Chapter 109...A Real Electric Refrigerator:)

Off Grid...Chapter 109 Hello everyone. This month will be our 3 year anniversary of buying our land. It's been a great 3 years with a lot of ups and downs and a lot of learning. So far this year has been a good one We are making changes and improving things. So now to let you know what we have been up to Back to the beginning of May. Since Mike and I want to improve on what we have done, we have been talking about getting an electric refrigerator instead of our propane refrigerator. We looked into solar electric refrigerators and they cost over $2000.00 for a regular sized refrigerator. We have been doing some research and we have decided to buy a regular $360.00 electric refrigerator and increase our solar system if needed. Which means we have some shopping to do Our electric line that runs underground from our solar system to our house isn't sized big enough for more electric usage. We knew at some point we would have to increase the wire size and now is the time. Wouldn't it have been great if we just "knew" everything from the start, lol? I just hope some of you can learn from all of our experience Life is all about learning and since we don't know anyone else who has ever tried to do what we are doing I guess we are the guinea pigs, lol. So on May 1st it's back to Lowe's for more wire I know Mike wants to get this job done but I made plans to take my stepdaughter out to go plant shopping and out to lunch. I will help Mike in the morning and then I have to leave him to work on his own. Before I leave on Monday the 2nd I help Mike get ready to shut our system down and start over His plan is to turn off our system, change out the underground wire, and rewire the whole system including our indoor electrical panel. It's going to be a long and stressful day for Mike until he gets our electric back up and running. First Mike disconnects the wiring from the box in the building and also the breaker panel in the house. Next it's time to get the old smaller wire out of the ground and get the larger wire underground. Time for business. Mike tapes the end of the old smaller wire to the new larger wire. We have to get about 65 feet of the new wire underground. We are taped up and ready to go. Mike stays at one end and pushes the wire down into the pipe underground while I pull from the other end. We cross our fingers and I pull gently while Mike pushes...and it's through to the other end Mike has a full day of work ahead of him. My stepdaughter shows up to go to town with me. She is doing her first garden this year and I am doing my third garden. We are going to the school and the nursery to buy plants Hours later after buying multiple plants and having lunch we get back home. We had a great time while poor Mike had to work. He got all of the wiring hooked back up in the building and also redid the breaker box inside the house. The old breaker box. And the new one. Mike also painted a board and put it behind the box. He worked really hard and did an awesome job. We are back online and ready for a new refrigerator with a self defrost We have been hearing a lot of chainsaws lately and that's never a good thing to hear. Today we finally saw where they are cutting and it's right across the way No matter how much land you buy, you just can't protect it all. As you know, this is what it looked like before it was logged. At some time it will grow back. The trees won't grow back in our time but hopefully it will eventually turn green. Tuesday May 3 Mike and I stayed home and redid some house and food organization. My plants are all inside as it is way to cold to plant anything yet. Wednesday I called Lowe's and they have my new refrigerator. Woo hoo. Time to go to town and pick it up. Mike and I get it loaded onto the trailer and back home. Ahh....now to get it down to the house. It's tall so we have to be careful getting it down. It's not too heavy just awkward. I help Mike get it onto the tractor bucket and we strap it in. Mike backs it down the drive while I make sure it doesn't tip over We get it down to the house and off the tractor. Next we bring it inside. For now we are going to hook it up in a different location. We have to test our system before we can make the switch over from the propane refrigerator to the new refrigerator. Mike is reversing the door handle for me. This is a huge peeve of mine. I can't stand when a refrigerator door opens the wrong way. Since it is late we won't plug the new refrigerator in until the morning. We have to monitor our system and make sure our system can run it without any problems. The next day we plug it in and I write down every time the refrigerator goes on and for how long. So far so good. If all goes well we can switch the food We also went out to cut up some wood but our chainsaw is broken and Mike can't get it fixed which is very unusual. We rarely have to drop things off for any type of servicing which i am very thankful for Friday May 6 It's raining today so we are stuck inside again. First we dropped off the chainsaw. Back home...the refrigerator is doing great and our system is handling it I moved the food over. Now it's time to advertise our propane refrigerator. We will leave it hooked up for a couple of weeks. Hopefully we can sell it before we have to unhook it and store it. Saturday- Another cold day. Mike and I are painting the bathroom. I do the cut in while Mike rolls. This time we use a small roller since it is a tight room. It's amazing how much less paint you waste using the small rollers Mike painting the bathroom. It only took us about an hour and now it looks so fresh and clean. and On May 9th I painted the electrical box. Much nicer And the next day Mike starts to clean out the green building again!!! I don't know if Mike and I will ever be done organizing, lol. We always seem to change things. That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed the story and I will write again soon. Lisa

Chapter 89...Kool Seal For The Metal Roof

Off Grid...Chapter 89 8-31 It looks like a rainy day again but we did get a couple of things done. Since we had a mouse get into our shipping container it's time to change out the grate where the mouse got in. We fixed that with a heavier piece of metal. Since we also have an air vent going into the house we better change that also. We really don't want any mice inside the house so Mike is going to change the grate on the air vent. First Mike cuts the screen for the vent. Then he puts it over the vent cover. He screws the cover back on the house. And then he paints it. It still needs one more coat. 9-1 We went to the electric company to find out what we need to do to bring electric into our barn. After that we go and get the supplies. 9-2 Today we get to work on real electric so we head down to the barn to get started. We are going to make a shop area with an overhead light. First I have to clean out some of the old hay(it's clean...LOL) This is the stall where we will have the electric and shop light. Mike installs the box and wiring in the barn. Banging in the ground rod outside the barn. And finally Mike hangs the shop light. We are ready for a rough in inspection. 9-3 This morning we met with the electric inspector to schedule an inspection. He will be out later this afternoon. We passed the rough in but he couldn't ok us on the final because we didn't put a meter can on the outside of the barn. Thanks to Jimmy we didn't install one. Jimmy said since Mike and I are going to put the meter at the gate and we didn't run the underground wire we should wait. Well what none of us remembered is that the electric company reads the meters from the office now and we don't need the can at the road. We all should have known better considering Jimmy's brother works for the electric company. So now Mike and I have to buy a meter can and install that. 9-4 It looks like a good day so Mike and I start on the roof coating. We bought the Kool Seal which is like a rubber coating that rolls on the roof. It will completely seal any holes made from any screws or seams. It should also help deaden the noise when it rains hard. Mike and I do this job together. He starts rolling the first row of 5 panels and I start the next row of 5 panels right after him. Here I am painting on the Kool seal. After a few hours we get the first coat on the roof. It took us longer than expected but it was an easy job. We will roll on the second coat tomorrow. 9-5 Back to the roof. We did the same routine today. Here is Mike rolling on the second coat. And he is at the edge and almost done. This rubber coating should really make a difference for our roof. That's all for this now. I hope you all enjoyed the story. Lisa