Monkeys with wrenches, Chickens with electricity, and other things that don’t make sense-A day in the life of an off-grid solar installer

[The Chicken]

Here’s a cool time lapse of the first span going up.

 

[Cooter01]

That is a mighty fine erection! Post up those vids on the hub or onlysteel and hello big bucks!

 

[Mandelon]

Holy hell, that steel must have cost a fortune. The odds and ends I buy at Industrial Metal Supply are damn pricey!

 

[rivermobster]

I wonder how long your erection will last? Will you have to see a doctor about it?

 

[The Chicken]

Holy hell, that steel must have cost a fortune. The odds and ends I buy at Industrial Metal Supply are damn pricey!

Well, you have to remember this was 4 years ago.
To say pricing on things is far different now versus then is an understatement.
One of our big dilemmas when we had to decide to pull the trigger was how to afford it. Pricing had already gone up once just during the design phase, and was set to go up for another big hike and when it all came down to it, we had only a few days to take the plunge on a building that was already way over our budget-with our business in a Covid-induced slump and income seriously in question, or pass and hope pricing would go down and our business would recover.
It was stressful to say the least.
We obviously took the plunge, and I'm glad we did-there is no way we could afford this exact same building today as it costs about twice as much as what we paid for it.

 

[The Chicken]

Before sunup on day 3 of the big erection, we went down to the build site to start our day. Hulk the dog was already on site inspecting our work.

Those members of the crew still around showed up awhile later, and things went full speed ahead.
Denise, no stranger to a plasma cutter, jumped on cutting the base channel where needed to make each piece fit anchor bolts, conduits, or whatever.

Pretty rapidly the remaining red iron pieces were being bolted to the building, and the pile of parts was getting pleasantly smaller looking.

By mid day, pretty much all the red iron was in place, and it was time to install some temporary support cables and adjust them to insure the structure stayed plumb and square throughout the rest of the build.

And just like that, there was a building up!

It sure looked impressive and satisfying in the light of that evening.
Surely we would be moving in within a few days as fast as the red iron went up, right?

 

[wash11]

My fondest memories of that building were spending six weeks in a scissor lift, twenty feet high. I'm afraid of heights btw. I almost choked the Chicken a few times.

 

[Yarder]

I'm not sure how I feel about you telling people how much I helped with your erection @The Chicken

 

[The Chicken]

If anyone here has ever built a steel building, you know damn well that the red iron is the fastest, easiest part of the build and always looks impressively fast going up.
The details and sheet metal seem like they take forever.
And that would be doubly so in our case, as the rest of the building construction would be done here and there whenever anyone had time to work on it.
The three days of the red iron construction ( big erection for you perverts) took place October 2-4th, 2020.
The rest of the month would drag by with little visible results, despite a lot of effort going on.
From here on out, the principal “crew” would consist of @wash11 , @Yarder , myself, and our wives over the course of the next couple months on weekends here and there. The girls would make sure we were fed and our coolers were full of beer, and would also help handle whatever else needed done, which unfortunately included cutting a lot of insulation. ITCHY!!!
Here’s Yarder tending to some bracing details in the roof area.

During all of this, I had been having something of a running battle with the utility company about how to get power to the building. I won’t bore you with details, but it took a couple months to hammer out an acceptable solution.
Here’s Joel helping me put the finishing touches on some conduit stub ups for the 400A panel.

I have some cool videos of us doing the exothermic welds for the ground rods that I’ll see if I can get to post. Here’s a still picture of the setup ready to weld.

The underground electrical was finally completed on October 23.
And on the very next day, we finally got to start hanging sheet metal and insulation!
Here’s Yarder up in Joel’s favorite rickity lift, setting the first piece of sheet metal. Another exciting milestone!

By this point, Joel was shit full of that particular lift and refused to go up in it any more. I don’t blame him. That lift with it’s obsolete design and worn out parts sways and moves so much it’s extremely unsettling. Ironically, I too am afraid of heights-I’ve just had to master that fear a little with the work I do.
Once we got a method figured out, we made pretty good progress on the wall. Here is that back wall just 4 hours after hanging the first sheet. Pretty good for three guys whose resumes don't include "professional Steel Building Erector" on them!

By October 31, the back wall was done, and it was time to start the first end wall.

My brother in law made the mistake of showing up, so he got roped into playing building erector.

By November 4th, the back wall and east end wall were completed and looking good!

And that’s not all, the west end wall was about a third of the way done too!

Here’s Denise riveting on some door trim pieces prior to putting the siding up around it.

At this point, progress was slow, but steady, and everyone was pleased with our progress and quality of work.
In short, things were going pretty good!
One thing I’ve learned about construction over the years, and especially construction in remote places-things don’t go pretty good for very long…

 

[The Chicken]

A memory popped up in my phone today that seems relevant to where this thread is currently at.
How Denise and I ended up moving out here is quite the story in itself, and parallels Joel’s Going Off The Grid story.
But that story is for another day.
What’s important is that on September 11, 2016, we hauled the last of our belongings here and officially moved to this little corner out in the sticks.
Here is the picture that Joel took to commemorate the fact that this neighborhood would never be the same.

What makes this picture even more relevant is the fact that where Amy is standing, which in this picture is untouched land, would be where the front of our new shop would be in four years time.

 

[rivermobster]

400 amps and a big ol shop...

 

[Romans9]

As much as everyone talks about @wash11 Joels meat I’m not surprised he can help with an erection.

 

[The Chicken]

One of the biggest challenges we face when we are doing off grid installations in northern Arizona is the weather.
Newcomers just don’t understand-and it usually takes them a couple years of living out here to “get it”.
Someone with a vacation home out in the sticks isn’t likely to grasp the issues either.
And when I talk about weather issues, most of the time what it all comes down to-whether it’s winter, or summer, rain or snow-is one factor:mud.
The mud all around northern Arizona is typically a reddish colored volcanic based high clay content goop. It’s thick, heavy, sticky yet slick as snot down a water slide when wet; and hard as concrete when dry.
The reason this mud presents us so many issues isn’t at first obvious, and there are several issues to consider.
The first issue is what impact vehicular travel on the roads have when they are muddy. In short, even one regular sized 4x4 slogging it out over a muddy road destroys the road. There will be ruts that are from 4-8” deep, criss-crossing the road, often off the road, into the ditches-pretty much deep nasty ruts will be left everywhere and there is nothing anyone can do to fix those ruts until everything dries up. And even once the road is dry, those ruts are damage that require big equipment like a road grader to fix.
The second issue is most of these back roads are privately owned and privately maintained-often enough by the subdivision or property owners association. Most POAs have minimal funding for expensive road maintenance, and there may only be enough in the budget to blade the road once a year-and sometimes there isn’t even that much, or there is no POA and the roads are maintained as best as the locals can with whatever limited resources they have. What all this means is if you go flogging around the muddy roads and tearing them up-you are definitely angering the locals and making their travels miserable for a long time after you’ve had your joyride and left. There’s reasons why most people who live out in these remote areas just stay put when the weather is bad and wait to travel when things are better, and damaging the roads is one of those reasons.
The next issue is vehicle damage. If you take your vehicle down one of these goopy muddy roads, the best case scenario is a very time consuming and expensive car wash. The risk of real vehicle damage is high. Even at low speed, the slop and terrain will trick you or suck your vehicle into a ditch, boulder or tree, and next thing you know you have a flat tire, wrecked fender, or other body damage.
And when that happens, chances are good that you are now also stuck. Stuck in a remote area with little or no cell phone service, and the nearest tow truck hours away. And those tow trucks aren’t really going to do you any good anyway-they can’t help you until the roads dry out enough for them to travel. Locals aren’t really going to want to help you-remember, you just tore up their road, so they are already displeased with you. Furthermore, if they are smart, they have also learned that even if they have heavy equipment that could maybe get you out, running that equipment in the mud has a terribly high operating and cleaning cost.
But if you haven’t lived out in the sticks and experienced all this first hand, it’s hard to comprehend.
I’ve had a few potential customers sorta give me a hard time when I tell them I won’t bring our trucks out to their location if it’s muddy. I’ve gotten a couple comments like” It’s just mud. You must not know how to drive off road, it’s not that big a deal.”
Sigh.
Look, I’ve got well over 30 years experience driving off road. I’ve driven off road desert race vehicles, pre runners, 4x4’s, quads, SXSs, and heavy equipment. I can do things in two wheel drive that most people can’t do with 4 wheel drive. I’ve been in dust, silt, rocks, mud, and everything in between. I’ve been well over a hundred miles an hour in terrain that would destroy a normal vehicle, and I’ve been bound up on the rocks barely moving on three wheels locked in 4low. I was driving off road vehicles as a kid for years before I ever drove anything that touched pavement. In short, I’m no Ivan Stewart, but I absolutely know my way around off road driving of all different kinds.
And one other thing I’ve done that most people haven’t is drive real heavy work trucks off road in adverse conditions.
There is a vast gulf of difference between driving a 6 thousand pound SUV in the mud, and a 12 thousand pound fully loaded work truck in that same mud. And yet another huge difference when you take 50 thousand pounds of semi truck and trailer down dirt roads… The level of difficulty, damage, loss, and the cost of the tow bills for work trucks isn’t even on the same planet as compared to your normal SUV, car, or truck.
All of the above really just deal with trying to GET to a job-we haven’t even started on how terrible it is to try and actually WORK out here when it’s muddy. Miserable just begins to describe it.

