Breakin' rocks.....

7:38 am - Tuesday - January 14th - TWW - 16° F (COLD!!!), humidity 58%, wind 9 mph out of the east.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 46° F.  On this date in 2016 TLE and I were boondocking at Quartzite with good friends.....

......left to right: Steven, Bill, Jodee, Linda, moi, TLE and Michael.  We met Steven and Linda at Cape Blanco in 2014, and Michael at Amazon in 2012.  Bill and Jodee were guests of Steven and Linda.

Monday was a good day.  We got a lot done, and I even took some pictures!  I've been wanting to break up some of the large rocks which dot the road into TWW for a long time now, and finally decided to take a whack at it Monday.....FINALLY.  Rocks embedded in any dirt roadbed are like ice bergs.  What you see on the surface is about 10-20% of the actual rock, and my experience Monday did not deviate one iota from that theorem.  Using a mid sized sledge hammer, a pick axe, and a long, steel pry bar, I slowly removed large rocks which were protruding 3-4" above the road bed.  It was slow, tiring work, but after about an hour I had a large pile of excised rocks, and a hole about 4' x 4' to fill.....

.....in the picture above I've outlined where the rocks were before I dug them out....not a very big area, and there are probably a dozen spots, or more, like this along the 1/2 mile road into TWW....

....there are a lot more areas like this, and we'll slowly clear them over the next few months...I hope.  From there we drove out to the main north/south arterial road to install 'The Wilson Wilderness' sign I wrote about previously....

.....we managed to find a spot free of sub-surface rocks to pound in the sign using a dead blow hammer. 

The temp barely reached 40° F Monday, and at 7:36 am it was barely 27° F......

......it was after 1 pm by the time we returned from ripping rocks out of the ground, and installing the sign.  While TLE retreated to the warm confines of the Newell I headed out to the garage to apply a coupe of coats of paint to some metal work I'm going to install on the cedar shed to close up the hole I cut for the Honda EU2000i generator exhaust, and the the 6 foot seam which runs from the roof to the floor at the back of the shed to seal it from the cold air. Lithium batteries do not enjoy temps below 32° F.  With the doors closed, and all the holes sealed the heat of the batteries will keep the interior well above freezing.....

.....I had to employ Charles' propane heater to get the temp above the required minimum temperature for painting of 50° F.....I was able to get it to 59° F.....

.....I'll let them dry overnight, then install them Tuesday when it will be significantly warmer than Monday (46° F.....lol).

I ran the onboard diesel generator in Phyllis' Newell for about an hour to exercise it, and keep her batteries charged.  I've been using the BIG Champion generator to do that in the past, but it makes more sense to exercise the onboard generator and charge the batteries at the same time.  I was back inside the warm confines of the Newell by 3:15 pm.....just in time for dinner.

The final NFL game of the 'Wildcard' weekend pitted my L.A. Rams against the favored Minnesota Vikings.  The Rams finished the regular season at 10-7, while the Vikings finished 14-2.  However, you would have thought their records were reversed as the game progressed.  The Rams totally dominated the Vikings from beginning to end racking up 9 sacks.  The final score read 27-9 as the clock expired.  The game had to be moved from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA to State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona due to the wild fires, and smoke in SoCal, but the Rams played like they were at their home stadium.

As I type today's missive at my laptop the temperature finally reached 23° F at 8:41 am.....

Thanks for stopping by!

A pajama kind of day.....

 7:57 am - Monday - January 13th - TWW - 16° F, wind 8 mph out of the east by northeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 43° F.  That was one COLD night!  On this date in 2013 TLEW and I were enjoying another Cedar Key, FL sunset.....

....we were there over 5 weeks and I do not believe there was ever a less than spectacular sunset.  We took enough sunset photos to fill calendars for years....in fact one of our friends we met there did just that, and sold them on Amazon!

I guess I shouldn't make a big fuss about how cold the weather has been the last week, or so, since most of the country is under snow cover right now.  I've see snow pictures from Texas, Georgia, Alabama, and many other places one would normally not associate with snow covered landscapes.  Meanwhile Southern California is burning to the ground....literally....go figure.  Anyway, earlier this morning the temp hit a low of 16° F.  That is a new low for us at TWW, but not the lowest temp we have experienced in the Newell.  The winter we spent at the Grand Canyon (2017/18 @ 7,300' elevation) we saw overnight temps as low as 5° F on many an occasion, and single digits on many other occasions.

