'Curbing' our enthusiasm......

 8:09 am - Wednesday - January 15th - TWW - 22° F, humidity 38%, wind 11 mph out of the east by northeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 54° F.  On this date in 2022 TLE and I arrived at 'Newell House' in Wittmann, AZ......

....which is also the home of Tom and Darlene McCloud....wonderful Newell friends.  It is one of our favorite courtesy parking places in the USA.  In the foreground is the home, and in the background is the enormous 'Newell House'....big enough to hold two 46' Newells.  There are also two full hookup, 50 amp sites on the south side of 'Newell House' where we usually park.

There were two things I wanted to accomplish Tuesday.....1) Install the metal work I had painted the day before on the shed to seal the round hole I had cut for the Honda EU2000i exhaust, and the long north and south seam in the cedar panels on the back of the shed, and 2) Start my 1969 Jeep CJ9 for the first time in a month.  

With TLE's help we removed the 325 watt solar panel from the table at the back of the shed so I could access the aforementioned areas where the painted metal pieces would be affixed....

The backside of the shed

The view from inside the shed after installation

.....it took me around 30 minutes to install everything, and it turned out well.  My initial hope was that sealing the large vertical seam on the back of the shed would allow the heat of the three Bluetti AC200P batteries to keep the interior above freezing, but that was a fools gambit on my part.  Without insulation the interior will only stay a few degrees above the outside temp.  For instance, when we woke up this morning the outside temp was 22° F, and the interior shed temp was 26° F....not a big differential.  On the other hand, sealing those gaps and holes will keep the moisture out of the shed, so that is a nice trade off.

I was going to head out to the garage next to start the Jeep, but TLE suggested we haul some gravel to that spot on the entrance road to fill that hole resulting from the removal of all that rock.  That, actually, was a good idea as I had set up Charles' propane heater (of the catalytic variety) in the garage under the Jeep engine to warm it up while the battery was charging.  A little extra time would not hurt.

We used the Yamaha Rhino to move the gravel to the hole, and had it dumped, and raked within 30 minutes.  But, you know I could not leave it there.  We had this large pile of those rocks I had pried out of the ground, and I thought they could be used to create a type of 'curb' along the left side of the driveway apron.  We hauled those large rocks back to the property entrance, and found they only covered about one half the distance to the gate, so we scrounged some more rock along the road, and completed it.  In all it took us around an hour to finish the previously unplanned curb.....

While I filled the hole with gravel TLE cut the juniper tree back that was hanging over the road

......this rock is all over the property, and the local area.  Might as well put it to good use, right?

Once we put away our tools I headed out to the garage to start the Jeep.  It has been really cold lately, and the battery had run down to about 55%, so there was no way the Jeep was going to start without charging the battery, and heating up the engine.  By the time I got into the Jeep to turn over the Buick Dauntless V-6 it had been 2, or 3 hours since I turned on the heater, and the charger.  As hoped it fired right up, and was soon purring like a kitten.  I need to remember to start it more often during the winter.

Not much else got done Tuesday, but that was fine.  Everyday we get more done.  Our rooftop solar panels brought our house batteries back to 100% by 1 pm, and the Eco-Worthy Dual Axis solar tracker did the same for our Bluetti battery bank.  The trailer Bluetti gets back to 100% by 11 am everyday, sometimes earlier.  At night I shut off 120 VAC power to the trailer, but the 12 volt DC power is flowing to the solar tracker 24/7.  The Predator 5000 dual fuel generator is running less than 2 hours per day, and on 'warmer' nights, less than 1 hour per day.  Once I rewire the panels on the roof of our Newell from parallel to series we should get down to rarely needing to employ it...at least that is our hope.

Thanks for stopping by!