# Need to go off grid ASAP.



## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

We've been working steadily on our off grid power system for the past 6 months. Have done all we can without a bit more $$$$$ investment. Had a score and were given 20 80 watt panels a few weeks back, that has made things a bit easier . We knew we were using a lot of power over the summer months with extra freezers and we now have two homes on the farm.... BUT we got the latest bill today... $2045 !!!!!! Talk about feeling sick to the stomach, thankfully we tend to keep payments well in advance. I hate credit but we've decided to spend the last few hundred dollars on our emergency credit card and get everything finished. Prices have skyrocketed in this part of Australia, they charge us $145.00 per quarter just to come and read the meter... bloody criminal :gaah: So we'll invest in a larger generator and a few more inverters (we have a number of stand alone systems, some portable so we can move them around the farm) and flick the switch. We don't NEED a bigger genny but it will be nice to have the option of still using some of our bigger machinery/equipment when we want to.


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

That is a pretty scary electric bill! And, you have to pay for them to read their meter so they can charge you for their services? Something is not right there. I would send them a bill for allowing them to have their meter on your property, I’d say $145 per quarter would be about right.

Good score on the panels, I hope they are enough to suit your needs. Have you looked at your energy usage and seen anyplace you can cut back?


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## cnsper (Sep 20, 2012)

In addition, get some battery chargers so that when you are running the generator you are also charging the batteries with that.


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## BillM (Dec 29, 2010)

I would use solar cells to charge a battery bank of deep charge batterys. 

All my lighting would be 12 VDC like on a sail boat. 

I would use 110 ACV only for a freezer and a refrigerator.

I would use a wind mill type generator to aid in charging my battery bank.

My generator would be a propane or desiel powered and I would only runn it when the battery bank needed recarging.

I would set up as many automatic timeing and motion activated wireing devises as possable to cut electrical useage when possable.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

Strangely our power went up a lot in Canada too, natural gas is ridiculously cheap in comparison. Am thinking that is a 3month bill right?

Sounds pretty similar to our place, sometimes one big cohesive system just isn't practical on a farm, we have small setups all over.
I think if you can setup a decent battery bank you will be doing great, then you can tie in all those panels and also have the generator top them up while running like mentioned. Then when the gen is off you should have power for a long time.
Freezers and fridges are our biggest user of power out here as well, of course we heat with gas and wood and don't need air conditioning. The newer ones can save a lot of power compared to the old ones and the specialty ones are really good but it is all so expensive. We are looking at more natural gas propane options but in other places that is not going to work. We are also canning and dehydrating more to cut back on fridge freezer space needed.
I recently got a new Kill-a-watt thing that tells you how much power whatever is plugged into it is using, really useful device.
It is a really nice feeling to have a place not NEED anything from the grid though, sounds like you are doing great.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

Woody said:


> That is a pretty scary electric bill! And, you have to pay for them to read their meter so they can charge you for their services? Something is not right there. I would send them a bill for allowing them to have their meter on your property, I'd say $145 per quarter would be about right.
> 
> Good score on the panels, I hope they are enough to suit your needs. Have you looked at your energy usage and seen anyplace you can cut back?


Charging massive amounts to provide services is the norm in Australia, and WE had to pay to have the power put on in the first place, $10,000 per pole (well the people that owned the place before us did). The panels will be enough for our needs if we are careful,. We look very carefully at where we use energy at the moment most is used to power freezers and water pumps, we don't watch TV or have many appliances beyond those that are essential.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

cnsper said:


> In addition, get some battery chargers so that when you are running the generator you are also charging the batteries with that.


We have a few (redundancy!), one of the reasons we will run a genny will be to make sure all battery banks are fully charged often.



BillM said:


> I would use solar cells to charge a battery bank of deep charge batterys.
> 
> All my lighting would be 12 VDC like on a sail boat.
> 
> ...