Phyllis and Charles left for their drive back to Phoenix around 10 am, and we were all alone, once again.  I really had no aspirations for Sunday, big, or small, except to watch a few NFL wild card playoff games, remain in my pajamas, and stay warm.  There were three playoff games scheduled for Sunday, and the first two were really not very competitive.  The final result in those games became obvious before the end of the first half.  On the other hand, the night game between Tampa Bay and Washington came down to the last minutes tied at 20-20.  Washington won on a last second field goal, which hit the right upright on the goalpost, and caromed to the left, and through the uprights for the winning score.

Late in the afternoon I started up Phyllis' Newell to air it up so I could install the rear tire covers she bought.  I had installed the front ones a couple of days ago, but the rear wheel wells of the coach were too low, and I could not get the tire covers on the tires.  Once that was done I was done for the day.

Along with the installation of the two 300 amp hour Cloud Energy lithium batteries, and new Victron charge controller (when it arrives), I am going to rewire the 4 solar panels on our roof from parallel to series to get more wattage out them during the short charging window we have each day.  I should be able to at least double the input wattage, if not more, by making that simple change.  I really don't know why the original installers didn't wire them that way to begin with, but it is what it is.

Each morning while I am composing my latest blogosphere offering I see (I can see the array from my desk in the salon out the large driver side salon window) the Eco-Worthy Dual Axis solar tracker begin to tilt from the neutral position to face the rising sun in the east.  It is like clockwork.  The sun hits the sun sensor on the array around 8:20 am each day (right now), and the array begins to tilt to maximize the absorption of solar energy.  It goes from ZERO to 350 watts quickly, and within an hour it will be closer to 600 watts.  The highest wattage I've seen so far is 630 watts at peak.  Every single day since I rewired the six 100 watt panels into series we have gotten back to 100% on our Bluetti AC200MAX battery bank anywhere from 11 am to 1 pm, depending on how depleted the battery bank became overnight.  Most mornings, like this morning, the battery bank is at 75%, or greater.  By the time we finish making our morning coffees using our electric pot it's into the mid to high 60's, and then the recharging process begins.  I haven't been using the Predator to charge first thing in the morning most of the time.  I am only using the Predator to charge the house batteries for about 1/2 hour from 10:30 am to 11 am each day just as the sun finally begins to light up the roof panels.  I run the Predator again in the evening around 30 minutes to top off the Bluetti battery bank before going to bed....that's it.  There have been a couple of exceptions to this rule when the house batteries got down into the 60's overnight, but for the most part we're sticking to the 60 minutes run time per day.  Both of the Bluettis are far exceeding my expectations for durability, and consistency.  I've only turned either of them off once, or twice since we've been here at TWW.

We've been running the Predator on its gasoline option for the past week as our 120 gallon propane tank was down to 30%.  We get a propane delivery this Monday (today), and we'll switch back to the propane option then as it is way cheaper than gasoline.  As I write Monday morning we still have 20% in the tank.

Oh, by the way, I did remain in my pajamas all day long.....thanks for stopping by!

'Watts' that you say?

 7:33 am - Sunday - January 12th - TWW - 23° F, humidity 48%, wind 8 mph out of the east by northeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 43° F.  On this date in 2019 TLE and I were in Sorrento, LA having breakfast at the 'Coffee House' with Forest and Cindy Olivier, whom we met through the Newell users group many years ago.....

.....we were on our way back to Arizona, so stopped off for a few days to see them.

According to Charles it got down to 19° F early Saturday morning (he has one of those indoor/outdoor thermometers).  Our water bay temp got as low as 34° F.....just above freezing.  It stays in the 40's most of the night without any heaters running, and we believe that is due to the two Norcolds venting heat from their individual compressors, which finds its way into the water bay.  

