Toppling dominoes......

 7:22 am - Monday - February 3rd - TWW - 43° F, humidity 56%, wind 9 mph out of the southeast......mostly clear today with a forecast high of 69° F.  On this date in 2012 we tilted our new solar panels for the first time.  They can be tilted either direction, but we usually park with the Newell nose facing west, so they are normally tilted to the driver side of the coach.....

.....on this particular day we were facing east at Jojoba Hills Escapee Park near Temecula, CA, where the panels were installed.

Wow, what busy day Sunday was!  Charles and Phyllis planned to head back to Phoenix around noon time, so we were outside early getting the things done for which we needed their assistance.  The big event of the day would be moving Phyllis' sister Newell to a new, temporary location while I build a pad for it near our new pad over the coming weeks.

While TLE and Phyllis trimmed a tree near our new site to make room for the 120 gallon propane tank, which will be moved on Tuesday, Charles and I began to disconnect the sister Newell from the solar panels, and the Eco-Flow solar charger, and move those items to the new, temporary location.  In order to start the sister Newell we needed to run the block heater for about 40 minutes.  As you know these old Detroit Diesel series 92 engines are cold blooded, and need a little heat injected before starting them in the winter, so I connected the large Champion dual phase generator to the coach (it has a 50 amp plug, so the coach is getting 100 amps of power).  Around 11:30 am I started the sister Newell, air it up, and with the guiding help of Charles and Elaine I backed out of the site where it has been parked since early November.  I had to back up quite a ways before I could drive forward to the new site.  Once the coach was moved the area where our new site is, as well as the trailer, became visible once again from our Newell.  As you can see, we've deployed or artificial turf for the first time since we arrived....order is being restored....lol.....

.....Tuesday we'll move our Newell around the same circular drive way so I can then pull into our new, permanent site with the nose facing east.  Why east?  Well, we want to create a little courtyard between the Newell and trailer, and we want the passenger side to face the trailer.  

We repositioned the sister Newell next to the barn, and CONEX, and then reconnected the solar panels to the Eco-Flow solar generator, plugged in the coach.....

....using these two 400 watt, bifacial solar panels to keep the sister Newell batteries fully charged without employing the Champion dual phase generator is working well beyond our expectations.  Being able to keep the coach plugged in, and batteries fully charged without the aid of the Champion has saved a lot of fuel, and eliminated the attendant noise.  By the time we repositioned the sister Newell it was around 12:20 pm, and time for Charles and Phyllis to begin their southward journey home.  We'll see them again on Thursday when they hope to spend 3 days and 3 nights at TWW this week.

After they left TLE and I attached the new pallet forks, purchased by Charles, to the Ford 420 tractor bucket, which we will use to move our shed, and our IBC water tote.....

.....these pallet forks can handle up to 4,000 pounds (2 tons), which is way beyond what we need, but one thing I've been learning the last few months is whatever you think you need when you're living off grid, double it.  I was originally looking at 2,000 pound pallet forks, but Charles said we should get the 4,000 pound ones, and he was right.  The same thinking has been applied to how many solar panels we think we need.  I thought I only need 300 watts of solar panels for our Bluetti AC200MAX solar generator battery bank, but it turns out we needed at least 600 watts, and that has worked well.  The same for the Bluetti AC200P solar charger which powers the trailer.  I originally thought I only needed 300 watts of panels, but the addition of the two 325 watt panels keeps that battery charged at 100% most of each 24 hour period without the aid of a gasoline generator.  By adding 3,200 watts of solar panels to the already existing 3,200 watt house system now keeps the house powered 24/7.

It seemed like we hardly took a break all day long, but at the end of the day we had a lot to show for our effort.  We are now one step closer to moving the Newell into our new site.  There are still a lot of dominoes to topple, but with enough pre-planning it is moving pretty smoothly.  It was such a nice day (mid 60's) that we decided to have a sunset fire for the first time in ages, and we are so happy we did....

....sunset was at 6:02 pm, but this sunset continued to evolve for at least 40 minutes.....

.....we headed back inside around 6:45 pm....what a day, and what a night!

Thanks for stopping by!