hey i won the election! i won my life back!

[mobile_bob]

the opposition party finally got off their collective arses and got enough support from outsiders (out of town, out of county and at least one out of state voters) to oust my out of office!

whew, finally got my life back!

so here i am back on the forum, and over the next couple of months i will have a bit more time to start doing more over here.

i may be the only one posting here, but why not
maybe someone will take an interest?

first on my agenda is getting my shop cleaned out, it has been 4.5 years since i did much of anything in there, and it shows
i might have to have an auction to get rid of some stuff so i have room to clean and rearrange.

my goal is to figure a way to build a small if not tiny house, just south of town, we have 10 acres midway up a hillside
and for years that is where i wanted to be, so i am tired of putting off what i want to do, and am deciding to go for it.

i just need the structure, i got every thing else to make it work, from fixtures, plumbing, wiring, etc and all manner of power/heat/cooling production.

i even found the trigen out in the middle of the shop, under about a quarter inch of dust.  and it is calling my name!

more as i go.

bob g

[Henry W]

Bob, You paid your dues for this country. Many good things came to pass in your town and they would of never happened without you being in office. Glad you got your life back. Now you will be able to work on reaching your goals. A tiny house sounds great! It been almost 3 years since I moved in the RV and I don't give it any thought. It's home. My daughter loves coming over to get away. She has an easier time studying since there are much less distractions.

Just a few days ago I went over to the garage and started to clean and organize. There is plenty of room to start working on the genset with the 16 hp Briggs Vanguard and ST-10 head that I started a few years back. But the project that I feel is priority is genset for the RV. Been drawing it out for the last couple weeks. I'll be working on both during the winter. I'm looking forward getting in the garage. It will be great seeing these projects come together.

Henry

[Tom T]

Good to see you won the reelection and now will have the time to just set back and o your ow stuff what ever that might be. Setting her watching it snow temp has dropped to 33 might get own to 25 tonight. An glad  to see Henry post an well. All well on my end Tom T

[mobile_bob]

good to see a couple of the old guys still alive and kickin!

from the looks of things i think it will take me all winter to get the shop cleaned out, things organized
and be able to get back to what interests me.

one thing i notice is the change in battery technology,  the lithium batteries (lifepo4) look really interesting

small, light, able to absorb lots of amps, deliver tons of power, with cycle life that is amazing at least to me.

one thing i did get done this week so far, was to go out and water my string of golf cart batteries and check their
condition.  they have been maintained by a pair of APC ups units, and aside from needing a bit of water they were sitting
pretty.

they are right at 8 years old and have never been cycled more than perhaps 5% off the top, so i was surprised to find that
they were able to deliver power at all.

i am sure that they are down on capacity, how much i am unsure until i can do more testing of course, but for test purposes
they are worth more than the expected scrap value i thought i would find them to be in.

on another topic, i have a friend here who also got ousted from office, he was given a 1973 cortez motorhome, one of those oddities
that had front wheel drive oldsmobile toronado with 8 lug hubs, it was purposed as an emergency response unit, has a 5k onan and a roof mount air conditioner.   apart from being old and ugly, and having had a tree fall on the top leaving a sizeable dent that will need to be jacked up and resealed/tarred it does however run and the price is right!   free

he just wants the generator when i am done with the thing

i am thinking it will make a great get away cabin, suitable for bunking while and storing tools while i build something a bit more ordinary.

its got a huge flat windshield, and a couple of big seats up fronts, i am thinking of parking it so that it faces downhill toward town so that i can sit in the capt chair, have a drink and listen to some tunes without having to deal with the city, i can see it but they wont see me... i think i could get into that.

maybe i will just build a shed roof, lean too ( or is that "two") off the side(s) and make it my version of ?  i won't say for fear of being
politically incorrect.

lots of rock on the hillside, maybe i clad the thing in rock?  lmao
the way i feel about this county right about now, i think it will be my way of protesting.

bob g

[Tom T]

Something tells me you are going to spend a lot of time just setting and   thanking and a drink or two or three just trying to decide what to do next I know I do. Take care and find some fun.

