It's Official! We are OFF THE GRID!

The Annoying Fitness Couple of the 80s

These past two weekends have been full of major progress!

In the past two weekends we have done a plethora of stuff ranging from post-wedding to life in general to tiny house related tasks. In between, I flew out to Little Rock, AR for a busy work week. My apologies for the long awaited next post, but there has been just too much going on! And I'd rather be out DOING than in Writing. ;) I know for a fact that many of you are squirming at the edge of your seats, waiting to hear all about our solar power set up, so let me just break it to you in the first paragraph- this isn't the post. HOWEVER, I will be doing something a bit different this week- since there is so much to talk about. I will be doing some posts in rapid fire! Expect two more posts from me within the week! I have tomorrow off, which I plan to make wise use of, and also spend a little time with my favorite veteran- my older brother, Adam. I am going to break down the solar power set up in two posts. In the first post I will catalogue the components of our system so you know exactly what we have. I will also introduce some of the major items you should be evaluating when you first make the decision to go solar. I may even include some helpful resources in that one- or maybe the second one. The second post will most certainly contain a video of me showing our setup and giving and VERY rudimentary explanation of how it all connects and works.

But for this post- I will stick to the highlights and plaster the place with photos.

Halloween weekend- we did something fun and unusual for us- we made a little effort to plan costumes and then headed out to Twin River to meet some friends, take in the entertainment, a few beverages, and we even gambled a smidge. We walked out with five extra dollars. 

The gifts keep trickling in! We love it!

Saturday was a slow lazy start, then we suddenly had to help out a family member which ended up taking a good part of the day. So we scrapped the rest of it (as far as work on the house was concerned) and tended to a few errands of our own- like laundry. And we put together our new Berkey!! Thanks Lupo! :) Gotta love the late wedding gifts that keep showing up.  

Dan digging out a trench to bury our grounding rod.

On Sunday, we completed the last few connections that were needed. We realized part way through that we didn't have the additional wire and teeny weeny connector pieces for the Trimetric monitor, but we kept going. The Trimetric is not necessary to allow the system to run and produce power- it simply monitors the battery levels and a few other things. We just wanted to make sure the whole system worked at this point! We didn't turn on the inverter. It was late in the day and we wanted the batteries to get a good charge before we asked for any power. 

I'm not sure I can describe the slow steady rise of joy that came over me as we flipped the breakers at each point. First, we were at the panels, flipping the connector box breakers- and seeing the little blue lights of the lightning arrestor beam up at us was a lovely first sign. We then headed to the utility closet and began flipping those breakers too. When the charge controller powered on we were AMPED!! (See what I did there?)

It's lit up!!

By that point in the day it was getting dark and quite crisp. We headed inside and started reviewing manuals so we could start understanding what all these little monitors needed from us, and what they would tell us in return. 

This past weekend, we spent Saturday getting the materials for the heater and the Trimetric. We finished installing the battery monitor to the system and programmed both the Trimetric and our charge controller as needed. At first the charge percentage didn't display and we got a bit nervous, but after more reading we realized it would not display the first time until the batteries were at 100%. 

On Sunday, we finally saw it hit 100% within the first half hour of morning sun. We decided to go for it! We turned on the inverter and plugged ourselves in! We are now proudly, joyously, FINALLY using power from the sun!!! YYEEEEEHAAAWWW!!!

The rest of Sundays light hours were spent installing the heater. Dan's Dad came over and gave us a hand. Since I did most of the homework on the solar power, I told Dan that the heater was his homework.


 It was quite nice, just hanging back and taking photos, letting him and his Dad do the work. :) We found that we are missing just one little connector piece, which we plan to get tonight. Then we will see how our new heater works!

Marking the hole...

After these past two weekends, two major major tasks have finally been accomplished, and we are ahead of the winter weather still. I have felt this rare, remarkable calm settle over me. The entire vision is finally coming together. I am beyond proud of what we have done together, and even more so now that we can say we successfully installed our own solar power system! It can be done people!

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Cutting the hole with a jigsaw.

Finishing the cut on the outside!

Hey there! Our pipe fits!

 

About To Leap Off The Grid!

We are just a couple connections away from running on sun power!

This past weekend, Dan and I spent two full days carefully reviewing, prepping, assembling, and installing our solar power system. All that remains to be done is to ground a few different items in our "power center", install the Tri-metric battery monitor, and then actually connect the line leading from the house up to the panels.

We had a fair mix of plain old labor (digging trenches and yanking wire through conduit) and the more cerebral challenges of making sure we understood and replicated the many schematics and diagrams that came with all of our parts and pieces.

