A new fridge

Our Engel refrigerator arrived yesterday afternoon. It is larger than I had pictured it in my head. The interior is plenty large enough for the whole family.

The refrigerator pulls about 30-40 Watts when it's cooling (about 2-3 minutes every 20 minutes or so) and it pulls 4-5 Watts when not cooling. I have it hooked up to my wattage counter so I can see how much electricity it uses in 24 hours. I will know that at 3:00 this afternoon. So far it looks like we'll be able to run it off just a portion of one panel's output. We bought 2 panels to take into account overcast days and extremely hot days. The extra electricity on sunny days will not go to waste.

Today sometime the solar panels that power the refrigerator will be arriving.

All together we spent about $1,425.00 on the refrigerator and panels.

You may be asking yourself why we would spend so much on what amounts to a refrigerator the size of a medium sized cooler... Well, the answer is that we need refrigeration on the road and wherever we might end up and we don't want to have to pay for electricity or propane. An RV refrigerator runs between $700 - $1,200 dollars and runs off propane (quite a bit actually) or DC power at 6-10 times the power consumption. The Engel and solar panels basically give us free refrigeration from now on - no need for an RV park's hookups to keep foods cold (or even frozen).

So why solar when grid electricity is so cheap right now? The answer is not so much about the cost of electricity - although prices for electricity will always go up in the future (here's an example of how volatile it can get in a hurry). We're freeing ourselves from the whole electrical grid. You can't imagine how nice it is to be able to look at property that is "unimproved" in the same way that most people look at a city lot. Being able to provide all of your own power you need without having to buy fuel for a generator, fill propane tanks or pay an RV park for electricity. Being able to buy property that most people would not consider because of the cost of running utilities to the site will save us many times over the cost of the initial investment. Consider the price difference between a .16 acre plot on the edge of town with utilities against the cost of a full acre of unimproved land just a few miles away...

Our feeling is that everything is just going to keep getting more and more expensive over time. Energy costs just keep going up and up. It's better to buy in now while the costs are still relatively cheap. Once fuel prices hit a certain level, the price of everything else (especially alternative energy sources) will go through the roof. Just in the past year our solar panels went from $265 each to $323.00 each. That's $58.00 per panel in just under one year. There's a big demand for solar, wind and water power alternatives. Waiting yet another year will only cost us more.

More Independence

Today is a big day for us.

We're 100% debt free as of yesterday. Everything we own is free and clear. Now we're on a mission to eliminate all of our utility bills and other expenses.

I ordered an Engel 40 liter fridge (thanks to my friend Alan's suggestions last time we were able to visit). The new fridge will allow us to stop using propane or 110V electricity for keeping food cold. basically we will have free refrigeration (the 3rd largest electrical expense in the average home). The other two expenses (hot water & cooking) we already have solar solutions for.

I also ordered 2 more 64 Watt Uni-Solar panels for the roof of the RV. The price has gone up nearly $100.00 per panel since we ordered them just 1 year ago, so this was a big purchase for us... The new panels put us at the limit of our current charge controller and battery bank capacity. The extra panels will run the refrigerator with a bit of extra power to spare, so we're fairly confident that we'll be able to stay off grid indefinately as long as we don't purchase any more electrical appliances...

We're getting close to being back where we were in the bus when our total expenses for a month were near the $600.00 mark. I'm pretty sure that we can beat that if we get a piece of property.

Happy Valentine's Day!

If you want to be happy in life and live it to the fullest, you cannot believe that money equates to happiness. Here in the US the mantra is "money makes the world go round". Those who have it want you to believe that it's something worth having. People dedicate their lives to it. Worship it more than anything else. More than family, more than friendship, more than love...

The best things in life are not things.

Today is Valentine's Day. A day to love and be loved. To be giving and joyous and free. To worship friends and family for who they are and not what they are worth.

Don't drink R/O or distilled water!

The local water here in Minnesota tastes like shit. It's very hard water and tastes like a mixture of salt, iron and has a real distinct fishy/lake water after taste. That prompted us to switch to the bulk purified water in the grocery store (5 gallons at a time). The water is city water that is mechanically filtered, charcoal filtered, resin filtered, Reverse Osmosis (R/O) filtered and then ultraviolet sterilized when it is dispensed - although I noticed that for the past couple of months the one at Wal-Mart has had a burned out bulb...

The girls came down with what seemed like food poisoning. Cramped stomach, frequent vomiting, fever and then diarrhea. Worried about dehydration, I started looking on-line for information about electrolyte solutions and treatments. During the search I started thinking about our 5 gallon water jugs. We sterilize them every 60 days or so with a bleach and water solution, but sometimes they sit for a month or more without being opened. I wondered about the safety of drinking R/O water that has no chlorine or other buffers in it to ward off bacteria and came across a really frightening article from the World Health Organization about the hazards of drinking distilled and R/O water...

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutdemineralized.pdf

Needless to say, we've switched to tap water (carbon & mechanically filtered to remove the smell/taste) now. We'll be storing water chlorinated and only filtering it at the point of use from now on.

I looked for any information about the positive effects of drinking R/O water and came across several articles, but in every case, the information came from the R/O unit manufacturers, distributors and other folks who make money off of R/O filtration craze. I have not yet seen any proof of any of their health benefit claims. Many bottled waters & soft drinks contain distilled or R/O filtered water as the main ingredient. Why isn't there any warning given to consumers about the health risks associated with drinking pure (and very low PH/Acid) water?!?

Think twice about using R/O or distilled water for anything other than topping off your batteries...