Apparently holding steady

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.

OMG 85% but then what happened?

This afternoon I went to the bus to check the voltages and I could see a very impressive 12.9v and 85% capacity on the battery. It was another really good, sunny day. That looked very promising.

Meanwhile, having not slept too well and having only just about recovered from the dehydration of the day before I didn't start work until well into the afternoon. By then, of course the area in which I was working was shaded by trees. That was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Using a shovel, a repaired rake and my wonky wheelbarrow (yes, the tyre is flat and it leans to one side) I started work. Just look at that equipment. Millennials would throw their hands up in horror - not a switch, a dial or an LCD display anywhere. Fully manual and proven technology. Shovels have been around since the Bronze Age. Wheelbarrows since 200AD and rakes since 1874.  The most modern technology there is a rake invented 150 years ago.

Within a few hours I'd created really quite a good little parking area or rather got a lot further with my parking area. Now I have made a great big howler. I did not put tarp down first and I did not weedwhack the weeds so now they're springing through my crush and run. I'll put a tarp down over it all in a few days. I have to go to Lowes or somewhere to buy a tarp or black groundsheet or something. The alternative is pesticide and I don't want to release chemical toxins into the environment.

By the time I called it a day, I had very little left of my pile of crush and run. That 10 ton pile has now got down to probably about a ton. That I shall use tomorrow to patch areas that are thin, to tidy up the closest edge and to extend in another direction for parking a car. It looks like I might need another 3-5 tons at this stage.

So, back to the batteries. In the evening when I checked, they were hovering around 57% and the Renogy thingy was claiming 12.3v while the other meter was claiming 12.2. Near enough as to make no difference. I'm holding off on new batteries until the RJ45 dongle comes in from China. Then, assuming that works as it should, I should know definitively what is going on as it'll read the settings on the Renogy thing that don't appear on the screen.

Seriously, how half-assed is it for Renogy to flog a Chinese charge controller that collects information but won't let you read it until you buy another gizmo? The Renogy branded gizmo is at least $45. The one that I'm getting from the Chinese virus lab is exactly the same but less than half the price at $18 including $6 shipping. I wasn't about to blow $45 on a gizmo for the Renogy when as my readers already know, I'm unimpressed by anything Renogy pedals.

I did get a pile of 18650 batteries to put together to make a big battery to replace my probably failing lead acid batteries. Then I found the Renogy thingy wasn't ready to accept a 14.8v battery. That puts me back into looking for another battery but all is not lost. I still have use for the batteries. It's a different use and that will have to wait for drone project B or C.

Having got a few things from Aliexpress and found them to be a bit cheaper and better than stuff on eBay, I'll probably turn to Aliexpress for my lithium battery. BangGood was another recommended alternative. Amazon is right off my list and the Walmart site seems just to be a clone of Amazone - same as Newegg is,

Onward and upward. Tomorrow, all being well, I should knock out the rest of that pile of crush and run.

woohoo 80%

My two 10W panels and bright sun brought the battery to a reported 80% but after darkness fell, it was at 57%. This is positively gripping! The voltage before dark was 12.5 and after dark 12.3 on the Renogy thingummy but 12.2 on my desktop meter. Make of that what you will.

I really didn't do much today - I way overdid it yesterday and I'm no spring chicken. I felt every ache today. I was out too long in the heat, doing too much. I was dizzy for the first half of today so I probably got way dehydrated and probably a touch of heat exhaustion.

Today I dug out the rake and raked my piles of crush and run, making a coherant looking driveway. I'd estimate it'll take another day or two days to finish up the crush and run. I still have a massive pile right in the middle of my driveway. The majority will probably be used between the right of the driveway and the telegraph pole on the right, stretching in a triangle to the right, out of the picture.

I have no way of compacting the driveway yet. That's something I've not really worked out. I'm hoping that the rain forecast for next week will do my compacting for me. Out of curiosity I looked up how much it would cost to hire a bobcat to do the work I'm doing with my $40 wheelbarrow and borrowed shovel. It seems that per day excluding fuel it would be something like $300.  At that price I could hire a couple of Mexicans, pay then $20 an hour and get the whole thing done perfectly in about 3 hours! Since I've already forked out $381 on my crush and run, I think I'll keep the rest of my money and do it myself.

Thinking about money, I understand the last of the first round of Covid unemployment and extra $600 a week payments will be ending next week. I never received any of that because I have a steady job. I'm wondering what will happen when those people stop having the steady payments they've had for 3 months because they will be used to them and likely used to spending all that money. It'll be a real hard shock! I'd have been saving that money, myself.

Meanwhile, my very generic bluetooth connector for my Renogy whatsit is apparently on its way from Chnia. Aliexpress tracking indicates it went straight from the warehouse to Chinese customs the same day. The tracking indicates that it's arrived in the USA but also that it's awaiting customs clearance in China so who knows what's happening there. When that arrives, it should (assuming it works as advertised) answer a lot of questions. If not, there's always the replacement battery (which I think is what it's going to end up being).