[glort]

Seems like you got the right election result Bob, the one that made you happy.

I have never understood this tiny house thing. from what I have seen of many of them, one may as well just get a caravan and set it up permanently and be done with it.

I also don't get why people like yourself whom I assume are not spring chickens any more and not without means having worked their guts out all their life don't want a bit of luxury.  I say that from the POV that the tiny house thing seems to be based on saving money and living cheaply/ Fugally. Maybe I have it wrong but I want a big house and to enjoy some luxury at my time in life.
Even if the mrs and I die flat broke, out daughter will still be good fora  $2-3M inheritance in property and assets and she is really our main concern. That said, Very proud that at 22 she has been pestering the guts out of us about investment homes she is wanting to buy so she is on the right track for her own independence.

It does not always have to be expensive in a larger/ normal home either. If we significantly down sized, I very much doubt we would save much. We live pretty cheap on utilities now, Might save a bit on land taxes which are irrelevant of house size but then I'd have to live on some tiny block where the house has a sliding back door so you don't knock the palings of the back fence with a swing door which is what we desperately wanted to avoid coming here. And saying in land taxes or anything else would be spent 10X over on mental therapy to survive living on one of these pocket handkerchiefs.

Not trying to be a smart arse but I would like to better understand the idea behind this.  Seems to me you want a small house and a big shed or are you going to give that up for a single car garage as well?  :0)


One thing that does interest me I'll never do is shipping container houses. They really are just a prebuilt shell because nothing else changes internally but maybe 2-3 40 footers might be a good start for you.  Don't know that would be tiny but it sure would be cheap and interesting. There are some very beautiful and creative designs on the net.
Another dream I'm sure I'll never got to is a block of land in the country with running water for a Micro hydro system and a container house on that.


Here, by far the best bang for the buck in power storage is still the old lead acid batteries. Forklift pack seem great value and have a decent scrap value as well.  Small and light wouldn't be an advantage to me if I went to battery power and Lithium isn't cheap here by any measure.  I subscribe more to the small capacity, large generation idea.  Ship loads of panels a good stout generator and a reasonable amount of battery capacity so you don't eat into it too hard at night and that's it.  With the little play setups I have done I have it so whatever load is supplied direct from the panels to the capacity of the inverter in reasonable daylight hours so the batteries are floating again 30 sec after the load is removed.

I also use APC UPS units on my batteries. They seem to do a great job but I'm not aware of many other people using them like this.  I had a beautiful 3 Kw unit.... until cats got in the shed and pissed on it and ruined it.   

[Henry W]

Hi Glort,
The tiny house thing is not for everyone. At times I do miss extra space in a larger home. But for myself, The headaches of owning a large home just got too much. I reached the age that my health is not as good as it used to be and the maintenance alone on a large home got to be more than I could handle. The county taxes where I live over doubled in 20 years and utility cost are starting to rise again. I reached the point in my life that I pretty much had no choice. I had to cut out as much stress as possible in order to maintain my health as it is.

Having a small place has advantages, easy to keep clean and very low utility cost. Disadvantages, it does get a little tight when guests are over. I understand what your conveying. Four years ago I would of never thought of living in such a small place. Gave it lots of thought when I had to make a decision whether to move into a senior living environment or downsize to an RV. I chose the RV life style. At least it's bought and paid, and it's small enough that I can take care of it.

I also had much interest in a shipping container home. About 5 years ago they were pretty much giving them away. Was thinking of three containers. Two side by side and one stacked on top of one.

Have a brother that is thinking to make a micro-hydro. He has a cabin in up State New York, the only problem is the creek freezes pretty good in the winter. It might be worth staying solar with a small diesel or gas backup genset. Another thing he has to consider is it gets down to -20deg-F and lower at times. So he is thinking that gas might be his only option.

