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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Panels Are Up!

When you get something done that you didn't have planned? Always a great feeling.

Over the holiday weekend, Dan and I very much enjoyed the rainy 4th. Why, you ask? Well, when it rains one has less guilt about the long list of projects staring one in the face. One can say, "Oh gee, well would you look at that, I can't work in this rain! Guess I will just sit back, relax, and catch a movie or something equally passive." haha

And that we did! --At home. Apparently we weren't the only ones who thought it would be a good day for a movie. We went, saw the the massive line, and after waiting just 3 minutes we heard a staff member call out, "Maleficent is sold out!" So, we headed off to do some other errands that had been adding up, then enjoyed a movie at home. 

We didn't set our sights too high for the weekend. We have both been feeling the burn out set in. It's been over a solid year of working almost every last weekend and several, several weekdays of putting in the full 8.5 then coming home and putting in another 3-4. It's beginning to catch up with us! I'll admit, I've had more than one semi-melt down day in the last month or two. A break is much needed. But the end is in sight!

Neither of us expected we would get the panels up over the weekend. There was a lot to be discussed and figured still. Or at least we seemed to think so. But on Saturday, as we puttered around, unpacking this, tidying up that, we kept staring at that stack of panels. Finally, we made our way over and started to discuss the strategy we had for mounting them. We leaped from one alternative to another, only to end up back at the same idea. The truth is, you can talk in circles all day long or you can just DO IT. Then learn from the doing. 

"Let's just try putting up one and see how it goes," I said nonchalantly, and thus the panel mounting began. We opted to use flat brackets, about 3 inches long with four different holes. There are only 4 holes to choose from on either side of the panel itself, so we had made our racking according to those lengths. 

First we secured the brackets to the back of the panel racking with the bolt and nut facing up into the gap created by the frame of the panel- that way, when placed onto the racking, that bolt head was flush with the panel's frame. Once we had the panel in place, we used large wood screws to secure the bracket to the racking. The first one went up rather easily, as did the second, so we just kept going!

Due to our method of securing the panel, we had to have about 3-4 inches of space between each panel, so there was space to screw down the brackets. We alternated the height of the panels as well so the brackets of two adjacent panels could set under or above one another- otherwise the gap would have been larger if we kept them all at the same height and had brackets butting together.

Our two rows of racking are not symmetrical by any means either. We had to dig our post holes where we could manage to make holes period. So, we opted to leave a larger gap in the center of the back row, so as to sort of center the panels on the rack and also provide a nice opening for wind to come through- thereby reducing it's impact on the panels. The front row of racking is shorter, so we kept the same spacing all the way across.

We had all but two of the panels up by the end of Saturday. We needed more hardware to finish the job, so we called it a day. We stood back and admired our work. No, they aren't the picture perfect solar arrays you see in magazines where every last panel is immaculately lined up, centered, and even every which way. They are a little off here and there, like their owners. :) Last I checked, the sun still shines just as well on panels that aren't perfectly pretty in a row- as long as they are pointing at the sun!

One thing I would mention to anyone who is yet to set up solar panels. We learned about z-feet, which are, as it turns out, a very specific piece of mounting hardware that can make life easier when mounting. We searched high and low locally, but could not find what we needed. We could only order online from a solar or RV store. We weren't about to wait another couple weeks to do this, so we went with the brackets. 

On Sunday, we finished putting up the panels and also started spreading wood chips. Deb had a connection with the local electric company, so we got a great big heaping pile of wood chips made from trees that had to be removed for power lines and such. Thanks, Deb!! :)

We spread them around the solar array to help prevent plants from growing and interfering with the panels, and we spread a bunch leading up to the Pod and around the front side. Dan plans to finish spreading around the back as well. 

Now, we just need to starting hooking up our entire system. Eeep! I am certain we can do this, and it's all just a step by step process like anything else, but now I don't have the excuse of, "Oh, well we still have to get the panels up"- dang our productive natures!

I plan to dive into the manual tonight and start slowly over the course of this week and the coming weekend. 

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