Kevin Carpenter Introduction

[kevinc_63366]

Hi,

I'm Kevin N. Carpenter and I live around St. Louis, Missouri, USA. As of this post, in August of 2007, I'm 47 years old, have (2) daughters from a previous marriage, and an infant daughter and pre-teen step-daughter from my current marriage. For the past 16 months, I've been blessed with having Evgenia (she's from Omsk, Russia) as my wife and partner.

Part of my blessing has been being exposed to life in other cultures. Beyond any doubt, I have seen happiness as MUCH lower levels of consumption than the typical American family.

When I was young, like at age 18, I had purchased 20 acres of land with the intention of growing walnut trees for my retirement fund. Spent a fair amount of time watching the solar and wind power world be born and develop. Unfortunately, those acres were sacrificed to my divorce. Fortunately, both my new wife and I like the concept of having a "country place", and maybe a retirement home there, so the watching and planning has started anew.

Currently we are looking at ~40 acres parcels in north-east Missouri. Often we find such places have Amish neighbors. Much to my surprise, given my mostly "loner" existence, I find the concept of living in an area where people are about as self sufficient as possible in todays world rather attractive.

Such a place will be complicated, since I require a day job for now (thank you court system for awarding my ex lifetime alimony) - but it will be a start: a place to plant fruit and nut trees, grow watermelons and berries, bees, etc. I just won't be able to do anything that requires daily attention, since we will likely only be there for weekends and holidays. Thus, I consider myself "ish" in that we can't leave our "civilized" life behind - at least not yet.

The wife and I are already looking at highly efficient homes, currently focused on timber-frame & SIP designs.

I'm starting to refresh my knowledge on PV and Wind systems.

Its silly for us to be "off-grid" from a short-term economic stance - we have power lines running alongside every property we look at; and the local power company will runs lines free to any home greater than 800 sq. ft.

That said, I'd like to minimize my use of coal/gas powered electricity and am willing to buck up the dollars to do so.

Because we are looking in a marginal wind area, class 2 except in the summer, when it degrades to class 1, I'm thinking a combination solar/wind system would be best.

For those who have looked into this, power storage is a big piece of the cost - for that I've contacted VRB Power. They claim they will be looking into the rural home/farm market space within the next 18 months - a time frame that works for us.

Curious if three-way systems are doable with commercially available parts: Wind, Solar, and Grid. In my ideal world, I'd have a small, say 24 hour, battery subsystem that would be primarily charged by wind and solar. When that became depleted, I'd switch over to grid, and/or use the grid to charge when there was neither wind or sunlight and the batteries were low. On the other side of that equation, once the batteries were at full charge, excess power would be fed back into the grid. A 2007 Missouri state law requires power companies to accept such input, although my reading is that I would pay retail and be credited something less (that however, is unclear).

Total budget, including a 5KW Pacwind Aeolian wind turbine and a few KW 16-panel tracking solar system is about $50K. Totally not cost-justifiable today (the interest on $50K would pay for any power usage I save), but an acceptable amount to pay for peace of mind.


Cheers,

Kevin
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[chadspad]

Hello & welcome to the site

[Shirley]

Hello Kevin - and welcome to the site.

I can't offer any info on the power side of things but I'm sure someone will be along that can.

Best of luck finding your 40 acres - and I do hope that you'll keep us up to date with progress

[kevinc_63366]

Hello Kevin - and welcome to the site.

I can't offer any info on the power side of things but I'm sure someone will be along that can.

Best of luck finding your 40 acres - and I do hope that you'll keep us up to date with progress

Well... we have our eye on 35 acres. I need to sell my stock options to pay for it, and I got greedy. I had a sell order in, the stock jumped $5, and I "pigged out" and canceled the order waiting to see what it toped out at. Next day it hit my sell price, went up another $0.25, and has been well below that ever since. We tried putting an offer in with a sole contingency on stock price, but that didn't fly. Once things bounce back, and I have faith they will, we will make a cash offer.

Thinking about starting with a Post & Beam garage with an 40 sqm apartment on top. It would suffice for weekend stays, and give us some experience building with Post & Beam and SIPs for a fraction of the cost of the main house. We will need a garage anyhow, and septic systems, cisterns (rain and greywater), etc. so much of the cost will eventually need to be expended anyhow.

Cheers,

Kevin

[red]

hi and welcome

[Millymollymandy]

Hi Kevin and good luck with finding your plot of land and the future!

[Thomzo]

Hi Kevin

Good luck with your project. How exciting. Do let us know how you get on. Starting small with something that you are going to need anyway sounds like a great idea.

Maybe in the long term you can rent the apartment out once the house is built. Or you might find someone who is willing to work the land and keep an eye on the place while you are away in exchange for free accommodation.

Zoe

[kevinc_63366]

Hi Kevin

Good luck with your project. How exciting. Do let us know how you get on. Starting small with something that you are going to need anyway sounds like a great idea.

Maybe in the long term you can rent the apartment out once the house is built. Or you might find someone who is willing to work the land and keep an eye on the place while you are away in exchange for free accommodation.

Zoe

Now THATS an excellent idea. Only kicker on the second part is that the place wouldn't be available for us to use on weekends. It will only be a small studio apartment (say 40 sqm or 400 sq ft), but it would suffice for us after the house was built until we moved out there permanently. I could rent the house. Its country, the income would be small, but having someone live there is of value.

