Diary from the cabin page 4

4-28-06 

The C12 controller

I've got my first report with the solar panels in their installed location and the Xantrex C12 controller. After a week of about 50-50 cloudy weather, the controller had the bank at it's bulk shutoff (14.3 volts) and was holding it there; so success.

The solar panels

After some long thought and math, I came to the conclusion that 300 ah (150 usable*) just isn't enough capacity. Very close but not quite good enough. My needs aren't a lot; enough to last one or two days running off the bank. So, I've purchased a 110 amp hour type 27 deep cycle (Exide) battery to bring the total of the bank to 400 amp hours (200 usable*). So I popped the new battery in the middle of the bank and.....after 8 hours of drain the bank is still at 78% charge, so that's accomplished. That extra 50 amp hours is exactly what I needed. Of course, the only cables I could find were like 6 feet long, so I've got to get shorter cables. And I designed the bank box to hold 4 not 5 batteries but they all fit just fine.

The back wall

On to the next project, putting up the last piece of plywood on the back wall. 15 years ago, the original mobile home on the property fell apart from disuse and the township made the wife (long before we met) haul it off and a temporary wall put up on what is now our cabin. I've been replacing that wall with a permanent one. The lower portion of the back wall is cement block; it's what the mobile home sat on. Which is convient because the back wall is 9 feet tall without it; sort of hard to put up 8 foot plywood. I'm filling the cavities and spaces with expanding foam insulation as I go, which is working well. The next step is to put up siding.

Also started screwing around with a generator house. I've been using the storage shed, which didn't dampen the noise enough. Well....remember that block wall in the paragraph above? I already had 2 sides of the new generator house. Using the huge supply of discarded cement blocks laying around the property, I put up the other 2 walls (it only needs to be 20 inches high) and used plywood with acoustic material to line the inside. Now, I left a 4 inch by 4 inch air gap at one corner for intake, and a 6 inch by 6 inch gap at the other end for exhaust. Started the generator and popped it in. With it just sitting on the ground, the decibels are 55 with a load. In the new generator house the decibels are.......15. You can barely even hear the thing 20 feet away. From the front of the cabin, you don't know it's running at all.

I've measured and priced the parts for the new boat dock. I can build it using 2x4s and that composite decking material for about $150 which will make it 16 feet long. Still looking for new dock poles.

* Usable is half of the bank capacity; you shouldn't drain the batteries past 50% regularly. In fact, 50% is probably too much of a drain.