It snowed last night.
- Thread starter SparkyJJO
- Start date
Lucky you!
timselectric
If I can do it, you can do it.
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2022
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- 29,854
Same here, without the sun at all.
Last edited:
Trailblazer2025
New Member
In Western New York, we get about 20% of possible sunlight from November through February. Then add snow on top of that, and production during those 4 months are dismal.
DC_Ripple
Solar Addict
ricardocello
Watching and Learning
Rain here most of the day, then just cloudy, then actual sun just before sunset.
No snow, just above freezing all day,
Rainy: 200 W
Cloudy: maybe 1000 W
Full sun: 6500 W (this time of year, 9000 W in summer). But not today.
I do have the long poles and squeegees ready to clean off the panels in case of snow!
No snow, just above freezing all day,
Rainy: 200 W
Cloudy: maybe 1000 W
Full sun: 6500 W (this time of year, 9000 W in summer). But not today.
I do have the long poles and squeegees ready to clean off the panels in case of snow!
scrubjaysnest
Solar Enthusiast
Still waiting for it to reach the ground.
Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
Around 10" here over the weekend. Then it blew around.
I didn't see any snow on the vertical array. The ground mounts at 62° were clear in 2 hours. Official Loads Tester™ and I adjusted the arrays before leaving Friday for Thanksgiving dinner at our son's house. Glad we did.
Spent Saturday morning finishing splitting some wood that was piled where I push snow thru. Not fun with snow on the wood. Wet gloves.
If I could only bottle all the heat and excess PV from the summer months to use in the winter..... I should build that still. At least I might feel warm if I drank the product in winter.
I didn't see any snow on the vertical array. The ground mounts at 62° were clear in 2 hours. Official Loads Tester™ and I adjusted the arrays before leaving Friday for Thanksgiving dinner at our son's house. Glad we did.
Spent Saturday morning finishing splitting some wood that was piled where I push snow thru. Not fun with snow on the wood. Wet gloves.
If I could only bottle all the heat and excess PV from the summer months to use in the winter..... I should build that still. At least I might feel warm if I drank the product in winter.
azazel1024
Solar Enthusiast
I mean, along those lines, an electric "solar" kiln for firewood in the summer could help with that a bit. Get that firewood extra dry with the extra power.
I am stuck with no good firewood storage, and not much of it. So I am splitting stuff that'll be burning in a month. With no kiln, and not even good cover outside of one decent and one leaky tarp. Since I am building a proper woodshed in the spring once I can get some trees taken down, I don't even see the point of spending the money on replacement big tarp for the one pile. It keeps most of the water off the wood (it is old, no holes, just not 100% waterproof anymore.
I have probably a cord and a quarter split and "seasoning" the best it can. I went through the half cord the former owner left when I bought the house over the summer (he had it covered in the leaky tarp). I filled the pile under that tarp with about a cord and a half total (so a cords worth) before November. Another almost half a cord on a new pile with a new tarp strung under rope so it can get airflow but still keep the rain/snow off it. But I've burned half a cord in November and the first few days of December now.
I'd be burning a cord a month if I had the firewood for it, but I am focusing on using the wood stove on just the colder days and first thing in the morning when it is coldest. I've run it a few times all day long on particularly cold weekend days when I have been around.
I have PLENTY of firewood I can split, or cut. Just not enough time and no real good space to season it well this winter. I am loathing what the flue is going to be like to clean. Speaking of, I need to get a chimney brush and plan on doing that sometime in January.
I don't have a final size yet, but I am planning on probably a 16x6' woodshed. With it being at least 6' on the back wall and 8' on the front wall. That'll give me roughly 4 cords of wood storage depending on how I stack it. 3 deep at ~18 inch logs.
I plan to put solar on the shed roof, which also gets me around 200sq-ft of solar (I plan on making it 20x10' roof, 2' overhangs all around, granted front and back will be on a slope, so the actual overhang will be less). I figure I might be able to squeeze 4kw on there.
Buttttt I might end up less ambitious and go more like a 12x5' woodshed. One thing I want to do is have at LEAST two. So that I can be filling one as I am emptying the other one. Partly because I much, much prefer to split wood in the wintertime, than the summertime. So I can be burning year old wood in the wintertime and filling up the other woodshed for next year. Or have one BIG wood shed, and two much smaller ones that might only be holding a cord and a half. I do like the idea of a solar kiln, but if I am seasoning wood for an entire year, a kiln isn't going to get it much drier.
CMDRZOD
Solar Enthusiast
*Cries in Canadian*
Constant overcast and cloud forecasted for the next 10 days. Been snowing the last few days. 30kwp installed make 1.4kw most of the day.
Combined with the short days means many hours on the generator.
Constant overcast and cloud forecasted for the next 10 days. Been snowing the last few days. 30kwp installed make 1.4kw most of the day.
Combined with the short days means many hours on the generator.
Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
My wife and I cut and split 2 cords of ash on Thanksgiving Day, stacked in cages I move with the forklift. Plus went to dinner at my sister's.
Granted, we were out there until 9 PM finishing up that last cord. Did 2 cords the next day too. Then another cord the following day. 8.5 cords total in a few days. Each cage measures 6 feet tall, 6 feet long and 3.75 feet across so slightly larger than a cord but it can't be stacked quite tight on the top. Filling totes now to stack on top of the cages in the shed. I have at least 20 to 25 cord left to split plus another 25 cord to cut and split. All from my yard.
