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Off-Grid Water · Troy MT

How to Size a Rainwater Collection System for Montana Winters

Montana winters will freeze any exposed water system if you don't plan for it. The math people skip: figure 0.623 gallons per square foot of roof per inch of rain. Troy gets about 18" of precip annually but half of that falls as snow — so your effective collection season is shorter than you think.

Key decisions upfront: IBC totes or buried cistern? IBC is cheap and portable but will freeze solid above-ground. A buried cistern below frost depth (5–6 ft in Lincoln County) is the only year-round solution without heat tape. First-flush diverters are not optional — roof contamination is real, especially with metal roofing in the first rain after a dry spell.

Rule of thumb: 1,000 sq ft of metal roof = 600 gallons from a 1" rain event after first-flush diversion. Size your storage for your longest expected dry spell, not your average.

Water Systems Off-Grid Montana

Pig Raising · From Experience

Weaning Your Pigs Off Sweet Feed: What Nobody Tells You

Most people start their pigs on sweet feed because it's cheap and pigs love it. The problem: it creates fat hogs fast but it also creates feed dependency. When you try to shift them to All-Stock and hay as primary nutrition, you're going to fight them for two weeks.

The method that works: cut sweet feed by 25% every 4 days while increasing hay access to unlimited. Pre-load them with hay before grain time so they come to the trough already half full. A pig that's hungry is a pig that will eat whatever you put in front of it — the key is making the transition during warm months when pasture is competing for their attention anyway. Montana timing: April through June is ideal.

Body condition check: you should feel — not see — their spine. If you can see ribs on a healthy foraging pig during transition, slow the cut. If you're squeezing to find ribs, you're on track.

Livestock Pigs Feed Management

Solar & Off-Grid · Real Numbers

What 100Ah Actually Gets You: A Brutally Honest Battery Guide

Everyone sells you on battery capacity. Nobody talks about what 50% depth of discharge actually means in practice. For a lead-acid battery — which most starter systems use — you should never go below 50% charge. That means your 100Ah battery is actually a 50Ah battery in real-world use.

At 12V, 50Ah = 600Wh usable. A single 10W LED runs 60 hours on that. A phone charger (5W) runs 120 hours. A 12V water pump at 120W? You get 5 hours of run time before you're cutting into your reserve. These numbers change everything about how you design a system — which is why the calculator on this page uses 50% DoD by default.

The upgrade worth paying for: LiFePO4 batteries run to 80% DoD safely, last 3,000+ cycles, and don't need to be kept above 50%. The upfront cost is 3× AGM but the 10-year math almost always wins.

Solar Batteries Off-Grid