Tell me if I'm crazy or if this sounds like a plan..

[RockyMtnr]

A couple of notes to consider:
*Starting at around -30 (below zero), propane will start to freeze. Many of the colder areas use Butane - which carries a slightly cinnamon aroma and needs different burners.
*It's always windy in Wyoming ... except maybe when you need it to be.
*Depending on the oil/gas industry boom-bust cycle, there are always plenty of water-trucks around that "might" be suitable for livestock, irrigation, etc but you need a place to fill up ... and with water being a valuable commodity in Wyoming, it's not always comfortable and easy to find such a place. Also, you'll never keep it warm in winter without great expense.
*While the blessing of winters being so cold is that they're dry and so, not like Wisconsin or New England winters - they are still extremely cold and basically, nothing thaws 'til March or April ... or May ... or (?).
Good Luck - but please remember; there's a reason all those Mother Earth News "Back to the Landers" settled in North Carolina and not in Wyoming ... and there's also a reason all those "Alternative Housing" folks chose New Mexico over Wyoming.

[NVDave]

Originally Posted by jcostagliola

Electricity: we plan on using a "wind turbine", which by my calculations will provide enough electricity for the house. Just in case there is some calm, we will have a propane standby generator. Cost for this will be approx $8000 but we will never have an electric bill.

Appliances: We are thinking propane. The refrigerator, freezer, water heater and clothes dryer can run on propane. This is why the wind turbine will be able to provide plenty for the house.

Water and Septic: I know a septic tank will run about $5000 but it is the water I am puzzled about. I know a well is about $22 per foot to drill with water anywhere from 250' - 700'. This would be an approximate cost of $5500 - 15000. Here is one question I have. Do people haul water at all and what is the cost?

OK, into these plans, figure the following additional expenses:

1. Buying a propane tank. If you lease a tank, you're tied into one propane supplier - and you have to take their prices. If you own your own tank, you can shop your propane around.

You'll want a large tank. Most home installations have a 500 or 1000 gallon propane tank. At the rate you'll be going through propane, you'll want a 1,000 gal tank minimum. Here's something to think about: call around to the various propane suppliers in the area and ask them if you get a cut in the delivered propane price if you can take an entire bobtail truckload at once. This will require that you have a pretty big tank - probably at least 2,000 gallons. A bobtail truck, if full, will have between 2,000 and 3,000 gallons of propane on board.

You could spend upwards of $5K on a new tank of that size.... or you could hunt down a used tank. Used tanks run about a buck a gallon of capacity.

2. When you're looking at propane gensets, look for gensets that run at 1800 RPM, not 3600 RPM. 3600RPM gensets wear out quickly.

You will need at least a 10KW genset to be able to start motors reliably without a sag. You'll want an engine that is made out of cast iron. If you're really going to keep your fuel bill down, you could use a heat exchanger on the exhaust to extract heat in the winter. When you do this, your overall efficiency can go up over 50%.

3. When you're looking at batteries for your wind/solar power setup, don't get sucked down the rathole of truck or marine batteries. If you're going to be living off the alternative power all the time, do it right the first time and get L-16 type wet cell batteries. They're huge, they're heavy, they're expensive, but they're designed for deep cycling and they're going to last longer than anything else you put into the application.

4. Water: If you're going to have water hauled in, you're likely going to be using a plastic tank for your water storage. You're going to need to bury it to keep it out of the sunlight and to keep it from freezing, and you'd need to budget for that too. You'd probably want at least a 1,500 gallon water tank.

[jcostagliola]

Thank you so much for all the input. This is exactly why I started this thread. You guys are giving me alot of insight into things I may or may not have thought about.

I seriously appreciate it!!

Thanks,

JC

[Kristynwy]

Not sure what kind of budget you have for utilities? Just thought I would throw this out there...

