felltoearth wrote:

The blisters were not the funny part. My trip home was. On that day my friend needed the car himself because he had a dentist appointment. In my habitual optimism I suggested he'll just drop me off at the Boiling Pot, which is the first surfing point of the parks four, and I'll hitch a ride back in the evening.

The surf was really good that day, but the waves at Tea Tree Bay keep rolling in with such consistency that their predictability makes them a bit less exciting after ten or 20 rides. So I walked to Granite Bay, where they are a bit more tubular and variable. It takes about 20 minutes to walk there. No cars are allowed in the park at all.

Very few people bothered to go that far in those days. It became an unofficial nudist beach. I thought "Why should I be the odd one out?" and dressed only in my birthday suit and the ankle strap that connects me via bungee type cord to my kneeboard I went surfing.

As I said, the surf was particularly good that day and even in winter the water temperature was somewhere above 20°C. Without a wetsuit you can still stay out there until you get exhausted, thirsty or the surf stops being good. My kneeboard was a George Greenough style semi-spoon, so it had bugger-all floatation. My bum, the only part of my body that was not well tanned, should be well under water most of the time. Safe from the sun's UV radiation, I thought.

Late in the afternoon the idea occurred to me that I ought to start making my way back soon, after just one more wave and one more wave and... By the time I arrived back at the car park the sun was getting close to the horizon, but it didn't take long for a couple in a Mini Moke to give me a lift. A couple of kilometres out of town is a T-intersection. It's the Noosa-Eumundi Road, which at that time was a single lane dirt track. My friend's property lay about six kilometres up that road. The friendly couple needed to go straight ahead, but offered to do the detour to get me there. I thanked them and said this won't be necessary. I'm bound to get another lift. We said goodbye. I got out of the Moke. And that's when I noticed the sunburn. Holy fuck, did it ever sting when I got off the vinyl-clad seat. The couple departed and I began walking down the dirt road. Gingerly, for my boardshorts chafed. My bum began to heat up. I never got another lift. In fact, not a single car passed during the next hour. And the sun was setting. Before long I was walking in the moonlight.

Now is a good time to mention that apart from my board, speedoes, flippers and towel I had absolutely nothing with me. Not even sandals or thongs. The sunburn became more troublesome with each step. I thought "No traffic", so it was OK to take my boardshorts and speedoes off. This was a great relief. I continued with my board under one arm, flippers hung off two fingertips and towel, boardshorts and speedoes were draped over the shoulder on the other side.

Then another problem cropped up. Every time a grader takes the corrugations out of the dirt road it exposes very angular pebbles. Kind of like 20 - 50 millimetre grade gravel. During the day they are easy to avoid. By moonlight not so much. The soles of my feet could only take so much of them. Without suitable footwear, there is only one thing I could do: Put on my flippers. Walking with flippers gave me a strange gait, because one has to lift one's knees up really high to prevent the tips of the flippers from doubling up under the soles of one's feet. So now I was waddling almost 'silly walks' style, naked except for wearing flippers on the dirt road in the moonlight with a kneeboard under my arm and a towel, boardshorts and speedoes draped over a shoulder.

Then the moon set. In total darkness I was reduced to walking by touch. Every time my flippers hit a berm left by the grader I knew I was on one edge of the road and changed the angle of my now extremely slow progress accordingly.

Another effect of total darkness was that it became nigh on impossible to prevent the flippers from doubling under one's feet, which made walking even more difficult. I could think of only one solution to this. As a result I became a naked figure with a kneeboard under one arm, towel, speedoes and boardshorts draped over the other shoulder, wearing nothing but flippers, walking along a dirt path on a moonless night - backwards.

A few days ago in another thread...

OlivierK wrote:We've booked in photovoltaic solar works over the winter to make our house in town a net energy exporter, and also at our farm, where the grid will be relegated to a backup system for an essentially standalone electrical supply system.

laklak wrote:Oliver, I'd be most interested in the details of the farm setup. Solar array and battery specs, chargers, inverters, etc. We'll be setting up a similar system in the next year or so, when we build the Swaziland house. We get to design the whole thing from scratch, so it will be an experiment in green design. Positioning on site, active and passive solar, landscape plantings, thermal mass walls, the whole schmear. I'm quite excited.

So...

Our house faces about 20 degrees east of north. Great for morning/midday sun, but a bit weak by mid-afternoon, so we've gone for 16 panels on the NNE main length of the house, and 6 on WNW side roof (about 70 degrees west of north), which should be going gangbusters on hot summer afternoons. Jinko Eagle 275W panels.

Fronius Primo 5.0-1 5kW inverter / Victron MultiPlus-II 48/5000/70-50 inverter/charger.

BYD Battery-Box 7.0 KwH batteries (LiFePO4).

We're grid connected, but we get a lot of blackouts. The battery is sized to get us through most of those, and also to get us through the evening using surplus power from the day. The controllers can be set to reserve any chosen percentage for blackouts (so if we set it to 30%, once the battery has fallen to 30% in the evening, it will switch to the grid, and save 30% for potential blackout backup). The battery is scalable, and we'll see how we're going with it over time. For the next few years we'll be spending most nights in town, so a smaller battery is fine, given that we've got the grid (usually!) to fall back on, and no aircon). Once we move back out there in 5 years, we might expand the battery if that makes financial sense.

