Chapter 77...Moving Trees & Battery Gas Vent

Off Grid...Chapter 77 7-2 We finally got our new battery vent. Mike took it out of the box and figured out what needs to be done. But before we can do that job we have to go over to the other property to mow. On our way we stopped at our dirt pile to fill some 5 gallon buckets with dirt. We have some extra trees at our other property that we planted 2 years ago. We will bring some back and plant some in our backyard. Hopefully they will survive. When we got to the other property we saw that the back field was hayed. It was a rough year for the farmers this year. We have had so much rain which made it really hard to get the fields hayed. I also got another surprise when I started to weed eat. Our next door neighbor did the weed eating on his side of the fence. Woo hoo. Just one section that I don't have to do this week. After Mike and I finished mowing and weed eating we picked out a few trees to dig up and take home. We started a small nursery on this property with very small trees for future transplants. Mike is digging one out. We picked out 2 more trees and dug them out. Then we filled in the holes with the dirt we brought from home. Our first 3 trees are loaded on the trailer. We get back home and unload the mower and the weed eater. Then we pick an area to plant the trees. Mike starts digging a hole for the first tree. After the 3 trees are planted Mike stakes the trees to protect them from the wind. Then he waters them. Now we have to try and keep them healthy until they establish. Hopefully they will make it. Our first 3 trees are in. Later on we got a call form our neighbor Albert. He said as much as he and his wife want our other property they can't buy it right now. They have to sell their land first. Oh well- back to the drawing board. 7-3 Wow, it's really cold out this morning. Don't get me wrong because i am not complaining, lol. I hate the heat. Niki and i went up to check the garden and I picked my first two squash. Woo hoo. I think it is so cool to be picking my own veggies. Now that Albert isn't buying our pother property we have to start advertising. We made up some flyer's and now we have to go over there to move the signs around. We take the trailer and a ladder and head to the other property. On our way we stop and fill up a few more buckets of dirt. We might as well get a few more trees while we are there. Mike getting dirt. We get to the other place and go around to the back. We put the ladder against the tree and Mike and I take down the big For Sale sign. Then we bring it up to the front of the property. Here I am banging a t-post in to hang the sign on. We hang the sign, install a box up front and put the flyer's in the box. Then Mike takes the backpack sprayer and starts spraying the weeds on the driveway. While he is doing that I go over and dig out 3 more trees and fill in the holes. Then I load them onto the trailer and wait for mike to finish. When we get home we plant the new trees and Mike fertilizers the new grass to give our lawn a boost. 7-4 All I can say about today is Ugg!! It's just one of those days. I think all of our problems from June are catching up to us. Mike is working on our new battery vent. First he installs a PVC elbow and pipe into the battery box. Then he puts the battery vent with the fan on top of the pipe. Next he has to hook up the wires to make sure it works. The fan is supposed too automatically turn on when the batteries are gassing. He hooks it up to the inverter first but since we don't use the "mate" on our system it doesn't work. He had to reprogram some things to get it to work. Next he hooks the wires to the charge controller and tries the fan. Ah success. The fan is working. Then Mike goes outside while I hold a coffee can up to the roof so he can drill a hole. I catch all of the metal filings while Mike files the edges of the hole. Here is the hole for the new pipe. Next Mike has to add a piece of PVC pipe to vent the gases outside. Here he is measuring for the pipe. Finally our new battery gas vent is in and things are safer. After that Mike goes outside and climbs up top to put the cover on and seal it. Just one more thing off the list, lol. 7-5 It's a dreary rainy day. Mike noticed that our tailer for the mower which is made for our mower is staring to bend and basically fall apart. It doesn't look like the company used strong enough metal. Mike called Tractor Supply and told the manager we just bought this trailer this spring and use it about once a week. There is no way it should be falling apart. He told us to bring it in so he could look at it. Well it's a rainy day so we take the ride down the mountain to Tractor Supply. The manager comes out to look at it and he tells Mike "this