Woodstove for interior Alaska cabin
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You're taking this too extreme with this NASA mathematics routine of yours. So many people live in Alaska off grid as we speak and did not sit around calculating with mathematical precision specific BTUs to live there and bring in MIT Cal Tech engineers...Did you calculate the difference in Watt per square meter (or whatever surface area units imperialists prefer) for solar energy impinging perpendicular on a surface for Washington state and Alaska??
This is an off grid cabin, not the NASA Mars space rover. I'm not building some bio-dome on Mars. lol 😂
I don't know if you know this or not but, I'm not building this cabin, I will be hiring professional contractors/builders. The solar system will be installed by professional electricians. I'm not building anything.
Below, she's doing fine without your precision mathematical BTUs. Ask her is she had MIT Cal Tech engineers design a mathematical scientific engineered off grid cabin for her where every square centimeter is calculated by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory lol 😂
I do appreciate your concern and the science/math data approach you have though, and yes, I do believe in the saying "Trust the math, trust the science."
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AILDWarrior
Member
@Log Home, I think it's really apparent that you haven't spent an appreciable amount of time living near the area you are proposing. We can theorize all day long and generate good ideas with an infinite imaginative budget, but experiencing the real deal is an entirely different story.
I strongly encourage you to live in Fairbanks or a nearby location for a full year and rent an apartment or cabin just to garner an appreciation for the environment you are planning to live in. I'm not saying any of this with negative sentiment. Alaska is the place where dreams come to die for many people. Most vastly underestimate the cost of living, others struggle with idealized notions of "homesteading", and countless people overestimate the useful solar hours they think they can achieve.
@begreen has already mentioned several times that this is a wood stove forum. So to stay on that topic, I would still absolutely recommend that you burn local split and seasoned birch in a catalytic stove sized appropriately for the building you eventually build. I've never seen a cleaner, simpler, or more cost-effective method for heating off-grid in the Interior.
I strongly encourage you to live in Fairbanks or a nearby location for a full year and rent an apartment or cabin just to garner an appreciation for the environment you are planning to live in. I'm not saying any of this with negative sentiment. Alaska is the place where dreams come to die for many people. Most vastly underestimate the cost of living, others struggle with idealized notions of "homesteading", and countless people overestimate the useful solar hours they think they can achieve.
@begreen has already mentioned several times that this is a wood stove forum. So to stay on that topic, I would still absolutely recommend that you burn local split and seasoned birch in a catalytic stove sized appropriately for the building you eventually build. I've never seen a cleaner, simpler, or more cost-effective method for heating off-grid in the Interior.
If you in don't understand the energy density difference in solar irradiation between AK and the northern contiguous US,.then you're going to be disappointed.
AILDWarrior
Member
^This
Average daily W/m^2 is a pretty standard unit of measure when building a system, not limited to rocket scientists. On a perfect day in the dead of winter, you'll see 100W/m^2 for the whole day. However. the average is 0.0 kW/m^2 per day in the month of December. To put that into perspective, you need about 5-6 panels at the perfect angle with no inverter/converter loss to power a desktop computer for an hour. Like I said before, I hope you're coming with a lot of money.
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The air heater panels can do with lower incident energy than photovoltaics, but won't put out much when not much is incident on them.
I've been doing a lot of numbers crunching and using A.I., take that with a grain of salt...
For the appliances that I will have, my daily load in kwh per day will average around 3.5 kwh to 5 kwh. A.I. gives me some minor differences...
I understand the solar system will have to be over built and $$$ to get battery autonomy for many days in interior Alaska during the winter months that have short days...
For a solar system that has around 50 kw solar array and 160kwh of battery storage, that can generate at least 30 days of battery autonomy with no sun before the batteries drop to 20% to start the backup diesel generator to recharge the batteries.
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The theoretical maximum Solar irradiance in Fairbanks in December is 100 W/m2 per a report of U. Alaska Fairbanks.
Meaning a panel of 2 square meters would only get you 200 W - theoretical maximum. If you'd have 20 hrs of sun on December (you don't...), you'd get 4000 Wh. That is about 13,500 BTU.
That is what my stove puts out in 1 hour at its minimum setting, more or less.
Multiply by 4 panels, and you get 54,000 BTUs **over a 20 hr sun day, with optimal perpendicular incidence all the time**. That is what my stove puts out in 1-1.5 hrs (i believe) at max.
You have 4 hrs of sun in Fairbanks in December, at max 2.9 degrees above the horizon (so you better have no trees for quite some distance). So 800 Wh per day (still the theoretical maximum, keeping your panels rotating with the sun to keep them perpendicular at all times, having zero reflection from the screen in front of the tubes etc.). That's 2700 BTU per day.. Times 4 panels is 10,800 BTU per day. About what two 1.5 kWh plug in heaters produce in 1 hr.
