Setting up Infrastructure – 197 – 220

August 10 – Sept 2 (AM)

Ok.  23 days since my last update.

Seems like I’ve been busy doing a whole lot of nothing, at least it seems that I’ve been getting nothing accomplished since the last update.

Let’s review starting where I left off – concerned about having enough charge in the batteries to last the night after a day of heavy cloud cover.   Yes indeed.  Made it through the night with power to spare in the morning before the sun came up and started charging the batteries.  Had the same concern yesterday but will get to that later.

I’ve spent a few great days out and about with Cheryl and Rachel.  First was a day where we took a tour of Shakespeare ghost town (http://www.shakespeareghostown.com/) followed by a trip to Deming New Mexico to see what it had to offer with a stop at Walmart there for groceries.  There is the vet in Deming that I took Hersey to, but IMO, not much else making it worth the trip.  We ended the day with a trip to the Portal Cafe for dinner and live music.

After spending a week of evenings thinking and planning the water supply and electric supply to the RV carport area and ordering a number of items online, came a day trip to Sierra Vista to pickup conduit and misc other things as well as a general shopping day for Cheryl and Rachel.  It was a long day, but a productive and enjoyable day.  First stop that day was at the mall for Rachel to look for pants to work around the property in – she is very particular about her clothing and she doesn’t have anything appropriate to work outside around the mesquite and cactus in either pants or footwear.  My back was sore from the drive.  Felt like it may even have been a bit out of place.  The mall happens to have a massage place.  For the first time in my life, I broke down and paid for a massage.  My back felt much better afterwards.

I took some time out to upgrade Rusty’s WiFi network.  It was the first time in a year that an upgrade to that network went without a hitch.  The previous 2 – 3 upgrades always seemed to be a nightmare that had me walking around the park with my laptop and directly connecting to one or two WAPs to try to recover them and get them back online.

I spent a couple days clearing mesquite shrubs from the long term compost and general storage building location, then build a new compost bin in that location.

It occurred to me that I should double check to see if the 10 AWG wire I am currently using to power Rachel’s trailer (15 AMPs at 110V) in the current car port area is large enough to carry the 30 AMPs at 110V that I plan on for the RV carport area before I proceed with burying the wire and conduit.  Ugh… One reference I found says the wire is large enough to carry that load but mentions nothing about distance which I know is a concern.  Further searching revealed I need at least 3 AWG but is really on the edge, so I ordered 2 AWG wire.  Boy is that expensive!  So, with bigger wire, will it fit in the conduit I just bought for it?   Nope!  Soooo…. Yep, another trip to Sierra Vista to return the conduit I bought for the electrical wires and get larger conduit.  Another full weekend day gone without clear progress.  At least I wasn’t alone.  Cheryl came along to keep me company.

The water pump in the 5th wheel died.  So had to order a replacement online and replaced it the day it arrived.  Natually, the plumbing fittings that connected directly to it were aged and disconnecting from the old pump and connecting them to the new pump, leaks.   Sooo… picked up new fittings on my previously mentioned 2nd trip to Sierra Vista.  Problem solved.

So, I now have the conduit for electrical, the RV electrical pedestal that I ordered from Home Depot, and all the odds and ends that I think I need to be ready to run water, electric, and communications cables (phone, network, remote control panel for the solar system) once I got the trench dug.  This is a big project that I don’t want to drag out, so I plan to perform the trenching the Thursday and Friday before labor day weekend so I can spend the three day holiday running water line, electrical, communications cables, and filling in the trench.  Sounds like a good plan right?  I thought so, except….  After spending evenings earlier in the week clearing clutter out of the 5th wheel so I had a place to sit and work on micro controller projects in the evenings and giving the tractor an overdue lube job, Thursday and Friday were spent working for work instead of the planned trenching.  Also, the week came and went without delivery of the electrical wire.  Saturday was rainy pretty much all day long with hail, thunder and lightning thrown in.  So even if I wanted to work in the rain, no way am I working in hail, thunder and lightning.

