Friday, May 28, 2010
Found a propane refrigerator...
...Now to pay for it before it goes away. Trying to horsetrade for it, but can't catch the bossman there to work a deal, and the hired hands don't have the authority to do anything but cash money. Maybe this afternoon.... maybe....
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
An observation about choosing a generator
One thing you DO want to make absolutely certain of when you're running ANY generator for long enough periods where it just becomes 'background noise' is to be sure you're running one with a low-oil shutdown feature.
What this is, is a sensor in the crankcase (the part of the engine where the oil resides) that will shut down the engine if the oil level falls below a certain point.
ALL engines sip a little oil as they run. Think about it, if it's coating the cylinder walls to make the piston slide without eating the engine, that means there's a little bit of oil in there each time the spark fires, burning off a wee bit of oil each time. With an engine running at 3600 RPM, those little bitses add up before too long. Gotta make it up somehow, and that somehow is to add a few ounces ever so often, and to know when to do that you must check the oil level daily. I check this one every time I start it.
Speaking of oil, it's time to change it, too. Running it 4-6 hours a day for 7 days now, that's 28-42 hours, and 50 hours is about max on a small engine for an oil change interval. Simple choice if you do the math: 20 oz of oil a week, or new generator after a few months? Sounds like a no-brainer to me!
What this is, is a sensor in the crankcase (the part of the engine where the oil resides) that will shut down the engine if the oil level falls below a certain point.
ALL engines sip a little oil as they run. Think about it, if it's coating the cylinder walls to make the piston slide without eating the engine, that means there's a little bit of oil in there each time the spark fires, burning off a wee bit of oil each time. With an engine running at 3600 RPM, those little bitses add up before too long. Gotta make it up somehow, and that somehow is to add a few ounces ever so often, and to know when to do that you must check the oil level daily. I check this one every time I start it.
Speaking of oil, it's time to change it, too. Running it 4-6 hours a day for 7 days now, that's 28-42 hours, and 50 hours is about max on a small engine for an oil change interval. Simple choice if you do the math: 20 oz of oil a week, or new generator after a few months? Sounds like a no-brainer to me!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Where we are, so far (lotsa pics)
Any suggestions are welcome, as are screams of "NO DON'T DO IT THAT WAY!"
This is, for now, the main workhorse of our electrical system:
That orange wire is 10/2 romex going to the top feed of this branch box:
The ''old'' feed for this box is the 10/2 coming in and hooked to the upper left double breaker. That now 'feeds' the main house box inside through the 40A breaker in the main box, which is simply a connection point now, being that it passes through that double 20 in the branch box shown.
All the other breakers in the house box (shown below) are shut off, except for the 40A dbl mentioned above. What I'm doing is backfeeding the house main which is out under the meter can. Bear with me, there's a reason for this :)
It's too dark out there to go get pics of that tonight, but there are three separate breakers under the meter: One double 30 to the water well, one double 60 to the house, and a double 40 to the workshop. The shop is turned off. (If I need electricity out there, I'll deal with it then.) By backfeeding the house main, I can use the bus bar in the box to power the well branch. I know, this energizes the lower lugs of the meter can, but I have a warning written in magic marker on the socket cover. Being as how I'm not buying any juice from them, they've got no business poking around out there anyways. AND if this works out through the summer, I'm going to go down to the courthouse and revoke their easement, and tell 'em to come git ther junk off'n my land ...But that's on down the road. I can just imagine the looks on their faces, I doubt they've ever had anyone revoke an easement!
Now, on to the show'n'tell.....
Clearly, we don't want to have to stumble around in the dark or hunt for flashlights after bedtime, nor can we afford to run the noisebox 24/7, so this setup below works fine for a few lights as needed and the nightly fix of Al & Peg, the only TV I watch. (Hey, I do have one vice....and they're a heck of a lot more intelligent than any of the late-night news shows or talk shows!)
[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/2w1ru6h.jpg[/IMG]
That is a Harbor Freight (or Wallyworld, can't remember--it's OLD!) 225A charger/starter and 3 O'Reilly's group 24 marine batteries, batteries tied together in parallel (that's positive to positive and negative to negative) with the charger hooked to opposite ends--by that I mean the positive is hooked to the positive on the left, and the negative charger cable is hooked to the negative battery terminal on the right hand battery. Likewise, the inverter is hooked up diagonally opposite. This forces the system to charge and draw from the entire battery bank instead of just the closest one. The little meter is hooked to the center battery just to make things look even
The inverter (below) is HF's 750 watt inverter, with 11 volt shutdown IIRC and 16 volt overcharge shutdown.
