Living with Energy from the Sun for 26 Years, what we have learned (update)

It almost feels like sun worship. Watching our garden grow, working, feeding our electricity habit and staying healthy by the sun. 

We live a low energy lifestyle and work in an isolated spot in the interior of British Columbia. Getting away from the geopolitical mess or at least putting a bit of head space from the mess of corruption and manipulation.

We started with two 85 watt panels and two golf cart batteries 25 years ago. Powered our 12 volt tv and a light. Now we run 3 small, independant solar arrays.

The smallest is made up of  a 75 watt panel fixed to our roof, facing south connected to a charge controller. The controller is connected to one 12 volt deep cycle battery. It powers a 12 volt light in the pantry, a 12 volt water pump from our well, a cd, tape player and radio.

A second system is made up of 4 panels (400 watts) mounted on a sun tracker 5 metres high that we built for less than $50. The panels are connected to a 40 amp controller that is connected to 4 x 6 volt deep cycle lead acid batteries. The batteries are connected to a 1750 watt inverter. The system is 20 years old. Two of the panels are 25 years old. The system runs electricity into our cabin and shop. It cost us $5000.

 

500 watts of solar panel

The third system is made up of  5 panels (500 watts) mounted on a sun tracker 3 1/2 metres high we made for less than $100. The panels are connected to two 30 amp controllers that are connected to a 2000 watt inverter.  One controller has a disconnect from the batteries for charging automobile batteries. This system is 2 1/2 years old. The cost was $1600. In the years, since purchasing the last panels 20 years ago, the price of panels and inverters has come down 80%. The price of batteries has risen about 10%.

Sun trackers can provide a 45% increase in power. 

We built this one 20 years ago. It has been modified since then to hold 4 panels vertically.

We live and work here. The trackers are manual. We turn them directly on the sun three or four times a day in the summer. Spring and fall, 2 or 3 times. In the winter they are static. Working with the sun. On dark winter days we run a 3000 watt inverter generator for a few hours, assuring everything stays rock hard in the freezer.

Besides lights, computers and the odd kitchen appliance, we power our shop. Our most demanding machine is the band saw with a 3/4 horse power motor. 

What we have learned to get the most from your solar panels is:

charging batteries and relying on that stored power is not the way to go. Battery technology is inefficient. For us stored power is just enough for lights and computers when there is no sun. When the sun is out we'll work. From March until October we have unlimited power for our needs. We work full time with smaller machines (10 amps and less) when the sun is out. The bigger machines we use intermittently and because of our lighter wiring we run one 3/4 horse machine at a time.When the batteries are charged and there is a 60% sun day the process is a lot more efficient. Solar energy flows through the panels. The batteries act like a conduit. Energy the inefficient batteries will not accept on a full sun day is the energy  we can use up.

After working in the shop, at the end of a day the batteries have as much charge as they had at the beginning of the day. If the day involved lots of heavy use, like using the table saw ripping or milling apple wood with the band saw  etc, all over 15 amps, then we would alternate system. Keeping the batteries charged.

Our shops

 

This power set up could be doubled, tripled, quadrupled... You would just need more. Heavier wiring, more wattage (panels), larger capacity controllers etc....

We help charge the batteries with a generator in the low sun months from November until the middle of February. We need to use a generator for machine power in the winter and on heavy load days in the early spring and fall. We slow our work right down in the winter. It works out.

Having two main systems that are interchangeable has proven to be a great asset in the low sun months. As one system is being used and discharges the other is charging.  

4.6 billion years old. The sun will start a transformation into a red dwarf in 5 billion years. Swallowing the earth, Mars...

Consider, the sun provides enough power in one hour than the planet of people use in one year.

We are fortunate to live and work with the sun. A few panels and batteries have worked for us. What we've paid for our 1000 watt systems, today, you could buy  6 or 7 times as much power.  A system of 5 or 6 thousand watts would pay for itself in 2 or 3 years if not sooner. 

It almost feels like sun worship. Watching our garden grow, working, feeding our electricity habit and staying healthy by the sun. That is the point. The sun. The most eye opening idea we've seen is the fact that the sun will supply everything human kind needs and more, it's staggering how much  more,

 

Regards,

Aki and Scott

www.caribooblades.com

 

 

George Sears (Nessmuk) and Henry David Thoreau

 

 Two Massachusetts writers who have had an impact on our lives here here.

The potato patch.

