Friends, Lurkers, Xenomorphs, Lend Me Your Ears!

[ShadowHM]

I don't think a couple of silvery white air screws would look to bad. I might take the rise in question and cover it with tulips.

There is a very large wind generator not far from my cottage. Consensus is that it looks attractive. :D Some photographs of it are here:
http://www.brucepeninsula.org/feature/feat...re19/page03.htm

I have also seen a private wind generator on a (fairly large) private property on Georgian Bay. It has the same design but is considerably smaller. The way it works here is that you can build your own alternate energy generator and set up a deal with Ontario Hydro where you can feed the system (and get paid for it) or pull from it.

The family expert on solar panels is my step-dad, who is incommunicado for the next month and a half while he and my mother are wilderness camping (with benefit of solar energy) in Florida. Not much help for you there, I am sorry to say.

I have a couple of creeks on the property. All of them are fairly fast flowing. What if I wanted to try something really dumb, like build a mini hydro-electric damn for electricity? Would it even work? Is it something I am allowed to do? Is it even a good idea?

Tricky stuff to engineer. You have to have the 'right spot' to build up a height from which the falling water can drop to generate the energy. This means making a pond behind the dam, which will alter your property considerably, even if you have an ideal place for it. Then you likely will run into County/State legislation about the alteration of water flows. At least, here you certainly would. I noted last summer (in my compulsive review of council minutes) that the township at my cottage required one fellow to dismantle the dam he built, because it affected the folks downstream.

The project(s) that get you free of the grid could also turn into a PITA for a guy that likes his privacy, because you are likely to require trained hired help to maintain them. Of the three, the wind generator seems to the the one that requires the least in maintenance, albeit possibly the most expensive in capital outlay.

Good luck Doc. As that saying I used to have as my signature goes: "Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back." (Piet Hein)