[IMG]http://i46.tinypic.com/2l8kxzd.jpg[/IMG]
So far so good. It runs the old analog TV, the converter box, this laptop, a little 6 inch fan, and occasionally a couple of 10 watt CFL lamps if needed. The three batteries are plenty for that small load, and the charger recharges the batteries in about 2 hours of runtime a day on the medium (40A) setting. We're running the generator 4-6 hours a day as it is, simply to keep the fridge at 45 degrees somewhat consistently. Soon as I find a propane fridge, this requirement will be off our backs.
Water system:
Right now, we run the well pump to fill these:
[IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/25q9lvp.jpg[/IMG]
That is two 275 gallon poly tanks that had roundup in them. Roundup is a salt, sodium glyphosate to be particular, and just simply vanishes in a product called Nutra-Sol, which is available at Tractor Supply or any other ag chemical house. If the water from our well weren't so :puke:-inducing awful, I'd have no problem drinking from these tanks.
The pump to the left (the blue thing) is another Harbor Freight product. Does an admirable job as a booster pump, and runs on 110v, at much less amps than the submersible pump does when pumping to pressure. We've had this dual pump setup for about a year, and it's worked well for us.
However, that pump means that the generator has to be running to get water. I found this in the motorhome in the back pasture. (Neighbor and I do not have a separating fence in our pasture, we chose instead of fence the outside and graze our animals in common. Works out well for both of us.)
[IMG]http://i46.tinypic.com/s0wyeh.jpg[/IMG]
This is what it came out of:
[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/w8qntl.jpg[/IMG]
The MH also has the following two critters in it:
[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/2up4h0h.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/2wfoifm.jpg[/IMG]
I did confirm with neighbor that it IS in fact all mine for the taking still, so I'm gettin' after it!
Unfortunately no refrigerator in this thing, so have to go hunting afield for one of those. Think I've found one... Will know this week.
The "where we're going" part will be in a separate post, following shortly. Thanks to all who have been following this! Feedback is welcome, just hit the "comment" button!
This is, for now, the main workhorse of our electrical system:
That orange wire is 10/2 romex going to the top feed of this branch box:
The ''old'' feed for this box is the 10/2 coming in and hooked to the upper left double breaker. That now 'feeds' the main house box inside through the 40A breaker in the main box, which is simply a connection point now, being that it passes through that double 20 in the branch box shown.
All the other breakers in the house box (shown below) are shut off, except for the 40A dbl mentioned above. What I'm doing is backfeeding the house main which is out under the meter can. Bear with me, there's a reason for this :)
It's too dark out there to go get pics of that tonight, but there are three separate breakers under the meter: One double 30 to the water well, one double 60 to the house, and a double 40 to the workshop. The shop is turned off. (If I need electricity out there, I'll deal with it then.) By backfeeding the house main, I can use the bus bar in the box to power the well branch. I know, this energizes the lower lugs of the meter can, but I have a warning written in magic marker on the socket cover. Being as how I'm not buying any juice from them, they've got no business poking around out there anyways. AND if this works out through the summer, I'm going to go down to the courthouse and revoke their easement, and tell 'em to come git ther junk off'n my land ...But that's on down the road. I can just imagine the looks on their faces, I doubt they've ever had anyone revoke an easement!
Now, on to the show'n'tell.....
Clearly, we don't want to have to stumble around in the dark or hunt for flashlights after bedtime, nor can we afford to run the noisebox 24/7, so this setup below works fine for a few lights as needed and the nightly fix of Al & Peg, the only TV I watch. (Hey, I do have one vice....and they're a heck of a lot more intelligent than any of the late-night news shows or talk shows!)