In other news, I remain highly entertained by the clueless clots offering expert advice online. One of the prize statements today was the flexible solar panels are no good because they all catch fire. If that was true, nobody would make them because they'd be afraid of being sued. Another piece of nonsense came from another prize clot. Apparently a Renogy charge controller will blow up a battery but then the clot announced he used the same Renogy controller as me. Two lots of clueless clots in a day. I wish I could record them giving this bad advice on a video. It'd probably be salable as a comedy video.

52% yet full sun and 100W on 70AH

I had two 10W panels in full sun all day. That should have gathered at least 8 hours of full sun so assuming only 10W was coming from those two panels, that's 80W or 6 2/3 amp hours or possibly even 13 1/3rd amp hours. Add in the other 80W of panels and that's a potential 66 2/3amp hours.

I did order the bluetooth dongle for my charge controller. Maybe that will help to work out exactly what is going on. I do suspect the batteries are worthless. On the other hand since the 30A charge controller throws a fit if I dare to ask 4A of it then it could be that this Renogy Chinese junk is not up to much.

Yesterday at close of play I'd put some piles of crush and run out. Today I spent the whole day working in short bursts in order to deal with the heat.

By the end of the day, the bus parking lot looked like that. There's still a lot of crush and run left. I'd say I probably used 2/3rd of the pile so far. I need to fill in some of the bigger gaps and then add more to the left side. I did locate a rake but it's very well buried in the shed so it'll be a case of taking things out in order to get at it. That's a task in itself.

Once the bus parking is sorted out I'll have to lay some more in order to park my car.  Oh for a mechanical way of doing this. It's hard work. I have blisters, aches and aggravated an old wrist injury that had already been aggravated fairly recently. In fact it was so bad I was losing feeling in my hand.

As far as flattening that crush and run is concerned, all I can do is to rake it. Whether I use real rake or just bolt a piece of angle iron to a length of 2x3 really depends on how I feel tomorrow about digging in the shed. OK. Foregone conclusion - I'll be looking for bolts tomorrow! I won't be able to roll the crush and run but fear not. The weekend and next week are forecast for torrential downpours. The weather will be my roller.

In other news, a roll of conspicuity tape arrived. It's supposed to be orange and is in fact orange which is confusing because all the other conspicuity tape manufacturers call yellow tape, orange and barely yellow white tape, yellow. OK. It makes no sense and I'm as confused as everybody else.

Meanwhile, as many of my regular readers will know, my phone service of choice has been Straight Talk for the past 5 years. I liked it because I got unlimited data when I wanted the unlimited package and could use my phone as a hotspot. Now it appears the unlimited data option has vanished and use of my phone as a hotspot has been blocked. Now that is NOT user friendly. I'm quite disappointed by this as the phone hotspot has been invaluable at times. It makes a bit of a mockery of the advertising for 5 and 25 gigabytes of data on the phone when it's a phone. Who on earth uses more than a few megabytes of data on a phone in a month? If others are like me, my phone is in my pocket 99% of the time, either waiting for calls or making calls. Very occasionally I might look up using GPS or hunt for an address or contact details but that's it.

Occasionally I'd be out in the boonies and would want to send an email. Now it seems that's just impossible. Great work Walmart/Straight Talk/Tracfone - whoever made that stupid decision. It's now a phone service I cannot recommend. They would do that, of course, within 8 months of my buying a new phone that only runs on their network! Talk about welshing on the customer!

Well, the plan for tomorrow is to level all the crush and run then if there's any left over, I'll lay more to the right of what I've laid over the past few days.

100W and not much change

Today I raised the horizontal panels to 20W. At the end of the day despite the battery having shown 67% earlier, the battery was on 57%. The end of day voltage was 12.2v. I really don't seem to be getting that voltage up much. With a drain as high as 0.05A that would represent a 0.6W drain or over 24 hours, 14.4 watt hours. Given a single 10W panel ideally angled, that 14.4 wh drain could reasonably be expected to be overcome in a couple of hours of ideal sun and maybe a few hours of poor sun. As I'm using a total of 100W and still not achieving any gain over what's in the batteries on a daily basis, I'm forced to assume once again that the batteries are stuffed.

Earlier in the day, one of my friends came by. She'd been looking to get into a new hobby so I'd suggested welding. Thus she was interested and now has my old Harbor Freight 70A AC arc welder. That was a pretty darned good welder to be honest but my new DC stick welder beats it hollow. I'm not so struck by the AC wire welder but that might grow on me eventually though I fear it will be more like a monstrous carbuncle. I gave her the welder as a gift. She's happy and I'm happy.

With a crash and a grinding noise, my 10 tons of crush and run arrived. A pleasant, helpful and friendly driver came and dropped his load exactly where needed and avoided the power lines nicely.