When the overnight temps first began to dip into the low 30's a number of weeks ago, we were concerned about how to keep the water bay from freezing.  It can be heated three different ways: 1) a 120 VAC electric heater, 2) a Suburban gas furnace (the kitchen one has a vent that feeds hot air into the water bay), or a chassis heater which uses the heated coolant from our big Detroit Diesel 6v92, while we are under way, to heat the water bay, bedroom, and salon.  Running the electric heater draws around 1.2 kw of power per hour out of our Bluetti battery bank, and will run that battery down to zero overnight.  Running the Suburban gas furnace during the night draws down our house battery bank quite a bit, too, plus we do not like to sleep with the gas heaters running as they are noisy.  Once we realized the bi-product heat from our Norcolds would keep things above freezing, we stopped worrying so much about that.  Of course, if we get overnight temps in the low teens for hours at a time we may have to turn on the kitchen Suburban gas furnace in the early morning hours to protect the water bay.  So far that has not been necessary.  The last couple of nights the water bay has gotten down to 37° F.

A couple of weeks ago Charles and Phyllis bought 10 additional 400 watt solar panels to supplement their existing eight 400 watt panels, and six 100 watt panels, which are installed on the CONEX, and barn roofs.  Since they were' going to be staying 3 nights this week they wanted to begin installing some of those 10 new panels, so I spent part of the day helping Charles do just that.  Since the barn roof needs some work to eliminate a few leaks, he didn't want to install the new ones up there just yet, so we set them up in the field behind the barn, and ran positive and negative cables to the battery room.....

I'm getting aluminum stands just like these for our two 325 watt panels

.....this, of course, is a temporary installation, and once the barn roof is fixed in the very near future, we'll move them up there.  Just adding the 1,600 additional watts of solar generation increased the input wattage to the batteries from around 1,400 watts to around 2,300 watts.  When we add the remaining six 400 watt panels (2,400 additional watts) that will really boost the input wattage, and get the batteries back to 100% hours earlier.  Ultimately they will be adding additional storage batteries to the system.  The panels are wired together in series, just like the ones on the CONEX and barn roofs. 

The daylight portion of each day is slowly getting longer.  While the sunrise time has barely changed in the three weeks since the winter solstice, the sunset time is now about 30 minutes later than it was then.  With that the sun is moving higher in the sky each day, gifting us more time in each day to to what needs doing.

Thanks for stopping by!

Two brains equal one?

 8:14 am - Saturday - January 11th - TWW - 26° F, humidity 23%, wind 5 mph out of the north....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 49° F.  On this date in 2019 we left Quincy, FL and ended the day in Louisiana.....4 states in one day.....

Mobile tunnel under Mobile Bay, AL

.....in all we covered 333 miles that day....a very long day for us, but the driving conditions were idyllic.....flat roads, with a tail wind, and the sun at our backs most of the day.

Friday was another cold one, but there was no wind, so even though it only reached 48° F, it felt much warmer with clear, blue skies, and all of that direct sunlight.  Even though the overnight lows were in the mid 20's, our Bluetti battery bank only got down to 67%, and our house batteries only dropped to 79%.  I decided not to turn on the Predator 5000 generator, and just wait for the rising sun to tilt the solar array, and begin recharging the Bluetti AC200MAX and its two expansion batteries (B200's).  The panels tilted at exactly 8:20 am, and by 12:30 pm they were back to 100%.

I finally turned on the Predator for about 30 minutes at 10:30 am to give the house batteries a boost before the sun finally hit our four roof panels in full.....there is a large juniper tree which blocks two of the four panels from getting sun until around 10:40 am each day.  I turned it off at 11 am when we left to drive into town.  By the time we returned at 12:30 pm the house batteries were also back to 100%.  In all, we only ran the Predator for 30 minutes in the morning, and 30 minutes Friday night just before we went to bed to top off both sets of batteries.....just 60 minutes of run time....that is a record for us!

On the topic of the house batteries I pulled the trigger and ordered a Victron Energy Smart Solar MPPT 100 I 30 with Bluetooth to replace the aging Blue Sky solar boost charge controller, which will give us the ability to program parameters for our soon to be installed Cloud Energy lithium 600 amp hour battery bank.  It will be here late next week, so we hope to begin the conversion from flooded cell to lithium by next weekend.

