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OpenD - You are not kidding about the big stink in outhouses... A lot of area in Northern Canada and Alaska you are not allowed to use chemicals due to the environment... So no "blue" tabs to get rid of the smell. And I only *thought* horse flies were big down here - until I saw them up there around the outhouses. I even saw one with a saddle on it. You sure don't take your time in those. And let's just say that stopping on the side of the road and going in the bushes felt a whole lot cleaner than using those.
I didn't know that separating liquid from solid would cut down on the smell... Most of the port-o-lets have a "urinal" in them where at least the males using it would have their urine diverted.
In my next house that I hope to have in a more rural setting, I wouldn't mind an outhouse type setup as long as it didn't smell.
On Edit: I found a lot of residential urinals for sale online. And the below site has a bunch of examples of them in houses. Some are interesting looking and at least don't look like your typical urinal.
In my state that isn't four cents per kilowatt hour that the solar panels generate. It's a third of that.
What state is that? Where does it say that you only get 1 1/3 cents per kWh? I'm really curious
In Hawai'i the net metering is at par, so if I pay 43 cents per kWh, then I get credit at 43 cents per kWh for what I feed back to them, up to a zero balance on my account. I'll have to dig for the wholesale rate they pay if they agree to buy any surplus to that, but it's a substantial portion of the retail price.
And for a little benchmark in this conversation, the national average retail price for electricity in the US, in January 2014 was...
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Last month, the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity in a U.S. city also hit an all-time January high of 13.4 cents, according to BLS. That marks the first time the average price for a KWH has ever exceeded 13 cents in the month of January, when the price of electricity is normally lower than in the summer months. - See more at: Electricity Price Index Soars to New Record at Start of 2014; U.S. Electricity Production Declining | CNS News
I didn't know that separating liquid from solid would cut down on the smell... Most of the port-o-lets have a "urinal" in them where at least the males using it would have their urine diverted.
But it winds up in the same holding tank, which is where the mischief begins. Combining the two creates an anaerobic environment, and the microorganisms that thrive in that environment stink.
Composting toilets, by contrast, operate in an aerobic environment, which has little smell. For them to work properly they must quickly remove excess liquid, so the older units all had heating elements to accomplish this task. The most efficient operation occurs when the solid waste is barely damp, and some designs allow adding a little sawdust or peat moss to dry the mass as well as adding a bit of carbon for a more effective composting action.
With the Nature's Head "dry toilet" I mentioned earlier, you start with a couple quarts of damp peat moss, add a small scoop of additional peat moss for every use of the toilets, and stir the contents with an external handle to fully expose the contents to air. An external vent hose removes the small amount of odor to the outside. After a month or two when the hopper is full (80 "uses") you remove it to empty on an external compost pile for further breakdown, and start with a new charge of peat moss.
It's an interesting fact of history that when the W.C. (water closet) was first being developed in Victorian England, there was a parallel development of an Earth Closet, which was almost identical to today's simplest composting toilets. but the Queen preferred the "out of sight, out of mind" aesthetic of the W.C., thereby by setting the trend for what we have today in urban society, where perfectly good potable water is used to flush the waste away.
At least with greywater you can flush with water that's already partially used.
I was talking to my and she brought this up the other day but the big issue as mentioned here is the cost for infrastructure replacements across the country. It would be a great thing IMHO. But who would pay for it, would we have to pay higher taxes or cutback in current public services?
"An estimated 65,000 PG&E customers have solar panels on their rooftops. The power they produce offsets their electric bills. However, many are producing much more energy than they use and by law their credits are wiped out at the end of the year. So some homeowners say that's a giveaway and now they're plugging in more appliances in an effort to use up their excess energy."
"Here's how it works: by law, homeowners in California can offset their electric bills by generating their own solar power, but if they produce more than they use, the credit on their bill is wiped out at the end of each year. A new state law does give homeowners a small payment for that surplus energy -- about four cents per kilowatt hour, but customers say that's practically a giveaway."
In my state that isn't four cents per kilowatt hour that the solar panels generate. It's a third of that.
Harvard released a study on solar vs wind. Wind wins hands down in energy production, cost to build, and energy storage. Solar takes longer to pay off, costs more in time and energy to produce and can't store as much. Just go off the damn grid and get wind, no point in having solar as your main source, it wouldn't be a bad back up for non-windy days.
What state is that? Where does it say that you only get 1 1/3 cents per kWh? I'm really curious
In Hawai'i the net metering is at par, so if I pay 43 cents per kWh, then I get credit at 43 cents per kWh for what I feed back to them, up to a zero balance on my account. I'll have to dig for the wholesale rate they pay if they agree to buy any surplus to that, but it's a substantial portion of the retail price.