Anyway, I thought you all would find our unique problems with the weather and mud in particular interesting and perhaps educational.

In the case of putting our shop together, mud wasn’t an issue-but the weather was about to be.
The last picture I showed you was from November 4th-and the weather was typically of our November weather here-perfect!
But a few days later, the weather started getting weird, and an uncharacteristically early snow storm was headed our way.
Crap!
Our issue now was we had walls with insulation up-but no roof to keep rain or snow from getting into the wall insulation and soaking it-potentially ruining both the insulation and the steel siding from trapped water.
With only a day to try and do something to protect the building and materials, I ran around frantically trying to cover up everything I could.
I rigged a makeshift cover made from tarp scraps over the tops of the walls to keep out the rain and snow that was bearing down on us.
In the last light of November 8th, I had everything battened down as best as I could as the snow began to fall.
The next morning looked like this:

The tarps worked, and a day later, everything was dried out and fine. But we had bigger problems on the horizon-an even larger storm was on its way and was set to hit in a couple days. And i was having to admit that with our limited manpower and no reach lift, setting those 35 foot long roof panels was looking difficult at best, and downright dangerous.
So in a jam, and sort of in a panic, I called someone I knew who had a steel building contractor working as one of their subs and begged him to send a crew over ASAP ahead of the storm to get us dried in.
Their B team showed up the morning of the 11th, and by days end they had the rest of the walls up and the first roof panels in place.

On the 12th, they showed back up and finished the roof, and just like that, the shop was finally dried in.

The steel building crew certainly bailed us out, and got us dried in, and for that I’m thankful.
But the quality of their work left a lot to be desired with damaged roof panels, insulation not properly flashed or trimmed, and the wall panels not hung quite right. Not the end of the world, and the building will survive, but disappointing.
Sometimes you just gotta move on.
And so we did.
At this point, the building looks done, but there is a TON more left to do to make it complete or usable.
Stay tuned!

 

[WTMFA]

That was awhile ago!
What buggy did you have that I worked on? I worked on a bunch back in the day.
That green blazer is still around.
In fact, the owner recently contacted me about possibly doing a whole new powertrain swap in it. Don’t know if that will happen or not, but you never know.

It was a Suspensions Unlimited that I crashed and it needed a new rear engine cage. You made a full length aluminum skid plate for it as well

 

[The Chicken]

The rest of the shop construction would grind on for about another year, with Joel, Amy, Denise and myself working on it when we could during the long, wet winter months.
Just a day after the roof was on, I rigged up some temporary lighting using a trio of LED high bay lights I had laying around.
I pulled Ol Yeller in to take a couple pictures.
This was the most room the shop would ever have, as from this point on, it would slowly fill up-first with construction materials to finish the building, then with tools, parts, and equipment.

Throughout the following months, the roll up bay doors got installed, I ran all the water lines in the shop, and generally got everything ready to install the interior sheet metal.
By February, about half the interior sheet metal and second layer of insulation was installed and it was time to start putting some real electrical in the place.

Here’s part of the first batch of conduit and electrical parts. It’s a lot.

At some point, I coaxed Joel back into a scissor lift-but only because this was our better, more stable one.

By March 2021, a good portion of the conduit was ran for the first 200A panel, which is outside the building opposite the gutter in this picture.
Steel buildings are always a bit of a challenge to run conduit and make it look nice.

By the end of April, the real lighting had been fully installed, and I had the majority of the electrical completed.

One last exterior item remained to be done, and it was too cold to do all winter-besides, we were plenty busy with everything the inside needed.
By July, the inside was complete enough that we could move back outside to address something that really need to happen before monsoon season really hit full stride-the missing rain gutters.
And so, over the course of several hot and humid summer days, Denise and I tackled installing the rain gutters.

We managed to get all the gutters up, and the rear down spouts before the first big monsoon.
But just as we finished the front gutters-with no cutouts yet for the down spouts-the first big monsoon hit-and it was a monster!
The problem was, that rain gutter was going to fill up and likely collapse because there was no drains on it.
In a frenzy, I hopped on the rickety scissor lift in a torrential downpour, with lightning touching off all around close-REALLY close-to us and the deafening roar of thunder constantly in my ears.
Up I went, barely able to see in all the rain, and started making holes with the cordless DeWalt drill and tin snips.
Somehow I jammed through the first three holes without incident, and even managed to get the size and shape of the holes good enough to accept the downspouts later.
On the forth and final hole, the trusty DeWalt drill finally died -it gave its last breath as the last hole punched through. It was a miracle it lasted that long-it was pretty much drilling under water the whole time.
With the holes in the gutter and disaster averted, Denise and I-soaking wet-hid in the shop while the storm grew in intensity and then finally blew itself out.

By August, the second 200A panel was up and I was mostly done with its conduit and wiring. Here’s the phase converter all wired up and ready to run our machines.

By the end of August, the building was just about as done as it was going to be, somewhere in there we got our final inspection, and it was time to start moving tools and equipment in.
Here’s how it looked.

The next thing I want to show you, is a very special vehicle that got to move into the shop after being locked up in a shipping container for five years.
It was an exciting thing to drag it out into the light of day and see it again.
I think many of you here will dig it, and if I’m not mistaken, get your attention.

 

[The Chicken]

It was a Suspensions Unlimited that I crashed and it needed a new rear engine cage. You made a full length aluminum skid plate for it as well

Ah yes!
Weren’t you like member #3 or something over on Glamis Dunes! Ian, IIRC?
Or do I have the wrong car/person?

