeting their time toward the “work in progress” that describes our way of life, as there are always a dozen or more projects and repairs that need doing. Most of us, if we’ve been living this way for some years, have amassed more tools than many city-folk even know exist. In fact, for most projects the primary concern is coming up with the money to purchase the materials, and making sure we’ve got every little nut, bolt, pipe, sealant and extraneous parts before we start.

Perhaps the author is speaking more to urbanites than those of us who live out in the boonies on purpose and strive continually to be ever more self-sufficient. When the faucet washers wear out and start wasting our precious water supply (and driving us crazy with drips), or the drain clogs or cracks, or the windows break or the door needs replacing, we aren’t usually inclined to call a plumber or contractor. Heck, many of us would laugh at the very idea of paying some stranger extra to drive from town to our property and repair or replace what we could repair or replace, for ten times more than we could do the job for. But even urbanites with some tools, patience and an ability to turn screws/wenches could fix a leaky sink or hang a door without breaking the budget.

DIY disasters can cost big money to fix. Before starting any home improvement project you will need to understand each step from start to finish. Research potential pitfalls and problems you may encounter along the way to determine if the project is over your head. Be honest with yourself because your enthusiasm will quickly wear thin if something goes wrong – and if you don’t know what you’re doing, things can head south quickly.

That paragraph in the Money Bucket article made me chuckle. Sure, the author is talking about ‘home improvement’ more than simple repairs, but we homesteaders are quite used to those type of projects. We remodeled our kitchen last summer, which included replacing a window and door, re-siding the exterior wall, re-plumbing so we could move the sink, re-wiring, installing new cabinets and countertops, removing a bar to make room for the dining table we inherited, drywall installation, re-framing, flooring and insulating the attic space, and even reinforcing the main load bearing beam. It cost a pretty penny for all the materials, and we did have to replace the drill twice (old chestnut and locust beams are literally hard as rock). And of course things discovered along the way once we got into the walls and attic weren’t planned for but had to be dealt with anyway. Such is life.

Hiring a reputable contractor to complete an upgrade at your home generally gives you the peace of mind that the job is done right the first time. You will pay dearly for that peace of mind, but in some situations it can be worth every penny.

Heh. That’s kind of a surprising bit of advice to give to people described in the first paragraph of the article as “…planning to sell and need to update your home to make it more attractive to potential buyers…” I mean, if you have to pay dearly to upgrade your home in order to sell it to somebody else, then your improvements aren’t likely to cover the costs in this awful real estate environment. If you’re already underwater on that mortgage, digging yourself in deeper isn’t going to help.

It’s a little different if your home is where you plan to live for the rest of your life, but not much different when money’s tight. I had no kitchen all summer (it wasn’t officially finished until Thanksgiving), had to cook on the grill out back while a big sheet of plastic served as a front wall to my house. We all worked very hard, this is not the kind of project that allows much time for other things, and it involves everyone. It even upset the dogs and cats. But if we could have found a contractor to do that much structural damage to a hundred year old chestnut cabin with a crew of a dozen, it would have cost more than we paid for our entire homestead. Literally. And no, that would NOT have been “worth every penny.”

Sure, those kind of huge projects – new roof and/or installation of solar panels/wind or hydro generators, reworking the entire water supply (my next big project), tearing out walls or floors to get to wiring or plumbing, building a barn, etc. aren’t things one undertakes lightly. Or often, if you can help it. And it certainly helps to build up your confidence in the meantime by tackling small repair and replace projects first, learning to handle all the tools, and such. And exercising your mind about how to plan clever ways of getting around serious issues that may be encountered.

It’s all good for you, and just puts that much more of yourself into the overall Being we lovingly call “Homestead.” Good planning works too, so that several projects can be tied into one – the solar panels at the same time the new roof goes up. Replacing the old water-guzzler toilet with a low-flow at the same time you replace the sink and shower. Going ahead with the better insulation when any section of wall comes out. Things like that deserve the time it takes to plan ahead.

Money Bucket is correct in their bottom line that doing things yourself doesn’t always save you money, especially if you’ve got more money than time, skills and tools. But for those of us who have dedicated ourselves to a broader, more expansive and involved way of life that highly values self-sufficiency, doing things yourself is simply another aspect of the life we’ve chosen for ourselves. And we’ve usually got way more time, skills and tools than money to spend. Plus at least one friend with enough time, skills and tools to help us out if we need it.

