The sun is truly an eternal presence in our sky, its tides of life-giving heat and light washing across the surface of our small blue planet each and every day. Starlight literally permeates every fiber of our beings, and without the sun’s energy to provide the earth’s surface with sustenance this would be a cold, dead world indeed.

In an age where technological know-how is respected above all else, harnessing and manipulating the powers of nature for man’s benefit has become the organizing principle of our entire society. Given this orientation, it is hardly surprising that modern inventors and entrepreneurs have focused on the sun as a potential source of limitless energy. If only we could find more efficient and cost-effective ways to capture and store the sun’s heat and light, it is said, that energy could finally provide us with a cheap and reliable source of electricity. It could revolutionize our society and economy, while changing our relationship to nature completely and irrevocably.

Whether or not the promise of solar energy turns out to be more hype than reality has yet to be determined. Solar has come a long way in the past few decades, but it still has a long way to go before it will be ready to replace the burning of fossil fuels as our primary method for generating electrical power. But in our rush to “conquer” the sun, it seems as if we have overlooked something very important and very significant. While other sources of energy must be harvested and processed in order to be converted into a useful form, this is really not necessary at all in the case of the sun. There is no disputing that solar photovoltaics are already producing energy and hold at least some promise for expanded use in the future, but that doesn’t change the fact that the sun is already supplying us with plentiful amounts of energy, entirely for free, and we would be foolish not to take full advantage of this wonderful gift from God in its raw, natural, unmediated form.

“Passive solar” is the label that is most frequently used to describe natural sunlight as a form of energy, and it is in the area of building construction – particularly home construction – that passive solar has really taken wing. As its principles have developed, passive solar design for heating and cooling (passive solar for lighting is a separate topic) has come to be associated with four different aspects: glazing, shading, thermal mass, and insulation. Home construction and renovation projects are incorporating passive solar design features related to one or more of these factors left and right these days, and if you are planning on building a new home or refurbishing your old one anytime soon, you really owe it to yourself to take a good hard look at what passive solar might be able to do for you.

Glazing

Before the sun can begin performing its energy-saving magic, first you must give it access to your humble abode by installing windows on the sides of your home that face the sun during the daytime. If you live in North America, the southern side of your house should have the most windows because it will be bathed in sunlight most frequently, but a good glazing scheme should also include windows on the eastern and western sides so that the heat and light provided by the rising and setting sun respectively can also gain access to your home’s interior.

In the past, builders and designers thinking about the sun always went on the assumption that when it came to glass more was better, so when constructing homes in areas with low wintertime temperature patterns the general practice was to try and install as much glazing as possible on the southern facade. But there are two problems with this approach. First, even though the heat and light of the sun are most welcome during the winter months, when glass windows are too large daytime temperatures can become unbearably hot on even the coldest days. Second, while sunlight can enter easily through windows during the day, the heat it generates can just as easily leak out through them during the night, since glass lacks good insulating properties. The effectiveness of glazing as a method for harvesting passive solar energy is maximized when windows in the home cover an area equivalent to 7-12% of the floor area of the space being heated, and if you use more glazing than this, you will actually lose more than you gain in the end.

One method for improving the performance of glazing is to cover either the inside or outside of your windows with clear plastic during the wintertime months. This can improve the insulating qualities of glass without decreasing their ability to absorb sunlight during the day.

Buy Wholesale Solar Panels

Shading

As wonderful as southern glazing can be during the winter months in northern climes, windows unquestionably cause interior heat levels to rise during the summer, which is why homes designed to absorb passive solar energy for the purposes of heating also need to be cleverly designed and landscaped to keep the sun out when the heat of the day is at its most intense. This is where shading comes in, and while the term “solar cooling” may not be technically correct here (how could you use sunlight to make something cooler?) it does capture the essence of the idea.

The trick of course is to come up with methods of shading your home that will protect it from sunlight in the summer but allow the sun’s rays to penetrate the home’s windows again during the winter. Planting deciduous shade trees that lose their leaves over the winter is of course one of the best ways to provide variable shade for the southern facade of a home, and this method will work quite well for windows placed on the lower floor of a home in particular.

One potential problem is that if trees are planted too close to the home, just their bulk alone may be enough to block out the sun in the wintertime, even if they have lost all of their leaves. As a general rule, to avoid this problem you should plant your deciduous trees no closer to your home than two-and-a-half times their mature height on the south side, and no closer than four times that height if your trees are going to be planted on the southeast or southwest corners. If possible, you will also want the trees you select to grow tall enough to shade upper floor windows from the high summertime sun, and if this is not possible you might want to consider restricting your southern glazing to the lower floor of your house.

The other way to effectively shade a home is to put in roof overhangs or extensions. The reason these work so well is because the sun changes its angle or declination in the sky as the months pass by, so overhangs will block the sun during the summer when it is at its zenith but permit its light to penetrate the house’s glazing in winter when the sun is at its nadir.

Thermal Mass

Building materials such as stone, concrete, and brick are said to have high thermal mass because of their ability to absorb significant amounts of heat from the surrounding atmosphere. While materials with low thermal mass such as timber tend to quickly lose any heat they take in, heavier building elements act as heat sinks that will soak up and store heat from a warm environment during the day and then slowly re-emit it at night when interior temperatures go down. Materials with high thermal mass, when used to make the floors, walls, and other fixed furnishings on the interior of homes, have a tendency to promote twenty-four-hour thermal equilibrium by regulating temperature extremes naturally.  This makes them ideal for use inside of homes constructed in climates that experience large variations in daily high and low temperatures, such as you might find in a desert or mountain area for example.

In the past, the concept of thermal mass was not well understood, and while glazing was overdone, the heat-preserving and regulating abilities of concrete, stone, and brick were overlooked and seldom exploited. Things have changed dramatically, however, and those building new homes based on passive solar principles are now using hard and heavy materials on the interiors much more frequently. One new idea that is starting to catch on (they are crazy about it in Australia) is reverse brick veneering, which flips the older style of wall construction on its head by putting the brick on the inside and the timber on the outside, creating walls that combine a good aesthetic impression with excellent thermal mass qualities.

Amazing “Solar Generator” Is Like Having A Secret Power Plant Hidden In Your Home!

Insulation

You can capture and store all of the sun’s energy you want, but if you are trying to use it to keep a home warm on winter nights, all the thermal mass in the world won’t help you if your house is not well insulated. There is really nothing very tricky here –  basically, anything with good thermal mass should be protected on the outside by insulation, otherwise any heat it emits at night will simply disappear through the exterior walls. And of course, any building material used that has poor thermal mass also must be insulated to keep the heat loss problem from becoming even worse. In the well-designed passive solar home, insulation essentially fills the role of the outer shell or skin, keeping all of that wonderful heat and energy that has been captured from the sun trapped on the inside where it can be put to good use.

The Sun’s Eternal Grid

More energy hits the earth’s surface in the form of sunlight each second than is consumed by the entire human population of the planet over the course of a whole year. This never-ending cascade of light and warmth is a sign of the unlimited greatness that defines our Creator, but astonishingly, up until now we have only making good use of a small portion of this amazing natural bounty.

Passive solar design and building practices are helping us change this habit of neglect. This field is growing fast because passive solar principles can save us a lot of money while decreasing our dependence on the man-made grid, which on its best day will never be able to match the unbounded perpetual output of the nearby star that continues to bathe us in its warm breath of life each and every second of every single day.

©2012 Off the Grid News

Thankfully, the dog days of summer are almost over now, as the temperatures in most places are finally starting to moderate into the range of the tolerable. The summer of 2012 has been the hottest we have seen in quite some time, and unless you have been spending the last three months holed up inside your home with the air conditioner blasting away, the chances are that you and your family have been suffering a good bit.

Of course, for those who live off-the-grid, power supplies are always at a premium, and therefore air conditioning is not really an option in most instances. Or at least, it is not a very practical option, since air conditioners are ranked near the top of the all-time energy hog list, and spending precious electrical resources to run such power-hungry machines is hardly consistent with an energy-efficient lifestyle. For this reason, off-the-gridders who live in climates where extreme summertime heat is an issue – and outside of Alaska, Hawaii, and maybe the Pacific Northwest, that is pretty much everywhere in the United States – should be leaving no stone unturned in their search for low-power and no-power ways to keep their homes cool when the mercury begins to rise.

While this year’s heat wave is now water under the bridge (in the form of a river of sweat), we can only imagine how bad things might get next year.  So if you are willing to look ahead, there are a number of changes or modifications you may be able to make to your home and the surrounding homestead that will allow you to beat the heat when it returns with a vengeance in 2013. It wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to start making plans to address that situation now, so that you will be organized and ready to roll with your home renovation project come next spring, before those scorching summertime temperatures have the chance to go soaring into infinity.