[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/2w1ru6h.jpg[/IMG]
That is a Harbor Freight (or Wallyworld, can't remember--it's OLD!) 225A charger/starter and 3 O'Reilly's group 24 marine batteries, batteries tied together in parallel (that's positive to positive and negative to negative) with the charger hooked to opposite ends--by that I mean the positive is hooked to the positive on the left, and the negative charger cable is hooked to the negative battery terminal on the right hand battery. Likewise, the inverter is hooked up diagonally opposite. This forces the system to charge and draw from the entire battery bank instead of just the closest one. The little meter is hooked to the center battery just to make things look even
The inverter (below) is HF's 750 watt inverter, with 11 volt shutdown IIRC and 16 volt overcharge shutdown.
[IMG]http://i46.tinypic.com/2l8kxzd.jpg[/IMG]
So far so good. It runs the old analog TV, the converter box, this laptop, a little 6 inch fan, and occasionally a couple of 10 watt CFL lamps if needed. The three batteries are plenty for that small load, and the charger recharges the batteries in about 2 hours of runtime a day on the medium (40A) setting. We're running the generator 4-6 hours a day as it is, simply to keep the fridge at 45 degrees somewhat consistently. Soon as I find a propane fridge, this requirement will be off our backs.
Water system:
Right now, we run the well pump to fill these:
[IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/25q9lvp.jpg[/IMG]
That is two 275 gallon poly tanks that had roundup in them. Roundup is a salt, sodium glyphosate to be particular, and just simply vanishes in a product called Nutra-Sol, which is available at Tractor Supply or any other ag chemical house. If the water from our well weren't so :puke:-inducing awful, I'd have no problem drinking from these tanks.
The pump to the left (the blue thing) is another Harbor Freight product. Does an admirable job as a booster pump, and runs on 110v, at much less amps than the submersible pump does when pumping to pressure. We've had this dual pump setup for about a year, and it's worked well for us.
However, that pump means that the generator has to be running to get water. I found this in the motorhome in the back pasture. (Neighbor and I do not have a separating fence in our pasture, we chose instead of fence the outside and graze our animals in common. Works out well for both of us.)
[IMG]http://i46.tinypic.com/s0wyeh.jpg[/IMG]
This is what it came out of:
[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/w8qntl.jpg[/IMG]
The MH also has the following two critters in it:
[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/2up4h0h.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/2wfoifm.jpg[/IMG]
I did confirm with neighbor that it IS in fact all mine for the taking still, so I'm gettin' after it!
Unfortunately no refrigerator in this thing, so have to go hunting afield for one of those. Think I've found one... Will know this week.
The "where we're going" part will be in a separate post, following shortly. Thanks to all who have been following this! Feedback is welcome, just hit the "comment" button!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Work has intruded....
...into my improvements and the telling thereof. No, I'm not complaining, just explaining :)
Bill
I should have time to work on it some tomorrow, and time to work on posting some of it here tomorrow evening.
Spent today driving around south Texas, little job here, little job there... boring but it pays....
Thanks for following!
Bill
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Water from gasoline and other observations
Got up this morning to nearly empty water storage tanks. No time like the present to figure out how to get water from the well, 300 feet from the house. Straightforward way to do it would be to pick up the generator, stick it in the back of the pickup, and drive it out there and plug the well into it. But noooo..... have I done anything the straightforward way yet? (If you think about it, the simple and straightforward way to do it would've been to go, hat in hand, to the electric company and pay their extortion to reinstall my meter, then happily go on about my sheeple life until they quit sending electrons bouncing down the overhead wires, then worry about all this later. Sorry, didn't happen, ain't gonna happen :) ) Of course not. The straightforward, conventional way involves making "baa-aa" noises and paying someone else for the privilege of using their product on an ongoing basis.
Disclaimer: I know some of what I'm doing is not "approved" but as time and money and proof of things working come to pass, my 'jury-rigging' will be made more permanent and fail- (and fool-) safe. Not fail- and fool-proof, mind you, but safer.
To get juice to the well, I reconnected the branch supply to the breaker box I'm powering with the generator, then turned off all the breakers in the primary house box except the one that used to power this branch box, which serves to let power flow from the generator back upstream to the master main breaker box under the meter.
To clarify, my meter is out past the well, about 500 feet from the house. The well is on its own 20A breaker under the meter next to the house's 60A main breaker. Turning both of these breakers on will backfeed power to the main bus in the meter breaker box (also to the bottom lugs of the meter socket, I know--I have written a warning on the meter socket cover in magic marker warning of this to anyone, like an electric co. employee, who might go into the meter can) and back down the well lines to the well. So, using the breaker at the house, I can turn the well on and off from here. I'll draw and scan a diagram of what I'm talking about and post pictures as things settle down. Bottom line, we got the water tanks filled without needing two people to heave the generator into something and move it to the well.
