Protecting from Cold – Days 28 – 97

Dec 3 2018 – Feb 10 2019

My Gosh!  Has it really been that long since I posted??  My apologies.  Hope you have some time to read cause I’m guessing this is going to be a long one to get you up to speed.  It is cool, windy and rainy out so I’m not inclined to work outside today.  As much as I’d love to be working on developing my electronics monitoring systems on this unpleasant weather day, if I don’t get this blog entry done now, it will only become an even greater undertaking.  So update the blog entry it is.  You’ll be happy to know that I have a number of pics to share as well.

Where shall I start???  Maybe I should start where I left off.  Sounds like a good idea.  I’m going to organize this entry by subject and not timeline.

My efforts were around protecting the plumbing and spigots from the cold.  So far so good.  The only issues I’ve had are around the host going into the trailer.  I had a pressure regulator connected between the hose and the inlet to the trailer.  I think between the weight of the hose hanging on the pressure regulator and the freezing temperatures, it’s seals failed so by the time I decided to replace it it had a pretty decent drip of water coming from it.  Had some decent sized icicles hanging from some twine that I used to keep the access door from swinging in the wind.  Saw that, the saturated pipe insulation around the hose, and the soaked trench that the hose was in and scolded myself for letting it go unrepaired for so long.  Removed the regulator, reconnected the hose, turned the pressure down on the pump to reduce risk of over pressurizing the 5th wheels plumbing, and turned the water back on.  No problems.  On nights that it is supposed to get below 27, I turn off the water pump and depressurize the water line out of an over abundance of paranoia.

So far, my solution for protecting the spigots has worked out.  No issues there.  Not exactly pretty, but effective thus far.

What pretty much wraps up the physical aspect of protecting the infrastructure from the cold.  The last piece of the puzzle that I have planned is monitoring and eventual automated counter measures.  Enter the nerd in me.  I won’t get too technical here as I will save that for blog entries focused on technical projects as previously mentioned.  That said, I have planned to develop wireless network connected micro-controller (think tiny specialized computer) based temperature, humidity, and ultrasonic distance finder sensors to monitor temperatures at various locations around the property as well as monitor the dept of the water in the water tank.  That data will be logged to a local server which can send alarms if high or low thresholds are exceeded in the near term and in the long term  automate some corrective action.  Automated actions I am contemplating are:

• turn on a heater if the temperature is too low at a given location
• turn on a fan if the temperature is too high at a given location
• turn off power to the water pump if the water level is either too low or is dropping too rapidly
• pump water into main tank from secondary tank(s) when water drops to a particular level in the big tank
• Open and close windows depending on time of day and temperature of structure.
• take a photo of vehicles detected at the gate.
• take photos of individuals entering and leaving remote sheds/buildings.
• If it is hot, the batteries are charged, and there is power to spare, turn on fans at various locations to provide comfort to people and pets, monitoring power load on system.

Of course I would employ some method to over ride the automation.  I would be able to turn something on that I want on but the system didn’t turn on in an automated fashion.  I would also be able to turn something off over riding the automation that turned it on or would turn it on.

As time goes on, I’m sure there will be many more monitoring and automation projects that come to mind.

Starting the monitoring is what I spent most of my personal time over the holidays doing.  The weather wasn’t very nice so I played on the computer accomplishing the following:

• Setup a database to record and store sensor data
• Wrote web server programs to collect the data being sent from sensors and store that data in the database
• Wrote programs to collect data stored in the internet for my solar system and store it in the database
• Installed and configured a monitoring program to monitor it all.
• Wrote small custom monitoring programs for the bigger monitoring program to use to monitor the solar system data such as battery temperature, battery voltage, battery current, AC voltage, AC current, setting custom high or low warning or critical thresholds for each element monitored.
• Setup alerts in the monitoring program to email me warning or critical events.
• Setup my phone to play a unique sound if a critical alert is received.
• Setup a web page to display the most recent solar system stats that are of interest to me.

I spent a substantial amount of time learning new things and getting all that initial data collection and monitoring setup.  I expect it will be a good foundation to build the rest of my monitoring and automation projects on top of.

Within a day or two of completing the data collection, monitoring, and alerting setup, I was treated to an alarm one morning (I was already awake though), notifying my batteries were too cold to take a charge and the sun would be coming up soon.  I have lithium ion batteries and you can damage them if you try to charge them when they are below 32 F.   I had been monitoring the weather forecast and the trending temperature in the shed over night given the cold weather we’ve been having, so I was somewhat prepared for the alert letting me know the battery temperature was down to 33.  I went out and turned on our little electric space heater in the shed.  It brought the battery temperature up to 35 before the sun came up and started charging the batteries (and also warming the shed and batteries).  I think the outdoor temperatures that night had gotten down to the upper teens.

