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

[monkeyswrench]

@The Chicken , this will sound stupid probably for those that deal in this stuff. Could a large capacitor, or bank of them, be used to soften the load impact? I only ask because back in the old days we'd run 1 and 2 Farad caps as an "accumulator" on big stereo stuff. In one instance, a setup had 5 Farad caps The voltages and amps that these systems run may make it unrealistic, but the concept worked on the smaller scale, though extremely simplistic in comparison.

 

[The Chicken]

@The Chicken , this will sound stupid probably for those that deal in this stuff. Could a large capacitor, or bank of them, be used to soften the load impact? I only ask because back in the old days we'd run 1 and 2 Farad caps as an "accumulator" on big stereo stuff. In one instance, a setup had 5 Farad caps The voltages and amps that these systems run may make it unrealistic, but the concept worked on the smaller scale, though extremely simplistic in comparison.

Not a stupid idea at all.
Capacitor banks or large capacitors are often used in AC power systems to help with voltage sag just like they are used in car audio.
They are also used to help with power factor correction, but that becomes another, more complex discussion.
Most high starting load single phase motors (think air compressors-one of the most common applications) use large starting caps, in conjunction with a high torque start winding that drops out once the motor reaches its rated operating RPM via a centrifugal switch. (Think of it as like a first gear for an electrical motor.)
You can't really use caps to deal with a load imbalance(phase A loaded excessively more than phase B), and there is a limit to how much you can use caps for voltage sag in an AC system.
There are some creative ways you can deal with surge loads-but the best way is to just design the system to be properly sized in the first place and be done with it.
Sometimes, say in the case of an off-grid deep well pump-that system design may include using better pumps that are capable of using soft starts, VFD drives, or external start caps instead of your basic down hole pump.

 

[The Chicken]

Wednesday saw us loaded up and rolling out in the cold November morning around 4 to our next job in Paulden, Arizona.

This would be a return trip to a customer we have done work for before, and they are ready for the next phase.
here we are just after sunup getting camp setup.

You may recall I posted some pictures of their place awhile back. And seeing as we are going to be there anyway, and we have some equipment, we might as well fix up some of their dirt work and trash issues.
Here’s what they had:

Among all the left over construction trash that nobody bothered to put in the dumpster, or even in one spot, and old pallets scattered everywhere, there were several important things like well heads and underground water tanks hidden in the weeds that I needed to avoid. Accidentally driving over or into a buried plastic tank with a 10,000 pound skid steer would have immediately expensive and catastrophic consequences, so to help me keep my bearings in the dust as the terrain changes during the clean up process, I attached some 8’ tall scrap lumber and painted them bright purple to avoid any incidents.

Once I had that ready, the first thing to take care of was all the pallets scattered everywhere.
I stacked them all in one spot so the owners could throw them away, burn them, or whatever they decide to do with them.
These are the ones that didn’t get tossed in the dumpster. There were just a few.

Once that mess was corralled, I put the grapple bucket on and started hauling all the brush and trees that were pushed over when the dirt work for the house pad was made.

The brush pile ended up being way bigger than this picture makes it look.

Again, pictures don’t really do justice, but here’s what the place looked like the next morning.

It’s hard to see, but on this end of the house I brought the grade up about 8” to where it needed to be, then sloped it off for drainage. It’s not quite final grade, but it’s close and way better than the rough rock and trash pile that was there before.

Their little dumpster was full, so I stacked up the next pile of trash next to it.

This side of the house still needs some dirt work, but at least all the trash is now gone and it’s easy to drive around.

 

[The Chicken]

Don’t look now-but we’re about to do off-grid solar stuff again!
Thursday morning had us firing up cranky and unwilling trucks in the early cold of the dawn at the Paulden job site.

On this day we would be revisiting a previous installation to add some more batteries and an automated back up generator.
The road in to this location is steep, winding, narrow and rough. Once again, pictures don’t do it justice, but here it is anyway.

When we got there, we discovered road wind had gotten to my bucket of blow line due to a broken lid and dispensed a thousand feet or so of itself all over the back of the truck.

Once that mess was cleaned up, it was time to get to adding batteries.
First, we had to get all the batteries to the same state of charge-it’s a bad idea to connect batteries that are at significantly different states of charge due to the high current levels that occur when they are connected and attempt to equalize.
This process can become deceivingly time consuming, especially as the battery count goes higher.

Then comes the process of making battery cables, installing buss bars, loading the batteries into their cabinet, and a bunch of other details.
At the same time we were bouncing back and forth to the work that had to be done to install the generator. That ment finishing conduits, pulling in power and control wiring, connecting all those wires, setting up the generator and performing a two-wire control conversion on it. I somehow didn’t get any pictures of the generator or its work-but it’s a fair pile of work.

Normally at this stage it’s just a matter of reconnecting the batteries to the inverter and double checking settings and functions, then setting generator parameters and testing/commissioning the generator.
But this day had other plans in store for us.
For some reason, the inverter decided to stop communicating with the batteries, and nothing we did would restore communications.
Finally we gave up and got SolArk tech support involved.
We ended up spend hours on the phone with them attempting to resolve the issue and tried everything under the sun-but to no avail.
We all had to throw in the towel and let the system run in an open-loop/no communication mode. We’re still not sure what is going on, and will have to involve the battery manufacturer next.
That issue took so long and was so complex, we didn’t have a chance to finish the generator installation, so once we conceded to run in open loop mode, we shifted gears to getting the generator up and running.
That took us pretty late into the night, and finally by 9 pm, we had everything up and running and the trucks loaded up and ready to start the three hour run home.
Here’s what the inverter room looked like when we rolled out.

And with that, we began the long trip home.
It had been a long, frustrating, and tiring day, and at 10 pm, we had gotten as far as the Paulden job site we had left from that morning.
With over 15 hours on the clock, and another two hours of driving to get home, we made the decision to call it a day and stop at our camp for the night rather then risk an accident driving the rather dangerous and notorious 89 highway as exhausted as we were.
We would have to catch a couple hours of sleep, then get up at 3 am and haul ass home in the wee hours of the morning to make our next appointment…

 

[The Chicken]

Well, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks, and obviously I’ve had no time to update this thread for that time.
Where we left off, Denise and I were crashing out in our job trailer that just happened to be in a spot to give us a break from our drive home after a real grind of a day…

The alarm went off at a disagreeable 3am as planned, and we staggered out of bed, started coffee, and shrugged into clothes more asleep than awake. After getting enough coffee into our systems to give us a jump start, we felt pretty good. Certainly WAY better than we had when we crawled into bed.
I went outside in the brightly moon lit cold morning and started the trucks that were surprisingly agreeable to starting despite the cold air.
We hurriedly grabbed whatever crap we needed and said goodbye to our trailer and hit the road for the two hour drive home.
Traffic on the 89 to the I-40 which is typically miserable after dark was almost nonexistent, and we rolled up the blacktop at a brisk pace under a moon so bright we damn near didn’t need headlights.
It was just beautiful out, and the drive home was smooth and enjoyable.
We made it home at about 5:30-just in time for our next appointment that I alluded to in my last post.
And what, you might ask, was this appointment that was so time sensitive that Denise and I were running so ragged to meet?
Well, opening day of her cow elk hunting tag is the answer!
And because we had been so damn busy with work, we had exactly zero time to prepare for this hunt. We really didn’t even have time to hunt, and had so much work back-logged that we considered just skipping the hunt altogether-but elk tags are hard to get, and we really like eating elk all year, so we made the difficult decision that come hell or high water, we were at least going to try.
And so it was that on that frosty moonlit morning I started running around like a chicken with my head cut off grabbing gear and hucking it into the Mud Taxi in a desperate attempt to get out well before first light to a hunting spot.
Meanwhile, Denise was throwing together food for the day in the house.
With just enough time to spare, we had the Mud Taxi loaded and we were off on the long, long trek of about 4 miles to the spot we decided to start her hunt from. Did I mention we live right in the middle of our hunt unit?

We got our glass set up with time to spare, and despite the cold, it was beautiful out with the moon setting, and the sun starting to lighten the sky on the opposite horizon.

The moon always looks spectacular through the spotting scope.

