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
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!
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
"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
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
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.
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!
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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
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.
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.
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 .
@@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
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?
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!
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.
I just recently invested in a diesel heater for camping and it produces about 15,000 BTU. I would recommend you research diesel heaters to see if you could use one as they are small and produce a lot of heat, I only got a $200 Amazon one and it works just fine.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Great Video! I am a big fan of efficiency, so I have a few good suggestions: 1. Those solar panels are way too shallow! For you location, in the winter, your solar panels should face directly south, at a really steep angle, perhaps 60 degrees or more! You can find the exact angle and estimated performance using NREL's PV Watts calculator. This would considerably improve your generation, as the sun is very low in the sky, in the winter. Another advantage of a steeper angle is the snow sliding and falling off the panels, further improving performance. This adjustment would be easy enough to do with the ground based panels, but for the roof panels, I might suggest making a rack than can sit flat for transport, and angle up when parked. 2. Your insulation is inadequate. Rockwool and metal framing are good choices, for many reasons, but metal framing has terrible thermal performance. You yourself saw that, looking through the thermal camera. It would be difficult to do at this stage, but If you plan on spending more time in hot, or cold climates, I would recommend taking the siding and roofing off, adding R10 or R20 foam/Rockwool continuous insulation, and re-siding/roofing. This would DRASTICALLY improve thermal comfort and performance. 3. Heat Pump! I would highly recommend installing a mini-split heat pump. Instead of directly turning electricity into heat, you can obtain 150-400% efficiency! depending on temperature. Personally I recommend the Senville Aura minisplit. You can buy them directly from the manufacturer, and install them yourself. You'd just need a vacuum pump, and manifold gauge set. I'd say you could get it done for ~1500$. I've used that particular heat pump at -35 C, and it still works, so Ohio winter should be like easy mode by comparison. So you should be a lot closer to that 400% figure than I am typically. Also in cooling mode, you could expect DOUBLE the efficiency compared to the window AC. It should also be MUCH quieter. Mine is almost whisper quiet in cooling mode. 4. Energy Recovery Ventilation. Fresh air is important, I would recommend looking into getting an ERV. These systems work by using the exhaust ventilation air to warm/cool and humidify/de-humidify the intake air. So you get about 70% of your energy back when ventilating. In the summer, the exhaust air will cool and de-humidify the intake air, and in winter the opposite will occur. For this, I would recommend the Panasonic Whisper comfort Ceiling ERV, it is all self-contained, like a bath fan, and has fairly good performance in most American climates, including Ohio. 5. Backup Diesel heater. Wood heat is charming, but if it is convenience and functionality you are after, I would recommend looking into the Chinese diesel heaters. They are very affordable (~300$), have separate intake and exhaust, so no negative pressure or fumes in your living space, they run automatically, and are reasonably efficient. The diesel heaters are definitely more expensive to operate than a heat pump (in most places), but would make a good source of backup heat if you are going off grid. Also, I've seen guys run them on used motor oil, and diluted diesel with used vegetable oil, so if you can find some of those substances, it could even be free to operate. This concludes my suggestions, I'm really enjoying the project thus far! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
@@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.
EcoFlow = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ x lots for such an installation, but great you got it free. Even the unit you first showed at the beginning of the video, here in the UK costs the equivalent of $5500 USD. Not cheap, and you still have to charge them up from somewhere if the solar power is not enough. It is a hell of a lot cheaper to buy a 5 KVA diesel generator and run the generator off agricultural diesel (in the UK this diesel is called RED diesel), where there is no taxation on this type of fuel, unlike automotive diesel where the tax is HUGE! The EcoFlow Delta and pro are fantastic for portable power, but most certainly no use for living off-grid. Regards, K.
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.
If you make your own wood stove, make it so water can be heated inside through copper pipes , which flow to small radiators( or something that will store heat)
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.
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.
I HIGHLY recommend getting a reversible AC unit. The energy efficiency of heat pumps is off the charts. It could be worth the investment to help you get an extra bit of heat in winter
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!
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
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.
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.
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
"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
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!
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.
Two things to consider for Ohio winter... One; Have you considered a Mini Split Inverter System that can provide cool in the summer and heat in the winter with a SEER rating over 18. It is more efficient than straight electrical resistance heating. Two; Theoretically the solar panels do have an "I" sub s rating for short current rating. Do you think this would melt the snow from your panels in shunt mode?
