We Live!

Hello! We are still here...... just very busy and still without a main computer and camera. It is hard to just write when most people are posting photos and video, so I have not been posting anything for many months. Still, we have not been idle! The latest project is an outdoor kitchen, modeled after the ones I saw on my first visit to Singapore in 1999. If you think about it, an outdoor, our SEMI-outdoor kitchen makes a lot of sense! After spending the day and a LOT of money to cool your house, why re-heat your entire house during meal preparation? An outdoor kitchen, or one with three inside walls and one exposed to the outdoors will remain the same temperature as the outdoors and nothing you do in it will affect the controlled temperature inside. So, we are building our main kitchen outdoors, with a slightly smaller one indoors. In Singapore, Malaysia and much of SE Asia, the only kitchen is outdoors, but since we are still American and should try to retain a home that is "functional" in the USA, we are also building an apartment sized kitchen in the "Homas De Bottellas" as well. Part of this kitchen design, is a solar hot water heater made from beer bottles and "tall-boy" beer cans. The beer bottles make up the structure of the heater, as they do in the structure of the house. The cans are the heat sink for the water and are under plexiglass and painted flat black. There will be 288 cans under the glass, with 100' of pex piping running through 20 stacks of 9 cans. All this will face 200 degrees off of due north, at a 31 degree angle to the sun. A light sensor will switch on an in line recirculating pump from dawn to dusk that will circulate the heated water through our two, 50 gallon hot water tanks, heating the water inside. Additionally, since we have over 8kw of solar panels and the potential of 6kw more of wind power generation, any power we dump, dumps through the two hot water tanks... through the four heating elements. We have replaced the AC elements with four, 600 watt, 12 volt elements. This way, any power we dump further heats the hot water. I have incorporated an outdoor patio design into all this, so that the heater is the focal point, with seating all around it in a horseshoe shape that looks into the outdoor kitchen. If the Sun is too hot, folks can sit at the limestone picnic table under the "solar panel patio", an area shaded by 50 solar panels. Limestone benches, picnic table, counter tops and window frames complete the kitchen, with a native oak cutting board island, framed by more limestone. The entire area is illuminated at night by yellow "rope lights". The rope lights and limestone are items used by wannabe yuppies in their "McMansions". The limestone is of particular interest, as it is "Leuders Stone", featured on both the DIY and HGTV networks..... I get it cheap, as we go there often for the folks I work for when my health permits, to pick up benches and fountains..... we also have a veined limestone fountain/birdbath as an integral part of this design, but that is another article. When the outdoor kitchen and water heater are completed next week, I begin construction on an 1180 square foot building with two bedrooms and a bath. When this is done, we move the travel trailer out and finish the inside of the current patio area. When completed, we will have a 3200 square foot home (including the outdoor kitchen) set in a classic Mexican hacienda format. Stay tuned for more and hopefully photos and video soon!