Several hours of glassing revealed…. Nothing!
Typical hunting:hours of boredom interjected ( if you’re lucky) with brief moments of intense excitement.
To give our eyes a break from the glass, we grabbed selfies.

After a couple hours of staring through high powered glass and freezing our asses off, we crawled into the Mud Taxi, started the engine, cranked up the heater, ate cold breakfast burritos, and accidentally passed out in front seats from exhaustion.
After about a 20 minute nap, we decided that there was nothing to see from where we were, so we packed up and headed to a local water hole to read whatever sign there might be.
Here we found the only animals we would see that morning:the local ranchers cows standing in the bottom of a mostly dry tank, hiding from the wind.

We called him and told him seeing as we had a cow elk tag, we figured one of his cows was close enough to our tag’s description to shoot and fill our tag!
He didn’t think it was quite as funny as we did.

Hunting mid day around here rarely pays off unless you have already spotted something, so we decided to roll home and take a much needed real nap.

That evening, we decided that the high winds and cold called for a reverse glassing strategy-meaning we would find a good low ground location and glass up instead of the other way around.

We looked and looked, but all we saw was a small herd of deer hunkered down under some thick trees, hiding from the wind.
We weren’t surprised-with a full moon and less than ideal weather, animals had no need to risk being active during the day.

The next morning was agreeably calm, slightly warmer but….

A little snow storm had moved in!
We decided to return to our low-point glassing spot to start the day and see what visibility was going to be.

The snow fell intermittently throughout the morning with no real accumulation, which was kinda a bummer because snow on the ground would allow us to possibly hunt by tracks.
However, the air was beautiful, clear, slightly overcast, and with pretty even temperatures so there were no heat or cold waves to glass through. In short-it was perfect hunting and glassing weather!
We decided to move to a higher vantage point, so we packed up and made a run to a good hill we know to see what was up there.
We got glass out and started scanning. After about 30 minutes, Denise exclaims”Elk!”, and sure enough, there’s a small herd of good looking cow elk slowly making their way up the hill about 850 yards straight ahead of us!
Hot damn-the hunt is ON!!
Now, our rifle is by design a long-range gun ( It’s a Fierce CarbonFury with a carbon fiber Twisted Precision barrel, chambered in 300 Remington Ultra Mag, slinging 205 grain bullets at around 2800 FPS, and topped with a great 5-20 Swarovski scope, for all you gun nuts), and the previous owner has taken shots out to around 1000 yards-but even with the ideal position we had, and the excellent weather with zero wind, there is a lot that goes into a shot that long, and we didn’t feel comfortable with it. We want a clean kill, not wounded animals.
So we elected to draw back, loop around and get into a position that we thought they would be heading for.
A quick couple of miles in the Mud Taxi, and we parked and started our hike towards our intended place to shoot from.
We used trees and shrubs for cover, and made our way a couple hundred yards up slope to our firing position.
The herd was right where we expected them, and by this time we were both so excited we were struggling to keep our composure.
I ranged them right at 530 yards, slightly uphill.
Dang. That was still about a hundred yards longer than I’d hoped for, but well within our range and skill set. ( Denise shot her last elk at over 650 yards and dropped it with one shot. )
So I triple checked the range, dialed up the scope and got her as set up as I could.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, a good looking cow stepped our right where we wanted her, perfectly broadside, and posed for us totally motionless.
It doesn’t get much better.
Denise had me verify range and the animal one last time, called out “ going hot.” , and the show was hers…
The absolute thunder of a 300 RUM with a muzzle brake shattered the still early morning and I practically jumped out of my skin-there’s no way to not flinch. I got my glass back on the target and… her and all her buddies were staring curiously in our direction, not alarmed at all.
Oh shit!
To me, that meant we had missed the shot by such a large margin that we weren’t even remotely close. A near miss bullet strike would have made those animals panic and run.
Denise and I made the immediate but difficult decision to not continue this stalk or take any more shots. Something was obviously very wrong with either us or our equipment, and we’re pretty adamant about ethical shots.
Time constraints had forced us to skip range day before the hunt to double check our gear and ourselves, and that had just come home to bite us in the ass big time.
Worse, we were due to leave in just a couple hours to go to a thanksgiving/Christmas family get together for Denise’s family for the next two days, and the beautiful weather of today was forecast to be replaced with winds gusting into the 20 mph range on the next day we would be able to go test fire the rifle.
Disappointed and down, but feeling like we made the right decision, we reluctantly turned our backs on the herd of elk still calmly feeding on the hill, and made our way back to the Mud Taxi.
Damn!!

 

[The Chicken]

I think most guys will agree, if you’re feeling down, there’s nothing like finding some fresh young pussy to make you feel better, and surprisingly-that’s exactly what I found at Denise’s family party!

This little guy was just the cutest kitten ever! He had a fun personality, and loved to snuggle, so I kitten-napped him every chance I got.

And come evening time he looked cold, so I just had to help him stay warm!

Anyway, I’m sure there were other things that went on at that family get together, but all I remember is the pussy.
When we got back home Sunday, we spent the rest of the day buried in the office, trying to catch up on the mountain of paperwork, estimates, and everything else that seems to come with running a small business that’s no fun.
Monday morning it was back to the hunt-or more correctly-back on the gun to figure out if there was something wrong with our gear, us, or both.
Our rifle had been used on last year’s hunt, where I got a great bull elk, and went back into the safe where it stayed all year, so we didn’t really expect any issues. Did the scope come loose? Did the action come loose? Did I input something wrong in the ballistics app? Did Denise just get the jitters and bobble the shot? It was time to find out.
The first thing I did was torque check the scope and action screws-everything was still tight and no signs of movement. Then I took this opportunity to do something I had been trying to get to for several months-after many months of waiting, the guns new muzzle device had finally showed up, so I swapped that out. Then a quick bore check, and Denise and I loaded up and headed out to our local range-a big clearing on the local rancher’s property with some steel targets.
The first thing to do was torque check see if we were even on the steel at close range, and to make sure that the new muzzle device was functioning properly, so we set up at 200 yards and lobbed a few test shots to see what was up.
Here’s Denise getting ready to test our new hush-a-boom.

And here it is in action. The recoil from a 300 RUM is pretty legit, but thankfully the somewhat heavy rifle and can make it manageable. Denise would send some 20 rounds down range this morning and her eyes got tired before her shoulder did.
If you listen closely, you can hear the bullet hit the steel 200 yards down range.

In the end, we discovered that one of our biggest problems was some values that got messed up in our ballistics app. To try and make a long story short, several years ago we were using an app called Strelock Plus, which is a great ballistics app. The problem is, it’s author is based in Russia, and apparently there’s some war going on with Russia that our country disapproves of, and they have put restrictions in place on updating the app, so when we discovered this same accuracy issue a few years ago we traced it to the fact that while we could still use the app, we couldn’t change any of our bullet B/C data, and that was causing issues out past 400 yards. So at that time we switched to a Horaday ballistic app. But for some reason this year, all my account information, including the rifle/scope/load data was lost in THAT app. In frustration over not wanting to do the tedious job of re-entering all that nonsense, I went back to my Strelock app, where it APPEARED I was able to save my data changes, but wasn’t actually able to.
Ugg.
A call to a friend of ours who is the sniper for the sheriff’s department and my go-to for long range shooting questions for obvious reasons directed me to yet another app, where I spent an hour or so entering in all the data for our equipment.
After that, Denise and I spent most of the morning testing different ranges with the app and the rifle out to about 550 yards with mostly acceptable results. We felt better, but not as good as we’d like, but considering the shifting wind gusts that were well into the 20+ mph range, we got it as dialed as we could.
The rest of the day the wind was forecast to get even stronger, and with that we decided to call it a day and go back to work in the office for the rest of the day in an attempt to catch up there, and hope for better weather on Tuesday.

 

[The Chicken]

Tuesday morning was cold, clear, and thankfully calm in the early hours before first light.
We pointed the Mud Taxi up the treacherously nasty steep and rutted hill to our high ground observation point where we had spotted the small herd of cow elk on Saturday in hopes re-acquiring them today.
As usual, the Mud Taxi sauntered right up the nasty road without even trying hard.
As the sky began to lighten in the East, the pre dawn sky was painted with pretty pastel hues.

