3R Home and Barn Project

[firefighter9208]

While working on the irrigation for the hillside, we also installed a 3/4" copper line hose spigot up on the deck.
This will come in handy for washing that area down plus a lot easier to refill Coco's water tray. We feed and water Coco up on those decks just outside the dining room.
Loretta's garden area also needed a hose spigot sow we trenched and installed one near the rock pile. That way she can hand water or wash stuff off out there. All little improvements but it still takes time to do. Especially trenching with the backhoe through the road and field for that garden spigot.
I'm not sure what we will do about insulating the pipes. The builder told us none was necessary for our climate but we know different. One year we had a bad freeze that busted our water lines.
Rob-

Rob,

How about installing one of these:
Frost Free Yard Hydrants | Water Pumps | Northern Tool + Equipment . I have them all over my place ( 5 to be exact). They are sturdy and you don't have to worry about them freezing. I have bought them at Lowes, Tractor Supply, and Southern States (local cooperative), along with other building supply stores. Pretty much everybody around here uses them. I would go with the 2' or 3' bury depth in the area you live in.

Chris
Hill Farm Boer Goats

 

[woodlandfarms]

We live in a no freeze zone as well and had two pipes rupture this winter (house unattended).

Love the frost free pipes. They are very simple to install, you just remove your stand pipe and nozzle. The units we have are the top nozzle with the stand pipe. When the nozzle turns off the water drains out the bottom of the stand pipe. keeps the upright form containing any water at all.

Carl

 

[studor]

Rob -- I live in a guaranteed freeze zone . I would go with a method to drain the pipes and blow them out with a compressor -- no water -- no damage.I use the frost free hydrants as well (I need 5 foot ones to be safe) but for lawn sprinkling and garden irrigation I just shut it down and drain in the non- growing season.

 

[weedsportpete]

Hi Rob,

I don't know if this applies in your situation / terrain, but my sister and brother-in-law built moveable coops that keep the chickens safe from predators while allowing them to range over a wide area, although someone has to move the coop every few days. They are kind of large structures (see link) for something that is moveable, with (I think) half (or maybe all?)of the floor open to the ground. Moving the coop keeps the area from being over-grazed and gives them a fresh supply of bugs, and keeps the fertilizer manageable. You could move it by hand but using a tractor (loader) would be easier. My sister calls their's a Taj Ma Coop.. its got the skylight, etc. They used to sell these chickens to customers who signed up at the beginning of the season; unfortunately they just shutdown their business. See the picture in the center of the page with two coops.

McClary Hill Farm Product 3

 

[saltman]

Rob, it's been a while since I looked at your projects, you certainly have been busy.
Tell me about your solar are you finding that you generator almost never is needed?
I am getting ready to start my home in S.E. San Diego county and will be off grid as well.
I forgot what you elevation is there but my citrus never made it at 3,300 feet, they are alive after three years but have not grown more than an inch or two. All of the decidous fruit trees like the cold and hot and are doing well. Not sure about avocados where you are but no way would they make it at my place unless I smudged.

Derik

 

[3RRL]

Thanks for the tips on the non freezing lines guys, I'll look into that for sure.
Right now the big non pressurized irrigation lines can be drained by shutting the valve at the water tank. The one in the garden area is buried and the one under the deck is sort of insulated since it's close to the house.
I got some tips from Mike about the chicken coop too. Loretta and I started building a portable (small) one for our 4 chicks. We are down in Rancho right now, so later this week it should be finished. I'll post some photos of it then.
Rob-

 

[3RRL]

Rob, it's been a while since I looked at your projects, you certainly have been busy.
Tell me about your solar are you finding that you generator almost never is needed?
I am getting ready to start my home in S.E. San Diego county and will be off grid as well.
I forgot what you elevation is there but my citrus never made it at 3,300 feet, they are alive after three years but have not grown more than an inch or two. All of the decidous fruit trees like the cold and hot and are doing well. Not sure about avocados where you are but no way would they make it at my place unless I smudged.

Derik

Derik,
Our elevation is only 1500 feet at the homesite where the orchard and garden will be.
The rest of the property is a good 100 to 200 feet below that. Last week we had another cold spell but temps got back into the 70's just before we left. Next week it's supposed to get into the 90'sF.

I'm happy to report we have made many adjustments to cope with off grid living.
Everything runs off our solar ... everything. Our back up generator helps out when there is no Sun, but other than that, it's all off the solar. the generator runs more in the Winter due to shortened days and less sunshine due to rainy days or bad weather.

Our adjustments were to make sure we unplug (via electric strips) all unnecessary equipment.
We turn the computers off except when using them. Same with the TV and radio etc. We even unplug our electric shavers and tooth brushes lol. We also changed every single light to either CFL and many to LED. The saving in energy consumption was astronomical. Typically, we've cut down from about 28 to 30 kW use daily down to between 8 and 13 kW a day. Maybe 18kW when using the electric drier. We expect our use to go up a bit if we use the air conditioning system. But we also have more sunshine then.

It depends how much washing and drying we do.
The rest is pretty typical for us to use about 10kW-16kW a day on average. The adjustments were inconvenience at first, but after 9 months now, it's no big deal. Our biggest power users are the electric drier so we run that when the generator kicks on. I need to run the generator when I run my big lathe which is rarely. The Direct TV uses a lot of energy too, so it's unplugged all the time except when we watch TV. We even have 8 sets of accent light around the home and barn. They are dusk to dawn lights with 2 bulbs in each fixture. We put 1.5w LED's in them so all together they draw 24w total for about 10 hours, or .24kW for the night.

The solar is holding up nicely with very little trouble once we got it tuned in and the batteries balanced out.
That took many charges with the generator to get them into float, but it's all working great right now. The big thing is monitoring the system and watching (make a habit) to use as little electricity as possible.
Peter has helped us a lot with tips along the way and what he's done with his system.
Rob-

 

[PAGUY]

Rob - What do leave on when you are down at Rancho? I'm talking like refrigerator. security lighting, etc..

 

[3RRL]

Rob - What do leave on when you are down at Rancho? I'm talking like refrigerator. security lighting, etc..

At the Rancho home we leave the fridge on, a security light on inside and outside the home and water heater all the time. Oh, and the automatic sprinkler system is on all the time. When we are there we plug in the alarm clock, coffee pot, TV and turn the computer on when we use it.
When we are at 3R, my son is working at the house during the day so he uses electricity for whatever he's doing or working on.

 

[3RRL]

Loretta's chicks were getting too big for the box she kept them in.
So we took a break from the gardening and plumbing to make a chicken coop last week. We took into consideration all the tips to make a comfortable coop with lots of roosting bars. It's screened all around and on the bottom too. It's a 2 story coop and it's also portable. Loretta tows it behind the ATV. We made it very easy to hook up and take off with it.
Rob-