Yep will be charging deep cycle batteries, but a number of banks. Suits the farm better. Our lighting is 12v and mostly LED. But we have many other light sources if needed. 
Both the fridge and the freezer will have their own stand alone solar system. 
We have one gas genny and the new one will be diesel. We will run the diesel it when we need to, we have a big workshop and will probably find ourselves wanting to weld/plasma cut etc once or twice a week. Don't see any reason not to run it when it's needed.
This isn't a normal household. It's operation central for our families and friends. It's where veges are grown, animals are turned into meat/leather, cheese is made, cars are fixed, furniture is made, clothes are made.....etc etc We need to keep all this happening so use a lot of mechanical helpers. I've lived a pretty big part of my life without power (any power not even electric lighting) and I'm getting old and worn out, I have no desire to go back to boiling and scrubbing clothes for 8 hours per week, I'll keep my washing machine and put a bit of cash into fuel. 
We run our pumps on automated timing or pressure switches. No reason to use them anywhere else, nothing else is left on unless it's being used. If you've ever lived with a very limited amount of power you'll know that you DON'T leave things on, nothing worse than draining a battery bank for no reason.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

cowboyhermit said:


> Strangely our power went up a lot in Canada too, natural gas is ridiculously cheap in comparison. Am thinking that is a 3month bill right?
> 
> Sounds pretty similar to our place, sometimes one big cohesive system just isn't practical on a farm, we have small setups all over.
> I think if you can setup a decent battery bank you will be doing great, then you can tie in all those panels and also have the generator top them up while running like mentioned. Then when the gen is off you should have power for a long time.
> ...


Yep, 3 months. 
We don't use power for heating or cooking. We use bottled propane as back up cooking when the weather is really hot. Hot water is solar and wood. Not sure how the cost of propane differs here to other places, we are paying about $1.50 a liter..... (a 100lb propane tank costs about $150 to fill). It's so much easier to have small power systems on the farm, we are also working on two mobile trolley mounted systems to slot in place if we have any problems with the permanent ones and also to power up things like the egg incubator for a few weeks at a time, or a mobile work shop. 
Got my second pressure canner this week, got to empty the freezers asap, lol. We do a lot of dehydrating but I have been putting off some of this years canning as our summer has been horrible. Nearly finished the new canning kitchen so that should help a lot next summer. We plan on keeping one freezer but have added another 6 inches of insulation to the sides and a flue to pull heat from the back. We have a cool room for refrigeration and are putting a small section within that, that can be run from a small fridge compressor so it will be well insulated as well as easy to run with solar. The larger unit will only be on if we need to chill after a kill day. Our long term plans are to run a heat exchange to help cool this area. 
We have a swamp cooler but we don't NEED it, first time I ever had cooling in a house or car was a couple of years ago, can live without it. We are planning a large fern house on the southern side of the house to pull some cool air from on hot days. 
Truth is we don't really NEED any power, lived for many years without it quite well. But I do like some of the things it can do and I love having a bit of frozen meat for BBQ's etc. Back in the day we would kill a sheep, dress it, make a stack of smoked or corned mutton and then have some friends over for a BBQ with all the frying cuts, lol, same with pork. I missed having a few chops in the freezer. Pressure canners were unheard of in Australia in those days and we salted or smoked meat and dried or pickled vegetables. Washing was boiled and scrubbed, all cooking and heating was wood, lighting was kerosene, water pumping was wind, we dug a cellar for cheese, wine and cured meat storage, most everything else was by hand (including building the house, all hands tools) was a great time and I learnt a lot but I don't want to go back to that but I know I can!


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Wellrounded said:


> We have one gas genny and the new one will be diesel. We will run the diesel it when we need to, we have a big workshop and will probably find ourselves wanting to weld/plasma cut etc once or twice a week.


What brand/model? 
It isn't one of the 3600 RPM diesel Chinese units, is it?


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

LincTex said:


> What brand/model?
> It isn't one of the 3600 RPM diesel Chinese units, is it?