Energy-Efficient Alternatives To The Air Conditioner

While the need to save electricity may preclude the use of an air conditioner in most off-the-grid settings, there are a couple of power-drawing technologies that you may still want to consider using to help keep your home more comfortable in the summertime heat.

Fans of course are the alternative to air conditioners that everyone knows about. How many fans you would like to have going in your house at any one time is up to you, but for the sake of efficiency, you should certainly consider having ceiling fans installed in each and every room where people normally congregate. This low-power, aesthetically pleasing, virtually noiseless type of fan is extremely efficient in its operation and can reduce temperatures in the average room by up to four degrees when kept on for an extended period of time. Ceiling fans can be purchased that turn in either direction, so it is important to make sure you have fans that rotate in a counterclockwise direction in summer, which will create soothing indoor drafts by pulling warm air upwards.

The most powerful and effective type of ceiling fan is what is known as a whole-house fan. These centrally located machines are actually mounted in the ceiling instead of on it, and they work by drawing hot air upwards and funneling it through into the attic, where it can then be vented into the atmosphere. More sophisticated whole-house fan systems are available that can remove hot air from many rooms simultaneously before venting it through multiple interconnected openings, but the cost of a set-up like this can easily run into the thousands – which could be worth it, depending on how determined you are to keep things cool inside your humble abode.

Evaporative coolers are another possibility for those who are willing to cash in some of their electricity chips to keep their homes livable in summer. The appearance of an evaporative cooler is not all that different from an air conditioner, but rather than relying on the circulation of expensive chemical gases to remove excessive warmth from a room, these coolers instead take advantage of the process by which dry air loses heat whenever it interacts with water and causes it to evaporate. Because it operates by exploiting an entirely natural activity, an evaporative cooler only uses about 25 percent as much electricity as the average air conditioner, which can make it a good option for off-the-gridders living in arid areas where high humidity levels don’t interfere with the evaporative process.

There Is No Such Thing As Too Much Venting

The thing to remember about the ability of moving air to cool warm humans is that as long as air temperatures are below the 98.6-degree threshold at which our bodies normally function, we can always make our homes feel cooler by encouraging good air movement. The best way – really, the only way – to do this without investing precious power resources is to fill our homes with as many holes or openings as possible, arranged in ways that work with prevailing wind patterns and the laws of physics to facilitate the maximum amount of interior air flow.

The most common type of opening in our homes are of course windows, and it is generally true that the more windows we have, the easier it will be to promote effective air passage. But windows aren’t the only choice available for those concerned with interior cooling; vents that allow air to enter on one side of the house and exit on the other are another possibility, and vents have an advantage over windows in that you don’t have to worry about covering them with shades to keep the sunlight from coming in during the hottest part of the day.

Use The Sun To Help Create Your Own Secret Power Plant…

In order to maximize the cooling effects of both windows and vents, there are basically three things that must be done. First, once you know what the prevailing wind patterns in your area are, you will want to make sure that the openings in the walls of your home are set up to work with these patterns and not against them. In other words, if the winds in your area mostly blow from the south to the north, it will not do to have all of your windows installed in the east and west walls, or to have the largest windows on the east and west and smaller windows on the north and south. So when designing a new home or remodeling one that already exists, if good cooling is what you seek then window location is something that you must plan out with intelligence and foresight.

The second thing you must do is make sure that your openings of exit are elevated above your openings of entrance. This is because hot air naturally rises, which means if you let warm summer breezes in at a height of eight feet on the south side but try to sent them back out through vents or windows at a height of four feet on the north side, the air in your home will stagnate instead of flowing freely. Remember, you want to bring the outside air in, but you don’t want it to stick around once it enters your home, so it is important that your arrangement of vents and windows include openings that are higher on the side of exit than on the side of entrance.

The third thing you will need to do to keep air flowing steadily is to put vents, cutouts, or even windows in any walls on the inside of your home that could possibly obstruct the free movement of the air. Few homes are constructed with the principles of smooth and steady airflow in mind, so the idea of adding interior openings is nothing that should be sneezed at.

Roofs Need Venting Too

As previously mentioned, whole-house fans can move air out of a home efficiently by sending it straight up through openings in the attic. But there are several other venting options available for the roofs of homes, and given the irresistible urge that all hot air has to rise, these possibilities should not be overlooked.

Some of the best roof-venting options available include:

• Chimneys – with fireplace or without, chimneys can provide excellent vertical airflow and venting. If you paint the part of the chimney that extends above the roof black, or install a plane of glass at the top facing the southern sun, this will cause air near the top of a chimney to heat and thereby create an even stronger updraft effect than would exist under normal circumstances.
• Operable skylights – they can be shuttered when the sun is shining directly down on them and opened during the hours of the day when it is not.
• Turbine ventilators – these neat devices look like spinning tops sitting on top of the roof as they efficiently suck the warm air up from below.
• Atriums – these will add beauty, a feeling of serenity, and high-quality air movement to any home or indoor space.
• Cupolas – these are dome- or square-shaped rooms that extend upward from the roof of a home. They can be large enough to actually accommodate guests or small enough to provide venting and little else. Cupolas are an attractive architectural innovation that has sadly fallen out of favor, but like atriums, they can improve your house aesthetically at the same time they are improving the interior circulation of air.

Additions to your home like these will obviously require some work and financial investment. But they could very well be worth the expense and effort for those who are truly serious about reducing their indoor suffering index in the months when the outdoor heat index rises into the stratosphere.

Keeping Things Cool On The Outside

Setting up good natural air flow is all well and good, but of course the cooler the air is when it enters your home the more effective it will be at keeping your family cool as it passes through. Shade trees that can provide shelter from the southern sun will help reduce the temperature of the air before it enters your home, and large overhangs or awnings that can keep windows in shadows will do the same. Generally speaking, the more shade you have on your homestead, the cooler things will be, so this is something you should always keep in mind when you are picking a building location or making plans for your surrounding landscape.

Another excellent way to reduce air temperature is to install a pond or fountain near your home, preferably on the side of the house facing into the wind. As we have already seen in our discussion of evaporative coolers, dry air loses heat as it evaporates water, so any time moving air sweeps across a watery surface, it will be cooled quite efficiently and effectively. In a humid climate, this would not work very well since the air is already saturated with moisture, but in an arid climate putting in a pond or a fountain can be an excellent way to help reduce the temperatures of a breeze before it actually enters a home.

One last trick is to landscape your exterior so that the trees and shrubs and outbuildings will naturally channel and concentrate the prevailing winds toward the house. And if the objects used to create this effect are tall enough to provide some shadow as well, then so much the better.

©2012 Off the Grid News

There are a lot of unique and interesting ways for inventive and imaginative folks to heat and cool their off-the-grid homes. One method that is beginning to make a bigger splash is the heat pump, which works by transporting heat from one location to another, most commonly from outside to inside. When in operation, these electrical devices can remove latent heat from either the air or the ground during the colder months and distribute it through a system of ducts to the rooms of an adjacent home, keeping inside spaces toasty and warm when the temperatures head south. But most heat pumps are also reversible, meaning that in summer time they can be used to suck the unwanted warm air right out of a home before releasing it into the atmosphere outside. Heat pumps are much more energy-efficient than furnaces or air conditioners because they do not consume power by directly heating or cooling the air; instead, they simply capture the heat that is already there and move it to a location where it will be able to do some good.

The two most common types of these devices are air-source and ground-source, or geothermal, heat pumps. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but in this article we will be focusing strictly on air-source heat pumps.

Air-Source Heat Pumps 101: The Cliff’s Notes Version

We tend to think of cold air as being utterly bereft of warmth. But as long as air temperatures remains above absolute zero, there is in fact heat present, and heat pumps are constructed to harvest this hidden warmth and redistribute it to the interiors of homes or other indoor spaces.

Air-source heat pumps are generally divided into two sections, one of which will be located on the exterior of a house and the other just inside an interior wall. These electrically powered heat exchangers usually consist of the following parts:

• An exterior fan
• A network of refrigeration coils with an inner and outer grill
• A compressor
• An interior fan
• A reversing valve

Heat pumps work on the very same principles as refrigerators. The exterior fan pulls in air from outside, and as it passes across a grill of refrigeration coils, the air will transfer any heat it contains to the cold liquid refrigerant inside. This refrigerant is then pressurized and heated further by the compressor, and as it circulates through its network of coils, moving through the wall into the inside of the home, it releases all of its excess heat through an interior grill, just as a refrigerator does on its back side. But while a fridge only produces waste heat that is vented aimlessly into a wall, the refrigeration grill connected to a heat pump funnels the heat it produces into a powerful blower, which sends hot air out through a ductwork system that distributes it throughout the rest of the house. Meanwhile, after releasing its heat, the gaseous coolant in the coils returns to its previous liquid state before cycling back outside to the exterior refrigeration grill, where the whole process will start all over again.