After returning from town I helped Charles move his Starlink Gen 3 satellite dish from the wood deck to a pole on the southeast corner of the house....actually about 10 feet east of the house.  It took our two brains to equal a whole brain for this installation.  While most of the installation was very intuitive, the actual installation of the pole into the ground screw was anything but intuitive.  There were three possible options, but only one would work.  We finally prevailed, solved the riddle, and here is the finished product....

......after putting my tools away, and fiddling around in the trailer for 40 minutes until it was time for dinner (3:30 pm). I then headed indoors to change out of my work clothes, and head into the house where TLE and Phyllis were preparing spaghetti and meatballs with side of coleslaw.  As always, the dinner and conversation were delicious and enjoyable, in that order!

We retired back to the Newell around 5 pm where we watched the 2nd semi final NCAA football playoff game on successive days.....University of Texas Longhorns versus the Ohio State Buckeyes.  It was a close game (21-14) in favor of Ohio with 4 minutes to play.  Texas got to the 1 yard line of Ohio attempting to tie the game with a touchdown before turning the ball over on a quarterback fumble, which Ohio returned for a 90 yard touchdown to ice the game at 28-14.  At least it was a close game, right?  Ohio really had the edge over Texas most of the night, but offensive mistakes on their part, and great Texas defense kept the game closer than it should have been.

Thanks for stopping by!

Are we comfortable yet?

7:24 am - Friday - January 10th - TWW - 22° F, wind 5 mph out of the east by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 49° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I were awakening to snow from an overnight snow storm.....

 .....yes, it was as cold as it looks....lol!

The overnight low was around 30° F here at TWW, but the skies were crystal clear Thursday providing those much sought after solar rays to infuse electrical current into our thirsty, depleted battery banks via your 12 mono crystalline photovoltaic (solar) panels once again.  Each day the cycle repeats itself, and you find yourself hyper aware of how much electricity you consume on a daily basis, and how much you might be using right at the moment.  You are hyper aware, because you know the limits of your electrical system, and how much time it will take to replenish 25, or 30% of the power you used the day before, and overnight.  You turn off lights when you leave a room, and after a certain point in the morning you turn off all the lights, and open all the curtains to receive as much natural light inside as possible.  The sun shinning through the windows means you don't need lights, and the heat transfer through the windows enables you to turn off most of your heaters.  Your life is a mixture of 12 volt and 120 volt readings.  You hope, after a while, you won't need to be obsessively checking the state of charge on your Bluetti battery bank, or on your flooded cell house batteries, but you continue to check on an hourly basis.  It's been almost 3 months since you began living off the grid, but there is still this level of anxiety lingering in the background.  A hundred 'what ifs' swirl around in your brain.  You mostly trust the systems you've installed, but seem to always be waiting for the 'other shoe to drop'.  I'm inclined to be a little obsessive/compulsive, and this living off the grid kind of puts it into overdrive.

When we boondocked in the Anza Borrego Desert back in 2021, which was the 3rd, or 4th time we've boondocked there, we were in a comfort zone.  We only had our two 8d, flooded cell, house batteries, and a 2,000 watt inverter to provide direct current and alternating current to the coach.  There was less to worry about, and it worked well.  90% of the time we had clear, blue skies, and our batteries returned to 100% virtually every day, without fail.  We had been using this system since 2012 when we installed our first solar panels, and had gotten quite comfortable with its reliability, and I'm sure that we will become more comfortable with our expanded battery system, and its reliability.  

Thursday was our third successive day of winds in the mid to high 20's.....bad for us, but its all relative, right?  They've had winds over 100 mph in SoCal for the last 4, or 5 days, and that is like Category 1 in hurricane terms.  I grew up in the Pasadena/Altadena area, and judging by the aerial views of the fire damage it looks as if an atom bomb was dropped.....complete devastation.  And that is another one of the hazards one faces in a large urban area built along the foothills of the Angeles Crest and San Bernardino mountain ranges.  I love the rural, low population, high desert!

