Setting Up Infrastructure – Days 86 – 114

April 23 – May 20

What a slacker.  No update post for nearly a month AGAIN.  The difference is, this time I have progress to share and a few other items that may be of interest to share.  AND, I’m going to post photos.  Yes, you read it right.  I’m going to post photos within this blog entry.

So, I think that once again I will organize this blog entry by subject.

Tractor:

On April 25, I did a bit of research online and decided to give fixing it myself a try.  As a reminder, something got screwed up with the transmission when Artem was trying to help me when he was in town.  After a couple minutes of effort, it was fixed.  I love easy fixes.

Solar system:

I narrowly missed my goal of running on solar before May 1.  May 2 was my first full day of running solely on solar power – no generator and I have not run my generator since. YAHOO!!

Filling in the gap of activities between the last post and now:

I completed painting the posts – which I later regretted doing for a couple reasons which I will share shortly.

Thurs – Fri April 26 – 27:  Read the instructions for installing the support rails.  Installed the rails.  Something about the installation seemed off.  Re-read the installation instructions a second and third time to realized I missed some key points that I had looked for but didn’t see in the first reading.  I shifted placement of  rails right or left to the appropriate location which made far more sense to me.

Saturday April 28:  Had asked Drew if he was available to help install the panels but he had strained his back earlier that week.  I decided wind was low enough in the morning (was forecasted to increase speed in the afternoon) I would give it a try to install them solo.  While it was a bit precarious installing the top row by carrying a 3’x5′ solar panel up a ladder and then lifting it over my head to get it onto the rails by myself while standing on the ladder, I succeeded without incident.  After a run to Douglas for misc hardware parts for the grounding the solar panels, I dug 3 of 4 trenches for the ground rods.

Sunday April 29:  Dug the trenches for the conduit and ground wire between the panels and shed as well as for the last ground rod.  In reality, it turned into just a great big hole as the sides kept caving in among all the interconnected trenches in that area.   I laid the conduit and pulled the cable through it, cursing the whole time for not buying larger conduit.  The cables fit through the conduit, but not with enough room to spare for easy pulling.  I also connected both the wire run to the shed and the solar panels to the appropriate connection points in the combiner box which I had attached to the solar panel support posts.  As a reminder, the combiner box is a place where each string of solar panels gets run through a circuit breaker and the output is merged into a single output that runs to the charge controller located in the shed.  I connected the support rail system to two grounding rods that I bent such that they go down in the ground about 36 inches then have the rest of their length situated horizontally.  As a reminder, it is too rocky to drive a ground rod sufficiently deep vertically so I dig a trench and bend the ground rod to a near 90 degree angle and bury it that way at a sufficient depth to meet code.

Monday April 30:  I worked on grounding the panels together.  This is where I regret painting the post or at least not thinking through my selection of paint.  Per the instructions, the intent of the instructions was that the posts would be conductive and all the mounting hardware for holding the steel pipe together, the rails to the pipes, and the panels to the rails would effectively establish a ground path all the way from the panels to the entire set of steel pipes.  One minor problem.  The paint I used was non-conductive and effectively isolated the mounting hardware to the steel pipes and the steel pipes from each other.  Oops.  So now, I not only need to tie the panels to the ground rods but I also need to tie them to each other.  Luckily, by the nature of the installation, each column is already interconnected so I just needed to interconnect each column of panels.  In writing this, I realized that the steel pipes themselves are still isolated from each other but all but the two horizontal runs are in the ground albeit encased in cement.   Wondering if that is an issue or not.  Thinking that I will sort out some solution in the coming months.

Tuesday May 1:  I had my neighbor Tom come over to babysit me while I connected the cables to the inverter where the batteries are connected (and still live) and completed connecting the rest of the circuits at the panels themselves (I had left the negative disconnected for each string so I could safely connect everything inside the combiner box).  His job was to contact emergency medical services should I do something stupid and electrocute myself.  As I’m sure you’ve surmised, thankfully it didn’t come to that.  It was somewhere around 4:30 PM when I nervously started turning on the various breakers in the appropriate order (shutting down in the wrong order = fire).  No pops.  No snaps.  No arcs.  No fire.  Just clean power.  I told Tom as he was preparing to leave, that he would be the second call I would make should it catch on fire the next day.  He smiled and said don’t bother.  The wind if from the south blowing north.  As he lives south of me, he is safe.  Note:  We are in fire season here as we haven’t had any rain since February or maybe early March, hit has been warm and the wind has been blowing regularly since February.  Everything is dry and is like a tinder box waiting for a spark to ignite it.  Ah.. I digress once again.  I checked and found that even that late in the afternoon it was supplying nearly as much power as I had the system configured to pull from the generator.  I was really anxious to see what it would do around noon.