[Thomzo]

It will only be a small studio apartment (say 40 sqm or 400 sq ft)

Believe me, that's not small. I know of 2 bedroom houses in West Swindon that are smaller than that!

Years ago I worked for an international house building company. The guys who came over from abroad were absolutely stunned at how tiny new houses are in the UK (and this was 15 years ago, they're even smaller now). In fact someone did say that the sizes would be illegal in their country (I think that was the states).



Zoe

[kevinc_63366]

In fact someone did say that the sizes would be illegal in their country (I think that was the states).



Zoe

I think the minimum legal bedroom size in the USA is 80 sq ft. - but apparently that includes closet space. Just to be clear, when I say 400 sq. ft. I'm talking the inside dimensions of the outer walls - that includes everything: halls, bathrooms (water closets), kitchen, etc.

Here is a link to a sample plan: http://www.familyhomeplans.com/plan_det ... mber=94343

[Thomzo]

Just to be clear, when I say 400 sq. ft. I'm talking the inside dimensions of the outer walls - that includes everything: halls, bathrooms (water closets), kitchen, etc.

Hi Kevin
Yes so was I. As far as I am aware, there is no legal minimum size for any room in the UK. There is a minimum ceiling height but that's all. Many new houses have a room 6" x 9" which is classed as a bedroom (54 sq ft). Some are even smaller. I am not kidding when I say that there are houses smaller than 400 sq ft. I was looking at houses with my lodger recently and we saw several 2 storey, 2 bedroom houses that had a footprint of less than 20" x 10".

In fact, I know someone who has just paid 170,000 gbp for one such house near here and the garden is only 10" x 12"!

I love the look of the garage on that website. It's really cool. What a fantastic project. Good luck.

Cheers
Zoe

[kevinc_63366]

Zoe -

Thanks for the international education! I have a side business where I rent "starter homes" (we have 5 units currently, with hopes to someday own about 10). These homes are typically about 1000 sq. ft and are considered small by most people here in the mid-west part of the USA.

That said, my in-laws in Omsk, Russia, live in a 72 sqm house (about 720 sq ft.) an it feels more "roomy" than my Mom's house of almost double that size.

Regarding the project: We are off to visit a Timber Frame manufacturer/builder (frame only) this Saturday. Turns out we have one about 50 miles from the property we are looking at, which would be very convenient. If we don't like them (and I almost scratched them off my list until they agreed to use a different SIP maker), my top two companies are in Kansas - about 200-300 miles away. Still not bad. Many in the USA use Canadian companies or companies from either coast of the USA (1000+ miles away from my location). In any case, the visit should prove educational.

I have started asking public aquarium friends if they are interested in the contents of my aquarium. So far, I've received some interest. I really need to shut that energy intensive project down. Last month we averaged 238kwh/day in power consumption. Fortunately, power is cheap here, about 4.7 cents/kwh, but I'm trying to develop a lifestyle that will only consume about 10% of that (what a good size hybrid solar/wind unit could provide). At LEAST half of that is the aquarium and related equipment. Figure cutting the house size in half and having a better insulated one should get me down another half, so 238base-120aquarium-60house size gets me to 60kwh/day. Getting that down to 20kwh'ish should be possible by reducing the numbers of computers to one or two from 7+ today, unplugging their UPSes and using more energy efficient lighting and appliances. At least that is the hope. If the aquarium ends up being more than half, it just becomes all the easier.

Kevin

[kevinc_63366]

Well... our bid on a 35 acre parcel was rejected - the owners simply want more than we feel its worth.

We bid on an 80 acre horse farm last Friday and were today yesterday that the owners rejected that offer because they decided not to sell!

Oddly, this is not the first time this has happened to us. I think some land sellers are expecting to make small fortunes on their property, and when real bids come in they are disappointed. At least here in the mid-west part of the USA, large track (> 10 acres) land values are way down - they tend to be cash deals (financing unimproved (no building) ground is hard), and money is tight right now.

There was a new 80 acre parcel that come onto the market last Friday. A Google Earth look shows it being heavy in fields and light in woods, but we will at least go look at it this weekend. Suppose we can always plant trees, indeed, I have been planning on restoring some native short-needle pine trees on whatever we buy. These trees were the predominate species pre-1800s in the area. Post railroads and mining (mostly fuel for smelting), oaks and hickories have become the predominate species.

More later!

[Thomzo]

That's a shame that your bids were rejected. Good luck in your hunt.

Zoe

[kevinc_63366]

That's a shame that your bids were rejected. Good luck in your hunt.

Zoe

We are feeling "OK", somewhat disappointment of course. Reality was that neither parcel was ideal. The 35 acre lot felt a little small (we ideally want 60-80 acres), and had no natural water. We did like the neighborhood, and it was half-dozen miles from anything calling itself a town (e.g. it was REALLY quiet there). The 80 acre parcel had a VERY small spring (it produced water about as fast as you could pour it out of a coffee cup, but ran year round), was a little heavy in woods - but nice woods, complete with an old graveyard and lots of horse trails. Alas, it was but a half mile from the major Interstate Highway and about that far from the local town on that highway. e.g. It wasn't as quiet as we liked.

The good news is that we are getting better at understanding what we really want in a piece of property - so should recognize it if it exists and comes on the market. The bad news is that we have looked at everything that is close that is for sale in literally several thousand square miles of land (about 1/8th of the state of Missouri). So now we wait... and are likely to miss this falls planting season.

Cheers!

Kevin