In AK winters, you'll be running stoves hard.
Meaning you'll get about 1 hr of wood back for the theoretical max **with 20 hr of sunlight per day** in winter.
50% of your wood/coal is a ridiculous statement.
No rocket calculation here.
Meaning a panel of 2 square meters would only get you 200 W - theoretical maximum. If you'd have 20 hrs of sun on December (you don't...), you'd get 4000 Wh. That is about 13,500 BTU.
That is what my stove puts out in 1 hour at its minimum setting, more or less.
Multiply by 4 panels, and you get 54,000 BTUs **over a 20 hr sun day, with optimal perpendicular incidence all the time**. That is what my stove puts out in 1-1.5 hrs (i believe) at max.
You have 4 hrs of sun in Fairbanks in December, at max 2.9 degrees above the horizon (so you better have no trees for quite some distance). So 800 Wh per day (still the theoretical maximum, keeping your panels rotating with the sun to keep them perpendicular at all times, having zero reflection from the screen in front of the tubes etc.). That's 2700 BTU per day.. Times 4 panels is 10,800 BTU per day. About what two 1.5 kWh plug in heaters produce in 1 hr.
In AK winters, you'll be running stoves hard.
Meaning you'll get about 1 hr of wood back for the theoretical max **with 20 hr of sunlight per day** in winter.
50% of your wood/coal is a ridiculous statement.
No rocket calculation here.
AILDWarrior
Member
Just to dummy check your numbers, you'll need 32 perfectly efficient panels and perfect conditions from November-February to meet your daily need with zero surplus. You probably need to triple that number to produce the reserve you're expecting and make it through days with less than ideal conditions. If you're converting to ac, you also need to take into account a 5-10% conversion loss. Even if you install everything yourself, you're looking at 90 panels and 50 135ah 24V batteries. Up here, that's about $100k in those two materials alone, if not more.
I guess I'm having a really hard time understanding why you want to make this as complicated and expensive as possible. Your coal stove/water heater alone has multiple failure points, some of which would disable your hot water or home heating. Plus coal is an absolute pain to deal with and you still have to haul it and store it just like firewood. If your electric system needs a backup generator, why not just use the generator in the first place? Also, I believe those Arctica air heaters use an electric fan, making your argument against a Toyo stove a moot point.
The greatest aircraft engineers in the world(Skunkworks) rely on the KISS principal; if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for the rest of us. Catalytic wood stove, diesel genny, diesel hot water, relatively small battery bank, backup diesel heater. Easy-peasy. Save your money to buy quintuple-pane, argon sealed windows or some other nonsense instead.
I guess I'm having a really hard time understanding why you want to make this as complicated and expensive as possible. Your coal stove/water heater alone has multiple failure points, some of which would disable your hot water or home heating. Plus coal is an absolute pain to deal with and you still have to haul it and store it just like firewood. If your electric system needs a backup generator, why not just use the generator in the first place? Also, I believe those Arctica air heaters use an electric fan, making your argument against a Toyo stove a moot point.
The greatest aircraft engineers in the world(Skunkworks) rely on the KISS principal; if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for the rest of us. Catalytic wood stove, diesel genny, diesel hot water, relatively small battery bank, backup diesel heater. Easy-peasy. Save your money to buy quintuple-pane, argon sealed windows or some other nonsense instead.
I can sum up these 10 pages of "fantasy".
If you are serious get a blaze king.
Ponder on now to continue the Dream/nightmare.
If you are serious get a blaze king.
Ponder on now to continue the Dream/nightmare.
I already posted many times about the coal stove and wood stove I will be having installed.
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AILDWarrior
Member
You can lead a horse to water...but you can't prevent it from trading all of its water for fleeting fantasies. I've done my part to prevent another Alaskan dream casualty. I wish you the best of luck, and please spend as much of your money as possible in-state.
What doesn't have failure points in very cold weather? There's no perfect solution. The DS Stoves water heater has fewer failure points than the Toyo water heater.
What is the math on diesel fuel and how much annually will it cost? Battery autonomy, depending on how long you go between using the generator to recharge the batteries will determine a lot on how much diesel fuel used annually.
The Arctica uses fans powered by solar, their own solar panels independent from the main solar farm.
I'm planning on a refrigerator, chest freezer, electric stove, washer machine, well pump, outlet for engine block heater for diesel truck.
You only mentioned coal, you didn't mention that I will be adding a dual fuel stove that can burn both wood logs and coal and adding a second wood stove.
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