Living illegally! Off-Grid One Year Later - EcoFlow Delta 2
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2022
- Update, the delta still works good but stay away from the power kit, it’s been having massive problems for the last few months and I DONT recommend buying one
ecoflow DELTA 2 amazon: amzn.to/3LaV5bQ
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#Ecoflow #EcoFlowDelta2 #NotJustaBattery - Наука та технологія
Update, the power kit while good looking is an untested POS save your money as this thing is an unmitigated disaster that has been slowly failing over the last few months. Customer support for it is not useful as well
Thanks for coming back and letting the people know
Update video?
Make sure you only use un-dimmable LED lights so they don't flicker as current changes. Cheap $100 diesel heaters are outstanding as far as heating a small home for very low cost. Small backup generators are always nice in the winter when "solar" is not there. Anything that is an "all-in-one solution(power kit) is also an all-in-one point of failure. Keep having fun!
As far as wood stoves are concerned, gasification is actually beneficial and significantly improves the efficiency...if the wood gas catches fire in the place you want it to. In your design for your own wood stove, build it with two combustion chambers: a lower chamber for the solid fuel and an upper chamber where the wood gas is mixed with fresh air (that is preferably pre-heated by the lower chamber) and burns efficiently. A lot of modern wood stoves use this same principle and even rely on gasification as the main heat source.
This is how a proper rocket stove should work.
@@TheWebstaff As well as other designs, yes
Woodgas isn't something I want inside my walls. A large component is carbon monoxide.
Outdoors with a heat exchanger.... sure.
@@ur_quainmaster7901 The carbon monoxide is getting produced by the solid fuel regardless, and it's getting sucked out the flue along with all the other exhaust gasses. If your wood stove leaks any of the exhaust gasses into the room, you're going to have a problem whether it's designed to burn the wood gas or not.
@@ur_quainmaster7901 then you shouldn't burn any carbon-containing fuels inside your house. The few remaining options for heating are: solar/geothermal (they work together), hydrogen heating, and heat pumps.
For winter, you probably need to figure out a way to add another layer of insulation between the framing and the inner walls. Rockwool is good stuff where it's actually in place, but that metal frame is going to have some massive thermal bridging where you have basically zero insulation. Even a relatively thin layer of something past it would help a lot.
Products like a space blanket are good too.
Ohio must be the coldest place in america 💀💀🗿🥶
@@prolska alaska exists
@@sepg5084 Alaska, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, North Dakota, Washington... all the coldest states
The fake stone facades that you can put on buildings will add a bit of insultation, and plug air gaps.
It's just a weather resistant plastic face, that looks like rock, backfilled with foam.
One of the things I’ve noticed is you don’t have a skirt around the bottom of your tiny house. This makes a significant difference due to airflow under the frame. Even an inexpensive tarp all the way around would help. Adding a second wood stove fan would probably help as well. Regardless I’m envious of what you’ve done! Good work!
Someone has probably mentioned it already, but a hot-water tank is relatively inefficient,constantly keeping a mass of water warm in case you need it. On-demand water heaters make more sense when running on battery power. As someone mentioned below, using your wood stove to heat water may make even more sense in the winter.
He said he only runs it for like 10 minutes to take a shower. A tankless electric low flow would be good for hand washing though. 120v tankless is pretty low flow for showering
I've heard good things about heat-pump based tank hot water heaters too
I don't think a heat pump will work during winter.
@@123markdiaz Modern heat pumps work fine in the winter, even in Ohio.
Tankless water heaters are fine if they are gas powered, but electric ones don't heat the water nearly as well and would draw massive amounts of power, even if it's only for a short time. A tank water heater is FAR better for off-grid because it can heat the water much more slowly over a much longer period of time and therefore draws MUCH less power at any given moment than a tankless one. Also, with a tank you have the option of using stored heated water even if you have completely run out of power, and even if it doesn't get a chance heat the water fully you can still have usefully warm water, whereas with a tankless water heater if your batteries are too low you're completely out of luck. There are now tank water heaters that are designed specifically with this in mind and can work with your solar system to only draw power after the batteries are full and there's nowhere else for the energy to go. That's for the summer, of course, and they have different strategies for winter and other scenarios.
I really like the rig for keeping the solar panels pointed at the sun. Building it on the trailer lets you adjust it as the angle of the sun changes throughout the year and keeps it mobile with the house. Very smart.
Didn't see how it actually automatically tracks the sun though. If he put all his panels on that and it always pointed the entire array directly at the sun all day, he'd likely be able to last longer in the winter. But would likely need to double his battery bank to ensure there was enough capacity to last the cloudy days.
@@blaircox1589 solar panel trackers usually just work on a program once you tell them your date, time, and location
@@kimberlydrennon4982 They don't have to. You can certainly build a sun tracking unit. Many plans for different types. But even using software that acccurelty tracks the location of the sun for each day of the year would still point the panels towards the sun. Soooooo ???
@@blaircox1589 You could easily use a power mechanism like a grandfather clock uses. All movement is by potential energy. All control is by micro-amps.
@@blaircox1589 5:10 shows the uncovered tracker. This type uses two light sensing diodes (seen on the top corners of the PCB), if one diode is getting more light, the panel adjusts towards that direction until the diodes are sensing equal light.
