A work in progress....

6:48 am - Wednesday - December 18th - TWW - 39° F, humidity 35%, wind 8 mph out of the east......crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2007 TLE and I were taking a walk along Rincon Parkway just north of Ventura, CA.....

We spent part of Tuesday repositioning the new 325 watt solar panels we bought Monday numerous times to keep them in the sun for as long as possible each day.  With the sun so low in the sky now there is more shade than ever over much of the property.  Even our solar panels on the roof of the Newell are being impacted to the point where we're only getting full sun on them 4-5 hours a day, which is not optimal.  However, for the first time since we arrived I did not have to run the Honda EU2000i generator to recharge the Bluetti AC200P solar charger which powers the trailer.  The new 325 watt solar panel took care of that all day long.  I'm going to begin assembling the new solar array Wednesday now that the concrete has had 5 days to cure.  Once that is up and running my hope is that it will be enough to keep the Bluetti Ac200MAX and its to expansion batteries charged sufficiently to reduce the daily running time of the Predator 5000 propane generator.  It is all a work in progress, and with each passing week we are getting more efficient at living off the grid here in Northern Arizona....

.....we, also, wanted to follow up with our battery maintenance Tuesday by checking the water levels in the two 8d chassis batteries (engine). The good news is the 12 cells (6/battery) only needed a total of 1/2 gallon of distilled water to top them off.  No elements were exposed, so that is also good news.

I helped TLE cut up some more fire wood using the Stihl 16" bar chainsaw, but it began to act up so I decided to install the new chain I bought for the other Stihl (20" bar).  It went on easily enough but the new aftermarket chain kept binding, and stopping the chainsaw.  I finally determined it is not the correct chain for this model....031AV, so back to the drawing board.  At any rate we managed to get enough wood cut, and split to fill the wood pallet for wood which needs a little more aging before we can burn it.  After the wood project we took a snack break on the house deck for about 20 minutes....

....next up, for me, I decided to finally hard wire, and permanently mount the SeaFlo water pump we use to pump water into our fresh water tank from the IBC water tote, and into the black tank to flush it.  Up until now I've just been connecting the pump to the Bluetti AC200P (we had disconnect it from the trailer each time to move it over to the IBC water tote), or the new small engine battery I bought at O'Reilly's the other day.  It took an hour or so, but now it can be connected easily to the small battery, and then all I do is flip a switch to turn on the pump.....

A lot of tools were employed to do the job

The finished product...the board upon which the SeaFlo pump is mounted is screwed into the metal cross bars on the IBC water tote

....when not in use the small engine battery is kept in the shed on a trickle charger (plugged into the Bluetti AC200MAX) to maintain its charge.  With the completion of the SeaFlo project I called it a day.  TLE made white chicken enchiladas for dinner.....she makes the best enchiladas!

Thanks for stopping by!