Have you considered the cost of Propane vrs the cost of Electric? Propane is extremely expensive right now. My husband works in the heating and air conditioning industry and he has told me of how much a month people on different ranches had to pay just for propane and how it was eating a big chunk of their money each month. They eventually had to switch over to something else, such as electric furnace, wood and/or coal, ect...
Just a thought.

We are renting a place in the country that we are getting ready to move out of shortly and it cost us an arm and a leg to keep this placed heated with propane, we were paying 3 times what people in town were paying. So we bought and electric heater, and our electric bill only went up 10-20 dollars a month. Our water heater is propane so we had to buy our own smaller tank to fill up every few weeks for hot water. It isn't cheap either.

Just something to consider if money is an issue. I would weigh out the pros and cons, how much it would cost to get electricity put in and maintain each month, and how much it would cost per month for propane. You may be surprised... Propane used to be the way to go and very economical. But not as much anymore...

[Wyoming Bound]

If you're wanting to live that efficiently, why not just get off the grid completely and naturally?
I'd love to (not sure if my hubby would tho) live with a wood stove for heat, sun and candles for light and a fireplace for cookin' and a stream for water (or a well, as to me, that's just as natural as the stream). But most people think I'm nuts cuz I don't need the creature comforts..... Oh wait, this IS coming from the same person who freaks out when the internet goes down!! LOL, wonder how long I could live without my computer? hmmmmm on that note, I could do everything about my life EXCEPT for the electricity to run my computer/laptop. There. Now, that said, why not? People have lived eons of centuries (or however long it really is, I'm no anthropologist) without gas or electric heat/water/energy. Was it really SO bad back then? I'd love to try it and see.

[imbobbbb]

Originally Posted by Wyoming Bound

If you're wanting to live that efficiently, why not just get off the grid completely and naturally?
I'd love to (not sure if my hubby would tho) live with a wood stove for heat, sun and candles for light and a fireplace for cookin' and a stream for water (or a well, as to me, that's just as natural as the stream). But most people think I'm nuts cuz I don't need the creature comforts..... Oh wait, this IS coming from the same person who freaks out when the internet goes down!! LOL, wonder how long I could live without my computer? hmmmmm on that note, I could do everything about my life EXCEPT for the electricity to run my computer/laptop. There. Now, that said, why not? People have lived eons of centuries (or however long it really is, I'm no anthropologist) without gas or electric heat/water/energy. Was it really SO bad back then? I'd love to try it and see.

well there isnt exactly a 'surplus' of trees around casper for wood for the most part and many who have live streams only have them which flow seasonally.I don't think casper wyoming is the best place to try your idea out.

[Clay Lady]

Ya'lls posts made me remember my daughter taking electricity away from her four year old as a punishment for something. That was so funny seeing the child realize how many things took electricity!

A well designed home making use of window placement, solar, wind, and all that good stuff is going to be cheaper to operate than an older home. I like to have back up on my heating. I have electric and propane. I like that combo.

[NVDave]

Originally Posted by Wyoming Bound

If you're wanting to live that efficiently, why not just get off the grid completely and naturally? .... Was it really SO bad back then? I'd love to try it and see.

I have friends in central Nevada who lived just as you describe until the mid-1970's. Most people don't know it, but there are places in central NV that received power (ie, the grid) in the mid-1970's. There's small towns in northern NV (just south of Idaho) that got phone service only in the 1980's. The Rural Electrification wave got to central Nevada rather late, and there are still plenty of ranches that have no power now, and they're never going to have power.

And when I talk to these folks about what it was like before & after they had power come in... I notice that they're mighty happy to have utilities. The biggest change they describe is that when they didn't have power at the ranch on which they grew up: no free time. Their "free time" was spend cutting wood, stacking it, feeding the boiler, cleaning the boiler, feeding the woodstoves, cleaning them, fixing water pumps, chopping water out of cattle troughs when it would freeze in winter, chopping ice out of toilets, getting splinters out of their butts before they had a toilet (back when they had an outhouse), digging a new hole for the outhouse twice a year, moving the outhouse. The gals had plenty of time invested in laundry. Cooking on a wood stove sounds romantic, but the fire is invariably too hot or too cold, and lots of food comes out burned unless you've developed the skill to bank the fire right.

