# Minimalist Energy Ideas



## JAK (Oct 15, 2005)

My post on Walden Pond under Homesteading made me think up some energy ideas and questions that I thought should go here:

1. If you had a freezer set at say 20degF, or whatever, could you fill the bottom foot or so with plastic containers of salt solution with a freezing point of 20degF and then only operate the compressor when you are generating electricity, or at solar peak?

2. What is the best system for doing laundry, for minimal time and space and energy? Could you automate it some that you do a load every day during the solar peak? Could you get the clothes dryer to use solar heat, or just get its heat from your solar hot water tank? How might you recover the heat from the hot moist air and hot water?

3. If you used your vehicle for charging your home batteries while driving to and from work or on errands, would it be cheaper than running a generator at home? Would it be cheaper than solar power? 
For a small 12v system, like for a camp, could you just keep your batteries in your vehicle, or on a special charging trailer, or two trailers, and then just tie them back them into your system when you are home?


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## JAK (Oct 15, 2005)

I looked into energy efficient dryers just to see how bad they really are.
I found a Thor ventless washer/dryer that runs on 12.8 amp 115v/60hz.
It is somewhat expensive, but uses only 1.4 kwh and 17 gallons of water for a full load.
If you did one load every day you could put it on a delay timer for solar noon.

What do 12vman and others do for laundry?


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## mightybooboo (Feb 10, 2004)

JAK said:


> My post on Walden Pond under Homesteading made me think up some energy ideas and questions that I thought should go here:
> 
> 1. If you had a freezer set at say 20degF, or whatever, could you fill the bottom foot or so with plastic containers of salt solution with a freezing point of 20degF and then only operate the compressor when you are generating electricity, or at solar peak?
> 
> ...


#2-clothesline

#3A-Yes and Yes.For real efficiency you would want a 3 stage auto regulator and a high output CONTINUOUS rated alternator though.

#3B-Yes,I sorta did that at one point in time.Tears up automotive batteries fast(like 60-90 days!),you would want true deep cycle batteries for the homepower part of the set up,and an isolator to charge first the starting battery,then it switches to your secondary batteries.Also prevents you from discharging the starter battery when hooked up to the home.

Boaters use their engines for battery charging,google marine supply places and see the nice setups they have for this.

BooBoo


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## JAK (Oct 15, 2005)

Thanks mightybooboo. 

Clothesline work very well and give that fresh smell. I was thinking of designing a system around an efficient condensing washer/dryer combo and then using the clothesline when wanting to use power for something else or to allow the batteries to recover after a few days of fog and rain. I think they most efficient washer/dryers use as little as 0.5 kwh for the wash cycle and then 1 kwh for the dry cycle. Not sure how big these loads really are. Perhaps big enough for a family of three at 1 load per day. Perhaps not. The other thing I like about the combination is that you could put it on a delay timer to do the wash and dry and solar noon while you are away. 

This is the dryer I found on my internet search:
http://www.thorappliances.com/
http://www.thorappliances.com/advantages/specifications.php
http://www.thorappliances.com/comparison/index.php


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## mightybooboo (Feb 10, 2004)

Check out Splendide and Staber,2 more that might be what you would consider.

http://www.splendide.com/

http://www.staber.com/
You can get Staber washers cheaper at other places,pretty pricey but oh so user friendly.

BooBoo


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## JAK (Oct 15, 2005)

Thanks again. There are none of these condensing dryers in town here but good to know they are available in North America.

As much as I like wind power because there is more wind than sun in winter I am now leaning towards a small generator for winter backup. I think wind power would too tall of a tower for a small system and considerable more batteries for backup than a solar/generator combination. Also you can recover some heat of the generator in winter and you should not need to use it in summer. Also requires a good site, especially in the smaller sizes like 500w. My land faces on the river to the South, and half the time the wind is from the North.


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## Tango (Aug 19, 2002)

Applaince choice eliminates the need for modifications, I would think. For now I hand wash my clothes. When I have towels or comforters in the winter I go to the laundromat. A Staber is on my wish list and I hope to buy one in the next two years. And being a stay-on-the-farm writer/farmer, I will time my laundry for peak use. Drying by clothesline. There is an appliance called the spin-x which removes excess water and detergent from clothes before they are placed in a dryer or on a line. It doesn't use heat just rapid spinning. I doubt I'll need it but some people might like it. It would be more useful for me in the winter months.