In an economy like this one, sometimes a friend will help just for the nightly cook-outs, fresh garden veggies and fruit, refreshing cool-down at the swimming hole after swinging a hammer and wielding a circular saw all day, and maybe some iced beer and story-telling around the fire while the fireflies rise.

Money, after all, isn’t everything.

As part of our plan to revamp our water supply system to get rid of the energy-sucking 220 pump and replace it with a ram jet, and concurrently installing geothermal collectors to supply a steady supply of cool air in summer and warmer air in winter, I’ve been checking into other ways of cutting our grid energy use. It will be years before we’re in a position to purchase solar panels or a wind generator to get the homestead off the grid entirely, so every little bit of electricity we don’t use from Duke Energy helps our bottom line.

A friend in Arizona long known for his bicycling prowess sent me a link to David Butcher’s Pedal Powered Generator website, which is chock full of information about getting a little exercise while charging up some batteries used to operate things like LED lights, computers, televisions, electric motors on your assisted transportation (Moped), even a washing machine. Though that last takes some real muscles for the spin cycle. I’ve often thought that as I’m sitting here at my desk surfing around on the internet I should be pedaling a stationary bike to power the machinery that lets me do that.

Butcher’s site offers free Do-It-Yourself plans, some videos for instruction, some hints for potential uses of your generator, and power stats for various appliances you may want to power in this way. you of course will need the DC batteries to charge, and the AC adaptor for many appliances, but those are available all over the place. MNS Power has both DIY plans as well as systems for purchase along with video instructions for installation of all components.

And for those who really get into the swing of things human-powered, there are even sites out there where you can purchase 12 Volt appliances you can power directly. Things like LCD flat screen TVs and DVD players, refrigerators and freezers, various kitchen appliances, fans and heaters, lights, etc. There are of course the usual cellular phone chargers, Bluetooth kits, appliances that come with their own built-in inverters and such. I particularly like the 12 volt refrigerator/freezer, which while quite small, could be powered by solar panels most of the time or switched to pedal power if the sun’s not shining enough to keep the batteries charged.

Refrigerator/freezers are one of the biggest energy hogs in any household, yet they are important for keeping food safely at temperatures where bacteria can’t grow enough to make your family ill. This is of course a much bigger issue in the summer than in the winter, when a simple window box or porch-mounted ice box could be used instead.

A friend in Pennsylvania once rented an old farmhouse that had a nifty water refrigeration system built-in. It was a concrete trough that ran across the width of the cellar. Spring water came in through a pipe at one end, and drained out of a pipe at the other end to a rock-lined depression that took the water to a stream. The spring water was about 40 degrees all year long, cold enough to keep things cool enough. Deal was, she had to use those Tupperware type containers to keep water away from the food, and bricks to keep those containers under the water. Still, it worked, and kept melons very nicely.

Knowing we have to do something about the water system (because the cistern cracked) has put me in a mind to be looking around for the many energy alternatives that homesteaders could be using to keep their footprints small on this earth. There’s much more available today than there has been in the past, as there are many more people both in the cities and countryside who are trying to save energy or become more self-sufficient. One of the best sources of information I have lucked upon in my surfing safaris is Home Power Magazine, which offers articles and plans for all sorts of generation systems, appliances, collectors, etcetera.

Please check out some of these good sources of information and get yourself thinking about how much more your family could do to nudge your homestead ever more toward independence.

Useful Links:

Home Power Magazine
12 Volt Appliances
David Butcher: Pedal Powered Generator
Free Plans Bicycle Power Station

As plans for the new water system move forward, we find ourselves in sudden possession of quite a lot of high-end good-sized PVC piping of various lengths, assorted odd couplings, some strips and scraps of new carpeting (good for insulation of trenches), and a surprising amount of aluminum ductwork. Salvaged from various places. Not being content to leave what look to be perfectly good but not immediately needed lengths of such pipe and ducting behind, we’ve been rescuing as much as we can get from the dumpster-side repository at the contracting facility next door to hubby’s day job.

