Water from gasoline and other observations

Got up this morning to nearly empty water storage tanks. No time like the present to figure out how to get water from the well, 300 feet from the house. Straightforward way to do it would be to pick up the generator, stick it in the back of the pickup, and drive it out there and plug the well into it. But noooo..... have I done anything the straightforward way yet? (If you think about it, the simple and straightforward way to do it would've been to go, hat in hand, to the electric company and pay their extortion to reinstall my meter, then happily go on about my sheeple life until they quit sending electrons bouncing down the overhead wires, then worry about all this later. Sorry, didn't happen, ain't gonna happen :) ) Of course not. The straightforward, conventional way involves making "baa-aa" noises and paying someone else for the privilege of using their product on an ongoing basis.

Disclaimer: I know some of what I'm doing is not "approved" but as time and money and proof of things working come to pass, my 'jury-rigging' will be made more permanent and fail- (and fool-) safe. Not fail- and fool-proof, mind you, but safer.

To get juice to the well, I reconnected the branch supply to the breaker box I'm powering with the generator, then turned off all the breakers in the primary house box except the one that used to power this branch box, which serves to let power flow from the generator back upstream to the master main breaker box under the meter.

To clarify, my meter is out past the well, about 500 feet from the house. The well is on its own 20A breaker under the meter next to the house's 60A main breaker. Turning both of these breakers on will backfeed power to the main bus in the meter breaker box (also to the bottom lugs of the meter socket, I know--I have written a warning on the meter socket cover in magic marker warning of this to anyone, like an electric co. employee, who might go into the meter can) and back down the well lines to the well. So, using the breaker at the house, I can turn the well on and off from here. I'll draw and scan a diagram of what I'm talking about and post pictures as things settle down. Bottom line, we got the water tanks filled without needing two people to heave the generator into something and move it to the well.

Now, on to the other observations.....

If you want an analogy that truly fits, compare purchasing power from the grid to renting a car. When you rent a car or buy electricity from the grid (or stay in a motel or rent an apartment or rug cleaner or whatever you pay someone for the use of something), you pay weekly or monthly for the privelege of having something you can go use, and when it breaks, "they" will make it to where you can use it again. Of course, when they for whatever reason cease to function, your use of that [whatever] also ceases, and all you have left is a pile of cash receipts and memories.

Back to the car rental. Your other option is to save up your money and buy something, even if it's a beater/clunker, and use that for basic transportation until you save up to get what you really need or want. Of course, it's kinda tough to save while renting. Likewise, it's kinda tough to set up for going off grid when you're paying the power company for juice. It will take time, time and a bit of forbearance while acquiring the stuff. I can deal with that, and will deal with that, because after a few months, I'm through with the outlays and am down to just maintenance and a small amount of fuel for the generator, hopefully much less when I get a more efficient generator and large enough battery bank to make full use of the generator.

The biggest thing I must continue to do for now is keep my wife Denise's wheelchair charged. It will go 4 days on an eight- to ten-hour overnight charge. We shall see if we can make that happen on two four to five hour charges, or even a daily two to two and a half hour charge, because it makes sense that she will want to be up and moving around while the lights are all on. Short term, until we build up batteries and get enough inverter capacity to run what she wants to have use of while up in her chair, this will be a challenge.

My goal is to eventually get to a 4 or 5 hour generator run once a day. If I can locate and deal for a used propane refrigerator this is do-able. I've found one but haven't had the chance to talk with the owner of it (it's at a junkyard next town over, in a wrecked RV) and find out what it's going to take to get it. Our chest deep freeze is good for a day on a 4 hour run. The fridge is not keeping its cool with that, and I have doubts about running the fridge we have (an older side-by-side 18 cu ft) on an inverter, even one of enough capacity. From what I hear the compressor tends to overheat from the modified sine wave power, too much slamming around of the voltage on a 60 cycles per second consistency.

We do have a small ''dorm size'' refrigerator that I consider a throwaway for experimentation purposes, but that will require more inverter capacity as well. Time will get us there.

Biggest headache we're experiencing is washing clothes for the moment. Heating water is not a problem, simply because it is May, it is 95 degrees, and a cool shower feels wonderful this time of year. We're finding that everything else must be shut off to power up the washer, especially now that I've reconfigured the wiring to provide 220v to the well.

It is simply an inconvenience, not a calamity. To me, it is less of an inconvenience than having to pay the power company for spotty service, and having nothing when they don't provide it.