Mid August 2008 - Homestead Pics

Here's a picture of our bathing facilities. A pallet to stand on, a sun heated shower bag hanging from a Ponderosa Pine, and branches for towel racks. It looks primitive, but bathing outside with the birds singing and the wind blowing is great. I'd take this over a $10,000 luxury bathroom any day.

The picture at left shows some of our solar electric system. Four large six volt batteries under the camper give us 1100 amp-hours of storage at 12 volts DC. The little generator is just in case we need to run a large power tool.

Under the front edge of our little cabover camper, we put a 12 volt DC chest freezer. This freezer runs on only 75 watts of power and costs about $1000. We have 300 watts worth of power from three PV panels (sitting on top of the other camper), and find that it's enough to run the freezer, lights, computer, radio, and charge flashlight batteries, plus run the occasional small power tool. We also use the freezer to make ice in 1 gallon jugs that we put in a cooler. That way, for the price of a freezer, we have a freezer and fridge. This works really well. The cost of the entire solar electric system, including inverters was around $2500.

We have an old camper trailer that we use as a portable storage unit. But that filled up fast. We also have a used Toyota Uhaul box truck, but that was full of tools. So, with misgivings about buying more non-biodegradeable plastic, we bought a 12'x20' portable garage for $600 on Ebay, and put that up to store belongings and building materials in. If the cover degrades before we sell it, we could always cover it with greenhouse plastic and have an instant hoop greenhouse.

This picture shows the little cabover camper on right that we lived in while getting ready for the yurt. We supported it on steel barrels that we obtained for free from a local company that sprays Icynene foam insulation. They get the Icynene in barrels and have to pay to dispose of them afterwards. Once washed out, the barrels are useful for so many things, from composting drums, to camper supports, wood stoves... On left is our storage camper trailer with solar panels sitting on the roof.