 

[rivermobster]

The rest of the shop construction would grind on for about another year, with Joel, Amy, Denise and myself working on it when we could during the long, wet winter months.
Just a day after the roof was on, I rigged up some temporary lighting using a trio of LED high bay lights I had laying around.
I pulled Ol Yeller in to take a couple pictures.
This was the most room the shop would ever have, as from this point on, it would slowly fill up-first with construction materials to finish the building, then with tools, parts, and equipment.
View attachment 1427966

View attachment 1427967

Throughout the following months, the roll up bay doors got installed, I ran all the water lines in the shop, and generally got everything ready to install the interior sheet metal.
By February, about half the interior sheet metal and second layer of insulation was installed and it was time to start putting some real electrical in the place.
View attachment 1427968

View attachment 1427969

Here’s part of the first batch of conduit and electrical parts. It’s a lot.
View attachment 1427970

At some point, I coaxed Joel back into a scissor lift-but only because this was our better, more stable one.
View attachment 1427971

By March 2021, a good portion of the conduit was ran for the first 200A panel, which is outside the building opposite the gutter in this picture.
Steel buildings are always a bit of a challenge to run conduit and make it look nice.
View attachment 1427972

By the end of April, the real lighting had been fully installed, and I had the majority of the electrical completed.

View attachment 1427973

View attachment 1427974

One last exterior item remained to be done, and it was too cold to do all winter-besides, we were plenty busy with everything the inside needed.
By July, the inside was complete enough that we could move back outside to address something that really need to happen before monsoon season really hit full stride-the missing rain gutters.
And so, over the course of several hot and humid summer days, Denise and I tackled installing the rain gutters.
View attachment 1427976

We managed to get all the gutters up, and the rear down spouts before the first big monsoon.
But just as we finished the front gutters-with no cutouts yet for the down spouts-the first big monsoon hit-and it was a monster!
The problem was, that rain gutter was going to fill up and likely collapse because there was no drains on it.
In a frenzy, I hopped on the rickety scissor lift in a torrential downpour, with lightning touching off all around close-REALLY close-to us and the deafening roar of thunder constantly in my ears.
Up I went, barely able to see in all the rain, and started making holes with the cordless DeWalt drill and tin snips.
Somehow I jammed through the first three holes without incident, and even managed to get the size and shape of the holes good enough to accept the downspouts later.
On the forth and final hole, the trusty DeWalt drill finally died -it gave its last breath as the last hole punched through. It was a miracle it lasted that long-it was pretty much drilling under water the whole time.
With the holes in the gutter and disaster averted, Denise and I-soaking wet-hid in the shop while the storm grew in intensity and then finally blew itself out.
View attachment 1427977

By August, the second 200A panel was up and I was mostly done with its conduit and wiring. Here’s the phase converter all wired up and ready to run our machines.
View attachment 1427978

By the end of August, the building was just about as done as it was going to be, somewhere in there we got our final inspection, and it was time to start moving tools and equipment in.
Here’s how it looked. View attachment 1427981

The next thing I want to show you, is a very special vehicle that got to move into the shop after being locked up in a shipping container for five years.
It was an exciting thing to drag it out into the light of day and see it again.
I think many of you here will dig it, and if I’m not mistaken, get your attention.

 

[WTMFA]

Ah yes!
Weren’t you like member #3 or something over on Glamis Dunes! Ian, IIRC?
Or do I have the wrong car/person?

My name is Ian and I am a member of GD but it's my buddy Steve (fasthijumper) who was member number 3. You've got a great memory tho, I'm impressed!

 

[WTMFA]

That there is fukkin funny!

 

[FlatNv]

impressive!, great thread!!
I can relate to road maintance , good neibhors are invalubale !

 

[The Chicken]

Ok, so a slight detour from the shop construction.
I’m pretty excited to share this post.
The few of you here from the old GD.com days may remember this vehicle, its story, and may have guessed what I’m about to post.
I’d like to introduce the rest of you to Project Bronco-Denise’s 1974 Bronco, or what’s left of it.
Project Bronco is a six month long makeover that has been going on for something like 29 years now.
Here’s what it looked like when I drug it out of the shipping container it had been trapped in for several years and towed and pushed it through the mud and into the new shop.

Even though it had crap like shop barstools stacked all over and in it, it was exciting to see it again!
Here is Denise standing next to it. It’s sitting on the bump stops.

And here it is with the front end lifted to the limit straps. The ol horse has some serious wheel travel after I designed and built it a new suspension.

Project Bronco is a pretty rad deal. When I have some time, and if there’s interest, I’ll post up some more pictures and some of its back story.
For now, here’s a video that’s fun.

 

[rivermobster]

Ok, so a slight detour from the shop construction.
I’m pretty excited to share this post.
The few of you here from the old GD.com days may remember this vehicle, its story, and may have guessed what I’m about to post.
I’d like to introduce the rest of you to Project Bronco-Denise’s 1974 Bronco, or what’s left of it.
Project Bronco is a six month long makeover that has been going on for something like 29 years now.
Here’s what it looked like when I drug it out of the shipping container it had been trapped in for several years and towed and pushed it through the mud and into the new shop.
View attachment 1428634

Even though it had crap like shop barstools stacked all over and in it, it was exciting to see it again!
Here is Denise standing next to it. It’s sitting on the bump stops.

View attachment 1428636

And here it is with the front end lifted to the limit straps. The ol horse has some serious wheel travel after I designed and built it a new suspension.
View attachment 1428637

Project Bronco is a pretty rad deal. When I have some time, and if there’s interest, I’ll post up some more pictures and some of its back story.
For now, here’s a video that’s fun.

View attachment 1428638

 

[The Chicken]

Don’t look now-but we are back out in the field!
Today was mostly getting there, meetings, and getting set up.
And a whole new truck load of parts:

And a little bit of conduit.

Got to spend a few minutes and check out one of my favorite spots here. Love those spruce trees!!

Some of the locals were out getting a drink at the local watering hole.

Some of the other locals checking us out.

Tomorrow the real work Starts…

 

[The Chicken]

So this week we have been back up at the Camp on Mingus Mountain, and while we’ve been busy, there hasn’t been much that was picture worthy, and we’ve busy enough that getting pictures has been low on our priority list.
We had several days of meetings with the camp staff, tidying up a few loose ends, and planning the next steps-for this location and our next several jobs.
One really cool thing has been this beautiful full harvest moon at night. Once the moon clears the tree tops, it’s lit up like daylight and it’s simply magical out. It’s also the start of Elk mating season, so the early mornings and throughout the night, the empty camp-which we once again have to ourselves-has been echoing with the sounds of bull elk up on the ridge bugling and grunting.
If you’ve never heard the strange call of a bull elk trumpeting out in the still forest night, you’re missing an almost other-worldly experience.
Here’s a picture of the moon coming up through the trees. It’s so much better in person.

One of the loose ends we had to tie up was removing a bunch of old lead acid batteries from one of the previously installed mini solar systems that was on site.
At ten years old, these batteries were pretty much toast.
As if messing with old nasty acid covered batteries wasn’t enough-rodents had gotten into the battery storage area, and did what rodents do best-destroy everything in sight, and urinate and defacate on everything as well.
Having unfortunately delt with this too many times in the past, and knowing that the spaces rodents have taken over are a serious health hazard, we dressed up for the occasion.

Surprise! The glamorous life of off-grid solar installers isn’t actually so glamorous!

Here’s the old 48 volt battery setup being removed. These are Rolls flooded lead acid batteries-once the best option available for battery backup installations. Times have changed for sure!

It’s amazing how much damage the battery acid does to the concrete.

And the years of corrosive gasses take their toll on the surrounding building framing as well.

Now the camp staff will clean this room up, rebuild the inside and seal it off from the vermin, and it will become a nice storage room.

