Thank you for the informative comment! I agree, solar power is ugly. I am really sick of our system! Our inverter fried because a mouse got into it and chewed the boards. It's going to be $1500 to get it fixed back up. Beyond the extreme expense of solar, like you said, it is totally toxic! It really isn't green at all. I think becoming less dependent on electricity helps a lot, and alternatives like wind or water turbines are good alternatives, which can be DIY. I am planning to downsize our solar and look into getting out of the camper and building an earthbag home, something that regulates temperature naturally.
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Actually the best way I can give you would be using traditional wood burning and heating however you are in the desert so that complicates things however you do have quite a bit of brush in the area that you could repurpose for power generation and start thinking thermoelectric generators to make electricity off of your heating.
There is quite a bit of burnable stuff in the area and since you said you have a fire hazard start collecting everything close to the house and start working outwards!
And absolutely you're definitely going to need some small tools to begin and then as you grow continually upgrading your tools is definitely going to be a must.
There are so many alternatives that you can fit to your geographical environment.
Then there is also the solar heaters that you could also slave to thermoelectric generator
The hardest part is the cooling. Our camper heats up like a tin can in the sun! And I wouldn't be too worried about it, but we have pets in the house that can't go outside. An earthship would be ideal. Once the pets are gone, we won't have to worry about cooling too much.
There is ways of running piping in the dirt to cool air and then fan it into your house.
Some ways of cooling in the desert are pretty simple. And yep dig in! Earth is your friend.
You got good water access?
We have a well, which provides us good water. We have a good aquifer underneath us. I think the next big step is building a sandbag earth ship. That is my goal. But it is an overwhelming one!
Biggest advice for that... Start. And one shovel at a time.
Mike ohler? The author of the $50 underground house and an amazing architecture genius.
Yep I'm right! I met him at rainbow Washington State 2011 and got his books and one signed. I've got an open welcome.
Just get shovel out and start digging one shovel at a time and make a bigger hole and draw your lines out and visualize where you're going but start to remove material slowly and consistently over time.
Up until you can get more funding to get in an excavator that would be an interesting fundraising goal for enabling you...
Yeah, that is a good point. Baby steps!