Hi all,
It's been a while and I wanted to give you all an update now that I have my head above water just a little bit.
Why no updates?
Well, a lot has happened in the last couple of months. Between a family emergency and moving, not one, but two homes I haven't had much time for my own. It's been the most chaotic time I can remember having in a long time if not ever. But now, all of that chaos is 90% over, and I am back at it! Can't wait, I *still* don't have running water in the cabin.
I had a break of three days between moving the two houses. During that time I installed three 150w solar panels that I traded for. There was an old run of 12g wire from that location past the cabin. I hijacked the wire and pulled it over to the cabin, hooked it up and now I get about 350w out of that setup during peak sun hours. I strung them in series to get appx 66 volts out of them. By the time they run the few hundred feet on the 12g copper, I get about 47-52V out of it. This has been a real game changer here because fuel costs on the generator were getting out of hand. I also picked up a Victron 100v / 30A charge controller for this setup. I basically get one free charge cycle out of the sun each day. I still have to run the generator at night.
What will I be working on?
Most of these will be worked on in parallel. I had planned a more linear route, but losing a few months there threw me off and I have to get these done. Most this summer.
- Gate Opener Project: This has not changed since my last update. At all really, it's still sitting on my bench in the same state that it was. I will fire this back up in the next few days and see where I am. I think it's just about ready to start putting the control board together and start mounting in the steel housing. I still have to do my trenching, welding, and concrete work, and want to get most of the electronics completed before that happens.
- Large Solar Array: Those three panels I added are a stopgap. The system I am going to build will be appx 40 280w panels, with roughly 24x the battery capacity (28800 Watts). There will be posts about the entire build. Everything but the panels has been purchased since I am getting the panels used. All the inverters, charge controllers, fuses, breakers, batteries, etc are shipping now and I should start receiving them late this week (Mid-February).
- Running Water in the cabin: This is too long in coming! It's a pretty easy job since the cabin was once plumed for water, I just need to run some PEX, Hook it up to the water system, and connect to a couple of sinks and a toilet and my life will change! haha. Between this place and two years at the last shop, my bathroom has been in a different building from the house. This is a major game changer.
- Temperature Sensors: I really enjoy sensor data, and having that data about my environment. It probably comes from my Data Center management days. A pretty simple system using some ESP's and DHT22's. A bit of software to make that talk to an MQTT server, or directly to InfluxDB. I want one of these in every room in the house, and in different spots on the property.
- Water Tank Monitor System: This one is pretty important to me, and I would like to get it done ASAP. My water tanks are a hike up the hill, and the only way I can tell if I need to pump water is to hike up there and tap on them like a barbarian. The tanks are the big green 2500-gallon ones, and I have not found a solution for monitoring levels, so I will have to build something. I want to write a dedicated post about these to see if any of you have any ideas on how to accomplish this, But feel free to comment here until I get that post written. (I did write the whole post a while ago, but this blog platform ate it. I even saved drafts, and then it was just gone...)
- Micro Hydro Electric System: Well, I have had some rain. A LOT of rain and gathered some data about the creeks here. The seasonal creek only runs while it's raining and a few hours after. Then it goes down to a trickle. Im not sure if running the wire for that one will be worth it. But the year-round creek was massive. About three days after a big rain I measured it by putting a 5-gallon bucket under a culvert to capture the water. There was a lot and I think I captured about 90% of what was coming out. It took something like 4 seconds to fill 5 gallons! So that is something like 75gpm. I went down and observed, but did not test during a rain storm, and it was probably double that. I'll go down and test again in a few days. It has not rained here in a week or so.
All of these projects will either be videos, or detailed blog posts, so stay tuned!
Looking forward to talking to you all!
-Kaleb
