I can honestly say my horse barn is totally off the grid. I have finished rigging the gutters to fill water troughs with rain water. That is ugly 4" drain pipe hanging across the barn door opening hooking the gutter downspout to the water troughs. The first trough is pitched to drain into the second one. Initially, I tossed a third trough under the gutter downspout on the other side of the barn. That sucker has been kept full with the rains we have had. I went ahead and rigged up this contraption at the front of the barn. Now I'll have to haul water less often so long as we get some rain. There is also a small pond I have given the horses access to so that will help me maintain my lazy lifestyle. The black square sitting on top of the roof is the solar panel for the lights. Since I have went back to my natural hair color (mostly gray) and done all this at my barn, I feel like a freakin' hippie. If I quit shaving my pits, feel free to smack me upside the head.
Fun! I hope to get a reservoir tank setup to catch some water off the roof... In my rented barn before, I had a very sophisticated system of no gutters and with the tank just catching it off the roof... It would be nice to be able to control the water a little because there'd be times where I'd be planning a good scrub, and then we'd get a good rain and I'd have 1000 lbs of water telling me I missed my opportunity. LOL.
My fence chargers are solar. The barn panels just power the lights. We are looking at getting a 250-300 gallon tank and catch the water run off from the pole barn at the house. It's much bigger roof surface area. We would then use the tractor to haul the large tank the 3/4 mile to the horse barn to fill troughs in the summer. We also have a sump in our pond by our house to use to fill the large tank if there isn't enough rain.
We got the panels at Harbor Freight. It came with everything but the battery. All told it probably cost me $300 total. The lights are not bright and I could probably get some higher output ones but they are fine for what I need. Just a little light for the evening winter chores. The electric company would charge me $7,000 to bring electric down to my barn. I'm about 0.5 miles from the end of the electric line.