 

[The Chicken]

Alright!
We spent a long week on the job, got a bunch of odds and ends taken care of, then headed home for a nice, carefree, relaxing weekend doing nothing, right?
Insert record scratching noise here.
Well, there wasn’t a whole lot of doing nothing going on. @wash11 blew a seal on their backhoe a couple weeks ago, which landed it in our shop, and one blown ram seal repair somehow morphed into a lot of other work.
Joel’s brother in law somehow got roped into the mess, so he and I spent a day taking apart the rear of the backhoe in between drinking beers.
Here’s our weekend in pictures.

The greasy nasty part of the extend-a-hoe.
I’m sure some of you are looking at this picture and thinking “reminds me of my ex. “

Had to fire up the steam cleaner to get the nasty off some of the stuff.

Joel came prepared with a rain suit to keep him reasonably clean. I was already covered in oil and grease, so I didn’t suit up. We took turns drinking beer and running the pressure gun and removing grease from the tractor and blasting it on anything within a 20’ radius.

 

[Waterjunky]

Damm, you really did open that thing up.

That's a surprising amount of work to tear apart. The farm shop I grew up in tore one down and fully rebuilt it when I was in high school.

 

[The Chicken]

This week has been a bit crazy.
A bunch of time got sucked up by circumstances beyond our control that limited how much work we were able to get done-but we did get good progress on our current project.
When we arrived on site on Monday, the entire rest of the day got used up in zoom meetings, phone calls and emails trying to straighten out some issues with another job. By the time we got done with that mess, it was almost 5 pm and the day was lost to us.
So we decided to take up the offer of one of the camp staff members and go for a short hike that promised great sunset views. They have been trying to get us to do this for over a month, and we just haven’t had the time. Seeing as this day was lost to us work-wise, we might as well do something fun.
First we drove the Ranger up the road an eighth of a mile or so to his cabin-he owns one of only about 8 private properties hidden away in this little paradise.

In true hiking purest form, we had a pre hike meeting on his cabin deck, and had a couple of beers and some cheese and crackers. Jokes were told, exaggerated tales of all our misadventures were exchanged.
After a proper pre-hiking beer buzz was accomplished, we began our trek to higher ground to check out the views.
We found this huge old gnarled juniper tree on the way.

We also found this huge horny toad!

Upon our arrival at the summit after a vigorous 45 minute steep uphill hike, we discovered two things.
1-we are out of shape for these steep hikes in the mountains.
2-We had sadly lost our excellent buzz.
Fortunately, we are a bunch that travels prepared, and tequila, more cheese and crackers, and more beers were magically produced from backpacks and carry bags, and we quickly set the mood back to where it needed to be as the sun said it’s daily fair well.

The views didn’t disappoint, even though the pictures are not really that great. We could see all of Prescott Valley laid out before us, as well as parts of Prescott, Dewey, a lot of the 89a, Bill Williams mountain off towards Williams, and more.

Once it got dark, the lights of civilization sprinkled the high desert all around below us.

Now that it was fully dark, all we had to do was get 4 tipsy people off the mountain through some pretty rugged terrain with a total of one and a half functioning flashlights.
Needless to say, we all survived the hike back, and being pro drinkers-er, I mean hikers-nobody even fell down in the dark and we all made our way unerringly back to the cabin porch.
Whereupon we discovered that once again our buzz had been somewhat tamed by all that hiking, and another round of beers was deemed necessary.
It seems our drinking team has a hiking problem.

 

[Mandelon]

I know y'all work hard, but this seems way better than a real job.

 

[The Chicken]

So for the last couple of weeks, in between other work interruptions and boozy nature hikes-we have been adding a complete electrical system to the building that houses the inverters, batteries and solar up here on the mountain.
We had anticipated the need for this with our solar installation, and so had provided a main distribution panel when we did that work, so we had a head start there, and just needed to install the necessary branch circuits with their conduits, wiring, devices, and a strut support system.
This building, in addition to housing the entire camps power generation system, will also be used as a storage facility, workshop, and the covered open air portion will be used for educational activities such as gymnastics, welding, pottery, and performing arts classes, and for other events such as weddings, reunions, and business retreat activities.
To that end, we needed to provide basic lighting, convenience outlets and some speciality outlets for things like kilns, welders, and smaller 240 volt equipment.

One thing I hadn’t gotten to show yet is the entry to the camp. It’s pretty cool.
Here’s Denise letting us in on a Monday morning with the keys to the place we have been given.

After you get into the private property, there is a second gate and sign. This gate is really cool, but doesn’t really get used anymore.

This sign just inside of that second gate gives you an idea of this place’s history with that date!

Back at the Pavilion, which is what they call the building that houses the solar system where we have been working, we had been busy installing hundreds of feet of conduit, boxes, devices, lights and wiring.
It’s kinda hard to see, but here’s some of the outside conduits and lights installed up in the roof area. On the far exterior wall, you can see the conduits and boxes that will house the 50amp 240 volt and 120 volt GFI outlets.

Here is the inverter room/mezzanine area all lit up. Finally, now that we no longer need to see to work in there.

This Monday, about halfway through the day, a pretty good sized rain storm rolled in. Thankfully we were able to keep working as we were under the roof and up high in @wash11 favorite lift.

The storm also gave us a chance to see our dirt work/drainage that we had built for them in action, and it was satisfying to see the runoff water going where it was supposed to.

Here’s Denise safe from the rain trimming out some outlets.

And finally, on Tuesday evening, everything was all wired up and we could test out the open area lights.

It’s pretty satisfying to see this building all lit up and with a complete and functioning power generation and distribution system. It’s now complete and ready to serve its purpose for many years to come.
And for us, it would seem our work here should finally be complete after over two months of camping out here at this beautiful location.
At least that’s what it looks like, but-spoiler alert!-we are not done yet! Stay tuned!

 

[Yarder]

I heard that there might be some exciting additions getting turned on at the camp this Friday...

 

[monkeyswrench]

I heard that there might be some exciting additions getting turned on at the camp this Friday...

Please say it's a disco ball and a kegerator That place is looking so cool. A remote place, time warp from the 50's, with modern stuff now to keep lights on.

The concept that it can do that, and power welders and even kilns too, is really impressive. Those things pull more juice than I knew you could power with solar.

 

[Taboma]

Given that the NEC isn't always governed by what we might perceive as being common sense or even logical, and without a doubt your craftsman ship is superb.
After noticing a few things only a fellow sparky might notice, yet common sense would approve, are you subject to the oft nonsensical whims of inspectors ?

 

[rivermobster]

Awesome thread. I LOVE all the hiking/nature pics.

The wiring work is splendid as well.

 

[The Chicken]

Given that the NEC isn't always governed by what we might perceive as being common sense or even logical, and without a doubt your craftsman ship is superb.
After noticing a few things only a fellow sparky might notice, yet common sense would approve, are you subject to the oft nonsensical whims of inspectors ?

LOL.
I wondered if this question would come up.
This particular facility is beyond county inspection. I imagine they could elect to get inspected if they wanted to-but their location and very nature and age of some of the structures would make that an expensive challenge, to say the least.
The particular county that they would have to use is known to be extremely difficult to work with, and that's putting it politely.
I usually recommend customers opt for getting work inspected by whatever AHJ applies, if for no other reason it can help with their property values come resale time. It also helps keep contractors honest-there's a lot of contractors who will cut big corners if they think they can get away with it.
For this installation, that option did not make sense for them (their decision) and I actually agree.
For us, it matters little if a project is being inspected or not-we do every job as if it is, and every job is done with applicable Codes in mind. At the end of the day, inspected or not, if there is ever any sort of issue with a property, the last thing I want is for our work to even be able to be questioned-so we do it to the best of our ability and judgement, and it's one less thing for me to loose sleep over. Or at least-I loose minimal sleep over.

