Well after making a comment like that I thought I might pick up a tip or two to improve my set up, but as you appear to have responded honestly I will do the same. We live in a small dwelling on a few cleared acres of a bush block which is steep at the back with a northerly aspect. We have a small solar electrical panel setup (2kw) charging a battery bank. We also use water from two very small creeks to drive two water powered pumps to lift water 25metres to an 800,000 litre reservoir while ever water is available. Both of these creeks are not permanent. The water is then piped back down the same line, (penstock) to run a small water turbine turning a rewired fisher and paykel washing machine motor to charge the batteries or to run when there is no sun. The water then runs back into a creek to a reservoir to power one of the two water powered pumps to pump itself back up to the reservoir. The second pump is in a second creek which flows about ten months per year. Seasonal rainfall runoff obviously supplements this system. We get between 750-1250 mm rainfall per year. We use a small boiler and some solar hot water panels to heat a hot water cylinder (both using the thermo-syphon system which is used for domestic hot water and to heat the concrete slab to heat the house. The wood for the boiler comes mostly from the forest floor. We use 6-8 metres of wood per year. I guess you could factor in approx $20 of fuel for the chainsaw per year here. We do sell some firewood each year to offset the small costs that we do have. All this of course is sustainable. The house facing north and is fully insulated, including R8 in the ceiling, so uses very little energy to heat it. Our compromise to the system is that we gas to the tune of $100 dollars per year. This includes bottle rental. We can choose to cook on the wood fired boiler or use gas depends on the weather. ie hot or cold or for convenience. A lot of the resources for this set up was sourced from the recycle and scrap yards of the day and is free in so far as that it has all paid for itself several times over. All up cost our energy costs calculated over the 25 years is about $20-$25 per month. (obviously it gets less as time goes by) Ongoing day to day cost is pretty much zero. We use a small petrol powered piston pump to the tune of two litres of fuel per month in winter (This is our total water bill for the year.) to pump our roof collected domestic water to a head of 28 metres to provide great pump free pressure.