The little genny is a McCulloch, probably about 55 years old, lol. We haven't bought the big one yet, don't know what we'll get, still looking around.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Wellrounded said:


> We haven't bought the big one yet, don't know what we'll get, still looking around.


Are the Allmand / Terex / Amida / Ingersoll light towers available in Australia? These have a 14HP(?) Kubota D905 engine in them, usually mounted to a 6.5Kw gen head. These things run for DAYS on one tank of fuel, and we have some at work that have over 10000 hours of run time on them! If the 6.5Kw suits you, you would do well to find one to buy (about $2500 USD). They are also built with Isuzu and Lister-Petter diesels, but I have no personal experience with those.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

LincTex said:


> Are the Allmand / Terex / Amida / Ingersoll light towers available in Australia? These have a 14HP(?) Kubota D905 engine in them, usually mounted to a 6.5Kw gen head. These things run for DAYS on one tank of fuel, and we have some at work that have over 10000 hours of run time on them! If the 6.5Kw suits you, you would do well to find one to buy (about $2500 USD). They are also built with Isuzu and Lister-Petter diesels, but I have no personal experience with those.


I don't know but will investigate. Lister or Kubota would suit us well as we both have experience with those.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

A great thing about Oz is all the Japanese diesel engines available everywhere.

I love this guys ingenuity, *the electronic governor built to control engine speed is awesome* and would make any diesel engine a good generator candidate.

I googled "volkswagen diesel firewood machine" and came up with:

http://www.microcogen.info/index.php?topic=2695.0

http://mckgyver.pbworks.com/w/page/20654147/Firewood_Processor_Governor

http://arduinotronics.blogspot.com/2010/08/vw-diesel-governor-control.html


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## eddy_dvyvan (May 8, 2012)

Dont be selfish wellrounded!. You know that extra $$$ on your power bill is going to help the environment through the carbon tax and create thousands of high paying jobs for regular joe blow because of our new high tech green industry.



......meanwhile im trying to get off grid as well lol. And i have heard a few people mention it now. Prices for power in victoria are now at the point that a frugal household will actually be better off with batteries and solar panals rather than paying the power companies.

Have you got a tractor?. There are pto generators available. Might be a thought if you need to also have power on another end of the property ect


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

eddy_dvyvan said:


> Have you got a tractor? There are PTO generators available.


The farmers I have talked to with these typically complain that the governors on tractors are no where near sensitive enough to maintain close to 60Hz (you are 50 Hz in Oz, correct?) Regardless, they sag too much when placed under load and rev too much when load comes off.


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## eddy_dvyvan (May 8, 2012)

LincTex said:


> The farmers I have talked to with these typically complain that the governors on tractors are no where near sensitive enough to maintain close to 60Hz (you are 50 Hz in Oz, correct?) Regardless, they sag too much when placed under load and rev too much when load comes off.


Interesting, I will look into that some more before i look at getting one for myself.
And yes we are 50hz.

Also well rounded when your looking for a generator think low rpm large motors not those cheap little screamers. Also its a bonus if your cars also run on diesel. I buy my diesel in bulk and fill at home. Saves time and i get it at a good price and dont have to worry about the fluctuations each week.


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## -prepper- (Feb 3, 2013)

Does anybody know where I can buy a Solar panel . Cheap . I checked everywhere but I couldn't find one anywhere . Lowes , Walmart (didn't expect one to be there ) , Home Depot , Ace . Nowhere and I don't need a big one just one I those small 170 watt .


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## eddy_dvyvan (May 8, 2012)

-prepper- said:


> Does anybody know where I can buy a Solar panel . Cheap . I checked everywhere but I couldn't find one anywhere . Lowes , Walmart (didn't expect one to be there ) , Home Depot , Ace . Nowhere and I don't need a big one just one I those small 170 watt .


Im not sure what prices you have been given but these guys list prices and plenty of info. Good luck with your search

http://www.altestore.com/store/


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

eddy_dvyvan said:


> Also its a bonus if your cars also run on diesel. I buy my diesel in bulk and fill at home. Saves time and i get it at a good price.