[vdubnut62]

Hey Bob!!!
You will never know how glad I am to see that you have your life back! I have missed you on here and I am sure many others have as well.
The woodshed is finally showing signs of progress, I have 3 walls up and the roof on, I still need to finish things up, insulate paint and get the gensets installed, but I am making progress.
I am doing a Tarm boiler with an 1115/15kw set plumbed in to the 500 gallon heat storage tank for cooling and exhaust heat capture and an 8-1 with a 7.5 st head for use in the winter and at night. Without you and the microcogen forum, I would never have gotten even this far. The great Walla Walla Xing Dong is still sitting out in the garage just waiting for a power outage. My Wife even loves the thing! We had an outage a few years ago, we were sitting in the dark, waiting for the power to come back on, and she said "Ok, I'm bored go start the generator. It feels good to be the only house in sight with the lights on.
You and this forum is what got me started on the path to "enlightenment".
Glort, I hear you on the damn cat issue! My wife is a cat person. I think they should be terminated with extreme prejudice. Cats are nasty creatures, with acid for piss.
I just don't get the whole cat for pet thing, why would one keep an animal that urinates and defecates in ones home?

Thanks again, Ron.

[mobile_bob]

having been on the treadmill of life for longer than i want to admit, and also having made a couple of bad decisions relating
to women as life partners, and also having lived in everything from 235sq/ft to 3500sq/ft plus.... and having the benefit of hindsight...
maybe i can explain my interest in small if not tiny living.

also balanced against the over riding desire to separate myself from the grid, something i can't explain other than it is somewhat ingrained in my dna... so i will start my argument for small/tiny living from this perspective.

we all know that it is far easier and cheaper to reduce ones need for power than it is to make power, the story goes something like
"find out how to conserve first, then figure how to make the needed power"  i learned this from the windpower guys, coupled with study of two other genre's, one being the boat guys and the other being NASA, wherein they make do with very little power with careful design and removing all other unnecessary loads.

then there is the life lessons i have learned along the way

yes i worked hard to aspire to the big house, overlooking commencement bay old town tacoma washington. what i found was i had no time to really enjoy the place, hell i was working 6days/week. i also met my neighbors, who for the most part were old folks that lived in houses they worked hard to buy, pay taxes on, raise their kids in, only to find in their old age they never go to the upper levels of the house, (some hadn't been upstairs in 20 years). they however still pay taxes on the total house, have to pay the maintenance, and because they lived so much longer than they expected found that the cost of ownership was about twice or more than they had planned on.   i witnessed many old couples that converted their dining rooms into bedrooms, added a bathroom and lived basically between the kitchen and the newly converted dining/bedroom.  well under 400 sq/ft!

then there came the day that i went though an ugly and expensive divorce, and while going through that process and having to pay for child support (1 left at home), temporary spousal support, and the payment on the house, plus the grand a month for my atty, there was very little left for good old bob to live on, so i was forced into a 235sq/ft walk up that i called the "cave". 

i thought my life was over!  but after about a month i realized that "hey, this is not bad, not bad at all!"  i had 3 light bulbs, my desktop computer i installed a tv card so i could watch tv without having to have a separate tv (saved room i didn't have). my wall mounted nat/gas panel heater hardly ever came on in the winter,  and it just became down right comfortable.  and my then 9yo daughter loved it!

those years are behind me, however lessons were learned along the way

the good lord took pity on me, figuring i am too stupid to be trusted to pick a good women, he put one in front of me and she for whatever reason remains at my side, or is it the other way around?  i don't know but it works.

maybe i am just a bit off?  i drive a beater '83 toyo diesel pickup truck, when i could afford a new full size, i have bought others new cars, yet i find no need or desire for one for myself.  i know i can live in 235sq/ft, we currently live in the upper level of a 1500sq/ft house, so for 8 years we have proven that 750 sq/ft works just fine, and actually if it were set up better we could do with less.

so for me, "tiny" is about 400sq/ft, however i think that 750ft done right would be just fine, provided we have a shop of course.

