HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND – Could You Live Off-the-Grid? Part VI – Winter Wood-Working October 29, 2009
Posted by Kelly in : Could You Live Off-the-Grid?, HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND, Moving to Hawaii , add a commentHERE ON THE BIG ISLAND
By Kelly Moran
Could You Live Off-the-Grid? Part VI – Winter Wood-Working
Nighttime winter temperatures along the coasts, here, can get down to 60° F. Add the cooling effect of clouds and rain, and on the eastern side, at least, you can expect nights in the 50s. As you get above sea level, anywhere, ambient temperature falls 3° F for every 1,000 feet up, so many places here are downright chilly in the winter: Volcano, at 4,000 feet, gets frost!
But homes in Hawaii don’t have furnaces, and few if any are insulated against cold (or hot) weather. Other than wrapping yourself in heavy clothes, if you want to stay warm indoors, you’ll have to generate heat, and the easiest way is to burn wood.
You could soak all day in a wood-fired hot tub, but more likely you’d want to sit around the house near a modern wood stove or fireplace that’s engineered to send a lot of heat into the room, instead of up the chimney. They’re are sold in specialty stores in Hilo and Kona, and can be ordered through home-improvement stores, too. You must get a commercial model, and not build one yourself, because it has to meet strict local construction codes, and the building-inspectors here are very finicky about anything that could be a fire-hazard.
What isn’t widely available, however, is wood. You won’t see cords of firewood stacked outside supermarkets and garden supply stores, as you do on the mainland. (A true cord, by the way, is four feet wide, four feet high, and eight feet long.) Sometimes, a classified ad in one of the local papers will offer firewood. Just make sure that the pieces are cut small enough to fit in your firebox.
You could, of course, go out and cut your own firewood. Unless you have an especially dense stand of trees on your land, that you really don’t want to keep, you probably will have to go elsewhere. Obviously, you can not go logging in Hawaii’s forest reserves or parks; and until you’ve lived here a while, you probably will not know or hear about neighborhood trees that have to be cut due to land-clearing, hazard-removal, and so on.
You should certainly consider cutting weed-trees, though. Many property owners – maybe you, too? – have thickets of rose-apple or waiawi that they’d like to get rid of. Waiawi (”vy-vee”) is strawberry guava, an especially hard wood that burns hot; but the trunks are not especially thick, and hence not easily split by hand.
A client of mine purchased a house whose long driveway was lined with tall cedars and pines. These exotics were probably intended to be harvested as Christmas trees, but had not been cut in time, so they stood over 50 feet tall, deeply shading the driveway, and blocking half the view from the house. He had them professionally cut down. The branches and leaves were ground up into mulch, which was piled up near his garden; and the logs were cut to fit in his fireplace. Citing the old adage that you get warm first from the exercise and then again from burning the wood, he now spends an hour or two each autumn and winter month with an axe, maul and wedge, happily splitting those logs.
Getting a pro to cut your fire-logs frees you up to split and burn them.
He doesn’t use a chain-saw, however. In the popular imagination, you aren’t really living off-the-grid if you don’t have a chain-saw. But you probably won’t need one; and unless you are already experienced in operating one, or have someone who can teach you to use it carefully, you probably should not get one. The ease with which a chain-saw cuts through wood makes it a very compelling tool, especially for inexperienced users who are all too likely to take on a challenge they can’t meet, or in some other way get into an accident. Moreover, it’s a tool that requires a lot of
care: ensuring that the cutting-edges are sharp, keeping both the engine and the chain properly lubricated, etc. Like installing electrical circuits or plumbing, cutting wood with a chain-saw is a task best left to experts.
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HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND – Getting Into Hot Water October 27, 2009
Posted by Kelly in : Could You Live Off-the-Grid?, HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND, Moving to Hawaii, Resources , 1 comment so farHERE ON THE BIG ISLAND
By Kelly Moran
Could You Live Off-the-Grid? Part V – Getting Into Hot Water
You probably don’t want to live anywhere without hot water. But fortunately, that’s the easiest convenience to have, off-the grid. In our warm and sunny climate (sunny enough, even in Hilo), a simple black plastic water-bag on the roof will give you hot showers from afternoon through early evening.
