Welcome to
"Our Homestead & Lifestyle "

To better understand how Fran & I got here - I feel that a little history of our homestead is in order.

In 1974 We went west in search of a small farm or ranch in the southwestern part of Utah. After much searching I found a beautiful 240 acre piece of raw land atop a 5,000 foot mesa (flat top mountain) overlooking Zion National park. I felt that this was the place. This was located via air miles only about 50 miles north of the Grand Canyon and 5 miles west of Zion. I though this would always be a clean non polluted area as the US government would now allow a lot of pollution in their parks.

So I purchased this raw land without, a well, any buildings or fences on it.

I then went to Miami to study and learn how I could help others. There I meet Fran and together we moved to Utah.

First we drilled a well and found excellent water at only 180 feet. Then we built a log home, barns, sheep shed, blacksmith shop and fences for our livestock.

Why the "Do It Homestead" better know as Do It. The name was so quickly arrived at because from the beginning to the most recent outside help that we had we realized if we wanted it done right then we had to "DO IT" ourselves.

For lights we used candles, however as we soon realized that they were very expensive. Fran learned to make about 70 per week. I made Fran wall hanging for them in our blacksmith and wood shops and installed a mirror behind each so that we would have 2 candle power per candle rather than the normal single. It worked very nicely.

For electricity we first tried to make a wind mill - the Savannas rotor principle. We had constructed a 20 foot by 5 foot frame. This would hold the metal rotor and to it we attached 6 converted fire engine alternators with a chain drives. We used chains rather than belts as there was lower friction loss. After about a couple of years we gave up on this idea as we were not able to get a RPM slow enough alternator to convert the wind power to electrical power.

We then invested in a new factory made wind mill - only 400 watts, however we soon realized that the wind only blew only about 3 days per month and this was not enough to depend on for our electrical power. We still have this mill and are using it when the need arises and wind available.

Then in the 80's we decided to invest in our first solar panels. We tried to find some one locally that know about them but was unable to do so. So we started searching and located some in California. We started with one 53 watt Siemens panel and installed it on the ground.

Then we made a rack and installed about 5 more. This worked very well for us keeping our sears marine battery charged and giving us some RV type lights. At least we did not stumble in the dark. Read nope, but we were able to get around fairly well in the twilight.

For our lively hood we were successful in raising sheep. I learned to shear them as well as Fran learned to spin and weave the fiber and sew into garments. Of course the income from the lamb crop was helpful in buying the extras of life such as coffee, salt, and other "things" our city friends took for granted.

For food on the DO IT Fran was in charge of the gardening. She very successfully raised all of our organic food and preserving it by canning or drying it.

I made a large food dryer out of a 55 gallon drum that worked very nicely as we love dried food.

For cooking and heating we cut wood from our land as fuel. This was fine while we were younger, however that gets kind of "old" in a hurry. We then went to heating with propane gas in wall space heaters. This was good, but very costly as they waste at least 35% of the fuel out the vent in converting it to heat. Last year, we decided to add an addition to our home, indoor pool, and we installed in the floor pex tubing and used a combination of solar and a 94% efficient boiler to heat the water. This hot water is then used to heat our addition as it is pumped into our floor. I now realize how "old fashion" I was after hooking this up. It is SO nice to walk on warm floors and doing so "off the grid." As usual we had problems with our new set up and again we had to do it ourselves to reinstall it correctly, but this is another complete story which if you are interested in more details please check out our www page.

Then in 1990 the local newspaper the Daily Spectrum did a story on us and due to the interest they asked us to write a weekly column "ask Mr Solar." They picked this name in the early 90's because I was doing it, actually living on solar electricity and must know what it was all about. Sense that time many have copied that name, but unfortunately they do not have the first hand experience that I feel is invaluable for understanding how to it all works as well as its limits.