 

 

It wasn't until  Aki and I moved into the bush in '97, started to make hunting and survival knives that we learned of George Sears (pen name Nessmuk), his methods, bushcraft skills and the famed design, the "Nessmuk" knife. 

 

 "Go light, the lighter the better".   

We've sold many bushcraft knives fashioned after George Sears Nessmuk knife design. In total a few years of living here.

We read Henry Thoreau. He writes of freedom. 40 years later we're still reading. Testaments on freedom. Holding his belief in life close.... we persevere. We read his work aloud. Always amazed at how pertinent his insights remain.

Starting the green house with lots of greens. They go to flower and the bees come.

Before

After

 

Bees are amazing. Privileged to work with them.

Bumble bee and mustard.

 

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived". 

Henry David Thoreau

 

 

Aki sun dries, freezes, sauces and cans. We eat a lot of tomatoes.

 

Peas, Aki and fireweed.

Fireweed and rocks.

 

 "We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home, in towns and cities". 

George Sears, Nessmuk. 

 

Lots of rain this year. We lost our lakeside garden to the lake.

Salad Greens.

I viewed Thoreau's ideas as my own. It only made sense to me.

Living simply. Living with a light footprint. Feeding ourselves with the food we grow. 

So we live by isolation in the boreal forest while the world changes.

It felt serendipitous, a few years ago we made a connection. George Sears was born in 1820 at what is now Webster, Massachusetts. Less than 100 kms away from where Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. They grew up at the same time and essentially the same place. They were neighbours.

Photographs by Aki Yamamoto

 

Thoreau, July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862, was a an essayist, poet and philosopher. He was a transcendentalist. Thoreau wrote a book Walden which we have our son reading outloud to us these days when people are following rules and avoiding each other. 

"Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and attention to practical detail.^[5] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.^[5]

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.^[6]

Thoreau is sometimes referred to as an anarchist.^[7][8] Though "Civil Disobedience" seems to call for improving rather than abolishing government—"I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government"^[9]—the direction of this improvement contrarily points toward anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have". 

(I copied this from Wikipedia only to give a little insight into Thoreau) 

Aki and Scott

www.caribooblades.com

 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry-david-thoreau-quotes

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry-david-thoreau-quotes

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry-david-thoreau-quotes

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry-david-thoreau-quotes

Finding Empathy

-30 this morning. Warmed up. Yesterday morning the thermometer tube was empty. Its lowest reading is -40.
This being our first year keeping bees, as we’ve written about in a previous post, the cold snap is a bit of a worry. Until a week ago it was a warm winter.

So far the hives are strong.

After a very wet late spring and wet first half of the summer, the bees began to seriously gather nectar in August. The frost arrived at the beginning of Sept so we fed them open trays of sugar syrup until they stopped taking it near the middle of October so they could build up their winter stores.

It seems to be a crazy idea keeping bees here, a subtropical insect. We see the honey bee collapse as a microcosm of the state that human beings are manipulating the environment. They have as good a chance here as anywhere else… being kept. Maybe a better chance.
We stuck to the Warre hive management philosophy.

All three of us spent hours observing the hives, reading and researching.
With observation windows built into a few of the boxes and the observation of the hive entrance we committed ourselves to everyday, we are building confidence that we can have a reading of the health of our hives.

Meat birds, healthy and thriving, becoming predators. When they arrive as day old chicks they grow seeming to have no idea except to stay warm, eat their feed and drink. When they get older, 3 weeks, you can feed them grower, feed them all day, keeping their trough full. They lie around and eat.

After a couple of weeks of this most get comfortable and may only move half a dozen yards for the rest of their lives. After nine or ten weeks slaughter them and fill your freezer.
We did this one year. We felt so disgusted with the operation that we didn’t raise meat chickens again and realized that this method of raising chickens was still so much better than what is out there. We stopped eating chicken.

