I'd be happy watching either ElSapo or Microbet on YT. Please proceed.

ElSapo,

Who does your artwork?

Glad to see you selling some comics. I like the "literary" tag. An alternative might be "experimental", though I could see that driving away as many people as it drew in. Definitely keep it in the comics section though to get more foot traffic.

I like the ideas proposed so far about Expanding Your Social Media Presence. I don't know **** about that ****, and every time I think about opening one of those accounts to promote a creative project I feel ridiculous and disingenuous and end up not doing it. What the hell do people write on twitter, anyway?

Personally, I'd like to see stuff like Thoreau-esque item-by-item, day-to-day breakdowns of what you do, the cost of living, the struggles to build, clear brush, deal with dead deer, make the space your own and so forth. Basic daily life stuff. But I think you'd be better served steering away from that direction, as I'm a weirdo and nobody else wants to watch / read that stuff.

The vignette idea of off-grid life is really cool, though. And it dawns on me that you, being a fiction writer, might like to create some kind of vids, maybe backwoods mysteries tinged with horror and comedy. Have the stories revolve around those everyday rustic life type things, including characters like the lady who you'd never think would be off grid and was. I think you could do it with your Yuri Realman character, like have him culture shocked and what-have-you, dealing with the natives and the new situation he finds himself in, all the emotions that swirl when someone is put in an unfamiliar situation. You could even make fun of your laziness and lack of rural know-how.

Just an idea that I think would play to your strengths as it seems instructional videos are out of your league, and I don't see how you asking questions and trying to figure **** out would garner views. Do what you do best.

It's all me. I used to work in photojournalism, inadvertently made the switch when I moved to D.C., and now it's just a hobby or side business. I do shows on occasion, sell some pieces, but it's not a significant amount.

I'd always wanted to do a comic book but I can't draw (hence the Harvey Pekar reference earlier) ... So I've been taking photos and bastardizing them until they're kind of close to line drawings. Some work better than others, and it's one of the pieces I'm hoping will really gel as this goes on, get more consistent, so I can develop a more distinctive style. Some of these worked great, some didn't, a lot depends on the photo.

I think a lot of artists, people in general, feel this way. I know that I do. Recognizing that it's a common feeling is key, I believe. Also, actually making the thing, doing the art, really helps deal with it.

I played around with ideas for a YouTube channel last night.I'm going to try and do a few videos and then I'll post something for some feedback.

Maybe I'll go stand in front of the deer and ***** about that ...

EDIT TO ADD: Just did a standup in front of the deer. I feel like a small-town newscaster, lol. ... Also though, on video length: It's easy to run it up, apparently. And the file sizes get big.

Sap,


I’m another weirdo who would find that stuff interesting.

Me too. My bf and I considered going off grid and buying a property in the country and it's something I feel like we still might end up doing in a few years. I watch this sort of stuff on YT to try and get a feel for what it would be like.

<-- another weirdo

Everybody already knew that!

Sap,

Here's the thing. Most people live pretty ordinary/standard lives. And from what I recall, you did too. When that's your life, nobody really cares to watch videos of that. So you need some gimmick/twist/whatever to get people to watch.

But you're now living a decidedly non-standard life. So just showing various elements of your day-to-day have the potential to be pretty interesting to a lot of people for whom that stuff is completely foreign.

This is a total brag. But whatever. ... I'm not a mechanical dude but since moving out here I've really been trying to fix more of my own ****. ... Granted, it was just the spark plug, but I managed to diagnose the problem and get my smaller generator going again. Had to buy some tools and order a new plug, but damn it feels good.

Last year I fixed the chainsaw when the flywheel broke, and the other night I took apart my Coleman electric lantern and fixed that .... **** yeah.

N1! Fixing stuff is awesome. I recently fixed my washing machine but it was super easy so probably not brag worthy. Still made me feel good though.

Add me to the weirdo crowd, duh.

Don't buy a battery from the company you linked. That battery is overpriced by >$50 and is nothing special except for the label which obfuscates what you're buying.

You can go to your local auto parts store (Riley's, Autozone or someplace like that) and buy the same battery for <$200. One battery is almost certainly not enough for your purposes. There are better options than that site's battery or an auto parts store battery if you're willing to "get into it" for lack of a better term. I'm going to assume you're not, which is ok since the real gain if you "got into it" is actually pretty negligible.

