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

[ltbaney1]

The water tanks on the work trailer needed attention.
First problem is the tank train valves hang down out of the insulation and are prone to freezing and breaking.
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Then, the trans-fill hose between the two tanks was routed from the factory in such a way that about 15-20 gallons from the rear tank can never be used because of the high spot in the hose routing.
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Another issue was the pump suction line was routed outside, exposed, along the frame instead of with all the other water lines inside the trailer where they are freeze resistant.
So we installed a new line through the inside of the trailer along side the other water lines-a rather difficult and time consuming task.
I also removed the drain valves and replaced them with threaded plugs that stay in the insulated tank bays.
View attachment 1476712

When I went to work on the trans-fill hose, it split in two when I barely touched it.
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A new hose routed down low was installed.
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I added several more layers of foil-backed bubble wrap insulation to the belly pan, and added insulation wherever I could.
Then installed some angle iron to hold the belly pan in place and seal it up since it didn’t seal properly before.
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Then there were low point drain valves at the front of the trailer that needed addressing too.
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First I cut them off them installed threaded plugs.

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Finally, I built this insulated enclosure to protect what was left.
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With that and a bunch of other work, the work trailer was ready to deploy to it’s next job.

Looks like you have been busy!! Thank you for bringing us along, I enjoy seeing the creativity and problem solving.

 

[The Chicken]

This week, after wrapping up trailer repairs and waiting for a couple important parts to finally catch up with us, we rolled to the next job.
This time, it’s not a solar installation, but rather wiring a custom off-grid house for a customer who we built a large solar system for some time ago.
This is the same house that we did the electrical panels and dirt work on several months ago.

Here’s what happens when the local owls decide your unfinished house is a good place to hang out.
I’m not sure pictures do justice to the amount of mess they have made.

This house is a SIP (Structural Insulated Panel) construction, so it requires some special and rather tedious rough-in procedures for the perimeter walls.
The walls are basically thick blocks of styrofoam sandwiched between two layers of OSB. real high R values, real tight building envelope, and a real pain to work with.
Here’s Denise thrilled with cutting in an outlet box location.

Here’s what the wall looks like with a cutout made. You can see the round chase-ways that are pre-formed in the insulation that act as conduits that you have to line up your outlet boxes with.

Here’s a tool I have a love/hate relationship with.
It’s better, easier, and lighter than the classic old corded Milwaukee Hole Hogs, and has some cool advanced safeties-but if you’re not careful it’ll still kick your ass and knock you off your ladder. I made a lot of chips with it today.

There’s not a whole lot more to show at this point, as we have spent a lot of time with the homeowner going over parts, plans, equipment, and moving a bunch of things around-kinda standard in a custom home.
Here’s a cool photo we took of the place.

 

[monkeyswrench]

I've seen a few SIPS homes, but never really thought of the electrical aspect. Are there vertical tubes as well for running up the walls?

 

[The Chicken]

I've seen a few SIPS homes, but never really thought of the electrical aspect. Are there vertical tubes as well for running up the walls?

There are some vertical chases.
The vertical chases are factory made to the architectural/electrical plans.
Any changes or additions are a huge PITA.

 

[monkeyswrench]

There are some vertical chases.
The vertical chases are factory made to the architectural/electrical plans.
Any changes or additions are a huge PITA.

Hell no...That sure makes change orders a nightmare when someone says "I think I'd rather have the TV on this wall..."

 

[The Chicken]

Hell no...That sure makes change orders a nightmare when someone says "I think I'd rather have the TV on this wall..."

T&M.

