House conversion from grid power to renewable energy

This is a series of pages and photographs on a house in rural Ontario, Canada that we converted from being on-grid to being totally self supporting for its energy needs.

The process took two years and cost quite a bit of money, it was intended as a study on which parts of the process cost how much and what could be saved if you did it differently. That means that some of the decisions I made here were not optimal and you should probably get a good overview of the whole project before you decide to copy part of this installation.

These pages used to exist 'stand alone' as greenbits.com, but over time I found that reresource.org and greenbits have a large amount in common, and that merging the two sites and moving my own project under the user pages was probably the best way to archive the knowledge that we gained during the project, it also gives much more supporting information that way.

The original pages where authored mostly in 2004, the timestamps are definitely off!

-- from here on down the original content of the greenbits.com site follows -

Welcome to GreenBits.com. This is a site how to REALLY get going with alternative energy, instead of just talking and thinking about it.

It is about the hands on experience of taking an existing house and modifying it to be self sustaining in terms of the energy it consumes, in other words an 'off the grid' house.

See Why did we make this site to get a better grip on our motivations for making all this information available to you.

I have tried to keep it all as simple and understandable as possible, if you have questions, feedback or for any other reason that you care about then please let me know ! Keep in mind that this is fairly complicated stuff, but if you are persistent enough I'm sure that you will be able to figure it all out, even if you are screwdriver challenged. Look at it this way, if we could do it, then surely you can !

This site as sparse as I could make it with respect to pretty graphics other than where they are functional (lots of photographs of the installation and the various components), so it should load fast. This is to make sure that if and when you are actually going ahead with a similar project you can keep it handy as a fast online reference. Yes, there is a large amount of text here, but we really believe that all of it is useful information.

The most important part is without a doubt the Step By Step section where we show you how to put together an installation in bite sized chunks of work.

Of course, the usual disclaimer: The process described here worked for us, that is no guarantee that it will work for you. Prices quoted may be different, equipment may no longer be available, installing a system in the way we have done it may be illegal where you live (or not acceptable by your local electrical authority because of safety concerns, real ones or imagined ones). Also it is possible that what seems easy to us in practice is impossible for you. All in all you should look at this guide and apply your own COMMON SENSE and if you can not get it to work then please do not blame us. If, on the other hand you have questions or real feedback then we are of course happy to give you an answer or hunt one up for you in case we do not know.

The short version of the above paragraph is: No warranties ! Use your Head ! If you are unsure about something get a second opinion or ask your friendly neighbourhood expert.

OBSERVE SAFETY PRECAUTIONS AT ALL TIMES, read our page on safety for some pretty important information.