You need a structural engineer because building code requires one to use ICF. An energy designer would help you build an off-grid house you could actually live in.

Wish your builder good luck from me.

Again, with the insincere wishing of 'good luck' as if this were an impossible or unlikely endeavor. I am doing my very best to gather enough information and speak with the proper individuals to be successful, for you to say that I am not doing enough is equally insulting. If what I am doing isn't enough for you, that is your problem. You don't get to call someone rude if you are going to be rude yourself.

Anyway, The engineer is exactly what I want, because designers typically do not like to work from existing plans, which is what I have. They also tend to take 12-20% off the purchase price, which is not what I want either.

"jdebrree: Sorry about that, its just that the forum post that I made in the geothermal forum got taken over by overly critical individuals about my decisions, such as arguing that solar is not going to work very well (which is a lie. Texas gets 5 full solar hours per day, and the cloudy days are few), and going on about various other things".

I am not a liar, I didn't say that solar won't work in Texas. This is what I said.

"From what I hear, Electricity in Texas is pretty cheap, Probably half what I pay up here in New England (17.6 cents per KWH)
You can purchase many years of electricity for $15000.
Depending on how well you can maintain your battery bank, they will have to be replaced every 4-6 years at thousands of dollars each time.
You will have to have a generator to charge the batteries when the sun can't, of course you will have a 1000 gal tank of propane to run the gene.
Off-grid is not just buy some panels & batteries and your done. Do some reading on Solar panel talk forum.
ChrisJ

Please take some of your info gathering time and read about off grid living. On Solar Panel Talk forum they describe battery maintenance as a near full time job. They also say that off grid you will pay 5-10 times the amount per KWH for the rest of your life. A 10K grid tied solar setup is around $40,000.00 in New England, that's $4 per watt. You think you can get an off grid setup for $1.50 per watt with batteries. Even in Texas I don't think that is going to happen.

Dana has suggested twice to find and visit an off grid home.

Wanting to be a homeowner is awesome. I just can't understand spending $200,000 on building a home then living in it like your camping so you can avoid an electric bill. If your house is super insulated and everything super efficient you might spend a dollar a day on grid electric and get 40 years of electric for your 15K.

ChrisJ

Hi Sabotender,

People here really do mean well. A structural engineer may work from existing plans, and will make sure that the house doesn't collapse. But a structural engineer may not be versed in things like solar gain and window orientation, for example. Those kinds of things are crucial if you want to build an off-grid house, and should be designed (or incorporated into the existing plan) specifically for the building site from the very start.

ChrisJ: Retail residential pricing in TX is cheap, at about 11.3 cents/kwh, but it's still over half the typical New England rates:

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_06_a

Utility scale PV in TX can happen at $2/watt or less, and in less than 5 years that will be the average US price for grid-tied residential scale. I've very recently seen 15kw and 25kw proposals for grid-tied rooftop PV in MA in the $3.50/watt range (before any subsidy incentives.) The "learning curve" for PV has a 40 year trend line of dropping ~25% in price every time the volumes double, and the doubling time is now about 20-22 months. Unless the installation rates for solar flatten rather than continuing to increase, buck fifty rooftop PV will happen sooner than most people think. Grid tied small scale rooftop PV is under $2/watt in Australia right now, and in FL it's running about $2.50 (probably parts of TX too.) But buck fifty a watt PV off-grid "batteries included" isn't likely to happen any time soon.

The real issues are how expensive is it to extend the grid to the location, and the actual electricity use requirements. It's not necessarily financially unsound to stay off the grid if it costs $30K to bring the grid to the house, but staying off grid may not be rational if bringing the grid in only costs $5K or $10K. Paying $10K to bring the grid into a Net Zero Energy house may still be questionable though, depending on what the future grid connections costs are. Anybody have a good crystal ball?