Hi Peter, you need to look into the benefits of using a heat pump for your temperature issue. Your cooling unit needs to be reverse cycle, as such it can produce more heat than it uses in electricity in the winter far out performing the 700W oil heater you were using. I'd recommend watching a couple Technology connections videos on heat pumps if you want more info on what I'm referring to. - It will likely solve 99% of your issues :).
100% a heat pump AC will help with the temp issue. summer it can cool the house and in winter it can run along with the stove. lower power consumption too.
as an armchait engineer id suggest more insulation in europe almost every house has 10 - 15cm thick panels of styrofoam or rockwool insualation on the outside of the walls and it really makes diference in how much you need to heat up the room in the winter most of the time you dont need to use heater at all
That seems like the place to start.
He said it’s well insulated. That certainly gives away his limited but natural building science knowledge. R20 or so is building code in many northern jurisdictions. Combined with no thermal bridging and air tightness, that should serve him well. But I doubt that’s what he actually has. Maybe R10-15 with plenty of thermal bridging and poor air tightness. Especially prone to heat loss are floor and roof. The thermal imaging should be done in winter, from the outside. You would see how hot the entire building envelop is.
I wouldn't say that almost every house has them.
Concerning the low efficiency of solar panels in the winter, i think Tech Ingredients has a very good video on that topic. You basically can just use mirrors to reflect more sunlight onto the panels, which obviously generates more power and doesnt even hurt the cells, because they were designed to work in much warmer climates with a lot more sun exposure.
+1 for Tech Ingredients. Awesome channel!
Also, the panels have to be clear of snow to work. There are several ways to deal with that (automatically, I mean) and reflectors might even help melt snow. But the reflectors would also need to be clear of snow to do their job, so catch-22... And setting up reflectors to properly track the sun to keep the reflection angle properly aligned toward the panels would be a proper nightmare.
The other solution is getting more panels…
@@awo1fman zardoz not wax. only a couple of drops per panel.
@@Jokerwolf666 That is right, a proper mount and double, triple or even more. Ideeally you want enough solar to fill your batteries in 1 to 5 hours. I do not recall how many kwh he had yet if you have 5kwh of battery you would want enough solar to fill that up in 1 hour. This would give you a winter fill time of about 2 hours @ 50%. You can buy 5.2 kwh server rack batteries for around 1500 dollars today along with a really nice all in one inverter for 1500. then you can buy a pallet of used solar panels for around 1600 shipped. Get 2 pallets as I think the all in one inverter is like 8kw of solar input. The more solar the better. The faster you charge your battery the longer your battery will last once the sun goes down.
Peter is a pure sine wave
Nice vids
Why only two replies?
Interesting you went for the hole-in-the wall option of the window a/c as you’re problem is the 4th season of cold Winter. Economically priced heat pumps rated from 20-22 seer would make that tiny place over 78°-80° if you so desired and would use less than 400watts doing it. So your problem of depleting your batt storage too fast on cloudy days or strings of bad weather would be much more practical, and your heating issue would be generously solved.
Filling in the big picture window hole, not fun.
Why use resistive heating value of 1 to 1 with electrical watts, when you can get 4-5 to 1 with a mini-split heat pump.
Speaking from experience, of course.
They do cost more up front compared to the lame window units, but the gain in adequate heating and practicality bridging the bad Solar days and/or lower electric grid bill more that makes up for it.
The mini split air handlers are so much more silent, not noisy, and are excellent air movers and are directionally settable. (Unlike the window units that will not blow down, only across and up…LAME)
if you are willing to make the trip to mexico, you can get a good unit for $350.
Yes, please look into a heat pump
Those 5k window units are ridiculously efficient and work great. I looked up a generic 1 ton (12,000 btu) mini split heat pump that runs on just 115v and it shows 25 amps drawn which is definitely not nothing. So depends on how much power he can generate it's of course feasible, I think he knew that it was easier to just burn junk in a stove than it was to charge the batteries off of solar to heat the place so that's why he did that as the first design and used an ultra efficient window unit. Much like a van build, just go with your gut, try it out, change it to what you need later once you have used it and figured it out.
I have a the highest SEER Mitsubishi Mini Split heat pump from my basement office and while it is VERY efficient it is 220v and during very cold winter there is a pan heater to keep the coils from icing up and the power draw can be quite high during defrost. On the flip side as it is an inverter compressor when low cooling or heating is needed it runs at low speed with lower power draw and the indoor unit is nearly silent with air sweeps and other very nice features. Overall way way better then a window unit although it did cost $2,400 and the whole system is fairly large compared with a 8,000 BTU windows AC.
I don't know about the rest of you, but Toby's tail wagging while he was half asleep at the end was the best part for me!... 🤣😂🤣
I've been spending my spare time in the last couple of years figuring out ways to improve my winter situation and here are a few things I have found that might interest you:
1) Catalytic Propane Heater (wall mounted ones are good)
2) Mini Split Heat Pump & AC (you can find some that work well below freezing)
3) Propane / Gasoline dual-fuel generator (Ecoflow has a smart generator iirc)
4) Propane water heater (can be on-demand if you do not live in high elevation / high wind speed area)
5) Car type electric blanket
The propane/gasoline generator and water heater would probably be overkill for the limited use though. The original goal was to not have to pay for power, and be completely off the grid. You would still have to pay for the gas.