 

[Taboma]

This week, after wrapping up trailer repairs and waiting for a couple important parts to finally catch up with us, we rolled to the next job.
This time, it’s not a solar installation, but rather wiring a custom off-grid house for a customer who we built a large solar system for some time ago.
This is the same house that we did the electrical panels and dirt work on several months ago.
View attachment 1477294

Here’s what happens when the local owls decide your unfinished house is a good place to hang out.
I’m not sure pictures do justice to the amount of mess they have made.
View attachment 1477296

View attachment 1477298

This house is a SIP (Structural Insulated Panel) construction, so it requires some special and rather tedious rough-in procedures for the perimeter walls.
The walls are basically thick blocks of styrofoam sandwiched between two layers of OSB. real high R values, real tight building envelope, and a real pain to work with.
Here’s Denise thrilled with cutting in an outlet box location.
View attachment 1477299

Here’s what the wall looks like with a cutout made. You can see the round chase-ways that are pre-formed in the insulation that act as conduits that you have to line up your outlet boxes with.

View attachment 1477300

Here’s a tool I have a love/hate relationship with.
It’s better, easier, and lighter than the classic old corded Milwaukee Hole Hogs, and has some cool advanced safeties-but if you’re not careful it’ll still kick your ass and knock you off your ladder. I made a lot of chips with it today.
View attachment 1477304

There’s not a whole lot more to show at this point, as we have spent a lot of time with the homeowner going over parts, plans, equipment, and moving a bunch of things around-kinda standard in a custom home.
Here’s a cool photo we took of the place.
View attachment 1477305

Cut my sparky apprenticeship teeth on an old Hole Hawg roping tract homes and later for running al-flex for apartment complexes.

Two tricks, keep the auger sharpened and the real ass-saver was using a Buck & Boost Transformer. That higher voltage "Supercharged" boost allowed me to blow through nails with little more drama than modest jerk of the wrists.

But the blow that took me down, was while using it with a 4" hole saw while boring through a chest high 2x8 fire block for a dental lab.
Project super found me unconscious in a pool of blood about 15 minutes later making rounds and locking up.
Seems I'd made a real bad mistake of leaning forward to eyeball my progress with it still running. This action had caused the 4" hole saw to bind and slam on the brakes, which caused the custom handle I'd made so I could hold on with both hands, to immediately come around and smack me upside the F*ckin head.
I'd made this custom handle about 1/2 prior, by cutting off the end of a stick of 3/4" GRC. When I finished cutting it off and knocking off the burrs with my channellocks, I thought, "You know, I should wrap some rubber tape around this rather nasty bald end ---- Nahhhhhh, it's good-to-go".

 

[wishiknew]

Cut my sparky apprenticeship teeth on an old Hole Hawg roping tract homes and later for running al-flex for apartment complexes.

Two tricks, keep the auger sharpened and the real ass-saver was using a Buck & Boost Transformer. That higher voltage "Supercharged" boost allowed me to blow through nails with little more drama than modest jerk of the wrists.

But the blow that took me down, was while using it with a 4" hole saw while boring through a chest high 2x8 fire block for a dental lab.
Project super found me unconscious in a pool of blood about 15 minutes later making rounds and locking up.
Seems I'd made a real bad mistake of leaning forward to eyeball my progress with it still running. This action had caused the 4" hole saw to bind and slam on the brakes, which caused the custom handle I'd made so I could hold on with both hands, to immediately come around and smack me upside the F*ckin head.
I'd made this custom handle about 1/2 prior, by cutting off the end of a stick of 3/4" GRC. When I finished cutting it off and knocking off the burrs with my channellocks, I thought, "You know, I should wrap some rubber tape around this rather nasty bald end ---- Nahhhhhh, it's good-to-go".

you needed to run that hole hog in high that way you are stronger than the drill learned this at my 16 year tenure at McGee electric

 

[Taboma]

you needed to run that hole hog in high that way you are stronger than the drill learned this at my 16 year tenure at McGee electric

Almost always did, "Almost" ---- just not that day using that hole saw. Thankfully, I really only worked residential and apartments during my apprenticeship, the next 40 years was primarily large commercial, Industrial or Institutional.
F*ckin McGee, you're a brave man to step forward and admit what's normally only whispered in dark alleyways.