Clearly the lower your electricity requirements, the more the scale tips in favor of staying off the grid. In Australia (where retail electricity prices are north of 25 US cents, north of 30 cents in some places) some people have begun to cut the cord rather than net meter at wholesale (or zero) &/or pay stiff monthly connection fees, but even there it's usually been more of an attitude thing than truly financially rational. Attitude problems tend to rise when the regulatory policies are unstable, with constantly shifting incentives & costs. When people who feel mistreated can afford to opt out, some do. Even when it's not a financially rational investment, they feel more in control of their own destiny. (What starts as a drip can evolve into a trickle or even a torrent as battery costs continue to decline.)

It must have been in the thread at GeoExchange he mentioned 1/4 acre lot with city water not a well.

I figured if there is city water there is grid power! I really don't mean to derail his thread. Good Bye.

Chris

Where I am moving, there is grid power, but there is just one single provider. I don't want to have to deal with yearly ups and downs on the rates and deal with whatever the whim the energy company feels like charging at that particular time. AND I have already did the cost calculation of what I would be paying average in energy usage compared to having to 'deal' with off grid solar, and I would end up saving a lot of money.

Since the size of the home I initially wanted was outside of what I can afford, I redrew things and have really scaled down here to better fit my situation. My builder has given me numbers to architects that he knows personally, they are private business owners who would be willing to work with existing plans. I swear, I contacted 10 local firms and not a single were willing to work with me because they wanted to do things their way and were not even interested in looking at the floor plan that I drew myself.

The structural engineer is willing to work with me, BUT they need dimensions for everything, which I don't even really know myself, because I am not an Architect, so you see where I was being thrown into the never ending loop. These private individuals that was recommended to me, seems like there would be a greater chance of me getting something drawn up.

Heh the builder told me, that with such a simple home that I proposed, he could start construction right now if he had the complete plans...he also did mention that I didn't necessarily need a structural engineer.

I don't mean to get really snooty about this. It just seems like there are a lot of Native Americans in here with something to say, and not enough Chiefs. Everyone has an opinion, and when you don't like their opinion, they become rude and nasty. I was trying to avoid this.


And I am going to say this again. I do NOT need a generator! For goodness sake! How many baths do you think one person is going to be taking over the course of a single day? How much hot water do you think I am going to be using? It is absolutely ridiculous. It will be just me in this house. A solar water heater to preheat and an on demand propane heater would suit me just fine. I have nothing against taking a bath during the day when the sun is out. Even if I didn't have the pre-heater, these on demand propane heaters have yearly usage averages of around 300-400USD, which is perfectly reasonable. With the pre-heater, that cost would probably be quartered.

What upsets me is that people keep telling me that I am trying to achieve the impossible, when this is just not the case. I think what is happening here is that I am wanting to do something that they would not do themselves. If you are happy with paying the changing rates for on grid energy, that is fine. Just don't criticise me for not wanting to follow the herd.

Jelly, I know people here really do mean well. And I appreciate all the good recommendations that I have received thus far, and I promise to utilise those suggestions so long as they fit into what I have in mind for this house.

It's just that the lifecycle cost off-grid power with batteries is going to be dramatically more expensive than grid power (something like 300-400% of typical Texas residential retail) whenever the hook-up cost for grid access is (nearly) free. As long as you know that going in, it's an informed choice, clearly yours to make. Where net metering at retail is available it's a lot cheaper, and $0 bills aren't out of the question, with no upfront cost for batteries, but I don't know if that's the case in this location. (Texas has 1001 local electricity markets, and dozens of ways of doing things.)

Batch hot water heaters are inexpensive low maintenance, use no power, well worth consideration in a low freeze-risk location. Have you picked one out yet? On-demand/tankless heaters aren't always the best solution in conjunction with solar HW though, since they they can't modulate down to zero BTU/hr. The bigger-deal propane HW heaters also have substantial idling power use, not well suited for off-grid. If going that route, be sure to investigate the versions used in Mexico or the Caribbean that don't need electricity to function (eg Marey : http://store.marey.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1820 ). The last thing you want on an off-grid PV system is 20-50 watts of idling load sapping the service life of your batteries. A key feature to look for is a very LOW minimum-fire BTU, so that when the batch HW heater is serving up 85-90F water it can still regulate the out temperature at less than full-flow without flaming out.

