New house, Texas, 1/3 acre

I'm jealous of what you guys are doing in Montana but for the time being, I'm stuck in suburban Texas. Here's what we're doing to make the most of it.

So, we bought a house from a big name home builder. Hardie siding, vinyl flooring, the usual... One thing I am proud of is that we strategically picked the property so we got a weird wedge-shaped lot on the corner of the development. For a couple thousand extra bucks, it's double the size of the other lots around here.

One thing I like a lot is that 4.8kW of PV came installed on the house. This wasn't optional; apparently it makes financial sense so the builder just did it. We lease the system and it generates about 2X more electricity than we use. Win/win situation. We used about 220kWh last month IIRC.

I've done a lot of work around the house to make it more energy efficient. All easy stuff, nothing mind blowing.

- Garage door insulation, $150 on Amazon. Highly recommend.
- Foam gaskets in the outlets
- Heavy drapes in the windows
- Ceiling fans so we don't run the AC so much. We bought all of these used.

In terms of planting, we have a small garden and 20 trees. I wanted to plant a lot of trees mostly to get some GD shade in our hot, hot summers. But the environmental aspect is nice and I also have a bit of a prepper mindset. The prepper mindset really started after our big power outage a few years ago.

The sod is still really new and green but I expect it to die hard in the summer sun. Our neighbors are in denial and they water the grass a ton. We'll see how that goes.

I think gutters and a rain barrel are next on the TODO list.

As far as transportation goes, I bike more than I drive. My wife has been driving an EV for 5 years or so while I have an old economy sedan. I'm tempted to buy a truck constantly. Not sure if it will be a vintage truck or a new EV or hybrid.

With all that being said, we have a lot of weaknesses. Especially our diet. Tonight it was frozen ravioli and fish sticks. Oh well, could be worse.

Here are some pics.

congrats, looks like you are well on your way. Lots of potential in that giant lawn. How does the lease on the solar work? do you own it after a certain amount of time? any idea what kind of inverter they installed? Is there a buy out possibility? You could easily upgrade it to have a battery back up element to it for outages. As is its probably wired to send to the grid and is dead in the water if the power is out.
Cheers,
David Baillie

Looks like you have a lot of space to work with. Seems like a lot of new builds in my area in central Texas are on sub quarter acre lots. I think a rain water collection system is a good fairly inexpensive next step. I would opt for rain tanks over rain barrels though. Saves a lot on plumbing fittings and with our boom/bust rain cycle a lot of storage is nice.

That looks good, well done.
Instead of rain barrels consider a rainwater tank of about 5000 Gallons.
\My signature has a link to the discussion about it.

David, there is a buyout option on the solar. I'm not sure if it's a good deal or not. It's a bunch of Enphase microinverters. I'm only interested in a battery if it gets me off-grid completely. I'm not too worried about short term power outages and our electric bills are already the minimum, I believe. Would be curious to see how a battery pencils out. I guess it doesn't make financial sense.

Aaron and John, I'll definitely think about how to store more water than one 50-gal barrel. I haven't even done enough research to figure out where to buy a barrel or a tank yet. Home Depot? Farm store?

Here's a small pic I like, in terms of reusing something. I took apart a broken computer speaker for the heck of it, and for my son to learn. Turns out it makes a good fridge magnet.

Actually, I just did a small amount of water barrel googling. This roll-up kit from Home Depot is the right price, easy to assemble, and it will fit in my car. It's also 100 gallons, not 50. We may have a winner.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/100-Gal-Green-Rainwater-Barrel-811782105964/316107600

Andy Ze wrote:Actually, I just did a small amount of water barrel googling. This roll-up kit from Home Depot is the right price, easy to assemble, and it will fit in my car. It's also 100 gallons, not 50. We may have a winner.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/100-Gal-Green-Rainwater-Barrel-811782105964/316107600

I think I would go with at least an IBC tote (or two) per downspout location. An IBC tote has 275-330 gallon capacity and used food grade ones in my area or $100-$130.

Andy Ze wrote:David, there is a buyout option on the solar. I'm not sure if it's a good deal or not. It's a bunch of Enphase microinverters. I'm only interested in a battery if it gets me off-grid completely. I'm not too worried about short term power outages and our electric bills are already the minimum, I believe. Would be curious to see how a battery pencils out. I guess it doesn't make financial sense.

Aaron and John, I'll definitely think about how to store more water than one 50-gal barrel. I haven't even done enough research to figure out where to buy a barrel or a tank yet. Home Depot? Farm store?

Here's a small pic I like, in terms of reusing something. I took apart a broken computer speaker for the heck of it, and for my son to learn. Turns out it makes a good fridge magnet.

well you could add enphase batteries to the system but they are pricey for what you get and add only limited outage coverage. They would work well if you are in an area that charges peak pricing for high demand periods as they can do peak shaving which is huge in California. Some inverters do what is called AC coupling which tricks the microinverters to thinking the grid is present during an outage and charges batteries. That is a complex one though.If there is a balance on your utility bill not already covered by solar you would be better off setting up a stand alone system which takes care of some essential loads in an outage and shaves your bill a bit. That large yard would be a great ground mount array location..cheers, David

News on our end:

I found out I could buy a $70 adapter to charge our Chevy Bolt at 240V, rather than buying a $200+ dedicated charger. It's about 5% more efficient to charge at 240V as opposed to 110V so this is great news. Here's a link to the adapter I bought in case anybody else has a Chevy Bolt and a 240V plug available:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/153731040798

We also put in a 50 gallon rain barrel and have been using it. We went with this one (made in Canada, great product, good price). Soon, we'll probably put in another 50 gallon barrel to bring us up to 100 gallons. I know you guys are recommending more capacity but the truth is, a thousand-gallon tank just isn't gonna fly.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0821L5R4Z?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

Finally, I have to say that shopping at CostCo has brought our %organic food up from probably 5% to 25%. They have a lot of good organic products.