Here in the US home heating oil is the same exact thing as red off-road (no tax) diesel, except for the spec on the dye. Buy it as cheap as you can!!!


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

-prepper- said:


> I don't need a big one just one I those small 170 watt .


170 watt is NOT small!!!! I have a 120 watt that is large enough that it really should be handled by two people. 170 watts worth of "Harbor Freight" panels (12 or more panels) would be impossible for one person to handle, one would be the size of a small porch roof. NOT small!

I have bought some panels from these guys on eBay with great results: http://www.solarblvd.com/ ("Solar Cynergy" brand)


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

eddy_dvyvan said:


> Dont be selfish wellrounded!. You know that extra $$$ on your power bill is going to help the environment through the carbon tax and create thousands of high paying jobs for regular joe blow because of our new high tech green industry.
> 
> ......meanwhile im trying to get off grid as well lol. And i have heard a few people mention it now. Prices for power in victoria are now at the point that a frugal household will actually be better off with batteries and solar panals rather than paying the power companies.
> 
> Have you got a tractor?. There are pto generators available. Might be a thought if you need to also have power on another end of the property ect


We've been slow going off grid as it has been cheap and easy in the past. Not any more. We have been using far too much power over the past few years, mainly freezers and water pumping over summer. Water pumps are about to be switched to solar and wind, they are all in place just need to hook it all up now. It should be enough water for the gardens, if not we'll relook at it before next summer. Freezers are nearly all shut down as I've been cannning like mad. We are only planning on running the genny for 4 hours a week or so, with a few shorter runs if needed. I've done all this before and it's really just about organising yourself to do everything at once. We've got an old twin tub washing machine and I can do a weeks washing in an hour with that. I have a commercial electric oven, I can bake a weeks worth of bread/biscuits and cakes in 2 hours (I can also use the wood stove of course) and have a standard propane oven/cooktop to be installed in the new kitchen. All other household appliances are small and the solar panels will cope with them. We will need power in the workshops but not for hours or days on end. We don't want to build a system that relies on the genny, they will be for back up and large machinery only. 
I'm pretty sure we have a tractor pack here somewhere, we DH has at least one of everything...LOL (we both love farm clearing sales!). We'd use it as a back up to our back ups but not as a regular source of power.

The times I've lived off grid before I've managed fine on much, much less power than we will have on the system we're working on at the moment. I'd be happy with a freezer, water pump,washing machine and power to charge laptop and phone. Any thing else is a bonus.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

eddy_dvyvan said:


> Interesting, I will look into that some more before i look at getting one for myself.
> And yes we are 50hz.
> 
> Also well rounded when your looking for a generator think low rpm large motors not those cheap little screamers. Also its a bonus if your cars also run on diesel. I buy my diesel in bulk and fill at home. Saves time and i get it at a good price and dont have to worry about the fluctuations each week.


Truth is eddy, we'll be getting what we can afford. We don't need to rush out and buy something tomorrow so will hunt for something suitable within our budget. We've rethought the time scale of going off grid and have decided that we'll take our house off the grid asap but my daughter will stay on grid for a while longer and take over the power bill. That way we can buy a bit of power from her while we sort out the bugs and look for our dream genny. We won't be looking at 'screamers' for many reasons, we don't like working on cheap engines for starters and I can't stand the bloody noise of the damn things. In an ideal world we'd come across an old diesel stationary engine fully restored and hooked to a modern gen pack for under a grand, not likely but we can dream.............


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Wellrounded said:


> In an ideal world we'd come across an old diesel stationary engine fully restored and hooked to a modern gen pack for under a grand, not likely but we can dream.....


