Practical Solarpunk
Page Last Updated 20240606
Originated 20240506
What do you mean #PracticalSolarpunk?
When I came across the term "Solarpunk" it all too often seemed entwined in fantasy fiction or AI generated art, and although I love some good speculative fiction we need action to start making these dreams a reality.
So assuming doing anything is better than doing nothing I looked at what I had at my disposal, mostly gaffer tape and imagination, and started making some changes. My goals were to try and lessen my families impact, protect the biosphere, and learn what works along the way.
One of my biggest inspirations is Simon Dale's "Hobbit home" which I've been following since around 2010. The project has grown considerably, and lots of details and ideas can be found on his website linked below. It is hard to explain how big an impact reading about the evolution of the Hobbit House had on me. That someone with limited practical homebuilding experience, but a lot of confidence and energy could build such an amazing and earth concious home was truly inspiring. It's an example I find myself returning to whenever I have an idea but start to rule it out because I lack the skills, or funds, or whatever that I have convinced myself you must have to succeed.
Water Conservation
Rain Barrels
- Backgarden - Two 55 US gallon barrels
These are connected in parallel to the guttering that collects off half of the back of our house. The parallel connection is via a hose pipe connected to taps at the bottom of each barrel. Both taps are usually left open so as water drains from the roof into barrel A it naturally balances between both barrel A and barrel B via the connecting hose. This method allows me to drain from both barrels via a single tap or from the hand-cranked pump inserted in barrel A.
The containers are sealed and treated to prevent mosquitoes which does limit how the water can be used but is essential in this environment. I've installed a hand cranked pump to fill watering cans as it is more effective than gravity fed filling, and allows me to draw from the very bottom of the tank ensuring we don't get a layer of sediment along the way.
Cleaner Energy
Sun Powered House
In 2022 we had 40 solar panels installed on our roof in two arrays. The smaller array is of ten panels on the garage roof with an unobscured view of the sky to the south south-east. The larger array consists of thirty panels mounted on the back roof of our single story home. This has an unobstructed view to the west south-west. As we're on the Gulf Coast of Florida the panels get plenty of sun, and were installed with fasteners rated for a category 5 hurricane.
This system is net metered during normal operation. However, we also have 14kWh of battery backup which is kept in a charged standby state by the solar controller. If the grid fails the system automatically switches us over to off-grid operation, using the batteries to power our household 120v system. The changeover disconnects us completely from the grid, ensuring that no power is fed back to the grid during outages which could be dangerous for line repair crews. The changeover to off grid operation is so fast that our household supply is uninterrupted, allowing our work computers and backup serevr to continue normal operation, and more importantly the icecream in the fridge to stay frozen!
Our goal here was to power our everyday lives on solar, and also have a reliable solution for multi-day grid outages caused by hurricanes or other catastrophic weather events. With more than 18 months in service I am happy to confirm that so far everything appears to work as planned.
Sun Powered Car
Once the solar panels were up and running the next logical step for me was to get some form of transport I could charge from them.
Pest Control
Less is more
I'm in Florida, and so unfortunately a certain amount of pest management is required to prevent termites devouring the house, and the cockroaches from taking over the ruins. However, we've found a reputable company that agrees with our desire to protect the pollinators, and so only minimal targetted treatments are used on a quarterly basis.
We also take a targetted approach to invasive species, such as the toxic crickets that nothing eats but will swarm and demolish a garden given half a chance. After a vicious swarm a few years ago we started a focused kill approach, aiming on destroying adults before they lay eggs. It involves stalking them around the garden, and executing each one by hand, but after two years we've noticed a dramatic reduction in our garden.
Unfortunately I'm a realist, and know that this reduction is just as likely to be down to our neighbours spraying as our control methods, but again it is better to do something and see what happens!