The Code can be a tricky thing. It's a huge legal document written in legal terms and it's not always as clear as one would like it to be. And not all inspectors or counties or AHJs see it the same or enforce the same codes the same way. And to be fair, there have been a few times in my career that I've been called out on something by an inspector and it turns out I should have been. There have been a couple of times I have been called out and had to prove myself right too. The relationship between inspectors and contractors doesn't need to be a battle-nor should it be. At the end of the day, we all want safe, reliable installations. We all live and learn and adapt.

If you see something that you question, or that you noticed and are curious about, ask me. As this is a public forum, anything I post here is subject to scrutiny anyway. And I'm not above learning something new-when you quit learning, you die.

 

[Taboma]

LOL.
I wondered if this question would come up.
This particular facility is beyond county inspection. I imagine they could elect to get inspected if they wanted to-but their location and very nature and age of some of the structures would make that an expensive challenge, to say the least.
The particular county that they would have to use is known to be extremely difficult to work with, and that's putting it politely.
I usually recommend customers opt for getting work inspected by whatever AHJ applies, if for no other reason it can help with their property values come resale time. It also helps keep contractors honest-there's a lot of contractors who will cut big corners if they think they can get away with it.
For this installation, that option did not make sense for them (their decision) and I actually agree.
For us, it matters little if a project is being inspected or not-we do every job as if it is, and every job is done with applicable Codes in mind. At the end of the day, inspected or not, if there is ever any sort of issue with a property, the last thing I want is for our work to even be able to be questioned-so we do it to the best of our ability and judgement, and it's one less thing for me to loose sleep over. Or at least-I loose minimal sleep over.

The Code can be a tricky thing. It's a huge legal document written in legal terms and it's not always as clear as one would like it to be. And not all inspectors or counties or AHJs see it the same or enforce the same codes the same way. And to be fair, there have been a few times in my career that I've been called out on something by an inspector and it turns out I should have been. There have been a couple of times I have been called out and had to prove myself right too. The relationship between inspectors and contractors doesn't need to be a battle-nor should it be. At the end of the day, we all want safe, reliable installations. We all live and learn and adapt.

If you see something that you question, or that you noticed and are curious about, ask me. As this is a public forum, anything I post here is subject to scrutiny anyway. And I'm not above learning something new-when you quit learning, you die.

I grew up with a father that became the International President of the International Association of Electrical Inspectors, and worked with UL to co-author certain sections of the NEC. Herb Ufer of UL, was a dear family friend and a brilliant electrical engineer.

When I initially started my IBEW apprenticeship I was placed with the largest ding-bat electrical contractor in Orange County. Just so happens that the King of this Ding-Batting empire was the driving force behind the introduction of Aluminum romex in Orange County.
His motivation being the railroad cars filled with the shit that he'd been given for pennies so he'd lobby on their behalf for approval.

So imagine, my boss is at war with my dad and visa versa over the struggle of him trying to lobby the OC Board of Supervisors to allow it, while my dad was fighting him vigorously to prevent it.
To make life even more interesting, it was already legal in Huntington Beach /Fountain Valley and I was roping and trimming homes with the crap daily.
18 and still living at home, this placed me in a rather awkward position as nightly dinner conversation could have easily been mistaken as the Spanish Inquisition.
Dad lost the fight initially, got pissed and retired. A couple of years later, when homes started burning in Mission Viejo, the BOS apologized, banned AL NM cable and he returned for a few more years, mostly for the extra retirement dollars and to " I told ya so" gloat.

So yeah, had a bit of experience with inspectors both before and during my almost 50 years in the business.
There was that one time that one of my dad's inspectors tried to extort a pay-off from me in order to pass my perfectly code legal tilt-up job. I got a chuckle out of that, since obviously he hadn't a clue who he was f*cking with. Needless to say, being an inspector was a very short gig for this clown.

I just appreciate your interesting contribution to RDP, especially enjoy sitting on my retired ass watching others do interesting work.

If I wanted to discuss or squabble over the finer nuances of the trade or code, I'd join Mike Holt.com. No thanks.
I will participate in some electrical threads on RDP, but learned the hard way a few years back on RDP, even helpful assistance can get you metaphorically shot in the ass, so I'm far more cautious regarding the What and With Whom.

Mostly the reason behind the question was, In '04 when we purchased our 40 acres, located in Spring Valley Ranches, Hackberry and a couple of years later when we did some extensive grading, permits and inspections weren't required. I think it was within the past five years the permitting requirements changed.

Thanks again for the entertaining thread and posts.

 

[monkeyswrench]

A question for sparky's, and other trades: on two occasions I ran into issues where the engineering didn't agree with code, code didn't agree with material manufacturer...and all three weren't going to stop water intrusion in my case. Is this a problem in other trades with what I consider "newer" techniques or materials?

In my first occasion, I was called to a severe membrane leak. I told property owner what I thought the problem was. Several weeks later, there were a herd of people on the deck...including an angry contractor, a city fella, a sales rep, 2 lawyers, building owner...and one scared monkey I explained that I felt the order of operations was messed up, and allowing the failure of a new membrane. Contractor points to sales rep, because that's what their engineers said to do. City guy said it didn't look quite right, but looked like a good instalation...WTF?!

On the second, I did the install. This time, the inspector called me out because the flashing didn't match the detail. Same issue as last, but I did a preemptive change. (I didn't want to be paying for damages, or paying for a lawyer) Thankfully, this inspector was bright enough to understand my explanation, and drawings, and said he could see what problems could have occurred.

This was 20ish years ago, and pvc membranes were not new, but not every inspector had seen them. With solar stuff, I can see it being the same in some areas. Not new, but not everyday in some cities or counties.

And to back up Chicken, my current county can leave some to be desired. I had an inspector that, I kid you not, was a dog catcher the month before

 

[wishiknew]

I grew up with a father that became the International President of the International Association of Electrical Inspectors, and worked with UL to co-author certain sections of the NEC. Herb Ufer of UL, was a dear family friend and a brilliant electrical engineer.

When I initially started my IBEW apprenticeship I was placed with the largest ding-bat electrical contractor in Orange County. Just so happens that the King of this Ding-Batting empire was the driving force behind the introduction of Aluminum romex in Orange County.
His motivation being the railroad cars filled with the shit that he'd been given for pennies so he'd lobby on their behalf for approval.

So imagine, my boss is at war with my dad and visa versa over the struggle of him trying to lobby the OC Board of Supervisors to allow it, while my dad was fighting him vigorously to prevent it.
To make life even more interesting, it was already legal in Huntington Beach /Fountain Valley and I was roping and trimming homes with the crap daily.
18 and still living at home, this placed me in a rather awkward position as nightly dinner conversation could have easily been mistaken as the Spanish Inquisition.
Dad lost the fight initially, got pissed and retired. A couple of years later, when homes started burning in Mission Viejo, the BOS apologized, banned AL NM cable and he returned for a few more years, mostly for the extra retirement dollars and to " I told ya so" gloat.

So yeah, had a bit of experience with inspectors both before and during my almost 50 years in the business.
There was that one time that one of my dad's inspectors tried to extort a pay-off from me in order to pass my perfectly code legal tilt-up job. I got a chuckle out of that, since obviously he hadn't a clue who he was f*cking with. Needless to say, being an inspector was a very short gig for this clown.

