The McParland Mountain Retreat

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

SEARCHING FOR ELECTRONS

Once the frame was up and there was a roof over their heads, the couple began to long for a few of the conveniences they'd been doing without ... so they decided to call in the electrical utility to silence that incessant generator. Unfortunately, the nearest existing line was at the bottom of their two-mile road, and the power company announced that it'd be glad to extend service for the price of $1.85 per foot. Worse yet, even if the McParlands had forked over nearly $20,000 for installation, they still would have been expected to pay a monthly user fee ... above the standard service rates. Needless to say, utility electricity quickly became an unnecessary luxury in the mountain household.

So to quiet the generator's roar, and—no doubt—as an occasional respite from working on the house, Roger began to experiment with a resource that he'd long been fascinated by:water power. He studied pictures of turbines and began welding up devices that could be run by the flow of their domesticwater supply line. One of his earliest designs consisted of a 3"—diameter length of pipe with tablespoons welded around its periphery, but by trial and error (which Roger laughingly claims is the same process that scientists call research and development), he eventually came up with a small turbine that seemed to be "pretty powerful". His attempts at working with automobile alternators weren't successful, however, until he met a fellow named Roy Parkhurst ... a retired tinkerer of many trades who rewound a car alternator to do just the job Roger needed done.

The combination of Roger's little turbine, more than 200 feet of fall, Roy's 55-volt-output alternator, a bank of eight 6-volt batteries, and a 5KW Best AC inverter put electricity into the McParland household ... without noise and without a $20,000 umbilical! And amazingly, the homemade turbine, the alternator Roy had salvaged from a scrapmetal yard, the bank of deep-cycle golfcart batteries (bought used for $3.00 each), 1,000 feet of 1-1/2" polyethylene pipe, and 250 feet of No. 10 wire ... all cost less than $700. Compared with that sum, the inverter's price tag of $2,600 (at the time) was considerable, but Roger's enthusiasm for the appliance (after all, without it he'd be forced to burn gasoline in the noisy generator to run his power tools), has since led him to become a distributor for Best Energy Systems products.

AN UNFINISHED SYMPHONY

When MOTHER's staff members had the pleasure of visiting the McParlands, they found it difficult to pay attention to the unfinished aspects of the passive solar home, which the couple kept mentioning ... because there were so many fascinating completed parts to study. For example, Roger made all of the building's window frames, both to save money over the cost of readymade units and to do more than just let light in. You see, the side-hinged panels have a unique ventilation scheme that Doris developed. The inner layers include ventilation holes, in the bottom and top rails, that can be opened by flipping up pivoting wooden covers. Thus, on sunny days, air can thermosiphon through the space between the glass sheets and be heated.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print