[Homestead] Shaking the grid

DSanner106 at aol.com DSanner106 at aol.com
Fri Feb 5 17:24:57 EST 2010


I had a good friend who reduced his need during emergencies in Michigan by  
moving living space. He had a basement bedroom bath and living area with  
kitchenette and small efficient fridge. He stayed here in the summer and let 
the  cool earth keep temps down. he moderately cooled the ground level. He 
also had a  converted attic bedroom space that he used during winter that 
collected any  rising heat, and just heated this level in winter, keeping the 
ground level in  the 50's. In an emergency he retreated to the appropriate 
floor, tripped  breakers off in the rest of the house and just had juice to 
that small area. His  solar and occasional gas generators kept him going 
indefinately. He ran  lights, radio and the smaller fridge (in the winter it 
barely had to kick in)  off about 2000 and could splurge a little. His 9 cell 
laptop battery ran his  computer in efficient mode for 5.5 hours and could be 
recharged off the car  lighter, or generator when he was running it, It took 
maybe 45 mins to charge,  so not a bad tradeoff. He cooked off a gas 
camping stove mostly.
 
Drew
 
 
In a message dated 2/5/2010 4:53:28 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
timopp at gmail.com writes:

>  
> 
> And I finally decided that, if it comes down to it, in the  event of
> some major catastrophe that ends grid power for all time, I  will
> revert to living as my grandparents did, without power. That is  what I
> do when the grid fails now anyway.
> 
>  YMMV,
> 

I was looking at 2000 watts for emergency, worst case  stuff. Last year we 
survived for  week during the ice storm for a week  with my 1800 watt 
generator, so I kind of have an idea on what will run. In a  longer term emergency 
etc. it would be nice to have something. I hope to build  this into my shop 
which would have a lot lower needs than a house.

So  does anyone have some ideas what this would run?

Dan,

Thanks for  all the numbers. Do you use any solar for your  trailer?

Tim


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