Tag: solar

  • Solar Powered

    Solar Powered

    The solar install was completed today, for the most part. The install is done and working. Now we have to wait on the State of Colorado electrical inspector and then our power utility inspector. That should take less than 2 weeks and then we will be putting juice back onto the grid and eliminating our…

  • Getting solar installed

    Getting solar installed

    One thing we designed our home to have is a large south facing steep roof. This gives us a perfect platform to install solar panels. The initial plan is to have them tied to the grid to offset our electrical usage. This saves us all of the money we pay for power and helps reduce…

  • Building a forever home – 3/100

    Building a forever home – 3/100

    Kate and I moved into our new home almost 3 weeks ago. Awesome is the word that sums up the entire situation. We designed the home to be exactly what we wanted based on a few criteria: It will be our forever home, we wanted to highlight the views of the La Plata mountain range…

  • Concrete waits for no man : 52/100

    Concrete waits for no man : 52/100

    Today we had some gentlemen come and pour concrete into the giant hole we dug yesterday. You may recall that we had to dig a 24 inch wide hole 58 inches deep to the pole that will hold our solar panel array. The problem is that the amount of concrete needed to fill a hole…

  • Auger : 51/100

    Auger : 51/100

    One thing I briefly mentioned in my post about Solar Panels is that we are mounting them on a pole. We are doing this because we have a flat roof on the cabin that we may eventually build a deck on. Additionally since it is a flat roof the snow will accumulate and block the…

  • Halfway : 50/100

    Holy moly we are halfway through the 100 days of blogging challenge! In some ways it feels like the time has flown by but I remember days where I scrambled to come up with something to write about. Also we are only halfway there so who knows what might happen. What I do know is…

  • Solar Panels : 46/100

    This is the 4th part of a multi part series covering the solar energy system we are building in our cabin. The 1st part discussed grid tie vs off grid systems. We are going to be off grid. The second part talked about AC vs DC and how an off grid system has to have…

  • Batteries : 45/100

    Batteries : 45/100

    Featured image is of the smoke from the East Canyon forest fire. It started around 1pm and is about 10 miles from us. We are not in any immediate danger except the smoke may blow our direction and be annoying. Welcome to Colorado in a dry summer. Solar Yesterday I did the second part of…

  • AC vs DC : 44/100

    A few posts back I talked about solar for our cabin. That was the start of a multi part series about how we designed the system and then may have parts of the installation of the system. In the first part I talked about Grid Tie vs Off Grid and some of the ins and…

  • Hangin Drywall : 30/100

    Hangin Drywall : 30/100

    We built a 320 sq ft cabin 2 years ago. It started life as a guest restroom/bath-house but quickly evolved into a larger structure. Last year the windows and insulation were finished. This year we are adding solar power which means we need to finish the drywall. This weekend Kate’s dad and I are hanging,…