I was also thinking about setting up an alarm such that if the batteries were only charged to a certain voltage by 3 PM an alarm would go off telling me to go start the generator as there would not be enough power stored to make it through the night otherwise.  I can’t remember if I actually wrote that one.  Guess I will find out.  It is still raining and batteries are only up to 43V and it is 2:45 PM now.   At this point, I have no hope of the skies clearing for a late afternoon charge cycle.

I’m anxious to get the water/electric trench filled into so we can spread the gravel and move the RV’s into their long term positions.  As you may recall we were sorting the dirt by hoe and hand pulling out larger rocks so that should I ever need to dig the trench backup (by hand) again in the future, I would not be fighting rocks as I dig.  As you might imagine, that is a painstakingly slow process and the trench was not getting filled fast enough for my liking.  So I sacrificed a nice day and instead of filling the trench by hand, I build a dirt/rock screen with materials I had laying around.  This was a much larger screen than what I had previously build to screen dirt from rock for filling in the ground rod trenches.  This one is built for me to use the tractor with.  It is neither ideal nor durable.  I’m hoping it lasts long enough for filling this trench.  That said, I tested it out for an hour or so after I completed building it, and got as much dirt and rock separated and trench filled in that hour as I would have gotten done in a day doing it by hand.  I would call that time well invested.

Next I need to lay down the warning tape then top off the trench.  I’m thinking probably another 15 – 20 hours to get this section and the section that heads south crossing the drive to RV parking area filled into grade level.  But first….  I need to do some maintenance on the tractor.  Yep.  I broke it again.

I also spotted a grease zerk that sheared off so I ordered an extraction tool from Amazon to get what is left of it out so I can install a replacement.  It is also due to be greased and have bolts tightened.  Hoping the zerk replacement goes well so I can grease it up and at least use the bucket to move rocks out of the way and move dirt from elsewhere on the property to the trench area so I can prepare for topping off the trench.  Removing the rocks has left me short of material to refill the trench to grade level.  An afternoon of me greasing the tractor is usually a curse-fest for me as inevitably something goes wrong and I end up squirting grease where it doesn’t belong and I end up getting it on my clothes.  I look forward to the day when I have the process down and don’t have any issues.

One Sunday morning I was watching youtube videos and by chance learned about an earthbag dome building workshop a few minutes east of Bisbee that started that day and was scheduled to go for two weeks.  I had other commitments that day but the next day was MLK day and it was a company holiday, so I decided to go lend a hand and get some hands on experience.  It was a good learning experience.  I also returned to work some more the following Sunday as I was available then as well.  I was available Saturday but they took Saturday off.

This is the owners facebook page which has more pictures of this and other cool stuff she does.  https://www.facebook.com/RansomRanchBisbeeAZ/

I took a couple days vacation and joined Cheryl for a trip to Tuscon.

We enjoyed trying new to us vegan restaurants.

I had a great business trip to Pennsylvania for a week.

On the way home, between Tuscon and just a mile before the Wilcox exit I always take to top off my fuel tank, I was reminded to look on the bright side and be thankful.  Here are just a few things I was thankful for that early evening.

• I was thankful it was a beautiful evening in the 60’s with the Sun shining.
• I was thankful traffic was light.
• I was thankful I was awake, alert, and rested.
• I was thankful I had not recently over worked my muscles.
• I was thankful I was wearing good walking shoes.
• I was thankful the fuel station was within sight of where the truck stalled out.
• I was thankful I didn’t get hit walking along side the highway on that beautiful evening.
• I was thankful the gas station had a 5 gal diesel can in the back when I couldn’t find one on the shelf.
• I was thankful the gas station had automotive work gloves.
• I was thankful I was smart enough to NOT fill the fuel can all the way up and only put in the three gallons or so of fuel I would need to then drive the last mile to the gas station.
• I was thankful I had two good arms and hands to switch back and forth which was carrying the fuel can back to the truck.
• I was thankful I had done this once before so I knew what I was doing this time.
• I was thankful I had purchased two new batteries this summer/fall reducing the risk I would run the batteries out of power trying to get the air out of the fuel line before finally getting it started.
• I was thankful that I had a crescent wrench in the truck to enable me to open and close the priming valve.
• I was thankful that when I heard my phone start playing Chopin’s Death March (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC6S_VuRNGk) as I was consciously trying to remain positive while trying to start a truck that didn’t want to start, I doubled down on my positive thoughts and didn’t take it as a bad omen.  I have to say, it was ironic timing for that song to start playing.
• I was thankful when the truck started a couple minutes after that
• I was thankful I got the truck started while there was still daylight left (not much though).
• I was thankful I had bought enough fuel to make it the rest of the way to the gas station.
• I was thankful to be back on then road.
• I was thankful to make it home without any further unplanned exercise opportunities.

And with that, I bid you farewell till next time.  I’ll try not to make it so long between posts.  I know I keep saying that only to make it even longer between posts.  I’ll try to do better.