Nothing was stirring on our hill, but just after sunup, the local rancher, Scotty Dunton, called to tell us he’d spotted a nice cow elk going down a nearby road and it was very likely she was trying to catch up with her herd that was probably nearby.
We stashed our glass, fired up the Mud Taxi, and launched it down the steep hill and headed for the elk sighting area.
When we arrived at the area, sure enough there was a young cow at the end of the road.
We hopped out of the truck, grabbed the rifle, and started in her direction. She had been walking next to a fence, and about that time, the fence ended, and she hooked a hard right and headed into a clear cut, suddenly picking up her pace. She quickly out distanced us, but by her tracks, she had caught up with some other elk, and they were all jogging across the clear cut for a hill to our east.
Behind us, Scotty turned his truck over to a friend that was with him, and jumped in the Mud Taxi and they drove out to us to see if we could spot the herd.
As we glassed over the clearing, a bull elk bugled once! A rare thing indeed on a late hunt with the rut over.
About an hour later, we spotted the herd of 12 cows and one bull bringing up the rear, making their way up the mountain about a half mile to our east. It looked like they were going to scale the ridge and circle back on the high ground to the north and likely bed down on the mid slope there for the afternoon.
Now, they were way out of range for us at this point, but we happened to know that there’s a power line trail that would put us within about an eighth of a mile of where we thought they were headed. So we hatched a plan to loop around and see if we could reacquire them from the top of the mountain. We parted ways with Scotty and his friend, and once again got to hustling in the Mud Taxi.
As the crow flies, where we needed to be was under a mile away, but the roads to get us there loop around a good sized mountain, and we’d drive some 8-10 miles to get to that point, with the last mile being one of the roughest, nastiest, brush-choked roads there is. Even the Mud Taxi struggles with a couple sections of this trail, and it’s a good thing it’s not new, because the amount of desert pinstripes this trail hands out is seriously cringe worthy.
Finally, after bouncing and scratching our way over the the hump to the highest point of the road, we parked the truck once again, grabbed our backpacks, rifle and tripod, and began the steep hike to the summit.

The tricky part was to guess correctly where the herd was hopefully bedded down and cross over the ridge-which was less a ridge and more a rolling crest-in a place that would allow us to spot them before they spotted us.
Towards the summit, I could see that we were going to have a challenge -the slight breeze had shifted and was blowing from us directly to where we expected to find the elk. Crap!
Well, there was nothing to it but to do it, so we eased as slowly and quietly as we could over the crest, stopping and glassing every few feet, looking for a vantage point that would perhaps let us look through the trees down on the area we thought the elk would be.
Finally, we crept around a big juniper tree onto a rocky outcrop that offered some views into the area we hoped to find the herd. As I eased carefully around the tree, the bull elk of herd suddenly popped into view only a hundred yards away!
He stopped, did an abrupt about face, and disappeared into the vegetation to the West.
Damn!
That indicated to me-assuming the bull was still bringing up the rear of the herd-that we had landed about 200 yards too far to the west at the back of the herd instead of at the front of the herd in their direction of travel for an ambush.
Additionally, the bull’s behavior indicated that he very well might have winded us and if that was the case, this hunt was blown right there-a very likely possibility with the wind definitely not in our favor.
Crap!
We faded north back over the hump as silently as we could, and shifted position about 150 yards to the West in hopes of sighting them from a more favorable position-assuming we hadn’t somehow spooked them clear out of the area.
It took us about a half hour to cover that little patch of ground, choosing each step with care and stopping to listen and look every couple steps.
We finally emerged out a spot that allowed a reasonable view of our target area and we took up positions screened by trees and commenced to do some serious looking, listening and glassing for the next hour or so, remaining as quiet and as still as we could, with an occasional shift in position for a different view.
I swear that I heard some animal noises from our target area a couple times, but couldn’t confirm it, and we never actually saw another animal again.
It was possible that the herd was bedded down just under our noses, or they could be a couple hundred yards in either direction, or they could have cleared the area altogether and be nowhere near.
To go further down the hill into the thick vegetation was pointless-even if the herd was still present, they would know we were there and run long before we would ever see them.
It left us with little option other than to call this stalk blown and pull back for the day in hopes that they would still be in the area come evening time and we could reacquire them then.
I guess that’s why it’s called hunting and not grocery shopping!

 

[The Chicken]

Tuesday afternoon, after going home for lunch and resting up a little, along with a couple hours of trying to get more office work done, we loaded up and headed back to the clear cut to see if we could spot the elk herd on the mountain again.
Scotty and his friend were already there when we arrived, and had immediately picked up two cow elk wandering around and feeding on juniper berries a little over a mile to our north high up on the mountain we had hiked that morning, but about a quarter mile to the west of where we had been.
Good news-except, where was the rest of the herd?
The four of us spent some time trying to find the rest of the elk, but we couldn’t see any except those two. Finding the rest of the herd was import to plan a stalk so as not to blunder into them and spook them all and blow the hunt again.
After about 20 minutes and no sign of other animals on the hill, we made the decision to plan a stalk and get on with it before we ran out of daylight.
We had a 2-3 mile drive to a known insertion point, then a hike of about a quarter to a half mile to get to a shooting position. But that short hike was straight up the side of a steep, rocky hill, with the last several hundred yards needing extra care to spot the animals before they spotted us, and was not going to be quick or easy.
I did some mental math, judging time, distance and the suns current position. It was going to be close on time for us to get where we needed to be and set up a shot, real close.
Again, nothing to it but to do it, so we said goodbye to Scotty and hustled the Mud Taxi towards a faint trail we knew of at the other end of the tree cut at the base of the hill we needed to climb.
Once there, we bailed out, grabbed our packs, rifle and other gear and started a brisk walk up the hill.
The hill got steeper and rockier as we got closer, and progress was slow and noisy, with us having to stop every couple minutes to catch our breath.
The sun was headed towards the horizon in the west at a rapid pace, and I knew we were razor thin on time. The pressure was on, the adrenaline was up, and we were winded and shaky-but the view, as usual, was worth the price of admission no matter what the outcome of this stalk.

We pushed on, and about the time I figured we needed to start slowing down and trying to locate the animals before we spooked them, the trees 30 yards ahead of us exploded in sudden movement and the sound of hooves running away.
Dammit!
We spooked animals!
Now the question was, was this this missing herd members, and did the two were stalking-who I was sure were still at least 500 yards further along and in a different direction-also cut and run?
Only one way to find out, so we cautiously pushed on.
Another 50 yards and again frantic hoof beats sounded just ahead of us-only this time I got a glimpse of one of the animals and it was a deer-so maybe the other animals that took off were also deer.
Finally, after another agonizingly long 20 minutes or so, we spotted our quarry right about where we had expected them to be!
Yes!
There was good cover to push closer to a good shooting position, so we snaked our way through the trees and finally popped out on a nice brush-screened ledge with a decent view of the pair of feeding elk.
Perfect!
Except now adrenaline and nerves really set in, and Denise and I struggled to keep our shit together and set everything up properly.
We are still pretty new to hunting, and none of this comes second nature to us.
I got the gun tripod set up and turned it over to Denise to put the rifle in while I got down to getting range and wind information collected and into the ballistics app. 336 yards, slightly uphill, zero wind. Excellent!
I fumbled the data into the app with shaky hands I would love to tell you was just from the exertion of the hike, while Denise was having similar struggles with the rifle and tripod. We finally got our shit together and set up. I dialed in the scope and double checked everything, and Denise knelt down to get on the rifle-sticking her knee right into a small cactus neither one of us saw and getting a knee full of thorns for her efforts.
Now, we gazed upon the perfect shot: easy distance, steady rifle, feeding elk standing in a clearing perfectly broadside to us with their heads up, like they were posing for the shot.
There was just one problem-both animals were in the same position, but practically touching each other and stacked up perfectly. To shoot one was to for sure shoot both of them, and while it’d be cool as all hell to be able to kill two elk with one shot ( I have zero doubts that the 300RUM would have more than enough power to do it based on previous observations), we only have one elk tag, and Game and Fish frowns upon harvesting animals without the proper tag.
Shit!
So we waited for one of the animals to move so we could get a clean shot while the sun dropped and time ran away. It seemed like forever before one of them finally moved, and when one did, both did, and they slipped behind some trees and started walking East.
Crap!
They kept moving, and we were forced to move our shooting position twice while trying to keep them in sight but not be seen by them.
Our nerves were shot and the fading light had only a few minutes left of legal shooting time when the two elk finally separated and stopped enough for the shot.
“Which one?” Denise whispered shakily.
I had been watching the two animals intently through my binos and had determined which one was in a better position, “ Take the one higher up.”
“Copy that” She said
And a second later “Going hot”.
“It’s all yours. Take your time “ I whispered, while inside my mind was screaming “HURRY! HURRRRRY!!!”
The next few seconds stretched into forever, and when she finally lit off the gun, the reduced sound of the shot through the silencer was a welcome sound, and I managed to not jump out of my skin and I kept my glass on the target.
Both elk jumped and ran, and I could hear Denise run the bolt next to me, chambering a fresh round.
“Where did it go?!” She half whispered, half yelled, trying to get back on target after the recoil.
I wasn’t letting the target out of my sight-or at least I was trying not to-her animal had bolted east and disappeared behind a tree about 30 yards from where Denise shot at it; the other I could see out of the corner of my eye still heading east.
Did the target elk escape?
Was it even hit?
Or had it been a good shot and had it collapsed behind that tree?
We got the rifle on that tree and we both watched for several minutes to make sure, but nothing moved, so we packed up and began the 336 yard hike to inspect what we hoped was a down and cleanly killed elk.
Except that hike was more like 600 yards because it turns out we had to hike straight down, then straight up an unseen ravine to get there.
With the last of the light from the day, we found the elk right where I’d lost sight of her. She was dead on impact, but just didn’t know it.