It'll be interesting to see how the extra roof-mounted solar panels and heat pump will help. It'll also be interesting to see how much the rotating solar trailer alone will do in the winter.
cant hear the word propane without hearing hanks voice😂
I did a conventional cargo trailer conversion.... have a mini-split that does heating and cooling, and something that made a huge difference in insulation was I did standard foam board insulation inside the metal frame... then I ran 2x2 wood strips perpendicular to the metal trailer frame and insulated further before putting up panel. Very little heat transfer through studs as you get in a traditional house.
Wood purlins on aluminum studs... why have I never seen this before? Great idea!
@@SoybeanAK Steel frame and aluminum skin in my case. No way to quantify but it feels far more rigid, as a bonus. I did 2x4 at the ceiling and framed around the doors.
A sand battery might be a really good solution for a lack of power and heat in the winter and it'd be really cool to see someone build one
A good trick I’ve had to use is, to make a heat radiator out of copper wires or aluminum blocks that I had cast, and candles. It’s worked to keep my green house plants from freezing in the past.
I live off grid on my sailboat and run my entire household on an Ecoflow Delta Pro. It’s a very impressive device. It’s been a real game changer with my off grid power setup. Probably the best plug and play solar generator ever made.
They seem good but aren't they more of a camping toy.
On boats theres no need to have a portable power supply as your home is the portable part ( assuming liveaboard/ long term cruising)
We've got 40kwh of power , 10kw inverters and 5.4kwh of solar on the roof of our catamaran and i genuinely think that electric only through the winter in the uk will be a bit tight considering solar yield.
Our favourite thing onboard used only for a couple of months has to be the diesel heater, changes the game entirely and cheap to run
@@alwilkins9467 the delta pro comes with 3.6 kWh capacity with a 3.6 kW inverter. It has a 30 amp plug, which I have wired directly to my shore power panel. This is more than enough to run my live aboard home/office. I also have around 500 watts of solar feeding into it. I know some live aboard folks want to have all the conveniences of a house in the city when out on the water, but I tend to use less energy the way I’m set up. No refrigerator, washer/dryer, electric heaters, etc. It mainly runs my computer/monitors, dehumidifier, air purifier, lights, house battery chargers. The delta pro isn’t really a camping device, weighing in over 100 pounds. It’s more for whole house backup power, but works very well as a primary power source on a boat.
@@eviemoody thats fair enough, i suppose it depends how you sustain your life away from shore. We have zero fossil fuel aboard so the numbers have to be big to sustain all the demands i guess, even if we dont use alot of the more luxury items ( washer/ dish washer, air con) much of the time.
Boat living is a totally different dimension of challenge.
The EcoFlow Delta Pro is the bare minimum, it’s also the only EF device using a LFP with 3000+ charge cycles, making it a bit more economical. However, the low solar input of 800-900 watt makes it challenging in the winter months.
That aside, if one setup or the other works really depends on our actual needs and location.
I myself will be cruising the Caribbean next year for an extended period of time. Solar and EF will be my main components to stay powered up.
Its a little strange how nobody seems to mention the cost of these devices, which is understandable because it is possibly enough to put anyone off buying them considering the free alternatives like a wood stove.
You should make an automatic spinning brush that periodically sweeps the solar panels in the winter.
How many actual snow days are there? Brushing the panels off by hand gives you a few perks, like morning exercise, inspection of the panels, and not excessively sleeping in because you need those precious few daylight hours. It becomes an exercise of discipline - a much needed trait most of us could use more off.
@@4philipp True. But it still sucks. Plus you might fall off the roof.
Dude! This was really cool! I wanna see it in person. Maybe have a sleepover? 😗
You sleep on the couch, me and Toby own the bed 👀
@@PeterSripol Ayooooo
Old comments
Loved your update. I have a workshop and use a diesel heater in winter, it's actually pretty efficient and only makes a whirring sound.
Make a double chamber over-under wood stove; the second chamber has heat exchanger tubes running through it.
I did that with a larger wood burner and a 35 gallon oil drum. I have the stove pipe going in to the drum almost to the top. it vents out the side at the bottom. I get so much more heat.
Just to be clear I cut a hole in the center of the lid of the small oil drum and sat that on top of the wood burner with the stove pipe sticking up. Then sat the small oil drum on top of that up side down and crimped the lid back on.
I have 28 solar panels on the roof of my house that feed my off grid system . I have 3 different systems (12v) to account for redundancy , but one thing i've noticed is that all solar panels are not the same . Some of them work really well in poor diffused light but crap in total sun and visa versa , so for me having 3 different brands of panels works pretty well, so bare in mind that you might find better panels for your winter .
How is it that you are combining all of those panels? Just 3 different charge controllers I assume?
@@scixxor6025 Yes, 3 different MPPT's to cope with the differences in the panels but set up with the same charging outputs to my 30off 100ah LifePo4 batteries
@@Island_Times Are they monocrystaline vs multicrystalin? If so, that would explain the difference.
Really just more panels is better. Your set up works great. You have 3 charge controllers. Really anyone can add more and more power to their battery bank with as many charge controllers as you want.
30off 100ah LifePo4 batteries
What voltage are you running and exactly what did you mean by your battery bank?
And then in 10 years, you gotta replace them.
"The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What do they look like? Ships? Motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then, one day, I got [off the grid]" - Jeff Bridges
Love tron legacy
I really enjoyed your presentation it was more than hearts and roses that you usually see. You gave subjective facts about how your system worked and pointed out things that could be improved and things that worked well I truly appreciate that.