Good video showing what happens if you think in separate systems instead of holistically. Heat and cool isn't just heaters, stoves and minisplits but includes air sealing and insulation and moisture control. Electricity isn't just the components and wires and connections but with solar it includes, as noted, angle to sun, orientation, and keeping the panels exposed as well as planning solar and battery capacity to account for weather for the desired autonomy. Balance that cost with the cost to operate a secondary power source such as a generator (or an extension cord plugged into a nearby current bush should you have such). More panels are usually cheaper and more durable than fancy mounts and trackers but do take more space. Congratulations on a fun and educational experiment.
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.
ATTENTION. I HAVE THE FIX, if you built a sterling engine, and all you have to do is set it on the stove. Then when there is heat from stove causes motor to run, engine speeds of 11,000 rpm has been recorded on precision builds. Belt drive turning generator will recharge batteries at an impressive rate. Free energy, free power right at your finger tips. Get you threw winter anyway, new set of problems in summer, maybe you can come up with something for summer. But that size stove with belt drive and fan mounted on belts will circulate heat better to. Hope this helps.
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
I just recently bought a rural house in Ontario, about 30 miles to the north of Cleveland, so I get the struggle with great lakes winters. I highly recommend a main heat source with propane, because I just turned mine on and it took about 5 minutes to go from 65 to 70 in my house when it was in the high 50's outside. I have a 500 gallon tank for a 1700 sqft house, so I imagine a 50 gallon tank would last in the tiny house for a good while, and with propane much cheaper than wood by the cord and liquid fuel by the gallon, it's definitely worth it. I also recommend a double walled cistern to stave off freezing, but the inside tank is something I thought might work too. Also, if you can afford it, a tankless water heater is the best option for small places like this it seems, plus, only runs when you want hot water, so energy savings too.
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.
The water heater can be easily replaced with super efficient inline water heaters, there's no reason to have something that runs unless you use it. (also, benefit, your water is instantly hot. No wait times)
Have you considered a diesel heater? Sips on diesel and draws very little wattage once the glow plug is warm. I have 4k one in my RV and built a 2k one in a pelican case and they work great. Dry heat too, unlike propane.
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.
During the winter, you can use reflective metal sheets to reflect more sunlight on the solar panels, even if they don't have a perfect mirror finish, to increase the amount of light which makes it onto the solar panels, thus both increasing the amount of energy produced, and melting the snow off the solar panels. Aside from that, you could mount solar air heaters on the outside of your tiny house, optionally with a mirror wall which folds onto the solar air heater panels for transport, to get more heat for less money. It would make one of the walls black while deployed, but when packed it could be the same color. And I would suggest a bigger stove, ideally one you can also cook on during the winter, ideally one which makes a fire vortex / cyclone to be as fuel efficient as possible. You might need a very long fuel feeding chamber, to use it overnight without waking up, but it would help with fuel efficiency and not needing direct sunlight for a few weeks at a time, if paired with the metal sheets acting as mirrors, to get power for the other appliances. Also, a vortex allows all the gases to be properly burned, by mixing the parts of the smoke with unburnt fuel and the parts of the smoke with unburnt oxygen together, so everything can burn and you don't end up wasting money on fuel. Bonus points if you can fit a deployable solar heating wall on the other side of the tiny house, too, which to separate from the tiny house and deploy nearby for even more solar heating during winter times. And you could use it during summer times to get some passive cooling, too, not only in the winter to get passive heating, if you make it so you can switch from cycling the air inside the house to heating fresh air then moving it onto or into floor of the house and to getting hotter air from the roof/loft of the house and heat it more to get it out of the house.
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.
If you're well insulated try using a Chinese diesel heater. I'm using one to heat my 40ft travel trailer. It is using 1 gallon of diesel every 24hrs on low. Also when I need to charge my ecoflow Delta Pro without solar. I charge it with a Honda eu300is in 2 hrs. I live in a camper in the woods so very little sun. I'm not off grid but prepared if they shutdown. I also have 3, 400watt ecoflow portable solar panels.
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"
I live at 6,500 ft elevation in Northern Arizona. Have lived off grid for 6 years, and solar does work. But you need more panels. I have 2 teenage boys, who play video games all night long. In the winter, a back up generator is a must.
Putting your stove on the floor instead of waist height, use the air in your house...and having something in/around the stovepipe is really good if you dont want to keep it burning all of the time, soapstone is awesome, 50-100kg will keep you sweating if you don't have to much to heat.
As a source of renewable heat, I would like to suggest looking into burning iron powder. It’s also safer for your small space than burning wood or syngas from gasifiers.