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## SolarGary (Sep 8, 2005)

JAK said:


> My post on Walden Pond under Homesteading made me think up some energy ideas and questions that I thought should go here:
> 
> 1. If you had a freezer set at say 20degF, or whatever, could you fill the bottom foot or so with plastic containers of salt solution with a freezing point of 20degF and then only operate the compressor when you are generating electricity, or at solar peak?
> 
> ...


Hi JAK,

Interesting stuff.

Dryer:
I think electric dryers pull about 4 KW(?) -- so if it runs an hour it uses 4 KWH. This is (4 KWH)(3412 BTU/KWH) = 14,000 BTU over an hour.
My 130 sqft shop solar air collector puts out about 17,000 BTU/hr of air at about 110 to 120F -- so, seems like this might work if you could collect all the air and blow it through the cloths. A good way to use the heat when its not needed for space heating?
I saw one arrangement in a house designed by Lawrence Technological University that had a large solar chimney for ventilation, and they had a clothes drying rack that could be lifted up into the chimney for fast drying.
http://www.btfsolar.com/zeh02.pdf
http://www.btfsolar.com/zeh04.pdf

Battery Charging:
I wonder how hard it would be to use braking energy and downhill deceleration energy to charge batteries? Kind of like a hybrid car does?

On another forum, someone suggested collecting waste heat from your car engine to heat water, which you use when you get home -- seemed like an interesting idea.
Or, use a fixed fossil fuel generator to charge the batteries in your electric car, and capture the waste heat from the fixed generator for space or water heating? This might make use of 80%(?) of the energy in the fossil fuel as opposed to maybe 30% if you used it directly in the car?

---
Saw the Al Gore movie last night -- thought it was pretty good.

Gary


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## Guy_Incognito (Jul 4, 2006)

I'm the the process of designing my off-grid house at the moment and I'm looking to maximise any heat/energy sources I've got.

I'm already going to have a heat exchanger + a small pump to transfer the heat from my listeroid genset's coolant to the solar hot water system.

I'm looking at recycling the waste exhaust heat to give me hot air for a standard (non-condensing) dryer. Should be able to run with low energy draw (3-500Whr) for the fan/drum motor. Don't need heat for anything else here - the property's only 15 degrees south of the equator. But maybe a small exhaust-heated pizza oven might be the go when I'm not drying stuff. 

Basically, you want a dryer that pushes the hot air out of a vent out the back, as opposed to some types that blow out a front grille.What I was planning on is to have two car mufflers in series from the lister exhaust inside a metal box attached to the side of the dryer, with all the other inlet vent holes blocked. This will draw air over the hot mufflers into the dryer when the genset is running and hopefully dry my wet socks fine. Will have to keep an eye on the temp, though I expect the general high airflow from the fan motor will keep things under control. Either that or I'll bleed some cold air into the vent after the mufflers.


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## jnap31 (Sep 16, 2005)

I have Always used a clothsline works great/not complex and the price is right. I cant understand why a minimilist would want anything else.


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## Guy_Incognito (Jul 4, 2006)

jnap31 said:


> I have Always used a clothsline works great/not complex and the price is right. I cant understand why a minimilist would want anything else.


Well, for me, it's because the average rainfall where our place is going to be built is about 160 inches a year  It rains Every Single Day in the wet season, and apparently a lot of remote systems in the region had spectacular battery failures a few years ago when it was cloudly constantly for 5 months straight, so odds are good the genny will be used at least weekly.

So "minimalist" for me will *require* some sort of drying system.
But yeah, if you're happy with the clothesline and it gets the clothes dry before they grow mould , that's the way to go.


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## jnap31 (Sep 16, 2005)

If you put where you lived in your profile so it shows I might have known that. Guessing you live in Hawaii or most likely in western WA or ORegon, possibly SE alaska.


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## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

Guy_Incognito said:


> Well, for me, it's because the average rainfall where our place is going to be built is about 160 inches a year  It rains Every Single Day in the wet season, and apparently a lot of remote systems in the region had spectacular battery failures a few years ago when it was cloudly constantly for 5 months straight, so odds are good the genny will be used at least weekly.
> 
> So "minimalist" for me will *require* some sort of drying system.
> But yeah, if you're happy with the clothesline and it gets the clothes dry before they grow mould , that's the way to go.


Do food dryers work in your area? Would a larger/modified system like that work where it had clothes hangers in a drying chamber instead of food racks?

What's the daily humidity like in your area?


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## frazzlehead (Aug 23, 2005)

What about a shed/room/space with clotheslines and a fan? 

I was thinking about food dryers and grain drying setups, and got to imagining options....