I just appreciate your interesting contribution to RDP, especially enjoy sitting on my retired ass watching others do interesting work.

If I wanted to discuss or squabble over the finer nuances of the trade or code, I'd join Mike Holt.com. No thanks.
I will participate in some electrical threads on RDP, but learned the hard way a few years back on RDP, even helpful assistance can get you metaphorically shot in the ass, so I'm far more cautious regarding the What and With Whom.

Mostly the reason behind the question was, In '04 when we purchased our 40 acres, located in Spring Valley Ranches, Hackberry and a couple of years later when we did some extensive grading, permits and inspections weren't required. I think it was within the past five years the permitting requirements changed.

Thanks again for the entertaining thread and posts.

You talking bad about Jackie McGee head ding-bat LOL

 

[Taboma]

You talking bad about Jackie McGee head ding-bat LOL

Essentially the same, just different names. In 1966 I was working for Baum Electric, Brian Vaughn was the owner. The comical thing is, he knew who I was, and if we ran into each other, he'd always greet me and mention "Oh, I saw your dad yesterday, be sure to give him my best". Whenever I relayed that message, my dad's response was a long string of four letter words in rapid succession.
So if your house burned in Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, or Mission Viejo, blame that asshole and/or probably the king of "Scare the ole folks into an upsale" McGee Electric.
Seems like all apprentices do their one obligatory year wiring tract houses. Year # 2 started with apartment complexes, but at least those in those days were roped in flex and you got practice tugging wires.
Seems I couldn't get away from Aluminum -----
The first apartment complex I did was in Irvine, close to the then under construction UCI. That project become a test subject for Reynolds Aluminum who was just introducing aluminum flex.
They were perfecting their machines and trying to get the best combo of flexibility, yet not so loose that the convulsions would rip when we were roping it. The rep would even buy us lunch for answering their questions and giving opinions. Sure was one hell of a lot lighter, easier to work with and easy to cut compared to steel. The down side was some it was so only that by the end of the day you looked like a mechanic. Grounding didn't matter, since by then flex was requiring a separate ground anyway.
Another apprentice and myself were such a great roping team, the contractor was paying us 2nd year apprentices journeyman wages --- that'll spoil ya. Of course that wasn't info we shared with others. Smith and Moser out of Long Beach was that company.

 

[HubbaHubbaLife]

Greetings! I have been wanting to write some stories to post up on RDP for years because I figure a lot of people here would really enjoy them.

A very few of you here may recall my stories back in the good ‘ol days of Glamisdunes.com.

The problem is putting these tales together takes quite a bit of time-something I seem to lack anymore.

Well, recent events made me decide I need to at least take a stab at sharing some of my misadventures, so here goes my first installment.

My stories have typically been about my personal experiences, and usually involve my work, and all the messed up situations I somehow find myself in, all the messed up things I find myself working on, and occasionally, the cool shit I get to do when it’s not all going to hell. I expect this story will be no different.

Sit back, relax, and I hope you all enjoy the ride!



First, a little background for context.

My wife, Denise, and I own and operate an electrical contracting business. It’s small. Really small-her and I are currently the entire company. We do everything from initial point of contact with a customer through the actual field work and everything in between. Currently, and for a number of years now, our primary focus is on off-grid solar system installations. We have had the great good fortune to work on a lot of really neat projects for a lot of really great people. We generally handle an entire installation in-house; secondary design considerations, setting the ground mount arrays, trenching, conduit, wiring, inverters, batteries-the whole job from start to finish and often a lot more than just installing the power system.

In order to do that, we have an arsenal of cool tools to enable us to punch above our weight, so to speak.

If people here seem interested, perhaps I will do a thread on our gaggle of cool tools, but in the interest of getting this story moving, lets jump into this past Mondays misadventures.


View attachment 1412356

This is how we roll out to a typical job. I drive the Freightliner service truck and tow whatever equipment we need, and Denise drives the F-350 service truck and drags along our heavily modified toyhauler that is our mobile office and living quarters.

This past Monday, after a day and a half of loading up equipment and supplies, and dealing with a lot of issues in the process, we left our home base in Fort Rock, and headed East for the Prescott area for a pretty big job up in the Mingus Mountains at a 4H camp there that is completely off grid and in dire need of a power upgrade.

It’s a job that has taken over 6 months to put together, and has had a lot of delays and hurdles to clear, so finally getting to head out and do the work was pretty exciting!

Typically, I let Denise lead and I follow, which works out well because I have a lead foot and she keeps me from going too fast. The trip went pretty well, considering that we got a late start, all the way to Chino Valley. There we began the dreaded run through all the round-abouts they have installed there. God-those get old!

We survived the round-abouts and down-town traffic and somehow miraculously managed to even stay together through all the traffic. Finally, we left Prescott Valley in our rear view and began the long pull up the mountain from Prescott Valley to the summit of Mingus mountain.

If you’ve never gone up the 89a from Prescott Valley to Mingus Mountain, you’re missing out-it’s beautiful.

View attachment 1412358

Unless you are towing big long heavy trailers, in which case, you are not missing out, as the route is one of the steepest, most winding, and narrowest paved roads in the state, and the beauty of the drive will likely be lost to you as you work to get all your crap up the road safely. The route climbs about 2000 feet in about 4 miles, with most of the elevation change taking place in the last half of the climb up.

Denise had been dreading this part of the trip due to its steep grade, extremely sharp turns, and little margin for error, so she was pretty tense by the time we started the ascent. I was able to talk to her on the CB and hopefully help her out, and fortunately, traffic was pretty light.

I wasn’t surprised when she made the whole trip up like a boss without a glitch and picked perfect lines the whole way.

It wasn’t exactly a picnic for me behind her in the Freight Shaker as I weighed close to 50 thousand pounds and the road was steep enough and the turns tight enough, that I was in the low range of the 10 speed gear box and trying to keep my momentum and speed just right to avoid too many gear shifts that I could potentially screw up. LOL.

It was with great relief that we finally hooked a right at the summit to get off the 89a and onto the backroads with less pressure!

That relief was to be short lived.

I had dropped down into second to make the turn off, and once straightened out, I picked up speed and upshifted to third on the steep hill.

And that’s when everything went to shit.

I executed what felt like a perfect 2-3 shift, hit the accelerator pedal and-nothing!

What the hell? It took me a few seconds to get sorted out as the truck was rapidly losing all forward momentum on the steep hill, but I finally realized that the engine has died.

Shit!

I radio Denise that I have a dead truck, but she has little choice but to continue on up the tight winding road to find somewhere to pull off-which ends up being a couple miles further along.

As the truck came to a stop, I stepped on the brakes to keep from rolling back down the steep hill and try to restart the engine. Not happening. I set the park brakes and got out of the truck to assess the situation.

At this point in time, it was about 2 pm, and we had been up since around 3:30 am and had a long day already behind us fighting issues with loading parts, fueling trucks, and generally just lots of frustrating and tiring delays. We had planned on being in camp-still a solid hour away under good conditions, by noon. Already late, tired, and a bit frazzled, I then found myself staring down the barrel of possibly really expensive repairs and maybe even an outrageous tow bill. It’s one of the drawbacks of such a big truck-when things go bad on the road, it’s generally really expensive.

I’m not gonna lie, I was borderline about to freak out with the full weight of what my current situation could cost and entail, and I was struggling to get my shit together and figure my way out of the current dilemma. Normally I’m pretty good at assessing, troubleshooting, and figuring out some crafty way to get out of sticky situations without too much drama or expense-but I was really nervous that I had finally come up against something that was going to really get painfully expensive.