then there is the economic advantages afforded by living smaller.  the smaller it is the less i give the tax man, the power company, the gas company, etc.  the easier it is to maintain, paint, and clean? 

as i get older and with my spine the way it is, facing surgery to insert screws/rods, bailing wire/bungee cords and whatever they
want to put their, from t3 to L4 will take me out for a year, and it is likely that from then on i will not be wanting to deal with a big house anyway.

i don't know how else to explain my draw to small living, it is because of what has went into me to make me who i am i suppose.

bob g

[vdubnut62]

Bob I understand, the reasons that I keep the house that we are in is that 1. We want room for the Kids. 2. We can't sell it because of the damn sinkhole that opened up literally 2 feet from the front corner of the house. No I'm not kidding. I have a 70 year old house that 2 years ago a F*&%ing sinkhole decided to open up next to it. I am on a ridge for the Love Of God. How does that happen?
  So, making the bet of a bad situation, I'm a gonna die here! Hey, at least I got a heck of a property tax break. It's really a small sinkhole as sinkholes go, a 5 gallon bucket a year will fill it up. So far.
  I look forward to your continuing discourse on CHP. 
As for your political career, Mark Twain said that it does no good to argue with fools (or maybe it was idiots ) they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Ron.

[mobile_bob]

there is an older lady here in town who states bluntly

"bob, you can't fix stupid, but a 2x4 sure helps"



bob g

[glort]

Thank you for the insight. It makes sense even if not from a Point I am concerned with.... yet.

We recently renovated ( still are renovating) the kitchen.  First thing I noticed is how big the ceiling was to paint.  In my old house doing a bedroom or even lounge room ceiling was a 15-20 min job. This one took me a solid 90 min.  Same with vacuuming. Got one of those pricey Dyson things and I have to vac every day because the thing won't get through more than about a 3rd of the place. goes flat and takes hours to recharge. I want to open it up and stick a bigger battery pack on the outside with a fast charger but I am not allowed to " Hot rod" the vac.

Mrs won't have a proper vac, I said use what you want. I'm buying a bastard that never runs out of power and I don't have to empty the bag 3 times even though it was vacced yesterday. You don't like it, YOU do the cleaning when you come home from work but it has to be done every day here.

From this POV I understand. 

also balanced against the over riding desire to separate myself from the grid, something i can't explain other than it is somewhat ingrained in my dna...

Well I get this too. Always lived where the power was annoyingly reliable, like one outage every 10 years when a truck hit a pole... But, I have always had this obsession with having a generator and felt I would be very uneasy without one..... one that legitimately was needed every 10 years for a few hours.  Alway had the independence / self sufficiency bug as well.  Give me a supply of veg oil and I have transport, heat, power and all my energy needs.

we all know that it is far easier and cheaper to reduce ones need for power than it is to make power,

This, perhaps as a consequence of recent modern advances I Disagree with.
I could reduce my power demands here markedly by installing double glazing for our sub freezing winters and out week long well over hundred and plus summers.  With 40 odd windows, most double and triple, It would cost me several tens of thousands.
With my solar that I have about $2500 in so far, I have More than enough power to run the AC flat out all day every day in summer if I want.  I'm still exporting when it's flat chat during the day from about 9 am to 6 Pm.  My power bills are less than what a 1 person home averages here according to the indicators on my power bill. Matter of fact, we come in at a half person house for 3 of us including a young adult daughter.... that still thinks every litre in a hot water tank was there to be used.

It would cost me more to insulate this place properly with windows and better roof insulation that literally what I have enough years left in me to recover and by a significant margin.  Doing the place by my optimistic estimates would be 40K. Play that off against a sub $1000 a year power bill with PLENTY of power to spare. I turned half my solar off last summer and still had too much power and had to shut it down completely for a fortnight.  Just shut it down for 3 weeks last month because we weren't using the air and getting too far ahead.