If you get a heat pump you can significantly raise your heating efficiency. Technology connections made a video on that... could be worth the trouble with the limited amount of power available.
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.
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!
BTU(Heating and Cooling)\insulation\air ventilation\space. make sure you get this formula right for your location. Math and Location are a great help too. Build to location and weather.👍🏾
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
if you don't have true solar trackers for your solar panels, you want your panels facing south at all times. you also want them angled to whatever latitude you're at, that will give the greatest performance with no tracking at all. if you have that one axis tracker, you still want them generally facing south, but your one axis can give better performance by adjusting the angle through the day.
It is safe to say PC as space heater has 100% efficiency, yes 100 percent, there are electric energy converted to kinetic energy by fan but the moving air will stop eventually due to friction and convert all the energy into heat, and the light too, all the lights from the RGB screen will hit something in the cabin and turn to heat too, well some photons will escape through window but that can be easily stopped by a curtain
they must really like your advertisement capabilities. 10g for the home unit and 3g for the 2 portable banks and panels. I will gladly wrap my car in their info for the same deal. let me know what they think. lol
That must have been a fun experiment and experience in one. You clearly ran into a few problems that are really common for first timers trying off grid and tiny house living. Let me summarize them for those who want to do better when they try this out… 1) wood stove for heating. Just because a wood stove is rated for xyz square feet, doesn’t mean it’s sufficient. Heat retention is what takes it to the level of being a practical device. Holding heat for 6-10 hours is your minimum so you can comfortably sleep thru the night. That mini stove is super cute, but cute doesn’t keep you warm. It’s next to useless as you found out. A larger stove that doubles as water heater and cook stove will be much more useful. Yes it takes up more space. Welcome to the flaws of tiny house living in cold climates. 2) Geez, those solar panels. Not sure what you were thinking. Your late fix to get them off the ground should have happened much earlier. You live in snow country. If that wasn’t enough, you never had a chance in the winter. Totally undersized. That’s the second problem with tiny houses. Solar takes up a ton of space and having 8kw of installed solar no longer looks cute. Yea, that’s reality. Cute doesn’t keep you powered up. Your system was designed for summer weather, not the winter. The design approach needs to be the opposite - prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Sitting in the dark is a good teacher. 3) Normal power user - that would be a great understatement. For a solar/off grid system you need to make an energy audit first. List all your devices with their power consumption and estimated use time and add that up to get a realistic 24h energy need. You compare that to your energy storage and solar production estimates for the worst time of the year. The 750 watt space heater, while an emergency fix, easily shows how quickly we underestimate our needs if not planned out properly. 750wh x 24h = 18kw/h. How big was your battery bank? A cute 5kwh? With a 2500wh solar array? In winter? With snow? It’s easy to see why you went dark and cold. Luckily you didn’t depend on it. Those are all areas that could be fixed. But none would fall into the category of cute, small, cheap or tiny. On the subject of tiny house living… It can be done when two conditions are met 1) none extreme climate 2) services and amenities are available outside of the home. You are able to downsize because society around you provides everything that you have shed. Off grid living by definition calls for setups of self reliance. In a grid down (disaster) scenario, your set up would leave you suffering badly. But it surely is a fun experiment for a couple of seasons. Good luck with that boat project.
Hang some type of divider to make the space smaller when running the wood stove heater. The wood heater would have a smaller area to keep warm. Hope this helps.
Your Windows airco is possibly able to produce heat too. Our house is powered by solar and heated by a decent size airco. Works up to -20 degrees. But our house is hooked up to mains too..
So some suggestions I have is #1 get a wind turbine for winter months to help with electric and #2 you could get a larger wood stove orrrr....... you could look into compost heating? Something I wanted to do for awhile now is attempt to heat a dog house or something up with compost. You run a tube like drain tile in a coil through a pile of compost and hook both ends to your house. One will have a blower fan into the coil and one end will have a fan pulling into your house through the coil. Always wanted to try it but I just haven't got around to it yet.
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!
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.
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.
"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
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.
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!
Yup..... I didn't believe this until I lived in an old rv for 3 years.
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.
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
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.
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.
Peter is a pure sine wave
Nice vids
Why only two replies?
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.
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😂
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Very cool. Great update video Peter!
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.
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! 😀
I love the crazy things you do in your videos, your a dedicated person 👍
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.
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.
I just recently invested in a diesel heater for camping and it produces about 15,000 BTU. I would recommend you research diesel heaters to see if you could use one as they are small and produce a lot of heat, I only got a $200 Amazon one and it works just fine.
SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
You should try and make window covers for the winter to increase the efficiency of the heater 🥶
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.
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
Great Video! I am a big fan of efficiency, so I have a few good suggestions:
1. Those solar panels are way too shallow!
For you location, in the winter, your solar panels should face directly south, at a really steep angle, perhaps 60 degrees or more! You can find the exact angle and estimated performance using NREL's PV Watts calculator. This would considerably improve your generation, as the sun is very low in the sky, in the winter.
Another advantage of a steeper angle is the snow sliding and falling off the panels, further improving performance. This adjustment would be easy enough to do with the ground based panels, but for the roof panels, I might suggest making a rack than can sit flat for transport, and angle up when parked.
2. Your insulation is inadequate.
Rockwool and metal framing are good choices, for many reasons, but metal framing has terrible thermal performance. You yourself saw that, looking through the thermal camera. It would be difficult to do at this stage, but If you plan on spending more time in hot, or cold climates, I would recommend taking the siding and roofing off, adding R10 or R20 foam/Rockwool continuous insulation, and re-siding/roofing.
This would DRASTICALLY improve thermal comfort and performance.
3. Heat Pump!
I would highly recommend installing a mini-split heat pump. Instead of directly turning electricity into heat, you can obtain 150-400% efficiency! depending on temperature.
Personally I recommend the Senville Aura minisplit. You can buy them directly from the manufacturer, and install them yourself. You'd just need a vacuum pump, and manifold gauge set. I'd say you could get it done for ~1500$.
I've used that particular heat pump at -35 C, and it still works, so Ohio winter should be like easy mode by comparison. So you should be a lot closer to that 400% figure than I am typically. Also in cooling mode, you could expect DOUBLE the efficiency compared to the window AC. It should also be MUCH quieter. Mine is almost whisper quiet in cooling mode.
4. Energy Recovery Ventilation.
Fresh air is important, I would recommend looking into getting an ERV. These systems work by using the exhaust ventilation air to warm/cool and humidify/de-humidify the intake air. So you get about 70% of your energy back when ventilating. In the summer, the exhaust air will cool and de-humidify the intake air, and in winter the opposite will occur.
For this, I would recommend the Panasonic Whisper comfort Ceiling ERV, it is all self-contained, like a bath fan, and has fairly good performance in most American climates, including Ohio.
5. Backup Diesel heater.
Wood heat is charming, but if it is convenience and functionality you are after, I would recommend looking into the Chinese diesel heaters. They are very affordable (~300$), have separate intake and exhaust, so no negative pressure or fumes in your living space, they run automatically, and are reasonably efficient.
The diesel heaters are definitely more expensive to operate than a heat pump (in most places), but would make a good source of backup heat if you are going off grid. Also, I've seen guys run them on used motor oil, and diluted diesel with used vegetable oil, so if you can find some of those substances, it could even be free to operate.
This concludes my suggestions, I'm really enjoying the project thus far! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
EcoFlow = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ x lots for such an installation, but great you got it free. Even the unit you first showed at the beginning of the video, here in the UK costs the equivalent of $5500 USD. Not cheap, and you still have to charge them up from somewhere if the solar power is not enough. It is a hell of a lot cheaper to buy a 5 KVA diesel generator and run the generator off agricultural diesel (in the UK this diesel is called RED diesel), where there is no taxation on this type of fuel, unlike automotive diesel where the tax is HUGE!
The EcoFlow Delta and pro are fantastic for portable power, but most certainly no use for living off-grid.
Regards,
K.
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.
If you make your own wood stove, make it so water can be heated inside through copper pipes , which flow to small radiators( or something that will store heat)
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.
Diesel heater and instantaneous gas hot water are the go-to items with off grid tiny homes and RV's.
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.
I HIGHLY recommend getting a reversible AC unit. The energy efficiency of heat pumps is off the charts. It could be worth the investment to help you get an extra bit of heat in winter
Definitely the coolest off grid house I’ve seen
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!
Place insulator panels around the base of your home to prevent loss of heat through the floor due to the increased cold air flow.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
"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...
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!
swag like ohio
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.
Two things to consider for Ohio winter...
One; Have you considered a Mini Split Inverter System that can provide cool in the summer and heat in the winter with a SEER rating over 18. It is more efficient than straight electrical resistance heating.
Two; Theoretically the solar panels do have an "I" sub s rating for short current rating. Do you think this would melt the snow from your panels in shunt mode?