So here’s where it all came to a halt. Stuck on a steep narrow two lane piece of blacktop with a disappointingly high volume of traffic needing to get by considering the location.

View attachment 1412359



OK. Time to figure out how to get over this. First, I tried to simply just start the truck. No dice, and after only just a couple short cranks, the batteries were too low to even turn the engine over, which was unusual. So maybe I’ve just got a charging system issue and the ECU quit due to low voltage? Alright, I’ve got a big NOCO jump box for just such occasions, so I got it hooked up and hit the starter. The engine lit right off! Yeah!! I’m saved!

Nope. As soon as the engine fired up, it then immediately revved up on it’s own, then died, and would not restart. Crap.

So is it some wiring/electrical issue? This era of Cummins M-11 have a couple known issues, a few of which I’ve sorted out on this truck. Now I’m really nervous. Wiring issues can be time consuming to sort out, I don’t have the repair manuals with me to help and don’t remember what wires were the ones to check to make sure the ECU is getting power or even how to check the fuel shut off solenoid. AAHHHHHH!!!

Just as I’m about to hit freak out mode, I happen to notice a small puddle of fuel on the ground under the fuel/water separator. What’s this?! Did the drain fitting come loose and allow the fuel system to suck air? That would certainly explain everything!

As it turns out, I have had to bleed the air from this trucks fuel system a few too many times and have that down to an art form. I take an air nozzle and connect it to the fuel tanks vent and put a little positive pressure on the fuel tank and crack all the necessary valves and fittings. And this truck has a separate hydraulically driven air compressor. Of course, the catch here is that the engine has to be running to run the hydraulics. Thankfully, I have a habit of running that air compressor at every start up to make sure the air system has pressure in case of an emergency like this, so I know I at least have some air to play with.

As soon as I pressurized the fuel system, my problem became readily apparent. The water separator drain bowl had cracked, meaning the fuel system had indeed sucked in air, causing the engine to die.

View attachment 1412360
View attachment 1412361


Simple problem, and a simple fix-if I had another separator bowl on hand. Crap. Getting one of those could be a nightmare in and of itself! I could just bypass this filter if I had the right fitting to put the inlet and outlet hoses together, as I’m pretty sure there is a second filter on the system. This could be risky though, as these type of injectors are extremely fickle and do not tolerate dirty fuel.

And I have dead batteries and a now dead jump box to deal with even if I get this sorted out.

I realize it’s time to call in some help.

I need a mechanic.

Not just any mechanic, but a mercenary mechanic.

It was time to call Monkeyswrench!

Slight problem there though-on this remote mountain summit, I had absolutely ZERO cell service!

Fortunately, this is a problem that I encounter often and happened to have the solution on hand. So I deployed our portable Victron 12 volt inverter and our Starlink satellite system. After a minute for the Starlink to boot up, and my phone set to enable calling over WiFi, I’m able to send pictures, texts, and make a phone call to RDPs very own Monkeyswrench.

View attachment 1412362

View attachment 1412363



After some discussion, Kevin and I conclude that I can indeed bypass that filter for a few miles if I can scrounge up the correct parts, and that he should come up the mountain to help me get it started again and jump the low batteries on the truck. For perhaps the first time that day, fortune shined upon me, as Kevin not only lives only a few miles from where I was broken, but was available to come bail my sorry ass out. Awesome!



About this time, the director of the camp that we are already supposed to be at happens to drive up. She didn’t recognize me at first, as we had met, but she had never seen our work trucks. I explained to her what was going on, that we should be rolling soon, and could she please relay what was going on to Denise, who presumably would be found parked along the side of the road somewhere ahead. The camp director was having her own issues, as she was guiding a 28 foot box truck in to the camp that had all the solar components that we were supposed to be on site unloading. That truck driver looked frazzled too. Seemed like everyone involved with the project was running late and having a total Monday on the top of this mountain, LOL.

I began scouring our electrical work truck for plumbing parts. LOL.

Right about then, the cutest roadside assistance ever shows up in the form of my wife, Denise, driving our Polaris Ranger. We often take our venerable old Ranger to jobs with us, as it proves invaluable in moving us and parts around jobsites that often span several acres.

View attachment 1412364



Denise, who knows me well, and who herself knows her way around solving problems and getting shit done, had unloaded the Ranger from the toyhauler, brought a cooler full of water, and a bag of snacks! I love that girl!

Her and I then found an electrical fitting that we turned into a plumbing fitting by applying a ton of Blue Monster Teflon tape, and bypassed the filter assembly. We then plugged the filter to keep dirt out, and together we ran the air hose and wrenches to purge most of the air from the remaining fuel system. Then all we could do was wait for Kevin to show up with a vehicle big enough to jump-charge the Freight Shaker enough to hopefully get it started.

Denise jumped back in the Ranger and high-tailed it back to her truck for the huge jumper cables we keep on it, and for more snacks. Shortly after Denise returned, the Monkeyswrench himself showed up to make this mess a real roadside party.

Here Kevin is doing his best Austin Powers turning the Excursion around on the narrow road to get the front of it to the front of our truck. LOL.

View attachment 1412365




The three of us then got busy final bleeding the fuel system, charging batteries, trying to direct traffic and not get run over, and getting the truck started. It took a little doing, but before long, the Cummins grumbled back to life. Once it did, it was immediately apparent that a broken fuel filter was not the only issue we had-not only was the alternator not putting out much voltage or current, but the noises coming from it clearly indicated that the front bearing set was preparing to permanently retire. Yikes.

But the truck was up and running, so we decided to get this circus moving again and that Kevin would follow us to our destination in case we had any other issues and needed more help. A couple miles up the road, we linked up with Denise who dropped in behind us, and then we had ourselves a convoy!

We eased our little convoy in the last rough miles over dirt roads into the camp without much further drama over the course of about 45 minutes. After some head scratching with camp staff as to where to park a lot of large truck and trailer in a small bit of real estate, we began to get unloaded, un hooked, un packed and our camp within the camp set up.

Kevin headed back home with whatever information he needed to procure us repair parts, as he would be returning to effect more permanent repairs the following week.

It took Denise and I till about 9pm to get everything setup and ready for tomorrows work to begin. We were both exhausted, as it had been a long, long day. Several days, actually. But we had our work trailer set up in a nice spot that was right next to the building that we would be working on. Here’s a birds eye view of our camp spot.

View attachment 1412366



Tuesday promised to be a better, more productive day. Tuesday, it would turn out, was kinda a liar…

Should I be getting royalties?

 

[The Chicken]

Warning!
Boating content!!
No, really, I have boating content here!
So last night, we again had this magnificent place all to ourselves, and the weather was warm, so we knocked off work a bit early to do something I’ve wanted to do since the first day we rolled into this place-go for a boat ride!

Ok, so it’s a tiny John boat, with no motor, on a little pond-but it’s still a boat and I figured if any crowd would appreciate a boat ride up in the mountains at sunset, RDP would be that crowd.

The water was surprisingly not super cold, and I was tempted to try out this floating dock slide!

We paddled a few laps around the pond, checking out some of its nooks, crannies, docks and little island. We let the fresh mountain breeze blow us across the pond a couple of times while listening to some bull elk trumpet in the nearby woods, and talked the sun out of the sky.

We get to work in a lot of cool places, but actually rarely get to take the time to really enjoy most of those places. I was glad we made time to go boating here.

 

[mash on it]

@The Chicken , curious about what pond?

Dan'l

 

[The Chicken]

Should I be getting royalties?

Depends.
Is someone using your story?
I don’t have any good hooker stories.
I don’t think Denise does either-I’ll have to ask her.