Just put a blanket over yourself and don't move around too much. That's the way I solved my issues with heat when I opened the windows in my tiny room.
Moving around makes you warmer. If you get cold, doing 50 pushups and 50 sit ups will get your body back into heat mode.
Peter look into heat pumps for the winter. They make them pretty efficient these days.
Modern heat pumps are around 300%-400% efficient, if he swapped the window AC for a window heat pump it could probably handle 90% of his heating and cooling with the stove just chipping in on the worst days.
The only problem would be if it's regularly under 10°F, then they fall to around 230% efficiency and may have some trouble as the only source of heat.
Nothing is 300% efficient. The coefficient of performance may be 3-4, but the efficiency is less than 1.
You probably mean COP
@@ECK138 Heating/Cooling efficiency, aka the amount of energy it moves per input unit of energy.
I've got a Delta 1 and love it the few times the power has gone out it runs the fridge and microwave both - no problem.
The sun tracker for winter use is exactly what I was thinking. Ideally, have it tip the panels vertical or even past vertical after dark. Also, you can get a lot more energy from solar thermal panels than from PV panels. It might be worth considering.
I love the crazy things you do in your videos, your a dedicated person 👍
Good video. There is a gravity feed pellet stove you can get that would make more heat than your current stove and doesn't need electricity. I live in Ohio also and we are predicted to have a lot more snow than last year. Maybe you could put a tall privacy fence around your home to help block the wind this winter.
Your Videos on this topic are inspiring. I am going to build a tiny house on my property in Florida soon. Going through the permitting process and researching building methods. Metal buildings are big here for storage but importantly hurricane proof. I have a well for the water, drainage field for sewer and hopefully get solar to power it. Thanks
Great video mate. Living self sufficient is a goal of mine too. Your giving us lots of real world info like your burner efficiency. Great advice. Thanks. Love to you and Toby from me and MiiMii.
Peter, thank you for your honesty. What an awesome experiment.. Ive bought other Ecoflow products but I've never seen the products that you're running your house now. Please provide updates to how those product work as we approach winter...
Try mounting the solar panels vertically & at least 6' off the ground. Less chance of snow blocking them & the sun will reflect off the snow on the ground.
Also, the older panels do better on cloudy days. So, have both types.
Brilliant!
Just a couple of quick ideas. Use a heat exchanger to assist in heating your water tank. If you don't want to deal with the plumbing, use a glow plug or two and connect it to a solar panel. Works great and with a simple circuit, you can set it to turn off and continue to feed your batteries with the aid of a relay and thermo switch. You live in a giant heatsink and need a thermal break. 2" foam board to break the contact from the siding would work wonders. In regards to the solar panels, use a solar tracker. I know you could build one with your bag full of skills. :) Take care.
Very cool. Great update video Peter!
You should try and make window covers for the winter to increase the efficiency of the heater 🥶
SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS!
I live in a big tinyhouse, with a 340 kg soapstoneoven, in mid norway, temperature is not a problem here, the oven keeps the temprature in the house good for 10 to 12 hours, so I make fire twice a day when its mid winter. I recommand you check out any heatstorage ovens available i your area. Definitly worth the extra money, highly recommanded!
My buddy did this with two camper frames so he could move both pieces and he had power problems in the winter but in the summer had no issues. He lives in wv and he had purified rain water and lived close to off grid for years.
Nothing like a 15 minute infomercial for eco flow
Very cool stuff! Looking forward to the boat video too. Boats / RVs / Tiny Homes have a lot in common when it comes to power and heating, and there are a lot of clever hacks you can do for all of them. I can't remember if you've done a DIY wind turbine before, but I bet that would be pretty easy with all your aircraft experience!
@PeterSripol looks like you've got those spambots again! 🙃
Didn't expect to see you here! 😀
Hi! I made a very functional wood stove using an old BBQ propane tank and a lot of bits and pieces. It has been keeping my poorly insulated garage shop (small, wood framed 1 car garage) "cozy" for two winters. It takes bigger logs than those mini stoves so you can get more BTUs in at one time! I am damn sure you could make something amazing. We burn a lot Ash trees that were killed by invasive beetles here in Ontario the last 10 years.
Hey there's no sun in British Columbia in winter. Use a good wood stove for room and shower heating, cook soups and tea on the flat top, and get an electric blanket for where you sit and lie down.
Have you thought about a little wind turbine? They are relatively cheap and little ones can put out about 1kW. No idea what the wind situation in Ohio is but you could easily put one on the roof
Hello, solar enthusiast here. For anyone wanting to use the ecoflows they are great! Very safe, insanely easy to use, and the components are all pretty high quality. Unfortunately for all that you are gonna be paying 2.5 times more than if you had built your own system. If you want to build a system this week go with ecoflow (or bluetti is just as good) if you want to build one "eventually" I would recommend that you start researching how to build your own system to save a load of money. You will also likely be able to get batteries that are serviceable that can last a long time.
My old and I mean OLD college buddy from the 70's wanted to have me help him build a solar generator. I said I don't know how to build a solar generator, but I can make a dandy Sunshine Compressor that should keep his clock radio running for a long time. Here it is in Test Mode.... ua-cam.com/video/GPYg1QZJ24o/v-deo.html
I keep seeing those ecoflow batteries on the channels I follow and they always seem to go over well. This is a really smart marketing strategy by them, they know they've got a product worth showing off!