Good video showing what happens if you think in separate systems instead of holistically. Heat and cool isn't just heaters, stoves and minisplits but includes air sealing and insulation and moisture control. Electricity isn't just the components and wires and connections but with solar it includes, as noted, angle to sun, orientation, and keeping the panels exposed as well as planning solar and battery capacity to account for weather for the desired autonomy. Balance that cost with the cost to operate a secondary power source such as a generator (or an extension cord plugged into a nearby current bush should you have such). More panels are usually cheaper and more durable than fancy mounts and trackers but do take more space.
Congratulations on a fun and educational experiment.
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.
ATTENTION. I HAVE THE FIX, if you built a sterling engine, and all you have to do is set it on the stove. Then when there is heat from stove causes motor to run, engine speeds of 11,000 rpm has been recorded on precision builds. Belt drive turning generator will recharge batteries at an impressive rate. Free energy, free power right at your finger tips. Get you threw winter anyway, new set of problems in summer, maybe you can come up with something for summer. But that size stove with belt drive and fan mounted on belts will circulate heat better to. Hope this helps.
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
I just recently bought a rural house in Ontario, about 30 miles to the north of Cleveland, so I get the struggle with great lakes winters. I highly recommend a main heat source with propane, because I just turned mine on and it took about 5 minutes to go from 65 to 70 in my house when it was in the high 50's outside. I have a 500 gallon tank for a 1700 sqft house, so I imagine a 50 gallon tank would last in the tiny house for a good while, and with propane much cheaper than wood by the cord and liquid fuel by the gallon, it's definitely worth it. I also recommend a double walled cistern to stave off freezing, but the inside tank is something I thought might work too. Also, if you can afford it, a tankless water heater is the best option for small places like this it seems, plus, only runs when you want hot water, so energy savings too.
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.
The water heater can be easily replaced with super efficient inline water heaters, there's no reason to have something that runs unless you use it. (also, benefit, your water is instantly hot. No wait times)
Have you considered a diesel heater? Sips on diesel and draws very little wattage once the glow plug is warm. I have 4k one in my RV and built a 2k one in a pelican case and they work great. Dry heat too, unlike propane.
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.
During the winter, you can use reflective metal sheets to reflect more sunlight on the solar panels, even if they don't have a perfect mirror finish, to increase the amount of light which makes it onto the solar panels, thus both increasing the amount of energy produced, and melting the snow off the solar panels. Aside from that, you could mount solar air heaters on the outside of your tiny house, optionally with a mirror wall which folds onto the solar air heater panels for transport, to get more heat for less money. It would make one of the walls black while deployed, but when packed it could be the same color. And I would suggest a bigger stove, ideally one you can also cook on during the winter, ideally one which makes a fire vortex / cyclone to be as fuel efficient as possible.
You might need a very long fuel feeding chamber, to use it overnight without waking up, but it would help with fuel efficiency and not needing direct sunlight for a few weeks at a time, if paired with the metal sheets acting as mirrors, to get power for the other appliances. Also, a vortex allows all the gases to be properly burned, by mixing the parts of the smoke with unburnt fuel and the parts of the smoke with unburnt oxygen together, so everything can burn and you don't end up wasting money on fuel. Bonus points if you can fit a deployable solar heating wall on the other side of the tiny house, too, which to separate from the tiny house and deploy nearby for even more solar heating during winter times.
And you could use it during summer times to get some passive cooling, too, not only in the winter to get passive heating, if you make it so you can switch from cycling the air inside the house to heating fresh air then moving it onto or into floor of the house and to getting hotter air from the roof/loft of the house and heat it more to get it out of the house.
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.
If you're well insulated try using a Chinese diesel heater. I'm using one to heat my 40ft travel trailer. It is using 1 gallon of diesel every 24hrs on low. Also when I need to charge my ecoflow Delta Pro without solar. I charge it with a Honda eu300is in 2 hrs. I live in a camper in the woods so very little sun. I'm not off grid but prepared if they shutdown. I also have 3, 400watt ecoflow portable solar panels.
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"
I live at 6,500 ft elevation in Northern Arizona. Have lived off grid for 6 years, and solar does work. But you need more panels. I have 2 teenage boys, who play video games all night long. In the winter, a back up generator is a must.
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.
Putting your stove on the floor instead of waist height, use the air in your house...and having something in/around the stovepipe is really good if you dont want to keep it burning all of the time, soapstone is awesome, 50-100kg will keep you sweating if you don't have to much to heat.