With winds in the mid 20's for most of the day, and the high temp for the day barely reaching 43° F it felt more like low 30's, or high 20's much of the time.  I wore my heavy duty Carhartt lined jacket with hood all day long.  So, what did I do Thursday?  Well, I attempted to connect our new Cloud Energy, 12 volt, 300 amp hour batteries to the house system, but it appears I will need to change my existing Blue Sky charge controller to one like a Victron, that has settings for lithium batteries, as the Blue Sky readings went crazy, so 2 steps forward, and one step back.  It's okay....we've got 3 more months to figure this out.  In the mean time our two 8d batteries are doing just fine.

Charles and Phyllis arrived for a 4 day stay....the longest time they've spent here yet.  We're going to begin integrating 10 more 400 watt solar panels into their solar array, which will be another learning experience for us.

Phyllis and TLE served us chili con carne (Phyllis) with Mexican cornbread (TLE), and I wish I had taken pictures.  Was it ever good!  We were back in the Newell by 6 pm watching one of the two semi final NCAA college football playoff games between Notre Dame and Penn State, and what a game it was!  With 3 seconds remaining Notre Dame kicked the winning field goal to win 27-24, so they will be in the final down in NOLA (New Orleans).

Thanks for stopping by!

A little of this, and a little of that......

 7:16 am - Thursday - January 9th - TWW - 30° F, humidity 42%, wind 12 mph out of the north by northeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 47° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I were at Simple Simon's Bakery and Bistro in Riverside, CA having coffee and bagels....

....I love sitting across any table from this woman!

Wednesday morning felt a lot like winter with blustery winds, and frigid temperatures. It did not seem like a day one should be outside dumping their black tank, much less doing anything else, but there TLE and I were doing just that at 10:30 am.  We were both bundled up against the cold trying to get the tank dumped, and fresh water back into our fresh water tank as quickly as possible.  By the time we finished it was after 11:30 am, and finally above 40° F.

Even though I had no desire whatsoever to be outside, there were four things I really needed to accomplish Wednesday, but not necessarily in this order: 1) Reinstall the old water pump in the water bay as the new SeaFlo pump produces way too much PSI for our system, 2) cut a hole in the top of the wood box shelter I built for the Predator 5000 generator to make it possible to add gasoline without moving the box,  3) move the charger/converter remote control from the electrical bay into the bedroom so I don't have to go outside to adjust the charge rate, and 4) reconnect the 20 amp cord for the Intelli Power charger/converter to the electrical outlet in the electrical bay.  

Up until now we've had the charger plugged directly into the Predator 5000 to avoid putting too much strain on the Bluetti AC200MAX.  The charger draws over 1 kw all by itself when 'bulk charging' our house batteries.  That combined with the normal draw during the day of 300-500 watts drained the Bluetti faster than we could charge it.  However, now that we have the Eco-Worthy Dual Axis Solar Tracker with its 600+ watts of power generation ability we decided it was time to make the change.  Once the house batteries are at 100% the charger goes into 'float mode' and the draw decreases to about 250 watts, something the Bluetti can handle, and still get fully charged during the day.  It is kind of an experiment, but we are hoping that keeping the house batteries topped off at 100% all the time will reduce our generator run time.....we'll see.  This took me about 60 seconds to make the switch.  Thursday we'll install the two 300 amp hour Cloud Energy lithium batteries in place of our current flooded cell 8d batteries.

I next tackled the generator wood box, as it seemed to be the most straightforward of the projects.  Using a 2" hole saw I cut a hole above the gas cap on the generator, then used a jigsaw to increase the diameter of the hole to about 4".  I used a piece of flat metal which came with the EcoFlow sun tracker to cover the hole, using just one screw to secure it so it can be swing out of the way exposing the gas cap on the generator.....

......that took me less than 30 minutes beginning to end, and it works quite well!

Next I decided to drill a hole in the floor next to drivers side of our bed to run the cable for the 'Charge Wizard', ran the line through the floor to the charger, plugged it in, and then fastened the 'Charge Wizard' to the wall under the window using 2 sided tape provided by the manufacturer.....

.....it allows me to manually put the charger into 'float' mode, or 'bulk charge' mode without going outside.  Why did I wait so many years to do this?  An easy 30 minute job.

