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amazon_syren Jan. 24th, 2014 06:00 pm)
amazon_syren Jan. 24th, 2014 06:00 pm)Reading Little House Off the Grid about a family of four who moved to the Napanee area (not that far from where I live, for those of you not in Ontario) to live in a Clearing In The Woods using solar and wind power and stuff like that there.
While this book will most likely be extremely helpful in terms of knowing what the pitfalls are and how to (hopefully) avoid them... gods, the authors (or one of them, anyway) are getting on my nerves! Preachy-vegetarian, preachy-environmentalist, and not very neighbourly... at least when they start out.
Hoy.
Granted, part of the not-very-neighbourly stuff may have come from being the go-to people when one of a number journalists wanted some kind of "extremist" (or possibly actually-extremist, I'm not sure) enviro-view on whatever was happening in Burlington at the time.
But still. It's irritating to have to deal with that Voice while trying to just find stuff out.
It's funny. Because I read this, and I pick up on the eco-snobbery, but I also pick up on the... "Barhavan" attitudes of the writers, if I can use Ami_B's term. I wonder if it would be pissing me off as much if the authors had been more "grass-roots community solidarity" (yep, I'm totally using those buzz-words to make a point ;-) or if it'd blow right by me.
It would probably still piss me off, honestly, but... I could be wrong. :-\
Anyway.
Right now, I'm looking at solar panels, and how much I would need... I'd like (in the hypothetical situation where I own a house and, thus, have a roof to put these on) something like 1000 watts worth of solar panels on each slope (east and west) of the roof. Or, alternatively, 1000 watts on the eastern slope and 2000 watts (meaning 8 250-watt pannels) on the western slope, which gets hotter and brighter sun in my neck of the woods.
I don't actually have a clue how many watts, say, a full-sized fridge or an electric oven will go through...
It's funny. One of the authors talks about giving away all her small apliances - like the bread-maker and the toaster oven and the microwave - and all I could think was: Yes. But don't all of those use way less electricity than an electric stove/oven? (They do. But this family was using a propane-fed stove, so...)
It's something I'd really like to have a clue about. I know that the authors also had a wind-turbine going on, and I'm not sure how much of their electricity came from it vs their 8-12 75-watt solar pannels.
I mean... I'm using a 100-watt lightbulb right now. Plus my laptop. Plus the slow-cooker. Plus my fridge that runs 100% of the time. Plus my electric (urgh...) heat, which also runs 100% of the time. That's a LOT of wattage going on.
Cancel out the heat, because gods know I don't want to be relying on electric heat, and that takes care of a big, BIG chunk of it. But I don't actually know how much I'd be using. What if I add a chest freezer in there? How much is that?
While this book will most likely be extremely helpful in terms of knowing what the pitfalls are and how to (hopefully) avoid them... gods, the authors (or one of them, anyway) are getting on my nerves! Preachy-vegetarian, preachy-environmentalist, and not very neighbourly... at least when they start out.
Hoy.
Granted, part of the not-very-neighbourly stuff may have come from being the go-to people when one of a number journalists wanted some kind of "extremist" (or possibly actually-extremist, I'm not sure) enviro-view on whatever was happening in Burlington at the time.
But still. It's irritating to have to deal with that Voice while trying to just find stuff out.
It's funny. Because I read this, and I pick up on the eco-snobbery, but I also pick up on the... "Barhavan" attitudes of the writers, if I can use Ami_B's term. I wonder if it would be pissing me off as much if the authors had been more "grass-roots community solidarity" (yep, I'm totally using those buzz-words to make a point ;-) or if it'd blow right by me.
It would probably still piss me off, honestly, but... I could be wrong. :-\
Anyway.
Right now, I'm looking at solar panels, and how much I would need... I'd like (in the hypothetical situation where I own a house and, thus, have a roof to put these on) something like 1000 watts worth of solar panels on each slope (east and west) of the roof. Or, alternatively, 1000 watts on the eastern slope and 2000 watts (meaning 8 250-watt pannels) on the western slope, which gets hotter and brighter sun in my neck of the woods.
I don't actually have a clue how many watts, say, a full-sized fridge or an electric oven will go through...
It's funny. One of the authors talks about giving away all her small apliances - like the bread-maker and the toaster oven and the microwave - and all I could think was: Yes. But don't all of those use way less electricity than an electric stove/oven? (They do. But this family was using a propane-fed stove, so...)
It's something I'd really like to have a clue about. I know that the authors also had a wind-turbine going on, and I'm not sure how much of their electricity came from it vs their 8-12 75-watt solar pannels.
I mean... I'm using a 100-watt lightbulb right now. Plus my laptop. Plus the slow-cooker. Plus my fridge that runs 100% of the time. Plus my electric (urgh...) heat, which also runs 100% of the time. That's a LOT of wattage going on.
Cancel out the heat, because gods know I don't want to be relying on electric heat, and that takes care of a big, BIG chunk of it. But I don't actually know how much I'd be using. What if I add a chest freezer in there? How much is that?
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