Dead Simple

 Hi all,

I recognize it has been all quiet on the western front here at Pater Familias. But it is all a good quiet, a little peculiar, and a great signal grace.

Over the summer, as some of my closer friends were aware of, I was going through an awful state of mind. Something wasn't clicking, mentally speaking--the synapses were all awry, I was agitated and depressed at the same time (not a good combo), and extremely anxious. While visiting my parents I would go for walks in the woods and admire the trees. "This is a good limb to hang myself from," I would think, as if it were a completely normal and rational observation. It can be very difficult to see through a glass darkly.

I contacted my doctor and told her I wanted to try a new medication, as the one (and only) one I had been on for the past fifteen years did not seem effective anymore, or at least I so surmised. I know better than to say the "S" word in the presence of mental health professionals, but I alluded to the fact that I simply was not feeling well and something needed to change. We tried a new medication that I had been meaning and wanting to try, and she was affirming of that choice. I had to titrate up for a month very slowly to avoid some side effects that were mitigated by the slow increase in dosage. 

It has been a few months now, and I am happy to report that I feel like a new person, in an absolute sense. There is a spiritual element to suicidal ideation, obviously, but would would be irresponsible to claim that was the only cause of mental malaise or temptation. This particular medication seems to be very effective with minimal side effects, and I am oh so grateful. In fact, I will find myself driving in the gorgeous Pennsylvania country side with the surrounding countryside swathed in red, orange, and yellow foliage, and giving spontaneous praise and grateful thanksgiving to the God of the Universe who pulls men back from the brink of death and slates their dying thirst with the cup of life. I have written about such "ejaculatory" prayers on this blog, and they are one of many ways in which we can pray; in this case, they are like shooting the darts of Thanksgiving and worship in a spontaneous prayer of the heart, pleasing to God and good for our souls as well. In essence, I feel like I am firing on all four cylinders. This is what "normal" must feel like, but for me it is seeing life with new eyes. A new lease on life.

Part of that slide away from the grind of anhedonia--an inability to experience any kind of pleasure, which I suffered from all winter and summer last year--is that I have more energy and drive, to do the things that make me--gasp--happy. This involves loosening the purse strings a little to modestly fund the various projects I have started (which I will detail below shortly), while also monitoring myself closely for signs of mania or hypomania. Thankfully, this does not seem to be the case, because I know exactly what mania looks and feels like, and this is not it; there is no 1000v speech, recklessness, racing thoughts or confusion. I am not acting erratically, just enthusiastically. I am grateful.

So, because of the glorious weather and some extra energy, I've begun or knocked out the following projects. Many of these have a "prepper" flair, though I am far from a hardcore prepper (and don't own guns either)--I'm more of a 'common sense' prepper, *semi*-self-reliant type.

YouTube has been a gamechanger for me, and many other men, because the sky is the limit with learning new skills and trades. The key is to find balance, and not go too nuts with it all. Remember to sleep (but when you are up at 3am because you have to pee, it's a good time to watch a video or two).

1) a rainwater catchment system with daisy chained 40 x 5 gallon buckets (200 gallons) acquired for free from a manufacturing plant near my work;

2) a DIY off-grid dasher-type washing machine setup (similar to the pricey ones from Lehman's) utilizing the stored rainwater, and a hand wringer that is as effective as a spin cycle;

3) new (my first) gas powered 50cc chainsaw with a 20" bar ($60 total) and portable mill ($60) for milling my own lumber;

4) demolishing my old 12'x20' shed and building a new 12'x16' AUD/shed/tiny home in it's place using said milled studs, cedar (cypress) siding, and corrugated roof panels acquired for free from Craiglist

5) collecting cardboard from our local recycling center to make 2" thick,  8'x16" insulation panels (cardboard has a R-4 insulation value, comparable to fiberglass or XPS rigid foam board) wrapped in movers (saran wrap-type) plastic to make them moisture resistant.

6) milling 400 square feet of white oak into 6'x6"x3/4" boards, planing and using a dado blade on the table saw for tongue and groove hardwood for our family room (ripping up gross carpet). Free (purchased new would be $4,000 or so for the flooring alone, not including labor)

7) learning to recondition dead 12v batteries using a 12v 100A pulse charger (100amps for 15 minutes x 5 rounds with an hour rest in between to bring up to 12.6v). This was because I picked up a 12v flooded lead acid truck battery (100 amp hour) that was dead, and I hope to give it new life for a 12v off-grid solar storage option for the tiny house/shed (lighting, fridge, etc).

8) Scrap the Berkey filters (overpriced, misrepresented claims) and use a Sawyer mini for water filtration (rainwater, pond water, tap water) rigged up as a gravity feed system. Filters 100,000 gallons before needing replacement, cleanable, $15 on Amazon, filters 99.9% of viruses, protozoa, heavy metals, etc. 