Utility executives know this. They also know that heating water with electricity is terribly wasteful and inefficient; and that they may never get approval to build another power-plant here if they don’t help to hold down demand. So the Hawaii Electric Light Co. (HELCO) is offering households huge incentives to replace electric water heaters with solar water-heaters.
You can’t go wrong with solar. Ideally, you should have a broad southern exposure, but almost any place with open sky views should be sufficient to generate heat from the sun. You will, however, need a tank, and some backup heat source (propane or electricity) to keep the tank’s temperature constant.
For an attractive alternative, consider an “on-demand” water heater, in which a small propane burner fires up only when you open a hot-water tap. There’s no tank (a cost-saving in itself), and though the heater may have a pilot-light, it isn’t burning a lot of gas to maintain a high temperature when you aren’t using hot water. These systems are very inexpensive, and easily installed by any plumber. Just be sure the burner is vented, for safety, to the outdoors.
You could also combine a solar water-heater with a slightly more costly version of the on-demand heater, which has a temperature-sensor built in. It can then raise up to full hot-water temperature the water that’s already warm from the sun.
Those solutions are excellent for showers and small tub baths. As for a resort-size, Jacuzzi-type hot tub, big enough for two or more people, you will need sufficient electricity to run the “jets.” But a more important consideration is that heating such a large volume of water takes a lot of energy – quite likely more than can be heated by the sun in single a day. But there are other ways to heat a big tub of water, especially if you’d like your hot-tub experience to be naturalistic.
In old plantation days, a Japanese farm worker would build a bathhouse, separate from his home, with a wood-fired furo inside. He’d lay a brick-and-mortar firepit and chimney, set a sheet of copper over the firepit, and make a tub out of redwood (and a redwood grille, to keep from sitting down on the hot metal). An hour or so after starting the fire, the tub water would be hot enough to soak in. Traditional bathhouses have drains in the floor, because the Japanese always wash and rinse themselves off first, and only then get into the tub.
Many years ago, I lived in a house near Hilo that had exactly that sort of backyard bathhouse with a brick-firebox and copper-sheet furo. I would jokingly compare the experience to the cartoon image of missionaries being cooked in a cannibal’s cauldron.
Fortunately, there is a modern alternative. It’s called a “snorkel stove” (www.snorkel.com) – an aluminum firebox that sits in one part of the tub, separated from the bathers, for safety, by a wooden screen. Since it takes up about one-person’s-worth of space, the tub has to be slightly bigger than you might otherwise need.
Having a separate bathhouse makes the experience seem special, somehow; and since the tub isn’t in your regular bathroom, it’s more relaxing and more attractive, especially if you share the tub with family or guests. You’ll probably want to site the bathhouse close to your home, though, and in rainy places, link the two structures with a covered walkway.
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October 2009 Newsletter – Hawaii/Big Island/Real Estate Updates October 22, 2009
Posted by Kelly in : Newsletter, Upcoming Events , add a commentThe October Newsletter is published.
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HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND – Could You Live Off-the-Grid? Part IV October 16, 2009
Posted by Kelly in : Big Island Hawaii, Could You Live Off-the-Grid?, HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND, Moving to Hawaii, Resources , add a commentHERE ON THE BIG ISLAND
By Kelly Moran
Could You Live Off-the-Grid? Part IV
AC vs. DC
Every electric motor and light bulb in an ordinary house runs on alternating current (AC). And though your cell phone or laptop computer runs on direct current (DC), you keep them charged up with a little transformer you plug into an AC outlet, that “transforms” AC into DC.
No matter how you (or the utilities) generate power, whether from fuel, wind, hydro, or the sun, it starts out as DC and must be changed – or, more accurately, “inverted” – to AC. That’s done through (what else?) an “inverter” that sits between your batteries and the breaker-box for the house’s electrical outlets. The inverter also keeps the electricity from fluctuating, so your power is as consistently smooth as it would be from the grid.
You could skip the inverter, and have an all-DC house. There are DC versions of most appliances, including TVs and refrigerators; and when people here started living off the grid, in the 1960s and ’70s, home-sized inverters were not commonplace; so going entirely DC was the only way they could have modern conveniences. But DC appliances are not cheap, and you won’t find them in local stores. Making an all-DC house also forces you to site all the components of your system, including the outlets, very close together, because (unlike alternating current) direct current loses strength if it has to run through more than about 50 feet of wire. So, to live off the grid, you need batteries and an inverter, too. The fact is: we live in an AC world.
