Up North and Off Grid

Over the course of writing this blog, I've made several upgrades and expansions to the systems in place. Some I mentioned briefly in previous posts, others I have not, or I might have only mentioned that things were in the planning phase. In this post I will show you what has changed in more detail, the reasons why, and the cost. Before that, I think I never shared a good picture of the finished inside with floor in place, painted ceiling and walls, lights, and the masonry fireplace fully installed with chimney, so here goes: This is before any furniture was placed. The combination of the spots and 'spider lamp' ( Serge Mouille inspired) works really well I think. They're all LED of course, and on dimmers, and have different color temperature options depending on the intended atmosphere. All sockets, light switches and dimmers are Schneider Exxact , in anthracite color. These things don't seem to be available outside of the Nordics, hence the link to the Finnish si

  This winter in Finland was (still is at the time of writing this) the coldest in 20 years. Temperatures down to and below -40C (-40F, yeah they’re the same) in some places, and all the way to -33C (-27F) where I am. Even here in Finland, these cold temperatures can be challenging, especially when they are sustained for weeks at a time… How do we keep warm off-grid with this kind of weather? Early winter — we had no idea at this time how cold it would get… Obviously since we’re in the middle of winter, I can’t rely on solar power for heating. That means the heat-pump isn’t even in the picture this time of year. I run the generator once a week to charge the batteries, to augment what little I get from the sun, but for a heat-pump I would have to run it every day. The only viable energy source for heating off-grid in this climate is wood  as I said before  — and I’ve got plenty of that. So let’s look at how much wood I use on these coldest days. I’ll use a few consecutive days of around

Over the years since I started planning this project and discussing it with others (both online and offline) I've had a myriad of questions pop up. I've also had people commenting on what I was doing in both constructive and, let's say, not so constructive ways. In this entry I want to summarize some of the most common questions and comments I've received and my responses to them. I hope that these topics will not only help for you to understand my thought process behind the project better, but that it can also help you understand yours better if you want to do something similar. I don't have a set number of questions, and I might expand and refine the list at some later point in time. 1) How do I start doing what you did? The first question you should ask is: do you really want to do what I did, or is it something else you're looking for. With that I mean, don't just look at something and go "hey, I want that too", instead, think about my project

After my previous entries on water, heating and power, I think it's time to go back to the house and reflect on some of the details involved in the building process. I already discussed the foundation and some of the design decisions, but in this entry I want to go over things like insulation, roof design, and other aspects that are crucial for this project. At the end, I also briefly discuss some updates to the power system. The Roof The roof construction is more involved than one might think. For one, the eaves have to be far enough out from the wall to help protect the wall from water. But there is much more: it needs to hold the insulation, it needs the ability to dry out in case of moisture, it needs to support the snow load, and of course it has to be waterproof. For these reasons, a typical roof construction over here looks, with possibly a few other material choices, like this: Let me go over these details and explain why I made these material choices compared to others.  G

This entry took me longer to write than I hoped. Spring and summer here means there is a lot of work in a short time, and that leads to other things being placed on the back-burner. Writing was one of them... Water: everyone takes it for granted. It is a key resource to have access to when going off-grid. In many ways, it's more important than electricity. I know that there are several methods to become independent of the public water works, but only a few of those make real practical sense in a northern climate. In addition, water doesn't just entail the clear stuff for drinking, washing and cooking: wastewater is equally important to deal with correctly so that it doesn't negatively impact your little piece of heaven in the long run.  Sources of water One of the popular ways to become independent of the public water supply is rain catchment. A lot of popular off-grid YouTubers use this method, think of Life Uncontained , Green Dream Project , and others. The problems with

In a cold climate, effective and efficient heating systems are paramount. Because I'm off-grid, I also want a heating system that is fail safe, that is, at least one of the heating options has to be chosen so that it works even if there is no power at all. I wanted at least a couple of systems that work well together, and provide a level of redundancy. We have a couple of options to work with; I will discuss both the advantages and disadvantages.  Before I get to that though, we need to have some idea of how much heating we're going to need. This will determine the size of the heating system, how long they can work between firing/charging sessions. This is going to involve some math - math is good! Heating losses What determines the size (in terms of power and stored energy) of the heating system is essentially one thing: heating losses. If there would be no losses at all, you'd heat up the place once and you're done. This is of course not realistic. Heating losses are