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## babysteps (Sep 11, 2005)

In response to the efficent laundry/dryer question here is a solution I've come up based on a recent article in _Countryside_ about the "Great Laundry Delima". Wear it, wear it, wear it, wear it, wear it,......is it dirty yet? Does it smell yet? NO? Then wear it some more.....My daughter and I have reduced laundry by practicing this. My husband can't practice this as much because when he works he gets very dirty and very sweaty. He also mush have pretty clean clothes for his public service job (those clothes however, get dirty almost every day in the summer). I however can wear the same skirt 5 days in a row and I've gotten my daughter to just keep rotating those fashions until there is dirt on them. We then hang stuff on the line. Last year I started hanging stuff year round on the line, on hangers in the laundry room, on drying racks by the woodstove. Of course there are the occasions when it has to be dryed NOW and we use the dryer. About one load a month. 

Happy laundry...:walk:


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## SolarGary (Sep 8, 2005)

Hi,

I think that one of the best minimalist energy saving ideas is the low mass sunspace attached to a house for space heating. 

Here is one version as explained in the Shurcliff 100 Solar Inventions book:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/ShurcliffPart1/PolySpace.htm

It combines simple construction, very low cost, and huge heat generation capability. I think that with todays fuel prices, that it would have a payback period inside of 1 year in most heating climates. 

One of the keys is keeping the thermal mass in the attached sunspace low so that it heats quickly when the sun comes up, and does not store any heat (which would just be wasted when the sun goes down). The idea is to capture the heat and get it into the house immediately -- this is the big difference from the usual greenhouse approach which includes lots of thermal mass to keep the greenhouse space from going below freezing at night. Some form of floor covering may be required to keep the floor from storing too much of the heat -- maybe something like garden bark with black pastic over it?

Gary


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## JAK (Oct 15, 2005)

Lots of great ideas. I agree that a clothesline and wearing clothes longer is most in keeping with minimalism. I think natural fibres like wool and cotton and linen are best suited for this. I suppose in a tropical rain forest you could wash and wear, and skip the dry cycle since you will just get wet soon enough. That is more or less what I do hiking in summer. I have thought of a solar drying room that converts to a wood heated drying room in winter, also a sauna. I think having a sauna could also reduce water use in winter. I think an attached greenhouse would be awesome also, especially for a really small place. I would divide the house into a North dry zone and a South humid zone. The wall separating the two would also be good for capturing a storing the solar heat, and could store the heat from the wood stove also. I would build things like the sauna and hot water tank and bake oven into that center wall also. Cob would work very well for such a center wall.

The dryer that I linked to above uses very little power because it is a ventless condensing dryer. They are rare in North America but common in Europe. They use cold water to condense the moisture out of the air and recycle the heat. I think this would be the way to go for sure if you had a dryer since it saves you from venting hot air outside as well as saving you money. That particular model by Thor looks identical to the model by Spendide, and is a combination Washer/Dryer. The disadvantage is in doing several loads at once. It is also slower, at 1-2 hours for drying instead of 30-60 minutes. But it uses only 1500w peak, and about 1.5kwh over a complete wash/dry cycle, which they compare to 7.5 kwh for a conventional wash/dry cycle. It also uses less water, including the cold water used for condensing. I think their full loads are a little smaller that what we would consider a full load, but the capacity is 2 cubic feet. If you got in the habit of doing one load a day you could put in on a timer to run at solar noon, so that you wouldn't be operating as much directly off the battery. You would still have the inverter losses, but at 1500w peak and 1.5Kwh per load I think it wouldn't be worth messing with DC conversion, especially if you were to run it off a small generator in winter while topping up the batteries. At 1500w peak it could be a really small generator, like the 900w Honda, which would make the battery charging a lot more efficient also. If you get 900w from the sun or the generator and only up to 700w off the battery you would suffer a lot less battery loss, or get away with less batteries altogether. Another nice thing about a combined washer/dryer is that it makes sense if you still want to use the clothesline most of the time, and only use the dry cycle for small items on the last load of the day. It is easy to put sheets out on the line, but all those teeny weeny kiddy socks and undewear take a lot of time, though they are awefully cute. You still get to fold them.

Also, it would still be nice to have a sauna also, even for a minimalist. 
We shouldn't get to carried away with the horsehair and self-flagellation.
You know what they say about too much of a good thing. 