Cloud cover was so heavy all day that the batteries did not get sufficient charge.  First time since the solar panels came online.  The generator hasn’t been run in months…  Not good.  It would not run with the choke at anything less than 1/2 and as such, it wouldn’t supply the power it normally would if it were running properly.  That said, after I reconfigured the system to not try to pull so much power from the generator, it got the job done of charging the batteries another couple volts over a couple of hours of running.  That was yesterday.  Today started out rainy (thus this early day blog post), but it is clearing up now.  I expect/hope it to be clear enough to charge the batteries today.  Some day I plan to learn to service the generator myself, but now is not the time for that, especially considering I don’t have a shop to work in yet.  In the mean time, I will have to find someone to take it to for service.

I’ll have to jump online tonight to shop for replacement vents for Rachel’s trailer.

What else have I been doing with my time?

Doing battle with a mouse comes to mind.  Damage that I am aware of was minimal before it met it’s demise.  Rachel has some extra cleaning to do due to his multiple visits to our kitchen gadget drawers.

Cheryl has had furry cuddle buddies in the form of cats for most of her life, but she has been without for the past year at the apartment.  Over the past year, we’ve discussed it at length and at this point in time, I don’t want another indoor cat so we agreed we would get a small lap dog when she got moved down here and settled into the trailer.  She became focused on getting a new furry cuddle buddy over the last couple of weeks.  After days and nights of searching shelters and rescue organizations, she gave up and turned to searching breeders in the area for a pup meeting her/our wants and yet affordable.  She finally settled on one this week, made the arrangements, and so it is that we have added a new member to our family.

 

Sasha pretty much ignores him.  Bear wants to play with her but she has no interest in playing with him.  He barks his little bark and charges a few inches then backs up trying to get her to play.  She silently walks away annoyed.  In fact, she has taken to now going into the upper bedroom area of the 5th wheel, an area she was previously not allowed and didn’t venture into, just to get away from him.  Feeling bad for her, I let her go up there now.  He is still to small to make it up those stairs but I’m sure it it is only a matter of time where she will just have to go outside to get away from him.  It is kinda funny.  For you Star Wars fans, seeing him run under and around her makes me think of Ewoks running around the imperial walkers.

Speaking of Sasha, we have been leaving her out at night to keep the unwelcome critters away as is in her breed’s nature.  She does this by barking at anything she hears go bump in the night.  She barks a lot.  We sleep through it.  Thought we were far enough away from all our neighbors that it would be fine.  Apparently not.  The one neighbor I failed to attempt to introduce myself to left me a nasty gram posted on our gatepost informing us that he had called animal control, had audio and video evidence of her barking, and if it continued, I would get a visit from animal control.  The note was left anonymously but I am confident I know who it was.  He stopped outside the fence line that night and parked for a few minutes.  I presume to see if she would come out and bark at him.  Thinking it is time to go introduce myself.  Sasha now sleeps inside at night with us.

Subject change…

One Saturday night after enjoying an evening of dinner and music at the Portal cafe, Cheryl and I heard a brief sound as I was helping her into the trailer.  It could have been a bug, but I had my suspicions that it wasn’t, so I went back out to investigate.  The sound had come from the direction of the solar panels.  After a few steps in that direction from the trailer, it occurred to me that I needed to not step lightly.  I needed to make my presence know with each step.  Sure enough, the next thud of my step were enough to elicit the very loud rattles of a disturbed rattle snake that Cheryl was able to hear from the inside of the trailer loud and clear.  Good enough for me.  I froze in my tracks for a few couple seconds, then retreated taking the same path I came as it was dark and I knew that path was rattle snake free.  I was thankful he was under the solar panels and not under the trailer.  I’ve been assured that as we establish our presence in the area, rattle snakes will become less of a problem in the immediate vicinity of our living space over time.  Note I said “less”.  Another thing to reduce their presence in the area is to reduce or remove their food source – mice and rats.  That sounds like a win/win to me.  So, making various forms of bucket mouse and rat traps are also on my to-do list.  I’ve also considered introducing non-venomous snakes to the property to further reduce the food supply in the area.  Cheryl is less excited about that option.  🙂

Okay.  I think that brings you up to date with everything.  The sky has cleared and it is still early in the day.  Time to get lunch then go play on the tractor digging a trench.  Maybe I will still be able to salvage some of this holiday weekend and make substantial progress after all.

Wishing everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend.

Cary