After a season of having snow plowed into it, the Sanitation Holding, Interment, and Transformation Process Intake Loading Endpoint was a bit the worse for wear, having racked a bit and suffering a slight loss of containment at the base.
But how to cinch that back up, already half-full of deliveries from the T.H.R.O.N.E., which I’m not especially keen to disturb? The answer turns out to be a tie-down ratchet strap! These are indispensable when it comes to holding things in places — especially binding them to trailer or truck beds — but they are just as good at being a band clamp!
Just actuate the ratchet a bit and the whole thing pulls together easily, even while loaded.
No, that’s not graffiti on the side, just a shadow from a tree.
I’ve had some more wildlife visits worth sharing, one lovely flutterby who stood still long enough for a portrait, and another ursine, definitely different than the first, who seemed young. This one moved like an old man.
My ursine friend is viewed at about 50′ away through a window screen, so not the best portrait.
Like the youth, this bear took a look at me for a few moments and then trundled off. This is now my third bear encounter here and in all cases it’s gone exactly like that. I’m happy to share the forest with them and if all they do is check me out a little, that’s fine with me.
They don’t seem to be interested in the S.H.I.T.P.I.L.E., neither are other creatures. It seems the combination of the biomass with the peat filler is enough to make it unappealing. Perfect. That is in fact part of the plan!
Speaking of wildlife, the area is sadly profuse with ticks! At least they’re the “dog” ticks – the bigger ones that are easier to see, feel, and for that matter remove. The question is, what to do with a tick once you’ve removed it? I found a solution.
An alcohol solution.
I discovered this morning that my WiFi was out.
Usually, this means my local mesh network repeater has lost its mind — this happens from time to time, inexplicably. Okay, power cycle the repeater in the HomeBox. Still no WiFi. Hm. What could it be?
Oh, right, I know! It’s been rainy. And cloudy.
What difference does that make? It means no energy in from my solar array. The house doesn’t need much power, but the workshop does, and that’s where the WiFi starts. But wait, don’t I have like 4 days of battery storage for the W.O.G., too? I do! But that “four days” was sized according to needs that did not include a very energy-hungry dehumidifier. My tools were getting rusty so I decided to install the dehumidifier, knowing that this time of year there’s plenty of sunshine to power it. True. Except when there’s not. The DH can deplete my entire battery storage in 23 hours of run time. Say it’s moderately humid and the DH is running at 50% or so. That sounds like 46 hours of run time. Except that same battery has to supply power for everything else going on in the shop, too, which is often more than nothing. Add to this that the solar array was out of service on the last sunny day for maintenance, the system was probably not at full when it got gray here. So no WiFi because no power in the workshop because no sunshine since then and it’s been rainy, making the DH work harder. Right. That. Generator time. The sun will be back later today.
Maybe I need to increase the battery storage if I’m thinking the DH is a permanent member of the workshop. It probably should be so I probably should, but the battery modules are pretty expensive (~3k per 7.5kWh) as well as being bulky. I could find room for two more but would have to do some re-wiring, as well, because my bus bars are full. Which also means reorganizing the layout of the office interior, where the power system lives… sigh. When I’m re-employed and my cash flow is good again, I’ll think about it. Today, the answer is generator time to get back online and the sun should be out for a green recharge later.
Solar array maintenance, did I say? Yep. Last winter I noticed that the design of the solar array featured some cantilever to the edges of the panels themselves. This made it possible for a heavy snow to apply some bending force which I didn’t like at all. It may well be that the panels can take it, but I saw no reason they should have to, even though this was the design recommended by the vendor.
See how there’s about 1/4 of the panel to the left and right of the vertical support rails? Yeah, that. I didn’t like that. This is the new arrangement, with edge and center support instead:
The astute observer may notice the two photos are also different arrays. There are two arrays and I didn’t take a “before” picture of the one that has been reinforced, so I used a pic of the other one.
There’s still a couple of inches of cantilever, but not enough to make any difference. Some inset of the rails is required so the fastening devices can have good purchase on the panels themselves.
And while I’m all in favor of supporting my local wildlife, this right here was going to be a problem:
The nest incorporated some of my wiring as structural support and I didn’t want the bird poop attacking either the framework or the wiring, so I had to remove it. Sorry, birds. There are a zillion other places in the forest you can nest. Use one of those.
For the most part, moving the rails from their prior positions to their new positions was relatively easy. Loosen the fasteners and just shuffle them along. We did have to install some shims to relieve compression of the fasteners by the weight of the panels, though. Otherwise they didn’t slide well between the panels as we shimmied the rails along. This was one of those times when having a helper really made a huge difference. I don’t usually have that luxury out here, but got lucky this time. Otherwise, it was going to be so much more work to hoist and hold and shove and release and and and and. Having another set of hands to just hold things in place while doing other work really made this difficult job into an easy one.
I don’t usually regret my choice to live out here alone – there’s a lot that’s good about that – but it definitely has its downsides from time to time.