They're overpriced hipster junk for any system over a KWH. The River is pretty decent for a camp/day outing battery, if you need bigger you should be building with cheaper blocks if they're not sponsoring you.
That’s what a good sleeping bag is for : ) I can relate. I tried to heat a log cabin with a small wood stove. For my shed I have a 240 volt 48volt solar system to run my well pump, mini split and appliances.
Two schools of thought on the winter sun issue. Some people try to get more batteries which is crazy expensive. The other cheaper method is buying used panels and combine them into a combiner box before your main combiner box. When the sun starts shining the breaker for the string your extra panels are connected in with will trip protecting the inverter/charger from over current.
Fitting more batteries would not solve the overall problem, you still have the limited charging capacity in WInter that limits the energy input.
@@tomgeorge3726 yep, but that's where most people tend to go. I'm not sure why. But your totally correct it's a game of intake and not so much retention. We are on the same page me thinks!
Batteries are cheap now. 5.2kwh for 1500 bucks. Those BB batteries are 1.2kwh for what 900 bucks? New solar panels cost 50 cents per watt and used can cost around 25 cents. You need a solar panel rack to which your panels are placed on and instead of 10 you need 30 or more of them. Randomly laying them around is the reason why he got crap power.
@@kameljoe21 With extra batteries, you're betting that you won't have a long streak of very dark days, or that you won't need more power during a low production period. Buying $1k of used panels will get you an extra ~3kwh/day in dark winter.
@@thelight3112 Pretty sure I stated that somewhere you can buy a used pallet of panels for 1500 bucks shipped or around 25 cents per watt. That gives you 4kwh of solar or around 2kwh at 50% for winter. Solar panels are dirt cheap in the used market. You always need more solar panels than you think. If you need 1kwh of solar then you should have 2 or 3kwh of solar panels even more if you can. More solar during the summer means you can run heavy loads during the day. For exmaple you can run extra AC units or what ever. With all of that extra loads you can put in a hot tub or what ever. The same in the winter if you have far more energy that you can use then its extra power you can turn in to heat or other daily loads.
Look into spray foam insulation. You could turn that place into a freezer in the summer and furnace in the winter with minimal heat/AC.
closed cell spray foam need use ewery metal cover cabin. or have wery could house and moisture lot in wall.
@@mattivirta A very good point. A cold roof, floors and walls will condense lots of vapor. Needs, fully enclosed impermeable foam with heat exchanged make-up air. Might have to remove and return the exterior siding, roof and crawlspace ceiling.
Rolling blackouts is our future... 100% agree. Because someone decided utility scale intermittent is a great replacement for reliable base load generators. (insert eyeroll). Absolutely love your tinyhouse setup.
Do you know Florida and Ohio are on the same grid?
Energy, from the roof panels of some Florida man, helped Peter survive the winter. that is a thing that is happening now. Energy from solar fields in New Mexico and Arizona are actively powering New York and Seattle. sound like rolling blackouts system wide to you? really? those places flood with a five minuite rain shower. and then there are batteries. much bigger batteries that need to be built still. we are not just going to flip a switch and shut off coal powered plants. They'll be slowly replaced with batteries charged up over summer and holding enough energy to power everyone.
And then there's the wind supply, the hydro-dams, and the more unusual energy collection systems like triboelectric charge collection from falling precipitation. (litteraly stealing static electricity from the rain and snow) It's about half as powerful as solar per square meter, but the collectors are quite literally transparent.. so they go over the solar panels.. thus making the solar panels work anytime there's a storm.
you've made an assumption, and a terrible one, that what happens in small scale is issue for large scale.
Self-sufficiency is, by and large, a myth for humans.
We are living outside our bodies' natural climate, using completely engineered solutions (often engineered for completely different environments as well. There is a reason native americans had the solution of juet getting the heck out of that region in winter. There is no legitimate good reason to stay in ohio during the winter. We probably should follow suit tbh)
And we are social critters that literally go insane and die without other people company and new company from time to time.
3:00 When I went off the grid I was surprised to learn the first two things that had to go...refrigeration and long showers:
(1) Refrigeration: Just a little office refrigerator uses 120W with a 30% duty cycle or 40W continuous. That's 1KWh per day. My whole solar source was about 1KWh...on a good day. I resorted to canning all my food in 8oz jars.
(2) 2 minute showers: Went to RV or Navy shower (wet down, lather, rinse off). Uses 1/2 gallon of water (1/2 of which is heated in a sauce pan over propane stove). I used a "solar shower" bag for the actual shower.
I insulated heavily. For heat I used a sunflower burner on a propane tank in about 5 minute bursts...to take the chill off...only used about 20 pounds per year. Didn't use wood because i was afraid of the fire hazard. No AC. Was in the shade. Opened up at night to cool down...in day to warm up. Heavy insulation acts as a big capacitor for heat.
With the cost of solar gone down and the cost of batteries you can build a really large system for around 7500 bucks easy and have more than enough power to have a fridge. Also full size fridge/freezer are far more efficient. Those small office fridges consume way to much.
Server rack battery 5.2kwh 1500
All in one inverter 8kwh 1500
2 pallets ( 6kwh per pallet or 12k) of used solar 3000
1500 dollars in racking, wire and anything else puts you at 7500 dollars. Which is more than enough for a single person to live, shower, fridge, computer, tv, cook and everything all year round in a small cabin.