 

[The Chicken]

Been a crazy, crazy few weeks.
We are in the middle of several jobs right now, the weather hasn’t been always cooperative, and a huge( for us) job that we actually won the bid on some six months ago-but the start of has been constantly delayed, which has totally made our lives difficult-finally sent us a deposit check, which is great, but now that means it’s go time and everything is now a mad scramble. Expect to see a lot more on that project here soon-it should be a bit of a wild ride…
Anyway, back to our SIP house project.
We finished the rough in, finally!-after several weeks of issues, setbacks, and challenges.
First of all, even though most of our jobs come with some frustrating challenges, they also come with lots of fresh air and spectacular views.

Our work trailer was nice enough to show us it appreciated all of our recent attention to it by shitting its water pump.
Luckily, we’ve played the RV game for too many years, and we know that water pumps seem to be one of those things that just fail randomly and frequently-so we carry a spare and we’re back up and running in short order.
This time what failed on the pump turned out to be the micro switch, which I just happened to have some of at the shop, so the failed pump was rebuilt and put back in the trailer as a spare.

Our challenges with missing, damaged or misplaced vertical chase ways in the SIP walls required some, ahh, creative solutions. I’m not gonna say just what those solutions entail, but I will show you a picture of Denise preparing one part of that solution. Draw your own conclusions.

After spending seemingly forever just preparing to wire the house, we were finally able to actually start pulling wires. It turns out that pictures of house rough is are actually pretty unimpressive. So I tried to get some that at least looked cool.
Here’s all the home runs at the sub panel awaiting termination.

And here is the sub panel all made up and just awaiting breakers at trim out time.

The mess that process left on the floor was pretty impressive.

Here’s the data/power boxes we set them up with for their living room entertainment center.

And this is the main data/power box for the data/entertainment hub room.

This is a junction box we set up to deal with getting the circuits out of the main panel, which is mounted on a SIP wall and required special attention.

Here’s a couple of rather busy switch boxes.

And here they are all tamed and made up and ready for switches.

Some random pictures of how we ran the wires. You probably not be surprised to find we’re pretty particular on how they are ran. No spiderweb of randomly strewn romex here.

Some 6000’ feet of romex, 3000 Milwaukee staples( BTW-Milwaukee cable stapler for the win. Finally a cable stapler worth owning!),300+ nail plates, and waaaay too many hours later-this rough in was complete.
No time to celebrate though-we cleaned up as the sun set on yet another long day and readied the trucks to move first thing in the morning for what would be a marathon run battling adverse weather to do the next job in an impossibly short amount of time.

 

[ltbaney1]

you guys are champions. that many wires makes my head hurt, but you guys make it look clean and easy.

 

[monkeyswrench]

I'd always thought of off-grid as being more basic, even "simple" living by today's standards. That really appears to be far from the truth now. "Data/Entertainment" hubs...in a place on the outskirts of the outskirts.

 

[TimeBandit]

I'd always thought of off-grid as being more basic, even "simple" living by today's standards. That really appears to be far from the truth now. "Data/Entertainment" hubs...in a place on the outskirts of the outskirts.

Between solar and starlink you bring the grid with you.

Or should I say you are the grid?

How is water handled?

 

[The Chicken]

I'd always thought of off-grid as being more basic, even "simple" living by today's standards. That really appears to be far from the truth now. "Data/Entertainment" hubs...in a place on the outskirts of the outskirts.

Today’s off grid amenities are only limited by the size of one’s bank account.
It’s pretty amazing.

 

[The Chicken]

Between solar and starlink you bring the grid with you.

Or should I say you are the grid?

How is water handled?

