This fifth-generation Iowa farmer’s electric home renovation is a labor of love
Corn and soy farmer Sam grew up learning how to problem-solve through experimentation, patience, and plenty of elbow grease.
From finding the best way to tend his 1,400 acres of corn and soy crops, to finding the best way to power and heat his home, Sam isn’t afraid of a little experimentation and hard work.
“Growing up as a farm kid, you get hands-on with all kinds of projects over time,” said Sam, who moved into his family farmstead about an hour north of Des Moines, Iowa, in 2022 along with his wife and kids, who were 10 and 6 at the time.
“I tend to approach everything with experimenting as plan A. I try different things and see which ones stick … that’s my whole approach to life in a nutshell.”
That attitude has served him well, whether it’s trying out different cover crops for weed prevention, or personally renovating his nearly 70-year-old family home — which Sam’s grandfather and great-grandfather built in 1955.
“Basically, we’ve electrified nearly everything,” said Sam, who compiled a to-do list with his wife before they moved into their 2,600-square-foot house. He’s steadily worked his way through the list ever since, doing more than 90 percent of the renovation work himself.
“Planting and harvest season, I'm very, very busy. But right now there's snow on the ground, and my time is nearly worthless. So it's a fine time to put some sweat equity into the house,” added Sam, who studied research physics in college and considered getting a Ph.D. before deciding to return to the family business of farming.
A health scare motivates a move to electric
Sam said he was motivated to move towards electric appliances in his home after a series of harrowing experiences with carbon monoxide poisoning in his community, and a close call of his own.
“I knew people who have died from carbon monoxide poisoning on accident, and it's no joke. I don’t really want to trust my life or my kids’ lives to a little detector in the hallway with the battery that may or may not be as charged as it’s supposed to be,” Sam said.
At their last home, which was built in 1905 and used a gas stove in the kitchen and propane for heating fuel, their monoxide detector “was just consistently reading high, but it wasn’t going off,” Sam said.
“We hunted around, tried to find something. Never really did, because it was intermittent,” Sam added, “and then one day it was going off and I had something of a terrible headache, and numbness.”
He finally realized that whenever the south wind blew into the vent of the water heater, it would back up the airflow and send the exhaust back into his house. He said they switched the old home’s water heater to one with a motorized exhaust van to prevent it from happening anymore, but the experience stuck with him.
“I said, you know? I really don’t want to have much more in the way of burning materials inside my house. We can do better.”
State and federal incentives helped fund this family’s electric appliances
His home renovation projects have run the gamut from removing the home’s overhead electrical service lines and running replacement ones underground, to stripping out most of the plumbing and replacing it, along with adding a new septic system. He also gutted and rebuilt the kitchen with all-electric appliances including an induction stove. He said if it weren’t for the ample state or federal discounts and incentives available for purchasing many of his electric appliances, he might have reconsidered or delayed adding some of them until they became more affordable.
The biggest-ticket item was removing the propane furnace and using about $40,000 from the sale of their prior home to bring in a crew to install a geothermal heat pump system, at least a third of of the cost of which came back to him almost immediately in the form of state and federal incentives. The geothermal loop has helped to slash his heating bill down to less than $100 a month, much of which is for service connection fees for the meter, he said.
“We haven't been here long enough for it to pay for itself yet, but it certainly works beautifully and we’re entirely satisfied with the job,” he said.
He also remodeled a large machine shed into a shop he can use year-round, thanks to three heat pumps and a propane heater for backup — the only remaining propane system left on the property.
And he added electrical service to the garage to charge their Chevy Bolt EV, which he and his wife drive about 20,000 miles a year, mostly shuttling their kids to after-school activities 30 miles away.
“I'm one of the very few EVs in the territory, and so I end up giving people a test ride who've never been in an EV before, for them to see, yes, it's not just a glorified golf cart, it’s a car,” he said, “for the short-distance traveling, it’s perfect.”
Moving towards self-sufficiency, one conversion at a time
Sam said when it comes to farm living, being prepared to take care of your own needs — and look out for your neighbors — is a daily reality.
“When you're out in farm country, when there's a blizzard coming — as we just had one two days ago — that means that I have one 300-horsepower snow-moving tractor and 175-horsepower backup snow-moving tractor, and a snowblower all tuned up and fueled up and ready to run when we need them. Because there's going to be a six-foot snowdrift between me and the closest road, and if I don't get through it, then I'm not going anywhere,” Sam explained. “There's always a neighbor you could call to get you out in a real emergency, but there's not enough county employees to be digging out everyone's snowdrifts or solving everyone's plumbing problems. There's not enough plumbing contractors, or construction contractors, or any other sort of contractors around.”
That’s also part of why Sam said he wants to add solar panels to his home someday soon.
“We don’t have the ability to live off-grid, but we like the idea that someday we could put up enough solar panels and battery banks that we could be energy independent. So trying to enable that as we go along has been in the back of my mind.”
Meanwhile, he said he’s still using plenty of fossil fuels, mostly to run his farm equipment — because electrification hasn't made meaningful inroads there yet.
“There is no battery bank that I'm aware of in existence that could go and run a 500 horsepower tractor for 18 hours a day and then do the same thing again tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll certainly be an early adopter when that comes to pass. But no one’s even selling it these days.”
Extreme weather has dire impacts for farmers
Sam said the effects of more extreme weather could threaten his livelihood, and the livelihoods of other farmers in his community.
“Spring is coming earlier than it used to. The fall freeze is coming a bit later than it used to. We've had droughts. We've had extremely wet conditions as well … The seed companies of the world are doing a lot to create crops that can handle those extremes better than they could, even 10 years ago. But I haven't really met anyone around here who can say with a straight face that, yes, the weather is exactly the same as it always was. There are certainly people who would say that it's just, you know, the variation in the last 500 years, and it's not humans’ fault, but no one's really claiming it's the same as it ever was.”
Home improvements are a way of life
Sam said he’s lucky to have had a chance to dabble in some electrical work before tackling his current home repair projects, but credits his successes to “a bit of just random life experience and a bit of the school of YouTube.”
He also credits the patience of his wife and kids, who have become accustomed to living inside a work in progress.
For example, his kitchen is full of custom-built kitchen cabinets, with room for all of their dishes, electric mixers and spices. There’s just one thing missing: cabinet doors.
“I haven’t gotten around to building those yet,” Sam said. “My wife puts up with quite a lot.”
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