Last up, I began the process of removing the new SeaFlo water pump, and reinstalling the older ShurFlo pump which produces a modest 40 PSI.  The 60 PSI provided by the SeaFlo was just too much for our system, and caused the water flow to surge, instead of providing a steady flow.  This reeked havoc with our Girard tankless water heater.  I was expecting this job to take an inordinate amount of time, but within an hour the deed was done, order was restored in our 'water world', and I was done working for the day.  Time to retreat to the warm confines of the Newell for the rest of the day.

I spent the afternoon continuing my efforts to catch up on the YouTube channels to which I subscribe.  And that was our day.

Thanks for stopping by!

Procrastination games......

7:34 am - Wednesday - January 8th - TWW - 32° F, humidity 50%, wind 15 mph out of the northeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 50° F.  On this date in 2016 TLE and I were boondocking in the Anza Borrego Desert near Clark Dry Lake Bed....our good friend, Steven Dempsey, took these pictures the morning after we got slight dusting of snow in the local mountains.....

....Steven has this innate ability, which most great photographers  seem to possess, to capture a scene so that it looks just like it did in real life, if not even more so.  I do it by accident on occasion, but Steven is a true artist, and these pictures are mute testimony to that fact.

We knew Tuesday would be a 'wind event' day, so our plans were to be inside as much as possible.  With the forecast high to be in the 40's, and winds in the 20-25 mph range the wind chill factor would be in play.  An inside project, that I have avoided doing for so long I am a little embarrassed to admit, was to reattach the power strip in the DVR closet over the driver seat to the ceiling.  I had used two sided tape a few years ago to attach it to the ceiling, but the tape failed a couple of years ago.  I reapplied the tape, and it held for another 6 months, but it's been 1.5 years since then and I just let it slide all this time.  My plan then, which never changed, was to utilize 'plumbers tape', and screw it to the ceiling.  My main reason for procrastination on this job was I thought I would need to take the TV down from it mount, to open up the area where the DVR resides, which is a long, boring task.  Upon reexamination Tuesday morning I decided that was not necessary, so the job became much less time consuming.  In the end it took me about an hour to drill the holes, and then form the 'plumbers tape' into a shape that would fit around the power strip....

....upon completion I wondered why I took so long to fix it.

The only other thing I really did Tuesday did take me outdoors for about an hour.  Back when we first got the Predator 5000 I had to change out the the 'fuel' jet for the gasoline application from the 'sea level to 3,000' elevation' one to the one for 3,000-6,000' elevation to adjust for altitude.  It took me a couple of hours to do this as some disassembly is required.  I got it back together, but it wouldn't start on the gasoline setting (this is a dual fuel generator).  It would kind of start, but then die each time.  At any rate, I finally hooked it up to propane, deciding to defer the trouble shooting to another time.  Well, that time was Tuesday.  Why?  Well, I checked the propane level in our 120 gallon propane tank and it was down to 30%.  It's been about a month since we topped off the tank (12/11), and we were told to call for propane delivery when it hits 30%.  They only deliver to the Seligman area on Mondays, so that meant another week.  The generator is the primary user of the propane supply right now, and it went down over 10% in the last week, so I decided we needed to switch to the gasoline option to avoid running too low on propane for our heaters, refrigerator, and water heater.....all important appliances in our household.  That meant I had to solve the problem then, not next week.

I had a feeling that the issue was the cable linkage which opens the fuel bowl port (on the bottom of the carburetor) to allow fuel to flow into it, and then into the carburetor.  after examining the linkage for a while it suddenly became obvious to me that I had reconnected it incorrectly when putting everything back together, because there was too much slack in the cable, making it impossible for the fuel bowl to be filled.  Once I removed, and then reconnected it to the fuel bowl correctly the generator fired right up, and ran like a top (and still is as I write)!  Success!  

After successfully crossing two items off my 'procrastination' list I decided to quit while I was ahead, and spend the rest of the day inside the warm, windless confines of the Newell.  It was the perfect afternoon to catch up on all the YouTube channels to which I am subscribed....I am way, way behind, so even after my viewing binge Tuesday, there is still a lot of unwatched content to view.  Wednesday promises to be another 'wind event' day, so maybe I'll get more viewing done then.

Thanks for stopping by!