~100kwh for 24/7 off grid home

[JoeHam]

You buried the little one on the front of the trailer or the big one on the back?

 

[David S]

I am underground for my thermal protection here as I live full time off grid, you need to be sure to be lower than your frost line in depth. Around here it's 60 inches but some insulation between will help. There is more things stored in here but this is before I buried it 4' ft underground.

View attachment 45313

That's a big hole...

 

[tanoshimini]

I'm curious if you thought about going underground for thermal protection? You know, making a little mini basement for all your equipment instead of the boxes.

Where we are, its only 3-4’ (~1m) down to bedrock. No basements for us.

 

[reg]

Where we are, its only 3-4’ (~1m) down to bedrock. No basements for us.

Maybe look into how people made root cellars in rocky parts of Maine and New Brunswick. Whatever the method, it wouldn't have been expensive. There's also a lot of information on root cellar construction in Newfoundland, also known, for a reason, as The Rock

 

[Weldman]

Where we are, its only 3-4’ (~1m) down to bedrock. No basements for us.

You don't always have to go down when putting a root cellar in or providing natural thermal insulation, you can build said structure and bury it above ground with same amount of dirt around it to insulate. Just be sure to help it with some insulation, Earthships/Earth Bermed homes do it all the time.

 

[reg]

You don't always have to go down when putting a root cellar in or providing natural thermal insulation

Yes, I have a seasonal home on the bank of a salmon river in Newfoundland. The river bottom is rock, and there's a mountain, only a few inches to rock, directly behind me. The soil for our garden was trucked in. It's been years since I've looked at our root cellar, built many decades ago, so I can't provide details on its construction. However, at one time it would have been critically important to getting through the winter, and I have no doubt that it works.

The root cellar in the photo below is in Elliston, a town 30 miles north of me that bills itself as the "root cellar capital of the world". Hey, apparently a lot of tourists are interested in root cellars I'm sure that the person who co-ordinates tourism in Elliston could tell you everything you want to know about how to build one. Link, including more photos: elliston-the-root-cellar-capital-of-the-world

Fun fact: Cape Bonavista, just a few miles north of Elliston, is where many people believe John Cabot/Giovanni Caboto, in 1497, first made landfall in North America. That said, it's probable that the Basques were fishing for cod off Newfoundland well before 1497. Indeed, it's been suggested that Cabot may have gotten the route from Basque fishermen.

 

[curiouscarbon]

i saw the hobbit too?‍

this thread is full of awesomeness

 

[Freep]

Where we are, its only 3-4’ (~1m) down to bedrock. No basements for us.

We have a family cabin in Ontario right on the Laurentian shield, so I know what it's like have bedrock a few feet down. The upside to that is you have a solid foundation for your house.

I'm taking my first trip to Maine in a few months. It looks beautiful there. I've been dying to get an off grid place and now with Starlink we can make it happen. So we're scouting the country to see where our next location will be. I also want a place with a stream to take a little hydro power too.

 

[Weldman]

Before anyone decides to do this in lets say Texas or Minnesota you might want to look at these charts. First one is frost depth unlike most frost depth maps this is what most building codes go off of, second one is ground temperatures after certain depth and coolest you can get underground at said depth and others are self explanatory.

 

[reg]

We have a family cabin in Ontario right on the Laurentian shield, so I know what it's like have bedrock a few feet down. The upside to that is you have a solid foundation for your house.

I'm taking my first trip to Maine in a few months. It looks beautiful there. I've been dying to get an off grid place and now with Starlink we can make it happen. So we're scouting the country to see where our next location will be. I also want a place with a stream to take a little hydro power too.

I'd suggest that you visit New Brunswick while you're at it. It's beautiful.

There is a lot of work going on to re-populate Atlantic salmon and sea-run trout rivers and streams in Maine. If you're looking at a stream that's an actual or potential candidate, It might be a good idea to talk with the Atlantic Salmon Federation. It probably has a position on hydro power installation. The Federation is based in Fredericton, New Brunswick, but it's a joint American-Canadian organisation, and quite influential.

 

[Weldman]

We have a family cabin in Ontario right on the Laurentian shield, so I know what it's like have bedrock a few feet down. The upside to that is you have a solid foundation for your house.

I'm taking my first trip to Maine in a few months. It looks beautiful there. I've been dying to get an off grid place and now with Starlink we can make it happen. So we're scouting the country to see where our next location will be. I also want a place with a stream to take a little hydro power too.

