All is good…
I'm sorry if I gave you the impression I am off grid. That is my neighbor, not me. I paid the electric company for 711 kwh last month. That's heat pump AC, water pump, hot water, including cooking and laundry. I water bath canned 11 quarts of dills today, which meant boiling the brine and boiling the canner. The kitchen uses as much electricity as the shop. Probably more, most days. I have a 400 amp service, 200 to the shop and 200 to the house. I now have a propane house generator on a transfer switch and the shop boasts a brand new 1957 10 hp. Dayton/Winco generator. The point is that lack of electricity is an inconvenience, not the end of the world.
How do you make coffee in the warm months when the woodstove isn’t running?
No refrigerator, freezers, modem, microwaves, lights, computer, vacuum cleaners?
No hair dryer for a woman, dishwasher, washing machine?
Blender, stereo system , TV, battery charger, security camera?
You mention no well pump, so no pump to move water within your house? No AC, obviously, but not even a ceiling fan?
You don’t have battery devices that need to be charged? No garage door openers? Soldering iron? Table saw,drill press, welder,….Nothing?
My wife is the classic city girl. Her father was a successful attorney and she grew up in an elite neighborhood. She relishes our 19th century infrastructure, as long as I split the firewood and the kindling. We both particularly love the silence. The only human caused sounds here are the occasional airplane overhead or car on the road. It gets even better during a winter power outage, with snow muffling everything. It's at the root of my generator aversion. I don't bother to start a generator until the second day of an outage, and even then I try to limit run time to under 2 hours.
No thanks, I prefer cooking with gas.
I'll be dead by the time that happens where I live. I use propane.
My generator's pretty much only to keep the refrigerator & freezer cold (especially in summer). During an outage I'll run it a couple days for an hour or so with only those 2 appliances plugged in. Our new water heater is a power-vent model, so it needs power too, but it's 40 gallon so we only need to let it run once a day or so.
Isn't topography a concern where you are? I've seen places here that were sort of a "bowl" that the air got kind of "thick" in winter during an inversion with all the woodstoves going.
Same here. Current stove isn't very good at keeping a low temperature burner so it doesn't simmer well. Generally limit cooking that requires that to winter when I can put it on the woodstove.
Me, too. I used to prefer gas by a lot. Then we bought an induction stove, and I only miss gas for the ability easily sear a pepper, or toss a tortilla on an open flame. Otherwise, it is induction, hands down. I think that induction is perhaps even better than the commercial ranges that I used to cook on, when I was a cook, with their 100,000BTU burners (and massive exhaust hoods that are an enormous energy hog just for all of the air that gets exhausted).
I’ve never tried induction but I did remove one for a friend that bought a home with one… this was years ago and she wanted no part off it.
The argument is prevailing on shore wind drives particulates to the Sierra where they are trapped… so not so much a problem for the coastal areas.
I live by myself so not being a cook by any stretch all I have is a small countertop stove and a good size induction hotplate. I wouldn't use anything but, fast, convenient and takes up no space. Gas of anytype in a house makes me nervous other than outside for a bbq.