If you're on city water you don't have a well pump & water storage issues to deal with, which takes some of your power use down. You can probably do this with less than 10kw of PV if you budget the power use carefully.

Your inverter craps out on the hottest day of the summer. Off to Holiday Inn or to the generator store? It's cloudy eight days in a row in Leander. You're lighting candles; might as well pray for sun. A control board failure shuts down your array on Day 2 of your two weeks in the Bahamas. You come home to find your batteries dead and your pipes frozen. Spending $2k on an automated backup generator to protect a $200k home is not a matter of principle.

I expressed pity for your builder earlier not because I think your project can't be built but rather because you won't listen. Builders live in dread of buyers who can't be saved from themselves.

You're silent on finance. The only off-grid mortgage I can find on the Web is from a VT credit union for maximum 70 percent loan to value. CUs are sometimes portfolio lenders -- they keep the loans they make. Banks and mortgage companies sell their loans to fannie and freddie, and offbeat stuff simply won't fly. Again the folks at Texasoffgrid.com can tell you about mortgages, and also about voluntary offgrid and generators if you're willing to pollute your plans with genuine expertise.

There is an answer here for someone willing to compromise. Do a super efficient grid tie house now, handling solar in a separate, later loan if necessary. (Easy to get with good credit.) Down the road, when battery technology catches up with PV, bail on the electric utility. And for the time being, when your builder hems and haws and finally says "well, I guess you could do it that way if you want," as poh-lite Texans are wont to do, ask him what he'd do and, for heaven's sake, listen to the answer.

Some off grid solar users think they don't need a generator - until they get a few sunless days in a row and are a) out of power and b) ruining $4000+ worth of batteries. Not to mention the full charge requirement of lead acid batteries and the number of hours that such a full charge can require (ie, how do you get 8+ hours of continuous charging in December?). Off-grid can be done (that's positive feedback) - but figure 4x the cost of Texas utility power and a lot more hassles. I'd like to see your calculations if you think it is cheaper than utility power (that's a request for information, not criticism).

My battery bank is going to be quite sizable, I think I am square as far as that is concerned. I plan on spending ~6k on batteries alone, actually.

There are lots of things I want to say, but I am going to remain mum about it. if you are saying something i am not interested in, I just won't respond to you.

Dana1: I don't really quite believe that, batteries kept in optimal condition can last a long time. I am getting high quality batteries with a long warranty on them. If I get 10 years out of them, then it is money well spent. The solar array would definitely pay for itself.

For such a green and efficient minded forum, you lot sure have daggers for off-grid solar. Seems you are only interested in green building structures and everything else doesn't matter, or isn't good enough.

I am getting tired of constantly having to argue and go back and forth about my desire to be off grid. Can we just not talk about that anymore? There is Zero you can say that is going to sway me from this decision.

Yes, there is city water where this property is located, so I won't need to dig a well.

I will definitely look into those low-fire on demand tanks, thank you very much for the link.

I have picked out a lot of stuff, but at this point, I am afraid to mention anything new, for the fear of being consumed with negative criticism. Everyone seems to know what is absolutely best for my situation.

I am almost at the point of just leaving and washing my hands of this forum and talk to some real experts.

(sigh)

How about we try this: Instead of telling me what you think is not going to work, how about we talk about ways of making it work? You know what I want, what my desires are. I have already made plenty of changes to my plans due to excellent suggestions. Can we stick with that sort of progress?

Please?

Chris wrote: "A 10K grid tied solar setup is around $40,000.00 in New England"
Maybe ten years ago, but nowhere near that now. I installed a 9KW system last spring - after rebates it was under $2/watt; before rebates $3./watt.

Was it DIY or completely by large company? I should have said in RI not New England.

That is what I was just quoted by Sungevity. Obviously not going with them.

