And it’s getting worse by the hour: When the wind gets this way there are disadvantages to being downwind of all that sand. So I’m probably going to go visit the chickens one last time and then spend the afternoon petting Torso Boy while reading a book. But it started so promisingly…
After my long morning walkie I hauled the generator out of the powershed and fired it up…
You might recall that I had to pull the Honda out of mothballs in early January to help some neighbors who got stranded in the snow. That time it was really hard to start, presumably because I should have let the oil warm up indoors first. But this morning it started right up and is ready for another work season.
And it’s going to have its chance…
The patched-together porch floor has been an okay stopgap but it hasn’t lasted as well as hoped. I had to screw down a couple of popped-up corners this morning. Fortunately Big Brother wants to come for another visit to help me finish the porch – it’ll get a roof in time for the sunny solstice! And hopefully a more durable 2X6 floor, though that’s secondary. Looks like I’ll be ordering components soon!
And this morning I decided to do something kind of optimistic…
I put the woodstove to bed and got the long wall into summer mode. All the leftover firewood went back to the shed and I’ve hauled out the dog bed Terrapod sent a few months ago. I don’t know if Laddie will consent to use it but he might: He gets upset with me if I spend too much time with my back to the world playing on the ‘pooter, and might prefer to have a bed in the main room. That’s the theory, anyway.
Emptying the ash pail at the pit beside the wash turned out to be kind of a mistake because the wind had already come up: I probably should have put that off till early morning. But it didn’t make too much of a mess and there’s no way there’s still live coals. There was only a day’s accumulation of ash and I haven’t used the stove in over a week.
And now I guess I’d best go out in the wind to check on chickens…
Will you also be working up something to address cleaning off the roof-mounted solar panels when BB is there? And some sort of screening for the stove vent as well, so Laddie won’t have any more stove birds to play with?
By the way, is there any new verdict on the Jeep’s “incontinence” issue?
There’s no particular problem with the panels that needs to be addressed. I suppose this would be a good time to figure out how to improve the chimney cap. And the Jeep has the only intermittent coolant leak I ever remember encountering – sometimes it drips at the front of the block and sometimes it doesn’t. But it isn’t a very bad one and doesn’t urgently need attention.
You must know that having put winter away you have double dared Murphy to make an appearance. Good luck.
??? I thought with the current situation, those roof-mounted panels were difficult to de-snow???
Not real easy, but I can if I need to. Usually the ground mount will get me through until the root mount clears itself.
But might there be an easy way for you to get the reach to clear those as well, in case you end up with an extended period of clouds following a snow storm? Yeah, if it would cost too much or be too difficult to do or not make much difference anyway, then it ain’t worth doing. But on the other hand, if there’s an easy and inexpensive way to give you more flexibility, and if it would be easier to take care of while BB is there…
You can never have too much power in the winter…
You need a squeegie like people use on their pools, and the corresponding extending pool pole. That should get you up to the solar panels.
That’s along the lines of what I was thinking, Beans, but figured I ought to leave it open in case someone comes up with a better idea.
I have a squeegee on a long telescoping pole, have had one since the winter of 2015 which is the first winter I could practically use one because I had acquired an extension ladder. The roof is too high for me to reach the panels from the ground even with the longest pole I can get. Used it quite a few times that winter, too, because ’15-’16 was a fairly wet winter. But ice on that aluminum ladder got scary. The following summer I was able to build the ground-mount for those four panels cast-off from Landlady’s upgrade, and I was able to mostly stop worrying about the roof mount. Now I break off the ice dam that often forms on the downhill side of the roof mount and otherwise let them clear themselves.
Could you build some “stairs” out beyond the drip line for the roof so you could reach up there more easily? I realize that space is at a premium around the Lair, so that probably wouldn’t work, but…
The other question is what is the outside diameter of the user end of your squeegee pole? Would it conveniently fit inside a 10′ stick of schedule 40 PVC pipe?
Rather than taking the squeegee to the roof panels, what’s the prospect of taking the roof panels to the squeegee? IE, extend the current ground-level array and transfer the panels?
I’m sure it would be a big job, but then the cleaning-an-inconveniently-tall-surface problem goes away for good.
One of the good things about those roof panels, jabrwok, is that it’s somewhat difficult for the cattle to defecate on them and thereby reduce their output. Plus those panels get sun a little earlier than those at a lower level.
Those are certainly factors to consider. Life is all about trade-offs.
jabrwok, that was discussed when the ground mount first went up. There’s even room for them on the racks. But it’s unnecessary, they actually do get sun a little earlier in the morning both because they’re higher and also because they’re oriented toward magnetic south rather than true south and at this longitude it’s a fairly significant difference, and because redundancy. And because removing the rack would leave holes in my roof.
Defecating cattle are not an issue – but back-scratching cattle aren’t an impossible source of danger…
Good reasons all!:-).