It’s always a sorta bittersweet moment for me when we get to this point. Victory. Meat in the freezer. Elation. But we also love animals, and a part of me is always a little sad. We take a moment, touch this great animal, thankful, respectful, there’s a few quiet moments…
Then we had to get to work field dressing the animal, which I had never done myself before, so I had to call Scotty for some pointers.
And at this point, the story of our hunt should be over, but it turns out there’s one more chapter…

 

[The Chicken]

As the day rapidly turned to night high up on the rugged hill, we followed Scotty’s instructions to prepare our elk for spending the night by itself up there.
The elk was in such a rugged area, that recovery by horse was kinda the only option, and that wasn’t happening in the cold dark where an injured horse or human is a real possibility. The elk would have to wait for morning.
With the temperature already in the thirties and dropping fast with a forecast low in the low twenties, so long as we got the hot internal organs out and opened up the cavity for cold air to get in, the meat was in no danger of spoiling.
Once we accomplished that, we stuffed the heart and liver in my backpack and began the long and precarious hike down the steep mountain through the rocky ravine in the pitch dark guided by our headlamps.
It was a long trip.
We finally made it home and had some tasty fresh smoked elk liver and cold beer to celebrate.
Then it was showers and much needed sleep.
The next morning it was time to link up with Scotty and help him get his horses ready for the elk recovery -a simple task that would prove to be anything but simple and end up being an adventure in itself.
For days, Scotty’s horses had been hanging around his house doing pretty much nothing but eat and relax.
Apparently they got wind of having to work in the cold morning and they all found an open gate and took off.
Well, you can’t saddle horses that aren’t there, so the first thing to do was find them.
The good news was that the gate they went out led to another fenced area.
The bad news is that fenced area was like a hundred acres.
So we knew where they were, but not where they were.
Scotty grabbed a truck, horse trailer and some bridles, and set off to where he figured they went.
Sure enough, they were right where he thought they’d be, but the instant they saw the bridle, they said nope! and took off.
So a new plan was hatched and we ran down to a corner gate, opened it, and used the Mud Taxi to make it so the horses would get channeled out the gate and onto the main dirt road where Scotty assured us they would head home on their own once they did that.
Ok, if you say so, lol.
So that’s what we did-hazed the little herd of horses into the corner and out the gate, and sure enough, they took off on a trot in the direction of their home.
We got in the Mud Taxi and followed them to make sure they didn’t stray, while Scotty went and got his truck and trailer and headed to his house by a different route.

Of course, when we got the horses almost home, they decided to cut and run a different direction to go check out the neighbors herd of miniature donkeys, so I had to jump out and herd them away from all that ass on foot while Denise used the Mud Taxi to cut off their retreat.

About that time, Scotty reappeared with his truck and trailer and together we got all the troublesome equines home and into their corrals without further issue.
And so, hours late, Scotty saddled up a couple of now sweaty horses and loaded them into the trailer , and we finally made the drive to the tree cut area to start the horseback elk recovery.
Now, I say “we”, but the truth is I barely know one end of the horse from the other, and certainly don’t know how to ride one-although I’ve always wanted to. Denise used to ride horses a lot as a kid, but that was long ago and far away. This was no easy flat trail ride, and no place to learn to ride, so it was all up to Scotty.

All we could do was watch, and marvel at how the horses easily covered the distance that took us an hour and a half in about 20 minutes.
See that buff colored ridge in the background? That’s where the elk is-it’s quite a distance.

Our friend Scotty is not only the local rancher, he owns and operates a legit hunting ranch fully stocked with exotics -https://www.duntonranch.net/
He’s also a licensed hunting guide and pretty much spends his life hunting.
And as such, he made short work of quartering up Denise’s elk and getting it loaded on to the horses. In not much time at all, he was on his way back down the mountain with our meat for the year.

I’m almost qualified to hold a horse in place if it’s tired and doesn’t want to move anyway.

After that, all we had to do was unload everything, clean and hang the meat, and roll it into the walk-in for a couple of days before it heads off to a local meat processor. Yum-yum!!

And THAT finally concludes our little hunting story that took place several weeks ago.
Hopefully some of you enjoyed it-I know it’s pretty different content for RDP.

 

[The Chicken]

So the great cow elk hunt of 2024 was actually about 3 weeks ago in real-time, and we had originally planned to take that whole week off and try to catch up on some relaxing time.
But it wasn’t to be-due to circumstances beyond our control, things on the work front were behind, and so many things were needing so much more attention than they should just to do normal day-to-day operations. Permitting issues, parts supply issues, having to constantly stay on top of so many people that we normally shouldn’t have to: the list goes on.
The short version is-the minute our elk hunt was over, we dove right back into work trying to get the last weeks of the year setup and on track.
And during all of this, we had work and maintenance going on in the shop as well, along with one certain backhoe project some pain-in-the-ass neighbor had left at our place.
Yeah, I’m talking about you, @wash11 !
Some of you may recall I wrote about Joel and Amy’s backhoe landing at our place for some repairs and maintenance way back in September. Well, as of the second week of December, it’s still here. Not surprisingly, that job is like an onion-you just keep peeling and crying. The more we dug into it, the more things we discovered needed attention. Add in a time-lag for ordering parts, an extremely difficult to decipher parts system, a machine that apparently has had some upgrades and revisions not indicated by its serial numbers, and we only get to work on it about one day a week on weekends in a place far from any parts supplier-we’ll, it’s no real surprise that it’s not done yet.
However despite many challenges, that backhoe is going back together nicely and should soon be ready for years of trouble free service again.
But holy crap has that thing taken over our shop!
There are new John Deere parts and dirty backhoe parts EVERYWHERE!

 

[wash11]

Fuck. That. Backhoe.

 

[The Chicken]

One of the things we decided to do on the backhoe project was replace all the hydraulic lines on the rear of the machine, as most of them were looking pretty rotten, and now was the time to change them while everything was all apart.
Turns out that you can’t just order new lines for this machine-you have to take them to a hose shop and have them made. Well, seeing as I have all the equipment to make hydraulic hoses for my own stuff, it just made sense to order up hose and ends and build the lines ourselves.
I’m a big fan of abrasion sleeve for hydraulic lines-in addition to abrasion resistance, the sleeve gives the hoses excellent UV protection and, IMHO, adds years of service life to hoses. So every hose I made I also installed abrasion sleeve.
Here are most of the hoses all made, labeled, sleeved and ready to be installed.

