This blog's about page has been
claiming we are working on building an off-grid homestead by 2025 and maybe you
wondered what exactly we have been doing to get there. We have been planning on
building a log house with basement for quite a while now and this summer
construction has started! 
The house has an attached greenhouse covering the entire south-end; it has a concrete floor slab for passive heat storage and we plan on attaching tubes with phase change salts against the wall to store even more heat.
The basement has a cold room in the north-east corner. The cold room will use natural convection to pull in cold air from outside. The cold room will be insulated from the rest of the basement and will use the basement slab floor (insulated from the rest of the basement slab) to stay cool.
We already have a well with its own solar pump system, it will be pumping water into tanks in the basement through a pipe running below the frost line. From there, a DC booster pump will pressurize the plumbing and feed the hot water tank which runs on propane. This hot water heats part of the basement and the greenhouse through in floor heating and heats the main floor and loft via hydronic baseboard heaters.
The main heat source however will be a very heavy masonry heater, basically a huge stone fireplace in the middle of the house that is heated with wood.
A 5.44 kW solar panel system with a 330 Ah lithium battery bank, and inverter and a propane generator will supply electricity to the log home, both 48 volt DC and the standard 110 volt AC.
All walls, floors and windows are as insulated as we can get them: we use pre-cast insulated basement walls, spray foam in all the walls and triple glazed windows.
Spring was very wet and this summer had downpours every couple of days, making it very challenging to get heavy equipment onto our property, which has no gravel roads yet. I will post more details as the build progresses!