ChrisJ

How long ago was that quote? I was seeing quotes in the $3.75-4.25 /watt range 18-24 months ago, but nothing over $3.50/watt recently (from solar companies large & small.) The national average in 2015 was $3.50/watt. According to NREL it's now averaging $3.16/watt as of 2 minutes ago:

https://openpv.nrel.gov/

I've yet to see a quote under $3 in MA, but I'll bet they're out there (if not this week by mid summer they will be.)

Sabotender: NO WHINING! :-)

I've long since accepted your desire to be off grid (was only surprised that you were in town with easy grid access, which is not the usual off-grid situation). The notion that I personally have "... daggers against off-grid solar..." would be a complete mis-read. I only want you to go into it with eyes wide open knowing the trade-offs of different approaches.

How you (ab)use the batteries determines their lifecycle, and thus their lifecycle cost. Martin Holladay at greenbuildingadvisor.com has been living off grid for more than 30 years, and could write the book on the care & feeding of batteries, if you cared to ask him. In the past handful of years he has replaced both his vintage PV system of yore, as well as his most recent set of batteries, and can tell you to the fraction of a cent what his electricity is costing now, and what it has cost him in the past. He's even roughly tested one of his now retired panels from 1980:

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/testing-thirty-year-old-photovoltaic-module

The project I referenced was a residential roof installation (not just a quote) by a small installation company in central NH. Allowed us to finish building the house on solar power - at least partially. The situation has changed in NH since then; most of the utilities have met their quota for net metering and our tea party legislature is discussing raising the cap. What they proposed would last maybe one year.

Dana the quote was in Aug/2015, but they just called back days ago and were using the same numbers.

After Bob said what his price was I called back to tell them they need to get a lot closer to $3 per watt.

They are pushing the "Get you into the feed in tariff and NG will pay you $.37/KWH produced" It will pay for the financing and give + money in my pocket.

RI has been lagging behind MA solar wise.

CJ

I was asking about when ChrisJ's $4/watt quote came in, just in case that wasn't clear.

With apologies for thread drift...

The whole SREC & net metering subsidy game is percolating rapidly in New England, and the band-aid & cap-rasing approaches by legislatures has made for some really lousy start/stop policy support. Maine may have gotten it right with their perhaps unusual solar valuation methodology, but that remains to be seen.

A saner approach would be to structure remuneration for solar based on market conditions & valuation on the date it was installed, but grandfather the deal for individual installations for 20 or 25 years from the date of installation. That way it's possible to incentivize solar heavily when it's at low penetration/higher-cost and higher value without over-paying when the cost (and value to other ratepayers) crash. The MA SREC and SREC-II were both WAY too rich for what the cost of solar ended up being, which led to the land rush (sun rush?) and filling them up YEARS ahead of schedule, as well at the net metering caps.

At $3/watt PV has a financial rationale against the current ~18-20 cent residential retail rates if net-metered, but not a super-strong rationale with enough arbitrage in it for third party ownership solar companies to be interested, and not exciting enough for homeowners with mental time horizons of 3-5 years. It gets a lot more interesting at $2/watt (which is about where it comes in with the federal income tax subsidy in 2016), since that has a levelized cost of about half the current New England retail rates.

By the time the 30% tax subsidy disappears both the cost and the value of distributed solar will be a lot lower than it is today, and net-metering at retail will no longer be viable. But how that's handled by the legislatures & regulators can make or break the solar biz &/or the the utility companies. Simply raising the net metering cap a bit at a time to keep the distributed solar ball rolling is short sighted in the extreme- they need to take the bull by the horns and define a roadmap to the next 15 years, for both utilities and ratepayers. If they screw up the policy stuff going forward there will be quite a lot of folks taking sabotender's solution in about 10 years, which will make it more expensive for the typical grid use (including toddm's granny! :-) )

Dana1 : Well you see, that's exactly the sort of direction I need and desire. I would love to know what to look out for, and what sort of work I will have to deal with maintaining the batteries, you know, like basic care instructions. The benefits and drawbacks of being on off grid, all perfect information. Just like your great suggestion on what sort of on demand propane heater to look out for. Incidentally, I would love some direction with solar water pre heaters too. I found quite a few on the web, but none of them actually displayed prices, which makes me a little nervous. You know when businesses tell you 'price on request', you know it's going to cost a lot. I have reduced the size of the home from 1.7K sq ft to just under 1K sq ft, because like I said, I am willing to do what it takes to make this work out, not to mention a smaller house means I have a bigger budget for other things, a lower mortgage payment, and fewer taxes. Its a win win for me.

