Wind is spilling out of all the trees, making the night noisy. We’re supposed to be on a 7:30 am boat tomorrow, to go to Orcas for vaccinations. It’ll barely even be light at that hour and we’ll be hauling our bags of trash and recycling down the ramp, and shivering.
Category Archives: Life off the grid
wind
Celebration!
The heat of the bonfire was on our faces, all of us gathering just above the beach, and counting down seconds til midnight. The kids were dragging more driftwood up, to throw onto the flames and make showers of sparks, until they were stopped so the fire wouldn’t be so huge it would need someone to stay up all night watching it. Little pads of paper and pens circulated, so people could write something they wanted to burn up in the fire at the turning of the year, and just at midnight someone set off an (illegal) firework down on the beach that shot colored sparks up into the cold dark sky, and we were all so glad to be there together.
Up at the house, the wonderful warm house, every surface laden with potluck abundance to make your head spin: wine, cake, cheeses, pie, fish, lasagne, candy, champagne, fresh-pressed apple juice, home-made breads, soups, nuts, liqueurs… even pomegranate seeds. Twinkling lights and shadowed corners, the house so warm from the woodstove that people migrated out to the porch to cool off and tell jokes and fill glasses (the various bottles mostly outdoors to stay cold).
Kids running out into the night, playing on the tire swing in the bonfire light, going down onto the dark beach where full moon through clouds was the only light. Teenagers gathering in fine dark places, the bonfire or anywhere else private, plenty of shadows to find. Some of us in masks and flowers and finery, most in ordinary sweaters and jeans. Toddler asleep under the Christmas tree that was actually a sculpture of driftwood and moss and lights.
The quality of closeness — how to even explain? Most of us there bound to others by blood or custom or proximity over decades. Children you still remember as preschoolers, now there with their own babies, the web of individual linking threads of history. How many parties even happen now where grade school children, teenagers, people of every generation all the way up to those in their 70’s and 80’s, all throw themselves equally into the celebration?
And the children move through firelight and mystery. There are no separate “children’s activities”, no (god forbid) videos set up to keep them segregated, no amusements arranged beyond the dark, the fire, the beach, the whole true glorious occasion. And we clapped for the retiring post-mistress, who was there with flowers on, all of us marking the passing of time and knowing with one glance at each other whole worlds which we’d seen together and it’s New Year’s now and hurray!
Thermoelectric Generation: The Next Big Thing
for off-grid northerners, at least.
Bob was drafted by one of our local farmers to help her design a greenhouse with heated beds — using no electricity. He spent a whole evening bouncing ideas around with me (not that I have any expertise, mind you — it was sort of an exercise where he could think out loud). We imagined variations on thermo-siphons, where you heat water in pipes that go through a woodstove, and then the pipes would carry the heated water beneath the soil in the beds… But the problem is that this kind of system would require terraced beds, since hot water in a thermo-siphon has to travel upwards — and if you imagine trying to split the system between several beds, some closer to the heat source than others — it quickly takes on too many finicky variables to be practical. And we envisioned stoves (like “rocket stoves”) where the exhaust pipe would go under the beds, heating them with its gases. But again, multiple beds posed some difficulties.
“She needs a little electric water pump,” we kept saying. The elegance of multiple small water pipes was hard to beat, but the water would need to be propelled by a power source.
“But what about the hot stove that she’ll have right there? Isn’t there some way to generate electricity from all that heat?”
We both looked at the little fan we have on top of our own woodstove, a pricey little gadget that seems more toy than tool. It doesn’t move much air, honestly (if you put your hand right in front of it you can’t even feel any breeze) … but there is some technology there which turns heat into electricity. We dove into the computer to research how heat can be turned into electricity — and suddenly our whole vision for our own home electrical system was transformed.
