Off grid living

EachPenny

AG47 wrote: »

You only get the big wind generators and solar panels after the 4 years is up and you get lawful development.

4 years is not long

If you got lawful development it would only be on what has already been developed. Adding extra stuff may require PP, and it might not be easy to obtain.

Everyone is different, but I personally am quite happy with a fairly basic minimal lifestyle. However, even I would baulk at the idea of living that length of time with only minimal facilities.

Take for example your water supply. The UK average rainfall is 885mm. There are places with much higher rainfall, but living 'off grid' in these might be too much of a challenge. Let's be generous and assume you can find somewhere reasonably remote with rainfall of 1000mm pa. That works out at about 2.75mm per day. Fortunately the maths is easy and 2.75mm of rain falling on one square metre equals 2.75 lites.

The average water consumption per person per day in the UK is around 140 litres. That would require a collecting area of 51 m2 per person. Hardly 'invisible' Of course living off grid you would economise with your water... but how far would you go? 4 m2 (still quite visible from above) would give you an average of 11 litres per day - that's about enough for a single one-minute shower.

And as I've highlighted, the figures for rainfall are averages and real rainfall doesn't work like that. You would need to have a large storage system to be able to collect all of the rainfall and as soon as you start storing water you need to address the issues of bacterial growth and other contamination. Doing all of that costs money (and often requires energy).

DaftyDuck

Given you've spent the last four years living in a tiny, grubby sh1thole of a home, unable to wash yourself properly and therefore stinking like a week-old catfish, I'm guessing you won't likely have a job that will pay for these technological marvels (which are always developed by like-minded folk, living in trees or wearing mushrooms...). Of course, you will, by then, be able to pick up a free power wall from your local shop (for local people) by bartering a willow basket of lentil soup and a whittled fork...

You will have planted screening of oak and yew, all of which will have nicely matured in that four years (fertilised by all that crap-in-a-bucket you have stored up), so you'll have copious free fuel (and acorns to suck and smoke too!) for heat and smoking the homegrown salmon you have planted in the reserve sh1tbucket.

Locals will welcome you open-fisted, marvelling at your scrounging off their council taxes and planning fees. At the pub, they'll all want to treat you to a little extra, ready for you after closing, or even happy to wait behind you at the shoot.

Planning officers, delighted at having rubbed in what wazzocks they are, and how poor they are at their job, all will help with your application for solar field panels (as no roof), and none will worry about your inability to benefit from any feed-in tarrif... as no further infrastructure can, so sadly, be provided. They will seriously ponder your application for a brick sh1thouse very, very carefully, for a very, very long time...

Once your children have been cured of scabies, scurvy and scrofula, they will be welcomed at the local primary with many hilarious japes and jollies. If they can find the bat [STRIKE]cave[/STRIKE] mudhole through the tears of joy, they can look forward to a light snack of Sparassiscrispa and cow bogey pie, before settling down on the bracken bed...

As a Parish Councillor, with all my prejudice set aside, I will pop over with petrol and matches, or just a few petitions from the pesky local oiks, to happily welcome to the community...

Oh, I give up! Come on in, the weather next week is balmy and welcoming...

Ah, I guess the kidding being over did not cure my grumpiness!

Davesnave

DaftyDuck wrote: »

As a Parish Councillor, with all my prejudice set aside, I will pop over with petrol and matches, or just a few petitions from the pesky local oiks, to happily welcome to the community...

Surprisingly close to what happened near me, when locals realised that the clearing of an illegal settlement meant that the council bill for the storage of old tat alone would run into tens of thousands.

Strangely, one night, the old tat caught fire. Even more strangely, when the fire brigade proved their efficiency by putting the conflagration out quickly, it caught fire again on the following night.

Despite extensive police enquiries, no one saw or heard anything, nor could they offer any explanation for the sudden bout of spontaneous combustion.

The council seized the land to offset the cost of clearance.

DaftyDuck

All that paperwork the Parish Council produce has to have some use; after all, none of the parishioners are ever going to read it!

EachPenny

Davesnave wrote: »

Despite extensive police enquiries, no one saw or heard anything, nor could they offer any explanation for the sudden bout of spontaneous combustion.

Ah, that would be due to the heat from the alien's spacecraft when it landed.

Davesnave

EachPenny wrote: »

Ah, that would be due to the heat from the alien's spacecraft when it landed.

Oh alien propulsion systems are nothing compared with the heat that was generated in the pub on that particular evening...err, so I'm told. :cool:

It's a good example of how public relations need careful handling. The people who'd set up the site had been left for a considerable time by a 'soft touch' local authority, and initially villagers had not been troubled by their presence. However, the behaviour of the site's inhabitants was poor, so attitudes changed.

AG47

DaftyDuck wrote: »

I do have three large wood stoves, connected to two thermal stores. I have several acres of wood to feed them. If I were to use them, and them alone, to heat my house, I'd use about four (six to eight in the cold) wheelbarrows piled to overflowing with logs a day. I would have to feed a log onto a wood stove every twenty minutes. The thermal store will hold about four or five hours heat. It would take me approximately six summer weeks to process the wood, and about seven acres worth planted to sustain that supply... if really well managed!

A Tesla (sic) Powerwall is great... but super-expensive, short-lived, and not environmentally friendly in the slightest. However, for the UK winter they, and other battery systems cannot provide an answer. You would need several tens of thousands of pounds of batteries to balance your productive an consumptive periods. Unfortunately, the wind tends not to blow regularly or strongly during the coldest winter days, so that's little help. I didn't go for wind power for that reason. I do have a river, and I am eyeing that up, but only for a bit of fun.