Wednesday May 2:  For the first time since I moved onto the property Jan 27, no need to start the generator.  🙂  I monitored the system operation off and on throughout the morning as well as for the next week or two.  By around 10AM or so, they panels were supplying about 3KW to the batteries – about 3x what I was drawing from the generator.  Needless to say, the batteries are topping off early in the day.  I believe even before noon local time when the sun is at or near the peak location in the sky for supplying solar power.

What’s left to do:

• Filling in all the trenches.  I have specific plans for filling the holes which requires manual labor rather than simply using the tractor to push the dirt dug out back in to the trenches.  I’ll share the plans later.  Suffice to say I once again have a lot of work ahead of me filling holes.  Seems to be a theme for this projects.
• Finishing the shed.  The shed is currently wrapped in a tarp secure with wooden boards.  Including the roof.  I need to install a vent in the roof and get some weather proof roofing material on it, then replace the tarp with board to fill in the large gaps between the pallet boards (reminder that I built the shed from pallets), then stucco the outside and paint it.  These steps are necessary to protect the equipment by providing better ventilation and prepare for monsoon season which starts around July 1.  If I do it right, it will also make it more resistant to catching fire should a wildfire come through the area.

Things I have learned / observed:

• This time of year the panels are keeping the batteries topped of until around 5PM local time.  Maybe even a bit later.  I need to review the data.  I had been shutting the generator down around noon local time and running on battery until the next morning.  That means even more power available for use during the evening hours.
• I can’t run high power drawing devices mid morning while the batteries are charging at a high rate.  I found that the cumulative power transfer between the batteries charging and supplying 20-30A for the load is higher than the 150A DC circuit breaker in place so the breaker blows.
• I believe that if I need to charge around noon, I would need to disconnect all my loads to avoid blowing the breaker.  It was early afternoon when I discovered the breaker to the batteries had popped because I had tried to run the electric pressure cooker around 10AM or so.  Apparently I had been running off solar with no battery involvement much of the day after that.  When I turned the breaker back on, it popped again a few minutes later (unbeknownst to me).  Around 4PM I happened to note that the battery levels were much lower than they should be so I checked the breaker again and saw it had been popped a second time in one day.  I got a bit concerned that something was wrong with the system somewhere.  I turned it on again and stayed there and monitored it for 5 – 10 minute this time.  It stayed on and hasn’t popped since.  My conclusion is that the reason for the second pop is the same as the first – over current situation.  This time, the solar panels were supplying power at near full capacity which is what the breaker is sized for and there is not enough spare capacity to supply power to my loads.  In normal operation, the batteries are typically charged before full solar exposure is experienced so I don’t run into over current situations on a day to day basis.  If it becomes a reoccurring issue, I believe I can configure the charge controller to send less power to the batteries from the panels.  It just means that they will take a little longer to charge if for some reason they are not charged before peak sun exposure.
• I can run high power drawing devices all day long after the batteries are charged (within the limits of the 15A breaker I’m running off of).  Hmmm… I’m thinking fans would be nice.  15A is not enough to run an air conditioner.
• Even on cloudy days I was getting about the same amount of power from the panels as I was drawing from the generator – around 1KW.

I’m not going to share all the photos of the process  of setting up the solar system at this time as I plan to do a blog entry dedicated to the entire process with numerous photos.

 

I could easily keep writing on subject of the solar system, but I’m sure I’ve already bored many of you to tears with the details above, so time to move on.

New to me 5th wheel:

Rusty and Tim dropped it off for me April 21 and there it sat for a long time while I focused on the solar system.

My birthday present to myself was to move from the smaller trailer that I have been living in for months now to the bigger 5th wheel.   Of course, like everything else I do, moving takes time, so I only moved the essentials.  Or so I thought.  I didn’t move any bedding and I was tired by the time it came time to crash.  So I simply donned my sweats and figured I was good.  WRONG.  I woke up around 3AM freezing.  I tried to sleep through it, but it was useless.  So, at 3:30 AM I’m dragging my half awake freezing self over to the other trailer with the moonlight to light my way to grab the comforter off the bed, then back to the 5th wheel to finish out the night/morning.

Sasha took to climbing up the 5th wheels steps with minimal issues.