Granted, we were out there until 9 PM finishing up that last cord. Did 2 cords the next day too. Then another cord the following day. 8.5 cords total in a few days. Each cage measures 6 feet tall, 6 feet long and 3.75 feet across so slightly larger than a cord but it can't be stacked quite tight on the top. Filling totes now to stack on top of the cages in the shed. I have at least 20 to 25 cord left to split plus another 25 cord to cut and split. All from my yard.
scrubjaysnest
Solar Enthusiast
It just started here, see the raised the chance from 30 to 50% with maybe 1/2 inch.
azazel1024
Solar Enthusiast
#Goals!
At a guess, with all of the trees I have down on my 3.4 acres, at least stuff that LOOKS worthwhile to split, I probably have 20-25 cords I could split, plus about another 8-10 of standing dead trees (and a few smaller live trees) I do plan to take down in the spring, another 15-20 of standing dead trees I plan to let nature take her course with.
That said, I might have my "big" woodshed in, in the spring/summer that might accommodate 4 cords of wood. and I am looking to maybe add another big one, or a couple of small ones, and maybe some wood storage under the cover of an awning/shed roof off a small workshop I'd like to put in, eventually. That might be another 4-6 cords of wood storage. If my wife and I burn it pretty good, we might burn 1.5 cords a month in the woodstove, if I were to guess. Maybe 5-6 a heating season. I'd imagine we could probably do better than that if we were really trying hard to cover as much heating of our house as possible, burning that 99k BTUH wood stove as hot as we can, keeping it really well fueled all waking hours of the day. But we both work (away from the home), and even then, not sure we'd put in that effort.
Based on the 120k BTUH wood boiler at my last house (4.4 acres, but only about 3 of them wooded, and this one is 3.4, with about 2.8 of it wooded), working from home, and trying to feed it somewhat aggressively, I managed to burn about 5 cords in best heating season. But my ex also really never fed it if I wasn't around (which during COVID, I was around basically all the time), or took a nap, etc. That thing needed feeding at least every 90 minutes or it would be down to ash unless it was a particularly warm day without much calling for heat, or you turned the thermostat down on it. Then you might get 2 hrs before you'd need to relight the boiler. I think the best I managed was about 4hrs PACKING the boiler to the max and turning the thermostat down. But that also makes a creosote mess, because it burns terribly inefficiently on low, plus with those cold boiler heat exchanger surfaces...
It just couldn't run low.
This wood stove, if you turn the choke all the way down after fueling it up good and the next morning (8hrs later) I can stir the ashes and coals some, throw some wood, open the choke and leave the door cracked and it is burning merrily away in 10 minutes (or less). And the stove fans are still spinning away in the morning, and the top is nice and hot still.
If I burn it all day, Other than starting the fire, I am mostly burning it at medium choke with just 1-3 medium logs in there at a time. Refueling about once per hour. About every 4-5hrs (so maybe twice a day?) I am throwing on 4-5 logs to get the coal pile built back up some more. Just opening up the choke for 2-5 minutes when I throw a new log(s) on there. With the typical size of the logs I split, I can fit probably 15 logs in there pretty packed, but still leaving a bit of room to breath (the wood stove, if I am remembering right, has a 24x24x18 inch firebox) as I typically split my logs into roughly 4" diameter/widths. A few bigger, a few smaller.
42OhmsPA
I hate clouds!
It snowed here yesterday, it was fairly sunny today.
I bet you can easily figure out what Inverter and MPPT has 5670W of roof mounted panels...
I bet you can easily figure out what Inverter and MPPT has 5670W of roof mounted panels...
Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
Switch to a gasification wood boiler (not one of those outside pieces of junk either) with thermal storage and do batch burns.
More efficient and you won't have to keep feeding it. It will cut down the cords per year. Yes, the wood needs to be dry- preferred is 2 years and yes, it needs to be split smaller. The fire needs to be hot and burned hard, the heat is pulled out by the heat exchanger and stored in the thermal storage.
azazel1024
Solar Enthusiast
Not going to happen at this house. Even retrofitting the HVAC to hydronic heat exchangers in the fan units would be way too much of a PITA. A next house, maybe. The wood stove works well enough. In theory, upper 70% range, it has reburn and low particulate emissions. Not quite as good as a forced air blower catalytic stove, but close enough with much less maintenance and expense of replacing catalysts, plus fewer issues with damper wood or soft woods (not that I really have any soft woods growing on my property).
Not that it is excessive amounts of power compared to running a heat pump, but wood gasification boilers are typically going to pull about 2-4kwh a day to run, depending on how much they are running. Then add in circulators and control circuits for the hydronic system (which also isn't much, but isn't nothing). Figure 60-120kwh a month, depending on how cold and how much it gets used. Which is more than offset by jumping 10-15% in efficiency of the wood burn. Probably maybe more like 25% if figuring burning a wood stove on lower heat. Then again, other than my time and space to store it, my costs are "free" for the wood I am burning, and a wood gasification boiler plus retrofitting my heating system would be $15-20k for a GOOD gasification boiler.
Not sure what value to put on my time, but if it saved me a cord of wood a year, and good seasoned firewood seems to be $300 or so a cord around me. That is a lot of years for payback if I bought it seasoned and pre-split.
And not as cozy as watching the fire in the woodstove. I might change my tune in a couple more years, but I am enjoying having a good woodstove over the boiler in my last house a lot more. Now, a boiler I only needed to feed 2-3 times a day, might change my tune rather than 16 times a day. And that boiler was in a big house with a big basement. I got all my 250 steps an hour just running downstairs to feed the boiler. The woodstove is 10 steps from where I store a couple of days of wood outside.
And with a next house, if it doesn't have a good woodstove, I'd probably install one anyway. Which makes the value proposition of a gasification wood boiler lower (not none). Then again, by then, I might be paying for convenience over savings.
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