Look into getting one of the Chinese diesels (like a ChangFa S195). I have a ChangChai ZS1110 and it is built to last decades.
http://www.microcogen.info/index.php?board=6.0


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## andy3 (Jul 4, 2012)

I have a light tower for portable power, emergency power and for my Scouting events. Love that Kubota engine.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

Sold a heap of unneeded tools and equipment yesterday, means our generator budget looks much healthier. We've got a long way toward flipping the switch in the last couple of weeks. Reconditioned our deep well pump and got two others ready to install, we still have some work to do on the windmill, having 4 alternatives to pump well water is a nice feeling. We've also set up an emergency fire fighting pump at the pond at the other end of the property and plumbed it into our main reticulation system (yep a 5th alternative). 
Been revising how we do things, have worked out a schedule to get all of our high power use chores done in two blocks of 3 hours per week. 
Still have two projects I want to see done, neither are urgent but will but still needed. First is building a solar heat bed for my propagation house, built them before so no big deal just need to find the time. The other is a large oven, my little wood stove isn't going to be enough when we have lots of people here. I have a large electric commercial oven, I have it running for about 3 hours per week and bake most of what i need then, filling in with a bit of baking in the wood oven. I like the idea of a community style bread oven, still need to do more research on this one.


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## eddy_dvyvan (May 8, 2012)

Evening wellrounded

set up a hinge on your windmill stand if you dont already have 1.


That way in the future as you get older you can still easily service it without climbing.

Just unlock the base and pull it down then pull it back up with your 4b and lock it back in.

Sounds like your making some great progress. Have you set the firepump up in a shed?. Dont forget to keep spare filters on hand. Air filters are the first to go during fires when you really need it working

Take care


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

Eddy we're preppers, my DH has spares for his spares, lol. The fire pump at the pond isn't there to fight fires, only to provide backup water to fill our storage tanks if needed, you'd have to be a bit crazy to go anywhere near that end of the property during a fire. It's not left there permanently, only when and if we need that water, no point having it sit there for years but it can be fitted in 5 minutes if need be now that we have the pipe etc laid. We've never had to use that water but it's nice knowing we can if we need to. For firefighting it sits next to the house and can be hooked to a number of water sources (we have more than one pump of course). We get a bit crazy with redundancy when it comes to something important.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

eddy_dvyvan said:


> Don't forget to keep spare filters on hand. Air filters are the first to go during fires when you really need it working.


Ditch the pleated paper element and retrofit an oil-bath unit. That will not plug with smoke.


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## eddy_dvyvan (May 8, 2012)

LincTex said:


> Ditch the pleated paper element and retrofit an oil-bath unit. That will not plug with smoke.


Thats a good idea. And not hard to make it up either :beercheer:

Cheers


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## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

Do your freezers have to be conveniently located in the kitchen or close to the kitchen?

What is the coldest temperature you get at your place at any point of the year day or night)?

Just some thoughts for you to kick around. If you had to contract for someone to do this it just wouldn't make financial sense but if you take it on yourself it would likely work to seriously reduce your cooling costs.

1.) Gut a refrigerator for the parts and then make your own super-insulated shell/box and attach multiple small doors thereby limiting the amount of cold air released when you open the door.

2.) Divert your water line so that it releases some of the coldness in the water into your fridge.

3.) Build a root cellar underground and place your freezer in the middle. Do as per #1 and build a walk-in, super insulate it, and as the coldness leaks out of the freezer shell/box it migrates into your root cellar, thus doing double-duty in terms of cooling. With this being underground, the ambient temperature is going to be low, so the differential temperature between the inside and outside of the freezer is going to be lower, thus decreasing the amount of cooling needed.

4.) Build an old-fashioned icehouse, preferably incorporated into your root cellar and load it up with thermal mass to store the cold. Replenish the cold on some of the coldest days of the year by opening the air shaft. Does it ever get below freezing in Australia?


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## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

Bobbb said:


> 3.) Build a root cellar underground and place your freezer in the middle. Do as per #1 and build a walk-in, super insulate it, and as the coldness leaks out of the freezer shell/box it migrates into your root cellar, thus doing double-duty in terms of cooling.