We are both beyond excited to finally get this system up and running, but certainly did not want to rush through anything. With great hesitation, we packed up and put everything away for the weekend around 4pm on Sunday. After all, when you work full time, your weekend should have at least a couple hours of down time right? Not to mention my body needed a break. 

Now THAT is a tiny space.

I spent the better part of this weekend folded up inside our utility closet. Dan's a lot bigger than me, and I did the bulk of the homework on this stuff, so I wedged myself in there to put all the pieces together. When I get locked into a project- everything else seems to fall away. My awareness hones to a pinpoint, and suddenly I am unaware of anything else....like sound, temperature, physical sensation, passage of time and so on. At some point, my legs had gone numb, and when I crawled out of that little space at the end of the day I nearly fell over! My muscles had cramped into that position, so for a few entertaining minutes, I hobbled around half hunched over like a 90 year old lady.

**Note- I began writing this post's draft before receiving some very sad news. My uncle passed away late Sunday.  For anyone who may have known Paul Belhumeur and would like to pay respects, we welcome you to his services on Thursday October 30th. More information is here. **

As a result, this post will remain brief. I had plans to begin laying out the details of our system in a two or three part series, but my mind and energy are elsewhere. I will begin doing so with the next post. 

Please send love, prayers, warmth, hugs, or any kind of support to my family- if you would.

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If you plan on leaving your panels mounted but not yet connected-
tape the ends of the cables! Some sort of flying insect decided to lay larvae
in our male MC4 connector ends. Not fun to clean out.

He's such a hard worker :)

Lightning arrester...

Wiring the combiner box...

Lightning arrester wired.

Time to wire these panels together!

Mounted the combiner box.

Feeding wires through the conduit.

Finishing up the wiring of the panels into the combiner box. 

Working on the e-panel wiring.

Progress: An Inch at a Time

Our activity over the next month will undoubtedly be minimal as we close in on the big day.

That being said, I will try my best to keep in touch and keep posting! They might be micro-posts in comparison to our usual content, but hey! We're still here- still doing the tiny house thang- we just need to divert more attention elsewhere for the time being.

Sooo- Dan's truck broke down Saturday morning, and he started his first day at RIC this week. We scrambled around to make arrangements for another car in the meantime, a tow, getting ahold of the mechanic on a holiday weekend, making sure his parking pass deal wouldn't get screwed up, and so on. Needless to say, that threw a big ol' wrench into plans we had for the weekend. I never realized just how much we use his truck when it comes to hauling basic stuff around. Collecting more pallets, getting long pieces of lumber at the store, hauling power tools from one site to the next...not to mention just not having your own set of wheels. We often split up duties, one of us will run off and do this, while the other goes there and does that. Not this weekend! So we re-adjusted.

 Among many other wedding things, we were able to mark the new/correct angle for our panels on the racking. After seeing how much we have to lop off- we were happy to learn that we can still use our racking. There are only a certain number of holes on the back side of our panels and we needed to make sure we could still fasten onto the racking at those distances. We came up with a new way to mount them once all the cuts have been made.

I'm not even sure I want to say- "We hope to work on the panels this weekend"- but I guess I just did! Progress seems to be crawling while time is flying. We are making a point to stay positive each day. We've jump started our super healthy eating once again, back to meditating, got all of our favorite supplements back on the shelf, and feeling pretty good each day. We want to look our best for the big day! And we really needed to quit it with all the take-out. It was beginning to be more of a problem than a convenience. We were feeling groggy, sluggish, cranky. It's amazing how much food can affect you. Eat garbage, feel like garbage.

Anyways! We plan to take it all in baby steps, but we really hope to take the panels off one rack and get the rack cut. Then, if there's more time in the weekend, we will try to re-mount!

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A Streak of Heightened Appreciation

Such an epic time!

My grand plan is finally beginning to work! MUAHAHA!

What grand plan, you say? The plan to live in such a way that we find ourselves reveling and rejoicing in the smallest of things. I believe life is about finding happiness and finding connection. So far, the tiny house living has brought us both in excess! We have become a part of a bigger community of people with the same dreams and goals, we have gained a lot of new friends and support, and we have seen the subtle shift in our perspectives bringing us small joys on a daily basis.

Saco River!

Dan's birthday was on the 19^th, and we went on a camping weekend in New Hampshire. The main activity of the weekend was canoe-ing the Saco river along with a big group of friends. We certainly had more than one hiccup that weekend, thanks to the poor planning/communication skills of excited young men. HA! BUT, those bumps in the road aside, it was a pretty good time. The river was a blast and absolutely beautiful. I have to admit I had a hard time adjusting to seeing flocks of people every two minutes on the river, and then camping in tiny little lots -practically on top of the next set of campers. I grew up in rural areas where you seldom saw a car driving down the road let alone people milling about. So when we camped, we went even deeper into the woods. If you heard a noise, it wasn't human. Needless to say, I will be involved in the planning of the next camping trip- and we won't be returning to the place we went.

