Thought For the Day

[MountainDon]

...I hope in the end I never have to retire.  I want to keep on living an active life up to the last day

Absolutely! I do plan on retiring, but not to an old folks home. (pardon my political non-correctness.... retirement community) I just want the freedom to do what I please, when I please, and not having to deal with the day to day business affairs. Just personal business.

"Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet.  I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it." - Groucho Marx

And remember; "Dates in Calendar are Closer Than They Appear!"

A wonderful sunny 70 degree day today. We spent a couple hours hiking the bosque along the river this AM. (bosque = treed and bushy banks of the Rio Grande. Also used to be the area that flooded each spring before the dams were built.)

[MountainDon]

"I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves."
   Ronald Reagan


"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."
   Charles Schultz

[glenn-k]

I asked the lady public servant behind the counter at the county a question about solar power and being off grid a year or so ago.  

She replied that "As long as the grid is available the law says you must hook up to it.  Solar power is too unreliable.  [highlight]If you won't take care of yourself the State of California will do it for you[/highlight]."  I said something to the effect of  "Oh, is that right?'  

and muttered under my breath to my wife that [highlight]"When they hook me to the grid it will be over my cold dead body."[/highlight]

...[size=20][highlight]and guess who had power while they were out of power for a day and a half[/highlight][/size].  

I failed to notice until later when everyone was complaining about it.

If not for her remark I may have considered using the grid for backup some day.  Now it will [highlight][size=48]never [/size][/highlight]happen.

Cool-- it looks like some psycho wrote that.

[MountainDon]

"When they hook me to the grid it will be over my cold dead body."

... or, when they hook me up to the grid it'll be to turn me into a warm dead body...    

[MountainDon]

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it." -  H. L. Mencken


Does killing time damage eternity?   :-/


"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan

[glenn-k]

Common Sense and Caution are factors which cannot be built into any product.  These Safety Factors must be supplied by the operator.

Harbor Freight Tool instruction manual Warning.

[fourx]

..Don't worry about the world ending today- it's already tomorrow in Australia ( Charles Schultz)
And it is tomorrow, moving toward Winter.

Just my sneaky way of saying Hi..

[glenn-k]

G'day, Mate, ow's it goin :-?

Can you tell us what's happening tomorrow?

Welcome to the forum.  We have a couple other friends from down there who keep us advised on the future.

What's on down there in toad poppers run?  Any building projects planned or in the works?

[fourx]

 :)Hi Glenn.
Plenty of things to keep busy with over the two week Easter break down here- a little fencing, some painting, and getting the update for a firewall- 5 hours  on a 26.5 kps dial-up connection- are all on the agenda.
I designed and built my own four panel rural solar-powered home using passive solar principles 20 years back- not because of any particularly green reasons, just economics and a forty grand grid hook-up fee-  and I'm looking foward to swapping ideas here, and maybe spreading a little inspiration.

[MountainDon]

Hi Fourx,
Welcome. We'd all be interested is seeing anything you plan on building as well as anything you've built so far. Re the solar, the hookup  fee can be  quite an incentive at times, right? As well it can be more reliable if done correctly.  

[fourx]

Hi Don, and a Happy Easter to you. Certainly being off the grid involves some minor lifestyle changes unless you are willing to pay almost what the grid hook-up cost is, but most of those changes are positive in terms of health and in the ability to downsize and trade-off more available time rather than more available money.
We can always borrow money..but time can't be borrowed.

[glenn-k]

We have our solar up to where it is almost normal grid type lifestyle most of the time with just an gentle eye on energy conservation.  We are totally off grid also.  Great to have you here to swap stories with.

I assume you are central to north east Australia?  Jonesy is in NSW

[fourx]

I am halfway between Sydney and Brisbane, Glenn, in NSW, about 80 k's inland, in an area with a 52 inch annual rainfall...cloudy days are rare so solar here is very successful- but, as the other posters from down here have  no doubt pointed out at some time, it can be very expensive.
Have you posted pics of your set-up somewhere here? It would be interesting to see them.

[glenn-k]

I have a few random pix here - probably some in the Underground Cabin thread - I'll see if I can find it or put some more.

I'll try to collect it up or update it on the Underground Cabin thread.  Here is the start of it - update will be at the end of it.

http://www.countryplans.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1107141843

[MountainDon]

Fourx, a most Happy Easter to you as well.

My suburban home has been grid tied for a few years now. At the present rates it'll never pay me back in actual dollars and cents saved on the electric bill, but the tax credits help. We do have all CFL or FL tube lights, a high efficiency furnace and A/C, but the A/C is a big user in the hot summer months. But oh so nice to have.   We could do better by turning lights off more tho' I think the power saved would not offset the shortened component life. However, the battery backup storage has been worth it's weight in any number of expensive metals.

The cabin I'm going to start later this spring / early summer will be totally off grid because it's way too far off in the woods and too expensive to hookup.

How's your solar insolation rating where you are? I'm in bright and sunny New Mexico, about a 6.

[fourx]

Great pics here, Glenn, and a heap of stuff to read up on- thanks.

[fourx]

Well, my isolation rating is great, Don- not another house in sight, nearest small village five miles away, which suits me just fine- and the one inch thick wool carpet in the wall works great as insulation
But insolation is a term I have not run across.    :-/

[MountainDon]

That's a fine isolation rating; I like nothing in sight or hearing range.  

Insolation - The solar power density incident on a surface of stated area and orientation, usually expressed as Watts per square meter or Btu per square foot per hour.

I've a number of USA links but can't put a finger on a global one.   :-?

[MountainDon]

Here's one for AU

http://www.rpco.com/products/solar/solar_australianz.htm

[fourx]

Thanks, Don..very interesting. Looks like a 4.5 here. The panels are at about 45 degrees, facing North.

[Sassy]

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.  Patrick Henry

[MountainDon]

Good one! True too!

[fourx]

"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails , they finish by loading honors on your head."
- Jean Cocteau .

[MountainDon]

Being "over the hill" is much better than being under it!

[MountainDon]

Every day, each of Earth's 6 billion inhabitants uses this much wood – about four pounds on average. But the average American uses 3.5 times as much. Should America use less wood? Steel, aluminum and concrete are touted as substitutes whose use will help "save forests." But wood is the only resource on Earth that is renewable, recyclable and biodegradable. What's more, the only energy needed to grow wood fiber is the free, non-polluting energy of the sun. Most of the energy consumed in the manufacture of steel, aluminum and concrete comes from fossil fuel – petroleum. And when fossil fuel burns, it releases carbon dioxide, the compound most often linked to global warming. But growing trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, adding oxygen to the air we breathe. Moreover, about half the dry weight of wood is carbon - meaning that the carbon dioxide trees absorb from the atmosphere becomes part of the wood we use. The formula describing this miraculous exchange is beautiful in its simplicity: to produce one pound of wood, a tree takes in  1.47 pounds of carbon dioxide and returns 1.07 pounds of oxygen to the air we breathe. As our civilization searches for ways to contain its insatiable appetite for Earth's raw materials, these questions beg for answers: Where will we get our daily wood and why are we unnecessarily using products that pollute the air we breathe?    

:-?
from  http://www.evergreenmagazine.com/index2.html