The timing was good because Fran's son Harry had just visited us and introduced me to a computer, another learning experience. I was about 60 and he wanted me to learn how to use the computer ­ so I did and used it to write the "ask Mr Solar" columns. We soon realized that there was great interest here in this information as we announced a couple open houses and to our surprise the first one we had about 300 people. Then the second one we had over 800 people. So we decided not to have any more. After writing for about 4 years in the local newspaper we heard about the net from our son, John who had visited a convention and convinced us that this was the way to sell. So in early 1994 we started investigating the net and installed out WWW site August 24, 1994 along with our free email newsletter. The first month we sent out a whopping 37 issues. Today we get more newsletter requests daily than we sent out in the first month. In 1997 a local college requested that we teach a college accredited course on solar electricity and do it on the net. So of course we jumped at the opportunity to spread the word to the masses that were interested in learning about this wonderful form of energy. We have taught many thousands world wide. I strongly suggest to our new web visitors that are wanting to use solar electricity to take our course. They will be much better of in the long run as they will have a basic understanding of solar electricity and its usage as well as its limits. In 1999 business got a little busy and Harry Brown, Fran's son joined us in working with our many fine customers.

After getting a "little" frivolous we now have both AC and DC power in our home. Originally we only had DC current and have added the AC back in the late 80's. We have the following DC appliances:

• Two 19 CF Sunfrost refrigerator freezer combination,
• our pressure pump so that we have pressure as we remember from our city days,
• all of our lights,
• our indoor pool pump, and
• heat pumps to move heat and hot water around.

We use a Trace SW4024 inverter for most of our AC needs and a small Exeltech inverter for critical loads such as our laser scanner and future printer. We have AC power for the following:

• Washing machine,
• Dishwasher,
• automatic coffee machine,
• Trash compactor,
• 2 computers with related equipment,
• bread machine,
• TV's.
• Electrical wood working tools in our shop,
• and many small "toys" such as toaster, mixer, noodle maker, blender, can opener, hair dryer, electric tooth brush, shaver, electric massage bed, electric blanket, electric meat grinder, electric wheat grinder, as well as others items. I have been told by our visitors that we have more than our "city" friends, so we realize that even though you live beyond the gird there is no need to suffer.

We have gone from our first solar panel to currently generating 12,500 watt hours per day on a clear day. To generate this amount of power we have:

• 10 Solarex 120 watt panels for 1200 rated watts,
• 24 Siemens 53 watt panels for 1272 rated watts,
• 11 British Petroleum 100 watts for 1200 rated watts, and a low RPM propane generator for back up. I would like to say that at times we need this generator for cloudy days. The most that we have used in the past 14 years is 43 hours total one year due to no sun or wind.

We are currently upgrading our battery storage system. We will now store this power in two battery banks. We have 21,600 watt hours of usable storage in a set of NiIron batteries which are decided to the DC power usage. We also have a set of Absorbent Glass matt (AGM) batteries that are decided to our AC loads. These contain 38,400 stored watt hours or 14,000 usable watt hours of power at 50% discharge.

Too charge our two different sets of batteries we have decided one solar rack of panels to each different set of batteries through a heliotrope controllers. Then we use the third rack of panels or set to switch between the battery banks as needed for full charging. Then our generator will charge the NiIron batteries though an external battery charger, we had to get this because as you know these type of batteries require a very high charge and the Trace is not able to do this. The Trace 4024 will be used to charge our AGM batteries from our generator.

In closing I would like to say that it has been a very interesting experience "going back to the land" but VERY rewarding even though at times rather trying. I wouldn't leave here for anything as we feel that we now have the best of all worlds on this planet.

That old saying What goes around comes around I guess is true today.

We have now sold our Mr Solar WWW page and are directing our energies back to trying to help others by spreading the word with our little book ABC's of life, which we are giving Free on our Thoughts Create www page.

We also teach an on-line solar electric (alternative energy) course that will instruct you how you may easily live, as we do, many miles from the grid. For more information check this out.