Good thought, but it doesn't work like that 

Energy is transferred, never created/destroyed. The energy coming in as electricity runs your fridge/freezer. If the temperature on the inside of your f/f is low, then that heat went somewhere. Specifically, it's released outside the unit (unless you're running the lines for the freon outside the room). If you put a freezer in the room, it will warm that room up a bit...probably not what you want in your root cellar


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

AdmiralD7S, Very true I wasn't going to address what's-his-name's comment but it is good to make sure the information on here is correct.

It is also important to point out that "coldness" or "cold" in the way it was referred to does not exist, failing to recognize that can lead to the above misunderstandings. Only heat and thermal energy exist, cold just represents an area with less of it, so fundamentally a cold water line cannot "release coldness" it can only absorb heat. You can also not "store cold" however you can store mass at a cold temperature and keep thermal energy away from it, which can be used to absorb heat at a later time.
This may sound pedantic but when you are talking about refrigeration and the like it becomes important.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

I love this concept, I saw it years ago and found it in .00023 seconds by doing a google search for "converting a chest freezer to a fridge"

http://mtbest.net/chest_fridge.html

http://www.off-grid.net/2012/10/03/freezer-to-fridge-conversion/

http://www.aselfsufficientlife.com/...on-the-most-energy-efficient-fridge-ever.html


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## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

AdmiralD7S said:


> Good thought, but it doesn't work like that
> 
> Energy is transferred, never created/destroyed. The energy coming in as electricity runs your fridge/freezer. If the temperature on the inside of your f/f is low, then that heat went somewhere. Specifically, it's released outside the unit *(unless you're running the lines for the freon outside the room)*. If you put a freezer in the room, it will warm that room up a bit...probably not what you want in your root cellar


I always appreciate good corrections. Thanks.

I didn't mean to imply that the compressor for the freezer would be smack dab in the middle of the root cellar. I imaged that the compressor was located on the top of the walk-in unit, isolated into a chamber and had a venting system of some sort to take the waste heat away and probably into the house itself or dumped into a water tank. I was focused on the shell of the unit and its insulative efficiency.

I recall reading about a commercial freezer the size of a building and due to a design flaw the ground under the entire building froze and there was all sorts of nasty frost heaving in the foundation, so the low temperature did in fact migrate out from the shell of the freezer unit.


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## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

cowboyhermit said:


> AdmiralD7S, Very true I wasn't going to address what's-his-name's comment but it is good to make sure the information on here is correct.
> 
> It is also important to point out that "coldness" or "cold" in the way it was referred to does not exist, failing to recognize that can lead to the above misunderstandings. Only heat and thermal energy exist, cold just represents an area with less of it, so fundamentally a cold water line cannot "release coldness" it can only absorb heat. You can also not "store cold" however you can store mass at a cold temperature and keep thermal energy away from it, which can be used to absorb heat at a later time.
> This may sound pedantic but when you are talking about refrigeration and the like it becomes important.


No need to hold a grudge. This is a different thread. I appreciate your effort to reformulate the description so that it fits with thermodynamic principles of physics.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

Our plans for running fridges and freezers off grid are pretty simple. We have a large cool room (was a freezer so the walls are freezer thick not fridge) inside this room we are building a small insulated cupboard, we'll use a small unit pulled out of a fridge to cool it and only use the big unit when we process livestock. Both the units will/do sit on top of the insulated room. We're only going to run one freezer, a medium size chest freezer, I've got some 4 inch cold room panel to double insulate it. At the moment both my fridge and freezer are not located in my kitchen (my kitchen is always hot, not a good place to try and keep something cool). When we go off grid I won't use a household fridge at all, just the cool room.
We do intend building a small cellar but that won't be until we have a few other projects finished. I'm expecting the cellar to sit on about 15 deg C, the last cellar I built was in a cooler climate and sat on 12 deg C. I intend to store cheese and vegetables in it.
We drop below freezing for a few hours overnight, a few nights per year. 
For us the easiest solution to running our refrigeration etc is to put a few solar panels on the roof. We don't NEED a fridge or freezer, they're luxuries and we're only willing to put a certain amount of effort into keeping them.


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