This will be more of an update through photos as I’m rushing off to get some other work done. The past week has been busy as tomorrow will mark a full seven days since our last snowfall and we’re running around trying to get things sorted for our full-on season. I went to Calgary on Friday and picked up the lovely batteries you see below- Surrette CS17pS, 4 of them for a 24 Volt system. On Saturday we headed down to Lethbridge to pick up our very solidly built solar panel mounts. Thanks to Troy at Eco Diesel for building us a mount that will easily survive the winds that blow through our property daily. I took a couple of pictures of his system- ours will look just like that once in place except that we have nine panels instead of twelve and will only require two cement blocks to secure the system. And on our way home from Troy’s, we picked up a rescue dog from a woman in the area. The latest addition to our homestead, currently going by No-Name because his new owners have channeled all of their creative juices elsewhere. I will try to write or at least post photos in the next while (I have fabulous worm bins and a new tractor to tell you about) but am so ridiculously busy right now that I can’t say when. Hope everyone’s spring is off to a wonderful start! 🙂
Are those cement blocks just sitting on the land or are they somewhat buried?
They’re not buried. The ground underneath was simply dug up enough to level. Each block weighs a little over 4,500 lbs so they’re not going anywhere. 🙂
Wow those are some nice batteries. I need to upgrade my “beginner” T-105s. Maybe you could mount the panels to them instead of concrete footers!
Hi Brandee,how workable is your weather there. It just seems to me you are building in patches when your weather clears. Your beautiful photos though seem to suggest an entirely different picture, one where you can work all the time.
The weather definitely dictates where our efforts are directed at any given time, but there has been so much to do there are no lack of options. 🙂 I’m still adjusting to some of the work. Given enough years at it, hopefully I will fall into a more comfortable pattern. Right now the building efforts consume most of my day (probably 10-12 hours), then food preparation (because I make everything from scratch) adds another hour or three to the end of my day… And that doesn’t include tending the garden, wild harvesting, scavenging (I try to keep an eye on the transfer sites for usable items) and so on. I imagine it’ll always be busy but perhaps a more reasonable pace once we’ve moved into the new home. 🙂
You should import South African weather, then you’d probably build for up to 9 months in a year, although climate change has changed our weather patterns too. I’m totally in awe of the amount of work you put in, that many hours? By the time you finish building you’ll have so much ‘experience’ you should go into consulting on green building. (I’m struggling to understand how a ‘city girl’ can so confidently carry out such a huge green project). In total awe😳.
[…] Image: Solar panels by Canadian Dirtbags […]