Next task was to hook up the water to it.  After a trip to Douglas for another garden hose and splitter, I started trying to hook up the water.  I first tried connecting it to the city water supply input for the trailer.  After finding and shutting off various water line drain shutoff valves as I was dumping my precious water on the ground, it still didn’t work.  I believe the low pressure coming from the tank via gravity feed is too low to open the check valves that are in place in the trailer.  So, I dropped a small bit of bleach in the fresh water tank and added water.  I now have running water in the trailer for the first time since early February when I ran out of the water I had brought from Rusty’s.

Next I ran a drain hose for the grey water and galley water to a depression in the ground and filled it with gravel so that the grey water being dumped is no exposed to the surface.

A day or two after filling the water tank, I hear Sasha outside barking up a storm in the early evening which generally meant something in the immediate vicinity was bothering her, so I go out to see what had her riled up.  I step out and I see Sasha out from under the trailer looking back at the trailer and barking.  I also hear what sounds like water spraying under pressure.  What the heck!  What is leaking now?  I step down off the steps, squat down to look under the trailer where Sasha likes to hang out for the  shade, and found my “leak”.

Oh crap!  Ok, so I didn’t use the word crap…  Anyway, I gave him a wide berth and walked over to Sasha and disconnected Sasha’s leash from the rope and escort her into the 5th Wheel, then came back out with my phone to snap the above pic.  So now what?  UGH! My snake boots are still in the other trailer.  So I step back out and he is still just a rattling away.  I once again give a wide berth and walk over to the trailer and put on my snake boots and grab a few other things to move while I’m there.  As I’m walking back, I note that he is gone from under the trailer.  Crap, where did he go?  I don’t see him.  I slow my pace but keep walking while looking intently trying to locate him.  No problem.  He started rattling again to let me know he was right ahead of me (probably about 10 feet away) in my walking path.  I stop, identify where the rattling is coming from.  I see he is out from under the trailer now, and I see the water hose I used to fill the trailer with between us.  Hmmm… I have an idea.  I bet he doesn’t like water and I bet there is enough pressure for me to spray him from a few feet back.  I set down my stuff, grab the hose, turn on the nozzel and …. nothing.  DOH!  It is shut off at the shutoff valve at the splitter which is way too close to Mr Rattles.  Screw that idea.  Put the hose down, pick my stuff back up and walk the long way around the trailer to go in.  I give Tom a call to see if he or Francisco is available to come over with some snake shot to dispatch this snake.  He said to just let it go and he would be by the next day and loan me a shotgun with some snake shot shells until I got my own.  A few minutes later I hear him coming on his ATV.  Not sure if he changed his mind or Alicia (his wife) changed his mind for him.  🙂  None the less, I’m thankful he came by.  He showed me the operation of the gun, demonstrated it, then had me take a shot with it to show I could use it.  I hit the box he missed.  :-).

Mr Rattles came back a couple nights later and started rattling as Sasha and I were going in to the trailer after having walked a few feet way from him.  I put Sasha in and stepped back out to try to locate him (it was dusk).   He was laying in the rock pile I had created from screening dirt while filling in the trenches for the solar system ground rods.  I went in and grabbed the shotgun and a shell.  Tom had advised to aim for the head otherwise you just wound them.  Sadly, I couldn’t see his head due to lack of sunlight, I was concerned a bit about ricochet and I didn’t want to get closer anyway.  I could make out is body.  I hoped his head was in the vicinity, lined up the shot and pulled the trigger.  I saw his body go flying as that section of the rock pile was relocated from the force of the blast.  I saw him slither off quickly at first then pausing on the ladder and then by a chair that had been overturned by the wind, then he was gone.  Damn.  Missed, and after I did so well with that practice shot.  I did not pursue him.  The next morning I noted blood on the ladder and around the chair.  Guess I hit him after all (hard to miss with snake shot from a shotgun I guess).  I looked around a bit but I didn’t see his body.  I saw him or one of his friends a couple days later in the drive way.  I left it alone.  If it is not in the immediate space of my living quarters, and it let’s me know where it is at as I approach, then we will get along fine.  I haven’t seen a snake since.

I think that sums up all the news I have regarding the trailer and our unwelcome visitor.

Next topic:

Wildfire fighter training:

I’ve completed two online computer training courses and been through 4 days of classes.  I just have to pass a physical test which is walk 3 miles carrying 45 LBS in 45 minutes, then I will be certified to fight wildfires under supervision.  I’m not sure when that test will be offered in the area.  I’m guessing July which will give me ample time to prepare (assuming I set aside time for some long distance speed walking).

Ok.  I can’t think of anything else at the moment.  Wouldn’t matter if I could.  I’m falling asleep at the keyboard.  I just had to delete some sleeping finger key presses.

Night all.

Cary