You need batteries. Here, the first five (of sixteen) 24-volt batteries are being installed in a household system. An inverter (not shown) turns the batteries' DC power into AC.
Go Gas
As for cooking, you will have to forget about an electric stove – you can not possibly generate enough power for that. Get a gas stove, and make sure the installer sets up all the burners for propane (instead of natural gas, which is not sold in Hawaii).
Propane is easily obtained. Tanks range in capacity from backyard-grill-size, to four-foot-tall cylinders, to horizontal giants. You can take the smaller ones into town to be refilled, or pay an additional but small monthly fee (less than $10) to have a gas company driver deliver fresh tanks and/or refill them at your home.
There are, by the way, refrigerators that run on propane. They are more expensive and slightly less efficient than electric refrigerators, but if your generating capacity is limited, and you’re getting propane anyway, for cooking or heating water (which I’ll cover next time), you may want to at least check and see if a propane refrigerator will suit your needs. It is, in any case, one more way to stay off-the-grid.
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HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND: Could You Live Off-the-Grid? Part III: Here Comes the Sun October 13, 2009
Posted by Kelly in : Big Island Hawaii, Could You Live Off-the-Grid?, HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND, Moving to Hawaii, Updates , add a commentHERE ON THE BIG ISLAND
By Kelly Moran
Could You Live Off-the-Grid? Part III: Here Comes the Sun
Turning sunshine into electricity is the most popular way to generate your own power, here, although two conditions must be met. First, you really have to have a good view of the sun all day: no trees or hills shadowing the house. And second, you have to have dough: the initial investment is high, and likely to remain so for the near future. A “family-of-four” will probably need a system costing $30-40,000, including batteries and control equipment.
But electricity from the Hawaii Electric Light Co. (HELCO) costs more than 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, pushing utility bills up into thousands of dollars a year, and the rates will only go higher. So, a solar system should break even in ten years or less. Moreover, the price of photovoltaic panels is slowly coming down, while their electrical efficiency keeps going up. And there are no ongoing costs: once the system is in place, your electricity is free, and your batteries get charged up every day!
Two recent technological developments make solar increasingly attractive. The newest photovoltaic collectors aren’t like heavy picture-frames, with glass on top. They’re lightweight, flexible sheets of plastic that are available either as shingles or as peel-and-stick strips that lie flat, between the ridges of standing-seam metal roofs. And these new materials are more sensitive to ultraviolet light than the glass panels are, so they keep on making electricity even on cloudy days, when there isn’t as much “visible” light.
Two ways to Capture Sunlight:
"Building-integrated photovoltaic" (BIPV) panels adhere directly to a standing-seam metal roof.
Framed-glass photovoltaic panels are mounted on a carport.
If your land is close to an existing utility pole, the Hawaii Electric Light Co. (HELCO) may accept whatever electricity you generate and, in effect, store it for you in its grid. But hey! – this is about living off the grid. And that means storing your electricity in batteries.
The right kind of batteries for home-size power-plants are similar to car batteries, but larger and heavier, with higher electrical capacity (24- or 48-volt, instead of 12). And their installation has to meet building codes (e.g., you can’t put them in the crawl-space under the house).
To keep your system operating at peak efficiency, you will have to take on some responsibilities that have traditionally been shouldered by the utilities. Though you don’t have power-poles to climb, or high-tension wires to string, you will have to perform some regular maintenance tasks, the equivalent of those that utilities ordinarily do, and the cost of which they bundle into their monthly bill.
So, for example, you must ensure that the fluid in your batteries is at the proper level, by topping them off with distilled water, once a month. And as soon as you do that, it’s a good idea to run your backup generator for at least an hour or two, not only to help your batteries stay fully charged, but also to keep the generator itself in top running condition, so it’s always ready in case of emergency.
Go solar, and you also ride the wave of the future. If we in Hawaii are ever going to free ourselves from imported petroleum fuels, we will have to generate more and more of our electricity from the sun.
