Hello from Nevada

[Nevadablue]

I’m a retired engineer/mechanic/miner living in the high desert in Nevada. My wife and I are full time caregivers for our DAV Son.
I’m in the process of building two small solar power systems to insure that we have heat and cooling and a small amount of refrigeration.

The first system is partly in place and consists of an inverter/charger and battery bank at this point. It is situated next to one of our swamp coolers (high desert is dry and evaporative coolers work well and have lots of advantages here) and our pellet stove. Both units have low power requirements. This system will eventually have solar panel strings and will be asked to run a small refrigerator. (Maybe within a couple of weeks for that development)
Currently the battery bank consists of four 200 amp Renogy AGM batteries. These will be moved to the second (trailer) system when the six 100 amp Chins lithium batteries arrive.



The batteries are now enclosed in a wooden box so that I can stack bags of pellets for the stove. The solar panels will be mounted on the deck outside the window above the inverter.

The second system is trailer mounted and designed to provide water to the house from our well and storage tank. It could also be called upon to provide power for the second swamp cooler in the house, in case of an emergency. The water system trailer will power a 24 volt submersible pump that will live in a 3000 gallon storage tank and pump to the house if/when necessary. The system will also eventually power a 24 volt motor to drive the hand pump in the well. The trailer will also have a propane fired generator to power the Grundfos 1hp submersible soft start variable speed pump that is in the well. Redundancy… must have water anywhere and for sure in the desert.

Please be patient with me, I’m 75 and move slowly these days. (Rode hard and put away wet too often)

 

[Samsonite801]

That's really awesome... Welcome!

This reminds me of one of the first backup systems I built for my StepDad, at my parents place up in Washington State. He had wanted backup power for his pellet stove for when the power goes out and not lose the heat.

I took a used computer type, APC 1500 VA 24v UPS off of eBay, extended the internal battery wires out to the outside of it, and hooked up some super big telecom gel batteries from a wholesaler, and it worked!!

I love seeing all the creative people building all these kinds of varieties of systems! It's always good to have backup means of power. Especially since the grid these days looks like it's on shaky ground more and more...

BTW, patience is my middle name hehe... (at least I try to always be).. God bless you bro.

 

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[Nevadablue]

Thanks for the welcome! I’ve run old UPS systems that were thrown away by the IT department. External battery bank salvaged from the BIG backup systems they had for the computer room. I still have my first Trace 1512 inverter. I also have this monster which will become salvaged parts some day maybe.



I found that beast used and got it for a fraction of what it was worth at the time.



There were two banks of batteries (one shown above). They are long dead, but I need to salvage the good parts like cables and switches. It was a 48 volt, 220 capable system.



It lived in this shed. I have the panels along with a bunch of others. I got all of them used, but working. The shed is still sitting at the old place. Hopefully I will get the chance to go back there and salvage parts.

Eureka is a neat area. Lots of interesting old mines. Most of rural Nevada (which is most of Nevada) ignores any zoning and building regulations if you just quietly go about your business.

 

[Risky Rob]

I have a full sized GE Energy Star refrigerator, and was pleasantly surprised at how few watts it draws. The plate inside the refrigerator lists about 7 amps, but most times, it draws less than 2 amps.

 

[Samsonite801]

Thanks for the welcome! I’ve run old UPS systems that were thrown away by the IT department. External battery bank salvaged from the BIG backup systems they had for the computer room. I still have my first Trace 1512 inverter. I also have this monster which will become salvaged parts some day maybe.

That's really neat. I always loved the idea of repurposing old decomm'd enterprise grade gear, kind of gave me a chance to have really good quality equipment at a fraction of the price.

I found that beast used and got it for a fraction of what it was worth at the time.

Yes, like for example the APC datacenter UPS I installed into my Prius. Like $500 bucks for a constant duty 5 KW LF inverter... You can't beat these kinds of prices for quality datacenter grade equipment.

There were two banks of batteries (one shown above). They are long dead, but I need to salvage the good parts like cables and switches. It was a 48 volt, 220 capable system.

It lived in this shed. I have the panels along with a bunch of others. I got all of them used, but working. The shed is still sitting at the old place. Hopefully I will get the chance to go back there and salvage parts.