Another thing I’m a big fan of is cleaning-and I mean REALLY cleaning-hydraulic lines after they have been made. Debris from hose making or changing in a machines hydraulic system can really wreck havoc and make for costly troubleshooting and repairs.
To that end, I have some pretty cool tools for cleaning hoses. This is my projectile gun kit. It shoots special foam projectiles through hydraulic lines to scrub them clean on the inside.

Here’s a short video of @wash11 and I using it to clean a line.

We catch and account for every projectile to make sure the whole projectile is cleared from the line, and to verify the cleanliness of the projectile. If it’s dirty, we keep cleaning. We use a liquid cleaner in conjunction with the projectiles for a squeaky clean result.
Now, usually what I get out of the lines when cleaning them is pretty benign-small pieces of rubber or tiny amounts of dirt or dust. But on one of these lines, we blew clear something I’ve never had come out of a new line before:

Holy crap!!
It was a steel shaving , apparently from the manufacture of one of these hose ends that some how was lodged in the end itself. Just running solvent and compressed air through the line didn’t dislodge it. It only came out when we sent the cleaning projectile through. This piece of metal would have assuredly caused damage in the hydraulic system had we not removed it! That right there justified any time and expense we spent cleaning the lines so thoroughly.

 

[TimeBandit]

At this point I'm just wondering if there's anything the chicken man can't do?

 

[Taboma]

At this point I'm just wondering if there's anything the chicken man can't do?

If this is a reading comprehension test, then I'm going with ------ A. Ride a horse

 

[monkeyswrench]

At this point I'm just wondering if there's anything the chicken man can't do?

I'm thinking the list of "can't" is pretty small...
I'd like to see him move past solar though. Maybe move into off-grid, small scale, cold fusion reactors

 

[The Chicken]

At this point I'm just wondering if there's anything the chicken man can't do?

Well-I take that as a compliment-thank you.
There are definitely some things I can’t do; singing and dancing are at the top of that list. Anyone who has heard me “ sing” hopes to never hear such terrible noises again, and anyone who’s seen me try to dance has laughed very hard indeed.
But in all seriousness, a few years ago I realized that I’m very blessed in that I’ve lived a somewhat unique life that has given me lots of experiences across so many different areas. And together with Denise, we’ve done-and continue to do-so many interesting and varied things.
Sometimes I’m hesitant to tell people what I’ve done or offer them advice on a certain topic because quite honestly after a point it sorta sounds like I’m full of shit and making things up, but I don’t have any real ability to lie, and I don’t need to make up stories because I’ve got so many neat, weird or funny real life mis-adventures there’s no need to make shit up.
We had a customer awhile back who we were hanging out with after work, trading stories and experiences. After a couple hours of talking about all sorts of different topics, I was showing him some pictures of something I had designed and explaining it to him. He stopped, looked at me funny and asked “ Who the fuck ARE you?!”
I’m just a guy that has been really lucky to have gotten to do a lot of strange stuff with just enough skill and ability to make it happen most of the time.
And I hope the scope and variety of what we do on the daily entertains and maybe helps people who read about it here.
Thank you to everyone who has tagged along here for the ride, and thank you to anyone who has commented.

 

[wash11]

At this point I'm just wondering if there's anything the chicken man can't do?

Things The Chicken CAN'T do:
1. Sing. Sadly, that fact doesn't stop him from doing it.
2. Say no to another Modelo or Corona.
3. Grow a gray hair on his head. Actually, just having a full head of hair at 51 while the rest of us don't- fuck him.
4. Estimate time. We run on two clocks around here. Mountain Standard Time and Dan Time. His optimism for accomplishing projects before lunch is legendary. As is the failure rate of that program.
5. Bullshit. After 35 years, if he was the kind of guy that had stories get bigger with each beer- I'd have picked up on it by now.

Outside of that list, he's the real deal on the fab, electrical, head scratching shit.

 

[monkeyswrench]

I hear his rendition of "Danny Boy" is simply breathtaking...

 

[wash11]

I hear his rendition of "Danny Boy" is simply breathtaking...

Yeah, it’ll take your breath away for sure

 

[The Chicken]

One thing most people don’t realize is just how much work goes into simply getting everything needed to one of these off grid jobs.
There will be at least a full day of loading, unloading, checking parts against lists, restocking trucks, and other tasks that all have to happen before we can roll. And if a job lasts more than a week, this work before even heading back to the job will typically happen every week.
Case in point-this past Monday, we headed north and east to a location at the base of Arizona Snow Bowl, were we are right now. I’ll get into the job itself a bit later.
This install is for a very small and simple system. Yet the preparation required is substantial. Over the course of four days, we began loading the two trucks and trailers, and a full 8 hours of labor was required Sunday to wrap it all up. The parts had all been ordered months ago and were mostly in our shop ready to load.
Thursday after a full day in the office, I went down to our shop area and unloaded the skiddy and scissor lift off of our equipment trailer, and then loaded the excavator, auger drive, auger bits, three buckets and rock hammer onto two trailers.
I worked on that till it was dark out and called it a day.

Friday I would spend several hours chaining all of the equipment and attachments down, and preparing the trailers for travel.
Saturday, I would spend a couple hours doing some modifications to one of our auger drive adapters to make them work with the ground screws we use because the manufacturer decided to change how they build some of the screws and it was causing issues.
Here is a threaded coupling from some oil field pipe that I originally tried to machine into an adapter spacer.

I knew I was pushing my luck machining the pipe that was still in the coupler to such a large O.D., but I did it anyway. And I was almost done when the boring bar snagged the pipe thread and then somehow wrapped it around itself. This required a cut off wheel to free the tool, and junked the part as well. Oops.

So I ended up welding up the adapter instead and machining the shoulder making it permanent instead of a sleeve.

Here it is test fitted into one of the screws.

Here’s a couple of the screws. They are 5 feet long.

While I was playing wanna be machinist, Denise had enlisted Amy’s help and they carefully went over a detailed 5 page parts list to make sure that every electrical part needed for the job was accounted for and loaded in the back of the Freightshaker. Thanks girls!!
Sunday morning was the real rodeo to get ready, and Denise and I both spent the first half of the day double checking everything, loading up last minute stuff, and packing. Denise rounded up all the food and clothing we would need, while I connected both trucks to their trailers and got them all lined out and ready to roll.

I wish pictures did justice to just how much crap is packed into these trucks and on the trailers. Oh-that trailer that’s two-thirds empty? Yeah, there’s a reason why. You’ll see.
We show up loaded to the gills with tools, equipment and parts.

 

[The Chicken]

It was yet another cold dark and early Monday morning when I lit off the trucks for the day’s trip.
The F-350 fired right up because I’d plugged it in overnight and it was happy.
The Freightshaker, on the other hand, was its usual bitchy self like it always is on cold mornings, and required that I put a heat gun on the ECU for about ten minutes before it would start. How it is that I came to figure out that whole heat gun/ECU thing is a story in itself.

Once the trucks were warned up, we rolled out and headed for the freeway. We always stop at the end of our dirt road for a final load check-it’s pretty normal for that couple of bumpy miles to settle and shake everything.

About an hour into our trip, the eastern sky was turning pretty colors.

We rolled into Flagstaff and headed to our solar supplier to pick up the remaining parts. Unfortunately, even though we had given them several days notice to have our stuff ready for pickup today, their warehouse crew had been super busy and not all of our stuff was quite ready, so it took a bit longer to get loaded up than normal. Oh yeah-remember that mostly empty trailer? Here it is after loading it up with solar parts-minus the 9 additional ground screws that also got strapped to the very back of the trailer.

After that load was all secure, we made a quick stop at the local Tractor Supply to get Denise some insulated coveralls to keep her warm in the freezing temperatures we were heading into.

Then it was a 30 minute run up the road to the job site. A narrow but smooth forest service road took us most of the way, and the snow capped mountains nearby looked pretty but felt cold.

When we finally arrived at the job at noon, we were disappointed to find the customer was the only one on the street who had apparently not paid his sun bill and the shade had left snow and 2” of ice everywhere. Great.

The first thing we did was get the F-350 sorta stuck on the ice. Even in 4wd, the road was too steep, the load too heavy, and the ice too slippery when one rear wheel was on the ice. It took some careful maneuvering to get the trucks and trailers parked and out of the ridiculously deep ditches that bordered each side of the narrow road.
It is a pretty location.