Link solar into an effective ASHP or GSHP and you will reap the benefit, but not when you need it most, in darkest , coldest winter. You will still need grid input for that. Batteries will not do the job - will probably never do the job either.

Neither generation nor storage is actually the answer.

Anyway, rather than argue, here's today's latest leonine arrival...



Those kids are just ten minutes old, and mum has washed them and they've already fed. I can't say I care about much else at the moment, least of all a poor argument. Oh, and now they are all kidded, I get to sleep tonight - for a change.

I might even be less grumpy ... but that's pretty unlikely! :rotfl:

That's a huge amount of fuel used, either you have very inefficient wood stoves or a not well insulated home, or a number of other factors.

If the wood has been dried properly makes a big difference to efficiency

When I was growing up my dad always had about three or four years worth of wood stores drying out.

We used up the oldest first that was completely dry, while storming up a years supply to be used in about 4 years time.

I remember an Entire years worth didn't take up that much space and we had the fire on every day in the winter for about six months, and only occasionally the rest of year.

Efficiency is key.

If you have enough trees around the boarders of your land that you can coppice then as you go round chopping wood by the time you get back to the start a few years later they will have grown back more abundantly.

Wood is a free naturally replenishing fuel source

[Deleted User]

AG47 wrote: »

...I remember an Entire years worth didn't take up that much space and we had the fire on every day in the winter for about six months, and only occasionally the rest of year.

Efficiency is key.

If you have enough trees around the boarders of your land that you can coppice then as you go round chopping wood by the time you get back to the start a few years later they will have grown back more abundantly.

Wood is a free naturally replenishing fuel source

Wood does not grow that quickly and you will not get enough wood from coppicing to burn.

We once had a huge ash tree (it had self seeded and would have been too large for the area in which it was growing - however, we let it grow a few years so that we could use the wood from it). We logged and chopped it and left it to season. When we used it a few years later we pretty much burnt it all over the course of one winter.

DaftyDuck

AG47 wrote: »

That's a huge amount of fuel used, either you have very inefficient wood stoves or a not well insulated home, or a number of other factors.

If the wood has been dried properly makes a big difference to efficiency

When I was growing up my dad always had about three or four years worth of wood stores drying out.

We used up the oldest first that was completely dry, while storming up a years supply to be used in about 4 years time.

I remember an Entire years worth didn't take up that much space and we had the fire on every day in the winter for about six months, and only occasionally the rest of year.

Efficiency is key.

If you have enough trees around the boarders of your land that you can coppice then as you go round chopping wood by the time you get back to the start a few years later they will have grown back more abundantly.

Wood is a free naturally replenishing fuel source

I do, as you seem to fully understand, charge out, dressed in "camo", with my chainsaw collection, and flatten several acres of prime ancient woodland, ready for the oaks and beech to regrow by the very next winter. I burn that cut wood same day I cut it, saves time and doesn't waste all that space on pesky storage. There are trees all around my borders (no boarders or oppidans here), as well as quite a decent area of ancient woodland in the middle so, with no care for the wildlife, I can just burn, burn, burn! Therefore I don't care about efficiency, insulation, whatever....

Oh, hang on...

My wood stoves burn at around 90% efficiency, partly because they are large, partly that I burn them hot and hard... hence the large, linked thermal stores. So, no, they are pretty efficient. That's helped by excellent wood storage, where I regulate drying to get moisture content down to around 20%. I, or rather my goats, strip the bark. Faster drying, and higher calorific content by weight. The wood is graded by size, as well as type of tree, as each burner is fed selectively - the one with no thermal store is fed and burned regularly, the others high burn and wet store the heat.... It's one of the most efficient heating systems you are likely to find in any older house, certainly one of the best I have seen. I have yet to add in the full ASHP that I want, and I have space for more solar on the barn roof... and have two more barns to add in when the price is right. I pointed out that your suggestion on using solar was wishy washy...it produces p1ss-all output when you need it most....

As I point out for your benefit, IF wood was the only source to heat a (quite large) house, I would use a huge quantity of wood.. six or more wheelbarrows a day .... Since you were going to heat your camo-covered hole-in-the-ground with woodburners, I was pointing out you too would need copious wood to burn if you want to avoid trench foot... wood you'd have to cut in secret from your own wood... Oh, wood is NOT free, even for me. It takes time and equipment to cut and, if you own the land, you had to buy that too... and you can't just chop it down willy nilly either... or one of those Oppressive Government Bodies will crush your balls for breakfast.

As it happens, I coppice hazel and sweet chestnut to burn, although the two acres of that I have just planted won't yield anything for nearly a decade. I'm restricted in how much and what I can plant, partly as I follow higher level stewardship regulations, and partly as I'm part of a wildlife and conservation scheme, reintroducing lost native species and habitats...

There are rules out in the countryside and, camo (oh how I love that abbreviation...:rotfl:) or no, you can't get away with nowt nowadays. Especially if you have such an unsound grip of how to do it.

Now, behave, or I will set Beelzebub-The-Bagot on you... and he's nearly three whole days old and HARD!

EachPenny

DaftyDuck wrote: »

Now, behave, or I will set Beelzebub-The-Bagot on you... and he's nearly three whole days old and HARD!

Who'd have thought any animal so young could look so mean :eek: