BARTOW. W.Va. -- When you live six miles from the nearest neighbor or power pole and 4,000 feet up a storm magnet of a mountain, you need a reliable off-the-grid energy system.

After nearly 15 years of off-grid living and three generations of alternative energy gear, Richard and Marcia Laska feel pretty good about the array of solar, wind and wood-powered equipment that keeps them warm, illuminated and connected with the outside world.

"Up here, our lives depend on it," said Richard Laska, a retired Environmental Protection Administration publications official.

The couple's home, Laskas' Grove Retreat, is a 500-acre expanse of forest and former grazing land near the top of Allegheny Mountain, offering stunning views of Deer Creek Valley and the mountain ridges to the west and up-close encounters with hawks, eagles and coyotes. It is reached by driving an unpaved secondary road built on the bed of the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, a trans-Allegheny toll road built in the mid-1800s.

"I'm not a religious person," said Richard Laska, "but this place is making me one."

One tradeoff for living in such a remote and scenic locale is coming up with a way to heat and light their home, a guesthouse/studio, two shops and a greenhouse - when the power grid ends six miles down the mountain on the outskirts of Bartow.

They started out with a wood-furnace boiler in the basement of one of the two former hunting cabins that came with the property and a propane generator. "I can remember sitting up all night on some nights, feeding it firewood and trying to get the draft just right" when the prevailing wind was creating downdrafts, said Richard Laska.

Gradually, they began adding alternative gear and upgrading it. A single wind turbine on the slope behind their house was eventually replaced by a pair of turbines on 70-foot towers anchored to the ground with cables, concrete and steel beams.

"When the wind comes in from the Arctic Circle, this mountain is about the first place it hits," said Laska. "It destroyed two turbines in a year and a half."

During the winter, wind power is the Laskas' primary energy source. "If we're really lucky with the weather, we can push as much as 50 amps out of the two turbines," said Laska. Most summertime power is produced by 12 solar panels that generate up to 30 amps a day. Since the couple's base-load energy requirement is only about 5 or 6 amps in winter and 2 or 3 amps in summer, much of the energy is diverted to two tons of storage batteries.

"The batteries can store two and a half days worth of electricity, no problem, and three days if we're a little careful," said Marcia Laska.

A reliable supply of electricity is particularly crucial in winter, since it is needed to pump hot water produced by a 5,000-Btu wood furnace into the Laskas' house and other buildings as the primary heat source.

On the 4,000-foot slope of the Laskas' mountain, "There hasn't been a day go by in the last couple of years when we didn't need at least some heat," said Richard Laska. "We burn 15 or 16 cords of wood a year, all from trees we've cleared to restore some of the fields."

Fencepost-sized chunks of wood can be used to feed the furnace, which only needs to be tended once or twice a day. If the water temperature in a storage tank drops below 140 degrees, a red light visible from anywhere in the vicinity of the house and outbuildings begins flashing, warning the couple that it's time to feed the fire.

The hot water travels through insulated underground pipes in double-layered conduits to the buildings that are heated. "We have about two miles of electrical cables and conduits underground," said Laska. "The land's all healed over now, so you can't really see any sign of them."

After nearly 15 years of off-grid living and three generations of alternative energy gear, Richard and Marcia Laska feel pretty good about the array of solar, wind and wood-powered equipment that keeps them warm, illuminated and connected with the outside world.

"Up here, our lives depend on it," said Richard Laska, a retired Environmental Protection Administration publications official.

The couple's home, Laskas' Grove Retreat, is a 500-acre expanse of forest and former grazing land near the top of Allegheny Mountain, offering stunning views of Deer Creek Valley and the mountain ridges to the west and up-close encounters with hawks, eagles and coyotes. It is reached by driving an unpaved secondary road built on the bed of the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, a trans-Allegheny toll road built in the mid-1800s.

"I'm not a religious person," said Richard Laska, "but this place is making me one."

One tradeoff for living in such a remote and scenic locale is coming up with a way to heat and light their home, a guesthouse/studio, two shops and a greenhouse - when the power grid ends six miles down the mountain on the outskirts of Bartow.

They started out with a wood-furnace boiler in the basement of one of the two former hunting cabins that came with the property and a propane generator. "I can remember sitting up all night on some nights, feeding it firewood and trying to get the draft just right" when the prevailing wind was creating downdrafts, said Richard Laska.

Gradually, they began adding alternative gear and upgrading it. A single wind turbine on the slope behind their house was eventually replaced by a pair of turbines on 70-foot towers anchored to the ground with cables, concrete and steel beams.

"When the wind comes in from the Arctic Circle, this mountain is about the first place it hits," said Laska. "It destroyed two turbines in a year and a half."

During the winter, wind power is the Laskas' primary energy source. "If we're really lucky with the weather, we can push as much as 50 amps out of the two turbines," said Laska. Most summertime power is produced by 12 solar panels that generate up to 30 amps a day. Since the couple's base-load energy requirement is only about 5 or 6 amps in winter and 2 or 3 amps in summer, much of the energy is diverted to two tons of storage batteries.

"The batteries can store two and a half days worth of electricity, no problem, and three days if we're a little careful," said Marcia Laska.

A reliable supply of electricity is particularly crucial in winter, since it is needed to pump hot water produced by a 5,000-Btu wood furnace into the Laskas' house and other buildings as the primary heat source.

On the 4,000-foot slope of the Laskas' mountain, "There hasn't been a day go by in the last couple of years when we didn't need at least some heat," said Richard Laska. "We burn 15 or 16 cords of wood a year, all from trees we've cleared to restore some of the fields."

Fencepost-sized chunks of wood can be used to feed the furnace, which only needs to be tended once or twice a day. If the water temperature in a storage tank drops below 140 degrees, a red light visible from anywhere in the vicinity of the house and outbuildings begins flashing, warning the couple that it's time to feed the fire.

The hot water travels through insulated underground pipes in double-layered conduits to the buildings that are heated. "We have about two miles of electrical cables and conduits underground," said Laska. "The land's all healed over now, so you can't really see any sign of them."

A satellite downlink provides the couple with Internet access.

The newest building at Laskas' Grove is the guesthouse/studio, perched atop what started to be a modern version of a root cellar.

A storage room was built atop the cellar, and when the Laskas checked out the view from its roof, they decided to go for a third floor.

"It's a completely sealed building with four layers of insulation, plus a layer of house wrap," said Laska. "There are five tons of rock in the ceiling to hold in the heat and help keep it from blowing off the mountain."

Siding for the guesthouse/studio comes from hemlock planks salvaged from timber infested by the hemlock wooly adelgid.

In the studio, Marcia Laska, a former buyer for the May Department Store chain, creates wearable art, including hand-painted crocheted scarves with pins made of silver and low-fired clay. Her work is on display at Tamarack. She hopes to eventually use the new studio complex as a place for hosting art workshops and retreats.

Richard Laska's work at Laskas' Grove includes planting thousands of native red spruce seedlings, cultivating a heritage apple orchard from grafts taken from some of the 30 species of apples found on old orchards on the property, raising perhaps the state's highest-elevation potato patch, and growing vegetables and flowers in terraced gardens.

He hopes to market a line of organic foods in conjunction with nearby Brightside Acres, a farm specializing in wild-grown and organic foods.

While he came up with the general plans for the alternative-energy components, Ed "Doc" White of Doc Solar Electric in Green Bank designed and installed the systems, and Joshua Simmons of Blue Grass, Va., did the carpentry work.

After adding some additional solar panels to the roof of the guesthouse, the Laskas think their alternative-energy system probably will be complete. They also plan to install large rainwater collection barrels for use in irrigating the terraced gardens around their buildings.

"We're sort of a little city up here, with four or five buildings getting power from the sun and wind," said Marcia Laska. "At our age, we may not see a complete payback for our [alternative-energy] investments, but a younger family would. So would someone who was in a location where they could meter their excess electricity back into the grid and sell it to the power company."

People whose houses are connected to the power grid but live in areas where wind or solar power is accessible could benefit from using alternative energy sources to fill a portion of their energy needs, according to the Laskas.

 "Our system is definitely cheaper than relying on propane and diesel generators," said Richard Laska, "but, mostly, it just feels good to leave as small a carbon footprint as possible."

 Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5169.