Burning wood for everything means that there's a constant film of ash and dust over everything in the house. There's dirt from hauling wood into the house and ashes back out.

It sounds real romantic. For the most rugged among us, it might be.

As hard working as these folks are, they like having some free time and and a little less work. When people ask them about going back, they smile and say "Didn't have to get the ranch wired in the first place. You don't see us calling the co-op to get the power taken out, do you?"

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by Wyoming Bound

If you're wanting to live that efficiently, why not just get off the grid completely and naturally?
I'd love to (not sure if my hubby would tho) live with a wood stove for heat, sun and candles for light and a fireplace for cookin' and a stream for water (or a well, as to me, that's just as natural as the stream). But most people think I'm nuts cuz I don't need the creature comforts..... Oh wait, this IS coming from the same person who freaks out when the internet goes down!! LOL, wonder how long I could live without my computer? hmmmmm on that note, I could do everything about my life EXCEPT for the electricity to run my computer/laptop. There. Now, that said, why not? People have lived eons of centuries (or however long it really is, I'm no anthropologist) without gas or electric heat/water/energy. Was it really SO bad back then? I'd love to try it and see.

Been there, done that back in the 1960's in Boulder, CO, while living in a non-winterized, no utilities cabin up Boulder Canyon for a year. I learned to appeciate the big woodstove and the wood heating stove and Aladdin Lamps. I had a hand pump well at the kitchen sink and an outhouse. Living there before sunshowers were in the market, I came to really appreciate the friends with dorm rooms in town and running hot water showers and bathrooms. I was more foolish than hardy for the experience.

Even now, with the location of our ranch in SE Wyoming, we are "off the grid" at times due to climate conditions taking out the power grid. While we're equipped with Aladdin Lamps for light (and some heat) throughout the house and a wood cookstove to heat the house and cook on (a real pleasure to cook on or bake in the oven; we cook on it in the winter even when we don't have to) ... it's still a real pain when we don't have running water because the well is out. We store some water for domestic use and to supply water to some of the livestock, but after 3-4 days of no flush toilets and no showers, it's a serious inconvenience.

There's not a lot of places in Wyoming where you'll have easy access to wood and water through the winter for an off-grid "simple" experience. It can be done, but you'll have to do a lot of work as NVDave mentions just to survive. I wouldn't envy you ....

[K-FOX]

Originally Posted by jcostagliola

One question I still have about water: Instead of a well; is hauling water a possibility and at what cost. I have read that hauling your own water is about 1 - 2 cents per gallon where delivery of water is about 6 cents per gallon. So, do people in the Casper area haul water?

Thanks,

JC

Hey JC,
I use to live in Casper and I also hauled water. There use to be 2 water stations in Casper, one over by Fort Casper and a new one they put in at the bottom of Cole Creek RD in Evansville just before I moved. It has been about 6 years since I hauled water so the prices might be different by now, but it was 50 cents for 50 gal. Many people haul water around Casper. Most of the water up in B.B Brooks Ranch is not potable. Very Alkiline. If you drill a well you most likely will need a RO system.

Living "off the grid" won't be your biggest problem. You will go thru propane more than water with the water heater and refrigerator, and forget the dryer (use wind to dry your clothes even in the winter they will freeze-dry fast). Also you will have to bury your water tank at least 5 feet and 6 feet is better otherwise it will freeze.

If you plan on trying to grow anything (as in a garden) you will need ALOT OF WATER! Trust me on this. I know the land up there in B.B. it is very dry and sucks up the water like crazy! You can water til it puddles and 5 minutes later it looks like you haven't watered at all.

I am not trying to discourage you at all, just warn you. If I could sell my house I would already be back there. It does take a special kind of person to live in WYO.

What phase are you looking at I, II, III or VI?

sage