As the other commenter said, larger refrigerators are much more efficient. My 50 year old full-size stand up freezer uses 170W at a 50% duty cycle which is only twice your minifridge. Modern ones should be a good bit more efficient.
@@eDoc2020 Wow that is pretty good for that old of a fridge. About 10 years ago I was looking in to the most efficient fridge you could buy and was able to find one at 47 watts and this required you to turn off the auto defrost which was disconnecting a wire ( to which I think they wired to a switch so they could defrost when they needed. ) I am not sure what the duty cycle yet even at 100% it was super low consumption.
@@kameljoe21 This is a freezer-only unit without auto-defrost and it's in the basement so it doesn't need to work as hard (and it might have also been winter when I measured).
The easiest way to get a super-efficient refrigerator is to take a well-insulated chest freezer and adjust its thermostat.
We have a DC non-frost free fridge that uses 0.5kWh a day. It was a bit expensive but cheaper than adding more panels and batteries. Inverters have idle draw losses higher than that. So a 1kWh/day fridge, actually will use 1.5kWh after you factor in the inverter. We turn the inverter off at night, we have DC lighting and a DC water pump too. The inverter is only used for laptops, tv, satellite receiver, cell booster, washing machine, etc... So far the cabin has only been used in the summer and there was always a surplus of power. My parents are planning on spending some time there this winter, so I think we will be putting in a new inverter that has an 80A charger built in to charge from a generator. As I don't think they will generate enough solar in the winter.
Single axis tracking really seems like the golden mean, it uses the panels a lot better and is pretty simple compared to two axis.
yep. and you can always have the tracker on a manual adjuster for latitude/time of year if the panels are easily accessible.
By the time you invest in a tracker and have it set up, it would have been cheaper to just install double the panels. When you factor in the cost of the tracker and the repair its just cheaper. While a tracker seems like a good idea, the cost hurts. Be smarter and just buy more panels. Even go used and get 4 times or more for the cost. You will even have enough money to have a bunch of spares. Used panels will last another 50 years and by that time it would still be producing the same had you gone with new.
I think a fun project, and perhaps an extremely useful one for someone in a tiny house in an Ohio winter...Install a Chinese diesel (air) heater or two. They are extremely efficient and safe due to being like a forced air home furnace and utilizing a heat exchanger, combustion occurs internally and the exhaust is vented outdoors. You can run them on diesel fuel or later on experiment with mixtures of used vegetable oil and diesel or other fuels. The 8kw versions push about 27,000btu's of hot air and through my experiments I've found another 10,000-15,000 btu's of recoverable waste heat from the exhaust. You could duct the exhaust into the woodstove which would get some of it, or an old steam radiator like I did and get all of it- which also allows you to heat a water tank off pure waste heat while still heating your space as well solving your hot water problem simultaneously, or even duct the exhaust through an insulated tube to outdoors for dethawing your solar panels. Excellent videos btw, always liking them.
Collecting the "waste" exhaust heat via radiator to warm his water tank and pipe supply would be the best for him so he isn't running out of water due to freezing.
I installed 1 for someone the other week in a caravan there cheap and work awesome
@@narref04 That's exactly what I did using an old cast iron steam radiator, I used the hot radiator for cooking and heating a water tank while also heating my garage with no issues all winter last year (in Michigan)
@@BIGSMOKE-bl2lq Heck yes, I agree. A few years back I heated my Tahoe all winter long, kept it at 80 degrees and all the snow and ice would melt right off even in blizzards and such. It was nice always having a warm truck, I even vented some heat under the hood to keep the engine warm and the hood dethawed
While diesel heaters are great their cost is far more when trying to live off grid. This tiny house problem could have been fixed by adding a proper solar panel mount and and adding more solar panels. When people go off grid they want to be off grid. Yet they fail to run the numbers and forget that solar needs a lot more solar to be happy. If you need 1000 watts of solar you should have 2000 to 3000 watts of solar to be safe. Which means that you battery bank is full faster and can remain full longer.
I have a 40ft shipping container and can agree. They get heckin cold. Even with 6" of foam on the floor and 8 on the ceiling.
I've got a Daikin mini split (12k BTU) that maintains the heat but when it's below 32, I run a normal 1500w space heater that's more than enough to keep the 300sqft hot.
One of the best efficiency gains for the wood stove is to have an outside air intake for combustion air. Otherwise, you are using your room air for combustion and then exhausting it outside. That air has to be made up in the room with outside air, at outside air temperature. All the smoke you see coming out of the flue is only a fraction of the volume of air coming out and all of the full volume has to be replaced inside the room with outside air.
Need to beef up insolation, fire stove and start using some gas. Also microwave and cooler need to go (Ideally... so does the gaming PC as well as other none essential electric demands). In winter you need to introduce more trickle charging methods, like a Wind turbine or two for constant trickle and a heat exchanger for the new bigger stove.
The goal isn't to live on as low power as possible. The goal is to live at almost the same standard as in his big house, just off grid. Throwing out his luxurious items would kinda defeat the purpose
@@maxrei8786 Well welcome to the real world at this time... to run a luxurious off grid setup... you are going to need a lot more than a handful of solar panels during winter at that location...