And there you have it. The air-source heat pump is the prototypical example of the magic than can occur when simplicity is mixed with just the right amount of ingenuity. Now of course it is true, we are talking here about a system that needs an electrical input to function, and we all know how precious energy resources can be in an off-the-grid setting. But the beauty of the air-source heat pump is that for every unit of electricity it consumes, it will produce two to three times as many units of heat, which makes it one of the most efficient technologies for heating available in the marketplace. We should of course put the word “produce” in quotation marks in this case, because a heat pump only “produces” heat in the same way that a modern milking machine (or a farmer with cold hands who prefers doing things the old-fashioned way) “produces” the milk that comes out of the cow.

But in the case of the milk and the cow, the flow is only in one direction, and this is where the heat pump has the milking machine and the farmer beat by a country mile. For as we have already mentioned, a heat pump can be used to either warm or cool interior spaces; it is simply a matter of using the reversing valve to switch the direction of the fans so that the hot air from inside the home can be vented out. But whichever way the air-source heat pump is used, its high level of efficiency is preserved, and one of the huge advantages of a heat pump is that it only requires one significant investment to replicate the entire performance of a conventional HVAC system, which requires both the furnace and the air conditioner to function twelve months of the year.

The Limitations Of An Evolving Technology

There is one bit of bad news about standard air-source heat pumps, and that is that they start to lose efficiency once temperatures begin to approach freezing. This means the electricity they consume will give you a lot less bang for the buck when things get seriously frigid in the heart of the winter, and if temperatures where you live regularly fall below 32 degrees, the air-source heat pump will not be able to heat your home during the coldest months in a cost-effective manner. This does not necessarily mean a standard heat pump system would be a waste of money for you, however; it just means that you will need some sort of back-up source of heating to complement your heat pump should you choose to install one. Some heat pumps provide their own back-up heating source in the form of electric resistance coils, but these are electricity consumers of course, and they will not operate anywhere near as efficiently as the pump itself.

Because of its normal two- or three-to-one efficiency ratio, a conventional air-source heat pump could still pay off for you in a colder climate if you were using it frequently from March to November. Nevertheless, the cold weather limitations of the standard unit are something you will want to take into consideration before you invest the $1,000 to $4,000 that an air-source set-up will cost you.

Let’s remember, however, that we live in an age where energy efficiency and “going green” are all the rage. When you have a promising technology like that associated with the heat pump, which works with nature instead of battling against it, we would expect there to be a lot of well-funded research and development going on, and that is indeed the case. As a result, over the past few years there have been some tremendous strides made in the area of improved heat pump efficiency, and there are now some alternatives available to the conventional air-source unit that can partially or completely overcome cold weather limitations.

Harness the power of the sun for your energy needs…

Reverse Cycle Chillers

Right now, the most affordable and practical of these alternatives is the reverse cycle chiller (RCC). The RCC works by the same principles as the normal air-source heat pump, but while a regular model releases its heat directly into the home, an RCC transfers the heat it collects instead to a large, highly insulated water tank. The water heated in the tank is used to heat the surrounding air, which is then distributed throughout the home by a blower and a network of ducts and vents. Or, alternatively, the hot water can be circulated through the tubing of a radiant floor heating system, which is generally more economical than any kind of forced-air technology.

At first consideration, you might think that a more complicated system such as this that adds an extra step to the process would be less efficient. But the collected and transferred heat will ultimately end up doing exactly the same amount of work, and the physics of it all allows the reverse cycle chiller to operate at peak efficiency no matter how low the temperatures outside sink. With a properly sized RCC, you will not have to worry about providing a supplementary heat source to maintain efficient operations – if you want or need more heat than your unit can produce, then yes, you will need one, but back-up heat source or no, the reverse cycle chiller will still continue to produce excellent results in the most extreme northern climates on even the coldest January mornings.

The downside to the reverse cycle chiller is exactly what you might expect. It is indeed more pricey than a conventional air-source heat pump (about 25 percent more expensive at minimum), but the RCC will cover the cost of this additional expense in about two or three years time, simply because it is able to function so smoothly and consistently in all weather conditions.

Options, Considerations, And Cautions

Air-source heat pumps are rated according to two different standards: seasonal energy efficiency rating (SEER) and heating seasonal performance factor (HSPF). The former measures a unit’s overall cooling efficiency (how much energy it uses for each unit of cooling it produces, in other words), while the latter not only reflects a heat pump’s ability to provide warmth but also factors in supplemental heating needs.

For home use, units with SEER ratings of 14 to 18 (or around 12 for a reverse cycle chiller) and HSPF ratings in the 8 to 10 range are recommended. Even though the Energy Star system can be a bit inconsistent, in this instance the specifications an air-source heat pump must meet to receive this government-sponsored badge of honor are perfectly consistent with these standards. So if you just look for the Energy Star label when you go shopping for a heat pump, you should come out all right.

Since the compressor is the part of the air-source heat pump that consumes the most electricity, this is where you might want to invest a little bit more to get something of the high-end variety. Two good energy-efficiency enhancing possibilities here are dual-mode compressors and scroll compressors. The dual-mode type will adjust its speed and power up or down based on actual heating or cooling needs, so you won’t have to keep shutting the pump on or off if indoor temperatures become unpleasant. Scroll compressors are state-of-the-art devices that reduce noise, save energy, and last much longer than a traditional compressor, which makes them worth the extra cost and then some.

One negative aspect of air-source heat pumps is that when you have to make the change from cooling to heating mode during the fall or early winter, it will take some time for the interior grill to defrost, and as a result you can get a pretty sustained blast of cold air coming into the house when the unit is turned on. Heat pumps are generally sold with backup burners that can counteract this problem, but if you select a unit that does not include this feature, you had better be prepared to deal with this chilly inconvenience.

Maintenance of a heat pump is a relatively simple affair. Filters should be changed approximately every month, and it is necessary to frequently inspect every part of the system to ensure that nothing is plugging or clogging the fans, coils, or compressor. Some of the more vexing problems experienced by air-source heat pump owners include low airflow, refrigerant leaks, incorrect refrigerant charge, leaky ducts, motor or compressor malfunctions, and unexplained noises or rattling. In order to prevent such problems from occurring, a professional should be called in to inspect a heat pump set-up at least every two years, and while it might be possible for DIY enthusiasts to handle some repairs or troubleshooting, you will definitely need to bring in a pro if anything goes wrong with your coil system. The chemicals used in refrigeration are almost always toxic, and for that reason they are not something you should be fooling around with all on your own.

With proper care and proactive maintenance, a good air-source heat pump system could last from fifteen to twenty years, if not a little bit longer. Even though they do represent a fairly significant investment, a heat pump system can unquestionably pay for itself over time, and that will happen fairly quickly if the owner of a particular air-source heat pump owner should happen to live in a locale that experiences relatively moderate temperatures during the wintertime.

The Future Of Air-Source Heat Pumps?

There is one other air-source heat pump deserving of mention, and that is the absorption heat pump. Instead of compressing a conventional refrigerant, this type of heat pump facilitates the absorption of ammonia into water, after which a low-power pump can be used in lieu of a compressor to squeeze the water-ammonia solution up to a greater pressure level, concentrating the heat that will ultimately be released and distributed by a duct-and-blower system. When the ammonia-water solution is circulated back to the outer section of the coil system, the ammonia boils out of the water again, leaving it free to soak up more heat from the air before being re-absorbed by the water in a never-ending cycle. Just as with standard air-source heat pumps, absorption units are reversible and can be used to either heat or cool indoor areas.

What makes this type of air-source heat pump unique is that because its power requirements are so low, it can work with an alternative source of power rather than electricity – most frequently natural gas, but geothermal, solar, and propane are also used with absorption heat pumps. The fly in the ointment here is that absorption units up until now have been installed almost exclusively in factories, plants, office buildings, and other large structures where economies of scale make the technology cost-effective. But as always, research and development is proceeding at a vigorous clip, and units appropriate for larger homes have now hit the market. Estimates are that in five to ten years, the technology may become affordable enough to be a legitimate option for general off-the-grid usage.

©2012 Off the Grid News

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series. Next installment: Long-term power outages. 

Electrical power outages are becoming more and more common. With the condition of our aging electrical grid, this really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to us.

We’ve become a society that is addicted to electrical power. We depend on it for so much of what we do, that losing power, even for a short period of time, can carry disastrous and expensive consequences.

When we talk about a short-term power outage, we’re really talking about something that lasts only a few hours — a day at most. That’s a short enough period of time that we can manage to survive it fairly well, even if it does require us doing some things a bit differently.

Of course, being prepared for a power outage makes it much easier to survive. Like any other problem in life, preparation is a large part of overcoming it. For each of the essential things we use electrical power for, we need some sort of alternative, so that when the power goes out, we’re all ready for it. So, what are those critical electrical usages?

• Refrigeration
• Cooking
• Heating and Cooling
• Lighting
• Communications
• Work (computers more than anything else)

There are also a whole lot of non-critical uses we have for electricity — especially those that are associated with entertainment. While it’s nice to be entertained, that really isn’t all that important. We can get by for a day without our Nintendo systems and tablets. We just have to find other ways of keeping ourselves occupied.

1. The First Thing You Should Do

In any power outage, the first thing you should do is to unplug all electrical equipment, especially anything that might have a computer chip in it. This includes entertainment centers, stereos, computers, copying machines and their accessories. Many times, when the power comes back on, there is a surge of power, which can damage this equipment. Of course, if your equipment is connected through a good surge protector, this won’t be necessary.

Harness the power of the sun when the power goes out…

Many people have a generator on hand to provide electrical power in the case of a power outage. While there’s nothing wrong with that idea, generators use a lot of gasoline – and they’re noisy and emit fumes. One good option is solar power, either as backup power or primary power. That way, you can continue life even when lightning strikes.

2. Monitor refrigeration

Refrigeration is probably the most critical item for most people. Fortunately, refrigerators are well-insulated, allowing them to keep the food inside cold for a minimum of four hours, without any electricity. A freezer will keep food frozen for up to 48 hours if it is full. However, if the freezer is only half full, it will only keep the food cold for about 24 hours. So, it’s better to keep your freezer full, so that it can keep your food cold if the power goes out.

If you don’t normally keep enough food on hand to fill your freezer, you can easily fill the remaining space with containers of ice. Not only will that help to keep the food frozen, but some of the ice can be moved to the refrigerator in the case of a power outage, in order to keep the food in the refrigerator from spoiling.

Don’t assume that just because you lose power for a day, that all of the food in your refrigerator is spoiled. We are accustomed to keeping foods refrigerated here in the United States, even if they don’t need it. Many foods which are marked “refrigerate after opening” will keep fine without it.

One of the most surprising of these is mayonnaise. We’ve probably all heard that anything with mayonnaise in it will spoil very quickly without refrigeration. Yet in Mexico, the very same mayonnaise that we refrigerate is commonly stored in a kitchen cabinet or out on the counter top. I’m not talking about for a few minutes or hours, I’m talking about for weeks, without spoiling.

So, when the power comes back on, don’t just throw things out. Check each and every container individually, to see if it has spoiled or not. If there is no mold and no smell of decay, then it is probably OK to use. Frozen food that has thawed out can always be cooked, and then if it’s not going to be consumed right away, it can be re-frozen.

3. Be creative in cooking

Most of us depend upon electricity for cooking, at least to some extent. In the event of a power outage, you’re better off having a gas range in your kitchen than an electric one. The gas one will continue to work, as long as there is gas in the pipes. An electric one, like a microwave, won’t do you much good at all.

The easiest alternative for cooking without electricity is to use a barbecue grill. Most families have one for cooking hamburgers and steaks. You can just as easily use it for cooking a pot of spaghetti or beans. Just put the pot on the grill and cook away. While you might have to get used to some difference in cooking times and temperatures, that barbecue grill will do just as good a job of cooking your food as your kitchen range will.

4. Don’t panic: heating and cooling

Our heating and cooling systems all require electricity to function; that is, unless you heat your home with a wood burning stove. Even gas furnaces require electricity to operate, as the controls and blower motor are powered by electricity.

Depending upon the outside temperature and the R-factor of the insulation in your home, it will take a number of hours for your home to cool down or heat up during a power outage. For a short-term outage, you may be able to get by without having to worry about heating and cooling. Unless it is extremely cold outside, your home should stay warm enough for survival without using any alternative form of heat.

That’s not to say that your home will necessarily stay warm. You will gradually see the temperature drop inside your home, until it matches the outside temperature. To combat this, add layers of clothing. There are many places in the world where people don’t have any heating in their homes. They keep warm in the winter by wearing layers of clothing, wearing coats in their homes and piling more blankets on their beds.

5. Go retro with lighting

Lighting is one of those areas that you will need a little bit of preparation for. Flashlights will provide light for you, but only for as long as the batteries last. Besides, it’s hard to work with a flashlight in your hands. You’re better off using candles and oil lamps, saving the batteries in your flashlight until you really need to use a flashlight.

Most of us have candles in our homes, even if they are just decorative ones. The best types of candles to have for an emergency are large diameter ones. Tapers and other thin candles are very inefficient, because they tend to drip more wax than they burn.

In olden times, they made candles that provided more light by adding additional wicks. If you make your own candles, try making them with three to six wicks in them. Each one will provide the light of one candle; so a six wicked candle will provide you with six candlepower of light. Keep the wicks at least a half inch apart, so that they don’t disturb one another. If you make those candles in old jars, you can be sure that all of the wax will be used and none will drip off to be wasted.

Oil lamps provide even more light than candles, mostly because they use a larger wick, so more oil can burn at one time than what burns in a candle. They will also burn just about any type of oil. While the mineral oil that is intended for use in an oil lamp is the best to use, as it doesn’t smell bad, you can also burn cooking oil if you need to.

6. Don’t abandon communication

There are two types of communications you’ll need to be concerned about: talking to people and getting news. Your cell phone should provide you with communications, even during a power outage. Typically, the cell phone towers have emergency power so that they will continue working even in the midst of a power outage.

An Amazing Breakthrough In Compact Portable Backup Power!

It would be a good idea to have a disposable cell phone on hand, from another carrier. That way, if your main cell phone loses service, there’s still a chance that you’ll have communications via that alternate carrier. You should also have a hand-crank or battery powered charger for your regular cell phone, so that you can recharge it, even if the power is out.

A battery powered AM/FM radio will give you the capability of receiving the news and finding out what is going on. Keep a list of the local radio stations, especially talk radio, as they will give you the most accurate and up-to-date reports. Make sure you have an adequate supply of batteries for the radio.

7. Have battery backups – especially for work

The ability to work is the one thing that suffers the most when electrical power is lost. So many jobs today require the use of computers and other electronic equipment. If you work outside the home, there is a good chance you will be sent home if it looks like the outage is going to last for more than a few hours.

With a laptop computer, it is possible to continue doing many types of work. However, that is limited by the life of the computer’s battery. Some laptop computers can only be used for about an hour on the power that the battery holds. The next time you shop for a laptop, be sure to keep that in mind. Some companies, like this one, also sell backup batteries that can recharge everything from a cell phone to a laptop during a blackout. They are very convenient if the power goes out.

You can operate your computer off of your car’s battery, if you have the right sort of adapter. Adapters are available for just about any voltage and connector style, so this is more an issue of planning ahead and making sure that you have the right sort of adapter. You can also make an extension so that you can connect your laptop to your car battery for power and use the computer in a more convenient location.

Sign up for Off The Grid News’ weekly email and stay informed about the issues important to you

For years scientists and government officials have told us the earth is warming, and the mainstream media has fallen in line, castigating and even laughing at anyone who suggests otherwise.

But there’s a growing body of thought that the general wisdom is not only wrong, but embarrassingly so – and that the earth is getting colder.

In fact, one prominent scientist says Earth is on the front edge of a 30-year cold trend that could have a major impact on our food supply and survival, making summers cooler and winters almost unbearable.

His name is John L. Casey, and he’s the guest on this week’s edition of Off The Grid Radio. His new book, “Dark Winter: How The Sun Is Causing A 30-Year Cold Spell,” flips everything you’ve heard about global warming on its head.

A former NASA consultant and White House advisor, Casey tells us:

• How 30 years of colder weather could devastate America’s crops.
• Why weather patterns from 200 years ago can help predict weather for the coming decades.
• Whether he believes we’re on the verge of a small ice age.
• How the 1645 freezing of the London Thames River could give us hints of what is to come.
• Why severe earthquakes and volcanoes could follow the cold trend.

Casey also tells us how we can prepare. Don’t miss this amazing episode of Off The Grid Radio that will make you question everything you’ve been told about one of the most controversial topics of the day.

The sun is truly an eternal presence in our sky, its tides of life-giving heat and light washing across the surface of our small blue planet each and every day. Starlight literally permeates every fiber of our beings, and without the sun’s energy to provide the earth’s surface with sustenance this would be a cold, dead world indeed.

In an age where technological know-how is respected above all else, harnessing and manipulating the powers of nature for man’s benefit has become the organizing principle of our entire society. Given this orientation, it is hardly surprising that modern inventors and entrepreneurs have focused on the sun as a potential source of limitless energy. If only we could find more efficient and cost-effective ways to capture and store the sun’s heat and light, it is said, that energy could finally provide us with a cheap and reliable source of electricity. It could revolutionize our society and economy, while changing our relationship to nature completely and irrevocably.

Whether or not the promise of solar energy turns out to be more hype than reality has yet to be determined. Solar has come a long way in the past few decades, but it still has a long way to go before it will be ready to replace the burning of fossil fuels as our primary method for generating electrical power. But in our rush to “conquer” the sun, it seems as if we have overlooked something very important and very significant. While other sources of energy must be harvested and processed in order to be converted into a useful form, this is really not necessary at all in the case of the sun. There is no disputing that solar photovoltaics are already producing energy and hold at least some promise for expanded use in the future, but that doesn’t change the fact that the sun is already supplying us with plentiful amounts of energy, entirely for free, and we would be foolish not to take full advantage of this wonderful gift from God in its raw, natural, unmediated form.

“Passive solar” is the label that is most frequently used to describe natural sunlight as a form of energy, and it is in the area of building construction – particularly home construction – that passive solar has really taken wing. As its principles have developed, passive solar design for heating and cooling (passive solar for lighting is a separate topic) has come to be associated with four different aspects: glazing, shading, thermal mass, and insulation. Home construction and renovation projects are incorporating passive solar design features related to one or more of these factors left and right these days, and if you are planning on building a new home or refurbishing your old one anytime soon, you really owe it to yourself to take a good hard look at what passive solar might be able to do for you.

Glazing

Before the sun can begin performing its energy-saving magic, first you must give it access to your humble abode by installing windows on the sides of your home that face the sun during the daytime. If you live in North America, the southern side of your house should have the most windows because it will be bathed in sunlight most frequently, but a good glazing scheme should also include windows on the eastern and western sides so that the heat and light provided by the rising and setting sun respectively can also gain access to your home’s interior.

In the past, builders and designers thinking about the sun always went on the assumption that when it came to glass more was better, so when constructing homes in areas with low wintertime temperature patterns the general practice was to try and install as much glazing as possible on the southern facade. But there are two problems with this approach. First, even though the heat and light of the sun are most welcome during the winter months, when glass windows are too large daytime temperatures can become unbearably hot on even the coldest days. Second, while sunlight can enter easily through windows during the day, the heat it generates can just as easily leak out through them during the night, since glass lacks good insulating properties. The effectiveness of glazing as a method for harvesting passive solar energy is maximized when windows in the home cover an area equivalent to 7-12% of the floor area of the space being heated, and if you use more glazing than this, you will actually lose more than you gain in the end.

One method for improving the performance of glazing is to cover either the inside or outside of your windows with clear plastic during the wintertime months. This can improve the insulating qualities of glass without decreasing their ability to absorb sunlight during the day.

Buy Wholesale Solar Panels

Shading

As wonderful as southern glazing can be during the winter months in northern climes, windows unquestionably cause interior heat levels to rise during the summer, which is why homes designed to absorb passive solar energy for the purposes of heating also need to be cleverly designed and landscaped to keep the sun out when the heat of the day is at its most intense. This is where shading comes in, and while the term “solar cooling” may not be technically correct here (how could you use sunlight to make something cooler?) it does capture the essence of the idea.

The trick of course is to come up with methods of shading your home that will protect it from sunlight in the summer but allow the sun’s rays to penetrate the home’s windows again during the winter. Planting deciduous shade trees that lose their leaves over the winter is of course one of the best ways to provide variable shade for the southern facade of a home, and this method will work quite well for windows placed on the lower floor of a home in particular.

One potential problem is that if trees are planted too close to the home, just their bulk alone may be enough to block out the sun in the wintertime, even if they have lost all of their leaves. As a general rule, to avoid this problem you should plant your deciduous trees no closer to your home than two-and-a-half times their mature height on the south side, and no closer than four times that height if your trees are going to be planted on the southeast or southwest corners. If possible, you will also want the trees you select to grow tall enough to shade upper floor windows from the high summertime sun, and if this is not possible you might want to consider restricting your southern glazing to the lower floor of your house.

The other way to effectively shade a home is to put in roof overhangs or extensions. The reason these work so well is because the sun changes its angle or declination in the sky as the months pass by, so overhangs will block the sun during the summer when it is at its zenith but permit its light to penetrate the house’s glazing in winter when the sun is at its nadir.

Thermal Mass

Building materials such as stone, concrete, and brick are said to have high thermal mass because of their ability to absorb significant amounts of heat from the surrounding atmosphere. While materials with low thermal mass such as timber tend to quickly lose any heat they take in, heavier building elements act as heat sinks that will soak up and store heat from a warm environment during the day and then slowly re-emit it at night when interior temperatures go down. Materials with high thermal mass, when used to make the floors, walls, and other fixed furnishings on the interior of homes, have a tendency to promote twenty-four-hour thermal equilibrium by regulating temperature extremes naturally.  This makes them ideal for use inside of homes constructed in climates that experience large variations in daily high and low temperatures, such as you might find in a desert or mountain area for example.

In the past, the concept of thermal mass was not well understood, and while glazing was overdone, the heat-preserving and regulating abilities of concrete, stone, and brick were overlooked and seldom exploited. Things have changed dramatically, however, and those building new homes based on passive solar principles are now using hard and heavy materials on the interiors much more frequently. One new idea that is starting to catch on (they are crazy about it in Australia) is reverse brick veneering, which flips the older style of wall construction on its head by putting the brick on the inside and the timber on the outside, creating walls that combine a good aesthetic impression with excellent thermal mass qualities.

Amazing “Solar Generator” Is Like Having A Secret Power Plant Hidden In Your Home!

Insulation

You can capture and store all of the sun’s energy you want, but if you are trying to use it to keep a home warm on winter nights, all the thermal mass in the world won’t help you if your house is not well insulated. There is really nothing very tricky here –  basically, anything with good thermal mass should be protected on the outside by insulation, otherwise any heat it emits at night will simply disappear through the exterior walls. And of course, any building material used that has poor thermal mass also must be insulated to keep the heat loss problem from becoming even worse. In the well-designed passive solar home, insulation essentially fills the role of the outer shell or skin, keeping all of that wonderful heat and energy that has been captured from the sun trapped on the inside where it can be put to good use.

The Sun’s Eternal Grid

More energy hits the earth’s surface in the form of sunlight each second than is consumed by the entire human population of the planet over the course of a whole year. This never-ending cascade of light and warmth is a sign of the unlimited greatness that defines our Creator, but astonishingly, up until now we have only making good use of a small portion of this amazing natural bounty.

Passive solar design and building practices are helping us change this habit of neglect. This field is growing fast because passive solar principles can save us a lot of money while decreasing our dependence on the man-made grid, which on its best day will never be able to match the unbounded perpetual output of the nearby star that continues to bathe us in its warm breath of life each and every second of every single day.

©2012 Off the Grid News

The post On the Sun’s Grid: The Principles of Passive Solar Heating and Cooling appeared first on Off The Grid News.

Thankfully, the dog days of summer are almost over now, as the temperatures in most places are finally starting to moderate into the range of the tolerable. The summer of 2012 has been the hottest we have seen in quite some time, and unless you have been spending the last three months holed up inside your home with the air conditioner blasting away, the chances are that you and your family have been suffering a good bit.

Of course, for those who live off-the-grid, power supplies are always at a premium, and therefore air conditioning is not really an option in most instances. Or at least, it is not a very practical option, since air conditioners are ranked near the top of the all-time energy hog list, and spending precious electrical resources to run such power-hungry machines is hardly consistent with an energy-efficient lifestyle. For this reason, off-the-gridders who live in climates where extreme summertime heat is an issue – and outside of Alaska, Hawaii, and maybe the Pacific Northwest, that is pretty much everywhere in the United States – should be leaving no stone unturned in their search for low-power and no-power ways to keep their homes cool when the mercury begins to rise.

While this year’s heat wave is now water under the bridge (in the form of a river of sweat), we can only imagine how bad things might get next year.  So if you are willing to look ahead, there are a number of changes or modifications you may be able to make to your home and the surrounding homestead that will allow you to beat the heat when it returns with a vengeance in 2013. It wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to start making plans to address that situation now, so that you will be organized and ready to roll with your home renovation project come next spring, before those scorching summertime temperatures have the chance to go soaring into infinity.