Some of these lengths of thick-walled new pipe are 3 or 4 inches in diameter, so I’ve been considering how we could use them as we head into this major project, other than as the ‘head’ flow from the new spring to the ram jet in the pumphouse. Given as it’s nearly July, I have also been scouting around for some form of air conditioning that doesn’t require an air-tight home and way more not-cheap electricity than we care to use. We only need it occasionally during the hottest hot-spells of summer and only at times when it’s inconvenient to spend the afternoon in the basement, out under the shade trees, or down at the swimming hole. As part of that research, I’ve been looking at geothermal engineering concepts and technology as well as at modern iterations of good old evaporative cooler (a.k.a. “Swamp Cooler”). Which looks great and works well in places like Arizona, but is not so great here in the southern Appalachians where it’s around 85-90% humidity all the time. Geothermal still looks good, so…

A Do-It-Yourself heat pump! But without the compressor/heat element assist. This could work.

This old cabin is built right into the side of the mountain, thus the ground (basement) level stays almost AC cool all summer. I’ve previously considered installing an in-floor fan basically where the wood stove pipe rises through to the main floor and simply sucking that cool air upstairs, but in my experiments with portable fans to blow the cool air up, warm exterior air simply gets pulled in from the side of the basement that isn’t earth-shielded and then the basement level is as hot as the rest of the cabin. The installed in-floor fan is still a good idea, but needed to find cool air to replenish what’s blown up to the main floor.

This 100-year old chestnut cabin is anything but air-tight, and I must admit I like the fact that it “breathes.” We live on a beautiful mountain and love the fresh, green (and often pollen-laden) air, the constant breeze and such. Want to be able to refresh the air summer and winter to a certain extent, and this is where those pipes may come in handy to supply both cool air in summer and warm air in winter.

We’ll have to do quite a lot of excavation to get the water from the new spring and ram jet up to a new cistern above the house, which will also require a new supply pipe to the house from the hill-side rather than the bottomland-side. So I’m thinking we could hook these pipes together with ‘u’ joints (with an above-ground intake at the back end) as a geothermal collector about 2 feet deep out in the side yard. The ground doesn’t really freeze here in winter (just not that cold here), so the air that runs through this underground collector would pick up heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Then we could hook that to a small in-wall exhaust fan into the basement level to provide cool air in summer for the in-floor fan to blow upstairs. Thereby keeping the basement level cool while circulating to the rest of the house. Working just the opposite in winter.

In the dead of winter the air from this collection system is likely to be only around 50º F. But during the day when the leaves are bare and the sun is in the south, we get a hefty amount of passive solar heating when the sun shines. And the wood stove in the basement (our “central” heat) has always worked great to make the place toasty on the coldest of nights. The geothermal should help even things out quite a lot, and likely even save wood. If we can pipe in 50º air to where the wood stove is cooking and it’s 25º outside, the whole system should be more efficient. And the house would still ‘breathe’ in a healthy manner.

So once we get from the creek and springs up here to the house (on our way up the ridge where the new cistern will be), we’ll be doing work on two projects at once. As it takes shape I will be sure to take lots of pictures and report regularly on the progress. Again, stay tuned!

During my year off from blogging one of the Big Projects for the homestead was a total kitchen make-over. We could afford it because my dearly loved Mother-in-Law died last April, after just a month in assisted living, at the ripe old age of 87. Turned out she had so much money in her checking account that even after expenses and splitting what was left with hubby’s brother, I could finally get a nice new kitchen to go with the dining furniture she also left to us.

For eighteen long years the kitchen has been separated from the main living space with a bar, even though the front door enters the kitchen rather than the living room. That bar has been variously attached to the right and left sides of the kitchen (thus changing the traffic pattern), and for the past six years it simply floated in the middle, topped with a piece of plywood painted for paper-flip football, mini-table tennis and various other games. Never managed to have four actually stable, matching bar stools at any given time, but our annual visitors were encouraged to buy or build their own, which would be exclusive to them whenever they were in-house. Some of them are pretty amazing, but of course none of them ever matched. And that front door, just so you know, was a hollow closet door that never actually closed or locked, we used to brace it against wind and possible night intruders with a bucket full of dirt.

