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Average Member
 
Group: Banned Members
Last Login: 11/1/2009 6:18:12 AM
Posts: 586,
Visits: 509
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eh, cars just don't work for me.
I mean it's just not practical for me to go to work and then need something like a pile of rocks. And my day just requires me to be ready for so many other things... like take'n a roller or a skid steer bucket to some client ect.
Hell with the price of gas, I write it off and or charge it to the client any how. 
I knew about the battery issues. It's the same with solar panels. They go down hill after the first year. My wife's uncle got his wife a Preus for her birthday.. (they are rich as hell to start with)... after 2 years the thing was scrap iron. now she has a hybrid SUV... that car is for the person who wants to be and bad..and still be warm and fuzzy......it's a joke.
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Advanced Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 9/23/2010 4:13:39 PM
Posts: 2,222,
Visits: 2,136
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wallsostone (9/2/2009)
Hell with the price of gas, I write it off and or charge it to the client any how.
That's the problem...everyone just passes this stuff off. At the cargo port we pass the cost of fuel for the tugboats to the tanker ships, who pass the cost off to the cargo port, who pass the cost off to the tanker truck owner, who passes the cost off to the gas station, who passes the cost off to the customer. In the entire process, everyone adds just a wee bit more then what they actually need and the price goes out of sight...
Society is being surcharged and fee-ed to death and everyone just keep passing the buck...and smiling about it.
This is what nicks my sheep...no one has the guts to say "the buck stops with me, I am going to reduce my fuel costs even if it means a bit of inconvenience on my part." Heck the smart businessman would figure out the savings they made, then figure that into his promotions or her marketing strategies and might get more work from the deal from being "green".
This is what's wrong with society today...we just don't take ownership for what we do, or what we can control. Let someone else deal with it.
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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Average Member
Group: Banned Members
Last Login: 11/1/2009 6:18:12 AM
Posts: 586,
Visits: 509
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sure i do, I spent the money at the gas station to get the gas...I'm the one who runs the business that pays the wages and sells the stone that I bought from the farmers...I'm smart enough to find a way to own a legit business ect and can a ford a truck.
It's not like the government sent me a check and said spend this however you like.
This is what it takes to get someone to even start a business. What other perk would there be if it were not for the write off?
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Starting Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 2/23/2011 1:39:28 PM
Posts: 28,
Visits: 75
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| Windmills suck. I am looking into something called windbands. Rather than turning a mill which takes a lot pf wind pressure and costs a fortune, my architect tells me that wind bands are a very simple technology, can be integrated into the archetecture, are cheap and I like all of that. They simply oscillate in the wind. I know very little about it but should know more by the weekend.
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Starting Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 2/23/2011 1:39:28 PM
Posts: 28,
Visits: 75
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| Windmills suck. I am looking into something called windbands. Rather than turning a mill which takes a lot pf wind pressure and costs a fortune, my architect tells me that wind bands are a very simple technology, can be integrated into the archetecture, are cheap and I like all of that. They simply oscillate in the wind. I know very little about it but should know more by the weekend.
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Advanced Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 9/23/2010 4:13:39 PM
Posts: 2,222,
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Wind bands hold a lot of promise and potential but they are a very unproven technology and I am not aware of any wind band powerplants that produce any measurable amounts of power yet. How many killowatts is the output on your proposed wind band powerhead?
I am just curious because I saw this a few years ago and thought they held some promise.
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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New Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 10/27/2010 5:26:34 PM
Posts: 70,
Visits: 130
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Drawbar: have you ever considered taking part of your farm offgrid?
Our house is off grid but all the outbuildings are still on and I can still flip the switch and use grid powerin the house if I want. I do it for a few reasons...none of which is "green" factor. In fact I can't stand the term and I hate how it has become corrupted and trendy...but I digress. I do it because: the weather is harsh around here and I will always have power no matter what and I don't trust the govt.
