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Originally Posted by xube
A group of architectural students from a local university are assisting with the development of a self-sufficient building designed from a trailer house (totally unsustainable structure).
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There are many good designs out there for cabins which start off as trailers. I see no reason to say that a steel box is 'not' a goodway to start.
Conex boxes are 12' wide and 40' long. Many guys in Iraq are living in them, very structural and easily insulated. We can get them here delivered for $2k.
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... Does anyone have an idea where we could find the plans to build solar panels and/or wind towers that would provide electricity for all aspects of the building?
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Building solar as DIY is really hard.
Wafer silicon is available but then you must deposit the one micron thick layers and etch on the connections. I once interviewed to work in a factory making them. It is an industry which generates a massive amount of toxic hazmat. Which is why such factories have a hard time in the US, the EPA is after them hard.
Most solar panel manufacture is done overseas with no EPA regs.
Doing it by yourself is truly difficult [and bad dirty]. You are better to buy them pre-made.
As for wind mills: we have two neighbors here that are off-grid. They both have wind mills. The problem is that living in a forest, even when you get the wind mill 10' above the top of the trees, there is no wind.
You see the texture of a forest [when looking at it from 100'] is very rough. You could have a gale force wind at 100', but the trees cause a lot of resistance to that wind. So as we get lower the wind speed drops, due to the effect of the tree tops.
When you look at a windmill the common math is to ask how long will it need to run making power before the expense of it finally equals the amount of power it has made? This is the unit's pay-back time-frame.
While shopping it is not uncommon to see windmills with a 5-year payback. After 5-years of operation they will have generated enough power to equal how much they cost you to build.
In this area windmills have a pay-back of greater than 10-years. At the same time their projected lifespan is 7-years. It is assumed that within 7 years they will break-down and require major repair work.
At issue is the math which shows that these windmills will never pay for themselves.
You will pay for the parts and the labour of putting them up, and before they have made enough power to make it worthwhile, they will already be broken and in need of major overhaul.
Back to my two off-grid neighbors. They can not build towers greater than 40' tall without special permits and air-craft warning lights. Neither of these farms has found windmills to be cost-efficient.
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... Or what some of the best deals are, in terms of price and power provided, to purchase ready made solar panels and wind towers with all the technology to set up plugs in, wire the heaters, fans and even air conditioning?
aho
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Electricity may be a good way to light things, to power motors and to operate computers.
Electricity is usually the worst method of generating heat. It takes a huge amount of wattage to make BTUs.
The other thing is freon compressors work real hard. I dont see it but they do. It takes a lot of energy to compress freon. Any refrigeration pump is working real hard and sucking up a lot of energy.
When looking at living off-grid:
1- electric heat is out;
2- A/C is out;
3- refrigerators and freezers are out.
It is easy to wire a home for lights [super easy if you use LEDs], to include a stereo [with speakers in every room and remote speakers outside], computers, web cams, motion sensors, ... The wattage being used in all these things is pretty low.
One coffee pot needs more power the all of that, and will suddenly bump your battery bank requires through the roof simply because it sucks too much power to make heat.
An A/C unit is the same way, so is a frig or freezer.
In this region we have a lot of people living off-grid. New ideas come up all the time. We have an annual fair where all of the new toys are displayed, and we have hourly workshops to help folks design stuff.
Your area may have something like this too.
May Divine Providence guide you.
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