A home in downtown Billings is almost completely off the grid, and the owners gave a tour in conjunction with Earth Day.
“These beams up here, the black beans, those all came from a school that was taken down in Lame Deer,” said Randy Hafer, who along with his wife Janna owns the Urban Frontier House.
Hafer reused a lot of material to build the home and the green posts came from the old Cobb field.
The home is nearly all self-contained.
“It's no city water, no sewer, no gas, no electric, no septic, no well, just us and the sun,” Hafer said.
Hafer says the home is hooked up to the electrical grid, and since the windmill doesn't always produce power, the monthly bill is a little more than $4.
But that will change when he finds another power source.
Still, everything in the home is energy efficient.
“And I said, well, you don't understand my husband says I can only use 400 kilowatts a year,” Janna Hafer said. “And he looks at me like, I don't think I've ever had anybody buy a refrigerator by how many kilowatts a year it uses.”
Janna says life is about the same as in any home.
“Pretty much, we've still got our TV and we’ve still got our internet,” she said.
The Hafers gave a tour on Thursday and another walk-through is scheduled for Friday.
Randy says anything that lands here stays here and the water stays for the plants.
He showed the water filtering in the basement.
“And then an ultra-filter, which is 0.02 microns, it's really small. And so we have really nice water,” he said.
That rainwater is stored in 1,500-gallon tanks before filtering.
“We've had as many as 16 people in the house, for several days twice,” Randy said when family stays at the home. “Couldn't even tell the difference.
That's for special occasions, but for Randy and Janna, the tanks are constantly refilling and have about a two-year supply.
On this night, the Hafers gave a tour in conjunction with Earth Day, hoping to inspire.
“I love the garden in there,” said Chelsie Rolen. “The recirculation is super cool, but everything is super cool.”
“It’s fascinating is what it is,” said Gray Harris. “Just looking at simple things like the floor and the doors. They've had the doors made and that's quite a feat, I would think. Amazing.”
“I'd really like to just get people to start thinking about some of that stuff,” Hafer said.
