What have we been doing this Spring?

 

After returning from our Winter travels we realized that there were several projects needing attention around our house. The deck off the back door had not been painted in several years.  Also a couple of the boards had rotted and needed replacement.

A good pressure washing and then a couple of coats of paint were what was needed

We also had installed many years ago several retaining walls made from landscaping timbers. In several places these timbers were rotting.  We removed the timbers and replaced them with concrete retaining wall blocks.  The previous year we had replaced about about 30 feet of timber wall.

We have a back lot on our property of about a 1/4 acre.  I had built a wire fence around it when we first moved in (almost 20 years ago).  The fence was now falling down.  

The new fence was completed in several days - about 200 feet of 5ft tall wire fence; ten 4x4 wood posts and about a dozen steel T-posts.

Another major project was the result of our RV refrigerator replacement.  Although our existing solar installations was marginally sufficient, I wanted to ensure the ability to boondock off-grid without needing generator power.  The residential refrigerator does not draw excessive amounts of  electric power, however it runs all the time.   

The 600 watts of panels were basically doubled with three additional 200 watt panels.  As the new panels were a different size and voltage a separate new charge controller was installed.

The four Battle Born lithium batteries store sufficient power and the 2500 watt inverter has no trouble providing the AC power.  However, the six 100 watt solar panels could keep the batteries fully charged only with full day of sun (with no margin for cloudy periods). 

The new panels are performing as expected with only a few hours of direct sun to bring the batteries up to full charge.