Never had any upper cabinets because the huge 6×8 foot window took up the most of the wall. Worse, it extended well below the countertop level, becoming a catch-basin for all sorts of junk and dirt. My nephew managed to break 4 of its 12 glass panes some years ago with a bad shot from the second tee, I’d replaced them with cardboard and scrap lumber. Very, very ugly. So, for the very first time in my life, I got to go out and buy real building supplies from a real supplier and design the room just as I wanted it to be.

Not that there weren’t some significant “Uh, oh” moments involved, of course. We knew the front door opening had to be enlarged to handle a real, live actual front door. Which we got at such an astounding discount at the freight salvage place (along with window, cabinets and drawers) that we went ahead and bought two. One for us, one for daughter’s place out back. That Saws-All and re-framing job wasn’t so bad, it was the window that took most of the summer. Made me entirely miss out on mid-summer preservation of the harvest, the entire front of the house was wide open and covered (barely) with a sheet of plastic. Put in a standard 2.5×3 foot window – double pane! – and this allowed me to put upper cabinets on both sides once the sheetrock was replaced and painted.

Moved the plumbing so the sink could be right under the window instead of next to the door, put the stove against the far wall and out of its corner hidey hole, replaced the beams on two sides to shore up the roof and attic, and gave up on my planned hardwood floor before the holiday hoards descended. Maybe next year…

New cabinets, new countertops, nice recycled glass tile work (still not grouted), new furniture. All that’s left is a new ‘fridge, but that must await whenever Habitat for Humanity gets a stainless or black glass one they’ll put aside for us. So for Christmas, to celebrate what we described to my retired State Department sis and brother in law as our dramatic rise from Third World to Developing Country, they got me a nice brushed stainless (matches the outlets/switches) Cuisinart bread machine. Because they know that I make a lot of bread, and wanted to give me something they knew I’d use. Hubby continued the theme with Cuisinart super bagel toaster and coffee maker for Christmas, the clean look of matching appliances makes me feel positively… modern!

And while I won’t complain about the bread maker – which is incredibly convenient – I’m now back to kneading bread by hand as I always have because its ‘dough’ cycle doesn’t have a whole wheat option, as its bread cycle does. And my family won’t eat anything that even vaguely resembles white bread. Just spoiled that way, I guess.

Have used the dough cycle for baguettes, for bagels, for pretzels, pasta dough and for basic cloverleaf rolls. All of which require further processing outside the machine, which can only bake loaves. Every single time I’ve had to dump the unmixed mess out onto the counter and start all over again, because the machine can’t handle whole wheat for anything but bread. Now I don’t bother with it, but it still looks nice on my counter along with the rest of the appliances. It does keep us in whole wheat loaves of regular old bread, and I’ve even learned how to factor for sourdough instead of yeast, it does very well with that. It beeps for me to add sprouts and seeds and whatever else can be added after the first rise, and the finished breads are downright scrumptious. Heck, I could go into business with some of the best of ‘em!

But mostly, it just looks very cool on the counter next to the toaster and the coffee maker. Which, if anybody wanted to know, is the best contraption since indoor cooking, for sure. But that’s a whole different blog post…

Until next time, look forward to spring, get those seedlings started, and know that it indeed is entirely possible to make the transition between Third World and Developing Nation right here in America’s very own hinterlands!

Having posted with pride about our new honest-to-hillbilly deck, I thought this might be a good time to talk a bit more about the many tools a homesteader needs in order to keep the place in order, do the gardening and landscaping, renovate and repair home and outbuildings. I can do this because during the deck project we had a total of 4 hammers on hand, and two of them ended up without handles before we were done. Frustrating.

The very best thing you can do, of course, is to purchase the absolute, best quality, longest-lasting tools – any tool – you can possibly afford. Yet in today’s economy, getting the best quality tools is often beyond the means of those of us trying hard just to make things work. Here at my homestead we’ve got a shed chock full of old chain saws, string trimmers, handle-less shovels, pitchforks, axes, mauls, sledgehammers, pruners, etc., not to mention a whole collection of broken hammers, screwdrivers, various saws and power tools bought cheap over the years and which didn’t last long enough to get to the second job.