Energy-Efficient Alternatives To The Air Conditioner

While the need to save electricity may preclude the use of an air conditioner in most off-the-grid settings, there are a couple of power-drawing technologies that you may still want to consider using to help keep your home more comfortable in the summertime heat.

Fans of course are the alternative to air conditioners that everyone knows about. How many fans you would like to have going in your house at any one time is up to you, but for the sake of efficiency, you should certainly consider having ceiling fans installed in each and every room where people normally congregate. This low-power, aesthetically pleasing, virtually noiseless type of fan is extremely efficient in its operation and can reduce temperatures in the average room by up to four degrees when kept on for an extended period of time. Ceiling fans can be purchased that turn in either direction, so it is important to make sure you have fans that rotate in a counterclockwise direction in summer, which will create soothing indoor drafts by pulling warm air upwards.

The most powerful and effective type of ceiling fan is what is known as a whole-house fan. These centrally located machines are actually mounted in the ceiling instead of on it, and they work by drawing hot air upwards and funneling it through into the attic, where it can then be vented into the atmosphere. More sophisticated whole-house fan systems are available that can remove hot air from many rooms simultaneously before venting it through multiple interconnected openings, but the cost of a set-up like this can easily run into the thousands – which could be worth it, depending on how determined you are to keep things cool inside your humble abode.

Evaporative coolers are another possibility for those who are willing to cash in some of their electricity chips to keep their homes livable in summer. The appearance of an evaporative cooler is not all that different from an air conditioner, but rather than relying on the circulation of expensive chemical gases to remove excessive warmth from a room, these coolers instead take advantage of the process by which dry air loses heat whenever it interacts with water and causes it to evaporate. Because it operates by exploiting an entirely natural activity, an evaporative cooler only uses about 25 percent as much electricity as the average air conditioner, which can make it a good option for off-the-gridders living in arid areas where high humidity levels don’t interfere with the evaporative process.

There Is No Such Thing As Too Much Venting

The thing to remember about the ability of moving air to cool warm humans is that as long as air temperatures are below the 98.6-degree threshold at which our bodies normally function, we can always make our homes feel cooler by encouraging good air movement. The best way – really, the only way – to do this without investing precious power resources is to fill our homes with as many holes or openings as possible, arranged in ways that work with prevailing wind patterns and the laws of physics to facilitate the maximum amount of interior air flow.

The most common type of opening in our homes are of course windows, and it is generally true that the more windows we have, the easier it will be to promote effective air passage. But windows aren’t the only choice available for those concerned with interior cooling; vents that allow air to enter on one side of the house and exit on the other are another possibility, and vents have an advantage over windows in that you don’t have to worry about covering them with shades to keep the sunlight from coming in during the hottest part of the day.

Use The Sun To Help Create Your Own Secret Power Plant…

In order to maximize the cooling effects of both windows and vents, there are basically three things that must be done. First, once you know what the prevailing wind patterns in your area are, you will want to make sure that the openings in the walls of your home are set up to work with these patterns and not against them. In other words, if the winds in your area mostly blow from the south to the north, it will not do to have all of your windows installed in the east and west walls, or to have the largest windows on the east and west and smaller windows on the north and south. So when designing a new home or remodeling one that already exists, if good cooling is what you seek then window location is something that you must plan out with intelligence and foresight.

The second thing you must do is make sure that your openings of exit are elevated above your openings of entrance. This is because hot air naturally rises, which means if you let warm summer breezes in at a height of eight feet on the south side but try to sent them back out through vents or windows at a height of four feet on the north side, the air in your home will stagnate instead of flowing freely. Remember, you want to bring the outside air in, but you don’t want it to stick around once it enters your home, so it is important that your arrangement of vents and windows include openings that are higher on the side of exit than on the side of entrance.

The third thing you will need to do to keep air flowing steadily is to put vents, cutouts, or even windows in any walls on the inside of your home that could possibly obstruct the free movement of the air. Few homes are constructed with the principles of smooth and steady airflow in mind, so the idea of adding interior openings is nothing that should be sneezed at.

Roofs Need Venting Too

As previously mentioned, whole-house fans can move air out of a home efficiently by sending it straight up through openings in the attic. But there are several other venting options available for the roofs of homes, and given the irresistible urge that all hot air has to rise, these possibilities should not be overlooked.

Some of the best roof-venting options available include:

• Chimneys – with fireplace or without, chimneys can provide excellent vertical airflow and venting. If you paint the part of the chimney that extends above the roof black, or install a plane of glass at the top facing the southern sun, this will cause air near the top of a chimney to heat and thereby create an even stronger updraft effect than would exist under normal circumstances.
• Operable skylights – they can be shuttered when the sun is shining directly down on them and opened during the hours of the day when it is not.
• Turbine ventilators – these neat devices look like spinning tops sitting on top of the roof as they efficiently suck the warm air up from below.
• Atriums – these will add beauty, a feeling of serenity, and high-quality air movement to any home or indoor space.
• Cupolas – these are dome- or square-shaped rooms that extend upward from the roof of a home. They can be large enough to actually accommodate guests or small enough to provide venting and little else. Cupolas are an attractive architectural innovation that has sadly fallen out of favor, but like atriums, they can improve your house aesthetically at the same time they are improving the interior circulation of air.

Additions to your home like these will obviously require some work and financial investment. But they could very well be worth the expense and effort for those who are truly serious about reducing their indoor suffering index in the months when the outdoor heat index rises into the stratosphere.

Keeping Things Cool On The Outside

Setting up good natural air flow is all well and good, but of course the cooler the air is when it enters your home the more effective it will be at keeping your family cool as it passes through. Shade trees that can provide shelter from the southern sun will help reduce the temperature of the air before it enters your home, and large overhangs or awnings that can keep windows in shadows will do the same. Generally speaking, the more shade you have on your homestead, the cooler things will be, so this is something you should always keep in mind when you are picking a building location or making plans for your surrounding landscape.

Another excellent way to reduce air temperature is to install a pond or fountain near your home, preferably on the side of the house facing into the wind. As we have already seen in our discussion of evaporative coolers, dry air loses heat as it evaporates water, so any time moving air sweeps across a watery surface, it will be cooled quite efficiently and effectively. In a humid climate, this would not work very well since the air is already saturated with moisture, but in an arid climate putting in a pond or a fountain can be an excellent way to help reduce the temperatures of a breeze before it actually enters a home.

One last trick is to landscape your exterior so that the trees and shrubs and outbuildings will naturally channel and concentrate the prevailing winds toward the house. And if the objects used to create this effect are tall enough to provide some shadow as well, then so much the better.

©2012 Off the Grid News

The post Effective Natural Cooling Strategies appeared first on Off The Grid News.

There are a lot of unique and interesting ways for inventive and imaginative folks to heat and cool their off-the-grid homes. One method that is beginning to make a bigger splash is the heat pump, which works by transporting heat from one location to another, most commonly from outside to inside. When in operation, these electrical devices can remove latent heat from either the air or the ground during the colder months and distribute it through a system of ducts to the rooms of an adjacent home, keeping inside spaces toasty and warm when the temperatures head south. But most heat pumps are also reversible, meaning that in summer time they can be used to suck the unwanted warm air right out of a home before releasing it into the atmosphere outside. Heat pumps are much more energy-efficient than furnaces or air conditioners because they do not consume power by directly heating or cooling the air; instead, they simply capture the heat that is already there and move it to a location where it will be able to do some good.

The two most common types of these devices are air-source and ground-source, or geothermal, heat pumps. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but in this article we will be focusing strictly on air-source heat pumps.

Air-Source Heat Pumps 101: The Cliff’s Notes Version

We tend to think of cold air as being utterly bereft of warmth. But as long as air temperatures remains above absolute zero, there is in fact heat present, and heat pumps are constructed to harvest this hidden warmth and redistribute it to the interiors of homes or other indoor spaces.

Air-source heat pumps are generally divided into two sections, one of which will be located on the exterior of a house and the other just inside an interior wall. These electrically powered heat exchangers usually consist of the following parts:

• An exterior fan
• A network of refrigeration coils with an inner and outer grill
• A compressor
• An interior fan
• A reversing valve

Heat pumps work on the very same principles as refrigerators. The exterior fan pulls in air from outside, and as it passes across a grill of refrigeration coils, the air will transfer any heat it contains to the cold liquid refrigerant inside. This refrigerant is then pressurized and heated further by the compressor, and as it circulates through its network of coils, moving through the wall into the inside of the home, it releases all of its excess heat through an interior grill, just as a refrigerator does on its back side. But while a fridge only produces waste heat that is vented aimlessly into a wall, the refrigeration grill connected to a heat pump funnels the heat it produces into a powerful blower, which sends hot air out through a ductwork system that distributes it throughout the rest of the house. Meanwhile, after releasing its heat, the gaseous coolant in the coils returns to its previous liquid state before cycling back outside to the exterior refrigeration grill, where the whole process will start all over again.