I think there is also a tipping point. I can only reduce demand so much. Big or small house still going to take the same amount of hot water for showers and power for cooking as well as refrigeration TVs, computers etc for instance. Big house I have the room for panels on the roof for that. Many smaller houses don't and they certainly are limited in worthwhile  directions.  I save more in power than what my over the top solar setup cost me every YEAR and by a good margin.

Not trying to be a smart arse and say you are wrong, until now reducing need has been a given, but rather trying to point out that now with solar, it may not always be cheaper to reduce than invest in some panels and produce and use the power. 
Especially if you want to go off grid where you don't have to worry so much about rules and regs ( not that I give a hoot in suburbia on grid anyway) You may well find that using that heater or AC IS cheaper than building the house so you don't need one.  In any case for me there is GREAT satisfaction in having heaps of power I am making for free.

the story goes something like
"find out how to conserve first, then figure how to make the needed power" 

My variation was find out how much to bring the insulation up to conserve power then figure out the payback time is easily longer than the days you have left and if you do last longer, you certainly won't still be in this place.

$2500 worth of DIY solar setup given me about 3x the power I need over a year with a shortfall I aim to rectify next year over the winter.  In actual fact by a bit of manipulation I recovered my winter power bill above and well beyond in spring without doing anything else.

so i was forced into a 235sq/ft walk up that i called the "cave". 

I can't imagine that. Seriously.
I have a small, and I mean I think it's real small, ( But very nicely appointed) holiday house.  It's bigger than that.  It's fine when I go there on my own but like last weekend when the 3 of us went there, we are tripping over things, literally. Of course being the holiday place I don't have all my hobbies and things I do here in the office let alone anywhere else inside. If I go up to do some work in the area and take all my camera crap , there isn't space enough to accommodate that neatly and practically.

so for me, "tiny" is about 400sq/ft, however i think that 750ft done right would be just fine, provided we have a shop of course.

Now this unsettles me completely.

I had to do the conversion on sq Ft and the answer honestly gave my anxiety a flick.  My Kitchen is bigger than 750 Sq Ft.  I know absolute because we had new tiles laid so had to buy them and have someone put them down and the people that quoted all measured. The thing I think of too is any measurements are total area and include the bathroom and laundry which you don';t live in per se but have to be a Minimum size.  I know they are minimum at the holiday place and while they are OK,. they are part of that over all measurement.
Holiday house is Kitchen/ Dining lounge room, Bedroom, bathroom and Laundry.  Bare minimum and no where to put anything like the personal possessions I have here and that's not talking the wifes decorative crap.

I look at holiday deals on the net and the 2nd thing is room size. Not trying to be a snob but the rooms that work out at 400 Sq ft I don't go any further looking at.  If the room isn't as big as my kitchen, it's too small.

Maybe because I am a fat, tall bulky lump that nothing ever fits across the shoulders let alone around the not too bad gut ( and my leg length isn't due to being fat) I just can't stand small spaces for living in. Holidays are one thing but my castle.....  I need my space.

then there is the economic advantages afforded by living smaller.    the easier it is to maintain, paint, and clean? 

No argument about that. Those things are invariable in proportion.

I envy people that can live like this. must take a degree of organisation, neatness and discipline I don't have,
Then again, if the house was 750 sq Foot and the garage was 2000 Sq Ft, I'd probably be able to squeak by.

[mobile_bob]

Glort

you last point makes a connection for me, and i would bet most guys here
that being maybe 750sq/ft but with a 2000 sq/ft shop!

and i am thinking that 2000 sq/ft for a shop is "tiny" lol!

i am still trying to get my head around the fact that

"he who dies with the most tonnage of iron wins"  is not true! 

bob g

[Henry W]

Bob, your right. With all the stuff you have a 2000 sqft. shop would be tiny for you. By the time you set up the machine shop section, wood working section, welding section, metal fabrication section, painting section, storage and than sections for a few projects in the works you will be tripping over stuff. You need double that. Oh, we forgot the office. If any space needs to be large it needs to be your shop.

Henry

[veggie]

Good to hear from you Bob.
Don't be a stranger here or on the LEF.

Cheers,
Veggie