Now, on to the other observations.....
If you want an analogy that truly fits, compare purchasing power from the grid to renting a car. When you rent a car or buy electricity from the grid (or stay in a motel or rent an apartment or rug cleaner or whatever you pay someone for the use of something), you pay weekly or monthly for the privelege of having something you can go use, and when it breaks, "they" will make it to where you can use it again. Of course, when they for whatever reason cease to function, your use of that [whatever] also ceases, and all you have left is a pile of cash receipts and memories.
Back to the car rental. Your other option is to save up your money and buy something, even if it's a beater/clunker, and use that for basic transportation until you save up to get what you really need or want. Of course, it's kinda tough to save while renting. Likewise, it's kinda tough to set up for going off grid when you're paying the power company for juice. It will take time, time and a bit of forbearance while acquiring the stuff. I can deal with that, and will deal with that, because after a few months, I'm through with the outlays and am down to just maintenance and a small amount of fuel for the generator, hopefully much less when I get a more efficient generator and large enough battery bank to make full use of the generator.
The biggest thing I must continue to do for now is keep my wife Denise's wheelchair charged. It will go 4 days on an eight- to ten-hour overnight charge. We shall see if we can make that happen on two four to five hour charges, or even a daily two to two and a half hour charge, because it makes sense that she will want to be up and moving around while the lights are all on. Short term, until we build up batteries and get enough inverter capacity to run what she wants to have use of while up in her chair, this will be a challenge.
My goal is to eventually get to a 4 or 5 hour generator run once a day. If I can locate and deal for a used propane refrigerator this is do-able. I've found one but haven't had the chance to talk with the owner of it (it's at a junkyard next town over, in a wrecked RV) and find out what it's going to take to get it. Our chest deep freeze is good for a day on a 4 hour run. The fridge is not keeping its cool with that, and I have doubts about running the fridge we have (an older side-by-side 18 cu ft) on an inverter, even one of enough capacity. From what I hear the compressor tends to overheat from the modified sine wave power, too much slamming around of the voltage on a 60 cycles per second consistency.
We do have a small ''dorm size'' refrigerator that I consider a throwaway for experimentation purposes, but that will require more inverter capacity as well. Time will get us there.
Biggest headache we're experiencing is washing clothes for the moment. Heating water is not a problem, simply because it is May, it is 95 degrees, and a cool shower feels wonderful this time of year. We're finding that everything else must be shut off to power up the washer, especially now that I've reconfigured the wiring to provide 220v to the well.
It is simply an inconvenience, not a calamity. To me, it is less of an inconvenience than having to pay the power company for spotty service, and having nothing when they don't provide it.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The first (of probably many!) "oops"es....
My time tonight is going to be limited, as I forgot to switch the battery charger back to "medium" from "low" during the generator run, and within 30 minutes of shutting down the genny, I got a low voltage scream from the inverter, and sure enough, the meter was under 12! Oops..... So, fired genny back up for an hour to put a bit of a charge on the batteries, but I don't want to run it into the ground on what I consider to be less than a full charge, so I'm shutting down Lappie for the night, and will crash around on here tomorrow sometime with the pictures.
One thing, though, I did get caught up with Einar :)
One thing, though, I did get caught up with Einar :)
Woke up this morning.....
....After running laptop until 11 pm and that little six inch fan all night, and found batteries still up around 12 1/2 volts.
Got up, started a pot of coffee in a steel stovetop percolator on the gas stove, am sitting here enjoying the sunrise and beautiful morning, knowing that my coffee is already paid for, and am not going to get a partial bill for it from the co-op in a few weeks!
Got the wife her coke, ice was still solid enough to have to break it out of the ice tray. Freezer's still well below 32, clearly.
A lot of our meat storage is pressure canned anyway. The extent of the freezer's contents is really convenience foods (generic frozen pizzas, a few TV dinners, etc.), ice, and at the moment 40 lb of rice in the chest freezer, debugging it before it goes into 5 gallon buckets and gets sealed then stuck in the pantry.