9) Discovering a performance fabric wholesaler in North Jersey where I can purchase 1.1oz ripstop nylon for 9 cents a yard (vs $7.99/yd retail) and making my own backpacking hammocks. Cottage industries like Dutchware, Eno, WarBonnet sell theirs for $120+. Mine weigh 10oz (12 oz with suspension) and I am selling (to friends, mostly) for $40. One of my favorite past times now is simply reading a book while hanging in my hammock in the woods by a creek while my son plays.

10) part of getting a new chainsaw and milling my own lumber helps to construct a ground mount solar array to accommodate the (40) 265w solar panels I picked up for free from a lady in Jersey who had them on her roof for a year before taking them off (leak in the roof). Solar panels are good for 25-30 years, so with only 1 year of service, they are good for another 24-29 years. They produce 10kwh of electricity. Per HOUR. (For a point of reference, this is 3x more electricity than we even use on a daily basis. And at our electric rates of approx $.24 (inclusive) per Kwh. This is $14.40 of free electricity per day (assuming 6 hours of sun average per day) essentially for life, basically maintenance free with no moving parts to break down. I had a local 12 year old boy dig the holes for me (to save my aging back) every ten feet and then dropped the 6" diameter pine logs in, with 10' 2x6s as a cross support. Here's a pic of 14 of the 40 panels set up in my backyard

Solar is a funny thing--Conservatives sometimes associate it with liberal eco-weenies and stay away from it, while other conservatives embrace it to get off the grid and government and infrastructure dependence. I don't care about either of those things that much, but I am simply fascinated by how simple the technology is. Each panel has a positive and negative lead and that is literally it. It produces DC electricity (which can be converted to AC with microinverters (which I also acquired for free from this lady in Jersey for grid tie applications, or string inverters for off-grid setups with battery systems). DC electric is pretty basic. For example, I wired eight of the PV (Photovalactic, another word for solar panels) panels in series to make a 240v array @ 8 amps. I have no real desire or plan to tie to the grid at this point, as I don't want to bother with the permitting, electricians, or dealing with PECO.

But one thing I am super excited about (for one) with the potential for these panels is resistance heating. 

Now, normally, if your house came with electric baseboard (resistance) heaters, that is probably the most expensive and least effective way of heating a house. Electric resistance heating (think stove coils, toasters, space heaters, etc) is 100% efficient, which means that all the electric used for the appliance gets converted to heat. But at $.24/Kwh, that adds up in winter when used as your primary source of heat.

With heating oil at $6/gallon, I was on the lookout for alternatives. I did construct two, 4x8' solar air heaters that produce around 1,500 watts each of solar heated hot air pumped into the house via a 50w solar panel and PC fans, which I still plan to use on the south facing side of our home, with the ducts from the panel feeding into the window of the dining room (so, no cutting holes in the siding necessary). 

But that was before I scored the PV panels, which I have arrayed in the backyard and wired into the family room. The solar air heaters are more efficient (and DIY) and serve a great purpose. But the PV also solve the problem of providing radiant heat overnight and into the morning. And they do so with a super low-tech and little known contraption called a sand-battery.

Only really utilized on a commercial scale in the Danish countries, they are not well known in the States. They are essentially a way to store the "extra" electricity produced by renewables in the form of heat. Water probably has the highest thermal mass of all materials, but has some issues--it boils at 200 degrees, so there is risk of explosion, leaks, burns, etc. Hydronic heating (radiant floor heat using PEX, etc) is effective but relies on circulator pumps and glycerol and needs to be the right flow rate and pressure.

There is another material though which has a high thermal mass, though not as high as water (thermal mass is the ability of a material to store heat). It is dirt cheap (no pun intended) and available at $40/ton (or $6 per 50 lb bag at Home Depot). And that is sand. 

The concept of a sand battery is that you produce the electricity from the solar panels, then hook the wires directly from the panel (or panels, wired in series to 240v) to a resistance heater (such as NiChrome wire (toaster wire) or a stove heating element buried in sand. The element heats up (240v @ 8 amps for my particular string of 8 panels) and also heats the sand, which stores the heat and radiates it out slowly like a cast iron radiator. You can put the sand in a metal cooking pot, a crock pot pot, or, like I did because I had them laying around, housed in a stack of bricks (which have a comparable thermal mass to sand).

