. I am sitting in my summer office ( no heat). I moved over too soon, it was -5 this morning outside.  Its is only 12 degrees C in my office. So decked out in my my muskrat hat (I am sure the muskrat died of natural causes) ear  flaps down, four blankets and my very warm office cat. It is really her office but she puts up with my presence because I am warm. Fresh coffee made with generator power, carrot juice and a couple of Bagels stuffed with Havarti and Hungarian Salami. I had to turn up  the on-line music coming from a CBC station because of the sound muffling ear flaps. I start typing to the lyrics of  “what I like About you”

The journey the last month has been interesting. I am off the grid. Using a combo of generator power and an inexpensive Ups/Inverter mod. The mod was an experiment that turned out very well. I made some mistakes, burned out one ups. I accidentally crossed the streams. Be careful if you try this yourself.

I shorted out the terminals once. My first ups went up in smoke. After disconnecting the wires quickly the smoke subsided.

I  had used a 1000 va Ups. I took the batteries out and hooked them directly to a couple of car batteries wired in parallel which gave the 12 volts my ups needed. The ups will recharge the batteries slowly but I used a 6 amp battery charger to help out. I was able to run a few hours without generator. three computers, a 46 inch tv , stereo. The ups reported that i was running 600 watts of power. With the tiny ups batteries I had 10 mins of runtime without the generator. I added two more batteries and my runtime jumped to five hours.

You should note it is not good to drain your batteries to zero. It will reduce the number of discharge cycles your battery will handle. Then they need replacing. These are experimental batteries, later they will be replaced with proper solar batteries with a higher rating both for discharge cycles and capacity.

Next I took an APC 1500 ups and stripped the batteries out. This UPS used 24 volts. The batteries needed a different way of being connected two batteries need to be hooked up in series 12 + 12 = 24 volt. What I didn’t realize is the amp hour capacity is cut in half while the voltage is doubled. What it meant to me is that I needed twice the amount of batteries to get the same runtime.

Then I hooked two other batteries. They needed to hooked in series to each other, then hooked in parallel to the original two batteries so the end result is still 24 volts. So I hooked every thing together and fired up the Ups and computers. I know from measurements that I took before,  my desktop, speakers, INTERNET, two monitors use about 200 watts of power.  This ups will handle 1000 watts of power. My total runtime without generator  has been reduced because of the mathematics involved.

The routine:

My Honda eu2000i generator, I thought it was too expensive when I bought it a few years ago. Now I am lucky to have it.

Now I learn that the little generator will run over ten hours on eco mode on 3.6 liters of fuel. That means  at the current rate of $1.32 per liter  the cost is about $5 a day to run it. It will not run my water pump,dryer or hot water tank. I have a second generator that I use for some of those chores. Still no dryer, or hot water.  The second generator is a noisy gas guzzling monster. I fire it up once a week. I do a load of laundry and I run the dishwasher and water pump. I fill my bathtub up with water and use that water to flush my toilet.  Eventually I will setup a similar system as to what is going to be in my tiny house, a water tank with a 12 volt  water pump that feeds water to the toilet and a tank less heater. It will be setup in my big house while I build my tiny house, then I will move it over.

Solar panels

I need to pickup a couple of solar panels to charge my batteries to make me more self sufficient. I will cover that in a future post.

I have learned how much electricity I wasted everyday. I am not talking about turning your lights off when your done. I am talking about keeping a tank full of water hot in case you are ever going to need it. Having a kitchen full of blenders,coffee grinders, mixers, toasters, food processors, I use two items now my toaster oven and a convection hot plate and do fine. I will fire up my blender tonight so I can make a green smoothie before bed. The rest of the electric crap an go in a garage sale. Funny enough I will use the money to buy solar panels.  The most important things to me are my computers and the Internet.

Imagine what you could do without. Now imagine what you could live without if you had to.

Take care Rod