Why 40 lb of rice? Simple. Priced it lately? I'll let you in on a little secret, by telling you a riddle: When do you get the best price on food? Answer: Yesterday. Any time you can buy a bulk size package of something to eat, you are coming out dollars, sometimes many of them, ahead, because by the time you finish eating what you bought, it's already gone up in price again. Yeah, I'm eating 1.28 a lb ground beef this week. What's yours costin' ya? (I know there are some out there who can't resist the comeback of 'we grow our own' or 'it didn't cost me nothing but some grass and a wait' or something..... well to you few, congratulations! I am sincerely happy for you, and applaud your frugality!)
Another reason to buy in bulk and put back when you can is, what happens if you lose your ability to provide? You self-employed especially, lose a day or two and you know what that does to your cash flow. When you throw on an extra job or two and make a few hundred bucks you didn't budget, go buy some food, go buy some of this or that, something that you need and will use. Sure, spen a few bucks of it on entertainment, but don't use it all that way!
Back on track. A good bit of our meat and most of our veggies are home canned. Result is we haven't got a great deal invested in refrigerator dependence.
Looking at a propane fridge out of an RV later today. Junkyard down the road has an old OLD motorhome in the back, with a complete absorption refrigerator in it. Gotta go do some horsetradin' with the fellow.
Got up, started a pot of coffee in a steel stovetop percolator on the gas stove, am sitting here enjoying the sunrise and beautiful morning, knowing that my coffee is already paid for, and am not going to get a partial bill for it from the co-op in a few weeks!
Got the wife her coke, ice was still solid enough to have to break it out of the ice tray. Freezer's still well below 32, clearly.
A lot of our meat storage is pressure canned anyway. The extent of the freezer's contents is really convenience foods (generic frozen pizzas, a few TV dinners, etc.), ice, and at the moment 40 lb of rice in the chest freezer, debugging it before it goes into 5 gallon buckets and gets sealed then stuck in the pantry.
Why 40 lb of rice? Simple. Priced it lately? I'll let you in on a little secret, by telling you a riddle: When do you get the best price on food? Answer: Yesterday. Any time you can buy a bulk size package of something to eat, you are coming out dollars, sometimes many of them, ahead, because by the time you finish eating what you bought, it's already gone up in price again. Yeah, I'm eating 1.28 a lb ground beef this week. What's yours costin' ya? (I know there are some out there who can't resist the comeback of 'we grow our own' or 'it didn't cost me nothing but some grass and a wait' or something..... well to you few, congratulations! I am sincerely happy for you, and applaud your frugality!)
Another reason to buy in bulk and put back when you can is, what happens if you lose your ability to provide? You self-employed especially, lose a day or two and you know what that does to your cash flow. When you throw on an extra job or two and make a few hundred bucks you didn't budget, go buy some food, go buy some of this or that, something that you need and will use. Sure, spen a few bucks of it on entertainment, but don't use it all that way!
Back on track. A good bit of our meat and most of our veggies are home canned. Result is we haven't got a great deal invested in refrigerator dependence.
Looking at a propane fridge out of an RV later today. Junkyard down the road has an old OLD motorhome in the back, with a complete absorption refrigerator in it. Gotta go do some horsetradin' with the fellow.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
How we got here
It's been on my mind for a while, as I've watched the degeneration of this country from what I grew up believing it was into the politically-correct, socialist, bastion of non-responsibility that we now look around and see, that some day stuff's gonna just shut down and not come back on. I've asked myself, Do I want to wait until then and suffer with the rest of the sheeple? Or do I want to at least start putting together a way to survive the end of life as we know and expect it?
I do not intend to meekly just accept this "new normal" puke that is being promulgated by our head Kenyan. "New normal" to me is supposed to be a higher and higher standard, not an acceptance of less and less as a suitable environment. A "new normal" that requires that one forget one's past to be happy with one's present is psychotic and self destructive.
So, on to how we got here. Thumbnail sketch: The local electric co-op ticked off the wrong guy. For want of fifty four dollars and some cents being paid Sunday, our meter was removed by a technician who couldn't either take my payment in cash and give me a receipt (I was on the way out the driveway to town to pay the bill!) or wait thirty minutes for me to drive to town and pay the bill, thereby cancelling his work order. The lack of sanity at the office, combined with the dearth of anyone willing to make a decision that might be contrary to the rule book, was the last straw.
