Steam!

[Liberty's Teeth]

I am looking for an alternative power source for my bug out location. It's north of here and cloudy more often than not so I feel that solar is not really the way to go. Wind is tough because of the terrain. I am kind of thinking about a steam powered generator. I have found a few interesting sites but the use of steam seams pretty sporadic. Does anyone here run a steam powered anything? What are your thoughts? Why would a finalized science like steam be so ignored nowadays?

I am leaning towards steam because I am surrounded by hardwoods so the fuel to run it is abundant and everywhere. Besides, what other electricity generator can also heat your house and give you hot water?

 

[geronimojoe85]

Don't rule out wood gas.

 

[6birds]

A steam engine, like the old hit-n-miss, are dead relaible, easy to build pressure with all sorts of fuel, so in that regard, you're on the right track.

Getting the power smoothed out to use for charging, that's an interesting question! You may want to dig on google, I'm sure it's been done a few times.

The guys at the State Fair that run the thrashers, logging operations, and band saws with the old steam motors ought to be your first group to talk to. I always enjoy talking to the old guys anyhow.

 

[philo]

My old boss retired to the woods and lives "off the net". He has redundant power sources, including: 8 solar panels, a steam powered generator, and a diesel generator.

He runs for the most part on 12 v dc and has a bank of storage batteries. Barring high electrical usage on multiple cloudy days, he can usually keep the batteries topped up with tthe solar panels, but he will run the steam generator every 2-3 days because the boiler also supplies his hot water.

Originally he lived in a yurt, then he built a second yurt as a "summer kitchen" to keep the heat of cooking out of the living quarters. After hearing about his plans, we poked fun at him for his latent hippie tendencies, but when we went to visit him it was inspiring.

He has since built a house on the property and he keeps the yurts as guest rooms. A real nice setup. I hope to copy parts of it someday. Maybe I'm a latent hippie at heart too.

 

[philo]

Oh, I guess I got off track. He bought his steam generator from a company in the pacific northwest. I don't know the company's name, but he originally found it on the internet. He did a lot of research prior to the purchase, and I think it was the only, or one of few companies that would make something small enough to use for residential size generation.

We all imagined comething the size of a locomotive, but size-wise its compares to a small woodstove(boiler) plumbed to a steam engine the size of a lawnmower engine.

 

[shibumiseeker]

There's a really good reason that society switched away from steam as soon as we could for smaller engines. From a practical engineering standpoint steam power on the scale of what we can do (excluding very high pressure turbines which is out of reach of the average DIYer)) is both inefficient, and extremely maintenance intensive. When I say extremely maintenance intensive, I mean on the order of near constant attention.

I thoroughly explored that route as we are off-grid here and set up for as much independence as we can get, and it simply was not a practical solution. I've been generating my own power for two decades now and it pains me to be surrounded by fuel and not being able to generate electricity with it. Recently I've been exploring using thermocouples Hi-Z Technology, Inc. but the cost per watt is still really high.

 

[Liberty's Teeth]

I really don't understand your inefficient statement. Do you heat your home with wood? From this standpoint if you do and you don't use steam your method of heating your house is inefficient. I feel it is all about extracting work from a medium. Yes, solar, wind, and even thermocouples require little or no attention but the do not provide massive amounts of energy on the home scale. At least with steam in a SHTF situation you can have power on demand. You can charge large battery bank in a couple of hours as opposed to days at the same time you are heating your house and water. Besides, have you ever asked the wind to blow or the sun to shine?

The thermocouples are interesting, how much does it cost per watt?

 

[ATOMonkey]

I really don't understand your inefficient statement. Do you heat your home with wood? From this standpoint if you do and you don't use steam your method of heating your house is inefficient. I feel it is all about extracting work from a medium. Yes, solar, wind, and even thermocouples require little or no attention but the do not provide massive amounts of energy on the home scale. At least with steam in a SHTF situation you can have power on demand. You can charge large battery bank in a couple of hours as opposed to days at the same time you are heating your house and water. Besides, have you ever asked the wind to blow or the sun to shine?

The thermocouples are interesting, how much does it cost per watt?

Steam works well if you're running it all the time, or for long periods of time. If you are shutting down and starting up frequently, it sucks.

That's why most boilers are very large. They're built to heat and/or power large buildings.

Scale and rust are big issues. Since steam is a constant pressure engine, you have to worry about your seals a lot too.

Water is also corrosive, unless it's DI or sufficiently softened.

As the water level gets low in your boiler, you can overheat the pipes and cause them to fail pre-maturely.

You also have to constantly feed it fuel if you want to use that fuel to make power or not. Can't let the boiler get cold.

You would need to size your boiler so that it was small enough to run continuously, but large enough to meet your power needs. That can be tricky.

 

[Regionnus Rattis]

I am looking for an alternative power source for my bug out location. It's north of here and cloudy more often than not so I feel that solar is not really the way to go. Wind is tough because of the terrain. I am kind of thinking about a steam powered generator. I have found a few interesting sites but the use of steam seams pretty sporadic. Does anyone here run a steam powered anything? What are your thoughts? Why would a finalized science like steam be so ignored nowadays?

I am leaning towards steam because I am surrounded by hardwoods so the fuel to run it is abundant and everywhere. Besides, what other electricity generator can also heat your house and give you hot water?

Wouldn't burning wood to generate steam "mark" your bugout location, from the smoke signals wafting into the air?

 

[jeremy]

Wouldn't burning wood to generate steam "mark" your bugout location, from the smoke signals wafting into the air?

Depends on how you Build the chimney...

 

[Regionnus Rattis]

Depends on how you Build the chimney...

How would you build the chimney?

 

[shibumiseeker]

I really don't understand your inefficient statement.