shouldn't happen". Ya think. He can't do anything about it know until he checks with the higher ups. Yeah right. That means they won't do anything. So everyone don't buy a zero turn trailer from Tractor Supply because even though they are supposed to be made for zero turns they aren't strong enough. Mike and I will just put braces under the gate when he rides the mower on and off. This way the trailer shouldn't break. That's all for this part of our story. All I can say is Thank God June is over. It was a terrible month for us. It seemed like everything went wrong. First the motor home fiasco, the flat tire on the Jeep, the computer broke, the Internet satellite stopped working, our generator didn't start, we had a water leak, our water pump didn't work when we tried to drain the water tank, our charge controller didn't work so we had to send it back, the starter on the mower died, our land deal fell through, and now the trailer is bent. Sometimes life just throws curve balls and you just have to keep on going. We got through all of the obstacles in our way but i really hope July is a little better because we could really use a break, lol. I hope you all enjoyed the update. Lisa

Chapter 67...Moving Solar Panels & Taking Care Of Batteries

Off Grid...Chapter 67 The next 2 installments are primarily about our solar system move and our new, and last lol, solar set up. Mike is pretty certain he has perfected our new system. In the next couple of weeks we are going to take down all the solar panels, move them to on top of the gray shipping container roof, move all the batteries to inside the building, disconnect all the solar(the charge controllers, the inverter, and all the wires) from inside our house, and re install everything inside the gray building. I know I lost some of you but I have lots of pictures. We have a total of 12 solar panels. Mike is going to wire a set of 6 panels to one charge controller. The next set of 6 panels will be wired to their own charge controller. It is not necessary to have 2 charge controllers for this but Mike wants to have a redundant system in case there is ever a problem with one of them. This way we will never be without solar power. We can survive with 6 solar panels. Each set of panels will go to 7 which is half of our batteries. Everything will have one inverter but we have a back up one just in case. Mike likes to be prepared. Tuesday June 2- Now it's time to do some work. This is the before picture with our 12 solar panels in their current location on our homemade wood mounts. Yeah I'm going to get the wood for my next garden bed. The first part of this is undoing all the wiring. We are going to disconnect 6 panels first and get those online. For a few days we will only be using 6 panels for all of our electric needs. Mike is undoing the wires from the batteries and the solar panels. Our first 3 solar panels are unhooked and we moved them into the shipping container. Mike now has to use the metal pieces we bought to make the brackets and bolt them to the solar panels. First he has to lay the 3 solar panels down in the building. Then he takes the measurements and lays the metal pieces across the backs of the solar panels. Next he pre drills the holes for the bolts and then he tapes and marks the location of everything. We have to get everything ready in the building and than bolt it and install it all when we are on top of the roof. It would be just too heavy and dangerous for the 2 of us to try to get the whole thing up on the roof. After everything is marked we can start transferring everything to the top of the roof. Mike goes on top of the roof and spreads a sheet out to protect the roof top. Then I start handing him the brackets, the 3 solar panels, and I bring up the tools. Now that we are both on the roof with the panels and brackets we can start putting it all together. I hope all the holes and markings are right, lol. We laid the the 2 brackets across the roof. Then we put the 3 solar panels on top of the brackets. Mike starts screwing the panels to the brackets to the panels but they don't fit. Uh oh I think i spoke too soon. "What's wrong?" He laughs and says "I bolted the panel in using the wrong hole" Ok at least that's an easy fix. Next Mike tells me to stay on the roof while he goes down and moves the ladder to the front of the building. He has to bolt the bracket down from the front of the building. He sets up the ladder and climbs up. While I help him hold the panels up he says "Oh no, I'm losing the ladder" Of course he is very calm and the next thing I know he is just gone. I'm yelling "are you ok"? Did you get hurt? Mike says he's fine he jumped off the ladder before it hit the ground. At this point I am having a heart attack because now I am