Updated:06/22/2010 ENTIRE
SITE IS COPYRIGHT 2010, MC PHOTOGRAPHY
BEST WHEN VIEWED ON A 16:9 SCREEN
Learn about
alternative energy, hybrid systems and watch pointless videos!
If you have any
questions, contact us.
I'm always happy to provide a convoluted answer to a simple question.
At this site, you can learn from my real world experiences
in solar energy production and how I produce power at our cabin in Northern
Michigan. The cabin is located right on the 45th parallel near Gaylord,
Michigan. Check out our photography
site which has some photos around the cabin in the nature and winter
sections.
While this format of the site will stay
here as it is, more of our updates and new articles will be in the new
format. Visit the
new format site here.
Peukerts formula helps you design an
alternative energy system by showing the real world capacity of your
bank!
First of all, welcome to our site! We've been
around for several years and conduct all kinds of half baked DIY projects on our
show, This Old Shack. Be sure to check out all
of our half witted articles and pages. If you have questions, just Email
us and we will do our best to confuse you beyond all belief.
Disaster
planning should be part of every single household across America, strike that,
the world. When disaster strikes, people die or lives are c80%hanged. In times of
plenty, forego the Playstations and buy extra food. You can explain a lack of
toys better than a lack of food to your children.
In
1980 our military switched its entire food ration program over to the full
moisture MRE pouch system. These are the meals we tested on "This Old
Shack". Check
them out here.
I can sit around smoking a cigar because I'm
an energy mogul!
Drawbacks:
Maintenance.
Installation.
Bunch of black glass panels sitting around.
Northern Michigan Solar
Cabin
This old Shack, Special disaster episode
"The Introduction"
This Old Shack is about alternative energy and living off the grid. It
doesn't matter if you live on the grid and use municipal services or off the
grid and fend for yourself. Disasters will happen. They've happened to
me, they've happened to you. This episode of This Old Shack is about surviving a
disaster from what to think about beforehand, how to evacuate, and emergency
foods. The entire episode is 60 minutes long and has been broken into four
parts. The videos are sized for broadband above 500 mbs.
NOTE: If the embedded player keeps buffering the video, choose the
download instead!
We cook most of our food over open flame.
Learn
how here. At cookstreet.com's Culinary
School, they offer a wide variety of culinary courses for everyone from the
aspiring professional chef, to the backyard
grill master.
MREs were originally developed for the Apollo program
and are used in space, by FEMA, the Red Cross and the Defense Department.
There are water activated heaters to heat the food available or you can
use the engine in your vehicle, boiling water or a microwave oven.
Some of the meals available as MREs:
Smoked Salmon Fillet
Beef Patty
Beef Ravioli - Pouch
Beef Pot Roast
Beef Stew
Chili with Beans
Cajun Rice w/Beans & Beef Sausage
Sloppy Joe Filling
Spaghetti with Meat in Sauce
Marinara Sauce with Meatballs
Chicken w/Black Beans & Rice
Chicken Breast, Grilled
Chicken & Dumplings
Chicken with Pasta Shells
Chicken with Salsa
Chicken Tetrazzini
Chicken, Vegetables & Noodles
Chicken Fajita Filling
Pork Rib, Boneless
Ham & Shrimp Jambalaya
Cheese Tortellini
Cheese Omelet w/Vegetables
Pasta & Vegs in Tomato Sauce
Penne Pasta w/Vegetable Sausage
Vegetable Manicotti
Veggie Burger in BBQ Sauce
There are several people on various newsgroups and discussion areas that waylay in uninformed or those just starting out in the off grid world of self power generation. This involves an almost religious belief in a phantom 6v golf cart true deep cycle battery that is superior in every way to any other battery in existence.
A simple examination of the specification sheet for a line of 6v and 12v off grid batteries will tell you quite clearly that there is no one single best solution for all circumstances. It is not accurate to say one is best.
Our system has been using the much maligned Harbor Freight 45 watt solar panel kits for 4 years. Over these years, we've moved them back and forth from the main home in Saline, Michigan to the shack in Gaylord. They've been dropped, exposed to heavy rain, snow, sleet, hail. One even has even had the glass on it shattered from a tree limb dropping on it.
Look, using testing equipment is all well and
good but those spec sheets don't mean squat if you can't run YOUR stuff
for as long as you want to. So what I do (so you don't have to) is get the
equipment (batteries, inverters, solar panels) and put what I run on it.
Usually about 30-50 watts at 12 volts - few amps of draw. You know, turning
lights on and off, running a computer (a laptop) and whatnot.
Throughout the test, a digital meter is run on
the bank and a hydrometer is used once an hour to determine whether the meter is
reading the correct voltage. During the sunlight hours on the panels, there is
another digital meter installed at the primary junction box (where the panels
feed into the 10 gauge cables that feed to the charge controller) that measures
panel voltage and amps.
One of the things that I like the best about
alternative energy is that you can make it as complicated or simple as you like.
Some people, even though they use alternative energy simply don't have a good
grasp on the entire substance that goes into the makeup of an engineered system
that has been built from scratch.
Don't ask me why, but I've recently become interested in
studying earthquake/volcano activity around the world; ash plumes and such. I've
added a page with RSS feeds and links to satellite imagery.
