Winter has arrived at the Gulch. Cold, wind, and our first sprinkling of snow…
This already-melting dusting wouldn’t be worth any action if it were on the panels on my roof. In fact it’s worse on the panels on my roof, and it’s not worth action. Action involves hauling out the extension ladder, shaking/breaking off the ice, getting it set just right, consigning my life to the gods, trying to work an eight-foot pole while balancing on one foot on the ladder…
Yeah, screw that. It takes a helluva snowfall to get one-legged old Uncle Joel up that ladder. In fact I’ve only had the means to do it in the past year or so. Mostly I just wait sans électricité until it melts off by itself.
But now twenty seconds of work gets me clear panels on at least one completely separate circuit. So I’ll probably stop worrying about the roof panels on snowy mornings. Which will make me feel much better about a lot of things. Like my prospects of dying alone in the snow with a broken back.
I even moved the squeegee into the ratproof shed, which is right next to the ground mount. Me so ready for winter…
“…dying alone in the snow with a broken back.” That sounds cold!
“…Ratproof shed.” You mean your rat “resistant” shed?
Seriously, your new panel rack system seems like a much better idea than roof mounting, for exactly the reasons you discussed.
” . . . dying alone in the snow with a broken back.”
Geeze . . . channeling Hemingway today, eh?!
😉
“dying alone in the snow with a broken back.”
Hey! Get your own nightmare, I already have that one! Besides, your snow lasts about three days; ours lasts six months. We hafta wait until June for the missing to reappear.
I want the job as squeegee man for the solar farm they’re putting up near me. “Photovoltaic maintenance engineer” sounds good. I’m hoping for $45k/annum, plus vehicle.
You may be ready for winter, but so are the rats. Aannnnnddddd here they come. If you lay some wire on the floor of the shed they will show up sooner. Are your rat traps loaded and in place???
I say hook the rat chewed extension cord to a step up transformer, route it across a rat highway and let the rats have at it. I’m thinking maybe ten thousand volts…
If you do some digging (or I can do some digging and re-find the link if you want it), there are roof rakes with rubber heads that don’t scratch up the panels that you can use to clear roof mounted panels without a ladder. Its what we use to clear ours, and even petite me can do it from the ground. Oh, I don’t generally manage to get them perfectly clear, but generally once you get them partially clear they’ll finish the job themselves, even here in the snowy region of Upstate NY.
(your shoulder might not like the strain though, as I think on it a bit longer)
Ruth, maybe if Joel gets his proper calcium and other good nutrients while using a spade to make pancakes for LB out of the rats that can’t let go of the extension cord, he will have his shoulder working proper in no time!