stuck on the roof with no way down and Mike could have been lying on the ground hurt. Now I think I would have had to pull a Tarzan move and taken the sheet, knotted it around the edge of the building just to swing down. Yeah I sound so brave when I am such a wuss. But at least I had a plan, lol. I am really thankful Mike is has good reflexes and had good balance. The ladder slipped because it was in a thick patch of fresh gravel that slid when he climbed up. Mike gets the first 2 panels connected on the front of the building. Then Mike has to get underneath the panels to connect the adjustable leg braces and also bolt the panels to the brackets. He has to be an acrobat to move around under the panels. While he is doing that I am looking around and I catch a flashing off to the side. I look over and can see a trackhoe way off over the mountain. It's Jimmy working on his land. We finally have the first 3 panels in place and bolted down. Woo hoo. Later on, back on the ground, we disconnect the next 3 panels from our old wood mounts and out them inside the building to get fitted for their brackets. While Mike worked on the brackets I did some weed eating under the fence around our little compound. Then I finished spray painting the T-posts green. After that I played with my garden. It is getting late but we are out while it's getting dark to remove the long board that held the first 6 panels. Here is Mike removing one of the boards that will be used for my next garden. Woo hoo. Wednesday 6-3 Mike pre drilled all the holes into the next 3 panels. Here we are on top of the roof working on the next set of panels. I'm not sure if you all remember how much I hate ladders. It's not that I fear heights I just have no balance. If you ever watched me climb a ladder you would laugh your self silly. I hang on for dear life like it will kill me if I fall off at 2 feet, lol. Anyway, I am only bringing this up because Mike is like a monkey and has really good balance. Here he is showing off. Look Ma no hands, lol. We came up with a better system for installing the next set of solar panels on the roof. On the first 3 we laid them down and then Mike had to crawl around underneath the panels to get it all bolted together. This time we stood the panels up and I held them together while Mike attached the brackets to the back. Once everything is even and bolted together we lay the whole thing down on the roof and then we install the legs to bolt to the roof. This was much easier for us. Six panels are on the roof. Now that the 6 panels are on the roof Mike has to start all the wiring. He has to wire the 6 panels, which each have one positive and one negative wire, into a disconnect box. From the disconnect box the wires go to the charge controller and then to the batteries. Mike is installing the weatherproof disconnect box. While he does that I go down to the house and paint some samples on the outside of the front of the house. We aren't in love with our house color so we are thinking of going back to our original idea of painting it some kind of darker green. I hate doing this because there are just too many colors out there. I tried 3 different colors and 2 of them are a little blue and the other one is kind of and unnatural color green. The last job for the day is putting up the new board to hold all of the electronics inside the building. This way we can bolt everything to the board and not put a bunch of holes in the side of the building. Here is the board. Thursday 6-4 Today is the big day. It is all or nothing. We will unhook the remainder of the solar panels and disconnect all of our batteries. We will have no power or water until all the batteries are moved and re hooked. Mike starts out disconnecting all the wires. Then we take the last 6 solar panels down and move them inside the building. And we take down the remainder of the wood boards. Now we have to work on the batteries. First we have to disconnect all 14 batteries, move them to the building, clean them, and re hook them. Here are the 14 batteries inside the box. Mike gets them all disconnected and one by one we move them into the building. We have learned over the years to be careful so we are using a hand truck to move each battery. It makes no sense to hurt ourselves when we have the tools to make the job easier. Next Mike takes apart the battery box and I bring it out to the well to give it a good scrub and cleaning. Then we dry it all and Mike sets it up inside the building. Next I take a bucket of soapy water and I start cleaning the batteries. Mike shows me how to clean any corrosion off of the batteries using a small wire brush. After I get all the batteries cleaned Mike fills each of the batteries with distilled water. Our batteries are actually in