Well, we finally got some hands-on experience with large concrete pours, and at the hands of masonry masters P+R. 1^st Biggest Lesson: prepare everything in advance, even the little rut under the concrete mixer so the wheelbarrow can fit easier. 2^nd Biggest Lesson: get more gravel/sand than you think you will use, then go get some more.

The magic ratio? One shovel Portland per five shovels aggregate (no magic really, just a veteran's experience). Mixer maxes out at ~25 shovel-loads, so that means 20 of aggregate and five of cement. Three giant coffee containers of water at first, then season to taste. Too wet makes the concrete weak, but too dry makes it weak also. Is your gravel full of sand or dirt? Sand is better, so pour a shovel-load from arm height and watch for a dust cloud. The smaller the dust cloud, the less dirt.

After starting this off the grid project about a year ago, we have learned quite a bit about the actual workings of a good system. Nearly everything you buy is going to be overrated; solar panels and wind generators are rated at peak watts, which when used in conjunction with batteries at ~13 volts is unattainable. We have just gotten accustomed to looking through the performance data and deducing a more accurate rating from that.

Yesterday we picked up two 105 lbs, 12 volt AGM 165 AH batteries from Ron for a solar job we have.  Personally, we would love to use these type of batteries in our system when ever possible. Making good 12 volt connections can be difficult, and we have found that many fuse holders have high resistance. Automotive style DC outlets are good for about 2 amps -- if you're not careful it's easy to waste power.  

We are making good progress on our house; the bathroom addition is almost all dug out (over 24 wheelbarrow loads so far) and now we are gathering gravel to make concrete. We already bought about half the Portland cement -- seven 94 lbs bags. As for the inside, we just got a dozen space blankets to use as reflective heat and vapor barrier.  We'll use these in addition to fiberglass insulation. These extra steps should make for a cool house in the summer and a warm house in the winter.

Yesterday evening we meet up with a fan of our site Dave in Fort Stockton. Dave is also an alternative energy enthusiast. He has done a lot with wind and solar power, and has even built a vertical axis wind turbine. Dave gave us a set of wind turbine blades that are 8' feet in diameter -- these will make a very good wind turbine, we just need to decide on a generator and controller.


We also stopped at the Fort Stockton chamber of commerce and saw a pretty good sized solar array and three Skystream wind turbines, two of them were humming away. An interesting addition in an oil town. 


We have also completed or first on-site automotive repair with a happy customer, we just need a few more tools and we should be able to tackle just about any no-start.

 

Quite an eventful past few days. It's been rainy/cloudy for several days, so our batteries have been working hard. The roads have been washing out all over, and even the paved section of the Ranch Road has washed away at the West Corazon draw.

Embarrassingly, I got stuck Saturday on Lake Ament road, but GM Frank was nice enough to come pull us out. Only to get stuck again at White Mill Ranch road the next day, with our parade trailer in tow. Lucky for us, the very next vehicle was a Toyota truck and they happened to have a tow strap. We thought our chance to be in the parade was over, but we were saved by fellow ranchies.
We got to the Study Butte Mall in time to line up, and the parade went off without a hitch. There was quite a turn out this year and we had a lot of enthusiastic fans of our parade float. After the parade everyone went to Kathy's Kosmic Kowgirl Kafe for some food and time to socialize. We ran into our neighbor Terry and got to show him our gasifier. Our trip to Fort Stockton has been postponed til tomorrow or Wednesday.

Until next time

-Casey

Hello dear readers!

I got a wonderful care package from my grandmother yesterday -- she must be psychic, I think.  The box was crammed with white t-shirts (a commodity out here!) Neosporin and anti-itch cream (the mosquitoes are finally tapering off), along with lots of other goodies.  I am so lucky to have such sweet and caring relatives!

Also we are very happy to have our first official customers! We hope that this is just a sign of wonderful things to come. 

We also got another mono-crystalline solar panel, and our batteries are much happier. We will be testing out a set of composite carbon fiber blades on our wind turbine, and hope to see a power output improvement.  In just a couple of days we will be headed out to meet Dave and family, some fans of the blog, who have a very interesting fiberglass turbine prop some eight feet in diameter.  Expect our wind farm to grow very soon!

This past Saturday we had some neighbors over to pick up some chickens we sold them, though I'm sorry I forgot to bring out the camera.  Tanyah and Tom brought along their three kids to join in the fun of catching and caging the fluff-nuggets (as I call them; their original nickname was the "chicken nuggets," but they have outgrown that moniker). It was a hot day, but it was fun to see the kids so excited over their new hens.

This upcoming Sunday there will be an Independence Day parade in Study Butte, and we are looking forward to joining the procession.  We will need to give the truck a bath and spend the next couple of days working on our "float," but we are looking forward to a fun project.  For any readers who want to attend, the parade starts at 6pm at the Study Butte Mall, and terminates at Kathy's Kosmic Kowgirl Kafe, on FM170.  At the Kafe, the Terlingua Fire and Emergency Medical Services (TFEMS) volunteers will be selling food and drinks.

