diy solar

diy solar

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  1. J

    going overboard with plants?

    If I stop, due to age and injury, I lock up. I can't say I didn't like the attention given to being fit when about everyone else my age had gained a lot of weight... Instead of driving 35 miles to do phsyical therapy, then driving back home, I just turned a lot of the chores into phsyical...
  2. J

    going overboard with plants?

    Honestly, 16 years in the Marines before I went back to farming and metal shop work... Call it 'Zen' or whatever, but I can't do anything about nukes, so I don't let them enter my plans/thought processes. Either you die or you don't... With 5 to 7 years of food stored for all my close friends...
  3. J

    going overboard with plants?

    Watermelons AND apples this week... They came in together this year, so I'm WORKING MY BUTT OFF! Can't complain much, other than living on ibuprofen for the old, sore muscles. The apple trees are so loaded we have had to rope the limbs off to keep them from breaking, and the fridge size melon...
  4. J

    Sol-Ark 15K AC coupled setup to reduce grid supplied power

    I don't want to side track the thread... Sol-Arc 15 has both AC and DC coupling capabilities (FINALLY!) and with a few installs under my belt I'm still learning g what it's capable of. You can do the 'Up' side of both AC and DC coupling if you can get the configuration correct... And so far...
  5. J

    Off grid people ill-prepared

    Application... *IF* you could get the appliances you mentioned in reliable, reasonably priced and available DC versions, that argument goes out the window. See DC water well pumps for example. My biggest complaint is designed for obsolescence and replacment instead of repair and upgrade...
  6. J

    Off grid people ill-prepared

    It's the learning curve that gets most people... OFF GRID... 1. You produce (panels) in DC. You store (Batteries) in DC. You had better have a grasp of how to COMPLETE a DC circuit... Seeing just battery cable terminals on every solar forum tells me most people don't have a grasp on DC...
  7. J

    Energy Observer Boat... Solar/Wind Over Hydrogen Efficiency

    I worked on a hydrogen combustion engine project that lasted for about a minute back in the 90s, really no point to it except they paid me. The dyno doesn't lie... The volume of hydrogen it took to make any horsepower at all barred any reasonable usage by internal combustion. The boat... He...
  8. J

    Energy Observer Boat... Solar/Wind Over Hydrogen Efficiency

    I'm not a 'pie in the sky' type person, I don't get emotional either way. It either is, or it isn't. Political slant has no place in science or engineering. This would be a retrofit of a 100+ foot (103 feet i think) aluminum hull, beaching cargo/ferry catamaran. Holds one big truck/trailer or...
  9. J

    Energy Observer Boat... Solar/Wind Over Hydrogen Efficiency

    A former customer sent me this link (and others) and wants some idea of how this could be adapted to small cargo delivery throughout smaller islands. I don't know crap about hydrogen electrolysis or fuel cells, but if this is correct they are way more efficient than fossil fuel engines. Any...
  10. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    Road signs, barns/sheds, farm equipment, cabins, even livestock, solar panels, anything that catches their eye... I subscribe to de-evolution theory now after 50 years of seeing what stupid people do. Explained by de-elolution theory. Humans are tribal and territorial by nature, take away...
  11. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    Morons will find you there too... I'm the LAST DRIVEWAY on my county road, 17 miles from the nearest town, and they plugged in political signs on the mowed area at the end of my 9/10 mile long driveway. Ideally, I'm the ONLY person that will see them, so why plug them in on posted private...
  12. J

    going overboard with plants?

    I NEED daily phsyical therapy. If I don't I lock up solid because of nerve/bone damage. If you DON'T need the exercise, then go with a POWERED cement mixer. Try and find one you can get (or make) different drums for. Most of what you do won't be anywhere near the weight of concrete so plastic...
  13. J

    going overboard with plants?

    Sifter/screener. It's a box frame with a screen in the bottom, or if you want to power it, a drum with screen sides that rotates. One way to mix is a long piece of construction plastic, lay out your components on the plastic (sand, lime, leaf mold, whatever) then pick up one end and roll up the...
  14. J

    going overboard with plants?

    Never thought of it that way, but yes, kind of... About half wild grown. Rotten straw/hay, weed cuttings, etc become compost and I grow directly in that. Throw some bales/thatch on top for winter, just go turn it until I find potatoes as I need them. If I have greenies, or they have bad...
  15. J

    going overboard with plants?

    I've given up on 'Planting' potatoes entirely. You beat them into the ground, you beat them out of the ground, and you try to keep the bugs off them while they are growing. I went with rotten straw and hay bales. Dig a hole, throw the straw/hay/cut weeds in and plant in that. Really easy to...
  16. J

    going overboard with plants?

    I enjoy gardening, both for commercial produce and for personal unwind/decompress time. I make money from produce, so I have done barrels, posts/gutters, pipes, different kinds of vertical gardening. I'm big on raised garden beds, I spend a lot of time turning sand/clay into growing soil with...
  17. J

    Feast or Famine, The off grid solar dilemma.