So. We started with one group 24 deep cycle marine battery, a 400 watt inverter, and a 3500 watt generator. First order of bidness was to get the refrigerator and deep freeze going--either that or send out invites for a HUGE barbecue!
I built and wired this house with in mind having to power parts of it with a generator in case of something like a hurricane making landfall nearby, or possums getting into the transformer substation in Orange Grove, or a general collapse of civilization, not to mention inflation outpacing my ability to pay the damn bill. Looks like the latter is going to get us all shortly, but that's beside the point.
At any rate (even an obnoxious one such as the rate per KwH of electricity from the co-op!) my first action was to shut off the breaker in the main box that goes to the branch on the back wall. This branch box serves most of the ceiling lighting in the house, the plugs in the kitchen and most of the master bedroom, and the back porch power, which runs our water pump and washing machine. I removed the supply from that box and in its place ran a 12/2 romex over to near where I decided to situate the generator and installed a plug on the end of the romex. I then plugged that into a pigtail, ten foot extension cord with 12 gauge conductors and plugged that into the generator. The reason for the extension pigtail is that romex (house wiring) is solid conductor and is susceptible to breaking from the vibration of a generator, where an extension cord is constructed with stranded wire which is much more tolerant of vibration. So by using a short extension cord to act as a vibration dampener I kept the romex physically insulated from the vibration.
I will post pics as soon as I have the chance to learn how to do that on this venue. Please forgive the lack of them for now.
Come bedtime last night we shut down the generator and used the one battery with the inverter. Not enough for the old tube-type tv (62 watts) and fan (unknown wattage, haven't found the name plate on it yet). About 2 hours to alarm and shutdown. Also, I hadn't planned ahead and we're not sure if the battery was at full charge or not. It had been used to start and move an old pickup around the place, but probably hadn't been run long enough to recharge. Could have something to do with the shortness of power output. We'll know more tonight.
So far have run since 5 p.m. (it's now a bit after 9) on the 3-battery setup. Charged them at 40 amps for an hour this afternoon right before shutting the noisebox down. I also connected a voltmeter to the system to monitor the DC voltage on the batteries from inside the house. It was showing still over 12v when I cranked up the generator again a few minutes ago to start dinner. (Reason for starting it to fix dinner is to keep the fridge cold while opening and closing it through dinner prep. Also to make sure we don't have a repeat of last night with the loss of battery power before we were ready for it :) )
More as I think of it. Questions so far, email me and I'll answer 'em.
I do not intend to meekly just accept this "new normal" puke that is being promulgated by our head Kenyan. "New normal" to me is supposed to be a higher and higher standard, not an acceptance of less and less as a suitable environment. A "new normal" that requires that one forget one's past to be happy with one's present is psychotic and self destructive.
So, on to how we got here. Thumbnail sketch: The local electric co-op ticked off the wrong guy. For want of fifty four dollars and some cents being paid Sunday, our meter was removed by a technician who couldn't either take my payment in cash and give me a receipt (I was on the way out the driveway to town to pay the bill!) or wait thirty minutes for me to drive to town and pay the bill, thereby cancelling his work order. The lack of sanity at the office, combined with the dearth of anyone willing to make a decision that might be contrary to the rule book, was the last straw.
So. We started with one group 24 deep cycle marine battery, a 400 watt inverter, and a 3500 watt generator. First order of bidness was to get the refrigerator and deep freeze going--either that or send out invites for a HUGE barbecue!
I built and wired this house with in mind having to power parts of it with a generator in case of something like a hurricane making landfall nearby, or possums getting into the transformer substation in Orange Grove, or a general collapse of civilization, not to mention inflation outpacing my ability to pay the damn bill. Looks like the latter is going to get us all shortly, but that's beside the point.
