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!)
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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!