After reading an article in Mother Earth News about raising meat birds in a humane way, we decided to give it another try.
As soon as the chicks arrived our son Kai gathered worms and bugs from the garden and introduced them to the chicks. It was hilarious. Leaping out of the way of the marauding click beetles. Then, one stopped, slowly, with trepidation, watching, studying and zeroing in on one of the beetles. It made its attack. Soon they were chasing each other around trying to steal each others' finds.
After a couple of days they would all wait for Kai with anticipation.
We have a couple of hens who have chicks about the same time and that are about the same size. We put the Cornish Giant meat chicks with the hens and their chicks. All together into the same run. The meat birds quickly learned how to forage from the lessons of the hens teaching their chicks. The Giants began to dwarf the laying birds. They turned into ravenous prehistoric mini raptors.
By the end of their time they’re travelling in flocks with free run of the property. Foraging for bugs, toadlets, worms, seeds and whatever else they need. Twice a day, first thing in the morning and in the evening Kai feeds them grower to satisfy their insatiable appetites. Every evening 25 giant Chickens gather out front and wait for Kai. Their lives are fast and furious. Ten weeks go by. We slaughter all the Cornish Giants and fill our freezer with chicken.
　
From the standpoint of having nothing. Come closer to your end than you feel comfortable with. Then push it a little further. You could die. With a little time and imagination you will be able to empathize. you can begin to see what you need to survive as an individual living amongst life on this planet. Maybe even become a brother or sister with most on the planet.

Every year the winter firewood piles have become easier to build.
The mature pine forests are dead. Huge trees collapsing on each other falling like dominoes.

Time and imagination.
There are a lot of changes coming fast.

Regards, Aki and Scott


http://www.caribooblades.com/

Solar Power, Engines and Alternators.

The sun is getting higher in the sky. A new season is coming. Looking forward to it for sure.

Aki and I have run our shop and cabin on solar power since 1998.

We are 100% solar powered from March until the middle of October. We work full time making knives and large timber tools.

We designed and installed our system
starting with 4 x 6 volt golf cart batteries, 2 x 85 watt panels and a 1200 watt inverter. The batteries are tough, inexpensive and easy to replace. Twice a year I'll clean them with baking soda and water then top off each cell with distilled water.
I've seen people spend lots of money on batteries. Tough golf cart batteries are the way to go for our shop and lifestyle.

Today we have 422 watts of panel. Four panels, a 40 amp regulator and we have a 1,750 watt inverter and built a 200 watt portable unit as well with 2 golf cart batteries for working around the place.

We built a manual tracker. 4 panels are mounted on top of a 20 foot pole set 2 feet into the ground in a cement housing. As we work we turn the panels to face the sun. Turn and tilt.
This has increased our power by 45%. The manual tracker we designed.The tracker put us at the level of power we are satisfied with and grounded the system well.

An excellent ground is really important. Ground your inverter, batteries and panels.

Trick is to work with the sun.  Use power a lot when it is there in the sky.
At night we use stored power for light, music and small amp tools.

If you have a steady wind a wind generator is the way to go.
It's quite amazing once you begin... Turning on your tools being powered by the sun.

Back up power has always been a concern here this time of year.

Late fall and winter. By the beginning of March we are free again to use as much as we want from the 4.5 billion year-old nuclear power plant in the sky. Although we've come to a spot in our time where we don't need a lot, we do want some.

Besides solar in the winter the first power generation we produced 19 years ago was from a 35 amp 12v alternator I parted from an old wreck left on the land here. Rigged it up to an old 3 1/2 horse lawn mower. Did the job for a while. It was handy to have had it on wheels, kept the throttle on the handle bar but the old motor was pushed down with those 4 dead energy-sucking deep cycle batteries. The small 3 1/2 hp engine drank a surprising amount of gas, began to burn oil then died after a couple of seasons.

We traded for a second hand 10hp honda motor. It was nice. Ran well and was not loud.

Built a frame everything could sit on securely. Rigged a 50 amp alternator up to it from another wreck on our land. It ran well until... we needed more power.

Living off the land. For 1997/98 we lived on $200 a month. We lived on an average
of $400 a month for the next few years. We ate a lot of hares, dandelions, mushrooms and wild onions. It was a little rough but when we look back we realize that starting from there was great. Determined we were and still are.

...We needed more power. We needed the late fall and winter to be power-ready to be able to " exploit" Christmas selling knives and art and cover the spring when we needed time to plant our gardens.

We bought a 150 amp alternator from a trucking outfit and used parts and wiring from the from the
wrecks.

Machined a pulley, adapted the larger alternator to the engine. Started it up. The unit was giving the four 6v deep cycle batteries what they wanted but the 10hp engine was working hard. Wasn't ideal - again it wasn't great on fuel because it was working hard but was better. Bought a small sanding machine a second and slightly larger grinder and a small band saw.

