Sunday, January 21, 2018

Upgrading the 4 wheeler

I've been looking at a better 4 wheeler for Crys. She uses one for tooling around here to do maintenance and they're just..... FUN. One came up in Manassa, about an hour and a quarter south of here, last week and I'd been in touch with the seller. Saturday morning they messaged me that they'd dropped the price $200 ($500 from where they started), so we drove down with the trailer and cash in hand. It was great. The sign that it was right was the kitty on the seat as we drove up. His name was Woody, because they found him in the wood pile.

We took it for a little test drive. It needs back tires and I'll do a basic tune up on it, but it's great. Just one little body part to replace and it's on order.

There's another one for sale in Sanford, just a little north of Manassa. Odd. Same year, make and model, just a different color. (red). So I'll check on it tomorrow and perhaps we'll have a pair. Gotta have a little fun right?


Wednesday, January 17, 2018

It all comes together.

Last month the propane fridge we spent way too much on, 7 years ago, gave out.

The month before that I installed a tracking/data system on the new solar array.

We made lemonade. Typically, our draw down on the batteries goes down to 90% SOC (State of Charge) We know this because of the tracking system, even in our lowest solar irradiation month of December. 85% SOC is considered to be in the ultimate range of draw down for a given system, as concerns battery life expectancy. We shopped carefully for a new electric fridge, and settled on one that has a yearly KW usage expectancy of 471 KWH per year. That means basically 1.3 KW per day. That seemed acceptable. As it plays out, the electric refrigerator/freezer takes our worst drawdown to 88% SOC. That's GREAT! It will also save us about $500 per year in propane not used, so the payback on the purchase of the new fridge is about a year and a half.

I know it's geeky and lots of numbers, but I'm happy figuring this crap out. It's ...... fulfilling and satisfying to be able to do this stuff myself.