Off The Grid

Fence wiring trick.

It's warming up nicely... my days are 1)check the chicks hatching (got one this morning). 2)check the greenhouse, 3)cut down trees around the pond. 3a working alone, on and off tractor, felling, cutting, hauling away. Walk to house to cool off. rinse lather repeat. We've got the horses confined to 3 smaller paddocks and we're down to 2 round bales of hay. The clock is ticking. The whole reason I'm cutting down all these trees is to prevent future me from having to repair a new fence when dead limbs fall on it. Gotta get that fence back up so the horses can graze the larger pasture.

Foundation frost heaving http://woodgears.ca/cottage/foundation.html Explaining how cyclic frost heaving can permanently displace a concrete foundation

This guy knows concrete. I have never learned so much. This guy is to concrete work what Amazing Blazing is for welders.

https://github.com/jgyates/genmon/wiki Generator controller that works with home assistant

I'm kinda window shopping for when my kid sister wants to build something.... I started looking at https://yixiangpower.com and their MB56 battery is 32kwh for $3500 with JKBMS. Then I popped over to docanenergy and they have a "panda" 48kwh battery for $3900 with some other BMS. The thing that worries me about the panda is that I think it puts several banks of LFPs in parallel and I'm really not a fan of that. The yixiang battery is a straight 16s 1p battery. As for my sis, she has an electric ford truck and we recently got a supercharger station about 5 miles from here. I'm confident enough with home assistant's forecasting solar production that I could begin charging her truck at midnight (give or take the SoC of the house battery and the expected production) so that either her truck would be full by the time she leaves the house or she'd have a SMS message from home assistant telling her she needed to supercharge on the way out. That would only be a few days in the winter. 3 of those 48kwh "panda" batteries would be almost 145kwh. In practical terms, the truck has a 135kwh battery and could be used in a pinch to charge the house. Right now the plan is for her to build on the backside of this property and never connect to the utility grid. We also have a 12kw pad mounted LP generator that can be thrown in the mix for her as well. I just never thought I'd see the day when youd have 145kwh in three batteries for under $12,000usd. https://www.docanpower.com/usa-stock/solar-home-battery/panda-52v-942ah-48kwh-prebuilt-pack-1-1

Submersible pumps go all the way to the bottom of the well. They have a set of wires that go all the way to the bottom to supply them with power. Look carefully and you realize that the motor is on the very bottom so it can be cooled by water flowing past it. These pumps should not run dry because they will overheat, so you should put a float switch in the well a few feet above the pump. Some pumps like Grundfoss have this switch built in. In most places this is the most common type of pump. They can be two wire or three wire. The three wire models require a small electronics box up top with a capacitor in it. The reason for this is so you can service the capacitor without pulling the pump. *two wire means two wires and a grounding wire. Three wire means three wires and a grounding wire.

Here is a jet pump foot valve.