Could not believe we had lived without the new shop machines. More power fell into our lives like a new pair of socks.
We were travelling around the province with handmade knives and edge tools participating and selling at 6 Christmas shows, 2 spring shows and 5 summer and fall shows. Fairs, art and craft and knife shows. We even did a couple of trade shows. The best was the Sto'lo nations Pow Wow in Chilliwack B.C..

Not a second to spare for 6 years.We needed more
power....

Aki and I started to build a reputation for our art,tools and knives. Over half of our sales were repeat customers by 2004.

Crazy thing was that we did not have any time or money. We kept up our garden but that was absolutely the only time we had. All the money we made was for fuel to travel, motels, food, show fees, insurance...

The piston rod broke. The engine was worn out. It was September. Orders had to go out. The Christmas stock had to be started.

We had a '84 Safari van. 4L engine, propane. The rear end was shot from heavy loads, lots of travelling and no maintenance.

Looked at the engine. The air conditioning had been dismantled. With some small adjustments and fudsing with belt size the 150 amp alternator would fit right into the spot the compressor was in.

More power, burned less fuel, burned cleaner and it was quiet. I thought small engines would be more fuel efficient, less impact. The thing was they were working hard. Like when the car companies first put six cylinders in full size pick-ups. They didn't burn less gas and they wore out faster and when the going got tough they have a hard time performing the tasks.

In idle position the alternator still put a demand on the engine but wasn't threatening its life. We had added another solar panel. Our power needs had been met. So what did we do... bought a bigger bandsaw and added a couple more batteries.

When the van was on in the winter we`d pump water, vacuum, charge batteries and the computer and grind steel.

The van lasted 5 winters. It started making sounds, worn sounds. The crank shaft pulley`s centre had shattered and 2 mounting bolts were sheared off. The drive pulley was being ripped off the engine. Holy torque.

In comes our old S-10, 2.8L. The great aspect to this plant was that the crank shaft pulley was a double belt to the alternator. A double pulley. Easy fit. Welded up an adjustment arm to accommodate the size. A couple of attempts at sizing the 2 belts which were different lengths.

It should run for awhile. We shut down our shop for December and January now. By adding one more panel we have the power we need.

Unrealistic some say, every person has their price some say. We don't believe that. Some can't be bought.

How much do we need to get started?

Aki and Scott

Smoke in Our Skies

It's been a spring and summer of sunshine, hot, dry and fires. In the last month smoke from forest fires blocked out the late afternoon sun for a couple of weeks. A forest fire just south of us was 53,000 hectares big. Very high ground water levels. The mosquitoes were extreme and lasted an extra month into August - still a few around.

For Aki, Kai and I it has meant a great harvest. This winter holds a palette of sun dried tomatoes, dried broccoli, cauliflower, broad beans, peas,herbs and kale. Aki is canning pesto, hot pepper jelly, Saskatoon jam etc, etc... .

Every knife and tool we've made this year has been produced with just solar power. We work with the Sun. The Sun basically dictates what we do, how and what we eat, what time we go to sleep, when we wake up, how many movies we watch and in the deep, dark winter, how many emails we can write. We'd much rather be guided by the sun than by Exxon or Shell.
We've been harping about solar power for 15 years to anyone who would listen. Not many were listening but a few were watching. To us it is mind baffling that everyone hasn't a panel or two. We all know the sun.
Today, silicon, which makes up roughly half the cost of making of most solar electric panels, has dropped from $400/kg to $70/kg in one year..... and the silicon Baron's are still making money. Kind of sounds like the oil companies. Right now you can get Sharp panels for 2/3 of what they were a year ago. .


At the time when we moved here we invaded Iraq. Now we're occupying Afghanistan. Sure is a disgraceful situation we find ourselves in. All for a pipeline. All for oil.

Anyone can.
Running your shop on solar electric power is easy. With this system we've run our cabin and shop for 13 years. We started with one panel, 2 batteries and an inverter.
We are 100% solar powered from the end of March until the end of September now. March and October are good for sun energy just not unlimited. We work full time making edged tools. Our power needs decline until December 21st, by the end of February we have the power we need from the sun again. It's December and January when we slow down and burn candles in the evening. If you're connected to a grid there is no fluctuation. We tried to keep up the production for these dark months only to fall behind and get stressed. This year we'll snow shoe, think more, and play more music.