Andy, if you present your location I will find a tank supplier near you.

Recording the first year's harvest, to benchmark later. I think this was less than 2,000 calories. Hope to do much better next year and maybe we won't have such a bad drought.

145 blueberries
15 small bell peppers
7 small squash
5 figs (may get more yet)
18 calamondin
9 okra

Learnings:

The tree diapers were pretty useless.
Plant okra sooner.
Calamondin was probably our most successful plant and it goes well with beer.

Major achievements:

Planted ~20 trees and kept them alive through the drought
Built a backyard gazebo (from a kit)
Planted a large Mexican White Oak shade tree
Built 4 raised garden beds from scrap

Major goals for next year:

Get a "water generator" to harvest air from the atmosphere, in case we have another extended drought
Grow 4,000 calories
Keep all trees alive
Add one more rain barrel

Do you want to get 'air' from the atmosphere, or 'water; ?
there are a few topics on this site about the subject.

I live in a drought prone area 100% of time.
There area few things that stand out to me.
- weed mat around base of tree
- mulched are of lawn out from the tree base at least 3 feet.
- if that diaper has a water filled bag your are doing something wrong.
- Do you have a lot of wind around trees?
- Use water crystals in the soil.

Andy Ze wrote:Recording the first year's harvest, to benchmark later. I think this was less than 2,000 calories. Hope to do much better next year and maybe we won't have such a bad drought.

145 blueberries
15 small bell peppers
7 small squash
5 figs (may get more yet)
18 calamondin
9 okra

Learnings:

The tree diapers were pretty useless.
Plant okra sooner.
Calamondin was probably our most successful plant and it goes well with beer.

Major achievements:

Planted ~20 trees and kept them alive through the drought
Built a backyard gazebo (from a kit)
Planted a large Mexican White Oak shade tree
Built 4 raised garden beds from scrap

Major goals for next year:

Get a "water generator" to harvest air from the atmosphere, in case we have another extended drought
Grow 4,000 calories
Keep all trees alive
Add one more rain barrel

Congratulations on the progress. What do you mean by a "air harvestor" someway of pulling out moisture from the air?
cheers,  David

Appreciate the advice, John.

Sorry about the typo re. "atmospheric water generator." I was thinking to buy one of these:

https://www.source.co/how-hydropanels-work/

But they are very expensive ($2500) and might yield only half a gallon per day. They can also be damaged by freezing temperatures.

Andy Ze wrote:Planted ~20 trees and kept them alive through the drought

Not bad at all. It was pretty bad this summer. We lost a few of our shrubs.

Andy Ze wrote: Get a "water generator" to harvest air from the atmosphere, in case we have another extended drought

Wow, they're like the moisture collectors from Dune.

Added some small swales to catch moisture better. TBD if it works well.

We're having a pretty good year. Lots of okra and figs. Highly recommend those to anybody else in Central TX who has clay-ish soil.

Here's a look at our compost bucket. I don't think it's big enough for worms. What's going on with all these grubs?

Andy Ze wrote:We're having a pretty good year. Lots of okra and figs. Highly recommend those to anybody else in Central TX who has clay-ish soil.

Here's a look at our compost bucket. I don't think it's big enough for worms. What's going on with all these grubs?

They look like black soldier fly larva. I agree with the figs and the okra.

Another year in the books, more or less. Recording the results for 2023 & 2024:

Type	2023	2024	Calories per
blueberries	145	379	1
bell peppers	15	22	1
squash	7	2	5
figs	5	70	30
calamondin	18	0	1
okra	9	90	2
total calories	363	2691	-

Total calories ~2500-3000 this year, I figure. Still small potatoes but things are trending the right way. We have a large compost bin now  :+1:

Most of this harvest came from one prodigious fig tree and a prodigious okra plant. If you're in Central TX, try fig, and blueberry and okra in the shade! I hope the other fig trees kick in next year.

Definitely trending in the right direction. Good on you for tracking progress.

So, we have a metal gazebo with gutters. I planted two olive trees under the drip stream of the gutters and they're doing great. I haven't had to water them in months. (Condensation collection) This is a major win in the Texas climate. Today I'm going to plant fig trees at the other two corners.

My wife really wanted a floor for the gazebo. After some research, here's what we did. I think it should be extremely durable and it only cost $200. Some of the other options we were researching were like $4,000.

We got some used plastic pallets for free. Put some stone blocks to fill the gaps between pallets, then covered it all with half-inch Hardie backer. The Hardie backer was glued on. Pretty easy.

Garden update. Acquired 6 buckets, planted them with blueberries, sunchokes, and potatoes. The sunchokes are growing great already and I learned about them on permies, so thanks for that.

2 of the buckets were found randomly in the middle of a field. No idea how they got there.

The orchard is doing great. A lot of the trees have gone from knee-high or less to waist-high or more. The figs are still the champions. Plant figs if you're in the Austin area!

Oh, and all of the water has been harvested rain so far. It's working.  👍