Worse, I’ve an energetic daughter and some grandchildren who work hard on occasion, but can’t ever manage to put the tools back where they belong. Which means I find rusted things all over the place, often with wooden handles that long since rotted into compost. It’s extremely frustrating, and having to replace the tools every time you start a project is a regular pain in the ass. Not to mention expensive.

My friend and local homesteading hero told us many years ago to “Buy The Best” because that way you don’t have to keep on buying over and over again. Great advice, but not very practical if you’ve got to have an axe (the last one has only half a handle) and you’ve got just $20 to spend right now. And my hugest complaint about ALL homestead tools with handles – when the heck do the handles get to the modern composite resin/graphite world, just like golf clubs?

Luckily for all us non-wealthy homesteaders, There Is A Way. Why, we can purchase ‘best’ quality tools secondhand! There are a number of ways to do this, and you won’t be sorry. Often you can acquire the super guaranteed-for-life item at or below on-sale cheap stuff at Walmart if you just spend some time looking around. There are estate and farm auctions, there are whole secondhand warehouses, and there are a good many sites on the internet where even with shipping costs the ‘best’ tool comes in cheaper than the Walmart Special.

You could go local to the auctions and auction houses that will let you inspect the items and brands pre-auction, you could go to Craig’s List or Freecyclers and hope for the best, or you could check out some of the links below and surf some of their cross-links too. The ‘best’ of our tools is a Craftsman tiller my father-in-law bought for me when we first moved here. It’s still in the shop right now for its 5-year tune-up, but that thing’s a true workhorse that may never really die. We went ahead and put out the bucks for a Stihl chain saw about 7 years ago, and it’s still going strong on its 4th chain. Which is better than the several cheap ones under the shed that didn’t last 2 seasons.

What’s your most elderly tool, and are you glad you bought the ‘best’?

Links:

Used Tools
How to Buy Good Used Garden Tools
Used Snap-On Tools

In preparation for the annual Independence Day celebration, last week was a regular beehive of energetic engineering to finish the deck in time for the fireworks. I of course appointed myself straw boss for the project, and imported day labor …er, an old friend… to do the actual work. My observations confirmed the efficacy of “hillbilly engineering” to the point that it loses a bit of its epithet-like undertones, and makes me confident enough to go ahead and advise that you don’t have to be a licensed general contractor to get things done around the homestead!

There was a deck there previously, installed by visitors from Florida a decade ago while we were out. We’d already sunk the support poles (a few salvaged 4x4s and some sturdy tree limbs) in concrete and installed the joists – salvaged 2×8′s left over from when we had to replace the foundation beams (another saga…). We’d scarfed some thick tongue-and-groove planking for the deck surface from the Children’s Home where hubby worked as a fundraiser at the time, left over from some projects there. We had planned to put those visitors to work, but we’d also planned to make a real deck with spaces between the boards so the water could drain off, and those visitors just went ahead and grooved the tongues anyway. Which of course meant that the deck was doomed to rot in record time, which of course it did.

As it rotted and people started falling through on occasion, we patched by laying random pieces of plywood and siding over the weak spots. But not only did that make for a seriously ugly deck, it wasn’t very much safer than the rotten underdeck either. It was time to start over, so my dear friend Chad came with his children while hubby was at work and took the whole darned thing apart. Once the foundation was exposed I was amazed at how much the joists had rotted, given that the deck timber had never been allowed to drain water!

We installed a few more supports, the old ones having rotted in their concrete, then shored up the joists – there was still lots of good timber, it just wasn’t level or clean for nailing anymore. I figured we could shim the uneven parts. Hubby collected the boards from our neighbor with the sawmill, untreated heart pine 1x4s that really measure 1×4 (commercial timber cheats on its measurements). By the time we got all the slats shimmed and screwed it became quite obvious that the joists which were ample for serious 2″ thick tongue-and-groove planking were not numerous enough to keep those 1x4s from dipping dangerously in high-traffic areas.