Now for the bad news.  Casey's Toshiba Satellite L305 is broken AGAIN.  The touch-pad isn't working, and there seems to be a hard drive failure also. As the main computer, it has all of our pictures on it and my web design software (and latest updates, though they can be recovered from the server).  Just like the first time, the Customer Service from Toshiba is a painfully frustrating waste of time.  This computer has turned out to be a total lemon, and we are stuck with it and it's problems.  I reiterate from a previous post: DON'T BUY A TOSHIBA!

Also, unfortunately, our printer kicked the proverbial bucket last week.  We have been giving hand-written estimates to our clients, which doesn't look very professional, but we don't have any other options at this point. We don't have the spare cash to fix or replace anything, so we'll keep trying to work out a solution.

There's always a silver lining, though, and we had to laugh when we saw the following label on the hard disk drive:

Lesson of the Day: Coffee and sewing do not mix well. Jittery hands + sewing needle = pricked fingers.

Stupid Mistake of the Day: ALWAYS shake out your clothes (and shoes) before donning.  Especially if they just came in off the clothesline (extra especially if they fell off the clothesline and had been laying in the grass).

Scorpion in my pants.  Yep, in my pants.  Stung my leg, but at least no worse than a bee sting. As you can see, he/she paid dearly for trying to live in my jeans.

Well, life in the desert is never boring. Although, sometimes I get the impression that people are wont to make their own live-action soap operas out of thin air.  I had applied for a job at the Ranch as a their bookkeeper, but apparently only CPAs qualify (I'd be interested to find out how many of the past bookkeepers had a certificate, but we all know how that would turn out).  Right now the Treasurer's wife is doing the bookkeeping (she is a certified public accountant, and a very savvy lady to boot) on a volunteer basis, and they probably won't hire a replacement until she can't or won't do it any longer. C'est la vie. Eso es la vida.

Our friends Phil and Regina are also in trouble for trying to help their neighbors get water.  Imagine that, trying to buy water in the desert -- how silly! They paid for their troubles, but The Powers That Be are still setting their sights.  No good deed goes unpunished...

On Saturday we did a field check for our neighbor and are writing her up an estimate.  She already has plenty of solar panels, but some unscrupulous (I assume) person told her that they were all broken.  Solar panel don't just stop working all of a sudden unless there is serious, visible damage!  The panels were all FINE, and put out plenty of power.  We will draw up a plan for mounting and wiring them for her, and we hope that she will be pleased with our work.  We certainly will work very hard to get her set up with all the power she needs in a neat and efficient way!

We had some more rain on Friday, and it threatened last night, but the thunderhead skirted us to the west.  I'll have to check John Wells' blog to see if he got any rain off that storm.  It did give us a beautiful photo op, and I'll post the pics of the distant rain at sunset soon! I forgot to bring my camera with me today. 

Thanks for reading!

We got our fair share of rain this week: 1.35" Monday night and 2.25" Tuesday evening. Tuesday we happened to be in Study Butte running errands when on our way home it started to rain hard so we waited it out at Phil and Regina's. When the rain stopped we attempted to drive home, but we happened to be driving the car, and all the roads had washed out pretty badly. I attempted to drive home (not taking Sara's advice to wait until morning), went through some deep water and did some bumper and oil pan damage. After making it through several washouts we came to the East Corazones Draw, which had several feet of fast moving water. We helped some people with 4x4 trucks cross, and then we turned around and spent the night at our friends' house. We got a ride up to our place Wednesday morning and almost everything was OK.

Today I did some work at the ranch and came home to help get ready for the monthly potluck dinner. The potluck was fun; we got to see our friends and meet some new people. I talked to Dean about gasification and he knew quite a bit about the history, including the WWII-era coal-powered Volkswagens.

So that's it for today, thanks for reading.   

Today we had our friends Phil and Regina; Rusty and his daughter Bailey stop by to see our place. Good south Brewster county visiting, talking about solar panels, good wind turbine locations, and wire sizes. We also walked to the top of our mountain (which we need to do more often) and got to see a good birds-eye view of the homestead.

Some very interesting AllEnergies fans have gotten in touch with us, including a family of blacksmiths who make some durable yurts. Their website is www.mountainwindyurts.com and we are going meet up with them in a few weeks to exchange some ideas. They have a wind turbine propeller eight feet in diameter and they are offering us the fiberglass wind turbine prop, which will give us the opportunity to make an awesome new turbine. We're aiming for a permanent magnet, 3 phase generator with a 30 foot tower and a diversion load.

Tomorrow we'll be busy down at the Ranch lodge, but we'll update again soon.