Ive also been looking into those triple pane, heat blocking windows for all the windows of the home, is that a good idea? Is the extra expense worth it? The builder told me that since I've reduced the house's square footage so much, it would be better to put the mini-split on the upper floor, because cool air travels downward, and of course have the wood burning stove on the lower floor in the living area because heat travels upward. I mean, that is perfectly logical to me.

Yes, I have also thought about the costs to update the system when it starts to wear out, but you see, I'll be able to allocate my funds toward that day a lot easier because I won't have to deal with the rising and falling costs of on grid energy, and by using propane, I can easily choose from five providers in my area, which is quite nice, as I love to shop around for the best price.

What do you think about SIP panels for the roof? I just got a call today from someone interested in selling them to me. I really wasn't too interested because there's wood used in the manufacturing process, but I thought I would ask before I say a flat out no.

What do you think about this product? http://decra.com/products/shake-xd I am really against normal (asphalt?) shingles, wood shingles have the word 'ready to burn' written all over them, I want something that will last a long time and are low maintenance. I think I mentioned rubber material...recycled tyres, but never got a comment on that.

Also...I didn't mean to sound whiny, I was just getting extremely frustrated. Like I said, I am in talks with the designer and when I have some hard facts about the layout, I am sure it would be far far easier for you to recommend appliances most appropriate to the establishment.

It's going to be hard to rationalize triple pane windows of any type in your climate.

A mini-split on the top floor will usually adequately cool the lower floor of a higher-performance house, and a wood stove (or mini-split) on the bottom floor can adequately heat the upper floor of a higher-performance house. A potential fly in the ointment is that in many/most locations to meet code every room has to be able to be heated to at least 68F at the 99% outside design temp with an automatic temperature controlled heating system, which means the wood stove doesn't quite meet that letter of the code. A second mini-split on the first floor could cover that, whether you ever actually used it for space heating or not.

Evacuated-tube HW heaters are popular,(despite the higher upfront cost compared to flat panel versions), and are usually more resilient to Texas-style hail storms than flat panels:

http://thesunbank.com/sunbank-80-gallon-solar-water-heater/?gclid=CLrH18yJo8sCFQJZhgodmnQG8A

This is pretty much the standard approach in China even in areas that are freeze prone, and with access to the grid:

http://s88108.gridserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/solarheaters2.jpg

An 80 gallon version could get you through a few sunless days in good shape if you're miserly on hot water use during that period.

There are multiple vendors & manufacturers/importers a bit south of you, since this is a popular approach in Mexico as well:

http://www.funcosa.com.mx/productos/calentadores-solares.html

http://www.ecovita.mx/Web/Calentadores-Solares.aspx

Not sure how up you are for some cross-border trade, but my impression is that there is more selection and possibly better pricing through Mexican distributors than in the US. Of course you can always buy direct from China too, probably at lower price but a more difficult support chain, if say, you ever needed to replace a damaged tube.

http://www.aliexpress.com/popular/batch-solar-water-heater.html

With imported HW heaters from Mexico or China there are also plumbing code issues to deal with, since you may need to prove that the materials met US specs for potable water to get a code inspector to sign off on it. With US distributors it's a fairly boutique ( pricey) market due to the very low sales volumes. If local codes/code-enforcement on that stuff is pretty loose you can probably just buy a pretty-good Chinese HW heater and be done with it.

With any solar hot water heaters, during high-sun /low use periods or periods when you're away you may need to shade the array to avoid a steam-explosion condition. With evacuated tube systems you can also dial-back the solar uptake by rotating the tubes 90 degrees to avoid high mid-day gain.