And for a little benchmark in this conversation, the national average retail price for electricity in the US, in January 2014 was...
Hawaii the elec companies are trying to put the kaboosh on solar panels.
"Georgia Power buys back solar power generated by customers at 17 cents a kilowatt hour. Alabama Power, on the other hand, pays between 3 and 5 cents per kilowatt hour for solar power its residential customers feed to the grid. The retail cost of energy for residential customers is about 10 cents a kilowatt hour."
As I said the power company in my state pays you back about a third of the price you pay to get the power from them.
What I've found is that 43 states require the utility company to buy electricity from home solar arrays, but the prices they pay are all over the place, and the systems to do it vary widely...
Some states, such as New Jersey, are "buying" solar energy fed to the grid by issuing SRECs (Solar Renewable Energy Credits) which can later be cashed in... .
Quote:
Homeowners with solar PV systems registered with the Board of Public Utilities will earn one New Jersey SREC for every megawatt-hour (1,000 kWh) their system generates in its first 15 years, and participating utilities will be required to buy them from the homeowners at the market price. New Jersey’s SREC marketplace and net metering laws allow utilities to meet state-mandated renewable energy generation standards, and customers to cash in on their systems’ production. New Jersey Solar Rebates and Incentives for 2013 - Real Goods Solar
Georgia doesn't have net metering, but it does purchase power from some consumers. It's a strange deal...
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Georgia Power has a solar purchase program, SP-1, for up to 100 kW systems which pays 17¢/kWh. A second meter is installed for the solar generation, all of which is purchased by Georgia Power. The consumer then purchases back any electricity consumed as if they did not have solar power. The program has an aggregate limit of 4.4 MW and is fully subscribed, but will be expanded as consumers purchase "Premium Green Energy", for an additional $5.00/100kWh. Solar power in Georgia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vermont has to be the most unusual arrangement. If you have a grid-tie solar setup, you will pay about 13 cents/kWh for power from the grid, and they will credit you back at the same rate for exess energy you feed to the grid, and then they add an incentive that brings it up to 20 cents a kWh total for your excess energy. No joke.
Quote:
Recognizing the peak power savings of net metered solar, the new law creates a financial incentive to catalyze more net metered solar by requiring utilities to offer a 20 cent credit to solar net metering customers for the energy they produce. Modeled after Green Mountain Power’s SolarGMP program, utilities will be required to issue an additional credit on top of the base residential per kWh credit that solar customers already receive (to make a total of 20 cents per kWh).This means that for every kWh your system generates, you get credited 20 cents per kWh. Customers are awarded the per kWh customer credit for a 10 year period.
Bottom line, to me, is that nobody has a clear picture of how best to accomplish the Federal Mandate in 2005 that the utilities have to buy the power from home solar installations. I imagine policies will gradually converge, but I don't think things will settle down much for at least several more years.
I used to use grey water for my trees and shrubs at another house and you cannot use it for something like that. If I didn't drain the tank my grey water was stored in every other day or at the very most three days, it got such a build up of stuff and the stink really was awful. I mean we could smell it in the house from a 250 gallon tank over 75 feet from the house. And then I had to take a sprayer and use Clorox to clean the inside build up. I have since learned that maybe I could have built a filter system but that would need changed out frequently also. The spots the trees and shrubs would smell from time to time if the water didn't drain well so you'd need to clean the inside of the toilets and the smell of them sitting there with the water in them would also need addressed.
We only spend $38 a month on electricity. In our area differant companies keep asking us to put solar on our roof. They estimate that we spend at least $128 a month on Electricity. We keep telling them that we don't and no one will place a solar system on our roof because we are spending too little now. These are companies that want to give us a system in exchage for our space, charging us to use the electricity that our roof produces and I guess selling back the remainder to the SCE. My thought was that if our roof can produce the power to run our home and provide even more power, that these companies would be flocking to us to put solar on our roof. Apparently I am not as smart as they are. LOL. The companies only see value if we were spending at least $128 a month.
Maybe if I put my own system on the roof. In California we can get an energy rebate, or we used to be able to get one, if we put in Solar. I just don't want to spend the money to put a system in.
OpenD - what a meant by the separate urinal was that it could be plumbed to a separate tank and wouldn't end up in the same place.
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Interesting that grey water is also a challenge. Something to think about and maybe a treatment system that does some filtering out, that isn't labor intensive.
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I'd like to have your electric bill SOON2BNSURPRISE. You should be able to put in a fairly low cost system yourself, save some coin, and have no electric bill.
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