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I use Frank's on every connection I make! It makes them nice and clean!

In very hard soil like this adobe crap here. Wet the ground && dig down ~2 ft with a post hole digger first. Fill hole with water, and start driving the rod. Fill hole with water repeatedly as you hammer the rod. Take a break to let the water soak on down if the rod stops moving. leave an...

I looked at this ages ago before solar was a thing ... Looks like it's still alive https://attra.ncat.org/publication/micro-hydro-power-a-beginners-guide-to-design-and-installation/ It's all about volume and gravity, but if memory serves you really can't get much unless you have a pretty good...

This is similar to my setup, but I'm running 100A on a breaker from the outside 150A panel, via a transfer switch to an inside 125A panel de-rated to 100A, and I moved ALL my loads into it. About 5 wire feet of 2AWG to the transfer another 2 feet into the panel. About 6 feet of 2AWG from a...

They moved here. $#!@@$! birds. And we don't have any trees to speak of. If there is a food supply around long enough with minimal predatory activity they will come back. I'm struggling that you would have minimal number of birds in your forest because of 'contrails'. There might be an...

The 30KWH of RUixu's were drastically less, free shipping > $5K Nice low profile cabinet.

Anything smallish up to about 3/4 you can get with a step bit. Over that just use a punch. The raceway I have has 1/2+3/4 and 1+1-1/4 knockouts, kind of depends, it's 4x4 not 6x6. I prefer plain boxes, just punch the holes you need of whatever size you need.

Really, really, really bad idea. Really bad, no really. Magic smoke time.

You need a transfer switch/interlock if you want to connect to your house wiring. Rolling a cart over and plugging in a couple of TV's and fridge is one thing. The minute you tie it to your house wiring you completely changed the paradigm. A suicide cord is a bad idea.

I have this new carburetor you can put on your car that will let it run on water instead of gas. No really! So while you are re-inventing in-floor radiant heat . . . IMNSHO this is a hair-brained idea. Even when it works, this stuff always sounds great in theory, but rarely pans out. In...

I'm EV charging with my 18K12 pair. 24A seems to work really well, I have it on a relay that allows EV from 10AM to 4PM. My normal solar output hovers between 10-13.5K during that window. Just need to make sure my batteries are over 90% at 1600 to cover TOU until 8. Since I put the MicroAir...

I love warranties, I think they are great. If I actually have to use it then your product or quality control was lousy and you cost me money.

Yes, I had this problem, they provide like a 7ft cable I needed like 8.5 to get down thru the conduit and back up. They really needed to improve the documentation, I've been bitching about parallel documentation since this time last year, but I would submit that this installation would have...

So if he's putting the cart BETWEEN the outlet and the fridge, that would give you the ground, bond it to the cart. No different than A simple UPS

This is a 16x16x6 Steel IP66 rated cabinet. I bought another to replace the one with the MC4's at the top that was inside, I had to re-engineer the entire setup when I got the 18K's. I stole the plate / breakers out of the original, and just mounted it in the new box. I bought DIN rail and...

'Threads' have a tendency to weave their way into different paths. Tim's thread is a great one because he's always doing something useful, innovative or interesting, that creates a lot of chit-chat. Still waiting to see what ends up happening with all those panels...

Perhaps, but I have family and friends that are electrical engineers, that tend to agree. Do you know what a voltage divider is? It's a common trick used in electronic circuits, to create lower voltage levels for small loads. You basically leverage the voltage drop across a resistance to get a...

Let's not devolve. Most of these outfits do what they do because the are after the dollar/ruble/shekel/whatever. The next great crises opens them up to lawsuits if some idiot that works for them gets sick/dies/whatever so they take the path of least resistance, and follow along. The sheeple...

Ocracoke Island has had nothing but desalinized water since before I can remember, basically a city wide RO system. It's very expensive compared to pump and filter, but not so outrageous, as to be non-viable, since even water produced via RO is not that costly compared to an overall household...

No need to be wasteful for the sake of being wasteful it is true. After all we ran out of oil in the late 80's, I know this to be true cause I saw it on several TV documentaries in the late 70's. Thus while the earths resources are definitely finite at some level, I'm not sure how big of a...

N95 Only works in so far that it is properly fitted, and removed. A respirator is the only sure thing. N95 was something like 95% effective at trapping, and to be truly effective would require cleansing and immediate disposal at regular intervals, just like you would if you put on a respirator...

Man, if you get on here want to ask a question, start a thread and ask it, we will bend over backwards to get you going. If you want to say "my inverter is not working when I connect the batteries, what is wrong?" That could bloody be anything, and gives us no clue as to what you might need to...

My house is cement brick originally built with just a swamp cooler, retro-fitted with an HVAC. There is ZERO insulation on the side walls about 6" in the attic. The windows are pathetic, but are aluminum double pane. I'll just overbuild my solar to make up for it, then keep the place cold...

Funny you say that, to your point ... I've said it before I will say it again, it's all about DEMAND. I think part of this, and a big consideration if you're going off-grid, is how far we get pushed into electric vehicles. Compared to a HWH or Dryer an EV is an order of magnitude different...

Yea, IMNSHO this is the Achilles heel of all these systems. The GF bought this power plug IOT thingy recently, turns out the company is gone, and there is no way to configure it. Good thing it had 'lifetime cloud service' , bad thing that the lifetime was about 3 years for the company. This...

This is a very coarse response. If I lived in a rural area, that was cold (like NY) that had lots of snow and/or even rain, and/or I took a lot of longer trips then I could say "I dont have to get kicked in the crotch to know it's not for me". I'm sure Tulex is quite aware of the tech and...

Bare minimum, I want more batteries, its only money. Max Constant Discharge per battery = 100A * 6 batteries = 600A * 50v = 30KWH ~= 240V/120A Recommended is 1/2 that 50A / battery, so 15KWH is realistic for a longer term sustained load, roughly 60A. The only time I draw > 60A for more than a...

Bought the exact panel from SanTan QTY 32. Along with the rails for my roof. Of course they are down the street, so I rented a truck for $60 and toted them myself. Ordered a full rack of 6 batteries from Signature, then ended up dumping the inverter setup I had for a pair of the 18Ks...

If I turn on my CV, it sagged my 30KWH rack for a brief moment, enough to dim the lights in the house when the inverter was running. I control mine with a relay on the AC side, and leave the breaker on. Either turn on the AC first or leave the DC side on. I seeded by turning on the AC, then...

Not true. Not even remotely true. Complete rubbish, and needlessly inflammatory. Not anywhere in the United States. This statement is blatantly inaccurate, and a totally ignorant comment. There are often issues with city water supplies, but I can assure you two things: Treated city water...