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HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND – “The Music Man” Comes to Hilo October 6, 2009
Posted by Kelly in : Big Island Hawaii, HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND, Upcoming Events, Updates , add a commentHERE ON THE BIG ISLAND
By Kelly Moran
“The Music Man” Comes to Hilo
I’m interrupting my discussion of living off-the-grid to let you know that some of the best local actors and musicians stage a Broadway musical every October at Hilo’s Palace Theater, and this year’s (Eighth Annual) Fall Musical is “The Music Man” by Meredith Willson.
I have a friend who’s a singer and band-leader here, but right now he’s a member of the cast. So I’m going to turn this blog entry over to Hal Glatzer, and let him tell you about the show …
“‘The Music Man’. . . is that the one with ‘76 Trombones’?” Yes it is. And you know that because you have almost certainly seen it before: perhaps in the movies, on TV, or on a local stage somewhere. It was even the inaugural musical for the new UH Hilo Performing Arts Center, in 1974. So, you may think it’s merely a valentine to small-town America, with old-fashioned music. And indeed it is that, too. But like many great works of art, it seems simple on the surface only because it’s complex underneath.
“The Music Man,” which premiered in 1957, is among the cleverest pieces of musical theater in the history of the American stage, and easily one of the best “book-musicals” ever. (In Broadway parlance, a book-musical – unlike a “revue” of songs and skits – tells a coherent dramatic story, with songs that advance the plot and/or deepen your understanding of the characters.)
Into stodgy River City, Iowa, on the Fourth of July, 1912, comes Harold Hill, a con-man posing as a music “professor” who will organize a marching band, and teach the local children to play, so they’ll stay out of the pool hall. Of course, he’s really there to fleece the townsfolk and skip out with their money just as the band uniforms arrive. But unexpectedly, he’s touched by the sadness of a small boy; and he falls in love with the boy’s sister, the local librarian, who sees right though his scam and is all set to bust him.
Meredith Willson had a long career as a composer and arranger for big bands, radio orchestras, and movie scores. He wrote “The Music Man” – book, music and lyrics – at the height of his powers, combining many of the American musical theater’s best components into a single show.
* Memorable characters in a believable situation, inspired by the playwright’s own Iowa boyhood.
* Beautiful love songs, the most famous being “Till There Was You,” which The Beatles also recorded.
* Funny, fast-talking raps – Willson called them “speak-songs” – not only Harold Hill’s grifter pitch “Ya Got Trouble,” but the entire opening scene with a railroad-rhythm chorus of traveling salesmen.
* Four-part harmony numbers that have become “standards” for barbershop quartets everywhere.
* And “double-songs.” Three of the songs in the show turn into six, when a different melody line, fresh lyrics and a change of rhythm form a counterpoint to those that were sung before. In this musical legerdemain, one of those beautiful love songs – the waltz, “Goodnight, My Someone” – is soul-mated to the show’s signature march (you guessed it) “76 Trombones.”
Willson wrote a short book, called “But He Doesn’t Know the Territory,” about how the show came to be. [Long out of print, a new edition was published this year by the University of Minnesota Press.] The title quotes the traveling salesmen’s hapless complaint about their rival, Harold Hill; but it’s also what thespian snobs were saying, in effect, when they predicted that Willson’s debut musical, set in small-town Iowa, would flop on Broadway. It didn’t. The original production won five Tony Awards, beat out (New York’s own) “West Side Story” for Best Musical honors, and ran for more than 1,300 performances.
Our Hilo production showcases great local talent. Jim Thompson is the slick Harold Hill, Corey Paglinawan is lovely Marian the librarian. Steve Peyton is the blustery mayor, with Jeri Gertz his haughty wife. Don Moody is Hill’s goofy pal Marcellus, and Nathan Sullivan is sad young Winthrop. Arval Shipley directs the show, with choreography by Lina Manning; musical director Cheryl “Quack” Moore conducts the orchestra.
Watching these folks in top form, I’m sure you’ll gain a new appreciation for Willson’s achievement. “The Music Man” is a feel-good show in the best sense: you won’t be embarrassed to say it made you feel good.
Evening performances of “The Music Man” start at 7 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays Oct. 9 & 10, 16 & 17 and 23 & 24. Sunday matinees start at 2 p.m. on Oct. 18 and 25. Advance-sale tickets are $15; $12 for ages 12 and under or for Palace Friends. At the door, tickets are $20 and $15, respectively. The box office is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mon.-Fri. Phone the Palace at 808-934-7010 for more information and credit card orders.