Once we got parked, we dove right into the work.
Denise got the cabin opened up and all our gear moved in, as we would be staying in the customers cabin instead of our job trailer for this job-with lows forecast into single digit temperatures, there was no way our trailer wouldn’t freeze up.how it was that we were doing a job here in these freezing temperatures instead of in the summer months when we should have is another story.
While Denise was moving in, I got the excavator unloaded and the tools and gear out we’d need for our first task-laying out the ground mount array and installing ground screws.
After getting our array and anchor locations all figured out, it was time to screw!
Here’s Denise holding the first one in place while I drop the auger drive into it.

And just 5 minutes later, the first screw was installed and we were off to the races!

Two more screws would drive home in quick succession and just like that a third of our anchors were installed in about 15 minutes!
Woo!!
And right there is where the misery would set in and things would begin to go poorly…

 

[callbob]

This has to be the most interesting thread on RDP. Very good read every time. Kudo's
There is always some screwing, erections and you know, that thing.

 

[The Chicken]

I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about our ground screw program, and also why the hell we are in cold country in December.
First, the ground screws.
To start, here’s Denise carrying one of the shorter ones we use to put the size of these things in perspective.

The reason we typically use ground screws is for time savings. We have tried a number of different ground mount anchor methods, and in most cases, even with the challenges we typically face with less than ideal soil conditions, the ground screws save us time and money. They also free us up from having to schedule with a concrete company to deliver mud to us-we’ve had jobs where concrete was a month or more lead time, which totally wrecks our entire program.
When soil conditions are right, we can sink a screw about every ten minutes once we are set up.
We use one of the highest torque output mini auger drives out there-it’s capable of 3350 ft-lbs, and we have often stalled it with screws or augers.
Once the screws are in, we don’t have to wait for concrete to cure-we can jump right into the array structure assembly. This allows not only speed, but flexibility on these remote jobs.
Now, truth be told, we unfortunately almost NEVER encounter ideal soil for installing these screws. However, we have developed a number of work-arounds that still make them viable. Usually we end up pre drilling the holes with a rock auger, then repacking the hole with native fill before finally installing the screw. This puts our install time at closer to an hour per screw unfortunately, but even with that extended installation time, we feel we are still ahead of what it takes to do concrete anchors.

Now, as to why we are fighting freezing weather at almost 9000 feet elevation and risking having all our equipment snowed in and stranded in December?
It’s a long story that I will try to keep short.
This customer contracted with us many months ago to install a small but powerful solar system on his summer vacation cabin. As usual, I recommended he permit the installation as it adds resale value to a property, and often helps when the owner goes to insure the solar system ( which I STRONGLY recommend).
So we had permit submittals drawn up and put in for a permit with the county.
Easy-peazy.
Except it wasn’t.
Turns out flagstaff had a once-every-hundred-years record snowstorm a few years back that ended up damaging a lot of older structures. The county then commissioned NAU to do a snow load study, and based on that study, the county implemented new snow load requirements for any structure built above 7,500 feet in elevation.
It turns out the new snow load requirements are off the charts high as a result.
And require an engineered system.
Even for something as small as 8 solar panels in such a remote area.
I pleaded with the county for an exemption ; asked if we could just fence it off to keep people safely away from the array in the extremely unlikely event it failed; asked for a defeated snow load due to the tiny size of the array and it’s low impact as a hazard-all to no avail, although the plans people thought all of those ideas were good with sound reasoning, in the end they wouldn’t budge.
And so, we then had to find an engineer who would be willing and able to design for a 177 pounds per square foot snow load rating.
Ridiculous.
Particularly when no known solar panels themselves are rated that high.
Eventually, we found a solar engineering firm that was familiar with the concept and had done this before and expressed confidence that they could take our off-the-shelf ground mount system and ground screws, add some more bracing and we’d be good to go.
The reality of the deal ended up being months of frustration as they then changed their minds on how much they wanted to add to the structure, tripled their fees, and just generally were a pain in the ass.
Once that was straightened out, we had to have the plans redrawn, and that seemingly simple task ended up being far more work and took far longer than it had any right to.
Then, with only a couple weeks left before our permit application process would have to be completely started over due to almost six months passing since our initial application, we finally had engineered plans to submit.
In our defense, this was the first time we had run into this issue, as it only affects one of the many counties we work in, and there are not many properties that fall into that snow load category.
The upshot of all this is:the customer-who had already paid tens of thousands of dollars in deposit money- had patiently waited half a year and had been forced to use his cabin with only an annoying little generator for power.
We wanted to do everything we could to get his system installed as soon as possible so that he could at least use it next season. So, despite the fact that it costs us considerably more in time and expense to work in these conditions, we are up here doing our best to make things right for him.
And it hasn’t been easy-yesterday morning saw a low of 6 degrees, and both the water and sewer plumbing froze up and we spent several hours of our work day thawing that all out. The excavator takes a long time to warm up to do work at these temperatures-I’ve learned the folly of pushing cold hydraulic equipment into hard work before it’s warmed up in the past with blown seals, lines and filters. All these extra clothes slow down our work. We’ve already burned through 15 gallons of propane trying to keep things warm…. There’s a lot of reasons we avoid working in this type of weather, and they are all coming home to roost here now.
Additionally, the forest service closes the road in and out of this place for the season with the first significant snow fall, so we are keeping a wary eye on the weather for fear of our entire work Fleet being stranded and us out of business for six months.

 

[The Chicken]

Tuesday morning broke freezing and miserable outside. The thermometer hit a low of 6 degrees overnight.
We weren’t too concerned because it was not terribly cold in the cabin-until we discovered that both the water and sewer plumbing was frozen. This was an even bigger problem than it first appeared to be because we both had to poop and there was only one bathroom. So we spent the next several hours carefully heating up water lines with a propane torch, plunging the toilet in hopes of getting it working, and prairie dogging something fierce.
Did I mention there’s reasons we avoid working in this kind of weather?
Finally, once everything was thawed and we sent the brown trouts out to sea, it was time to employ alternate methods to get ground screws in.
Short version-we turned this guys front yard into a war zone.
First we had to dig a trench about 6’ deep and 10’ long.

Out of that trench came tons of rocks, a few boulders, and not much dirt.

I used the bucket teeth to sift rocks from the dirt, then I had to carefully scoop all the dirt , drop it back in the ditch, and compact it.
The pictures don’t really do justice to how much material we had to process, or just what a mess this was. They also don’t show the huge hole we dug nearby to steal dirt out of so we could have enough to backfill with because we removed so many big rocks.
Finally, we re-measured and remarked the screw locations and drove home the last screws.

It’s hard to see, but at 12:30 Tuesday we had all nine screws in and Denise was happy to have another picture taken.

At this point the yard was somewhat put back together-but not for long because we next had to dig a trench for the underground conduit from the array to the house.

Here’s what that rocky mess looked like.

If it looks like a huge mess with big rocks everywhere, it’s because it was.
After we got our conduit in, we snapped a few pictures for the inspector who agreed to let us backfill and just show him pictures at final inspection.

The process of finishing backfilling, dropping lots of big rocks into our borrow pit, and putting this yard back together would drag on until we couldn’t see anymore, and continue for several more hours the following morning.
Our last view of day-

 

[HNL2LHC]

I always enjoy your stories…..once again I am more than impressed. You & Denise rock!!!!

 

[BabyRay]

This has to be the most interesting thread on RDP. Very good read every time. Kudo's

Yes, I get kinda giddy every time I see @The Chicken has been posting. Must be something in the Arizona groundwater, as @wash11’s homesteading thread ranks right up there too.

Oh, and I should mention @monkeyswrench and his many interesting and insightful posts as well. Like I said, it must be the water.

 

[The Chicken]

Wednesday and Thursday were both hectic days trying to get this job back on track.
Somehow a bunch of seemingly insignificant issues all ganged up on us and multiplied causing serious delays, setbacks and just general frustration.
When things don’t go well, we don’t have the option to quit, let someone else do it or give up. So for two days we have been in the suck.
We were so busy I didn’t get many pictures and honestly right now-I’m not sure I even remember what the hell has been going on because I’m sleep deprived and it’s all a bit blurry.
We did finally get the nightmare array structure up.

And the panels all installed and wired up.