 

[The Chicken]

@The Chicken , curious about what pond?

Dan'l

This place we’ve been working at for the last several months has an amazing little pond.

 

[The Chicken]

Last Friday, we had another special visitor up at the James 4-H camp.
Another project we were tasked with was helping to improve the camp’s communication ability.
They currently have two Starlink units providing internet and voice over IP ability, but one of the units was just ground deployed, and the other isn’t a really great installation. Due to the very tall trees, neither unit was getting great reception, and they both were suffering from poor WiFi strength due to all the trees.
So a plan was hatched to do a nice hard mount of one Starlink on the inverter building with a WiFi repeater to give that part of the camp better WiFi access, and add a WiFi repeater to the other Starlink to boost WiFi access at that location.
My go-to guy when I have questions on stuff like this is @Yarder He has set up a number of things like this for us in the past and we’ve always had great experiences. So a call to him and he picked out some affordable equipment that we would do the physical installation of, then he could come onsite and configure and test.
Here’s what we came up with for mounting the equipment to the inverter building. One upright holds the WiFi repeater, one holds the Starlink dish, and the third will hold a weather station and weather camera.

Inside, we had extra space in the mini server rack that serves the batteries communication hub, so we built a server rack DIN rail bracket to hold everything with room for future components and bolted it in. A dedicated circuit and a power strip were brought into the mini rack to power everything up.

The factory Starlink WiFi unit-which I somehow totally forgot to get pictures of-is mounted directly above the server rack on a nice bracket and still serves the inverters( the inverters are Wi-Fi enabled and talk to a cloud service that allow us to not only monitor all of their activities, but we can program and adjust other parameters remotely) and inside the room communications.
Here’s @Yarder up in everyone’s favorite lift fixing a little termination issue we had.

After a couple hours of work, Yarder had it all up and running with better WiFi coverage than the camp has ever had, and it was time for everyone to head on home for the weekend.
One crazy thing that is happening up here is how fast the fall colors are coming on.
Two weeks ago, everything was green. Last week on our way home, suddenly leaves were turning colors.

And just a week later this past Friday, there were even more colors!

It looks like fall is here in the mountains!
And that means we really have to hustle to get our jobs that are on the books for this year completed before inclement weather shuts us out.
It’s going to be a mad dash to get everything wrapped up over the next couple months!

 

[Yarder]

It's a beautiful location and Dan and Denise do excellent work!

I'm glad I was able to be a very small part of upgrading the communications needs of that little slice of Heaven!

 

[The Chicken]

This past weekend I managed to get some long-delayed work on our CNC plasma table done.
It has been setup and running for months, but needs quite a bit of things done to make it a more durable and user friendly installation.
First, there was a gaggle of wires and cables strewn all over under the water table that needed to get up off the ground and organized.
I sourced some old scrap chromed exhaust heat shields and modified them into a sort of cable tray and drilled and tapped the machine frame to accept them. You can see them tucked up high on the frame here.

Then there was this fragile looking little interface adapter box that allows the computer and machine to control and talk to the plasma cutter power unit. It was just hanging loose, so I whipped up a little bracket to mount it to the top of the power supply and clamp the cables to stop them from disconnecting or getting broken.

The irony of having to crudely hand fabricate brackets that the CNC could make better and faster-but couldn’t because it was torn apart.

I had to disconnect all the machine control wiring to improve its cable management, strain relief, and get the cables into this old workstation I had built many years ago for a customer that then closed down and returned the station to me because he couldn’t bear to see it scrapped.
Over the years I have repurposed this workstation many times and it sure has come in handy. It looks as if this might be it’s final and best assignment.

Now all the components are centrally located and protected in the bottom of the work station, and will be easier to access and troubleshoot as well.
I still have a few loose ends to address on the workstation, but the machine is now useable.

The only bummer is, I had to do all that work just so I could do the next round of modifications to the machine. Hopefully I will get to that soon.

 

[wash11]

This past weekend I managed to get some long-delayed work on our CNC plasma table done.
It has been setup and running for months, but needs quite a bit of things done to make it a more durable and user friendly installation.
First, there was a gaggle of wires and cables strewn all over under the water table that needed to get up off the ground and organized.
I sourced some old scrap chromed exhaust heat shields and modified them into a sort of cable tray and drilled and tapped the machine frame to accept them. You can see them tucked up high on the frame here.


View attachment 1437427

Then there was this fragile looking little interface adapter box that allows the computer and machine to control and talk to the plasma cutter power unit. It was just hanging loose, so I whipped up a little bracket to mount it to the top of the power supply and clamp the cables to stop them from disconnecting or getting broken.
View attachment 1437429

The irony of having to crudely hand fabricate brackets that the CNC could make better and faster-but couldn’t because it was torn apart.

I had to disconnect all the machine control wiring to improve its cable management, strain relief, and get the cables into this old workstation I had built many years ago for a customer that then closed down and returned the station to me because he couldn’t bear to see it scrapped.
Over the years I have repurposed this workstation many times and it sure has come in handy. It looks as if this might be it’s final and best assignment.
View attachment 1437430

View attachment 1437431

View attachment 1437432

Now all the components are centrally located and protected in the bottom of the work station, and will be easier to access and troubleshoot as well.
I still have a few loose ends to address on the workstation, but the machine is now useable. View attachment 1437433

The only bummer is, I had to do all that work just so I could do the next round of modifications to the machine. Hopefully I will get to that soon.

I sure am glad you cleaned this up. I was getting tired of the plasma table and its assorted bullshit spilling into the bay where our backhoe lives

 

[rivermobster]

This past weekend I managed to get some long-delayed work on our CNC plasma table done.
It has been setup and running for months, but needs quite a bit of things done to make it a more durable and user friendly installation.
First, there was a gaggle of wires and cables strewn all over under the water table that needed to get up off the ground and organized.
I sourced some old scrap chromed exhaust heat shields and modified them into a sort of cable tray and drilled and tapped the machine frame to accept them. You can see them tucked up high on the frame here.


View attachment 1437427

Then there was this fragile looking little interface adapter box that allows the computer and machine to control and talk to the plasma cutter power unit. It was just hanging loose, so I whipped up a little bracket to mount it to the top of the power supply and clamp the cables to stop them from disconnecting or getting broken.
View attachment 1437429

The irony of having to crudely hand fabricate brackets that the CNC could make better and faster-but couldn’t because it was torn apart.

I had to disconnect all the machine control wiring to improve its cable management, strain relief, and get the cables into this old workstation I had built many years ago for a customer that then closed down and returned the station to me because he couldn’t bear to see it scrapped.
Over the years I have repurposed this workstation many times and it sure has come in handy. It looks as if this might be it’s final and best assignment.
View attachment 1437430

View attachment 1437431

View attachment 1437432

Now all the components are centrally located and protected in the bottom of the work station, and will be easier to access and troubleshoot as well.
I still have a few loose ends to address on the workstation, but the machine is now useable. View attachment 1437433

The only bummer is, I had to do all that work just so I could do the next round of modifications to the machine. Hopefully I will get to that soon.

How thick of material can that puppy cut?

 

[monkeyswrench]

How thick of material can that puppy cut?

I don't know the max, but I saw it cut the receiver plate for a pintle hitch on the big truck. Thing was probably 3/4, with 3/4 bolt holes cut through it

 

[The Chicken]

How thick of material can that puppy cut?

My power unit will handle up to about 1 1/4” with edge start or if I pre drill start holes.
The table itself is rated to accept a full sheet of 2” and I have the ability to add an Oxygen acetylene machine torch if we get to feeling real froggy.