Yesterday was the worst so far in the Monsoon. Rain started around ten in the morning and came down HARD. Mudslide from the gully behind the Lair filled the drainage pipe. Everything is mud, far as the eye can see. The upper wash ran a little bit, not too bad, but the lower wash is impassible.
Naturally, yesterday was the big day for the Lair’s electrical rebuild. My weekender neighbor S was here and ready to go, and my good neighbor D had cleared his day to help me get the PV panel on the roof. So work we must.
I really wish I’d rethought the whole “tiny cabin with a loft” thing. Creaky old Uncle Joel with his wooden leg can’t do any roof with such a steep pitch, which means every time there’s roof work I need help. I hadn’t realized how often that was going to be. But D has experience installing racking and he was willing – indeed anxious – to help.
S installs PV systems for a living now, and by his standards my system is contemptibly small. What for me would have been a whole day of anxiety and possible disaster, he cranked out in less than an hour.
That’s the whole thing. Brand-new charge controller, two used six-volt batteries, and an old 4500-watt inverter from an RV. Vastly superior to my original improvisation which turned out inadequate even for my limited needs.
D got the rack up, but unfortunately that’s when the storm caught us and you can’t work on that roof when water is pouring off it. Though it rained again in the wee hours of this morning I woke up to a cloudless sky. D has other work to do this morning and so do I, but hopefully today’s rain will hold off until we get the panel on the roof. Except for some hole-filling here and there that’ll complete the operation. I’m so confident this new system will run a circular saw, I went out and bought one!
Also with all the clouds my batteries were nearly depleted and I didn’t even turn the thing on last night, just lit with kerosene and went to bed early. A lot of sun today would be really nice, but as you can see by the fact that I can post this it still works.
There are times that I envy your little hermitage. (Then again, when I visited friends ‘way down Terlingua way, I found myself actually pricing real estate. It’s hard being a misanthrope in the middle of a big city.)