Here are those links again for the Thor and the Spendide:
http://www.thorappliances.com/
http://www.thorappliances.com/advan...cifications.php
http://www.thorappliances.com/comparison/index.php
http://www.splendide.com/
http://www.staber.com/


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## Guy_Incognito (Jul 4, 2006)

jnap31 said:


> If you put where you lived in your profile so it shows I might have known that. Guessing you live in Hawaii or most likely in western WA or ORegon, possibly SE alaska.


That's alright, you're only a half a world out  . I live in Queensland, Australia.
(quietly goes and alters his user info to suit.)

And as for discussions on minimalism - if you already have something that produces waste heat regularly, then might as well put it to use.
But that'd probably be efficiency as opposed to minimalism.

I've got an LG washer-dryer combo here. It's a condenser dryer and it works ok, but it's slow compared to "normal" dryers. Complete cycle time is about 3 1/2 hours wash and dry. Water usage is excellent, but I couldn't tell you the power usage though.

A bit of a poor design on the condensing side - there's no lint filter and wet fluff gets sucked up to the small circulation fan, jamming it every 6 months or so. In theory the condensing water is supposed to rinse the fluff back down to the pump to get pumped out , but it doesn't really happen in practice.
It doesn't concern me too much - all the electronics are on the top of the unit, so it's two screws to get the cover off and a half-dozen more to get the fan out and clean the fluff out. Doesn't cause any serious damage - it cuts out on overheat after about 15 seconds with it stalled, but it'd mean a regular service call if you didn't know how to fix it.


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## JAK (Oct 15, 2005)

Thanks for the feedback on washer-dryer combo and condensing dryers. I have heard of them but I have never seen one in operation. They are not at all common in North America and would be particularly well suited to Canada in winter instead of shoving all that heat outside. The government never even mentions them when they talk about things to do to save energy. I think this is because we don't buiild them, and so nobody even knows about them, and then the industry says there is no demand for them. Go figure.

Do you use it in combination with a clothesline. Do you wash sheet and towels first and put them out and then do small stuff last and leave them in to dry full cycle. Would that work? Is the spin cycle wicked fast. How much dryer are they after the spin? That would help with the clothesline also.


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## Guy_Incognito (Jul 4, 2006)

JAK said:


> Do you use it in combination with a clothesline. Do you wash sheet and towels first and put them out and then do small stuff last and leave them in to dry full cycle. Would that work? Is the spin cycle wicked fast. How much dryer are they after the spin? That would help with the clothesline also.


It's a 7.5kg washer, but only a 4.5kg dryer as you need a bit of air space around the clothes you're drying, so it's more suited to smaller loads if you want to wash+dry.

Generally, big stuff (sheets,etc) we hang out on the line and don't bother about the dryer.

Spin on the LG models is 1400RPM and cotton/towels come out barely damp - synthetics come out practically dry. Clothes dry in about an hour or so on the line in the shade. Mind you, that's under the fierce Australian tropical sun, so your mileage may vary.

But for convenience you can't beat chucking a load in and going out for half a day to come back with clean dry clothes. Especially handy for me as I finish work about 7pm and can put a load of my work clothes + kids school gear when I go to bed - all clean and dry when I stumble out of bed in the wee small hours of the morning.

One thing to note with the condensor dryers is that they do use a bit of water continually - it's a squirt of water + pump out every minute or so for mine. If you're on a pump pressure system you might have to factor in the extra cycling of your pressure pump. Or get a bigger accumulator.


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## JAK (Oct 15, 2005)

Wicked. They make so much sense.

For the water use I understand they use about 3 gallons of cold water for the condenser in the dry cycle, probably more if the water is not so cold. I guess ideally you would use softer rainwater for the washing maching, but colder well water for the condensor dryer. I can see what you mean about the pressure pump cycling while the dryer is running. I am not sure how much pressure the dryer needs to work properly but you could get a larger accumulator like you say, and set it on a timer so as not to trigger on while the dryer is running. Pressure might drop below normal but the dryer should still work, as long as you get enough of a squirt. I'll bet 20psi would still be enough rather than 40psi. It would also be nice to have a motor and pump that is lower power but runs longer. It still needs to be able to keep up with the shower and washing machine, just not both at once. Shorter, more direct, and larger diameter plumbing would help also to get the same flow-rate at a lower system pressure, unless your shower is way upstairs.


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## JAK (Oct 15, 2005)

Well that was wierd. Just found this article:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/yago99.html


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## Valduare (Aug 27, 2005)

hey jak you mentioned up above that your land faces a river? why not put in a micro hydro system in. year round power. you can generate more then you'd ever need then.


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