hi I'm Robyn

Robyn67

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Hi I'm Robyn and live on a small farm in New England area of NSW and just found your wonderful site. We are attempting to get a better work life balance, reduce chemicals and our affect on the environment, and try to recycle or upcyclemas much as we can. We try to be self sufficient in many areas, veggie growing we attempted but just didn't grow enough and we also focussed on other areas. So we have alpacas, sheep, chickens, ducks, a cat and couple of dogs. We make our own yoghurt, bread, beer, cleaning products, deodorants, cheese sometimes etc. We would love to be fully off grid without compromising our current life - so at the moment we are around 75% as we do have a large battery which gets us through all except winter, but our hot water is still grid connected. Tank water (of course on a farm) and wood heating. I also sew, quilt and spin and hubby has become very handy with tools. We make things from our alpacas and sheep and sell these. Excess Eggs we usually give away and are just starting our adventures in breeding poultry.
 

ClissAT

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Welcome Robyn.
Sounds like you are very busy with a good mix of SS products.

re cooling in summer. I am currently investigating the use of secondhand caravan aircon units run by 2 panels with a small battery to act as a buffer.
It would be completely off grid & only needed when the sun is hottest so no problems & no other costs to running it but it would only do 2 small rooms or one large room.
Caravan aricon units that are designed to run on solar powered vans do a good job running from that small power source.
 

Robyn67

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Yes it keeps us busy (sheep shearing today and building a big brooder)

That sounds a good idea, Clissat. Especially where you are, air con would be really needed. I don't think they take up much energy to run. Our big killers are the electric kettle, stove and oven. But its hard to cook dinner in winter at around 3pm, hence why our battery doesn't last till morning.
We've just learned to do things a bit differently. The dishes are done in the morning, we only wash clothes in the day time etc.
 

ClissAT

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Most rural properties I worked on either had gas cooking & hot water or if an older setup it was oil or wood stove & hot water.
 

Robyn67

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Thanks Steve & letsgo.

Our house is all electric. The house had a new kitchen with new electric appliances when we bought it, so much as I love gas cooking, it would be silly to get rid of it.

We put in all the solar and battery - and if your interested we got an LG battery and the invertor system is by an Australian company Redback.

We installed a new electric hot water system instead of solar as Redback are just around the corner from implementing a system where excess solar energy heats your hot water first before battery and grid. We could install this too with an adaptor (my layman terms for it) but it's another 1000k and we'll wait for it to come to us free.
 

Sherry Robitson

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Hi I'm Robyn and live on a small farm in New England area of NSW and just found your wonderful site. We are attempting to get a better work life balance, reduce chemicals and our affect on the environment, and try to recycle or upcyclemas much as we can. We try to be self sufficient in many areas, veggie growing we attempted but just didn't grow enough and we also focussed on other areas. So we have alpacas, sheep, chickens, ducks, a cat and couple of dogs. We make our own yoghurt, bread, beer, cleaning products, deodorants, cheese sometimes etc. We would love to be fully off grid without compromising our current life - so at the moment we are around 75% as we do have a large battery which gets us through all except winter, but our hot water is still grid connected. Tank water (of course on a farm) and wood heating. I also sew, quilt and spin and hubby has become very handy with tools. We make things from our alpacas and sheep and sell these. Excess Eggs we usually give away and are just starting our adventures in breeding poultry.
Thanks Steve & letsgo.

Our house is all electric. The house had a new kitchen with new electric appliances when we bought it, so much as I love gas cooking, it would be silly to get rid of it.

We put in all the solar and battery - and if your interested we got an LG battery and the invertor system is by an Australian company Redback.

We installed a new electric hot water system instead of solar as Redback are just around the corner from implementing a system where excess solar energy heats your hot water first before battery and grid. We could install this too with an adaptor (my layman terms for it) but it's another 1000k and we'll wait for it to come to us free.
Hi, Robyn,
Welcome to the group,
I live in Texas....gets really hot here,but we survive. I really admire your life style.
 

Robyn67

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Thanks Sherry, and your hot heat probably has lots of advantages with what you can grow. I live in a cold climate, we never experience the sort of heat you do in Texas, but on the flip side, we get long winters and even our pasture dies off because of frost. We are planning to over sow one pasture with a more frost tolerant grass for next winter to reduce the amount of winter feed we buy.
 

Sherry Robitson

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Thanks Sherry, and your hot heat probably has lots of advantages with what you can grow. I live in a cold climate, we never experience the sort of heat you do in Texas, but on the flip side, we get long winters and even our pasture dies off because of frost. We are planning to over sow one pasture with a more frost tolerant grass for next winter to reduce the amount of winter feed we buy.
Yes our spring-summer gardening ends about July 4 except for peppers, egg plant, and okra due to extreme heat. Good luck with your grass crop.
 

Letsgokate

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We installed a new electric hot water system instead of solar as Redback are just around the corner from implementing a system where excess solar energy heats your hot water first before battery and grid. We could install this too with an adaptor (my layman terms for it) but it's another 1000k and we'll wait for it to come to us free.

We have instant gas which does work pretty good but in the summer hot days when you only want a small amount of hot water it's a pain as the hot water turns off. It needs a certain amount of flow to keep it going. We have 6kw of solar on our roof so when the gas one dies we will just go for a standard electric hot water with the same idea as you.
 

Robyn67

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Ah yes, waiting for the working product to die - just like us with our kitchen, but we'll be waiting quite a while before we can replace with gas.

We have 6kw too. And we are exporting a lot more than we are using at the moment (thanks to more hours of sunshine). Even with only 12cents a kilowatt feed in Tarif, this should mean it pays for the hot water system. obviously though winter is a different story.
 

Robyn67

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thanks Skippherron
 

Mark

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Hi I'm Robyn and live on a small farm in New England area of NSW and just found your wonderful site.
Hi Robyn, sorry my welcome has come so late - no excuses, I'm just snowed under with self-sufficiency at the moment lol :D

You sound very content with the lifestyle you are building on your property in another wonderful area of Australia.

One thing I will say about the move to be fully off-grid and that's I admire you working towards this goal but also not diving in too fast to ensure you don't overstretch your resources and fall inconveniently short.

Thank you for joining SSC :)
 

Robyn67

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thanks Mark,

And agree it's a good idea to try to go slowly, as I dont think I'm quite prepared to give up too much to be off grid. It takes an awful lot of planning and sticking to it - which sometimes we just can't do, like suddenly needing to wash & dry school uniforms at 9pm Sunday nights,
 
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