I believe my last post on our solar power suggested things were not going well with the batteries. Well, I’m happy to report a turnaround.
When I got concerned about the way I wired the batteries together and rewired them, I created trouble. I switched the battery wiring to a spider or wheel style and ended up with seven fat battery cables all held together with a single bolt. At the time I was concerned about the quality of the connection, but they were all touching and the bolt was tight — really tight. I hoped it was fine.
Over time, things continued to get worse. I worried the connection was not solid and finally found this beauty on line:
This is how we do it now
Ideally, it would have seven connectors and not five, but this is what I found. It, however, is working great. The batteries have all bounced back. When the sun goes down the initial voltage is higher than I’ve seen in a great while: 50.5-ish. The voltage remains high for much longer too. It’s frequently still above 50 volts late into the night. There was a time when the voltage dropped to 49.1-ish as soon as the sun set. Further evidence of improvement was a day with virtually no sun — we powered through the day and on until the next without concern — or skimping.
It’s such an improvement that I’ve set the generator into maintenance mode in order to make sure it runs once in awhile.
A nice convenience with this battery connector is the wiring block at the top. You can pull off 48 volts for DC powered things here — I’m not using it, but I would have if I’d bought it when I installed the system.
The greens (lettuce mix in the foreground; tatsoi, an Asian green, in the background) have shot up and are ready to begin harvesting.
About 30+ tomato plants are in the greenhouse now, with only 10 or so still in pots in the house. The first plants have blooms.
Squashville is doing well with cucumbers, watermelons, cantaloupe, and squash all a couple inches tall. Brad also planted some garbanzo beans, which have grown quickly. (If you haven’t had fresh garbanzos pan roasted, they’re quite delicious.)
In the new beds by the greenhouse, the green beans are doing well, but most of the edamame didn’t come up. I’ve reseeded with garbanzos.
It’s been hot here — in the 90s and supposed to reach 100 next week. Good weather for growing as long as you water frequently. The cool nights make the greens happy.
When Brad and I lived in California, we had a favorite getaway spot that was a small bed and breakfast in Palm Springs. It had a Moroccan theme that influenced some of our house design, and each evening they showed movies outdoors on a small makeshift screen. Often, we were the only two moviewatchers, huddled under a blanket on lawn chairs. (We were often there in the winter.)
We always said that someday, we’d like to have outdoor movies like that.
Last night was the debut of ranch movies. We had a few neighbors over for dinner and then went outside to watch “Moneyball” on the side of the house. Despite temperatures in the 90s during the day, the evenings are quite cool, so again, blankets were in order.
It was really just lovely. Exactly how we’d imagined it.
About a year and a half ago, Brad and I went for a hike back in North Fork of Horseshoe Canyon and found a big dam that was built in the 1950s to hold water to pipe down for cattle. The reservoir behind it was bone dry.
Today, we did the same hike and look what we saw.
At our house, it has rained very little so far this year (one time, less than a quarter inch), but looking at the watershed area behind this reservoir, it probably doesn’t take much to fill it up.
Finishing a big work project and finally getting some rain here gave me a chance to finish this video I’ve been meaning to assemble for a while now. (The actual work here has been done for weeks.) Enjoy.
[I always forget to say that this isn’t the final coat. The second coat is much prettier and also much easier to do.]
We’ve spent a lot of time over the last two weeks on gardening. We dug two new beds and expanded the one in front of the greenhouse. This involves not only digging but filtering all the dirt (we estimate the soil here is about 25% rock) and enriching it with compost.
These beds have been planted with edamame, anaheim chiles, beans, and cucumbers. (This is in front of the two allumium beds.)
This bed (covered with a garden blanket) is half tat soi and half lettuce.
Brad also made these ingenious little circles for planting squash and melons. Half have been planted and half are still to be done. Drip irrigation all around.
This area is behind the batteryhouse by the solar panels. We've christened it "squashville."
In the greenhouse, I still have greens growing, which we have an overabundance of right now. We also have herbs and green onions there, and the first of the tomatoes have been transplanted from the house. I hope to have them all moved in the next two weeks.
The first baby tomatoes in the greenhouse
All in all, we now have about 375 square feet under cultivation, up from under 200 last year.
And the cactuses? Well, we’re still waiting eagerly.
We have many cactuses with large buds on them right now and are waiting for the flowers to burst forth. I thought I’d share some pictures so that you can look forward to the blooms along with us!
This is a cholla, and we have many on our property. The blooms are beautiful purple.
This is a cactus very near our house that was just a small single paddle when we moved in. Last year, it added the two bigger paddles you see here. It is also growing 3 or 4 new paddles. This will be the first year it’s bloomed, and we can’t wait to see what color the flowers will be.