very good shape and they hardly need any water at all. We aren't drawing them down which is a very good thing. We found that using and old dish soap bottle works best for filling the batteries with water. It amazes me that all of our electric for our entire house is stored in Golf Cart Batteries. See you don't have to do what the "solar professionals" tell you, lol. Now that the battery storage box and the batteries are clean Mike can start arranging the batteries and re connecting them. Mike's new little invention. He made his own disconnect switch and attached it directly to the batteries. This turns off the power from the batteries to the inverter in case the system needs to be worked on. Mike also cut down some blocks to make a mount for the inverter. This way it sits off the floor and air can circulate around it. Back down to the house. Before everything can be hooked up in the building Mike had to disconnect all the solar equipment inside the house. First he disconnects all the wires, then he takes the 2 charge controllers off the wall, and disconnects the inverter. This is the closet after Mike strips everything out. Yeah we have a real closet. Now we just have to clean it up and paint it. Woo hoo. The wiring and equipment mess on the floor. Finally everything we need to complete the new system is inside the building. Mike can now start working on the electronics to get us hooked back up. For now Mike runs a wire to the house from the building so we have power from our batteries and also so our water pump inside the house works. While Mike does the wiring I start looking around to survey all the work that still needs to be done. Our hill on the side of the building is coming in with clover but we still have a lot of ruts that need to be filled with dirt. I carry about 20 buckets of dirt over and start to fill the ruts. Then I add some more clover seed. When that grows in I can start working on more of the ruts. Well we have been really busy the past 3 days. Tonight we are running our electric in our house from the stored power in our batteries. Next on the agenda Mike will get us hooked back in and our panels will start charging our batteries again. Woo hoo. I hope you all enjoyed our story during the middle of this week. We have been getting a lot done and still have plenty to go. Lisa

Chapter 33...Moving Day And The New Solar & Wind Hook Up

Off Grid...Chapter 33 Good morning all! It's time for the next chapter. Monday 10-20-08 We started our day bringing stuff down to the barn. We are storing things down there that we "may" need sometime in the future. Howard was there earlier getting the calves used to being penned up. All the cows were at the barn except for 98. He was at the top by our house- smart boy! Mike and I then went to town on a mission. We need to get a mattress and a box spring so we can move into the house. And, as usual, Mike needs more electrical for our new solar set up. We found a mattress that is hard as a rock and I love it. Three years ago we bought a Sterns and Foster memory foam super thick pillow top mattress. I hate it. Because of the soft pillow top you sink into the mattress all night long. For 3 years I've had to sleep with a pillow under my hip to keep me from sinking into the bed. I know, I know that's the "new" thing in mattresses. It's either the memory foam pillow tops or the tempurpedic because "NASA" uses them. You can keep them all. IMO, they stink. Mike got his electrical lugs and we went to the furniture warehouse. We loaded the box spring and mattress on the trailer, strapped them down, and brought everything home. When we got home, Nicole stopped by for a visit. She left the kids home with her husband so we had a nice quiet visit. We'll have to have the kids over when all the furniture is in, one at a time LOL. Tuesday 10-21 There is frost on the ground. Now we really have to hurry. Our generator in the motorhome is diesel and diesel engines do not like the cold. It was a low of 29 degrees this morning. The heat has been running all night in the mh and it is 65 degrees. We went into the house, with no heat, and it stays between 58 and 60 degrees in the mornings. That's awesome. It's going to be so easy to keep this house warm. Mike continued working on the electrical and prepping things for our new set up. I spent the day packing and moving things down to the house. Who knew we had so much stuff, LOL. Wednesday 10-22 Mike unhooked both of our satellite dishes. Oh no. This is serious business. He has to move both the TV and satellite dishes close to the house so we can move in. I hope he doesn't have any trouble or I will go through Internet withdrawal. It's successful and Mike got both of our dishes today. Here is Mike's dish. And mine. Then I helped