Thursday, January 20, 2011

Solar panels !


Sorry, it took me so long to post something new, but we have been busy. The work on our current home is done & the house is up for sale ! So, Katie & I have been building our own solar panels , successfully ! I build the frames , mark and glue the solar cells on . Then Katie does her magic, by soldering the cells together. Soldering is her specialty , for years now she's been constructing tiffiny stained glass and does beautiful work. We have 4 panels built and plan to build at least four more before we move. This will give us a good start since we don't have electric there. We want to stay off the grid if at all possible. I am also researching on how to build my own wind turbine , since we get a nice breeze down that hollow.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Happy Birthday Katie !


We stayed for a few days in October to install the stove upstairs. We found it was too cold in the containers without any insulation, to sleep in there. We did noticed there was about a 15 degree difference in temperature between the floors, the basement being warmer. So we decided to move all our stuff downstairs, so when we came back with another stove for the basement, we would be set.We came back in November with a soapstone stove, i bought on ebay and we got it in there and i used the existing chimney to exhaust. Now we have everything , well almost ! This is where the title of this post makes sense. Up until now we have been using the bucket for a toilet . So i promised to Katie that for her birthday i would install a real toilet. So i built a subfloor , installed the toilet . Happy Birthday Katie !