Without mechanical means, it will likely take me a week or more to lay all that where it needs to be so I started pretty well straight away, using an old fashioned wheelbarrow and something called a shovel. I'm pretty sure no Millennial will ever have encountered thousands of years old technology like that. Looking it up, we've been using shovels for 5,000 years and wheelbarrows since Chuk Liang of the Chinese Imperial army invented them in AD200. Of course before then we'd have been using a box supported from two poles with somebody at each end carrying it all.

The easiest way of spreading the massive pile would seem to be to put five shovels full into the wheelbarrow (which by now was creaking badly under the weight) and then make little piles very close to each other that can be later spread and merged with a rake. The ideal layer thickness is apparently two inches.

Having put the 32 barrow loads or 160 shovels full of crush and run into place, my back was telling me it was going to be very unhappy tomorrow. It will be very interesting to see how things go tomorrow. I'd imagine that it's going to take a lot more barrow loads than I'd estimated. As this is my first ever venture like this, I hope I'm going to get it right. I'm also hoping I have enough crush and run. This little pile worked out at $381.81. If I'd bought it as the 40lb bags that the DIY places sell then I'd have spent probably $1,500. At $5 for a 40lb bag, it soon adds up to silly money!

When all the barrow loads have been dumped, the piles can be raked so that they merge. Before that, it might be a good idea to hit the grass with some kind of grass killer.

90W today

This morning I checked the power level of the battery having left a 10W panel plugged in and left horizontal. Last night I checked and it was 66% having been up to 72%. This afternoon I checked and it was still on 66% and the battery power used is still 0.03A. Charge coming in when I looked in the late afternoon was 0.66A. This should all be gaining some traction and the battery should be climbing but it doesn't seem to be doing too much. Removing the 15W panel seems to have taken away more than I'd thought.

Today, two things happened. The first was I took the sheet of steel to a place not far away to get the bend put in. That worked really well as can be seen - the panel is now lying flat and conforming to the bend in the back door. That means I can now trim the bottom of the panel to fit the door properly.  Interestingly, the door handle and the hinge look like they're the exact same level. I checked the level with a ruler and found the hinge is a shade lower. That's no biggie. I can line it all up with the door open and see where I need to do work. Once that's all figured out I can drill the bottom line of rivet holes, trim the steel and then paint it all.

The shop where I went was one of those delightful Southern back-country places on a long, winding road. Most of the people working there were older and didn't believe in masks. The comment was made that I had fallen for the mask thing which I responded that as I live with somebody who is immunocompromised I didn't want to take any chances. That received a nod of approval. The old guy doing the steel bending commented on the shallow bend and did his best and got it a bit out but fixed it.

Going to pay was interesting. There was a sign up "minimum $45" but they charged $25. I was asked if I wanted an invoice. At that I realised they were asking if I wanted to record the purchase. After a brief look, I found $25 in notes and gave it to the elderly lady in the office and told here. There - cash. Now the taxman doesn't have to know. She grinned happily at that one. I think I have these Southern places pegged about right. The guy was curious what I wanted it for so I showed a photo of the bus conversion which made him happy.

The other thing was my 2 inch wide conspicuity tape arrived. I've put two pieces on where there wasn't any. I'm waiting now to see how long it remains in place. It's twice as wide as the original tape but that's not a bad thing. It didn't seem to be that sticky but I understand that the glue on those gets stronger as time progresses.

Meanwhile, I ordered my hardcore (crush and run). That arrives tomorrow afternoon. That was $425 approximately. They won't actually bill until it arrives because it could be over or under. It'll be 10 tons approximately. That'll take me a few days to shovel into place. I'll likely just let the rain tamp it down. I could do with a mechanical tamper to tamp it all down but I don't have one. I'm not even sure where to hire one. I'm pretty sure shoveling 10 tons of hardcore (crush and run) will take me a week at least, given the summer temperatures.

120W again

I put the solar panels out - the 40W panels and got 5AH out of them through the day. By the close of play, the battery had risen to 72% but then dropped back to 57%. Meanwhile the load has flickered between 0.00A and 0.05A staying normally around 0.02 and 0.03. That's just totally mysterious because the sole thing running is the door lock controller.

Looking at the figures over the last few days I'm thinking that the 15W panel that was vandalized that I had to take down possibly provided more power than I had thought. It's definitely time to experiment with putting a 10W flexible panel on the roof even if only as a temporary thing.

One of the things that might well be worth putting on is a charge diverter that will allow me to charge the house batteries from the alternator when the engine is on. In fact rather than putting solar panels and charge controllers that might well have been the more sensible and economic thing to do. Having said that, my bus spends the vast majority of its life, stationary.

So, as an experiment, tonight I shall put out a single 10W panel so it'll get the sun from before I get outside until dark. I'm thinking that might well make a huge difference.

Tomorrow I want to see about getting the crush and run, getting my steel panel bent, washing the bus and installing the roof vent. How much of that I actually get done is anybody's guess!