Coffee 7-16-11

Welcome all, come in, sit, have a coffee & tell us of your week. Blueberry pancakes with Vermont maple syrup are waiting. Join in!
It's been a busy year so far! It seems I've done a years work and there are still months to go! I do believe I'm going to slow up a bit. Other than build a little wood shed at camp, I think my summer projects are done for the year. I feel like a weight has been lifted and now I can relax & take some time to do nothing. Ahhhhhh. The solar system was 2 months of planning followed by 28 days of controlled chaos. I was looking at the photos.... 28 days of "full time spare time" to reshingle the roof and install enough solar panels to negate our electric bill. I saved a huge amount of money by designing and installing it myself. It was a big investment, but it's done. Thursday & Fri were the first two days with it on line. Thurs it made 43 KWH's of power & yesterday it made 47. Too cool!
I'll tell you a quick story. Next month Marty & I will have been married for exactly 30 years. We started with nothing. I was recently divorced & brought nothing but child support payments to the marriage. She was renting a small log cabin in the woods and drove a rusty Subaru. Other than the five grand we inherited when my Mom recently died we were never given a thing. (I bought coal with that money.) We watched our friends drive new cars and take fancy vacations. We put every penny into paying our mortgage. We rarely eat out, and maybe once a year go to the movies. We find great pleasure in the cribbage board at the dining room table. If we don't have the money, we don't buy it. In the entire time we've been married we only once paid interest on a credit card. Back in the 80's we splurged one Christmas. It took 6 months to pay that off & since then we pay the credit card in full each month. We have made it a priority to not give money to the bank! Now, it seems we are rich, but actually we don't make much, we just have seen to it that we don't need much. It's simply amazing how much money you save if you cook your own food ,find simple entertainment, and stop giving the bank a big percentage of your income!

Enjoy the weekend, it's suppose to be a beauty!

Freddy, I'm impressed! That looks super!!! Are you grid tied, or did you go completely off-gird?

I`m envious of your system Freddy, & thanks for your words of wisdom.

I only have time for toast with raspberry jam and a coffee. Speaking of blueberries I am going to pick mine then go off for the cutting of the hair followed by a trip to the store then back home to do more work and there is plenty of that.

Words of wisdom from Freddy. A dollar goes a long way if we sort out our true needs from our wants. That is a lot easier said than done and I don’t want to imply that I do it any more than the next guy. I only wish I had the money back that I spent foolishly.

That sounds like some pretty good output Freddy. I take it that is total output and your usage is taken out and the leftover sent to the grid or is that the total excess power after you used yours?

Have a great weekend and if not…it is still the weekend.

It's a grid tie system. No batteries. That 43 & 47 KWHs was the total output of the system. About 30 each day went out to the grid for credit, the rest was used as it was generated. Generally we use about 20 a day. The plan is that during these long days we will store up enough credits to get through the winter. It's all automatic and seamless, when I turn on a light I do not know if the electrons are coming from the panels or the electric company. It really doesn't matter. Time will tell if it pays the entire monthly bill.
Here it is 7:30 Am & it's already making 2,000 watts. Heeheeee! Part of the system is a device on the wall that shows output and totals. That connects to the internet. In a few days I will be able to share a link & anyone can go see my panels "live", so to speak.

Very impressive Freedy, I will be interested in your postings on your system!!

Freddy, outstanding choice for breakfast. Amazing the depth of your worldly philosophies, this old farmer is impressed. "PHOENIX" comes to mind Well, I'm off to my new part time job. Problem is, horses are as needy as kids with consistency & structure. So much for part time. I do love it. If only I got along better with people. If I sit down on my sheet rock pail amongst these silly guys & gals,they now just come around in thier curiosity mode instead of thier protection mode as it was 2 wks ago. Soooo, we're gaining on the socialization concept Have a good week-end all.

Fred,You and Marty are an OBVIOUS INSPIRATION !..... I enjoy this place because I'm always running into Folks who are using their heads for something more than a "hat rack". Miss Julie and I have been working hard at removing the "Golden Hand-Cuffs" that old financial practices can cause. Can't blame a Soul other than me,and we're doing something about it. I have found that 9 out of 10 problems you have can be solved by simply looking in the mirror....Yep,it's up to us,no one else,to remove the shackles and make wiser,smarter and better moves for the rest of our lives. On another note,I've never had much Faith in Solar due to our area and the Great Lakes Cloud Cover Machine. You may be making me re-think that. Beautiful Work,Fred !......Oh,and Thanx. Those pancakes were wonderful !

What an array Freddy! Nice work!

Even though I've only been married for 7 years, it sounds like you & I had similar situations. I was always the guy with the 20 or 30 year old car that considered it a vacation when I had more than 2 consecutive days off from my low paying, back breaking job. If I could see 2003 .. or even 2011 back then I never would have believed any part of it. Would have seemed impossible. I thank God every day things turned out the way they did. I still wake up every morning in amazement at what is around me today. I vent alot on the forum but I'm actually the happiest guy in the world. And paying the card off monthly - I couldn't have given better advice myself!

I hear ya Fred about the animals - I like them better than most MA residents myself.