My recommendation (without knowing your exact loads) is go to an auto parts store and tell them you want to buy (2) group 29 deep cycle marine batteries (<$200 ea pretty much anywhere) and connect them in parallel (red to red, black to black). Do not buy any battery that doesn't explicitly say "deep cycle" on the side. Car batteries and marine/deep cycle batteries are 2 different animals despite looking the same. Salesmen like to tell you they're interchangeable or my personal new favorite "It's dual purpose". A car battery is designed to provide a very large burst of electricity for 5-30 seconds and never be depleted. A deep cycle battery is designed to deliver a small trickle of electricity for days or weeks and be depleted by 50% or more.

We really need to know what loads you're using on a daily basis to figure out how much storage you need and how to supplement your generation. Please list every electrical device you use and approximately how many hrs per day you use them. Bonus points if you can find the amp or wattage rating on the back of each device.

I haven't seen the dead deer video yet but just standing over the deer telling the same story you wrote in the post about it will work on youtube.

You might be better off with a racing battery like an Optima. I believe they use a gel instead of just lead and acid, and they are just higher performance in general.

You might post a couple signs on a few trees that say NO HUNTING, to help keep stray bullets out of your ass. If you come across a dead deer again, contact your local game and fish department. If you just eat it, you might be guilty of poaching. If it's still edible, they usually take it to homeless shelters, etc.

Curious, did you ever build a proper outhouse?

I'll get back to the battery discussion tomorrow after I've had a chance to put together a solid estimate of what I'm charging and for how long. Captain, and everyone, thanks for the advice. It is much appreciated.

I wheelbarrow-ed the deer into a back corner of my property and skinned it. The whole thing just made me sad. Like I said, I don't have anything against responsible hunters and I know there's a ton of deer and yeah, they die. But it just seemed so pointless, and I'd like to try and have something of value come from it--even if it's just the experience of a skinning a totally-botched hide.

It wasn't pretty to begin with, and obviously I've never done this before, so it's a pretty ragged pelt. We'll see.

I've been giving more thought to the YouTube channel, and put together some art and a couple of videos. But at this point, I'm doing it backwards.

Right now there's two videos where I introduce myself as "lazy homesteader," along with the two Kickstarter videos. I basically needed some videos to play around with the design and see how the whole thing works. So it's kinda weird, there's no intro video or explanation right now, but I'll get to it soon.

One thing I like/don't like about this--seems odd but I think I like it--is that I'm not too worried about something being "perfect." I spent a very long time on the comic, editing each page a dozen times or so. Shooting a video, it feels more like someone seeing the back-end: imperfect, but maybe that's ok.

I'm not Spielberg. More like Ed Wood.

Anyways. Feel free to have a look, I don't suppose there's any harm in having the work in progress public.

The Lazy Homesteader

I don't think you are as lazy as you think you are.

Battery loads

Lights, two 3.5 watt leds ... 8 hours ... 56 Wh
Laptop: 100-200 volts, 50-60 Hz, 1.7amps ... takes about 3.5 hour for this thing to fully charge. I'll estimate it runs about 3 hours before needing to recharge.
My phone, no idea what it draws, let's say 90 minutes to fully charge, maybe charge it twice a day?

Those are really the essential loads and even that could be overstated a touch. On lighting: I currently run half of that, just the one bulb on battery, but doubled it because that's what I'm hoping to support.

That load is essentially nothing. Battery capacity isn't really your problem, the rate at which the goal zero system charges it is the problem.

I just went back to look at the specs on your system and it says is takes about 18hrs to fully charge the battery via a regular outlet (or in your case generator). Bear in mind that the size of your generator has absolutely no bearing on how fast the battery will charge (unless your generator wasn't large enough to handle the load of the battery charger- which isn't the problem in your case).

Using my late Friday night math, your system is only putting about 5 amps of charge into your battery while running your generator (considerably less than 100 watts). This means that when you are running your generator most of the fuel is going to waste and you're never running it long enough to fully charge your battery which decreases it's life.

You need to buy a larger battery charger. You can buy a 20 amp battery charger for < $100 which will cut your recharge time from 18 hrs to about 5 hrs.

Using the loads you've stated I'm coming up w/ less than 50 amp hours per day which means a single 100ah battery is probably ok but the charger in your system is so small it's necessary to run your generator 10 hrs per day to recharge it. I'm not including your solar input in any of this for simplicity.

If you upgrade to a 20 amp battery charger you can reduce the time you need to run your generator every day from 10 hrs to 2.5 hrs. Less given your solar input.

eta:

Go buy a group 29 deep cycle battery and a 20 amp battery charger and hook them up to your goal zero system so that you're using the goal zero system for the solar charge controller and monitoring and the add on battery charger for charging and you should never need to run your generator for more than 2-3 hrs per day max (considerably less if your getting much solar) and your battery should last 4-5 yrs. Total upgrade cost approx. $300.