We joked all weekend about how the way we live daily didn't seem much different than camping. In fact, at this place we had electrical hook up AND running water at our disposal! What happened to roughin' it?! The lack of sleeping bags or proper padding is what sealed the deal for me. Yep, this was still a step down from the Pod. And when we got home- OH GLORIOUS DAY! The Pod seemed brighter and more lovely than usual, our bed twice as wonderful and soft and cozy.

After returning home from New Hampshire on Sunday, I headed right back out the door Monday to spend the week in Atlanta for work. I'm usually not a big fan of traveling that long -being away from home. After three years of traveling like this, the excitement has mostly worn off, and I find myself going a little nutty with my free time on the road. All I can think about is “if I were home I could be working on this right now, or I could start that...” but, unless I can fit it in a suitcase and take it with me, most projects get placed on hold. This week however, I made a conscious decision to practice some deliberate appreciation. Rather than whine internally about what I couldn't be working on- I decided to look around me and enjoy. It worked quite well! The week flew by, and the evenings in my hotel went quickly too. Air conditioning! A huge bed with room to run all around it! Plumbing! Showers in my own space, at any time! Unlimited running water! Unlimited electricity! Unlimited internet and data! AMAZINGNESS!

While I was gone, Dan kept the work coming on the house. He processed a bunch more pallets for siding and then put up that batch. The third wall is almost complete! And he started work on the last wall! I don't even know what I will do when this siding is finally complete. Laugh, cry, jump around. Probably all three! 

When I returned home this weekend, we decided to dive into the solar power system once again. On Sunday, we hunkered down and brought every last box and bag of pieces inside. We were determined to figure this out. Long story short, we learned A LOT, from reading through the different manuals as well as checking out video after video on youtube. We have primarily MidNite Solar products and they have some videos up. There are also a whole lot of DIY solar power people out there using MidNite solar products- so we were able to glean quite a bit from various sources.

We turned the computer on and started reading, reviewing, and watching. We discussed our thoughts and how we interpreted directions. We put small pieces together here and there. We grouped other pieces according to how they would be used. We compiled a list of questions. Haha. By the time we looked at the clock, we were shocked to realize that 4.5 hours had gone by! We both felt like we had put in maybe an hour!

What we concluded that afternoon is that we had too many unknowns, and we weren't sure, but we thought some components were missing. We decided to wait and call up our rep, Greg, at the AltE Store, to get definite answers. We weren't about to guess with $6000 on the line.

Eeh?!

Come to find out, we were missing a few different pieces and needed to get some more wiring. In discussions with our rep, we also discovered one of our breakers was not the right size! So I am feeling pretty damn glad we waited and made the call. We will be ordering the additional parts needed this week and hopefully will have this system up and running before the end of August!

I know there are plenty of you who are curious about solar power and I promise you I will be putting together a big juicy post of how ours goes together and works. I have also been compiling the most helpful videos we have found. I just might make a set of my own videos, because the one thing that frustrated me, was all the folks putting up videos and calling it “how to” when really they just flashed a couple photos of their set up and gave some extremely vague descriptions. I don't know about you, but I like videos that talk to me like I'm a first grader and break every little bit down into comprehend-able pieces. That's what you can expect from me. The other challenging aspect is that there is no cookie cutter set up for solar power systems. The size of your system, the voltage, the distance between parts, etc all lead to very unique set ups. Not to mention, you can purchase one piece from one company, and then another piece from a different company, and so on, and of course, all these pieces look slightly different too. We watched a very comprehensive video on putting together a combiner box, only to open ours up and see that it looks nothing like the one in the video. The general concepts are the same, but a standardization in the actual pieces would be nice.

Oh! And something to look forward to! We had a really cool videographer named Danny come do a shoot of the Pod and interview us. This video and blog post are for a super awesome company called Custom Made. Check them out! It's kind of like a step up from Etsy. There are thousands of top notch artists and craftsmen who make use of this site. You have an idea or project you want to see created? You post what you want on Custom Made and then various artists or craftsmen will contact you if they are willing to create it for you!

We feel a little silly with our simple house being showcased on a site with such incredible work being displayed- but as Danny said- it's not just about fine craftsmanship, it's about creating. No matter what level you are at. They support and commend those who want to dig in and do it themselves too. We can't wait to see the finished video and blog post! Stay tuned!

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