We got that wrapped up about sundown on Thursday.

When we opened the houses main panel, we discovered that nobody sealed the holes in the back of the panel where all the wiring comes through, nor did they use proper cable connectors.
As a result, moisture is building up in the panel from the crawl space, and rodents are having their way with it.

With the array all done, it was time to wrap up the inverter “room”-which is a crawl space under the house that is just big enough to stand up in.
Here’s what that cramped little area’s like.

We stayed up really late and got the inverter and most of the components installed and wired up.
We are getting a final inspection tomorrow, so the race will be on to wrap up the last details before the inspector gets here.

 

[Willie B]

…You two are simply amazing…

 

[Waterjunky]

Very impressive as usual Dan!

 

[The Chicken]

We got up early Friday morning after a few hours of sleep with what we thought was a pretty easy punch list of things to do before we could wrap up and head home.
Originally, this job was only supposed to take three days, so for obvious reasons we were anxious to finish.
The day would prove to be exceptionally frustrating.
One of the first issues we ran into was our spools of 2/0 battery cable. We didn’t even think about what the 18-20 degree nighttime temperature would do to them, so we left them outside on the truck with the idea that in the morning, we would make our custom cables out at the truck where all the crimp tools were rather than carry all that crap up the hill to the already cramped inverter “room”.
Now, we use a really flexible, high quality MTW ultra fine strand wire for our battery cables. It’s like welding cable but with the MYW rating needed for permanent installations.
Well, that shit was frozen stiff! There was no way we would be able to manipulate it into the tight spaces where it had to go, so we measured off what we needed-which wasn’t easy because the crap was like a giant heavy slinky-cut it and carried it up the hill and turned a heater on it.
Once it was limber enough to terminate, we did that, but it was still too stiff to really work with, so back to the heater. Did I mention there’s reasons we don’t normally work in this kind of weather?

While that was going on and we were working on the last details needed to power up the system, I called the county building inspector to touch base with him and see about what time he thought he’d be there as Denise had put in for a later inspection.
He reported that we were first in his list, he was just a few minutes away, and that if we weren’t done-which we definitely were not done-we would fail inspection.
Fuck.
We frantically started hucking tools and parts into boxes and made the installation look as done and clean as possible literally as he was pulling into the driveway.
Now, we really were done with the physical installation except for the cantankerous battery cables and installing all the covers , and it looked about like this.

Fortunately, the inspector was not really cool about everything, but he liked what he saw. Additionally, he had questions about what was required for solar system safety stickers-which is actually a very hard to understand topic, and even I’m confused half the time as to what stickers are supposed to go where-so I spent some time doing my best to educate him on why the stickers are needed, what they actually mean, and where they need to be placed.
My last card to play was perhaps a bit sneaky and misleading, although not wrong-we had one of those little 600watt “solar generators “ currently hooked up to the systems generator input to run lights and test, and it turns out that actually powers up the buildings inverter, and due to the small, silent nature of the external battery pack generator, it appears that the inverter is actually producing the power and powering up the building, so I was able to point at the inverter’s touchscreen and demonstrate “yeah look, it’s working. “ which technically it WAS, as it was passing the power through as designed. When I showed him our frozen battery cables thawing in front of the heater as the only thing stopping us from connecting the already installed batteries, he seemed agreeable to signing off on it because he could clearly see the system was running and hadn’t burnt anything down.
But maybe what really sealed the deal is when him and Denise started talking about their recent elk hunts-he perked right up! This isn’t the first time that hunting stories have helped us with inspectors, customers or contractors, and makes me feel like hunting expenses are a legitimate business write off.
Anyway, he happily signed off on our final inspection, and an hour or so later we had the batteries all hooked up and the system up and running and we figured we’d be packing up to leave in short order.
Turns out we were wrong.

 

[rivermobster]

Best Sunday morning reading Ever.

Thanks so much for sharing your stories.

 

[Sandlord]

Can’t wait for the next episode.

 

[The Chicken]

So it’s Friday morning, day five of a three day job, we’ve just passed our final inspection, and all we need to do is wrap up the battery connections, finish programming the inverter, test everything, and move out of the customers cabin.
Still a lot to do, and a long day for sure, but doable and we figured we’d finally be back home late in the day.
As I alluded to in my last post, it would turn out to not be that way at all.
After getting the batteries hooked up, I began the inverter programming-which is pretty quick and simple for such a small basic system- while Denise started packing up all our personal items and tools and parts we were done with.
One thing that makes these inverters and modern lithium batteries fairly easy to program for a simple systems is the fact that the batteries communicate to the inverter via a data cable.
In modern systems, the batteries actually end up driving the inverter instead of vice-versa. The batteries populate the inverter settings for critical parameters such as charging voltages, overall capacity, temperature, etc. Better batteries will also drive their maximum charge and discharge rates based their internal parameters and self-balance individual batteries within a system of batteries, resulting in improved battery life and performance-in fact, good battery/inverter combinations running in communication with each other ( known in the industry as “closed loop communication “)can be up to 30% more efficient than when they are not in communication with each other. This is a significant and important benefit for overall system performance.
Which is great, and we were using a proven battery/inverter combination to leverage all that.
Except right off the bat, the batteries refused to communicate with the inverter.
I went to do a total system re-boot-which is occasionally needed on a new system on its first power cycle to make everything happy-which is where our problems began to multiply.
The two batteries in this system had been powered up and tested for proper voltage and proper power-up and power-down operation separately and had functioned perfectly before we tied them together.
But once they were put into the system in tandem, the batteries refused to power down. We could kill power to the DC power buss, but the batteries internal BMS ( Battery Management System) wouldn’t fully power down-which in this particular system was a problem because it would need to be powered down for months at a time in the winter, and the stuck-on BMS would prematurely drain the batteries and potentially ruin them.
I spent over an hour in mounting frustration trying everything I could think of to get the batteries to play nice, but everything pointed to a failed BMS or two, and we were running out of time to resolve such an issue.
Luckily, I happened to have that manufactures head US product representative cell phone number, and doubly luckily he answered the phone.
We went through all sorts of trouble shooting procedures and he was coming to the same conclusion as I was. Batteries won’t power down or communicate and it sure looked like a BMS failure-which was highly unusual.
Then we backed up and tried the one thing that I normally try first thing that I normally try in a no-communication type of scenario, but didn’t because of the batteries wouldn’t power down indicating a BMS issue-and that is to try a fresh communication cable to rule out a bad cable. Now, we use only quality pre-terminated data cables, and I’ve never had swapping cables fix a communication issue-it is always something else-but it’s still the first thing one should try because it’s easy and immediately rules out a bad cable.
Well lo and behold-for the first time ever, swapping data cables immediately fixed the communication issues! The batteries still wouldn’t power down, but with proper communication established, it made us realize we had two SEPARATE problems all along that only SEEMED like the same problem, and THAT puts a different spin on our thinking and troubleshooting process.
After several hours, what we discovered was that we needed to add an outboard and additional battery disconnect because the inverters DC buss capacitors were storing residual voltage after the batteries started their shut down process-which in turn would automatically trigger the batteries to power back up.
This was a perfect storm sort of scenario-these particular batteries with this particular inverter combo produce a unique DC circuit situation not usually an issue with other inverters.
Once we figured that out, the issue was pretty simple to fix, and luckily I happened to have an extra 175 amp DC breaker on the truck, so it was simply a matter of carefully marking out a breaker mounting location and cutting it in.

Here’s the breaker installed.

Yeah, my handwriting sucks. Our label maker is on the fritz, expensive to replace, and I was out of time. Deal with it. once we had that all set up, everything with the batteries worked perfectly.
Awesome!
Let’s get out of here!
The only thing left to do was test the little manual backup generator with the inverter to make sure everything there worked as it should, get the batteries charged up enough for seasonal storage, and roll our crap out of here.
Easy-peazey!
Except it wasn’t.
The inverter would NOT connect to the generator at all.
I tried the generator we carry on our work truck , which has proven to connect to these inverters in the past-and that one wouldn’t work either.
Shit.
Meanwhile, Denise was attempting to establish WiFi communications with the inverter with no luck-an unusual situation.
It was beginning to look like we had a bad inverter.
This was bad news, as we were rapidly running out of time to get all this running with it now being Friday afternoon.
I fired off some calls to inverter tech support and our vendor-but by that point in time, we had to stop working on the system, as we were scheduled to be one of three installers selected by a prominent battery manufacturer to be a featured guest speaker in their year-end webinar for installers. A big deal and honor for us for sure!
We had been scheduled to be in our office for this event-but here we were in the middle of nowhere.
Luckily, we had brought our portable Starlink with us, and we frantically deployed it and got a laptop setup just in time to participate.