It turns out that you can now buy thermo-electric generator modules which you can attach to the outside of your woodstove, and hook up to a reservoir of cool water. The temperature difference between the hot stove and the cool water generates electricity… at less than the cost of an equivalent solar panel! The cold side of the thermocouple would be supplied by a reservoir of cold water, kept outside and piped in. It will be the way out of our wintertime propane dependence, during these dark days when no amount of solar panels can produce any power to speak of! Our woodstove is hot probably 20 hours a day right now; if we could be generating power during all those hours? It would be amazing.
So, when we come back from Nicaragua in February, my project will be bees and Bob’s will be to set us up with a thermoelectric generating system. If it works as promised, I think almost everyone who lives off-grid in these cloudy northern regions would be as excited as we are. Check out the Tegpower website — it’s truly a revolutionary technology.
Plus a tiny one would power our neighbor’s hot water through pipes for her greenhouse beds.
Oh, and yes… our truck is once again running. I live with an Engine Whisperer… it took him 10 minutes to charm it out of its dark oily little sulk.
Also posted in 2009 blog posts Tagged electricity from heat, generator woodstove, teg, thermo electric, thermoelectric 1 Comment
Not working
ice
“It can’t be out of gas,” Bob told me, as he loaded a full gas container into the bike basket. I had just hiked back up the mountain road to home, after the truck ditched me down below while I was en route to Margaret’s house. Bob offered a couple further words about how I should stay away from mechanical things because I have some kind of force-field that makes them not work, and then he headed out on the bike.
Now I feel like I’m coming down with a virus, and my body isn’t working in top form either. So I’m here on the sofa with my notebook of lists beside me. Even if I can’t do the things right now, it makes me feel better to have them written down.
One of these things will be to make marmalade again, following Delia’s recipe. This time I have Seville oranges, bright round morsels of treasure that Bob brought back from Seattle before Christmas, so I’ll follow the recipe faithfully and won’t branch out into any pectin-sugar chemistry experiments on my own. I’ve gotten as far as poaching the oranges and lemons, and cooling them, but now I have to borrow or buy sugar — I don’t keep enough in the house, it turns out, since marmalade requires heaps and heaps of it.
Walking back up the road from where the truck abandoned me, I noticed the intense stillness in the woods. This is the kind of winter day where the sky is a solid blanket of grey, and it feels like there’s not one molecule moving in any direction. The air is as damp as the ground, everything paused, waiting for something to change. The broken ice in the photo has been in our front yard for days now. It was from rain that froze last week on the canvas folds of the big (yes, also broken) Costco tent that Bob spread out on the grass. The tent had been covering lumber, but got picked up by wind in November and thrown into the woods with all six of its feet in the air.
Bob just came back in the door and told me the truck has no spark, so he’s gathering tools together and biking back down there to try to resuscitate the thing. Typical wintertime; one starts to imagine the cold stillness flowing out from under the trees and quelling all sparks from wherever they still burn: generator, truck, body.
Long day, lengthening lists
This is when we left for our errands yesterday morning.
And the ride over to Orcas was rough once we got out into the middle of the channel. I took this photo before we started really pitching and tossing around.
Riding through the dawn
Bob and I had appointments in late morning for our pre-travel vaccinations, but the boat schedule depends on more than just our needs — thus, the early departure. The wind was still strong, and my neighbor and I just kept on talking in order not to feel uneasy while the boat climbed up and slid down the sides of waves. Bob and Mike (the captain) of course were wholly unruffled. We got pretty wet from spray, but that doesn’t matter. I tried to shield the camera while I took photos.
This gives a better sense of the water
We made it ok, just a bit dampened. But before Bob and I started out on our own scramble of post office, clinic, copy shop, food store, laundromat, he stopped to help one of the other passengers who (in rushing to make a ferry to the mainland) had locked her keys in her running car. It took the assembled helpers fifteen or twenty minutes to break into the car with a coat hanger and open one of the power windows.
breaking and entering, all part of the day's chores
And now it’s the following day, I’m back home, my arms are sore from shots, and I still have a bajillion things to do. Onwards.