So I had hubby crawl underneath and add a few cross-beams in the gaps using hangers from the hardware store. That at least made it so you didn’t feel like you’re walking on water, and when the pine does actually dry out it should be stiff enough to take some weight. Then Chad built us some nice steps, we re-attached the picket fencing we’d salvaged from friends when they moved from a rental house and didn’t want to leave it behind, moved the furniture and grill back to the deck from the yard, and jury-rigged a tarp so we’d have a place to sit when it’s raining (which it did, all weekend!). A lovely time was had by all!

This deck should last at least the decade the last one lasted. The boards are thinner but there’s space in between them, and we’re not shy of Thompson’s Water-Seal. It may be certifiable Hillbilly Engineering, but we are actual hillbillies so that’s no big deal. The whole thing came free save for the hangers and screws, and it will serve us very well until the next time it needs replacing.

Now we get to do the same thing for the front porch deck, which Chad jury-rigged last Thanksgiving so nobody would fall through and break their legs. We’ve plenty of wood from the pallet our neighbor donated in exchange for my hubby’s clowning at his daughter’s birthday party, and what we don’t use for decks we’ll probably use to frame in the front porch so I can have a winter greenhouse (and summer screened porch). I figure that with good plastic on the screen on that south side of the house, I should be able to grow salad and kale and scallions all winter long while still getting the solar heat-gain we rely on during cold winter months.

If my readers have any cool tales of hillbilly engineering to share, I’m sure we could all use the advice!

Great news this week on ScienceDaily, picked up by Nanotechnology News and other outlets that researchers from Swansea University have developed a paint coating for steel buildings that will generate electricity even in low light situations.

Note that this isn’t solar panels on the roof, but the enameled coating on the siding itself. Meaning that metal buildings – including garages, barns, equipment sheds, airport hangars, outlying megachurches and community buildings could all be generating electricity (some from the infrared spectrum current solar cells cannot capture) while they’re just sitting there enclosing space. Put a few regular panels on the roof too and it could be generating more than it uses on a regular basis.

But when I went looking at just how innovative this development is in the overall scheme of things keeping affordable alternative energy options safely insulated from regular people who might just put them to work, I found that the idea isn’t all that new, and isn’t anywhere close to being marketed to consumers of things like metal buildings (commercial or residential). Why do you suppose that is, given the sheer amount of money being funneled into research and development, as well as into actual production?

For instance, National Geographic reported in January of 2005 (more than 3 years ago) that Spray-On Solar-Power Cells are True Breakthrough. Just like in the ‘new’ news, nanotechnology able to harness infrared as well as visible light was formulated into a plastic to be sprayed like paint onto stuff (including clothing and cars) to produce “portable power.”

Have you bought any solar powered clothing or cars lately capable of charging your cell phone or car battery? …I thought not. In January of 2007 (just over a year ago), researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology reported that they had developed a buckeyball-based solar cell that could be sprayed like paint onto flexible plastic sheets. Inhabitat cited one of the researchers as predicting…

“Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.”

Have you printed out any usable solar cells on the ol’ Epson yet? Not to worry, says Konarka Technologies, which has actually developed the inkjet solar cell printing process for big production facilities (but no reports on whether any big production facilities are actually buying it).

When can the average homeowner expect to be able to purchase house, slab and deck paint that generates electricity at Home Depot for a comparable price to regular exterior paints? When can we expect to buy roofing tiles or sheets at Lowe’s that have inkjet printed plastic coatings that not only generate electricity, but add to the life of the roofing material?

The technology is out there. The government is pouring money into development. So far, none of it’s found on the shelves at Home Depot or Lowe’s. Why is that?

If we COULD buy it for a reasonable price when it’s time to paint or re-roof, We the People surely would. I’d sure hate to think that this might actually be the reason we can’t buy it. They’ve had time to incorporate and patent, they’ve had public money for R&D, they’ve reported for years that it’s easily done and the technology is easy. They can make more money off us if they wanted, I’d sure buy the stuff and so would millions of others. What’s the holdup… really?

Wise Living Journal blog is oriented toward people who have chosen to live closer to the land than most do these days, and who are willing to take responsibility for as much of their lives and life choices as is possible in this modern world. This generally means those living off the edges of crowded cities or suburbs, or those lucky enough to have found a bit of countryside to call their own.