We did our best to forget about all the problems we were knee deep in, put on our game face, and did our presentation and Q&A session for Pytes Batteries.
The webinar lasted just over an hour, which put us onsite, with a system that wasn’t fully functional, at past 4 pm on a Friday.
We had to face the difficult reality that there was no way we were going home today, and as Denise moved our essential personnel items back into the cabin and scrounged food for a meal that we hadn’t packed for, I went back to fighting with the inverter and generator.
Long story short, I finally got ahold of tech support, and after hours of work, it developed that a particular setting we used for off-grid generators-a setting, I might add, that the manufacturer recommends for our application and that we always use-doesn’t play nice with only this one model of their inverter and a different setting must be used or the inverter will never connect to external AC power.
Seriously.
Once we changed that setting, everything worked as it should.
But by that time it was dark and another day had passed.

The system was finally done, running properly, and our generator was charging the batteries in preparation to shut the system down for the winter season, but we still had hours of work to get loaded up, and that would have to wait till Saturday morning-and Saturday would prove to be yet another challenging day.

 

[Gramps]

isn't this why God invented tequila?

 

[TimeBandit]

This is the point where I just shake my head and say "too much technology". But I'm open for the challenge!

 

[The Chicken]

Saturday morning, 4 am.
It was very cold-in the teens, dark, and we were tired and just wanted to get home.
The first order of business was to get a bunch of cold engines started and warming up, and I knew that was going to be a rodeo in itself.
First up, the excavator-which after its 20 second glow plug routine, fired right up with minimal drama.
Next, the trusty Harbor Freight 3000 generator that lives in the back of the Freightshaker. That fired up on the second pull, and I plugged in the heat gun and let it run pointed at the Cummins ECU for about 10 minutes to warm up the ECU-which refuses to send fuel to the injectors when it’s cold, presumably due to micro cracks in its circuit board.

Then, the Freightshaker itself, which started, but under protest of the early hour and cold temperatures.

I didn’t notice the cool smoke rings the truck blew until I watched the video.
Then I went to the Super Duty, which I knew wasn’t going to play nice, and I was right.
To be fair to it, it has only about half of its glow plugs working-they were supposed to have gotten changed out a couple years ago, but there was some things that got in the way of that being done, and, well… here we are.
I tried to start it a couple times just in case-but no joy, so I drug out another generator and plugged in the block heater for about 45 minutes while I went and did other stuff.

It finally started then with the assistance of a big jump box with a big cloud of rattling smoke.

Down by the big truck, I had all the lights on to help me find and load everything in the dark.

After double checking the entire solar system again, and going over the whole site looking for loose ends or errant tools, everything slowly started finding its way to its places on the trucks and getting secured-no small task.
The trucks themselves were ready to roll just after daybreak, but the real rodeo for the day was only about to begin.
You see, we had two issues;1- the space was so tight, there was no way we could back either trailer out with either truck. It just wasn’t possible.
2-there was just enough snow and ice right where we needed to maneuver the trucks and trailers, that even had there been space, it would have taken a miracle to keep everything out of the huge and steep ditches and avoid a really costly tow bill.
So we started playing a tense, stressful and rather long game of equipment Jenga. First, we moved the F-350 out in the street and parked it where there was no ice so it was out of the way and wouldn’t slide into a ditch.
Then we chained its trailer to the excavator and used it to push the trailer up the property and back it into the parking spot, the excavator slipping and sliding the whole time on the ice.

I wish pictures did justice to what a huge pain this actually was, and how steep this terrain actually is.
Once that trailer was set, we slipped and slid the F-350 over the ice backwards and got it hooked up.
Then we had to do the same for the Freightshaker and its equipment trailer.

This setup was even harder because everything had to be moved two or three times to get it all turned around on solid footing.

Finally, every thing was loaded up, hooked up, secured and pointed in something that resembled the right direction to GTFO of here. I sent Denise off in the little truck first, communicating to her via phone to help her get out without getting stuck.
Despite planning the exit very carefully, the truck still slid around on the ice, and it was a tense and dicey couple minutes getting her out on the road.
Then once she had it all on the road and lined out just right, the trailer-which fortunately was very lightly loaded- was suddenly sucked into the deep ditch as if by some huge invisible vacuum cleaner! Then it started to slide the rear of the truck towards the ditch.
Oh shit!
I told her to up her speed and keep the truck pointed at ice-free roadway, and luckily the truck didn’t follow the trailer into the ditch, and eventually the trailer tires bounced off a big rock in the ditch that helped guide it onto the road just in time to avoid hitting the Freightshaker parked and awaiting its turn to exit on the next driveway.
Once she was clear, it was my turn to get the semi out, and to be sure, the pressure was on.
If we had gotten the little truck stuck, we could have used the excavator to free it. It would suck, but it’s doable.
But if I dropped the semi in a ditch, we were gonna have to call a heavy wrecker, on a Saturday, in a remote spot. That’s a recovery bill that has a really large price tag.
As I got the truck about halfway out, using every inch of road I dared to make the turn, the resistance of the loaded triple axle trailer in a sharp turn on solid ground started to slew the rear of the semi that was partially on ice, pointing me right at the opposite drainage ditch. My butt puckered enough to make a few diamonds, and I fed the Cummins a little healthier dose of throttle and crammed the wheel over. Thankfully, the truck found solid road and the trailer followed, skirting precariously along the very edge of the ditch-with one tire hanging out in space for a brief moment that seemed to last for minutes.
Finally-FINALLY, we had both trucks lined out and rolling towards home.

It had taken five hours, 33 minutes just to extricate ourselves from the property.
Did I mention there’s a reason we don’t normally do jobs in this kind of weather?!
We were still three hours from home at that point, but other than an uncomfortable section of the trip that took us through a busy downtown flagstaff on a Saturday afternoon, we made it home late in the day without further incident.
We were beat.

 

[monkeyswrench]

"Ice Road Truckers" meet solar installers!

I'm a wuss, the big truck may have had to stay until I got a ton of cinders...or spring.

 

[callbob]

Holy shit is all I can say. The part getting out was bad enough but the trouble shooting the system had my head exploding. Way the hell over my pay grade and pea brain. Good job you two.

 

[The Chicken]

Something I thought you all would find cool.
We are pretty serious about making sure what we do is as good as we can make it, and is good for our customers.
One thing we do pretty regularly is randomly test our ground screws for uplift resistance to make sure there are no issues with an array structure down the road.
Nobody requires us to test them-we just want to make sure they’re good.
With a different machine, we’ve pulled on them with considerably more force than the excavator here is able to with positive results.
The engineering for the arrays assumes an uplift test for these screws at something like 1.5x the calculated load for a pull test value of around 2900 pounds, IIRC.

 

[Tankerchief]

Your trucks must be like a pair of Tardis'. (Bigger on the inside than the outside) I would not have imagined a dyno link among all of those tools.

 

[The Chicken]

Somewhere in the midst of all of our regular work, the @wash11 backhoe rebuild was somehow still inching forward.
Some welding needed done on one of the sticks, so I chugged my beer and donned my welder costume.

Then we discovered some destroyed parts that interact with the extend a hoe ram. We sorta reverse engineered what we thought the ram cradle should have looked like before it got mangled, and then I cut some repair parts out with our trusty little plasma cutter.
Because our CNC plasma table has been down for modification since October; and instead of working on THAT, I’ve been working on a backhoe. So hand torch it is.

Somewhere in there, a beer or few were necessary to keep the project well lubed and moving forward.

With the extend a hoe ram cradle rebuilt and hopefully a little better than new, it was time to reassemble that big greasy mess.

With that assembly put together, it was just about time to put everything back on the rear of the tractor, but the day was over and we were still waiting on a few parts to show up, so here we stopped. So close though!