A Cold Day, Lots Of Napping, Solar Power Dreams & Some Thoughts On A Pumped Water Storage Micro-Hydro System
I awoke rather early and immediately realized just how chilly it was just by how crisp the air in the shelter was and how closely the dogs were cuddled up against me. It was nowhere near as cold indoors as it was outdoors even though I had slept with the exhaust fan running which draws in a lot of outside air through the shelter door's window. Once I got out of bed, let the dogs out and put on some warm clothes I quickly got the propane heater lit and the small fans mounted on top of the heater turned on before starting my morning ritual of brewing espresso on the outdoor stove. Although there has been some cool temperatures at night over the last few weeks I could somehow tell this was different even without looking at the weather forecast. In other words there was a 'bite' to the cold that had been lacking on the other cool nights (and mornings) of late. As much as I know that seasonal changes are going to occur I still can be a bit surprised by how abruptly those changes happen especially when it is super warm one day and then frigidly cold the next.
Anyway, I spent the morning doing my usual writing and posting and although I hoped that it would warm up outside once the sun was fully up that never actually happened. So, I took my time doing my morning routine and figured that if it was not warmer by noon then I would just spend the day indoors instead of punishing my mind and body by working outdoors in the cold. After all I have been plugging away at doing stuff for months now trying to get fully prepared for the winter and there will assuredly be a few more warmer days to do work during before the real winter arrives. With that in mind I took the day off and spent the entire afternoon napping with the dogs in the warmth of the shelter.
On the days when I do not do much outdoors I generally occupy myself with doing research online or pursuing some of my more creative endeavors because if I do 'nothing' I do not have much fodder for my literary cannon and ugh do I stress myself out about what the hell I am going to write about when that happens. I think that over the last several years since I have been writing each day that I have somehow managed to use that fear of 'having nothing to write about' to propel me to do stuff so that I am not faced with the dilemma of having nothing to write about but hell I still somehow manage to eek out a few words and have something to say so go figure! At this point in things though I have to really wonder about why I create so much damn stress for myself along the way and cannot just accept that after one thousand three hundred and eighty-three days of writing each day that I fucking 'got this' and by now it is a deeply seated habit. I guess that their is some kind of lurking fear that the proverbial 'well of words' will run dry in the absence of me doing a bunch of physical activity or overly taxing my brain learning about stuff.
During my afternoon nap I kept dreaming about my big solar panel, where to set it up at and that it was very important that I get it 'just right' or else I would be entirely screwed on electricity over the coming days. Since I have been racking my brain a lot about the solar setup of late I guess that it makes sense that I would eventually start dreaming about it and am a bit surprised that doing so had not occurred earlier. There is also the difficulty of setting up the solar in the shade of the woods and having to find the 'sweet spot' where I am not just going to maximize my electricity generation but also keep the panels safe from falling tree branches. Then there is the whole problem of seasonal tilt and whether I should set the panel up to have its angle adjusted with the changing seasons or just install it in a fixed position that will work throughout the year. In the past I have often settled on the 'fixed position' approach but given the shade of the woods, the terrain and the overall limited sunlight the area receives I think that it may be prudent to make the panel adjustable which brings in a whole new set of challenges for installing it.
Overall solar is not a good solution here and although I have known that the entire time... I still keep looking for ways to make it work out. Primarily I just want a good standby system and also a system that can accommodate powering some twelve volt DC water pumps for my rainwater system. What I am thinking of doing (and have been thinking of for quite some time now) is to pump the excess rain water into my three hundred and thirty gallon IBC tank (intermediate bulk container) so that I can then gravity feed from it downhill to a micro-hydro array. Unless I get a much stronger water pump and mount the IBC tank rather high up off the ground the 'end point' where the micro-hydro array will be is going to be pretty damn far away from the shelter area and I will have to figure out how to best send the electricity back uphill to where I can conveniently use it. Since the micro-hydro array does not generate a whole lot of amps to start with I want to avoid losing any power by either inverting it to AC power or by having it traverse a really long set of wires as DC power. Either way of sending the electricity that I generate over a long distance will cause some losses but honestly I am leaning towards using a tiny inverter and just going the AC route because that particular system is after all a small one that is meant for maybe a few hours of electricity generation at a time and since its source is rain water and not a spring or creek then I should try to develop a system with that consideration in mind and just maximize what power it generates whilst it is generating power.
Ultimately I want to use a ram pump to drive the water uphill from a spring near the creek and use it to fill the IBC tank but I do not have the resources for that endeavor so I am just focusing on what I can do with the stuff that I currently have at my disposal. As of now the rain water harvesting system is working super well and I am not even able to store the majority of the water that it produces during a single medium to large scale rain event so the next part of that project is going to be setting up more water storage tanks and tinkering with both pumping water via the solar setup and setting up the gravity-fed system to drive the turbines. I also have a bunch of ideas on how to automate the system(s) but I try not to spend too much time thinking about it all because I first have to finish building/installing all the various components and testing them before getting into the complex world of automation!
The entire 'pumped storage method' for generating electricity is rather novel to implement (given that I have all the necessary parts) and really frigging dependable if there is a constant source of water and the turbines remain operational. The major difficulty as I see it will be keeping the entire system from freezing when there is a lack of a constant water source. So far my solution (if I just use rainwater) is to insulate the holding tanks (and the pipes/tubing) and then figure out a simple low voltage (low flow rate) pumping system to keep the water circulating/recirculating between the tanks when the temperature outside dips below freezing. The other idea that I have considered is to use low volt heating pads to keep the water from freezing in the tanks and operate them off the solar setup in conjunction with the re-circulation system. Either of those setups would assuredly be difficult to manage with my current batteries but I think that the overall idea is rather sound and would work well given the right batteries and equipment.
Well, I have rambled on enough for one morning and had a lot more to write about than I initially thought that I would. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
Even though it was cold it sure was a pretty day!
Thanks for reading!
More about me: I have been doing property caretaking (land stewardship) for many years (decades) and live a rather simple life with my dogs doing what most folks would consider to be an 'alternative minimalist lifestyle' but what I often just think of as a low-impact lifestyle where I get to homestead and spend the majority of my time alone with my dogs in the woods doing projects in the warmer months and taking some downtime during the colder months.
A little over three years ago I began sharing the adventures (misadventures) of my life via writing, videos, pictures and the occasional podcasts and although my intention was to simply share my life with some friends it undoubtedly grew into much more than that over the years and now I find myself doing what equates to a full-time job just 'sharing my life' which is not even all that glamorous or anything but hey folks seem to enjoy it so I just keep doing it!
The way that the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.
I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.
The way that I look at it is that I give it all my best each day and while some stuff I write is better than others I think that for the most part I do a pretty good job at doing what I am doing which is simply 'sharing my life' as candidly as I possibly can and whatever folks get (or do not get) from it there is always the satisfaction of me doing what I set out to do... which is to simply share my life.
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That Is All For Now!
This post was originally posted to the Hive Blockchain here:
https://peakd.com/homesteading/@jacobpeacock/the-fantastica-chronicles-day-426
