No meters here
New Hampshire residents build their homes off the grid
By KATE DAVIDSON
Monitor staff
November 18. 2007 12:15AM
Jay Flanders meets all the new meter readers. They always make trips up his long, winding driveway their first time through the neighborhood. And Flanders never tires of chasing them away.
"They walk around the house going, 'Where's the meter?' " he said.
But Flanders's house in Newbury is 700 feet from the nearest utility pole, and it would have cost him $5,000 to pay for the wires and poles to connect his house to the electric power grid when he built it 10 years ago. Instead, Flanders spent $1,000 more on a solar energy system and panels that would provide enough electricity for his 1,500-square-foot saltbox house.
Today, the Flanders live a normal family life in a house where the kids are always on the computer and the morning doesn't start without the slurping and gurgling of the electric coffeemaker. They are among dozens of New Hampshire families that do not rely on municipal utilities, such as sewer, water, electricity or natural gas, and they are changing the stereotypes about living off the grid.
Lydia Hawkes, a nurse at Valley Regional Hospital, has dreamed about living off the grid since the energy crisis of the 1970s. She was 18, and President Jimmy Carter was the first president she voted for. Hawkes said she was inspired by Carter's efforts to promote energy efficiency and independence.
"You kind of have to ask yourself: What do you surround yourself with? Then, you have to ask yourself what you need," Hawkes said. "It's like living with conservation instead of excess."
She started the plans for her off-the-grid home in January and consulted with Flanders about how to design the house and how to build a solar system that could power the home. They chose a spot on her Goshen property and positioned the house facing south so it would receive the maximum amount of sunlight during the day.
Flanders used a solar pathfinder to track the
sun's path and make sure no trees or branches would block the solar panels, which will be built onto the front of the house. Floor-to-ceiling windows will allow natural sunlight into the house, and concrete floors will absorb heat from the sun. A woodstove will keep it warm during the winter, at night and on cloudy days.
Solar panels can also help power water heaters and heating systems, but Hawkes kept it simple. She is spending about $10,000 on her solar system and about $120,000 on the rest of the two-bedroom house.
"This is just kind of on a shoestring," she said.
Hawkes said she spends much of her time outdoors hiking, biking and skiing.
Her 1,300-square-foot house is all she needs, she said. She won't be able to use certain high-powered appliances - an electric clothes dryer would drain most of her energy - but the house will still have modern amenities.
"As far as conventional, I'll have a TV, stereo, microwave, toaster," she said. "It's just that I'm not hooked up to the grid."
The photovoltaic panels on the front of Hawkes's house will absorb sunlight and store the energy in batteries salvaged from golf carts. Flanders said Hawkes could stretch the battery power as many as 10 days during a period of stormy or cloudy weather. The reused batteries - Flanders used the same method in his house - will lower the cost of equipment that comes with a high price tag.
"It's not mainstream yet," Flanders said.
Much of the equipment Flanders used to build his solar system was found used on online classified websites. His solar panels were salvaged from a roof and can generate about 600 watts of power. Instead of buying solar hot-water tanks, he used less expensive tanks from electrical water heaters to store the water. The entire house was built from wood harvested on his property.
The house, called a "saltbox," was designed with plenty of windows on the flat front of the house and a roof that stretches down the entire backside to shield the structure from the colder north side. In the winter, a woodstove supplements the warmth from the sun, and a backup propane generator is on-hand in case of an emergency. The stove and refrigerator is powered by propane, but Flanders said he hopes to invest in more technology to move "off the petroleum junk."
The family's limited energy has forced it to think about energy consumption differently.
Flanders said his three kids always turn the lights off when they leave a room. But in the summer, when the blazing sun generates more electricity than the family can use, he encourages all of them to take longer hot showers. Those are days when the family "is duty-bound to use it up," he said.
"You live on a schedule with the sun," Flanders said.
But relying on the sun isn't the only way to live off the grid.
People also rely on windmills or water turbines - both renewable energy sources - to generate power.
New Hampshire doesn't track the number of off-grid homes in the state. Laura Richardson, who sits on the board of directors for the New Hampshire Sustainable Energy Association, said she knows about 30 people who generate their own power.
Richardson, who also lives off the grid, guesses there are many more.
"The people that live off-grid do it for a number of reasons," Richardson said. "Oftentimes, it's that they want to live in a remote area and they don't want other people to know about them. So they wouldn't make it on my list."
But despite the privacy that some off-the-grid homeowners seek, most of them are living normal lives, Richardson said. She and her husband have a comfortable home with all the modern conveniences they want and energy-efficient appliances.
"We're not wacky hippies, you know?" she said. "Not that there's anything wrong with that. It was just a choice that made sense to us."
Bruce Adami and Bob Cote said people are often surprised at how normal their home looks. Their house has been on the association's Green Buildings Tour for the past three years and has received nearly 100 visitors.
"It's an easy house to live in," Cote said.
They invested $30,000 in their solar system, which includes two arrays of panels that each produce 1,200 watts of electricity. A computer system in the basement controls the flow of the solar power going into the batteries, and inverters change the direct-current power into alternating current, which is required to power most home appliances.
Adami, a musician, and Cote, an environmental engineer, have a regular microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator and splurged on a Viking gas stove. They have a guest bedroom and bathroom, a second-floor master bedroom, a woodworking shop in the basement and a huge, second-floor storage area.
"You wouldn't know that this is an off-the-grid house," Cote said.
"Except when you come up the driveway and see the solar panels," Adami added.
Their 2,800-square-foot Deerfield home cost more than $300,000 to build, and Cote and Adami did much of the work. They hired a design consultant and worked with two local companies, KW Management and BP Solar, to create their solar energy system. Like Flanders, they used only wood harvested on the property to build the house, which is made mostly of white pine.
The south-facing house is built into the side of a hill, which protects it from the elements on the side that doesn't receive as much warmth from the sun. Adami and Cote also take advantage of sunlight with floor-to-ceiling windows and concrete floors that absorb heat.
In the winter months, the sun is lower in the sky and light stretches nearly 20 feet from the windows to the back of their living room and kitchen, keeping the home toasty warm most of the day. But in the summer, when the sun is higher in the sky, the roof's overhang provides just enough shade to keep sunlight from pouring in, ensuring cooler temperatures.
"These are very simple things that people could do with their houses, but they have to know about it before they build it," Cote said.
About every other day in the winter, Adami and Cote light a fire in their massive fireplace, built from stones that radiate heat long after the fire goes out. They go through about two cords of wood a year and pay nothing to heat their home.
The couple said they haven't compromised much since moving off the grid. The only thing they would have done differently was add central air conditioning, which they realize they could have run with all the excess power their solar panels generate in the summertime.
"We haven't figured out how to do an energy-efficient hot tub yet, but we're working on it," Adami said.
There are still only a handful of incentives for families to install renewable energy systems.
The U.S. Department of Energy offers a $2,000 tax credit for people who install products that improve the energy efficiency of their homes. New Hampshire offers incentives to people with renewable-energy systems that are tied into the power grid. They receive credit for excess energy they put into the grid and can use the credit to "buy" energy when they can't generate enough power (for example, if it is cloudy outside).
Rep. Michael Kaelin, a Lyndeborough Democrat, may introduce legislation this year to provide more incentives for New Hampshire homeowners to make energy-efficient home improvements, Richardson said.
The New Hampshire Sustainable Energy Association will continue to raise awareness about the benefits of renewable energy, and Richardson said she hopes the number of people trying it out will increase.
"We're normal people, and we want to show that we can be normal and have a great lifestyle," she said.
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By KATE DAVIDSON
concordmonitor.com |
