Bruce's Journal

[Bruce]

OK, specifically for @Senile_Texas_Aggie I did a couple of videos (hope they come out) of (static) snow. Unfortunately it was a weird misty snowy day, no blue sky and sun so a serious lack of contrast.

From the front door around the street side and a view of the barns.

To the barn and back

I came to realize yesterday that I won't be getting to that last rack of wood in front of the house any time soon. The pallet forks are on the barn side of all the empty racks and there is way more snow than I'm going to shovel between the barn and the forks. I have to run parallel down near the barn then turn uphill to get to the forks. The tractor isn't going to do anything on a snowy (even if mostly shoveled) side hill other than want to slide down into the barn. At least I had this epiphany BEFORE I needed to try it.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Thank you, Mr. @Bruce! Wow, you have a lot of snow! Do you have enough wood to last through the winter (or perhaps till the next snow melt) before you need to get to the pallet forks?

 

[thistlebloom]

Do you hand shovel all your paths? That's good exercise but a snowblower is faster . I love your big red barn!

 

[Bruce]

Do you hand shovel all your paths? That's good exercise but a snowblower is faster . I love your big red barn!

Down to the barn and to the parking area yes, around the front where that big pile of snow and the remaining wood rack are were done with the tractor. I had to go around the wood rack to get to the fuel oil fill pipe THINKING I was out of oil. The gauge said 1/2 but I didn't trust it since the furnace wasn't running. Turns out it only took 92 gallons to fill the 275 gallon tank which means the gauge WAS wrong but the other way which is why I THOUGHT I was correct about it being empty because it didn't "thump" differently as I went down from the midpoint. Turns out all I really had to do was hit the restart button on the burner, no idea why it tripped.

I have a 50" snowblower on the garden tractor but the winch is broken. It broke at the end of last winter and I THOUGHT I had it repaired but it broke again as soon as I put the blower on and tested lifting it. I guess I need someone to do some welding. There is a fair bit of disassembly required to get the mounting bracket off the front of the GT

In the past I have used the GT to blow down behind the barns though it is a bit of a pain. NO WAY it is backing up the hill so I have to make a good size cul-de-sac on the other side of the pipe gate. And of course since the blower is not much wider than the GT wheels, once a front wheel hits snow it gets stuck so there is a lot of forward and backward "chewing" to make the cul-de-sac big enough to turn the GT around to go back up through the gates. If I didn't have the real tractor I would have done something about the winch since I'm sure not going to shovel the entire parking area though it would have been REALLY slow going in 18" of snow with the blower. And it doesn't take much snow for the GT to get stuck even with chains on the rear wheels and an additional 50# weight on the back. And if there is ice on the hill? no differential lock and the chains polish the ice rather than moving the tractor.

Thank you, Mr. @Bruce! Wow, you have a lot of snow! Do you have enough wood to last through the winter (or perhaps till the next snow melt) before you need to get to the pallet forks?

Who knows when it will all melt?? It was -8°F this morning and will be at least that cold tomorrow morning. It MIGHT make 0°F for a high today and MAY go above freezing for a couple of hours on Tuesday before dropping back to near 0°F Thursday morning. Still winter here!

I have about 1.5 weeks of wood in the rack on the porch landing and a similar amount on the porch. If the snow hasn't melted by then I have to decide if I just want to burn oil or if I want to hand move the wood in the "stranded" rack. There are about 2 weeks of wood in each rack when they are full.

 

[thistlebloom]

Sorry about all that below freezing stuff. I know you get into the swing of it and deal, but it's so nice when it gets above freezing. Then it's shorts weather!

 

[Bruce]

Another one for Mr. @Senile_Texas_Aggie since I'm quite certain you don't see this sort of thing at your house

 

[thistlebloom]

I see blue sky and sunshine!!

 

[Bruce]

Froze my butt off every time I went down to the barn but the panels made 42.46 kWhs today
Supposed to have some increasing cloudiness tomorrow so we will make less. But not nearly as little as many of the days that will be on the next electric bill. We had quite a number of real stinkers, 14 days didn't even approach 5 kWhs and of course we made nothing during the storm last Friday.

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Froze my butt off every time I went down to the barn but the panels made 42.46 kWhs today
Supposed to have some increasing cloudiness tomorrow so we will make less. But not nearly as little as many of the days that will be on the next electric bill. We had quite a number of real stinkers, 14 days didn't even approach 5 kWhs and of course we made nothing during the storm last Friday.

So maybe you are the one to answer this question for me...Is it worth the cost of getting the solar panels ? How long does it take until you are getting "free" electricity ?

 

[Bruce]

I haven't actually calculated that out yet. I started a spreadsheet so I could see how much the bills WOULD be if I didn't have the panels but the dang electric company keeps adding new "fees" and jacking the rates and the "fees" change monthly making it really hard to have the spreadsheet do the calculations. Our electric rate is $0.18/kWh with a daily charge of $0.49 plus all the added fees.

The next bill would have been about $134 if I didn't have the solar. The last one would have been $155. I have to pay $66 on the coming bill but that is because I have no excess credits built up. My fault because I've been charging my Prime and didn't cancel the net metering sharing so some of my credits have been going to the other account. I used up all my credits with the last bill and owed $4, first time I've paid since Feb 2016. I should get back to not paying after this month (or not much next month) since I cancelled the net metering. I'm now using my "excess" in my car.

But, IF all my bills were $134 the payback would be about 12 years. And one thing is certain, the price to have power coming from the utility has only gone up and will continue to do so making the breakeven come in fewer years. I've had the panels for 4 full years so far. Note that mine are ground mounted on sched 80 metal pipe and can be adjusted seasonally increasing the net output by about 15% more efficient (but not as efficient as trackers, though those are much more expensive). As such the installation cost was higher than it would have been if the panels were on the roof ... which they would have been if we had any south facing roof!

The web site that stores the production data says I've saved 52,000 pounds of CO2 and "planted" the equivalent of 1,300 trees. I have NO idea what algorithms they use to calculate that but I suspect it is wrong in my case since my power company has mostly hydro (from Canada) plus solar and wind based power.