Today after a day of not much sunshine, the battery was reading 57% and 12.3v on the Renogy wotsit while my normal voltmeter read 12.2v. Whichever it is, having had clearly several days of 100 combined watts with 20W pointed directly at the sun, it can be safely assumed that the lead-acid batteries are stuffed. One is Harbor Freight and the other is Duracell so neither of them are particularly prestigious brands. By the way in Russian, "Dura" means fool. So "Duracell" or "fool cell" is pretty appropriate. Duracell has never been a particularly worthy brand. In fact the dollar store batteries work better than the Duracell AAs as an example.
57% capacity after just over a year or two years when the batteries have never been run flat and have been kept with constant solar input is really quite unimpressive. In fact it would rather suggest that Duracell and whoever makes the Harbor Freight Thunderbolt Solar battery might be well advised to start making breakfast cereals instead of batteries - something that perhaps they might actually be good at.
So, today I got on with the crush and run. I would have liked to lay more than I did but actually ran out of the stuff. Perhaps I should have ordered 20 tons! I'd measured the bus and the space and a website calculated I needed 3.5 tons. The trucking company suggested 10 tons and they were bang on the money. I had enough left over for other areas and then found even more areas that would benefit.
One thing I did was to make a space to park my car - I'd have liked to put more down so the pickup truck could stand on crush and run since the whole yard is knee deep in nails.
Where the pile was, there's probably a small mound but it would be hard to flatten that mound without digging the crush and run too thin. At one point I did go too deep and saw the grass which was turning yellow. I'll have to deal with the vegetation that has surfaced through the crush and run. Plenty has.
It was suggested that I used weedkiller but honestly I don't want to because of the critters and pets that might get harmed. Somebody suggested a DIY weedkiller that was mainly vinegar based. It was vinegar, epsom salts and washing-up liquid mixed. That's cheap but needs a spray applicator and I don't have one. In the end I decided the best way would be the cheap polyurethene sheeting, cover the area and wait two weeks. That will see all the vegetation dead from no sunlight.
As can be seen, I had space to put some crush and run that might be wide enough for my car - if parked carefully. There wasn't enough for the other side nor for all the other areas I'd like to hit. I will probably have to order more. I'll do that in a couple of weeks - after the weeds have been banished and then my vehicles moved so they stand on the new parking area.
It has been an exhausting few days. The crush and run appeared late afternoon on Wednesday and took til late afternoon Sunday to lay. That's with me using 5,000 year old technology in the form of a shovel. I did look at other alternatives but they were just too costly. I'm pretty sure I needed the exercise anyway.
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