    It was a lot of PVC pipe, but the well drillers said to build a bubble lift, air hose and PVC to the bottom, then 'T' in the air and the bubbles would lift sediment and it worked. About 10 foot of silt, then I hit hard bottom. Wasn't fast, but I didn't have to do it all at once, and I probably...
  18. J

    Feast or Famine, The off grid solar dilemma.

    That's changed some in Indiana depending on where you are. You might want to get below the rock cap down where I live, the water is still clean. Other places not so much... Between industral farm run off, industal manufacturing run off, farm chemicals, etc. you really want the full test done...
  19. J

    To Tesla or not?

    We didn't go Tesla for two reasons, the ICE-hole harassment/damage and you need a monthly service contract for updates and stuff. I'm not real keen on making monthly payments on something I already paid for. We found a program/lease return that had very low mileage, no accidents, and by the...
  20. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    At least you get something done...
  21. J

    Members outnumbered 3:1 by guests - Really?

    People think I'm OCD when I use a label maker and label every wire, diagram things out, seal it up in vacuum freezer bags and leave it taped inside the door of the battery boxes or inverter covers... YOU try remembering where/what everything is 5 or 10 years down the road when something gives...
  22. J

    Feast or Famine, The off grid solar dilemma.

    Deer meat was always a big spoon of salt on top, then pressure canned until the meat was stringy. Not a lot of fat in venison to start with, and after it's cooked to death using the old canning recommendations it was like eating string. I went with a digital time/temp logger and induction...
  23. J

    Members outnumbered 3:1 by guests - Really?

    I don't trust anybody that can't tell me 3 ways they screwed things up before they got it right... Anyone that says they do things flawlessly the first time, every time aren't actually getting anything done. I came back from lunch today and picked my terminal box up without checking the...
  24. J

    Feast or Famine, The off grid solar dilemma.

    We do a bunch of canning in a summer kitchen/shelter house and didn't do a commercial dishwasher until about 6 or 7 years ago. Night and day difference. An older Hobart brand, but it does a reasonable job. Since we only use it in mid to late summer (canning season) it's not too hard on...
  25. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    Still can't help you... You can only help those that will help themselves.
  26. J

    Feast or Famine, The off grid solar dilemma.

    It's not breaking me, the more we know the better off we will eventually be. I was human intelligence for the better part of 14 years in the Marines. I was trained to slide in, stay on station undetected, collect what we could and slide out undetected. Now they have satellites to do my job of...
  27. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    I still don't care...
  28. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    More Bullshit. I honestly don't care what you do as long as you don't make it a problem I have to deal with. You want to spend money on crap instead of reinvesting it that's your choice. Lots of people do, that's why we have a false 'Consumer' economy instead of the agrarian/manufacturing...
  29. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    Can't help you. For me, 17 years on a farm, 16 in the Marines, 30+ off grid, now retired. Lost 1/2 of right & 1/4 of left to a bullet, shattered left ankle, lost both knees, lost left hip, back broke in 5 places, neck in 2, left shoulder busted. I scratched up the money to get my back fixed...
  30. J

    Feast or Famine, The off grid solar dilemma.

    Signals intellegence. If you are talking about the big balloon, it had steering capabilities (to an extent). I don't think it was a coincidence it went right over the areas they did have access to all cell phone traffic previously...
  31. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    WOW! Thst was a lot of words... saying nothing truthful. First off, teens have cars. Students have cars. City dwellers in apartments have cars... Most households have multiple cars. There are already hand me down and second had EVs on the market, so they do live, And only YOU think you have...
  32. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    I Google it, over 31,000 ICEhole videos of blocked chargers. Apparently they do since they block chargers, 'Roll Coal' and harass EV drivers, etc. If it's happened here in the middle of nowhere, and it's in the news, it's happening. Someone decided it would be funny to put "Friends Of Coal"...
  33. J

    Watching 'Stupid' In Action...

    Clips all over the internet... Absloutely impossible to miss on a lot of web sites. Look up 'ICEing' or 'ICEholes', it's what EV owners started calling intentional charger blocking. As for low end rentals, I can't comment. I've never owned low end, substandard or illegal rentals. I rented a...
  34. J

    To Tesla or not?

    I'm all for NOT being in debt... People asked why I did without while getting businesses of my own up and running... You can't sell a job when you are ready to retire. When I made some money people asked why I didn't buy new cars, etc. Instead of SPENDING money, I reinvested it. When I sold...
  35. J

    Feast or Famine, The off grid solar dilemma.

    Yup. Buy crap, get crap, then complain about it. If you intend to store it, buy premium. There is a reason premium is more expensive, it's generally better quality. FULL fuel tanks means no place for moisture laden air to enter the tank. The military spends billions on fuel, have properly...
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