We designed and installed our system. It was fairly easy.
We went with 6 volt golf cart batteries. They are tough (We've frozen them solid and they have come back). These batteries are inexpensive and easy to replace although we haven't had to. 8 batteries and they are all in good shape. Twice a year I'll clean them with baking soda and water, then top off each cell with distilled water.
We've seen people spend lots of money on batteries. You don't have to, tough golf cart batteries are the way to go, especially for a shop. If you live within a grid you don't need batteries.

We have 390 watts of panel. 2 are BP and one is made by Sharp, a 20 amp regulator and we have a 2,500 watt (with a surge of 3,500) inverter we bought at Canadian Tire.

We built a manual tracker. Three panels, framed, on top of a 20 foot steel pole set cemented into the ground. As we work we turn the panels to face the sun.
This has increased our power by 35%.
The tracker put us at the level of power we are satisfied with and gave us a very good ground.--- An excellent ground is really important. Ground your inverter, batteries and panels.

Trick is to work with the sun when it is out. We don't think of it as storing power. Use power when it is there in the sky.
At night we use stored power for light, music, watching movies, and small amp tools.

If you have a steady wind, a wind generator is the way to go.

It's quite amazing once you begin... A different way of seeing. It feels like a breakthrough. Life on another level. Being responsible for your own power instead of being forced to be part of the crime. We are all, in this part of the world, part of a crime.

Questions like, "what do you do when the sun's not out", or statements like, "solar panels are made by oil energy" seem true enough in an all or nothing way. When the sun's not out we relax. The real cost to the environment of a panel is paid off in as little as 5 years. Life is saved. Solar electric panels are guaranteed for 25 years.

Electric cars are a boondoggle unless you plug into the sun. Electric anything, otherwise your plugging into oil, coal and nuclear reactors.

Living with the sun as the source of power, growing your own food, taking time to think, taking only what you need and most of all being empathetic, not psychopathic.

http://www.caribooblades.com/

Loading Shotguns

It was -8 this morning. All the mud has frozen. Good thing in a way because we can get out and back in tonight from a visit to some neighbours.





A break from the nice post....


We have lived in this beautiful place going on twelve years. Peace, freedom and we have almost shaken off our urban ignorance and anxiety.


Almost but probably never completely.




In our very first post we were excited to write about our lives here, share it and maybe be a bit of light .
There is a huge elephant weighing on our minds.


The abuse and disrespect toward the natural world here is right in our faces. The abuse is absurd.


We are urban people transplanted into the forest, or what's left of it. It is mind-blowing to witness the extent of human greed. It seems we are loading our shotguns, taking aim and blowing off our own feet.






Supplying the world with the pillages of rape.


They are talking "bio-fuel" now, with the "bio" making it sound friendlier somehow. The pine beetle killed off the Pine forests, we suppose because of the warm winters, now we want to cut them all down for bio fuel and plant "marketable stock". They are saying, the money suckers who survive from bending our rubber minds, that the threat of dead decaying pine forests will produce enough carbon emissions to threaten the planet ? We are crazy. What does all the wildlife do while we are clearing the forests. Have you ever walked through a clear cut? There is no place to go. There is nothing left. We are proposing clear cuts of the like never seen before. Meanwhile lumber mills are cutting, killing, the last 500 -600 year old fir trees. Our neighbours found a 1000 year old lying in a cut block left because it had some rot in the middle. The point is why was it cut down and left in the first place! Maybe the last one. It won't even get a chance to rot and become fertilizer for the next generation - the "unmarketable timber" is pushed into piles and burned.


We humans, whether you like it or not, are ripping off the dead, eating them and then complaining about the aftertaste and the heartburn.
We'll go in with feller bunchers and cut the trees, skid them out with skidders, load them on trucks and truck them to plants that aren't built yet, process them into ethanol, put the ethanol into our vehicles and burn it.... Sounds like a green plan to me.


But everyone knows this. That's what makes it so absurd and difficult to even talk about.


http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Forests/Canada/BC/Beetle/


Nice post cotinued....

Next morning: An enjoyable evening, a small gathering of neighbours (anyone living west of the Fraser River is a neighbour) who tend to stick to ourselves but venture out occasionally to share views, good food, homemade wine and also to offer a bit of support. Sometimes it is easy to feel completely alone in our quest to live simply with minimal damage.

We left their candlelit yurt with the nearly full moon rising in the sky, driving carefully past shadows of countless deer, bumping down the logging roads, finally into our yard to be greeted by our two dogs, tails wagging - good to be home.






http://www.caribooblades.com/