I bought some used monocrystalline panels that put about 6-7A into the batteries. Although I had the trees leaning over the house cut the ones further out leave me in shade except around noon while the leaves are out, which cuts the A/C cost. It can hit 100F here, with the dew point over 70F. In winter I have sun on the panels most of the day.
The picture broke up when the engine noise was loudest, so it was an easy call. He's a very skilled carpenter but not a mechanic.
--jsw
Sure you can collect a lot of good stuff cheap that way (I have), but it all has other problems waiting to jump out when you need the thing.
-jsw
To shade your roof, put the panels on a raised metal framework (chain link top rail works well and is inexpensive) and run shade cloth under it. A couple hundred dollars worth of cloth every few years will make the house a lot more comfy in the summer. Lose the tree and build the shade over the house. It'll be less overall work (no leaves!) and you can use the firewood in the winter.
I just noticed that I had a small amount shade over the center of the roof in the winter afternoons, so I moved the solar panel site to the peak of the far east edge. Even partial temporary shade is a killer for solar.
If he was smart, he'd have paid you for that work, too.
- If ever the Time should come, when vain and aspiring
Men shall possess the highest Seats in Government,
our Country will stand in Need of its experienced
Patriots to prevent its Ruin. -- Samuel Adams
Most of this stuff is repaired and sold for a good profit, funding more tool purchases. Dead tools I tend to fix and keep. (Thanks, Gunner!)
- If ever the Time should come, when vain and aspiring
Men shall possess the highest Seats in Government,
our Country will stand in Need of its experienced
Patriots to prevent its Ruin. -- Samuel Adams
I take it Grant's Pass has no storms or building inspectors. New England is downwind of everyone else between Hudson's Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, and gets samples of all their weather, including tornadoes. Hurricane Katrina passed over us.
The KillAWatt EZ says running my air conditioner costs $5 per month in midsummer. I salvaged a friend's ripped ShelterLogic car shelter by covering the roof with another heavy-duty silver tarp with the edges stapled and rolled around 1x3s (ripped from PT decking) and screwed to the rib tubes. A $100 tarp won't last over 5 years. When I tried suspending a tarp over the woodpile, the wind tore it up in two years.
-jsw
They do, but this is county out here, 3.5mi from the big (32k) city. But external shading devices won't have a whole lot of oversight even in the city, with the exception of Gnu Yawk, who has its own codes for each and every block, it seems.
So putting the cloth on cables and pulleys to retract during storms might be in order.
That's not bad at all. Are you certain of its low cost?
Tarps die quickly in wind, but shade cloth lasts a bit better, passing a lot more air than a tarp does. I lost a new tarp on the way home from my sister's (350mi) because her masseur wanted me to bring his massage table home with me to repair. It caused a gap in the boxes I had packed in the bed and the air forced the tarp out of place every time I tried. 200# of crap on top of it plus a 1" band around it all (toward the base), and it still kept tearing loose. Anyway, I'm left with a 10x10 out of a 10x20' Stansford standard tarp now. The other half shredded.
Anyway, I'm talking about this stuff
Interesting climate you live in, though, Jim. Storms, lightning, hurricanes.
I think I forgot to comment on that. The weather forecasts are accurate NOWHERE, and that's one reason climatologists (and AGWKers) have no clue, either. We don't yet have all the data points we need for proper casting, so the models are -all- lacking.
We call 'em "pigs ears"
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Between the lakes up here "Dry Canadian Air" is pretty rare!!!
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As complex as the "weather engine" is here between the lakes in Ont-Aiy-O, it's surprising how accurate they are sometimes. How much rain or snow is often WAY off -at least in some areas. We used to be real "snow belt" - but now we seam to be in a "shadow". Might get six inches within 10 miles to the east or west, and get half an inch here. The temperature and wind forcasts are "usually" pretty close.
Well, they do make mistakes.
A friend of mine used to drive between Philly and Ontario and couldn't believe the difference a mile made around Buffalo, when lake effect snow hit. It went from 2" to 2' on occasion.
Interesting product. I hadn't noticed these yet... They used to have an early version of these at one of the local GM plants in the guard shack. This was 20 years ago. It got a lot of use from what the guys told me. Made a lot of sense for that situation.
Reviews are all over the place on them though. I would be curious to try one on my truck. It would be interesting to see how it handled the
80 amp glow plug draw for 10 seconds and then get hit with the real starting current. Especially at 15 deg which is where we've been at for the last week or so.Way out of my price range though. I'll just buy a new Group 78 battery for ~$90 and replace the questionable one first. Heck I could replace both of them and still have money left over :)
I just gave the Whistler "Mighty" WJS-3500 Lithium jump starter a quick check, using a high-resistance 12V 18A-H AGM (sealed lead-acid) to imitate a dead car battery and the HF carbon pile to pull the starting current. On the first try it reached 150A before the beeping began. The second triggered the Mighty's red alarm LED, perhaps because the AGM voltage went to zero.
While trying to force some charge at 18V into the AGM I loaded the Mighty at ~4A with 3 Ohms through a home-made fused cable until an rc hobby Wattmeter showed 1.0 Amp-Hour drained. The voltage dropped from
12.5V to 11.5V and the charge status is 3 of 5 lit. I suspect the model name implies 3500 mA-hr cells. 4A approximates the drain of a laptop with an auto-air 12V power supply.I think what this shows is that the Mighty's cable protector module is very to overly sensitive to a bad battery and may refuse to start with plenty of charge left. After the first successful try the carbon pile's voltmeter dropped to zero when the carbons first made contact, which I previously measured as below 10A.
The AGM is too weak to provide 1A although its voltage implies a full charge. Initially 18V forced less than 50mA, after a few minutes it began accepting 0.25A at 14.3V. In my experience they fail with either high resistance (sulfation?) or a dead cell, 10V out. I don't have a car battery in typical poor condition, those get traded in. I kept a couple of weak AGMs to experiment with, like removing the valve caps and adding distilled water, which didn't help much.
Perhaps the setup for the next attempt would be a low resistance in series with a good battery to better simulate a drained car battery.
-jsw
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