You can take the house offgrid fairly reasonably. The outbuildings will draw too much power. So you will reach a point of diminishing return pretty quick. You could take the lights off grid though. We use a lot of solar outdoor lighting here. I use it in the chicken coop...primarily because I was too lazy to run wire out there. I also use them to light up the entances overhead of the outbuildings. I like being able to see my surroundinngs here at night. I don't know if they save me money or not..they were more of a convienience thing really.
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Advanced Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 9/23/2010 4:13:39 PM
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I thought about it, but to be honest with you, now that its just me here, my power bill is $40 per month so there is really no drive to do that.
What I could really use here though is hot water. I use a lot of energy (propane) heating water for domestic use and for heating my house via radiant floor heating. The winters are brutal here, (Maine) so I have some thoughts.
I could do a solar thing easy enough now that the wife is gone and can't object to whatever I want to do.
I could do something with compost heat since I got my 24 x 50 composting pad now with 48 tons of corn silage for the sheeps feed this winter. I might be able to tap the heat from that pile and help heat my home/shop
Fabricate some sort of efficient wood boiler. (We had an outside one but it was grossly inefficient going from burning 10 cords per year to burning 22 cords...until it burnt my dad's house down...)
Those are my loose thoughts for the moment on this.
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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New Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 10/27/2010 5:26:34 PM
Posts: 70,
Visits: 130
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| What about heating your house with wood? That is all we have, one wood stove in the kitchen and a fireplace in the loving room. It got down to -40 the past couple of years and they did fine. Or maybe a pellet stove? Here we get a permit to go into the national forest to log. It costs $8.00 a cord. Plust time and fuel obviously. You can snake a copper pipe around the bottom and sides of your fireplace and/or stove to make hot water. Which works pretty good btw. IT is pretty much free hot water, because you already need the fire. We don't do it for green BS or to save money, we do it to be independant from others. Because your bills never seem to go down...they always go up and I think that times are gonna get harder. Maybe something to think about.
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Advanced Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 9/23/2010 4:13:39 PM
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To be honest with you, firewood is just too darn expensive!!
It costs me about 1800 dollars to heat my house per year using propane. I pay a company to haul it out, they put it in the tank and I have heat. Pretty simple and very safe...
Now with wood, even though I have plenty of wood to cut, its not free by any means. Here it takes an acre of sustainable cutting to get 1 cord per acre, per year. If it takes 10 full sized cords of wood to heat my home, then that is 10 acres of land, per year, dedicated to just heating my home. At $18 dollars per acre, we are already up to $180 dollars in wood and have not even cut the wood yet.
Labor costs money, so the State of Maine DOT says skilled labor is worth $12.38 per hour. It would take me one full day to cut 10 cords of wood, drag it out with my tractor and pile it up. It would take me another day (at least) to cut it into 16 inch bolts, then another day to split it. Finally there is the transportation home and stacking. That is 4 full 10 hour days, which at 12.38 per hour would equate to $495.20 in labor costs.
Chainsaws, tractors and woodsplitters also cost money. The MDOT says a chainsaw is worth 3 dollars per hour, and our tractor is worth $29.71 per hour. Sinceour woodsplitter is powered by our tractor, well that is another 10 hours of run time on the tractor. So the 4 days of running this equipment would cost an additional $921.30.
Now we have the cost of a decent woodstove. Assuming its a Vermont Castings or something decent, it would be at least $800 bucks depreciated over say a 30 year life. That is only $26.33 per year, but the additional charges on your homeowners insurance certainly would not be. I have already checked into it, and that adds another $300 dollars on to the bill.
So if we add it all up, I can spend $1800 per year on propane and not do much, or I can work my bum off and spend 1922.83 to heat my home. When you add it all up, heating with wood is very expensive.
******
Tell a welfare recipient they must work and they call their congressman. Tell a farmer he can no longer work and he commits suicide. No wonder 1/2% of the population feeds the other 99-1/2%!!
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