New to the forum, was told by a friend I should check it out.
My story of prepping goes back many years. I was born on a large farm where were grew much of what we ate. I have a background in both mechanical and electrical engineering. I've worked in the IT world for going on 20 years. My wife of 3 years and I live on a large property and have become very self sufficient. We build our house to be very "green" We trap rain water to water our gardens, water our limited live stock, and we use it to flush all of our toilets. Plummer was a little hesitant to add the extra pluming to the house to do that but we are very glad we did.
Years ago when I first started growing my own food in an urban environment (Down Town Cincinnati) and I was able to grow must of my own produce right on the roof of my condo. After getting married my wife convinced me to move out of down town to some property. We do own a large piece of land about 15-20 minutes from downtown.
As stated above during the construction of our house we wanted to make it very efficient, and provide most if not all of our own bare necessities, we have two wells, a spring and a very large 4 acre pond on the property for fresh water. We harvest rain for garden, lawn, and live stock and as backups to our methods of hydration. We produce roughly 1200kw of solar power for just the house and another 500kw for moving of water. We don't store any power in batteries. we have a 1000 gal propane tank buried on the property it services two purposes one we have a gas oven and cook top, and for the grill. It also powers a genset that will produce 1500kw. I've never tested the run time on the gen but I've estimated if we conserve energy and make 1200kw for 6 hours a day from solar we can easily survive for a few months on just the stored propane.
We do have Geothermal heating and AC that runs of grid power, it can run off solar or gen if needed though during the few short power outages we never really had a need to run the heat or AC. Our land is very heavily wooded with very old growth hard wood trees so most of our heat comes from 4 wood burning fireplaces with wood burning inserts in them. Though since we've moved in we have not had a "bad" winter we do keep a fire going most of the winter in the family room fireplace and haven't even put a dent in the wood that was cut to build the house or driveway.
In our garden we grow tons of vegetables lots of fruits and we have about a dozen apple trees that should produce apples this fall. I mentioned we have live stock, we have 5 goats (not for milk or meat just to have) 6 chickens (eggs and meat with they stop laying eggs). The property has loads of dear, squairl, fox, rabbits, and turkey on it and I make sure I get my limit each year.
So because of all of this, and the national movement to prep my friends have now decided to call me a pepper.
My story of prepping goes back many years. I was born on a large farm where were grew much of what we ate. I have a background in both mechanical and electrical engineering. I've worked in the IT world for going on 20 years. My wife of 3 years and I live on a large property and have become very self sufficient. We build our house to be very "green" We trap rain water to water our gardens, water our limited live stock, and we use it to flush all of our toilets. Plummer was a little hesitant to add the extra pluming to the house to do that but we are very glad we did.
Years ago when I first started growing my own food in an urban environment (Down Town Cincinnati) and I was able to grow must of my own produce right on the roof of my condo. After getting married my wife convinced me to move out of down town to some property. We do own a large piece of land about 15-20 minutes from downtown.
As stated above during the construction of our house we wanted to make it very efficient, and provide most if not all of our own bare necessities, we have two wells, a spring and a very large 4 acre pond on the property for fresh water. We harvest rain for garden, lawn, and live stock and as backups to our methods of hydration. We produce roughly 1200kw of solar power for just the house and another 500kw for moving of water. We don't store any power in batteries. we have a 1000 gal propane tank buried on the property it services two purposes one we have a gas oven and cook top, and for the grill. It also powers a genset that will produce 1500kw. I've never tested the run time on the gen but I've estimated if we conserve energy and make 1200kw for 6 hours a day from solar we can easily survive for a few months on just the stored propane.
We do have Geothermal heating and AC that runs of grid power, it can run off solar or gen if needed though during the few short power outages we never really had a need to run the heat or AC. Our land is very heavily wooded with very old growth hard wood trees so most of our heat comes from 4 wood burning fireplaces with wood burning inserts in them. Though since we've moved in we have not had a "bad" winter we do keep a fire going most of the winter in the family room fireplace and haven't even put a dent in the wood that was cut to build the house or driveway.
In our garden we grow tons of vegetables lots of fruits and we have about a dozen apple trees that should produce apples this fall. I mentioned we have live stock, we have 5 goats (not for milk or meat just to have) 6 chickens (eggs and meat with they stop laying eggs). The property has loads of dear, squairl, fox, rabbits, and turkey on it and I make sure I get my limit each year.
So because of all of this, and the national movement to prep my friends have now decided to call me a pepper.