Nothing but the usual here. Grease up to the elbows, engines running for the first time in years. Same old same old. I've had a Murray lawn tractor parked in front of the dismantled Jimmy for the past 9 months or so. Got that pig running yesterday after wire wheeling the rust out of the carburetor with a dremel. Slapped my deep cycle battery in the step-thru part between my legs & ran jumper cables to the back connections. Fired right up! So of course I took it to the top of the hill, turned around & slammed it in neutral. Must've hit 45 mph by the time I got to the bottom!! Was a little nerve racking with the 4 inches of play in the steering! Almost lost it! I'd be posting pics of my broken limbs if that had happened. That thing is going to need a belt ... or something. Was getting whiplash all the way up the hill. Pull, slip - pull, slip ... all the way to the top. That's another project for another day. At least it's out of the driveway. Almost time to begin the heart transplant from the Jimmy to the Blazer!

And on that note, the clock is ticking. Winter will be here before we know it. Just put in a large order for coal this year, so I'll be all set for about 3 years anyway, just in case this '12 election doesn't go the way I want it to. I can just about guarantee coal will be taxed if we have a repeat of '08. After all .. what ISN'T taxed these days .... at least in MA ....

Looks like a good day out there today. Gotta get off the computer & get my ass outside! C-ya!

Hi everyone,

I missed yesterday's coffee because I'm on the road. I'm in GA for the next few weeks checking in on my parents and giving my siblings a break. Things aren't doing so well here. Dad is in a downward slide and often doesn't recognize us. That's painful for my mom in particular but she is dealing with it the best she can. Dad is stable in the sense we know where he is; Mom is still under going treatment for breast cancer I'll be taxiing her around to doctors and hospitals while I'm here. As those of you know who have been through this know, it's not fun but it's something most of us will go through in one way or another.

The drive down yesterday was beautiful with the Shenadoah Valley readying itself for harvest. The corn is as high as an elephant's eye and the wind is sweet just before the rain. Oh wait, that's Oklahoma but the words fit here, too. I have been blessed in that DK is not going to do the heat shield tiling while I'm gone. He is making a fire pit in the back yard instead. Having the ability to play with fire wins out everytime. Strangely the county doesn't have a code in place for fire pits other to say it must be 15 ft from the building. MMM.... S'morse and camp cooking right in my own back yard, it can't get any better then that, right. Take care, Lisa

Good morning. Freddy must have one heck of a heating element on the coffee pot, I'm a day late and the coffee is still hot! (Must be all that cheap electric ) . Yesterday was a warm one and today is supposed to hit 90...on days like this I am sure glad we have A/C. Nothing fancy, just a big window unit in the living room and another in the bedroom. The house stays in the low 70's, and that is fine with me.

I shut the EFM down about two weeks ago with the intention of doing some quick maintenance and firing it back up the next day. Things got busy and I let it "go cold". I haven't been enjoying the sound of the oil boiler since then, but I suppose I was going to have to burn off some fuel sooner or later. I took the flue pipe off the EFM and vacuumed everything out, you wouldn't believe how much old creosote fell down the chimney! For 25 years that flue served an indoor wood boiler, and just when I think it is clean...some more flaky creosote falls down to the cleanout. In total I got about 2/3rds of a 5 gallon pail out of the chimney and did a "mirror check" up the flue, and I think it is definitely clean this time. I think the fire pictured in my avatar is what finally did it, 200,000 btu's per hour for a few days heating the pool must have really dried things out. This morning I am going to get everything back together and fire the EFM back up. I also got around to painting the boiler and bought a real draft gauge, pictures soon to follow.

Freddy if you could how about a full detail on your install, Please were thinking about doing the same thing to our place here.

any links to other sites would help

thanks Jeff

Man, sorry to hear about your dad Lisa. I wish you & your family the best. You seem to be handling it better than I would though.


Had to post back because we went on a motorcycle ride yesterday, & happened to wander across the previous path of last months tornado. WOW is all I can say!! It's been weeks since it went through, yet the damage is just unbelievable!! I felt bad sitting there taking pictures, but I felt people need to see what happened there. Obviously someone didn't appreciate that & called the cops on us. Cops told us to "move along" when they showed up. I can understand they're probably sick & tired of all the gawkers coming by constantly. But anyway, here's the pics of the carnage as best I could do with this crappy cell phone of mine.

I think this phone may soon suffer the same fate as my Lexmark printer, but I digress ....

The last pictures are of my buddy's father's many-thousand-dollar custom chopper he took for the ride ..... and some of the results of wearing loose pants with an open primary!

I sure hope everyone is drinking 'Ice Coffee' today. It is 98 degrees in the sun here and the tens of thousands I saw headed for Loudon will need 'supplied' oxygen on those aluminum bleachers!! Great summer weather....even the lakes and rivers are warm! No need to talk about coal fired appliances; and Freddy has the photo voltaics on-line....but the jury is out on the final analysis of savings. Nice day to be alive.....and looking at those pants from the fella riding with an open primary drive, I feel lucky!

Thoughts to you, Lisa....slow ride on a one way train.....been there, done that.

I was just thinking of the folks up at NHMS.

I forget how hot it was when I went to the first one, but those grandstands give you new respect for Jiffy Pop.