Small things matter

[Joeboy]

Yeah JB, progress feels slow of late but I am hopeful for some progress soon and if the worst comes to it I can always wire up the batteries and the inverter and feed some essential loads from the inverter AC out till the sparky gets here.

In the mean time i am chasing quotes on the parents annex roof you would not believe the number of companies that simply never reply ??

Then i have my pet projects - getting the HWT into use as a back up energy "sink",

and i want a set of easily deployed solar panels quite small wattage so they are easy to dot around in small sunny patches as and when i am around - more aligned to the winter months than summer, 18V camper van panels of around the 100W range seem to suit this in terms of size and ability to sit in between shade zones and easily tidied away after i have finished playing as the boss would say -the question being do I invert at the panels or do i arrange cabling outside to allow me to feed in DC to the hybrid inverter. Cable runs would be circa 10 to 14 meters max - need to recheck inverter DC voltage range - I would think an extra 400 watts of mobile PV would be rather helpful at parts of the year and being around 100mm by 600mm thay are easy to move around and store away

Moxi

I installed a 100W flexible panel on the roof of our Bongo. 12v running into a 110ah battery. It did enough to keep the fridge running in the van for 3 days without overdepleting the battery and no electric hook up. Well worth it, only thing I'd say is that the smaller panels can be quite pricey for their power output. Looking forward to seeing how it works out.

[Moxi]

Yes the cost is higher as you get smaller but thats to be expected with economies of scale i suppose, 75p/Wp is what I am looking at with delivery, Bimble advertise at I think 54p/Wp for their small panel but then adding VAT and delivery and bump we are back at around 80p/Wp unless you buy in bulk and sadly I don't have bulk storage or bulk need at present.

I want to be able to buy the odd panel now and again and "sneak" it in to the system as and when funds allow and needs / opportunity presents.

Still at 75p/Wp thats way better than my first solar array i every bought under the 50% Fits scheme. Back then weren't we all talking about £4/Wp or some such being a good price ?? We have definitely moved on since the early 2000's.

Moxi

[Joeboy]

I also have used ITS technologies trade sparky and triple solar on ebay. Worth a check maybe? Bimble are excellent too.

[Moxi]

Thanks I will have a shop around a bit to check - seems to be the delivery prices thats the killer

Moxi

[Joeboy]

A day worth marking here. That's the last of 2021 dry logs moved into the garage woodstore. Another month at most and all stores will be full again and ready for Winter 22. A whole drying season ahead of them.

I am managing to keep to my self-induced ethic of the logging and splitting being powered by Solar
pic share

[Moxi]

A joyful site and no mistake,

I had a look at battery chain saws and flinched at the cost - looks like the batteries cost more than the rest of the saw put together and as i have two 2 strokes in the shed i dont think now is the time to be moving over, but its down on the future things list.

we are currently making 2.8kWp the new shed has arrived ready for assembly and the sparky is coming around on Monday to do the outside sockets and run me a 50 amp link from the new shed position to the consumer box so all of a sudden things are moving forward again.

oh and I have dig out the HWT i inherited and will be asking copious questions about later tonight as I may need some to help me make best practical use of it

Moxi

[Stinsy]

A joyful site and no mistake,

I had a look at battery chain saws and flinched at the cost - looks like the batteries cost more than the rest of the saw put together and as i have two 2 strokes in the shed i dont think now is the time to be moving over, but its down on the future things list.

we are currently making 2.8kWp the new shed has arrived ready for assembly and the sparky is coming around on Monday to do the outside sockets and run me a 50 amp link from the new shed position to the consumer box so all of a sudden things are moving forward again.

oh and I have dig out the HWT i inherited and will be asking copious questions about later tonight as I may need some to help me make best practical use of it

Moxi

The batteries of the good ones do cost. However you should see it as buying a "system" rather than a "tool". I use Makita so the same batteries work in my strimmer, hedgecutter, angle grinder, impact driver, SDS drill, combi-drill, And there are 100+ other tools I could get that are super-cheap once you've already got the batteries.

[Joeboy]

A joyful site and no mistake,

I had a look at battery chain saws and flinched at the cost - looks like the batteries cost more than the rest of the saw put together and as i have two 2 strokes in the shed i dont think now is the time to be moving over, but its down on the future things list.

we are currently making 2.8kWp the new shed has arrived ready for assembly and the sparky is coming around on Monday to do the outside sockets and run me a 50 amp link from the new shed position to the consumer box so all of a sudden things are moving forward again.

oh and I have dig out the HWT i inherited and will be asking copious questions about later tonight as I may need some to help me make best practical use of it

Moxi

The batteries of the good ones do cost. However you should see it as buying a "system" rather than a "tool". I use Makita so the same batteries work in my strimmer, hedgecutter, angle grinder, impact driver, SDS drill, combi-drill, And there are 100+ other tools I could get that are super-cheap once you've already got the batteries.

Dead right Stinsy, I used a chainsaw, circular saw, drill and angle grinder on a shed job yesterday All the same make, all light in weight and battery swapping as I went. Truly knocks time and angst off the job.

[nowty]

The batteries of the good ones do cost. However you should see it as buying a "system" rather than a "tool". I use Makita so the same batteries work in my strimmer, hedgecutter, angle grinder, impact driver, SDS drill, combi-drill, And there are 100+ other tools I could get that are super-cheap once you've already got the batteries.

I got the matika ones too, fits 2 x hammer drills, impact driver, jigsaw, edge trimmer and a site DAB radio.
Had them many years now and still work like new.

[Moxi]

Are these 18v systems ? I have a decent set of power tools and two stroke strimmer and chainsaws which are all too serviceable at present to change in fact the stihl strimmer is over thirty years old and my trusty bosh plug in hammer drill is forty two and dads metal bodied drill is so old I don’t know the maker and it’s got to have been bought by dad in the sixties so older than me and all are still as good as new so the most I can sensibly do is plan to convert across as and when tools die or as in the case of needing a good palm sander which my present tool set doesn’t have.

Moxi