Running the microwave for a few minutes at 800W doesn’t consume that much energy (since the duration is short). Running the 600W gaming PC setup for hours is a whole different thing of course. It does help to heat up the house, though a heat pump would be more efficient.
install a back boiler on the wood stove and have it connected to a radiator so it retains more heat
Also a space for a kettle. Gotta have hot drinks.
For your water storage you should Set up a set of water heater/solar panel, combos, set it up on the solar tracker, trailer, and have a small flow pump to continuously cycle the water through the Panels calling them making them more efficient while keeping your water moving and semi heated
This is the vid I needed to see. Thank you!!!
Consider a heat pump to help heat your home more efficiently.
THIS. Just installed a small 9k BTU unit in my house, have had it plugged into a watt meter, and it draws exactly 1/2 what my old 6k BTU window A/C drew over the span of a month. And it is supposed to generate heat in the winter down to like 13 degrees F outdoor temp.
So far as I understand it, it’s not illegal to live off the grid. Just challenging.
property tax prevents you from living 100 percent off grid, even if you dont use government services. so in a way yeah its illegal
It's just clickbait 😋
Living off-grid isn't illegal, but tiny houses are not allowed as a primary residence in many places.
I think I'm going to build an RV someday so this is really helpful for me especially since you're able to game in that place
Great video. those small wood stoves are nice for something 1/4 the size of what you built. One thing you can do is reclaim the lost heat going out the exhaust with a copper water coiled around or in side the vent. but then you need to plum that to the other side of your house and use a small radiator and fan to draw the heat.
Definitely the coolest off grid house I’ve seen
Have you worked out your biggest heat loss? I've seen some comments about scaling your solar generation to your winter usage - I wonder where the heat loss rectification draws level with more cells.
It looks like those metal rafters are a major problem; roof insulation is the most important. I would take up the roof and add a half-inch (R-3) of EPS above, which should cut the loss through the roof in half.
Compared to a normal house with >10cm of insulation and >10cm brick wall his insulation is just shitty.
I’m a 6’ 6” Tall Male who lived in a One Car Garage with a 6’ 8” tall Ceiling for 25 Years.
The only additional space I had was an add-on en-suite Bathroom (Flushing Toilet, Shower and Handbasin) with a 6’ 7” Ceiling.
Ceiling Lights had to be offset next to the Walls so I wouldn’t conflict with them.
I absolutely loved that space and still miss it 8 Years later.
When I was younger and poorer and rented a room in the roof space of a shared house, my old CRT actually did a pretty decent job of keeping the place warm.
Bit of an uninsulated fire death trap at the same time, but the rent was affordable.
Place insulator panels around the base of your home to prevent loss of heat through the floor due to the increased cold air flow.
If you froze that fast, surely the insulation just isn't good enough?
Yeah, that wood stove should be sufficient for that space. The culprit is the direct-conducting metal framing. An interior or exterior insulation layer is non-optional when using metal framing, because a wood 2x4 has an R value of 4.9 while a steel stud has an r value of ~0, meaning it conducts your heat directly to the outside.
@@Smooj canada, north europe rain lot snow winter season and have cold, about minus 30 degree celsius normal, insulation rules have here normal glasswool insulation need normal house 150-200 mm minimum at wall, and roof more,floor 100-200mm eco house what tiny off-grid house need be rule have need closed cell spray foam floor,roof,wall minimum 300mm normal eco house have 500mm foam wall. then have sure warm house. good warm house can make cheap if use 800m-1 meter styrofoam sheet around house. no need big stove keep house warm.
I saw that goofy boat project on your wraparound screen. Hull shape determines velocity through water, and adding more motors makes it like a tugboat.
I heard a lot of great things about EcoFlow I plan to utilize their equipment when I move down to Cali in Dec
"I live in the climate known as "Ohio""
As a life long Ohioan (northern), I _fully_ understand this. It's got its own freaking climate and it's really extreme.
Also, I will confirm that Ohio has _terrible_ numbers for # of cloudless days or total days where solar would work great. Especially in the winter, we get dense cloud layers.
Solar works in cloudy conditions. The problem is undersized systems for those exact conditions.
If your 24V panel only produces 2-4 volts, it will be hard pressed to produce enough to charge a 24V battery which requires 30V+ to get charged. Putting 10 panels in series would actually get you there. And that’s where the problems start. On a sunny day, that setup will fry your mppt charge controller. Unless you use one that’s rated for the solar arrays max output of 400V. This is the reason small systems always suffer in extreme conditions. You need to cover your bases on both ends of the spectrum
Michigan would like a word...
Hey, I live alone out on the prairie in Texas and I came up with a very good way to heat my house, which is 1200 square feet.
I cut a hole in the side of the house, enough to accommodate a box fan from Walmart, which pulls room air in and throws it into a tunnel come which goes outside. That tunnel, made of welded steel, steel panel and insulated with that pink insulation that comes on a roll, encircles circles a burn barrel, outside.
The burn barrel sticks up above the enclosure outside and has a swinging section, which I can swing out of the way to add wood, then swing back and make it align with the chimney, which goes through the awning on the side of my house up to a termination and then to the atmosphere.
Hey, it's just a burn barrel, but if you get a chunk of wood in there burning good, that steel barrel stays at somewhere between 700 and 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
Blowing room air across it, then back into the room can be enough to drive you out, honestly, it's a BUNCH of heat.