him move his 42" LCD TV down to the house. This TV was huge in the mh and not so big in the house. We may have to buy a larger TV so Mike can see the screen. He already has wireless headphones so he can hear the TV, LOL. We'll move this one back to the MH and buy a new one. Aren't there some good sales coming up. I continued cleaning the motorhome and now everything is emptied out. It's actually kind of sad. This was our home for 3 1/2 years and now it seems like we are abandoning "Mr. Coach". We'll just have to go for a road trip in the spring. We moved into the house. Woo Hoo!. We will be spending our first night there. Yeah! I put Niki's bed in the office and gave her extra toys so she would feel comfortable. I just wanted to make sure she was OK. So we all sat in the LR tonight and watched TV(which is on the floor) with no ceiling in place. We don't normally do things this back wards but we it's too cold to be in the MH. Thursday 10-23 We made it. Our first night in the house. The fire kept us nice and toasty, the mattress is great, and if Niki's snoring is any indication, she also had no problem. We pulled the slides in on the MH, pulled up, and mowed underneath. Mike moved the MH back in spot and we emptied and cleaned all tanks and winterized it. Now the coach is all alone.. We did a little more organizing in the house. Friday 10-24 We woke up to a miserable rainy day. Howard and his son where here rounding up the cows. They had to chase some down the hill with the 4-wheeler and a bucket of feed to get them to the barn. It's time for some of them to go. Howard is taking out 10 cows. Mike talked to Howard yesterday and found out that he found a buyer for "My 98". That means he won't be steak, yeah. I wonder if I can visit him. I'll have to ask Howard how far away 98 is. Mike and I went to town "again" to get more stuff for the house. We got home and we tried my new washing machine for the first time. Wow, the drum is huge. It's amazing how you adapt. I was so used to my compact washer and dryer in the coach that I forgot what a full size one is like. This is the one in the MH. Of course that's not the one that came with it. Mike ripped out the original combo unit and replaced it with a real washer and dryer with 220 electric. He is so good. I started organizing my kitchen and it is fantastic. I have so many cabinets and so much counter space. I'm in heaven. I can't even use it all. I think every person should live in an RV for a year and learn to really "appreciate" everything you have in your own house. It would be a great learning lesson on how much "junk" you can live without. Mike hooked up our new smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector. He also installed "one" toe kick in the kitchen. Here are the lamps we bought for the bedroom. The mama cows are outside mooing like crazy. It's so sad. Their babies are gone and they don't understand why. They just keep calling for their babies. I feel so bad for them and they have to go through this every year. Saturday 10-25 Today is the big day for Mike. In order to re-do our system he has to take all the wiring out, take all the boxes off the wall, and start from scratch. I do not envy him today. I will just stay out of his way and help him when he asks. We have wires and parts everywhere. It looks like a nightmare. This is Mike's wiring mess inside the house. Mike is taking wires out. He is removing the wires from the combiner box. Running larger wire into the battery box. Removing the inverter and re-hooking the DC disconnect. Mike is hooking up the 250amp DC disconnect. Controller box for the "new" wind generator is mounted. That was a really long day for Mike. He didn't re connect the solar panels yet but the new wind generator is on. Too bad the wind stopped. Sunday 10-26 The wind generator and controller works. Woo Hoo. The little green light is on. Now Mike is going to hook our 6 new solar panels into the house. First he has to cut the main wire for the combiner box. The new solar panels are hooked into the outdoor combiner box. It's a beautiful day so I start to paint the house. Here I am painting the back with Niki. The back of the house is done. Painting the side. The other side is done. We had a great weekend. Mike got the new wind generator and the 6 new panels hooked up. I finally got the outside painting done. This is what Mike got done. Oh yeah, and our grass is growing in before winter. Yeah. That was the past week in the lives of Mike and Lisa. We still have a lot more to do but at least we are in the house. If the weather is good we will move the solar panels off the house and install them on a new rack this week. I also want to paint our interior doors and maybe do some trim. I hope you all enjoyed our story. Lisa