A New Life

Life with power how amazing you are!  I have been able to run the dishwasher, clothes washer on sunny days during the week, and watch tv at night with the outdoor stove on and power to spare!  This must be how most people live...  I can even watch some tv at night on cloudy days.  Amazing!

First though, I needed heat.  I called the stove guy and he said the motor of the pump on the wood boiler has probably gone bad and it needs to be replaced.  I reminded him that I had a couple spare pumps since I replaced two with a larger pump.  Then I remembered that I also had a spare rotor, for which pump I had no idea, but it was worth a try.  Replacing the rotor worked and now I have a working pump which will equal a warm house.  

I waited as long as I could, but when the inside house temperature was hovering around 58 degrees, I thought it was time to turn on the furnace.  The official start date this year was November 6, 2013.  My goal is always to make it until December 1st, but not this year. 

So far the wood pile appears to be holding its own.  I still have a few blocks of cherry to split from last year yet.  I have spent a weekend on clearing out a fenceline.  My dad's neighbor wants to bulldoze the trees in the fenceline, however this is where I've been getting my wood for the last couple of years.  I only had a couple of weekends to get the trees cut down (definitely not my specialty), clean up the logs and get them out of there.  I did call in help to cut the trees down, but otherwise most of the work I did on my own, and I was so glad when Monday morning rolled around and I could go back to my real job because my body needed a break!  Anyway, I haven't counted the trees I pulled out, over 20, but I do have about three left on the ground that I couldn't get out of there.  Now, I come to find out that the job probably won't get done until spring!  It would have been more enjoyable to do that work more leisurely than trying to accomplish it all in a few short days.  I have the rest of the winter to cut up those logs and move them to my woodpile for next years wood.

With the heat on, much more power, the winter seems easy to conquer...but there's always something.  Tonite we are receiving our first legitimate traffic slowing snow storm.  The panic begins...will I be able to make it out of my driveway in the morning?  Unfortunately, the man with the blade is not sure he can even get in his tractor.  He fractured a vertebrae a few weeks ago and is in a backbrace and on pain killers.  He never offered his truck (the old one of course), so I will have to wait until morning to see what Mother Nature has surprised me 

One step forward part 2

I finally found another off grid installer with experience (nope, not on the internet, but through an authorized dealer from Outback Power company).   I wanted him to come out and take a look at the system and explain how things work, what I really should be doing and why I don't have enough power on cloudy days - even though I hardly use any.  

He did stop by on August 1, 2013 to look over the system.  He felt the 900 watt turbine and 1kw solar array weren't large enough to power my house and so more solar was the answer. Before I knew it, I was installing 12- 250 watt solar panels adding to the 8-125 watt array.  

There was a lot of prep work, as we were constructing the pole and mount on our own.  The install date was November 2, 2013.   The new array looks gigantic compared to the original array.  Things went fairly well, except the listing of things that have to be fixed or replaced on the original system to meet code.  The initial installer didn't seem to follow any sort of code.  My list of to do's is never ending!

The new mega solar array!

The next day, November 3 was a beautiful sunny day.  The batteries were fully charged - FULLY- by 11am.  That's crazy.  The original system would never fully charge the batteries, even on a sunny day during the summer.  

But this brings its own set of "issues".  I am really good at not using power - especially at night.  Little power?  No problem!  I just go to bed and read by flashlight at 7pm.  Now, I will have an excess of power during the day - when I really don't need it because I am not home.  So it's got me thinking...  Can I run the dishwasher on a timer so it will begin its cycle around noon?  Same with the washing machine?  No more waiting weeks for a sunny weekend day to do laundry and no more washing dishes by hand!   Maybe I can even watch TV at night?

The complete system.

You might be saying to yourself, hey, this is all good, finally things have changed.  But alas, they haven't.  I decided that with this extra power, I can finally start the furnace - the outdoor wood boiler that heats the domestic hot water as well as the water in the heated floors.  It was a balmy 57 degrees on November 3 (inside the house!).  So, I started a fire and waited for the water to heat up.  Finally at 6pm the water temperature was at 170 degrees, but the tubes that carry the water from the stove into the utility room, weren't even warm.  I went outside to check the stove, it was still on.  I felt the pump and nearly burned my hand.  The pump was on, but it didn't seem to be moving any water.  Turn the stove off. Call the stove guy.  There's my two steps back! 

One step forward and two steps back

Work has been done!  
First off...the wind turbine.  The new turbine and controller were delivered in August.  BUT, (why is there always a but?)  The installer hadn't even ordered the pipe for the new pole.   Apparently the installer was just trying to appease me by delivering the system components.  You are probably beginning to wonder where I find these contractors?  The internet, of course.    This led to my boyfriend taking on the project of buying and constructing the pole, wiring in the new system and putting the windmill back up.  

Everything was ready, and the date was set for August 31 to "raise the windmill".  It was a tad bit breezy for the raising, but we took it slow, all things went according to plan and the new turbine was back in the air.  After congratulating ourselves we took a moment to ponder why it didn't seem to be spinning very much even though it seemed quite breezy.  We decided to sleep on it and see how it looks in the morning.

We spent the evening perusing the literature and double checking the install to make sure everything was done correctly.  After much scratching of heads, we realized that the blades were on backwards!  The windmill would have to be lowered, blades switched and raised again.   Murphy's Law strikes again.  My philosophy is if you do something once, it is easier to forget than if you do it two or three more times.  We were getting really good at raising a windmill!  

How did it go up?  We used a pickup attached to the guy wires that lowers the gin pole as it pulls the windmill up.

Just to bring you up to speed, everything appeared to be fine for at least a month and then the lcd screen on the charge controller went blank and the windmill wasn't really turning.  Of course there was no warranty literature in the box.  I emailed the company in India and a dealer in Colorado.  (Apparently my new system had been ordered not solely by the Iowa dealer, but through another dealer in Colorado.)  The controller has been reset, but we are still in the process of running some tests to see if the controller is bad.  The company has assured me that they  will take care of this and the dealer in Colorado has been more than helpful.