The ECO Flow looks great buddy - nicely built tiny home
As a source of renewable heat, I would like to suggest looking into burning iron powder. It’s also safer for your small space than burning wood or syngas from gasifiers.
If you get a heat pump you can significantly raise your heating efficiency.
Technology connections made a video on that... could be worth the trouble with the limited amount of power available.
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.
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!
BTU(Heating and Cooling)\insulation\air ventilation\space. make sure you get this formula right for your location. Math and Location are a great help too. Build to location and weather.👍🏾
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.
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
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.
I heard a lot of great things about EcoFlow I plan to utilize their equipment when I move down to Cali in Dec
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.
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.
if you don't have true solar trackers for your solar panels, you want your panels facing south at all times. you also want them angled to whatever latitude you're at, that will give the greatest performance with no tracking at all. if you have that one axis tracker, you still want them generally facing south, but your one axis can give better performance by adjusting the angle through the day.
Electric water kettle to create hot water to be mixed with cold water is most efficient. A little measuring conserves water and electricity.
It is safe to say PC as space heater has 100% efficiency, yes 100 percent, there are electric energy converted to kinetic energy by fan but the moving air will stop eventually due to friction and convert all the energy into heat, and the light too, all the lights from the RGB screen will hit something in the cabin and turn to heat too, well some photons will escape through window but that can be easily stopped by a curtain
they must really like your advertisement capabilities. 10g for the home unit and 3g for the 2 portable banks and panels. I will gladly wrap my car in their info for the same deal. let me know what they think. lol
That must have been a fun experiment and experience in one.
You clearly ran into a few problems that are really common for first timers trying off grid and tiny house living.
Let me summarize them for those who want to do better when they try this out…
1) wood stove for heating. Just because a wood stove is rated for xyz square feet, doesn’t mean it’s sufficient. Heat retention is what takes it to the level of being a practical device. Holding heat for 6-10 hours is your minimum so you can comfortably sleep thru the night. That mini stove is super cute, but cute doesn’t keep you warm. It’s next to useless as you found out. A larger stove that doubles as water heater and cook stove will be much more useful. Yes it takes up more space. Welcome to the flaws of tiny house living in cold climates.
2) Geez, those solar panels. Not sure what you were thinking. Your late fix to get them off the ground should have happened much earlier. You live in snow country. If that wasn’t enough, you never had a chance in the winter. Totally undersized. That’s the second problem with tiny houses. Solar takes up a ton of space and having 8kw of installed solar no longer looks cute. Yea, that’s reality. Cute doesn’t keep you powered up. Your system was designed for summer weather, not the winter. The design approach needs to be the opposite - prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Sitting in the dark is a good teacher.
3) Normal power user - that would be a great understatement. For a solar/off grid system you need to make an energy audit first. List all your devices with their power consumption and estimated use time and add that up to get a realistic 24h energy need. You compare that to your energy storage and solar production estimates for the worst time of the year. The 750 watt space heater, while an emergency fix, easily shows how quickly we underestimate our needs if not planned out properly. 750wh x 24h = 18kw/h. How big was your battery bank? A cute 5kwh? With a 2500wh solar array? In winter? With snow? It’s easy to see why you went dark and cold. Luckily you didn’t depend on it.
Those are all areas that could be fixed. But none would fall into the category of cute, small, cheap or tiny.
On the subject of tiny house living…
It can be done when two conditions are met
1) none extreme climate
2) services and amenities are available outside of the home.
You are able to downsize because society around you provides everything that you have shed. Off grid living by definition calls for setups of self reliance. In a grid down (disaster) scenario, your set up would leave you suffering badly. But it surely is a fun experiment for a couple of seasons.
Good luck with that boat project.
Hang some type of divider to make the space smaller when running the wood stove heater. The wood heater would have a smaller area to keep warm. Hope this helps.
Your Windows airco is possibly able to produce heat too. Our house is powered by solar and heated by a decent size airco. Works up to -20 degrees. But our house is hooked up to mains too..
So some suggestions I have is #1 get a wind turbine for winter months to help with electric and #2 you could get a larger wood stove orrrr....... you could look into compost heating? Something I wanted to do for awhile now is attempt to heat a dog house or something up with compost. You run a tube like drain tile in a coil through a pile of compost and hook both ends to your house. One will have a blower fan into the coil and one end will have a fan pulling into your house through the coil. Always wanted to try it but I just haven't got around to it yet.
What an awesome live you live man, the self sustaining minimalist life I wish I led