At any rate (even an obnoxious one such as the rate per KwH of electricity from the co-op!) my first action was to shut off the breaker in the main box that goes to the branch on the back wall. This branch box serves most of the ceiling lighting in the house, the plugs in the kitchen and most of the master bedroom, and the back porch power, which runs our water pump and washing machine. I removed the supply from that box and in its place ran a 12/2 romex over to near where I decided to situate the generator and installed a plug on the end of the romex. I then plugged that into a pigtail, ten foot extension cord with 12 gauge conductors and plugged that into the generator. The reason for the extension pigtail is that romex (house wiring) is solid conductor and is susceptible to breaking from the vibration of a generator, where an extension cord is constructed with stranded wire which is much more tolerant of vibration. So by using a short extension cord to act as a vibration dampener I kept the romex physically insulated from the vibration.
I will post pics as soon as I have the chance to learn how to do that on this venue. Please forgive the lack of them for now.
Come bedtime last night we shut down the generator and used the one battery with the inverter. Not enough for the old tube-type tv (62 watts) and fan (unknown wattage, haven't found the name plate on it yet). About 2 hours to alarm and shutdown. Also, I hadn't planned ahead and we're not sure if the battery was at full charge or not. It had been used to start and move an old pickup around the place, but probably hadn't been run long enough to recharge. Could have something to do with the shortness of power output. We'll know more tonight.
So far have run since 5 p.m. (it's now a bit after 9) on the 3-battery setup. Charged them at 40 amps for an hour this afternoon right before shutting the noisebox down. I also connected a voltmeter to the system to monitor the DC voltage on the batteries from inside the house. It was showing still over 12v when I cranked up the generator again a few minutes ago to start dinner. (Reason for starting it to fix dinner is to keep the fridge cold while opening and closing it through dinner prep. Also to make sure we don't have a repeat of last night with the loss of battery power before we were ready for it :) )
More as I think of it. Questions so far, email me and I'll answer 'em.
A warm welcome to a new blog!
Hello and thanks for visiting! On this site, I plan to chronicle our conversion from power company serfs to true independence.
Right now, as we sit here, my darling wife is watching American Idol on our old television set, I'm sitting at the computer blogging like a bandit, and the stuff in the fridge is cold, the stuff in the oven is warm, and all is as it should be, except for one thing........
There's a coverplate instead of a meter in our meter can.
No, there's no noise going grindingly out back at the moment; we can hear the birds chirping, the chickens gluk-gluking and two of the seven cats mixing it up in one of their seemingly incessant scuffles.
Sure, we run a generator a couple times a day, and I will get into how and when and so forth as this blog and our experience grows, but for now, we're doing basically what we want without worrying about paying for it in 45 to 60 days.
No, we'll worry about paying for it, in kind, later that night. We'll either pay for it by suffering through listening to the generator or going to bed in the dark without seeing the evening news, and with flashlights to find our way to the little room, or some other way. But at least the 'reward' will be immediate, the cost borne on a daily basis, and not some time in the future after a big disconnect between actions and their consequences.
With this, next post I'll plunge into day number one and how it came to be that, and what we did to deal with it.
As I go, I'm going to include costs and details, including photos, of how, what, and my reasoning behind when, why, and so forth.
I'm going at this as fast as my finances will allow me to. Anyone wanting it to go faster, well, sorry--I don't have any more I can pour into it.
Right now, as we sit here, my darling wife is watching American Idol on our old television set, I'm sitting at the computer blogging like a bandit, and the stuff in the fridge is cold, the stuff in the oven is warm, and all is as it should be, except for one thing........
There's a coverplate instead of a meter in our meter can.
No, there's no noise going grindingly out back at the moment; we can hear the birds chirping, the chickens gluk-gluking and two of the seven cats mixing it up in one of their seemingly incessant scuffles.
Sure, we run a generator a couple times a day, and I will get into how and when and so forth as this blog and our experience grows, but for now, we're doing basically what we want without worrying about paying for it in 45 to 60 days.
No, we'll worry about paying for it, in kind, later that night. We'll either pay for it by suffering through listening to the generator or going to bed in the dark without seeing the evening news, and with flashlights to find our way to the little room, or some other way. But at least the 'reward' will be immediate, the cost borne on a daily basis, and not some time in the future after a big disconnect between actions and their consequences.
With this, next post I'll plunge into day number one and how it came to be that, and what we did to deal with it.
As I go, I'm going to include costs and details, including photos, of how, what, and my reasoning behind when, why, and so forth.
I'm going at this as fast as my finances will allow me to. Anyone wanting it to go faster, well, sorry--I don't have any more I can pour into it.
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