mecdatlanta
New Member
Greetings All,
This site is amazing and I am learning a ton. But I feel like I know enough to get my family into some potentially hot - or worse yet - cold (due to insufficient energy planning!) water.
Here is our situation, as best I can describe it. Nothing is carved in stone, although we do have the house plan, the lot, and the need to start building in the next few weeks/months so our kids can be in school next Fall (2025), so I need to figure out the energy side of things pretty quickly:
![Hot face :hot_face: 🥵](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f975.png)
Don
This site is amazing and I am learning a ton. But I feel like I know enough to get my family into some potentially hot - or worse yet - cold (due to insufficient energy planning!) water.
Here is our situation, as best I can describe it. Nothing is carved in stone, although we do have the house plan, the lot, and the need to start building in the next few weeks/months so our kids can be in school next Fall (2025), so I need to figure out the energy side of things pretty quickly:
- Location: North Georgia Mountains
- Family size: 5; 2 adults and 3 kids
- Lot size: 10 acres, sloping lot
- Home size/type: ~4k square ft / modern mountain design
- We have one EV and use it the most, but also have a gas-powered vehicle
- Electricity from the utility company is an option, but it would cost $30k just to run the line to our house. Hence my push to go completely off-grid (among other reasons),
- Solar array + battery system to cover most, if not all of our energy needs
- Build a ground-based solar rack system (as opposed to adding panels to our roof)
- Propane-powered generator for when the sun doesn't shine enough
- Heat pumps to heat/cool house
- A hot tub (I know, not great to have on a solar system, but we'd be willing to not use it during low energy periods, if that helps!)
- Heat pumps
- Do we use an air-to-air or air-to-water system?
- Do we go with dual fuel, or stick with electric and use the propane generator to charge the batteries to power the heat pumps when solar is insufficient?
- Hot water
- Do we go with a standard hot water tank (KISS), and focus more on the solar + battery side of things, or do we do something a little more creative like:
- heat pump hot water tank
- using the water side of an air-to-water heat pump to help heat the water we use
- use a solar water heating system on our roof
- Do we go with a tankless system?
- Do we go with a standard hot water tank (KISS), and focus more on the solar + battery side of things, or do we do something a little more creative like:
- Solar Panels
- How many do you think we need?
- Batteries
- Given the fact that we will likely need two heat pumps, do we need a high surge type battery like the Power Wall 3?
- What total capacity do you think we need?
![Hot face :hot_face: 🥵](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f975.png)
Don