A little this, and a lot of that!

Many things have been happening, and it has been a little too busy and tiring, for me to get the chance to write. This will be more a photo montage, than a long written out explanation of what we are doing. So here we go:

Painting the utility room floor.

 Before

 After

Finishing the duct runs to the dining room

Installing columns on the walls

 Finishing more duct work

Dropping the gas line to the water heater

 Running wiring (oh what a tangled web)

 Nestled under the green

 More wiring, I am labeling the wires to keep track of which is which.

Hydronic manifolds plumbed, and ready to finish connections to the tempering tank, which will maintain the proper temperature water for the floor.

Heat will be transfered to the tempering tank, from the water heater, which is a 96% efficient propane water heater.

 Laying out parts for the water supply manifolds.

Wiring the columns.

Quite a load ready to go. 2 solar panels in the bed of the truck, the rest of the parts of the vent house, and the aluminum for the 7 racks to hold all the solar panels.

Blocks set to support the vent house.

First rack assembled

Panels mounted on the rack

Well line plumbed through water conditioner.

Water supply manifolds assembled, and attached to the wall, ready to plumb.

 Finishing the conduit run, from the big junction box to...

The combiner box on the rack.

First panels are wired to the combiner, and power is now run all the way into the house from the panels.

Added a fuse and switch, to protect the batteries, and allow shutting off the battery power to the power panel completely.

Dad is framing up the roof for the vent house. He used metal braces that were used during the pouring of the walls for the house, to stiffen the roof framing without adding a lot of weight.

Scattershot

Right now, I am trying to get everything done, as fast as I can, and all at the same time. I say I, but it is really we. If we run into an impasse on one of the tasks, we just jump to another, and circle around to the problem task later on.

For instance, the hydronics, keep requiring redesign. I have not had the time to sit down, find what parts are available, take their measurements, and lay out all the fitting nice and neat. I know that this pump, has to hook up to this manifold, which has to hook up to these loops, but each time I go to get parts, I find that no, they are out of the exact part I need. So I have to come up with substitutes. But then I find that they won't fit where I was intending them to, so the piping has to be re-routed, and that requires some other fittings, I don't have on hand. This is not the way I like to operate, but right now, I am just getting it done, so it functions correctly.

Mom finished the priming, with the exception of one area we want to go over a second time. We took the tape and plastic off the windows. Looking pretty nice.

We got the pex tubing corralled and connected to the manifolds.

Dad put in a drain line for the pipes that keep having leaks. These pipes carry the well line, and in the future the wires out to the communications tower, and hopefully some solar panels for heating. I have had problems with them leaking when we get rain, and I kept buckets under them. Now I have a drainage system running to the floor drain, so that I don't have to worry whether I am going to get out there and find an overflowing bucket in the utility room.

We got the structure for the columns done.

So then it was time to haul them out to the house and start putting them on the walls.

Mom helped me get some more parts connected on the hydronics, then I ran into another issue with fittings.

So, it was time to clean the utility room floor. I think that the dirt we removed could have been measured by the pound! It is much cleaner (as clean as I think I will be able to get it). It now looks much darker than it did.

Tomorrow, I plan to put down an epoxy paint in the utility room. Hopefully that goes well, and I can start installing equipment in the utility room later in the week.

Letting the batteries breath

Well, we have gotten some more work done. We finished the battery box and got the vent for it run outside. That lets hydrogen out when the batteries are being charged, rather than having it collect in the box. We got the garage and utility room painted, as well as putting primer on a majority of the other drywall. Here are some pictures.

Battery vent pipe to exhaust hydrogen gas.

Battery box is finished, unless I decide to paint it. It has hasps that I can put pad locks on, so I can prevent others (especially curious little nieces) from getting to the batteries.

House breaker box is on the wall, waiting for me to run wiring.

Garage is painted white. Still need to clean and seal the floor.

First manifolds for the hydronic heating system are mounted on the wall in the utility room, waiting for me to connect the water lines.

Mom came out to help me put primer on the rest of the drywall. We had a guest outside the front window Wednesday morning. (I need to get a camera with a manual focus, I was not concerned with having the straw in sharp focus!)

 Mom starts to do battle with the walls.

We are glad I put plastic over the windows and the door before we painted around them.

Even just the primer looks fairly finished.

Hopefully this weekend we can finish priming the walls, get the first set of lines connected to the hydronic manifolds, get more done on the gas lines, and get the columns ready to install on the walls.

