Northern Michigan Solar Powered CabinAlternative Energy Living at the 45th parallel
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First of all, welcome to our site! We've been around for several years and conduct all kinds of half baked DIY projects on our show, This Old Shack. Be sure to check out all of our half witted articles and pages. If you have questions, just Email us and we will do our best to confuse you beyond all belief.NAVIGATION Email or Contact us here
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We're going to build our own solar panels!Read the diary entry here. |
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Disaster planning should be part of every single household across America, strike that, the world. When disaster strikes, people die or lives are c80%hanged. In times of plenty, forego the Playstations and buy extra food. You can explain a lack of toys better than a lack of food to your children.
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In
1980 our military switched its entire food ration program over to the full
moisture MRE pouch system. These are the meals we tested on "This Old
Shack". |
Quite possibly the best preparedness site in the world.
There were several reasons for the switch:
Sprinkle of rain = power failure.
Giving a little back by not using so much.
Independent living.
Diary from the cabin, page 65-30-06 I was worried. It had been 3 weeks since I'd been to the cabin and the weather was horrible; rain most days, almost no sun. Would the bank be down? Once again, it was a float having been through the bulk and absorption phases of charging. Job one on this holiday weekend is building a new dock. The old one was almost 15 years old and rotted away. The new dock is 4 feet longer and is higher to keep it out of the water. I also finished building the battery box and installed the 110 voltage circuit breaker box. This box, a Square D, fit the bill nicely since it came with circuit breakers. Having energized the circuits, I discovered the rest of the lightning damage see link which ruined the outside lights. Now (of course) I have to rewire the whole damn thing. That's when a problem cropped up. There seems to be a voltage leak from somewhere in the system even though all the wiring checks out okay. There's a .5 volt leak to ground at 6 amps. It's AC, not the DC that the system produces. The panels are still charging the bank at the same rate that they were, so I'm still looking for the problem. Update: After an interesting thread on Usenet, most opinions from other people are thinking that the voltage leak is coming from an old pole on the property. However the main 500kv lines in northern Michigan are less than 3 miles from the cabin. Hoo, boy this isn't good. I'm going to try and get some kind of filter. |
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Plugs and ads |
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How I testThere are several people on various newsgroups and discussion areas that waylay in uninformed or those just starting out in the off grid world of self power generation. This involves an almost religious belief in a phantom 6v golf cart true deep cycle battery that is superior in every way to any other battery in existence.
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