By Chiggers Stokes For Peninsula Daily News
EDITOR’S NOTE — In this third part of a three-part series of columns, Chiggers Stokes, a former Olympic National Park ranger who lives off the grid on a ranch southeast of Forks, tells of further tribulations encountered in pursuit of electrical independence.
BOGACHIEL RIVER — When I began operating a remote hydroelectric system off Hemp Hill Creek on the upper Bogachiel River, persistence was my only real qualification.
For 28 years, I have lived off the grid. Electrical independence entails engineering, building and operating skills that I was woefully underqualified to accomplish.
My family came to truly tremble in fear at the potential disaster built into my systems.
If a high-pressure pipe broke inside our cabin, it was the equivalent of a 200-foot waterfall, and it didn’t take long for water to be spilling out of every door to the outside.
Frequently, energized electrical outlets were overtaken by flooding. Farm boots were the footgear of choice to avoid electrocution while maintaining dry feet.
Plumbing, mood swings
My mood swings followed the status of my plumbing. Gauges inside the house sometimes gave early warning of disaster.
My daughter announced to friends, “If you want to see what kind of mood my dad is in, check the gauge in the bathroom.”
Falling trees and slides also disrupted our system, creating a long series of utility emergencies.
I finally began to read some books on alternative energy and realized that most of my potential power was being spent on pipe friction.
I purchased a half-mile of Schedule 40 4-inch PVC pipe and contracted out most of a 2,500-foot ditch.
The hauling, gluing and burying of the pipe was an enormous job. For three months, it was all I did besides my National Park Service job, eating and sleeping, and a couple of other biological functions.
When it was all connected, I invited my family to witness the magic moment of what I estimated would be a tenfold increase in our power generation.
Amid the smell of curing glue, my former wife and daughter mustered by the hydro shed, waiting for me to throw the new 4-inch valve connecting my turbine to the new half-mile run of 4-inch pipe.
Outside the shed, my family heard the rush of water as the 4-inch ball valve was opened.
Then, they heard an explosion.
I was propelled backward out the door, followed by the turbine, followed by thousands of gallons of water a minute.
I hadn’t waited a sufficient time for the final gluing to cure.
Once the glue was dry, output on the system began to approach its theoretical potential.
Average consumption
One kilowatt per hour approaches the average American family’s electrical footprint. After struggling for years, I had finally reached the great plateau of average consumption.
Without trees or slides to disrupt things, our system hummed along for several years.
By 2000, my family had lived for 20 years in a shack that I had built for less than $3,000.
It was time to move up to the standard of average housing — to match our average electrical consumption.
I was in the middle of building that house when a dispute with absentee neighbors ended my ability to transport water through a pipe on their property.
My ex-wife and daughter rounded up stranded fingerlings from the drying race to return them to the creek. Then, my family left.
Darkest night
I sat in the dark cabin that night drinking alone. It was the darkest night of my life.
I had lost a utility to which I had committed years of my life. And I had lost something more precious. I had lost love of neighbors.
My ex-wife and kid returned about a week later with a generator.
I interfaced it with my inverter and battery bank so that it started and stopped automatically.
That way, we had power 24 hours a day, but the generator only ran a few hours. Even then, it was very expensive, and the sound of the generator drove us wild.
Generator too noisy
Something big had been lost with the hydroelectric. The sound of the generator was repelling wildlife and driving me crazy.
I cast about for different schemes to get power around my recalcitrant neighbors.
I followed several schemes to a dead end before receiving permission from Rayonier Timberlands and the state Department of Fish & Wildlife to go around my neighbors with another pipe run.
I purchased $8,000 worth of pipe. My work with a laser level revealed that I had a 27-foot rise from the intake, but then a 227-foot fall to my hydro units.
I assumed a siphon effect would make the 27-foot rise negligible. Wrong!
So a dribble of water was all I got when I set out a run of 2-inch pipe to test the flow.
I had painted myself into another dark corner.
Move hillside
I had to move 27 vertical feet of hillside out of the way.
I approached a local well-digger/excavator in Forks and explained my dilemma.
Small towns have a way of taking care of their own. For a week, heavy equipment shoveled and hauled along the upper reaches of Hemp Hill Creek.
In the end, I had a level trench that was 300 feet long, 12 feet deep at its shallowest and 27 feet deep on the other end.
It was quite an emotional moment when water gushed through my turbines and my electrical gauges again sprang to life.
In the 10 years since that retrofit, I have had to put up with the same amount of tree strikes and landslides that compromised my early utility.
But like most Americans, I am addicted to electrical power. Unlike most Americans, I don’t purchase it ready-made.
I feel very fortunate to not have to listen to a generator.