One interesting thing that came up in discussion is that our local solar guys (who've been around for ever, as we live in a hippy area that's been doing solar and off-grid stuff since the 1970s) no longer recommend or sell solar hot water systems. Not because they're not good (we've had one for 18 years, and it's brilliant) but because cheaper panels these days means that a couple of extra panels on the roof to drive a standard electric HWS gets you the same amount of hot water for less $, doesn't require the tank on the roof, and is easier to repair/replace.

Another consideration for system size for us was that grid-connected systems are limited to feeding 5kW max back into the grid, so when we're not there (a lot of the time), it's not much use for us to have more than a 6kW system. The batteries will usually be full, and the hot water's solar anyway, so apart from running the fridge, and a modem/router, there's not a lot switched on when we're not there. A bigger system would have more than 5kW to spare most of the time, and have to dump everything over 5kW. If we weren't grid connected, and there full time, then we'd have a bigger battery, and probably more panels to make sure it stayed full.

All the controllers are wifi connected to allow monitoring and control through an app. The one thing we'll probably use that for is to manage the point at which the battery shuts itself down and hands back to the grid at night. Mostly, we'd be happy to run it pretty low, and use our own power rather than buying it, but in stormy weather, we'll bump up the threshold and run mainly from grid in the evenings so we're guaranteed a reasonable amount of blackout backup time.

One issue with our farm setup is that one of the components is a new model currently going through the standards compliance process, so our install probably won't be for a couple of months.

Our in-town setup should be sorted by the end of the month - much simpler, just 24 panels and a smart inverter (also a Fronius) with hot water controller (so excess power goes to the electric HWS first, then when the HWS hits full temperature, any excess gets sold back to the grid, as we won't have batteries there). Town setup is 6.6kW, and on blasting summer days, most of that will go into a 6kW aircon system, that we've put off installing until being able to drive it with our own power.

Not sure this belongs to this thread, but it's kind of home improvement for me, so....
I have an old dinner table that I wanted to get rid of. So I bought something I've wanted for a long time to replace it.
Here it is :
https://www.jmc-billard.com/fr/billard-pool-anglais/1477-billard-table-saloon-pool-anglais-7ft-blanc.html

Thanks for the info, Oliver. The farm system is very similar to what we're thinking about for Swaziland. We'll have A/C, but that will only be mains connected. Mains power is only fair there, it's generally on but there are a LOT of transient outages, lasting from a few seconds to a few minutes, and the occasional complete meltdown for a day or more. The power is dirty, too, so we need both backup for outages and power conditioning. We'll likely have a generator backup also in case there's a major outage for a few day, which is relatively rare but certainly not unheard of. There are also rolling blackouts when demand is high, or worse, "brownouts" with a significant voltage drop.

I've learned a bit about living off batteries on the boat. No solar panels (yet), but we're thinking about it. There's shore power, total of 60 amps at 120v. Three 8D AGM batteries with a total of 750 amp hours with separate 31 series for each engine and the generator. There's a 12v system that runs the lights, pumps, heads, and instrumentation, and a 120v system for the A/Cs, fridge, stove, etc. Each engine has a 100 amp alternator to charge the batteries when under power, when anchored there's a 7.5Kw diesel generator. 5000w inverter and smart charger. Had to replace the charger when we switched to AGMs from lead acid batteries as they charge at different voltages. When we add solar we'll need an additional charger to handle it. Problem will be space, there's just not that much for panels. I'm thinking about removing the soft bimini from the fly bridge and replacing with a hard top, that would give us about 200 sq ft of panel space. LIthium batteries aren't recommended for boats, I don't know of any marine certified systems on the market yet, so AGM is about the best we can do.

You could use solar panels on the boat for the redneck apocalypse Laklak. That way you can anchor for days waiting out the carnage and still have power without wasting precious gas.

aban57 wrote:Not sure this belongs to this thread, but it's kind of home improvement for me, so....
I have an old dinner table that I wanted to get rid of. So I bought something I've wanted for a long time to replace it.
Here it is :
https://www.jmc-billard.com/fr/billard-pool-anglais/1477-billard-table-saloon-pool-anglais-7ft-blanc.html

I think that will definitely improve your home

@ Lak: I completely hear you about intermittent short outages. Our farm is up a long valley with one wire in. While in general our grid is pretty good (can't remember the last blackout we had in town), out in the valley there's lots that can give it a kicking. When the wind gets up, stuff moves around. Even if they manage to keep trees away from the line (and that's a huge job with some steep terrain in places) branches still fly off in the wind, or long spans get yanked about just on their own. We'd get about 60 blackouts a year, but clustered together: 10 in a week, or even 4 in a day. Usually short (30 seconds if the system can self-reset), 30 minutes for a manual reset, 3 hours to put a single wire back up), but longer if a storm has knocked down wires all around the region, or flooding (we get a lot) stops the crews getting where they need to go. Our record blackout is 8 days.

