Trouble in the hollow !

On a sad note, my father passed away last sunday. Katie and i went back to Pa. to lay my dad to rest. So no work was done this past week. My heads still in the air but i'm slowly getting things done. My neighbor came down and brush hogged the other side of the creek for hay. When he was done he was kind enough to drag a colvet pipe from one end of our property to the other. I need to put it under the driveway so it stops the erosion and it was to heavy for my loader.Then they invited us up for dinner with his family , burgers , steaks and all the sides. Just what we needed to break the mood of the week. I also did some more framing and we are going to the lumber yard tomorrow to stock up. While we were gone, we had rain and the garden is doing great. My father never got to see the place , which upsets me . I know he would be proud and now has a great view from above ! R.I.P.

Feelin' Hot, Hot , Hot !

So we have put a couple more windows in. I learned today that the end walls are 1" thicker then the sides. The place is starting to look like a home inside now that we can look out. Katie has really adapted to this pioneer living. After being down here in the hollow for a month , I took Katie 45 mins away to dinner at a nice authentic Mexican restaurant tonight. Oh yeh I forgot something , we installed a pool in our spare time, we call it the " Hillbilly Hilton" . Check out the pictures ...

First window is in !

Katie and I worked hard in the heat the last few days. We installed the first windows and it went very well. Its sure nice to get cross ventilation in the house on these hot days. Our next on is for the living room and its 5 ft by 6 ft , should give a nice view. If you decide to take on a project like this , i highly recommend buying or renting a plasma cutter. It has made cutting thru the metal a breeze .

LIFE IS GOOD !

We finished adding the 2 other components to the solar system , the charge controller and the inverter. The last few nights we have watched tv , used the computer and lit some lights , all without the generator. It's nice at night , when it's quiet , not to here the generator. Quess we did it right ! Then i finished the steps , i cut my first set of runners , what a challenge ! Also , we wanted to start a garden , but don't have our tiller here. Surprise ! My neighbors are so great here , they brought there tractor over with the tiller and tilled it for us. Then Katie found me a helper in town . Our first job was to install an electric fence around it so critters don't get in and eat the plants. Again we went solar with the electric fence , its charging the batteries as i'm writing you . Tomorrow i can test it. I needed to rent a generator to start putting windows in but my other neighbor stopped down and yelled at me for not telling him i needed one. That night he brought me one i could borrow ! God i love it here in heaven ! I have the best neighbors ever !!! So tomorrow morning Bubba and I put in the first window ! Talk to ya then .....

Were online here now !

We've been here for 2 weeks now and we have several improvments. It's been raining everyday but 1 since we got here. The mud here sticks to you like glue, so i put some straw down , which helped alot. We love our new honda 2000e generator , it runs our tv , computer and a light or 2 refrigerators and 4 lights.We use our 6500 watt bigger gen. just for power tools and the well pump. Also im working on the deck and front steps , now that the walls are out . I built the frames for the solar panels and ran the wires underground to the house. Katie wired the panels in series and together we wired the charge controller up today. We plan on connecting the inverter tommorrow , the last step. Since the suns suppose to shine tommorrow , we want to test the system we built. Thanks to my brother , Danny, he hooked me up with the batteries, connectors and wire , what a bro. We were able to get dsl here , which allows me to post again. So i can post more often , plus were staying here to work on the house full time.Thanks for your patience, lots more coming !

Back at it again !

Hi again everyone and i am sorry i have not posted in awhile. We were not prepared to spend the winter , so no work was done for me to talk about. We did just get back from our two week stay thru all the rain. Our next big project was to remove some interior walls and start our floor plan layout. The one way to cut these walls is with a grinding wheel ( hard to control & hard on you too! ) another way is to use a cutting torch ( very smokey and alot of sparks and slag !) I opted to use a "Plasma cutter" ( clean cut , low smoke & sparks ,also very fast !) Well i never anticipated how much juice you need to run it . It also needs a compressor with a constant 70lbs to operate the cutter. The air pressure blows the hot steel out of the way , like a cutting torch . I have a 7000 watt generator , which i thought would run both , wrong ! So i had to rent another generator , one to run the cutter , one to run the compressor . Remember were off the grid ! Let me tell ya, i have never used such an awesome tool. Within 2 days , i myself removed all the walls needed , Katie did help pull the pieces out with the atv and winch.It cut a line about 1/16 thick and clean enough there's hardly any grinding. I also spent  two days moving 44 ton of stone we got delivered for our driveway so we could get in and out. Oh yeh and so that direct tv could get in to hook up the dish, so my high maintance wife had tv, lol ! This is quite a venture, living off the grid , building a container home , but as long as we are together , we will always be home.

They fianally did it !

We have been looking for awhile for a stationary backup generator. So when it a cloudy day and we aren't making enough energy from the solar panels, the generator will charge the batteries. I know when looking for a really good , quite generator , your looking for a "Generac"! So i called and told them our cituation and they said none of their backup generators were made to run for long periods of time. They also said "we void the 3 year warrenty as soon as they know your using alternet power source". Because the larger ones are made to run a whole house with everything running at the same time for 2 hours , while the powers out. Not for hours at a time to charge low batteries when the suns not shining ! Were thinking , ' Oh Great , this is going to be a task, just to live comfortably, no warrenty !" UNTIL....GENERAC COMES THRU , JUST IN TIME ! They came out with the first generator to run at lower rpm , which allows the motor to run longer. See , the lower the rpm , the slower the motor runs, the less wear on it. The big ones are screaming to produce all that power for an hour. Here they honor the 3 year warrenty because its made to do just that. Run slower , longer and charge your battieries till there full. YAHOO!!! If your thinking of going solar and wind power , this generator is exactly what you need. Its made to connect right to an inverter to change from dc to ac ! I found a link i'm going to try to post. Give me a a shout if any of what were doing interest you !