This is my brick-and-sand "radiator" with the PV panels wired coming through the door in the family room. The stove coil heating element (a single, 2,100 watt one, though they can be connected in parallel to make 4,200 watts, 6,400 watts, etc) is buried in the sand surrounded by the brick, stacked 6 rows high and sitting on a aluminum sheathed piece of wood elevated off the carpet with a heat shield underneath. What's so cool about not bothering with inverters, batteries, charge controllers, or grid-tie is that you can wire the panels directly to the element with just a 30A safety cut off switch at the heater, it is DEAD SIMPLE. The sun comes up, the panel starts pumping out amps, the sand and bricks store it and radiate it out over the course of 24-48 HOURS after the sun goes down. Combined with another, separate stove coil heating element with minimal thermal mass (maybe 5 lbs of sand or less), this coil heats up the room within an hour of the sun rising, while the 400 lb heater stores the heat throughout the day to radiate after the sun goes down. The coolest thing is that because these units are zoned, you can put one in each room. And even cooler than that, I am installing this smaller heater with less thermal mass in the kitchen on the counter next to the stove, so that in addition to the coil heating the room directly, you can COOK on it as well with FREE ELECTRICITY. You can boil water all day while the sun is shining if you want to go the extra mile and use it for tea, showers, doing dishes or laundry, whatever you want! Plus that hot water heats the house as well. Win-Win-WIN!

What is really awesome about these sand heaters is that while the core can reach up to 1,500 degrees F, the surface is less than 120 degrees typically--warm but not a burn risk (unlike a wood stove). The photo below is the inner core of the family room sand heaters after only an hour and a half of sunshine providing the 230v electric to the sand and bricks. That's 429 degrees for those having trouble seeing it.

All in, I've spent less than $50 on 100 foot of 12AWG silicone wire, shut off switch, mc4 connectors, and the heating elements (I do realize I scored $4,000 of used panels for free, but similar ones can be bought for less than $100 a piece on Marketplace or Craiglist). $50 for 30 years worth of heat, electricity, and independence from the grid, with virtually no maintenance, no ongoing costs, and nothing to break. I can also use them to power our AC window units in summer with an inverter at each unit.

Some people may note that with the rise in popularity of heat pumps (mini splits or ducted heat pump systems) which both heat and cool at 200-300% efficiency (vs 100% efficiency of resistance heat). These are definitely an option with PV; however, there is something in my that likes the dead simplicity of resistance heat despite it being half as efficient as a heat pump. I don't have to call a HVAC guy when the condenser freezes over in the middle of the night or it has a freon leak. I don't have to cut a hole in the wall to have it installed (with some systems ranging from $5k-$15k for professional install and multiple heads). With my new system, the sun comes up and it. just. works. There's nothing to do. If anything does go away, you just flip the shutoff switch and its off. 

A lot of the estimation of how much thermal pass to use, what size (wattage) elements to use, how many panels, etc. is mostly just math with a dash of physics, or as Will's friend in Good Will Hunting says, "equations and shit." Think of it like this--if you had one of those oil-filled space heaters on in a room, that is 1,500 watts of heat, which is approximately 5,000 BTUs of heat per hour. For perspective, if I used all my 40 panels for heating, that would be 10,600 Kwhs of electric, which is the equivalent of a 36,000 BTU furnace--more than enough to heat our 2,000 square foot house. And even better, while heat pumps struggle and lose efficiency below, say, 30 degrees F, resistance heaters don't have this issue. The bare elements heat up the rooms immediately while the coils buried in the sand heaters radiate it out over night, evening out the heat (unlike wood stoves) so that you don't have to open windows or strip down to your underwear, provided that you did your math correctly. Plus you can produce hot water and cook your food for free to boot!

I swear I am not an engineering nerd--very much the opposite. At the end of the day, these kinds of things give me pleasure. They are practical and cost efficient, with the ability to help thousands of people who are energy impoverished. Mostly, though, it makes me happy. When I was in middle school, I would lose sleep over global warming, the extinction of the caribou in the Arctic Circle, pollution, etc. My dad would always reassure me that "man always figures out a solution." I didn't quite believe him then, but it is neat to see how human beings can innovate to solve problems (this is what engineers do, for those who are into that!). That's why we need MORE people being born, not less. The future innovators, those pushing the enveleope.

However, I think there is something to be said for simplicity; that is, LOW-tech, not high-tech. Water, food, heating and cooling, housing--all this can be done in accordance with the laws of nature, not acting against it. Look to the developing world for a lot of these low-tech innovations, where people survive on $5 a day and are forced to pursue ingenuity and resourcefulness to survive. 

I catch myself thinking, "if this is so effective, cheap, maintenance free, within reach of all people with everyday materials"...why doesn't everyone do it? Maybe people just don't know, but they CAN. The knowledge is out there (on YouTube, on the internet, at the library), you just need to find it. Which is easier than every in the digital economy. The thing to watch out for is people trying to make money off your ignorance. We're not meant to be "self-sufficient"I--we need each other, community, specializations and bartering, trade, etc. But also, we don't have to be so dependent on the government or "experts" for the basics of life in SHTF situations. 

So, this was an personal post, but also (hopefully) an educational one meant to inspire, educate, and share knowledge. "Freely you have received, freely you are to give." Let me know if you have any questions, and enjoy!