Not too slack

It's nice weather for sun baking..

..but we've been busy with the solar system this week. We ran the wire for the lights in the kitchen from the old system to the new. I always forget how to wire up the pull-switch, have to look it up every time!

The most obvious part of the whole thing was finally being able to take down the UGLY little solar shed that dominated the north wall of the cottage.

Other than that, we're almost back to "normal". We're still charging everything outside instead of in the kitchen though.. and the freezer.. that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. All I can say about that right now is, I made a HUGE mistake buying it all those years ago! Now it's back to square one again, but at least we have a good idea of what we really need out here now. (Something I wish I had considered way back when..)

We'll show-off the whole system after we've installed the battery monitor, so it'll be just about all done as far as 12 and 24 volt is concerned. Marty and I are a little bit proud of ourselves for pulling it off. We knew nothing about this stuff before hand. It's been quite the learning experience, and this way, we know our system inside out, back to front. :)

Wet shaving and cutting concrete

So my face had hair all over it. Whiskers and grays. I'd say it was a full on beard! A rarity for me and probably the longest it's ever grown. While I liked the look and face warming goodness that accompanied it, the opposite can be said for the hot summers here so it was time for it to go. Back around May this year I started researching wet shaving because I liked the idea, frugality of it, and the super keen old school tech. I put together this little starter kit;

Only, it was just in time for winter... so it was relegated to the back of a cupboard - until about 3 days ago when it finally came to use and boy did it shave swell! Firstly, I got Manda to hack off the longest bits with a hair clipper, before trying out the double edge safety razor and thankfully loosing only a little blood.

I'm using a Muhle R89 Classic DE, Semogue 1305 Shaving Brush, some Occams Original Shave Cream, a blade sampler pack, some Mitchells Wool Fat shaving soap and the lathering bowl is from Bendigo Pottery that was found in an op shop.

We've also been powering forward with the off grid solar project. One part of it was cutting conduit channels into the concrete porch area where the system resides.

This exercise has cemented our idea not to remove the concrete porch when the time comes to construct a proper wood deck. While our neighbor told us of the thin layer of concrete over bricks around his house, we seem to have thick, well made cement, complete with quartz and reo-mesh!

We've been buying wire, bits, and hooking up converters, then unhooking them, buying more bits, drilling more holes... soon it'll be done... soon.

Charging ahead

We began early this morning, lifting the final panels onto the roof and plugging them in. The batteries were cleaned and wired in series and parallel, plus the temperature sensor for Blue on a negative terminal. We checked and re-checked everything, put in the remaining fuses and turned the system on. What a moment!

All that work comes down to this little setup we call the SCC - Solar Control Centre. (Not a very catchy name, and rather military, but it fits.) There is more to add to the system, but this is the basics of getting energy from solar panels into batteries. Everything flows from right to left - first a 2 way box with a couple of 50A fuses in there for the positive and negative cables coming from the solar panels, then Blue - a MPPT charge controller that is the brains of the system, over to the Bussmann fuse box which keeps the batteries and Blue separated if things go pear shaped (it has 80A fuses in it), and down to the batteries who enjoyed their first charge today thanks to this little setup.

So, how am I writing this if we've started the charging?? Well, silly us.. we realised that we can keep some of our power just by keeping one of the panels off the roof and using it to keep charging the old ute battery system. It's working just fine for now, and we're grateful for that. It gives us some breathing room to wire up the house and attach the other smaller components. We also want to make a door for the SCC to help keep out the dust.

We'll go to bed very tired, but happy with ourselves tonight.

Electricity and Water

The weather has certainly warmed up with 30°C+ (88°F-ish) days lately. We discovered last year that Spring isn't like it was in Victoria, with a slow build up of beautiful mid 20°C (77°F-ish) days. Nope, here we jump right into hot. Honestly, the winter hats, hot water bottles etc are still out and were only used a week or so ago.

But on that note, it means free hot water! Ok, luke-warm water is good enough for now, but oh how wonderful it feels!!

We used an old shower screen over the bath - an idea we got from our friends Jeanie and Bill. It was overcast today, but even so, after working in the roof and sweating all day, it was like heaven! The water drains to the mandarin tree, and soon the lemon tree as well, plus the pavers obviously need a bit of work still. :)

We're trudging along with the solar system. Step-by-step, little-by-little..

We've installed the conduit from the panels over to the batteries, fed the solar cable through (that is way more difficult than it sounds), bought just about every little bit of conduit joiner and accessory known to Masters (the hardware store), and we are still missing bits! Tomorrow we'll add the switch between the solar panels and "Blue" (the affectionate name for the charge controller), put Blue into place and wire her up. After that, we've got a pretty big job of taking down each one of the panels and re-wiring them.

It's only after all that, and then some, can we start the batteries charging for the first time. The initial charge is suppose to be for a week without load. As you might imagine, we're a little hesitant to say goodbye to the luxury of electricity for a week, but we'll just have to manage. It will be very much worth the wait though! It's not like we'll be sitting around with nothing to do, however. There's wires to run for the house, cutting concrete to run conduit to the kitchen and lounge, a light circuit to run for the bedroom perhaps, and of course, BATHS to relax in!! :)