The Campfire Trail: August 12 - DIY Homestead - Our First Utility Cost Report

August 12, 2022

Day 235 of the Adventure

Eaves and Soffits Getting Completed!

Our Camp Run-Amuck project is an experiment in Self-Sufficient living. (It's also a cool place to hang out in the woods, and drink coffee.......and sit by a campfire) but mainly, we are transforming some rugged, raw Missouri Ozarks land into a homeplace that has as small of a "cost footprint" as possible. With that said, we have received our first full month of utility bills and have an idea of what we can expect from an energy consumption of view. Before going into the details, I should cover a couple things that would affect the outcome. Specifically for this month.

First, this is for the month of July, which may have been the hottest month in decades. We seldom saw a day that didn't reach within about 3 degrees of 100 and about half the month did go above 100 degrees.

We did not have insulation in the cabin for about the first half of the month, so our two A/C units ran pretty much non-stop to keep the cabin cool enough to tolerate. Most of that was utility grid, some off-grid. By the second half of the month, it was about 75 percent insulated and much easier to cool. It's still not completely insulated and today is August 12th.

Most of the month, we operated on about 30-40 percent off-grid solar battery storage. The rest was grid power. The reason for this was July was spent getting all of the solar generated, off-grid circuitry wired up in the cabin. As of the end of July, that has finally been completed and can be utilized much more.

The water utility is something where we chose to go with Rural Water for now. Mostly because the timeframe for getting a well installed was going to leave us living here with no water for an indefinite period. The options in that case would have been to spend a lot of time building a catchment system, or hauling water, neither of which we wanted to do or had time for.

So, with all that said, our water cost for July was $1.03 per day at $30.90 for the month. The electric usage was $2.45 per day at $76.00 for the month. Both of these included the actual utility use and the "Service Costs". We ran two air conditioners almost non-stop, day and night, almost exclusively from the utility grid. We have a high-capacity washer and dryer that is used weekly. We've been using every other amenity you would expect in the average home with two people. (except for the kitchen oven/range. You'll have to look at our outdoor kitchen videos for why that is the case) Finally, we've been operating quite a lot of tools, again almost exclusively on the utility grid. With all of that said. $3.48 per day or $106.90 for all of that is very acceptable to me.

With August already being much cooler than July and our A/C's running very little. Plus, more energy being pulled from the solar plant now than last month, I see, hopefully, a downward trend for August. We'll know in about a month.

Carry On

Adventure Quote: “I do not insist that this is a full adventure, but it is the beginning of one, for this is the way adventures begin.”

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Base Camp Coffee of the Day: B-52 (Kahlua, Irish Cream, Amaretto flavors)

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Off-Grid Priority Use (Part 1)

Off-Grid Priority Use (Part 2)

A fun Get-Away Roadtrip