I’ve covered the basic homestead tool kit, started talking about some basic home repairs and maintenance jobs the homesteader can do for him or herself much cheaper than they can hire someone else to do. I’ve talked a bit about planning yard and garden space to make the most of your surroundings. And these subjects will come up again and again, as there is plenty to cover. But this sub-series is about housing itself.

Buying

Some people have found some real bargains on acreage in various rural areas of the country. While the “housing bubble” in home prices in cities and extended populous areas of the country have swelled to absurd proportions in recent years – then ‘busted’ when the economy entered its most recent depressive phase on high energy prices and deficit spending in D.C. – some places still offer land at reasonable prices.

If you aren’t planning on large-scale farming or livestock production, the average family can have a wonderful life on 3-5 acres of land. Such plots can be found for $10,000 or less per acre in most states that aren’t California, Florida, New York or New Jersey. Sometimes a motivated seeker can find a 5-10 acre homestead that includes a basic, older model “fixer-upper” house or cabin, even an outbuilding or two, and spend less than $100,000 on the whole sheebang.

Building

Building your home on raw land offers many choices for the frugal homesteader, particularly for the new kit log homes and timber frame homes that the buyer can supply a lot of the labor for building. In my own area of southern Appalachian North Carolina, whole lending consortiums have sprung up to fill gaps in traditional financing for such homes, as there are some odd “city code” requirements that have been attached to home financing in recent years that simply don’t apply to people who don’t live in cities.

With Baby Boomers facing imminent retirement, many of them are buying land and building retirement homes – lots of them log or timber frame – and sustaining a mini-boom of gated mountain getaway communities that cost every bit as much to live in as it costs to live in cities. The ‘trickle down’ benefit is that there are mortgage sources for such construction and land.

Making Do

My family bought 13 acres of land 15 years ago for $5,000 per acre. It came with a 100-year old “fixer-upper” of a 28-foot square chestnut cabin that wasn’t worth anything at all. A freebie! A basement was dug from the foundational root cellar years ago and an indoor bathroom was added (along with septic tank and drain field), which we expanded when we replaced one whole side of the foundation because termites had turned the beams to paper.

That renovation included complete re-plumbing, which wasn’t too bad with just one bathroom and one kitchen sink upstairs. The roof had also been raised to add a loft room which we use as a spare bedroom, but it’s none too firmly attached and will have to be dealt with when we re-roof within the next year.

But for 15 years this little cabin has served our family very well in all seasons, all kinds of weather, and through all the comings and goings of family life. There’s still a lot that needs doing, and lots of cosmetic things that would make it ‘nicer’. But because we’ve had a little experience with how to add space without adding on (or rebuilding from scratch), this alternative is something a homesteader with a “fixer-upper” – or just a homespace that’s become too cramped – should consider.

The first sign that your home has become too cramped is that you’ve run out of storage space. Think of the cartoon character who opens the closet door to an avalanche of sports equipment, hats, ironing boards, bowling balls and assorted other stuff. You look around after a whirlwind cleaning of the entire living space and it still looks cluttered.

You could construct an addition to your home, but this can be a very expensive proposition. The high square-footage cost of construction, tying in to heating and cooling (plus additional cost), high interest on home improvement loans – if you can find one these days and that’s not easy. Redesigning an attic, basement, garage/carport or attached porches is more economical. The basic structural components are already there and the materials you’ll need to finish the space will cost substantially less per square foot than an addition would.

There are wonderful ideas out there for redesigning your already existing living space, some linked below. Before you decide, do take into consideration the construction mess you’ll have to work around on a daily basis during the project, how that may effect the family, and be aware of any zoning or building restrictions which may apply.

Eventually we’ll get into some fairly easy redesign projects that a homesteader should be able to do for him or herself, or with just a bit of strong-back help. Such improvements can add significant value to your home, but so long as it’s fairly invisible from the outside, it won’t add more to your tax bill than the ‘normal’ increases that come around every couple of years to reflect rising land prices.

In Part II of this sub-series, I’ll look at some of the deals that can still be had on new construction using those kit log and timber frame homes on raw or prepared land.

Links:

Homebuilding & Renovating: Top Tips

Ezine Links: Home Improvement/Remodeling

Real Estate Blogs: Interior Redesign

Realty One: Average Cost (hired labor)