And there you have it. The air-source heat pump is the prototypical example of the magic than can occur when simplicity is mixed with just the right amount of ingenuity. Now of course it is true, we are talking here about a system that needs an electrical input to function, and we all know how precious energy resources can be in an off-the-grid setting. But the beauty of the air-source heat pump is that for every unit of electricity it consumes, it will produce two to three times as many units of heat, which makes it one of the most efficient technologies for heating available in the marketplace. We should of course put the word “produce” in quotation marks in this case, because a heat pump only “produces” heat in the same way that a modern milking machine (or a farmer with cold hands who prefers doing things the old-fashioned way) “produces” the milk that comes out of the cow.

But in the case of the milk and the cow, the flow is only in one direction, and this is where the heat pump has the milking machine and the farmer beat by a country mile. For as we have already mentioned, a heat pump can be used to either warm or cool interior spaces; it is simply a matter of using the reversing valve to switch the direction of the fans so that the hot air from inside the home can be vented out. But whichever way the air-source heat pump is used, its high level of efficiency is preserved, and one of the huge advantages of a heat pump is that it only requires one significant investment to replicate the entire performance of a conventional HVAC system, which requires both the furnace and the air conditioner to function twelve months of the year.

The Limitations Of An Evolving Technology

There is one bit of bad news about standard air-source heat pumps, and that is that they start to lose efficiency once temperatures begin to approach freezing. This means the electricity they consume will give you a lot less bang for the buck when things get seriously frigid in the heart of the winter, and if temperatures where you live regularly fall below 32 degrees, the air-source heat pump will not be able to heat your home during the coldest months in a cost-effective manner. This does not necessarily mean a standard heat pump system would be a waste of money for you, however; it just means that you will need some sort of back-up source of heating to complement your heat pump should you choose to install one. Some heat pumps provide their own back-up heating source in the form of electric resistance coils, but these are electricity consumers of course, and they will not operate anywhere near as efficiently as the pump itself.

Because of its normal two- or three-to-one efficiency ratio, a conventional air-source heat pump could still pay off for you in a colder climate if you were using it frequently from March to November. Nevertheless, the cold weather limitations of the standard unit are something you will want to take into consideration before you invest the $1,000 to $4,000 that an air-source set-up will cost you.

Let’s remember, however, that we live in an age where energy efficiency and “going green” are all the rage. When you have a promising technology like that associated with the heat pump, which works with nature instead of battling against it, we would expect there to be a lot of well-funded research and development going on, and that is indeed the case. As a result, over the past few years there have been some tremendous strides made in the area of improved heat pump efficiency, and there are now some alternatives available to the conventional air-source unit that can partially or completely overcome cold weather limitations.

Harness the power of the sun for your energy needs…

Reverse Cycle Chillers

Right now, the most affordable and practical of these alternatives is the reverse cycle chiller (RCC). The RCC works by the same principles as the normal air-source heat pump, but while a regular model releases its heat directly into the home, an RCC transfers the heat it collects instead to a large, highly insulated water tank. The water heated in the tank is used to heat the surrounding air, which is then distributed throughout the home by a blower and a network of ducts and vents. Or, alternatively, the hot water can be circulated through the tubing of a radiant floor heating system, which is generally more economical than any kind of forced-air technology.

At first consideration, you might think that a more complicated system such as this that adds an extra step to the process would be less efficient. But the collected and transferred heat will ultimately end up doing exactly the same amount of work, and the physics of it all allows the reverse cycle chiller to operate at peak efficiency no matter how low the temperatures outside sink. With a properly sized RCC, you will not have to worry about providing a supplementary heat source to maintain efficient operations – if you want or need more heat than your unit can produce, then yes, you will need one, but back-up heat source or no, the reverse cycle chiller will still continue to produce excellent results in the most extreme northern climates on even the coldest January mornings.

The downside to the reverse cycle chiller is exactly what you might expect. It is indeed more pricey than a conventional air-source heat pump (about 25 percent more expensive at minimum), but the RCC will cover the cost of this additional expense in about two or three years time, simply because it is able to function so smoothly and consistently in all weather conditions.

Options, Considerations, And Cautions

Air-source heat pumps are rated according to two different standards: seasonal energy efficiency rating (SEER) and heating seasonal performance factor (HSPF). The former measures a unit’s overall cooling efficiency (how much energy it uses for each unit of cooling it produces, in other words), while the latter not only reflects a heat pump’s ability to provide warmth but also factors in supplemental heating needs.

For home use, units with SEER ratings of 14 to 18 (or around 12 for a reverse cycle chiller) and HSPF ratings in the 8 to 10 range are recommended. Even though the Energy Star system can be a bit inconsistent, in this instance the specifications an air-source heat pump must meet to receive this government-sponsored badge of honor are perfectly consistent with these standards. So if you just look for the Energy Star label when you go shopping for a heat pump, you should come out all right.

Since the compressor is the part of the air-source heat pump that consumes the most electricity, this is where you might want to invest a little bit more to get something of the high-end variety. Two good energy-efficiency enhancing possibilities here are dual-mode compressors and scroll compressors. The dual-mode type will adjust its speed and power up or down based on actual heating or cooling needs, so you won’t have to keep shutting the pump on or off if indoor temperatures become unpleasant. Scroll compressors are state-of-the-art devices that reduce noise, save energy, and last much longer than a traditional compressor, which makes them worth the extra cost and then some.

One negative aspect of air-source heat pumps is that when you have to make the change from cooling to heating mode during the fall or early winter, it will take some time for the interior grill to defrost, and as a result you can get a pretty sustained blast of cold air coming into the house when the unit is turned on. Heat pumps are generally sold with backup burners that can counteract this problem, but if you select a unit that does not include this feature, you had better be prepared to deal with this chilly inconvenience.

Maintenance of a heat pump is a relatively simple affair. Filters should be changed approximately every month, and it is necessary to frequently inspect every part of the system to ensure that nothing is plugging or clogging the fans, coils, or compressor. Some of the more vexing problems experienced by air-source heat pump owners include low airflow, refrigerant leaks, incorrect refrigerant charge, leaky ducts, motor or compressor malfunctions, and unexplained noises or rattling. In order to prevent such problems from occurring, a professional should be called in to inspect a heat pump set-up at least every two years, and while it might be possible for DIY enthusiasts to handle some repairs or troubleshooting, you will definitely need to bring in a pro if anything goes wrong with your coil system. The chemicals used in refrigeration are almost always toxic, and for that reason they are not something you should be fooling around with all on your own.

With proper care and proactive maintenance, a good air-source heat pump system could last from fifteen to twenty years, if not a little bit longer. Even though they do represent a fairly significant investment, a heat pump system can unquestionably pay for itself over time, and that will happen fairly quickly if the owner of a particular air-source heat pump owner should happen to live in a locale that experiences relatively moderate temperatures during the wintertime.

The Future Of Air-Source Heat Pumps?

There is one other air-source heat pump deserving of mention, and that is the absorption heat pump. Instead of compressing a conventional refrigerant, this type of heat pump facilitates the absorption of ammonia into water, after which a low-power pump can be used in lieu of a compressor to squeeze the water-ammonia solution up to a greater pressure level, concentrating the heat that will ultimately be released and distributed by a duct-and-blower system. When the ammonia-water solution is circulated back to the outer section of the coil system, the ammonia boils out of the water again, leaving it free to soak up more heat from the air before being re-absorbed by the water in a never-ending cycle. Just as with standard air-source heat pumps, absorption units are reversible and can be used to either heat or cool indoor areas.

What makes this type of air-source heat pump unique is that because its power requirements are so low, it can work with an alternative source of power rather than electricity – most frequently natural gas, but geothermal, solar, and propane are also used with absorption heat pumps. The fly in the ointment here is that absorption units up until now have been installed almost exclusively in factories, plants, office buildings, and other large structures where economies of scale make the technology cost-effective. But as always, research and development is proceeding at a vigorous clip, and units appropriate for larger homes have now hit the market. Estimates are that in five to ten years, the technology may become affordable enough to be a legitimate option for general off-the-grid usage.

©2012 Off the Grid News

The post Pumping It Up With An Air-Source Heat Pump appeared first on Off The Grid News.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series. Next installment: Long-term power outages. 

Electrical power outages are becoming more and more common. With the condition of our aging electrical grid, this really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to us.

We’ve become a society that is addicted to electrical power. We depend on it for so much of what we do, that losing power, even for a short period of time, can carry disastrous and expensive consequences.

