Buy in or not

ibhandyman

To all,
I currently live in a house that belongs to my mother in law. (Mine some day?) When we first moved here we used @ 2500 kwh in the winter using hot tub 4 boys etc. All electric home heat pump, woodstove, 2000 sq ft.
Were tired at age 62 of not enjoying the luxuries of life by turning off hot tub, living in dark, burning wood etc.
Thinking of spending some cash on solar so we can light the place up, sit in the hot tub, and turn the heater or AC on when needed. Is this feasable? We live on 8.5 Acres with lots of California sunshine. Would like to install well to get away from city controlled expensive water but anticipate electricity would be an issue.

Dave Angelini

It all can be done! It takes a good design, a budget that is realistic, and someone who understands exactly what you want and that will teach you how to maintain it yourself. Good Luck!

Estragon

If the reason you're not all lit up is to keep grid power bills down, solar may not save much, and may or may not even be feasible, depending on local utility etc. Before going much further, it may be wise to check into local grid-tie regulatory issues. My understanding is this varies a lot from one area to another.

If you're currently off-grid, you can certainly add capacity, but that comes at a considerable cost (roughly $1/kwh lifecycle cost).

Running a well-water system from solar is pretty common, but you'd need to check into water availability. Drilling into a salty aquifer may be worse than expensive city water. In any case, you would want to know well depth, static water level, recharge rate, etc to figure out a system that would work for your situation.