Yeah, maybe you'll have to make some time and get back out there (take a trip down memory lane)... Whenever I come across old stuff I had built a long time ago, I sit and marvel at it, and brings me back to what I had been thinking back in the day when I had put that thing together. Then thinking about how I've evolved since then, but many times I am amazed at what I had been able to do at the time, and sometimes even wonder how I achieved it at all.

Eureka is a neat area. Lots of interesting old mines. Most of rural Nevada (which is most of Nevada) ignores any zoning and building regulations if you just quietly go about your business.

Sounds like a cool place to visit (well maybe not cool temperature?).. Yeah, I wish my area didn't have all the building regulations, but at least it's not so stringent as the areas closer to the city (we're out in Utah West Desert area)...

 

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[Samsonite801]

Are there any counties in UT friendly to offgrid living? I saw some cheap land in Iron County but it looks like there are only a few ways in and out of there.. and the part that has the 15 running through it is FAR from the land I was looking at.

I'm not really too familiar with the other counties in Utah so much (except for Utah and Salt Lake counties. I know there are a lot of areas in Utah which people find good for homesteading / off-grid living (if you can get water access / rights).

We are in Juab County, Utah, and I really shouldn't complain, it's not nearly anything like the high-population counties. On our co-op, we found a cool guy from the county who basically does all our inspections, and he's pretty laid back. They say they're open-minded about all of our alternative building techniques and passive home strategies, we still need to have the plans engineered for wind / snow loads, safety and whatnot, we don't need permits for outbuildings or shops (if not living in them)...

We don't need permits for grey water septic, only black water. But we are somewhat limited in experimenting with alternative black water waste processing, somewhat stuck to traditional septic tanks / leach fields. We have good water rights here and abundant aquifer but still need well permits. It's pretty lenient compared to some places, but I still hate having to have any government involved with my building processes, not to mention the permit fees...

 

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[Samsonite801]

Here in NV you can drill a well and you are entitled to 2 acre feet of water per year. No metering either so no one can really verify unless someone complains, then they will put a meter on your well. Except in Pahrump, NV the water table on the aquifer there is getting low so they have new homes being built have to give up their water rights if they are within one of the 3 water district's service area... And if not, still have to sign them over when service is expanded to that area. Nye County has a ton of cheap land in and outside of Pahrump but because of Nye County water and planning nazis I wouldn't build anything there. Just calling the building department to ask questions, they treat you like you are wasting their time. And everything is in and run out of Pahrump when it isn't even the county seat. It just became the largest town in the county simply due to proximity to Las Vegas.

Clark County, where Las Vegas is, is another joke altogether...........

Right on, yeah I guess some regulation has to be there, since we as humans don't know how to generally be good stewards with water usage / conservation.

I grew up in PNW Washington where water was always abundant, so coming to Utah in 2004 was like walking into a different world. Growing up, our own household well out in the forest, had a water table usually around right under lid level in Fall/Winter/Spring, or a few feet down in Summer, where here at our co-op, it's about 60-80 feet down.

And over there when you buy a property in a lot of cases, one needs a bulldozer and a logging company to go in and clear your house plot location out, where here on my lot in Utah, one needs to figure out what to start planting so you could get more privacy or shade hehe. Cutting down trees to get some Sun in, or install your satellite dish, vs trying to plant some trees to get at least SOME little shady spot. Like everything is backwards, it's a whole different world.

On our lots here, they initially granted us 2-acre feet water (with meters), but recently they allocated more to us and raised it to 6-acre feet (with meters) which is an awesome bonus. I still don't know what to use all that water for yet, since I've been more in a mechanic role around here so far (need to learn more about growing stuff as I go forward, one reason why I came out here hehe).

Anyways, cheers

 

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[Samsonite801]

You can't even grade your land here with a shovel or remove shrubs/trees without paying for a grading permit. It is all a racket.

With that much water you could run an aquaponic fish farm. If I could I would like to raise rainbow trout. Yummy

One of our shareholders who moved here from Oregon (an older retired guy) says he's going to build that aquaponic fish farm on his 2 lots. I've chatted with him a bunch of times and he sounds like he knows what he's doing too, so I am thinking he has what it takes to pull it off (and the money).

I can help him with some of the technical details since I am really in tune with the mechanical part of it like pumps, fans, instrumentation, installation / maintenance, like putting the nuts and bolts together, and keeping it operational. He knows more about what needs to happen in order to make it work. So we'll see what happens I guess.

 

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