Editing 2009-040

From: Amanda Lavers <amanda.lavers@gmail.com> Date: 2009-10-27 (Tue) 09:27:31 ADT Subject: off grid questions Hello! I've just sent in my SolarNS membership. I've been on your mailing list for some time but not an official member. My partner, Jonathan, and I took Don Roscoe's course in Bridgewater several years ago and have built an offgrid strawbale house with a heritage timber frame near Keji. We always have lots of questions and sometimes we spin our wheels forgetting to ask people for advice. So I'm going to give this a whirl and see if whoever reads these emails happens to have any advice! We installed a MagnaSine inverter and programmed it in "Search Mode" so that the inverter powers down when there are no loads. This saves a lot of energy since the inverter isn't running in the night or while we're away. But it does mean that we need to have DC circulator pumps for our solar hot water and heating (we haven't finished installing our heating system, are presently just using a woodstove) - just hoping to talk to someone who lives offgrid and may use this programmable "search" feature on the inverter and to source some DC circulator pumps. We've connected with Simon Melrose and a couple of the other off-griders over the years who are profiled on your solar home showcase but just wondered if there are other ways you can direct us to other off-griders? I must commend you on your website, it has been a very useful resource for us over the years as we've been building - so there are many tangible benefits to your website that you might not even know about! We've also been struggling a bit with the design of our heating system because we're trying to pre-heat hot water both with solar and wood and to use hot water for both domestic and space heating. If you happen to know anyone with such a system, we'd really like to connect with them. We bought a two-tank system from EnComm but need more detailed drawings to finish plumbing it. Thanks again for any advice you can send our way, Amanda

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