Inefficient as in the amount of fuel put in versus the amount of work put out, and add in the amount of time it takes to maintain the equipment.

Look, if you want to speculate on what you can do without having had any experience actually doing it, that's good and fine. I've been in this game producing my own power and built and tinkered with lots of different systems over the years, being a hands-on kinda guy. If you think you can make a steam powered generator that can have a 4-5k hours lifespan with minimal maintenance then I challenge you to do just that. Patent, and sell it, because you'll make a fortune. I'm willing to put good money on the fact that you couldn't, because it's simply not possible.

I'd invest good money in a power system that would allow me to burn or use my biomass that took an hour or less of my time per day. I've built methane digesters, ethanol distillation and engine conversion, woodgas and engine conversion, solar steam, wind, photovoltaic, hydro, and regular gasoline generators.

Being off-grid for most of my life I've heard every single "you ought to do XYZ, it's the greatest thing!" from lots of folks who have never even generated a single watt of their own electricity, and who really don't have a clue as to what it actually takes to generate a few kWh a day. And when you have to live with it every day, then systems that require constant tinkering or maintenance lose their appeal very quickly.

 

[jeremy]

How would you build the chimney?

By correctly sizing the Chimney to it's use and also through the use of diffusers. The Chimney on our shop smokes very, very little...

 

[jason867]

Inefficient as in the amount of fuel put in versus the amount of work put out, and add in the amount of time it takes to maintain the equipment.

Look, if you want to speculate on what you can do without having had any experience actually doing it, that's good and fine. I've been in this game producing my own power and built and tinkered with lots of different systems over the years, being a hands-on kinda guy. If you think you can make a steam powered generator that can have a 4-5k hours lifespan with minimal maintenance then I challenge you to do just that. Patent, and sell it, because you'll make a fortune. I'm willing to put good money on the fact that you couldn't, because it's simply not possible.

I'd invest good money in a power system that would allow me to burn or use my biomass that took an hour or less of my time per day. I've built methane digesters, ethanol distillation and engine conversion, woodgas and engine conversion, solar steam, wind, photovoltaic, hydro, and regular gasoline generators.

Being off-grid for most of my life I've heard every single "you ought to do XYZ, it's the greatest thing!" from lots of folks who have never even generated a single watt of their own electricity, and who really don't have a clue as to what it actually takes to generate a few kWh a day. And when you have to live with it every day, then systems that require constant tinkering or maintenance lose their appeal very quickly.

So how do you currently generate your own power?

I'd like to fit a woodgas setup to one of my old fords eventually, when time, space, and money permit. I'm not sure how well woodgas would work for a fixed location generating power and heat.

 

[jeremy]

I imagine Solar is possibly the main source of Power, followed with a pair of Generators as a backup...

 

[Regionnus Rattis]

By correctly sizing the Chimney to it's use and also through the use of diffusers. The Chimney on our shop smokes very, very little...

It still smokes and on a clear day...even the smallest smoke is easy to see, let alone smell the wood smoke. I would think a large amount of wood is needed to produce the steam necessary to do what the OP is looking to do.

The idea of a bugout location is concealment...at least in terms of getting away from everyone.

 

[CountryBoy19]

Wouldn't burning wood to generate steam "mark" your bugout location, from the smoke signals wafting into the air?

Not if the combustion was highly efficient.

The only time an efficient wood burner smokes is one start-up, and that is because it isn't hot enough to burn efficiently yet. Smell, yes, the smell will still be there, but I challenge anybody to take a modern, efficient wood-burner and tell when it is and isn't burning based upon visual smoke. Anybody trying to do that would certainly think that I never have a fire at my house, but I haven't turned on the electric heat yet this year. Smoke is just unburned fuel, if you burn that fuel up before it gets to the chimney there won't be any smoke signals.

 

[shibumiseeker]

So how do you currently generate your own power?

I'd like to fit a woodgas setup to one of my old fords eventually, when time, space, and money permit. I'm not sure how well woodgas would work for a fixed location generating power and heat.

For the house it's about 75% PV. The shop is mostly generator. When the sun is shining I can power the house, put some in the house battery bank, and pipe excess to the shop. When the sun is not shining the generator running the shop charges the batteries in the house. I burn about 5 gallons of gas a week between the shop and the house in either a Honda EU2000i or a 1000i depending on how much power I need. The generator runs on average about 6 hours a day (no sun=8-10 hours, full sun=1-2 hours).

In another couple months I'm adding more PV and battery which will bring our generator use down to about 3 gallons of gas a week.

Right now with mild overcast I've generated about 400 watts so far today from the solar array. Almost enough to keep up with the house.

 

[jason867]

I assume pv means photovoltaic, I may not be spelling that right.

So, just a bunch of solar panels on your roof? How much of your roof is covered?

 

[shibumiseeker]

I assume pv means photovoltaic, I may not be spelling that right.

So, just a bunch of solar panels on your roof? How much of your roof is covered?

Not much, I have 2 220 watt panels and 2 105 watt panels. About 3-4 square yards. The question you are now asking yourself is most likely how I can power an entire house on that, and the answer is that it's not a typical house which may use 30-50 kWh a day. It's built small with highly efficient lighting, small fridge, wood and gas heat and cooking and water heating. Yet if you walked into the house you'd not know it was off grid because it all works just like anywhere else. I just use 2-4kWh a day. It's built to take advantage of natural cooling, and in the summer when I have the most excess power, during the worst of the humidity and heat I can cool the place with 1 5kBTU a/c unit, which can run for 5-6 hours during the heat of the day off the solar panels, and for a few hours at night off the generator. The house with basement is about 1200 sq ft and was built from the ground up to be energy efficient.


When it's been your lifestyle for all of your adult life, you learn how to do it. It's much harder for someone going from a conventional on-grid lifestyle.