Running on batteries

You are probably wondering what I have been up to since I got my batteries. Well, quite a bit actually. We have continued working on the gas piping. We still had a leak, and couldn't seem to find it, so we took down the section where we knew it must be, and put it under water.

This was very effective. We found the leaks in a few minutes after we got this set up. Unfortunately, that was not the last leak we have to deal with. However, the gas piping was put on hold, until I got my power system up and running.

Dad had come up with a scheme for attaching vertical studs to the bar joists, so I could mount the power panel on a "wall" that would support the weight without having to use concrete anchors.

After the wall was up, we started to mount equipment. The inverters each weigh about 65 pounds. These things have quite a bit of metal in them.

We also got the battery box set up. We put in a shower liner as protection from any acid that leaks. I am hoping that I never have to deal with that, but better to have a leak contained in the battery box, than spilling all over the floor.

The wiring in one of these setups is pretty involved. Even with all my planning, there were a couple things where I went "wait a minute, we need to redo that".

We got the batteries loaded into the box, and hooked up to the system. Almost ready to test.

Today, Adam came over with the Bobcat. I had been wanting to get the gravel pile pretty well used up, and out of the way. Adam started with the gravel work, and got the driveway smoothed out, and enlarged the turnaround area.

He also took some of the gravel around to the front, and we got the bottom of the walls covered, and I have a covered area outside the front door now. Eventually the area in front of the door will have some sort of paving stones set down to make a patio. But that will most likely be a project for next year at this point.

Adam also got things smoothed up around the house, so it was ready for me to put down some rye seed to keep the dirt in place, and try to make things a little less muddy.

I replaced the caps on the batteries with ones that have a pop top lid, rather than having to unscrew them when I need to check the battery fluid. That should make maintenance less of an ordeal. The battery box still needs to be finished up. There is also some additional wiring work to do in the panel, but for now, the system is functional. The work light that I had on in these pictures, was being run using the energy stored in these batteries, and the AC generated from that by the equipment on the wall.

I bought rye seed today, and put down 56 pounds of it on the areas that Adam worked this morning. Then I covered most of it with straw. I didn't have quite enough to cover all the areas that Adam graded, but I think the most critical are taken care of.

I have batteries!

That was a long day. This morning dad and I got started pretty early. I finished sealing up the drywall in the garage against fire.

I was wearing my rubber gloves again, so I didn't have any problem with the caulk and didn't even get any on the gloves.

Adam came over and worked a little while on the driveway, but his back was being a pain, so he wasn't able to do much of the work I had planned on. Oh well, dad and I had plenty of work to do. We checked the gas line. It had leaked again, and dad is not able to get the bubble solutions to bubble. So we finally had to start just tightening one connection at a time, a little at a time and waiting to see if we still had a leak. We did this on a few connections today, a few different times. I am hoping we finally got this part of the system leak free.

We got set up for painting. We put down paper along the whole wall, then put down a large drop cloth right were we were working at the moment.

Dad worked with a brush, and got in the corners, up in the nooks and crannies, and along the bottom. Then I came along behind, and rolled the rest of the wall. We got the primer on the wall where the batteries and power equipment will go, and a ways over on the wall that is shared with the utility room.

FedEx called and asked about the best way to get to the house. I told the driver, and then he asked about the road in front of the house. I told him that it was narrow and getting in the driveway is not easy for a big truck. He had a semi! I had told them that was not a good idea, but apparently the dispatch folks didn't think it would be a problem. When he got there, he tried to back in. It was a short trailer, and he got it into the driveway, but he could not back it up the steep part, and with the rain we have had, there was no way he could turn around at the top if he went up forwards. So I backed my truck down so we could load the batteries from the back of his truck into mine. We loaded 4 at a time, and I used the 4 wheel drive to slowly take them up the drive. Dad road in back, and made sure they rode OK.

Once we got them up, we had to get them inside. I was not going to turn around with those in the back. The area I would have to turn around in is bumpy, and I did not want to risk tipping any of them over. So we unloaded them outside and used my wagon to haul them inside.

12 batteries all lined up. Over 1400 pounds of plastic, lead and acid sitting in my garage.

Dad and I went for lunch then. After we got back, we worked on painting the wall we had primed in the morning. It is looking good. After we finished with that, Matt and mom came up and Matt helped us get part of the battery box assembled. Here it is lying on its back. Once we have a finish on the floor where it needs to sit, we will move it there, and load the batteries in.

Hopefully sometime next week, I will be able to charge the batteries for the first time, and try running off the batteries rather than the generator.