kecyba_

@WannabeSolarSparky - Nice job of showing the pros and cons and of course your experiences. We have a Backup Server setup that needs 700W continuous, and that has been my biggest challenge for complete offline - My house is also tiny, so no more space to setup panels - he he. But like you, we have reduced our Municipal demand to 6-10kW/day. Have just replaced my LeadCrystalGel batteries with a LiFePo of 1/2 the Ah size, but it works about the same. I am in a Catch 22 - I can't expand my solar array until there are some bigger improvements in Tech due to space, and expanding the battery bank would mean they could almost never get to 100% SOC in a day.
 
My wife is a professional baker, so an electric stove is critical, but she managed to find a specialised baking convection oven (standalone) that halved the power consumption of a normal stove, and has 1.5 times the capacity (space). That alone reduced nearly 10kW/day of power. We also now use induction plates when we can't or are not willing to damage pots on gas (we use a cheap 2 plate store bought gas stove). Since we camp a lot, we just throw the same gas stove and bottle in the car for our trips - he he. Our solar geyser is off-grid almost all year, think we have used electrical power to heat about 3 times this year due to additional guests. Since we do camping, our kettle is already gas (although we do have an electrical one as well in the kitchen for when wife is impatient). Just wish we could find something better for the vacuum and iron. We have also setup a 12VDC bus bar that runs the length of the house, that we keep on a separate basic 12VDC solar charger connected to a bog standard car battery (90Ah), charged by 2 x 100W panels that go with us when camping (if going for a while then have 2 separate 100W panels and 12VDC charger that can take on the road that we use to keep car batteries alive while we use those for power). Anyway, that 12VDC bus bar charges and runs almost anything I find in the house that can or is running on 12VDC - DSTV Decoder, OpenView Decoder, Alarm System (did have to tell security company to ignore power failure signals), Gate Motor, 12VDC lights in almost every room in the house - Unless reading never have to turn a light on in my house (3-6W LED's in almost every room, just enough to walk around).
My fault but I destroyed my batteries this year during the July Floods - We were without Solar and Electricity for days and I pushed them way to hard. Lost 3 out of 8 200Ah permanently and the others were heated badly due to load. I will keep the best for use with our camping setup, but this is the second time in my solar years that Lead/Acid (gel or standard) have let me down even with decent balancers and controllers in place. The first time nearly set fire to my house and completely melted down, this time some of them got so heated and swelled that when I finally got them removed, the label printing from some of them was etched in reverse on another - Eish.

Good luck with your progress and I will continue to follow and witness the challenges you overcome
Regards KLEVA

PS: And thank you for the link to Off-Grid Garage (Andy) - I will watch tonight +++