Feel free to copy my design, if you want.
The only downfall is, sometimes you have to go out in the middle of the night and your skivvies and toss a log in the barrel, but if you plan it right, you can toss one in late in the evening and it will burn hot until early morning without going out and still provide a modicum of heat to the room.
Good luck.
texas has heat....ohio does not lol
Peter, one of the reasons you might have been getting less power than expected from the solar panels is due to alignment. It is really important that all panels in a string are pointing the same direction. If not all the performance of _all_ the panels in that string will drop to the power output of the lowest producer. Anyway nice build and nice to see other people like me who struggle getting the last 10% of projects done!
If you can integrate water tanks under your flooring, you can keep them from freezing in the winter and use them as a sort of thermal battery for the home. Just some food for thought.
Peter built a California simulator.
As a user of solar panels, I can safely say that the people who say you can just put them anywhere are wrong. It takes a good bit of infrastructure to set it up and the angle of the panels and position of nearby trees are all significant.
Of course you should set them up in a location without shade. And then it’s just about using the optimum angle. There are even smartphone apps for that.
Diesel heater and instantaneous gas hot water are the go-to items with off grid tiny homes and RV's.
A heat pump will give you the most heat if you rely electricity, typically 4-5x the input. A mini split is easy to install if you have the wall space, also doubles as an AC in the summer.
Moved from Florida to Ohio after living there for 16 years. All I can say is, those who fantasize about Florida are completely delusional. The entire state is terrible. Before you decide to move to Florida, visit in August for a week. Most visit in December as an Xmas vacation and get fooled by the “better” winter weather.
wow this is really cool cant wait to see more of this
I'm 100% with you on the getting projects to 90%. It got to the point that whenever I build something for someone else, I factor that in, I even came up with a cute fraise for it, "I'll make it sturdy you make it purdy"
Look into combining your wood stove and water heater, and putting your wood stove in a separate building for safety concerns. Use a saline line to transport heat.
Also, if you spend a lot of time out of the house, if you also store your water with the heater, you can save energy by cutting the heat to your house but leaving the heater on a slow burn.
Years ago Peter, I commented hoping that you never become a sellout. 5 years later, and you're still taking sponsorships from things that you actually find useful. Thank you for being such a cool dude
Peter if you yoused two deisel heaters in the rig they only pull anywhere from 7 watts to 60 depending on what your fuel pump is set at and provide plenty of sufficient heating for a space that size they are quiet smell free and easy install
2:17 One of my other subscriptions changed from a wood stove, to a PROPER wood pellet stove. One with an automatic feed, and proven design. Works great.
You might need to put something around the bottom of the house to keep the wind from sailing under it. I've heard straw bales work good.
Blown Diesel/kero heaters work amazing. I lived on my boat in freezing conditions with one
You need to insulate the bottom of the trailer since heat from the furnace rises and brings cooler air in. The same goes for if you live in a windy area that wind chills the trailer that's why trailer homes have skirts on them and some RVs do to I believe.
for winter heat, if you are in a wooded area, you might consider a generator ran off of wood gas (wood gasification) to provide electricity to power a dometic RV AC/Heat pump.
you can make the gasifier yourself.
I have a Dometic RV ac (they have AC and DC versions). using the heat pump (air conditioner in reverse mode bascially) in winter draws less current than resistive AC heaters. in summertime with enough pannels (about 2k watts solar) you can run the AC directly off sunlight.
Yes even in below freezing temps a heat pump can pull plenty of energy from outside and heat your dwelling.
I agree about the current stoves offered . Same with the gravity fed pellet stoves . I figure you need enough room to fit 3 decent size pieces of fire wood to make any good heat . Pallet stoves just used to many pellets
This is literally so freaking cool man ! U have a great mind 🤟🏾I have a jackery 1000 with the panels and I just got the new ecoflow delta 2 with some panels , and I’ve been trying to figure out a solution to have the panels charge up the jackery and ecoflow all day while I work , and use the powerstations to power my small living space at night 👌🏾
I do like the setup with the Power Kit. Those 5kWh batteries look pretty powerful.
I remember designing a sun tracking system using 2 1inch ldrs in a bridge sensor and a pic16f877 many many years back to keep sun rays perpendicular to my panel. The best part was it worked even if it was cloudy.
Oh now i saw your video you did make a sun tracker ha ha.
There's a really nice camping stove which is also a overn this way even with no power you can keep warm cook and drink via boiler attachment to it.
One big firy backup
3:33 some things to think about, you can easily convert your water heater to propane, and you can also easily turn it off, untill you want to take a shower. It will save a bunch on your batteries. Also, when doing DIY power generation, diversification is key, Peter, look into Wind turbines, as a supplememnt, the wind blows harder in the winter, generally, (also the higher you go.) But if you have a stable setup where you will ive for most of the year, this isn't a problem. Especially if you live outside of city jurisdiction.
It's always recommended to have two alternative power sources: water and wind, wind and solar, etc. When it come to heating I've heard folk have had good success using a rocket mass stove utilizing cobb for the heat bank. Anywho, great lil video chief and thanks for the insight.
One thing you might want to consider is that all the metal frame just lets cold directly in. You might spray insulation foam inside the metal frame, maybe it helps alot? It might be worth investigating. Otherwise, nice project you got there!
Honesty a sick set up man.