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HOME FREE! HOME FREE! I'M FINALLY HOME
FREE!
What does it mean to be "Home Free"? Remember playing hide-and-go-seek when you were a kid? The guy that was
the "tagger" would come looking for you, trying to scope out where you were hiding. Then with one eye on home
base and one on the tagger, you would silently make your way to base and claim your freedom. What a great
feeling to run as fast as you could, even with the tagger on your heels and then to reach the home base with a
shout out "HOME FREE". The tagger was helpless because you had taken him completely by surprise.
At Home Free Solar we want to have that feeling of freedom at the end of each and every day. Wouldn't it be
nice to open your electric bill and see credits to be used the next month instead of owing a couple hundred
dollars.
In the game of real life we are all running for base just hoping that things will change and we will see a
break from the ever increasing utility rates. So who are the players in this game of tag?
Well the "tagger" is like the electric company and you are the mark or consumer of their commodity,
electricity. So let's just call ourselves Mark. Or how about Smart Mark? Month after month the "tagger" scopes
out where your are hiding your hard earned money, knowing that they will tag you with a large hit at the end of
the billing cycle. And the tagger does this ever so stealthily. He knows we all have electrical devices plugged
in and running 24/7.
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The refrigerator holding our sustenance for the week.
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Many clocks scattered throughout the house.
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Our VCR/DVD recorders.
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The computer, or all the computers with the external modem and router.
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The microwave, toaster, TV, stereo, all sucking phantoms from our wallet.
So like a Smart Mark we begin to think about how to lessen the impact of the tagger by looking all around our
hiding places for ways to lower our use of electricity.
Smart Mark Forms A Strategy To Become Home Free
We insulate the attic and the crawl space. Then we caulk all around the windows and doors. We wear out
the breaker in the control panel turning the water heater on and off during the day while we are gone. We raise
the blinds on all south facing windows just hoping it will warm up enough to offset the furnace kicking on and
off, on and off, on and off, all day long. Or it's the AC, doesn't matter it all cost lots of $$$$.
Can you feel the tagger breathing down your neck? Your running as hard as you can but somehow you know that at
the end of the game a big bill will still land in your mail box. You pay it wondering if you can ever run fast
enough. They system reboots and starts all over again for the next month. What is Smart Mark supposed to do?
We could give up television and go back to reading by candle light. Give up the Internet and visit the local
library more often. Put in a wood burning stove to heat our hiding space, not to mention our bath water and
cook our food. Which by now we are keeping in an ice box in the root cellar we had to dig in the back yard.
While all of these methods had a place in society a really long time ago, modern thinking persons just don't
want the major inconveniences this would certainly bring. WE WANT CHEAP ELECTRICITY! And we want it in a manner that is easy to obtain and
affordable enough for the every day working Mark. Happily for all of us today, we can achieve this goal by
tapping into a rich, never ending source of power. This source of dynamic power is the SUN. That's right, the
good ole ball of energy hanging in the sky day after day. Even when it is cloudy and raining the sun is still
available to produce abundant energy for our daily needs.
Seeking Out The Alternative Option - Solar Power
If you want to produce your own electricity to heat and cool your little hiding place so the "tagger" doesn't
get you then you will need to make use of the Do-It-Yourself concept and build your own form of solar
collectors. This may be panels that sit on your hiding place roof or mount to a south facing wall. It could be
building and installing a heat exchange that attaches to a window that gets lots of sunshine. There are many
ways and we will talk about all of them here at Home Free Solar.
What do we want to accomplish by applying our efforts towards making our own electricity? Remember our
hide-and-go-seek scenario? The "tagger" would chase us so he could call "tag, you're it". But after a while of
searching for all the players of the game, he had the option of calling everyone in by crying out in a loud
voice "ally, ally, in free". Least that's what it sounded like. This meant that all the players left hiding had
a free pass to the home base. A Smart Mark wants a free pass to pay less money for energy used during the
month. Plain and simple. Applying the principles of solar power can give us a monthly free pass to cheap
or even free electricity.
So where do we go from here? Let's start with the most obvious electricity hog in our home or hiding place.
The water heater. A metal tank of about 30-50 gallons in volume. It is
usually wrapped in a thin layer of fiberglass insulation and then housed in yet another metal container. Cold
water comes in and hot water goes out. Simple right! You open the faucet and after about a minute you have a
stream of hot water. What a lot of people don't think about is that to get that stimulating hot shower or a
soothing hot tub soaking for our pleasure requires electricity running through electrode elements designed to
create resistance and hence heat. Which in turn permeates throughout the tank of cold or luke warm water. If
you use natural gas or propane then think about how long it takes to heat a pot of water on your kitchen stove.
In both cases a lot of energy is being used to produce hot water. Something we take for granted every day.
Until at the end of the month, the electric bill comes and guess what? - TAG, you're it.
We are all faced with the same inevitable situation - utility bills are not getting any cheaper - they
will continue to rise especially if you live in the southern and south eastern parts of the USA. For us the cap
and trade bill has run it's course and the power companies like TVA will have free reign on pricing
electricity.
FOLLOW THE PAST OF LEAST RESISTANCE BY USING SOLAR POWER IN YOUR
HOME
No matter what income level we are in and no matter what our education level may be, the very basic principles
behind solar and wind energy are attainable to everyone. The focus of Home Free Solar is to open your
mind to the possibilities of using solar power in such a way as to tear down the stereo typical ideas that
alternative energy is only for the rich or big commercial corporations or those that know how to manipulate the
various government funding programs and wind up with a grant. It does not have to be that difficult.
Here are the basics in a nutshell.
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Solar power/energy is free in and of itself.
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Just 30 minutes of sunshine contains enough power to run the worlds energy needs for a full year.
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Sunshine is converted to electricity by means of photovoltaic panels wired to a converter device
located in your home,
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Solar energy can be used in a passive or active form. Active sometimes requires the use of mechanical
devices to deliver solar power in the form of electricity.
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Solar energy can be used to create heat and electricity.
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Wind is a form of solar.
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Geothermal solar power pulls stored energy from beneath the earth and passes it along to a
heat exchange device to provide comfort inside a residence.
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You do not have to be an electrician or electrical engineer to understand how to use solar power.
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Location is not an issue as long as you can get direct sunlight or wind. High on a mountain, deep in a
valley or in the middle of a large city makes no difference.
By following the advice and the real links to informational portals from this site you will learn how to be a
solar energy aficionado in no time.
To Your Success
Stanley
P.S. Thank you for visiting my solar & alternative power site. I hope you enjoy the information and it
proves to be useful if you are considering going solar. Please tell your friends and neighbours.
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