Given that your battery isn't that old and your load is small you might want to try just upgrading your battery charger 1st before replacing the battery. The battery has definitely lost some of it's capacity but you might get by just fine for another year or 2.

If it was my system and I wanted to save a few bucks I'd try getting the battery fully recharged and then using it w/ the new larger charger and seeing how it holds up for a few cycles.

You'll never get your battery fully charged using your system so I'd take it somewhere and ask them to charge it for you overnight. Most auto parts stores should be willing to do this for free. They can also load test it for you and tell you if the battery has any dead cells or is shot.

This. People love this kind of Bear Grylls survival stuff.

You can be like that primitive technology YouTube guy who just posts vids of himself building mud huts and stuff. Like 5 million subscribers.

Wow, this is all great information. Thank you.

On using the same battery, here's how it operates now: From what the battery says is a "full charge" to the lights going off, the battery charge indicator only drops to about 60%. And believes it is full in just a few hours of charging now.

The GoalZero incoming wattage indicator drops from the 50s, when it's recharging, to much smaller numbers, as it believes it is full.

I'm all for trying the same battery and saving some $, but do those details change your advice?

Is this the kind of 20 amp charger you are talking about?

That probably means the battery is shot but it's not certain. If you take it in to an auto parts store they'll test it for free and if they put it on their battery charger for 24 hrs it will bring the battery back to whatever potential it has left.

Plus if it has a bad cell or is otherwise doa you've already got the battery out and to the auto parts store. You have to take the dead battery in anyway for the core charge refund when you buy a new one.

A good battery charger like a store will have will continue to trickle charge the battery past the point of where your charger is saying it's "full". That extended trickle charge can revive batteries sometimes.

That's a pretty good price for the charger you linked and it'll do a much better and faster job. I'd just cut the clamps off the battery leads and replace them w/ ring terminals for a better permanent connection to your battery. That charger will cut your daily generator run time by 75%.

Also learn to use your batteries voltage as an indicator instead of the goal zero panel that tells you the percentage. State of charge voltage:

100% 12.8
75% 12.4
50% 12.2
25% 12.0
Dead 11.9

As a rule of thumb try not to let the battery drop below 50% which gives you a cushion as you'll inevitably wind up running it lower occasionally. You should never ever discharge it below 25% unless it's an emergency. Doing so will decrease it's life.

While you're charging the battery it isn't fully charged until the voltage hits 13.5 - 13.8 volts with the charger on.


How many watts of solar do you have?

My solar is very small, just 60 watts, I think, panels basically came with the battery. I've never been impressed with them.

The last thing you wrote, about learning to use battery voltages instead of the GZ indicator.... what do you mean?


Some dumb questions:

Any idea how to do these connections?

Also, would the new charger be used at the same time the GZ system, or would I need to manually switch somehow, from "Running Generator" to "Using Battery?"

What does Group 29 mean? Basically looking for one 100Ah or more?

Why does GZ use watts when it seems everything is talked about in Ahms?

Do you recommend any place in particular to purchase the battery? How can I tell what is a good price?

1. You talked about the gz indicator reading 60%. That # is probably inaccurate whereas if you look at the voltage on the indicator instead you'll get a very accurate reading. If the voltage reads 12.2 you can be reasonably sure that your battery is at 50%.

2. For simplicity I'd just leave your gz system as it is now but just never plug it into the generator to charge the battery. Take your new battery charger and connect it to the battery and plug it into the generator to charge the battery.

3. Battery group sizing
I recommended a group 29 based on the fact that it's the largest deep cycle battery that most auto stores commonly stock.

4. Watts sound bigger. Realistically watts are used frequently when talking about systems which incorporate dual voltages. A 100 watts is 100 watts whether it's 12 volts or 110 volts. 10 amps at 12 volts is 120 watts whereas 10 amps at 110 volts is 1100 watts. You can't just use amps interchangeably across different voltages whereas watts can.

5. Any of the major automotive chains. I bought a couple group 29 deep cycle batteries this summer in Missouri for $98 ea + core charge. New York is probably higher but that gives you a starting point.

Ah, the GZ system only dispaus %, not voltage. So right now, I have no voltage indicator (that I know of).

So, do I need to physically switch the cables to do this? I'm imagining when it comes time to turn on the generator, needing to open the GZ system and disconnect the battery from the system and then charge it?

The solar panels are plugged in all the time right, and I guess they provide some kind of low level charge often during the day.


Does this size fit insider the GZ system? Group 29 is the form factor? Or does this reworking of the system mean I get one of those crazy setups with batteries and wires everywhere?

Ordered the battery charger.