Weeks have passed by and you must have been wondering whether we have fallen off the face of the earth.
But nope, we are still here, just having been busy with ongoing improvements of our motorhome. And of course, the big project we started weeks ago is now finished.
Let me recap what we did:
12 100W solar panels were to be mounted on our roof. That would make 4 groups of 3panels.
The mounting materials consisted of 2 rolls of Eternabond tape, used to fasten 8 10ft long strut channels to the metal roof. 48 strut nuts and ditto 1/4" bolts are holding the 48 slotted crossbars, each 2ft. long, to the strut channels. Further it took 250ft of solar wiring, 72 quarter inch bolts with stop nuts and 2 washers each. The last hardware I needed were 12 flat alluminum supports for tilting up the panels, each had to be drilled 1/4" holes at the end for the 24 1/4" bolts, which were secured by 24 wing nuts. (for easy and quick removal.
For connecting the panels with eachother I had 20 branch connectors, and a bunch of single connectors.
But before being finished, I also had to secure the open wiring to the roof. For that I used small pieces of Eternabond. I also used SIKAFLEX 252 along the edges of the strut channel and in between.
I have only drilled 2 holes through the roof to feed the wires down into a rear hollow, where our washer/dryer is located. From there another hole gets the wires below the floor into a compartment next to the battery compartment. They then run through another drilled hole over to the battery compartment where they are connected to our 100amp charge controller.
If this confused you, I wouldn't be surprised. It's just a lot of stuff and procedure, and if I had known all this, I might have reduced the size of the project, BUT........
BUT, we are harvesting power. And we get a lot of charge into our 4 225amp/h Trojan batteries. This morning around 11am the controller showed 60amps. A little later our battery voltage topped out at 14.5V, which is the point when the controller does its job and reduces the charge amount. If it wouldn't do it, the batteries would be "cooked"
Our 2000W gas-driven generator has been retired for the rest of the season.
And today we took the whole show on the road. The reason for that was that after 17 days we needed to get to the dump station. Our waste water holding tanks were getting to their max capacity.
Dixie and Bea went along for the ride of the 8 miles to town. Dixie has gotten a lot more relaxed when I drive the bus down the road. It looks like these short trips are good training for her.
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It has also gotten a bit "Christmasy" here. Two cardboard Christmas trees, one outside, one inside, have been illuminated with solar lights. I cut these tree shapes out of the cardboard boxes the solar panels came in.
Another lightchain runs on the dash along the big windshield.
Meanwhile, we have also gotten to know our neighbours. Here we found a couple from Washington State and the other one from Montana. Another single guy came yesterday from Maryland. Tonight we have all been sitting at the camp fire and chatting across the board.
Life can hardly get any better!