Look up WeBoost, you might get away with cell phone internet. I live 30 miles from any cell phone signal, with WeBoost I got signal after I climbed 40' ft up a tree and I will say keep the box cool it does get warm. As for power draw it's not bad just don't put the the 12/24V DC plug on 24V system it will fry it as I found out.

 

[tanoshimini]

We have a family cabin in Ontario right on the Laurentian shield, so I know what it's like have bedrock a few feet down. The upside to that is you have a solid foundation for your house.

I'm taking my first trip to Maine in a few months. It looks beautiful there. I've been dying to get an off grid place and now with Starlink we can make it happen. So we're scouting the country to see where our next location will be. I also want a place with a stream to take a little hydro power too.

Oh nice! I'm on the waiting list for starlink... How is it so far?

 

[Freep]

Oh nice! I'm on the waiting list for starlink... How is it so far?

I don't have it. I was on the waiting list and then didn't sign up because the residential service will only work in the geographic location you have signed up in... for now. This is for technical reasons related to managing the number of clients per area. They need to do this because the constellation isn't complete yet and they want to make sure there is good quality of service. People are reporting between 60 and 150 mbps download and 20 mbps upload speeds with about 20 ms latency. They will be making a mobile version which I will use for our truck camper. Right now we're limited to areas with cell service when live out of the camper.

 

[Freep]

Look up WeBoost, you might get away with cell phone internet. I live 30 miles from any cell phone signal, with WeBoost I got signal after I climbed 40' ft up a tree and I will say keep the box cool it does get warm. As for power draw it's not bad just don't put the the 12/24V DC plug on 24V system it will fry it as I found out.

I use a cradlepoint LTE modem with two mounted external antennas with boosters. That doesn't cut it when you go to remote places out west though. There are a lot of very remote places where we like to go but can't stay for more than a few days at a time because of work.

 

[Weldman]

I use a cradlepoint LTE modem with two mounted external antennas with boosters. That doesn't cut it when you go to remote places out west though. There are a lot of very remote places where we like to go but can't stay for more than a few days at a time because of work.

That cradlepoint LTE modem wouldn't work out here either, and I am in mid west/west though we travel and the wife works online also so I speak from experience. It's so desolate here nearest neighbor is 2.5 miles away mail runs 3 days a week on a good week which is 2.75 miles away to mailbox and there is no power lines running here, no cables for internet and it's all rock/dirt road for 40 to 50 miles to town.

 

[serene_badlands]

[deleted]

 

[Freep]

I'd suggest that you visit New Brunswick while you're at it. It's beautiful.

There is a lot of work going on to re-populate Atlantic salmon and sea-run trout rivers and streams in Maine. If you're looking at a stream that's an actual or potential candidate, It might be a good idea to talk with the Atlantic Salmon Federation. It probably has a position on hydro power installation. The Federation is based in Fredericton, New Brunswick, but it's a joint American-Canadian organisation, and quite influential.

Any hydro power generator I'm going to setup will not impact fish runs. This guy is getting around 600 watts continuous. I'd do something like he did.

 

[curiouscarbon]

I use a cradlepoint LTE modem with two mounted external antennas with boosters. That doesn't cut it when you go to remote places out west though. There are a lot of very remote places where we like to go but can't stay for more than a few days at a time because of work.

if you do not mind me asking, are those two omni antenna?

sometimes i wonder if it would be workable to have one omni and one directional on a small rotating servo. download database of gps coordinates of nearby cell towers and program the servo to point at nearest cell tower based on two gps coordinates and a compass heading.

 

[Freep]

Omni directional. If you have a source for cell tower locations, let me know. I've not been able to find that data.

 

[curiouscarbon]

these URLs seem maybe relevant. be sure to check the first one and check top right corner for spreadsheet (csv) download.

HIFLD Open Data

HIFLD Open Data provides National foundation-level geospatial data within the open public domain that can be useful to support community preparedness, resiliency, research, and more.

hifld-geoplatform.opendata.arcgis.com

HIFLD Open Data

HIFLD Open Data provides National foundation-level geospatial data within the open public domain that can be useful to support community preparedness, resiliency, research, and more.

hifld-geoplatform.opendata.arcgis.com

Cellular Towers - CKAN

catalog.data.gov

OpenCelliD - Open Database of Cell Towers & Geolocation

OpenCelliD is the largest Open Database of Cell Towers & their locations. You can geolocate IoT & Mobile devices without GPS, explore Mobile Operator coverage and more!

opencellid.org