Offgrid for 12 May: Solar Surplus Water Heating, Camper AC Power Budget, Septic or Composting

Offgrid is a daily audio summary of the latest ideas, innovations, products, and hard-won lessons for living autonomously and becoming more self-sufficient in energy, tech, food, water, shelter, and everyday systems. This 3-story episode draws from OffGridCabins, OffGridLiving, and OffGrid and moves through solar surplus water heating, camper AC power budgeting, and septic versus composting tradeoffs. 1. Solar Surplus Water Heating This story starts with a cabin system that already has a lot of solar headroom and is looking for a better place to put the excess once the batteries are full before noon. The setup is not small either, with nearly six kilowatts of panels, dual three-kilowatt inverters, a twenty-five kilowatt-hour battery bank, and the usual cabin loads already covered. Source link Discussion thread Source subreddit: OffGridCabins 2. Camper AC Power Budget This one is really a sizing problem disguised as a generator question, because the load is not just a computer in a trailer but also air conditioning during long off-hours at a remote mining job. The post is trying to escape the default answer of running a borrowed gas generator all day just to stay cool and keep a PC alive. Source link Discussion thread Source subreddit: OffGridLiving 3. Septic or Composting Off-grid ideals run into a very physical problem here, which is what happens after you flush the toilet. The original idea was a composting toilet feeding an open-topped heated pit, but the comments pushed back hard and said the easiest day-to-day system is still a conventional septic tank with a proper drain field. Source link Discussion thread Source subreddit: OffGrid