Off the grid
Off the grid
The goal of our project in Tenerife always was to be as self sufficient as possible but also to satisfy all the creature comforts which we got used to while living in downtown Berlin. In order to achieve that we researched several years which technologies are suitable in this endeavour.
The following list describes what we found and installed.
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Electricity... We get our electricity through 4 solar panels and store it in 4 batteries. It is more than enough, you just need to learn to use it consciously (bigger consume when the sun is up)
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Water... The water comes from natural rainwater via a gravity based channel system from the mountains and is stored in a big holding tank on our property. The water is then filtered and pumped up to 3 IBC tanks to provide pressurized water throughout the finca. The water for consumption is then filtered by a osmosis filter to make it even cleaner.
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Hot water... The hot water is generated by 2 Solar thermal panels which is then stored in a 300l tank and if the sun is not sufficient to heat the water enough a gas heater switches on automatically to provide the missing heat. So the house has hot water regardless of the weather. The washing machine is connected to a intelligent watermixing device which uses the hot water of the storing tank in order to decrease the energy used per washing cycle by as much as 90%.
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Dry toilets... The toilets are dry which means you use the toilet as you would a water toilet but instead of flushing you put saw dust on your business. The containers are regularly put on the compost pile. The compost is used once finished two years later into soil amendment. Turning a waste product into a resource and saving water and money
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Biogas toilets... in the house we have a closed-loop system for recycling water filter waste, managing human waste into cooking biogas and liquid plant fertilizer.
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Satellite internet... We get Internet via a satellite dish which is as fast as in the city.
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Solar cooking... We build a solar cooker by putting reflective foil on a recycled satellite dish to focus the sunlight into the focal point and cook with the power of the sun. Also we build a solar oven for solar baking. We acquired lately the solar GoSun stove which enables us to cook and bake very efficiently. When the sun is shining we do not use any fossil fuel.
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Solar passive heating... The large greenhouse attached to the the front of the house acts like a big solar heat accumulator, saving the heat of the day in the thick vulcanic walls to be released in the night and thereby heating the house naturally and passively. This eliminates the need for heating for most of the year.
If you want to learn more, we offer afternoon workshops "Off the grid Basics" and local wine tasting.