When we talk about a short-term power outage, we’re really talking about something that lasts only a few hours — a day at most. That’s a short enough period of time that we can manage to survive it fairly well, even if it does require us doing some things a bit differently.

Of course, being prepared for a power outage makes it much easier to survive. Like any other problem in life, preparation is a large part of overcoming it. For each of the essential things we use electrical power for, we need some sort of alternative, so that when the power goes out, we’re all ready for it. So, what are those critical electrical usages?

• Refrigeration
• Cooking
• Heating and Cooling
• Lighting
• Communications
• Work (computers more than anything else)

There are also a whole lot of non-critical uses we have for electricity — especially those that are associated with entertainment. While it’s nice to be entertained, that really isn’t all that important. We can get by for a day without our Nintendo systems and tablets. We just have to find other ways of keeping ourselves occupied.

1. The First Thing You Should Do

In any power outage, the first thing you should do is to unplug all electrical equipment, especially anything that might have a computer chip in it. This includes entertainment centers, stereos, computers, copying machines and their accessories. Many times, when the power comes back on, there is a surge of power, which can damage this equipment. Of course, if your equipment is connected through a good surge protector, this won’t be necessary.

Harness the power of the sun when the power goes out…

Many people have a generator on hand to provide electrical power in the case of a power outage. While there’s nothing wrong with that idea, generators use a lot of gasoline – and they’re noisy and emit fumes. One good option is solar power, either as backup power or primary power. That way, you can continue life even when lightning strikes.

2. Monitor refrigeration

Refrigeration is probably the most critical item for most people. Fortunately, refrigerators are well-insulated, allowing them to keep the food inside cold for a minimum of four hours, without any electricity. A freezer will keep food frozen for up to 48 hours if it is full. However, if the freezer is only half full, it will only keep the food cold for about 24 hours. So, it’s better to keep your freezer full, so that it can keep your food cold if the power goes out.

If you don’t normally keep enough food on hand to fill your freezer, you can easily fill the remaining space with containers of ice. Not only will that help to keep the food frozen, but some of the ice can be moved to the refrigerator in the case of a power outage, in order to keep the food in the refrigerator from spoiling.

Don’t assume that just because you lose power for a day, that all of the food in your refrigerator is spoiled. We are accustomed to keeping foods refrigerated here in the United States, even if they don’t need it. Many foods which are marked “refrigerate after opening” will keep fine without it.

Story continues below video

One of the most surprising of these is mayonnaise. We’ve probably all heard that anything with mayonnaise in it will spoil very quickly without refrigeration. Yet in Mexico, the very same mayonnaise that we refrigerate is commonly stored in a kitchen cabinet or out on the counter top. I’m not talking about for a few minutes or hours, I’m talking about for weeks, without spoiling.

So, when the power comes back on, don’t just throw things out. Check each and every container individually, to see if it has spoiled or not. If there is no mold and no smell of decay, then it is probably OK to use. Frozen food that has thawed out can always be cooked, and then if it’s not going to be consumed right away, it can be re-frozen.

3. Be creative in cooking

Most of us depend upon electricity for cooking, at least to some extent. In the event of a power outage, you’re better off having a gas range in your kitchen than an electric one. The gas one will continue to work, as long as there is gas in the pipes. An electric one, like a microwave, won’t do you much good at all.

The easiest alternative for cooking without electricity is to use a barbecue grill. Most families have one for cooking hamburgers and steaks. You can just as easily use it for cooking a pot of spaghetti or beans. Just put the pot on the grill and cook away. While you might have to get used to some difference in cooking times and temperatures, that barbecue grill will do just as good a job of cooking your food as your kitchen range will.

4. Don’t panic: heating and cooling

Our heating and cooling systems all require electricity to function; that is, unless you heat your home with a wood burning stove. Even gas furnaces require electricity to operate, as the controls and blower motor are powered by electricity.

Depending upon the outside temperature and the R-factor of the insulation in your home, it will take a number of hours for your home to cool down or heat up during a power outage. For a short-term outage, you may be able to get by without having to worry about heating and cooling. Unless it is extremely cold outside, your home should stay warm enough for survival without using any alternative form of heat.

That’s not to say that your home will necessarily stay warm. You will gradually see the temperature drop inside your home, until it matches the outside temperature. To combat this, add layers of clothing. There are many places in the world where people don’t have any heating in their homes. They keep warm in the winter by wearing layers of clothing, wearing coats in their homes and piling more blankets on their beds.

5. Go retro with lighting

Lighting is one of those areas that you will need a little bit of preparation for. Flashlights will provide light for you, but only for as long as the batteries last. Besides, it’s hard to work with a flashlight in your hands. You’re better off using candles and oil lamps, saving the batteries in your flashlight until you really need to use a flashlight.

Most of us have candles in our homes, even if they are just decorative ones. The best types of candles to have for an emergency are large diameter ones. Tapers and other thin candles are very inefficient, because they tend to drip more wax than they burn.

In olden times, they made candles that provided more light by adding additional wicks. If you make your own candles, try making them with three to six wicks in them. Each one will provide the light of one candle; so a six wicked candle will provide you with six candlepower of light. Keep the wicks at least a half inch apart, so that they don’t disturb one another. If you make those candles in old jars, you can be sure that all of the wax will be used and none will drip off to be wasted.

Oil lamps provide even more light than candles, mostly because they use a larger wick, so more oil can burn at one time than what burns in a candle. They will also burn just about any type of oil. While the mineral oil that is intended for use in an oil lamp is the best to use, as it doesn’t smell bad, you can also burn cooking oil if you need to.

6. Don’t abandon communication

There are two types of communications you’ll need to be concerned about: talking to people and getting news. Your cell phone should provide you with communications, even during a power outage. Typically, the cell phone towers have emergency power so that they will continue working even in the midst of a power outage.

An Amazing Breakthrough In Compact Portable Backup Power!

It would be a good idea to have a disposable cell phone on hand, from another carrier. That way, if your main cell phone loses service, there’s still a chance that you’ll have communications via that alternate carrier. You should also have a hand-crank or battery powered charger for your regular cell phone, so that you can recharge it, even if the power is out.

A battery powered AM/FM radio will give you the capability of receiving the news and finding out what is going on. Keep a list of the local radio stations, especially talk radio, as they will give you the most accurate and up-to-date reports. Make sure you have an adequate supply of batteries for the radio.

7. Have battery backups – especially for work

The ability to work is the one thing that suffers the most when electrical power is lost. So many jobs today require the use of computers and other electronic equipment. If you work outside the home, there is a good chance you will be sent home if it looks like the outage is going to last for more than a few hours.

With a laptop computer, it is possible to continue doing many types of work. However, that is limited by the life of the computer’s battery. Some laptop computers can only be used for about an hour on the power that the battery holds. The next time you shop for a laptop, be sure to keep that in mind. Some companies, like this one, also sell backup batteries that can recharge everything from a cell phone to a laptop during a blackout. They are very convenient if the power goes out.

You can operate your computer off of your car’s battery, if you have the right sort of adapter. Adapters are available for just about any voltage and connector style, so this is more an issue of planning ahead and making sure that you have the right sort of adapter. You can also make an extension so that you can connect your laptop to your car battery for power and use the computer in a more convenient location.

Sign up for Off The Grid News’ weekly email and stay informed about the issues important to you

The post How To Keep The Milk Cold And The House Warm In A Power Outage appeared first on Off The Grid News.

For years scientists and government officials have told us the earth is warming, and the mainstream media has fallen in line, castigating and even laughing at anyone who suggests otherwise.

But there’s a growing body of thought that the general wisdom is not only wrong, but embarrassingly so – and that the earth is getting colder.

In fact, one prominent scientist says Earth is on the front edge of a 30-year cold trend that could have a major impact on our food supply and survival, making summers cooler and winters almost unbearable.

His name is John L. Casey, and he’s the guest on this week’s edition of Off The Grid Radio. His new book, “Dark Winter: How The Sun Is Causing A 30-Year Cold Spell,” flips everything you’ve heard about global warming on its head.

A former NASA consultant and White House advisor, Casey tells us:

• How 30 years of colder weather could devastate America’s crops.
• Why weather patterns from 200 years ago can help predict weather for the coming decades.
• Whether he believes we’re on the verge of a small ice age.
• How the 1645 freezing of the London Thames River could give us hints of what is to come.
• Why severe earthquakes and volcanoes could follow the cold trend.

Casey also tells us how we can prepare. Don’t miss this amazing episode of Off The Grid Radio that will make you question everything you’ve been told about one of the most controversial topics of the day.

The post The Truth About Global Warming You’re Not Being Told appeared first on Off The Grid News.