We also get about 10 days a year of scheduled outage (around 9am-4pm) for grid maintenance/improvement. You'd think that would reduce the number of blackouts we have, but it seems to be to no avail. The solar setup will power through those easily, as they're only ever in good weather.

We've got a generator, and they offered to wire up a generator input for the system for about A$350/US$250. We decided against it, because long blackouts aren't common, and if we have them we're just intermittently running the fridge to keep the freezer frozen and the water pump to have showers (the generator can't handle much more than the fridge and the water pump anyway), which we can do with two extension cords. if we did more, we'd probably run out of fuel (as during flooding, we can't go get more fuel, and we usually only keep 20-40 litres on hand). In any case, in long blackouts we'll get some juice into the batteries each day from the panels, although that will be limited in periods of constant rain. Often, during our long floods, the last few days are sunny, though, with the rain gone, just waiting for the river to drop. Anyway, we can always get a generator input wired up later if we decide we want one, and I think a few inverter/chargers have one built in.

I've considered (but never ended up implementing) running at least a lights circuit off 12V DC should we ever get batteries, rather than using an inverter, with transformers at each light. Effectively using a boat/RV model. I'd probably still consider it on a new build, but we're retrofitting, so it doesn't make sense. Also, you need an inverter anyway, so it's easy to just let it do everything, and it means you can run lights off the grid, as well as the battery.

What's the solar industry like in Swaziland? Do you have guys there who know their stuff? Because anyone who's built 100 systems has good stuff in their head. The industry here is a mix of those guys, and a bunch of newbs trying to cash in on the current wave of going renewable, trying to sell one-size-fits-all systems to the masses, regardless of their needs, usually with the cheapest components possible to maximise their profits.

Yeah there's a pretty good pool of talent. A friend just moved back, he was an engineer at NASA working on satellite solar systems, he and another guy have started a new company and they're doing quite well. Solar water heaters are very common, and you're seeing more and more panels.

We'll be running most circuits off the inverter and battery bank at all times, like the satellite internet, TV, security cameras, lights, etc. If the mains power goes out we won't even know it. Those transient outages are really annoying when everything starts beeping and reboots. Eventually we'll have an automatic generator that starts up when the batteries drop to a certain level, and shuts off when the mains come back on or the banks are sufficiently charged. A lot of houses there have those automatic generators, but I haven't see one integrated with battery backup and solar panels.

Should be doable, though. Whether it's the mains or the battery cutting out shouldn't matter to the genny.

You know, it’s like seeing a thread on a sweater and you think, “I shouldn’t pull on that,” but you do anyway.

Water damage?

Over time. The roof is three years old (but that’s another story). We’re painting so I was patching some cracks and started to chip away at some of the paint. The plaster is fine, I just need to skim coat it.

Step away from the putty knife!

I was pressure washing the house just before we left and made the mistake of cleaning one little section of the pool deck. Lesson learned.

Yeah. I think it had to be done though. Schedule blown.

Apparently, igniters in wood pellet stoves are prone to failure. They heat the blast air used to ignite the small pile of pellets in the burn pot during the startup sequence. Easy to replace, but I just replaced it last year.

Oh well, another one on the way from a different source this time.

But here’s the tip for today:

How to start a pellet stove.

Soak three cotton balls with isopropyl (91%) alcohol. Put the three cotton balls in the burn pot, along with a good handful of pellets. I put the cotton balls on one side of the pot, and pile the handful of pellets next to them.

Light cotton balls, close the stove, and start it up. The cotton balls will hold enough fuel to heat the little pile of pellets to burn temperature that is hot enough to sustain itself as new fuel is fed.

Last year, I used a half sheet of newsprint, torn into three strips then rolled up. It worked to light a similar sized handful of pellets. But, the paper produced huge mounts of ash and soot, which made a mess of the stove. I think the ink might add to that problem.

The cotton balls just disappear as the alcohol burns out.


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- 250 ml of 70% isopropyl alcohol
- 135 ml ammonia
- 5 ml dish detergent
- 3.5 l water

That makes 4 liters of spray window cleaner for about one dollar. I re-used the empty plastic 5 liter refill bottle, for which we paid $13 when it was full.

The spray bottle we got holds 750 ml. We fill it for about 20¢.

This stuff works as well as any common blue colored spray window cleaner.




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- 250 ml of 70% isopropyl alcohol
- 125 ml ammonia cleaner (NH3 dissolved in water, about 7% by weight)
- 5 ml liquid dish detergent
- 3.5 l water

That makes 4 liters of spray window cleaner for about one dollar.

I re-used an empty plastic 5 liter window cleaner refill bottle, for which we paid $13 when it was full.

We got a spray bottle for this job, which holds 750 ml. It costs about 20¢ to fill it.

This stuff works as well as any common commercial blue colored spray window cleaner.




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So progress report. Substantially complete. Here is the second floor with patching complete.



And the final result. SO got a great deal on those George Nelson lamp fixtures. I’ll post complete pics of first and second floors when I have a decent set.

That looks nice. Lots of wall space for maps, trinket shelves, things like that. Pictures of squirrels. Did you move the staircase over?

No, he's naughtily taken the "after" pic from the opposite end of the space.