Carl Krall's Realty Blog
Real Estate Adventures and Observations
Mulberry: Sky
I’ve been collecting photos of the sky as seen from the solar property I’m caretaking. The whole batch is at Solar Home Views where you can view them full-screen.
Here are a few samples…
Nice Santa-Fe-Style House in Coronado Hills near Douglas
Neat and well-kept home on Washington north of 80 in recently-built Coronado Hills neighborhood. It’s a 2/2 with vigas and those Santa Fe ceiling racks and corrugated metal roof inside for nice rain music. Master bath has dual sinks.
Open design has good transition from kitchen to living area, so it’s easy to grab something from the fridge while the game is on. Upper windows let the light in.
Living Area as seen from kitchen…
Kitchen with breakfast bar…
A nice neighborhood and an easy commute to Douglas if you’re looking for a newer home.
Mulberry: Solar life Day 3
Yesterday I got curious about something. The solar panels are on a rack out behind the wood shop, and they follow the sun. I tried to find a motor or some device that was moving it, but there is nothing evident, just two trunnion bearings that the frame pivots upon, and two sets of shock absorbers to protect it from wind gusts.
I looked up the manufacturer, Zomeworks, and found this page…http://zomeworks.com/products/pv-trackers/how-trackers-work
According to a Home Power review that they link to, the material inside the frame is freon. As it expands and gasifies on the hot end, it forces the heavier liquid freon to the other end. I have noticed that it moves slowly, and that if I sight from under the center it is very close to center all day, except in the morning when it’s still cool.
The freon is in the bars at each end, each end also has a reflector to intensify the heating. The top end in the photo above is the east end, which has an auxiliary reflector to speed heating in the morning, since the panel stays facing west until the sun heats up the freon int he morning.
In any case, the system works. I came back last night and vacuumed the whole place with my Miehle vac, which is stuck on high speed, and it did fine, while also drying a load of clothes and having various lights on. I am careful about turning off lights and shutting off water, but so far it’s been no problem living off-grid here.
Anyway, I titled this Morning Day 3, and that was about posting a photo of the view in the morning, so here goes…both are from the wraparound porch, so these are morning coffee views, and both photos are pale imitations of the real thing.
Looking West
Looking East
I have been taking morning hikes out there as well. There are some local wildlife photos over on my personal blog,..http://carl.krall.org
Mulberry: Going Solar
Maybe you’ve read about living in a solar-powered home, or have thought about what would be involved in doing so. I’ve wondered about what it’s really like, whether there would be undue hardships or deep technological learning involved. Our agency has several solar off-grid homes for sale, and one of them needs a pet-watcher for a while, so I am taking the opportunity to try living in an off-grid home myself and see what it’s like. if you’re curious, tag along for the next few posts and I’ll share what happens.
Yesterday morning was my first one in an off-grid home. I got up, did a couple of loads of wash, made a smoothie with my 600-watt blender, and took a warm shower with great water pressure and no city chlorine in the water. I actually forgot that I was running off the panels and batteries until I went out to the wood shop to look for something and saw the array of batteries and the inverter in the corner.
I was concerned that I had overtaxed the batteries, but the inverter simply showed that it was charging, and by the time I left for work an hour or so later the light was green and showing 100%.
There are differences. One is that I tend to turn lights off more strictly than I would if connected to the grid, and the same with water, since a solar pump automatically fills the tank that’s kept cool in its own house. The light issue is helped by the way the interior is built with walls that don’t go all the way up, which allows light to spread, and skylights in the higher parts of the walls that let in a lot of natural light.
One nice feature of this particular home is that the concrete/adobe block is on the inside and the insulation is on the outside, so there’s a feeling of being in a solid house with exposed block, but there is also good insulation. It helps to be in a place in the desert where it gets very cool at night, so leaving doors and windows open once the sun sets cools the place quickly. It’s dead quiet out there, so there no need to run a fan to cover street noise.
So far I love it out there. It has a full-size fridge, nice big kitchen area, entertainment center (which is lost on me, I’d rather be out looking at the scenery from one of the porches), all the typical stuff found in a home, but no connection to the power company and no bill. Just add food and occupants.
I’ll post more photos in my next entries, but here’s a sample just to show why I think the entertainment center is a waste of time…
South East AZ Real Estate
Welcome to my new blog about working at South East Arizona Real Estate. We are full-service in the real sense of that word. We work with homes and lots and property management in and around Douglas, Arizona, and we also do solar and off-grid homes and rural land. Now that I’m on board, I plan to expand our reach to all of Cochise County.
If you’re looking for a beautiful place to retire in or start something new, Cochise County has a variety of possibilities.
We have reborn mountain mining towns like Bisbee, re-enacting towns like Tombstone (which is one of the most-visited places in Arizona), and lots of other choices from small to medium-large, at various altitudes and attitudes. For example, our hometown of Douglas is perfect for people who want to eat lots of authentic Mexican food. Eat in town, or pop across the border into Agua Prieta for a while.
There are always periods of transition when you move to a new place, and periods of indecision. Our office was once new here as well, so we can relate and help with contacts and information to help you decide where you want to be.