Bingo.
Starlink has been a game changer for off grid people and people who live mobile and /or work remotely-I mean REALLY remotely.
And yes, when you go off grid and build a home, you are really building all your own infrastructure as well. You are all the utilities. It’s a bit daunting for some, and certainly adds a whole additional level of complexity and cost to building a property-but at the end- it’s buy once, cry once; and from that point on you have no utility bills, no real dependencies on outside utilities and their outages, issues or cost increases.
To be fair, being your own utility does make you responsible for maintenance, damages from weather or accidents, etc. , but for those that choose this route, the freedom is worth it.
One thing I advocate to all my customers is to get a separate insurance rider in their solar system through their homeowners policy-it’s not very expensive and provides you with the funds to rapidly rebuild your system should it get destroyed by a lightning strike, which is one of the hazards of having a solar system.
As for water-I personally wouldn’t even think about doing something like this without a good well on site.
IMHO, if you don’t have water, you don’t have anything.
Some people elect to live in areas where wells are impossible or very cost prohibitive, and live with water hauling where you either depend on a community well and/or hire people to haul your water to you. I personally think that’s borderline insanity, and I have a lot of reasons why, but everyone has their own opinions.

 

[Waterjunky]

Bingo.
Starlink has been a game changer for off grid people and people who live mobile and /or work remotely-I mean REALLY remotely.
And yes, when you go off grid and build a home, you are really building all your own infrastructure as well. You are all the utilities. It’s a bit daunting for some, and certainly adds a whole additional level of complexity and cost to building a property-but at the end- it’s buy once, cry once; and from that point on you have no utility bills, no real dependencies on outside utilities and their outages, issues or cost increases.
To be fair, being your own utility does make you responsible for maintenance, damages from weather or accidents, etc. , but for those that choose this route, the freedom is worth it.
One thing I advocate to all my customers is to get a separate insurance rider in their solar system through their homeowners policy-it’s not very expensive and provides you with the funds to rapidly rebuild your system should it get destroyed by a lightning strike, which is one of the hazards of having a solar system.
As for water-I personally wouldn’t even think about doing something like this without a good well on site.
IMHO, if you don’t have water, you don’t have anything.
Some people elect to live in areas where wells are impossible or very cost prohibitive, and live with water hauling where you either depend on a community well and/or hire people to haul your water to you. I personally think that’s borderline insanity, and I have a lot of reasons why, but everyone has their own opinions.

Very cool!

Yes, water is life.......

 

[The Chicken]

I'd always thought of off-grid as being more basic, even "simple" living by today's standards. That really appears to be far from the truth now. "Data/Entertainment" hubs...in a place on the outskirts of the outskirts.

To add to this and water junky’s “water is life” comment, I’ve seen some real high end homes on the beach that have huge commercial 3 phase off grid solar systems running huge luxury homes with large AC loads, swimming pools, and self contained desalination plants to turn seawater into drinking water.
There’s practically no limits.

 

[The Chicken]

4:00am, Wednesday morning
Time to rise, shine, and rock n roll.
We need to get the trucks out of this job site and move about an hour and a half to the next job-which sits on top of a rocky mountain accessed by a steep rough road that’s just barely passable with our trucks.
We need to hustle because this job should take three days-but it’s been in the works so long and the job itself is such a mess we aren’t sure we can actually get it done in the time allotted.
To add to the pressure, a storm front is moving in, promising to bring high winds and snow to the area.
But come Hell or high water, we have to leave that job by the end of Friday because we HAVE to be in the office the following week to deal with some critically important stuff for a big job that we’re working on.

We got the trucks started and warmed up in the pre-dawn morning, double checked everything, locked up the house rough-in from hell and rolled on out of there.
It’s about 4 miles of dirt road to pavement, and when we get to the end of the dirt road, we get out to do one last walk around inspection and load check before we hit pavement like we always do.
And it was right there where our day started to fall apart: we noticed that both of the security cameras for the trailer were missing!
Shit.
So I got back in the Freightshaker, got it turned around and started back tracking in the slowly dawning day to look for the cameras that had been knocked off by errant tree branches.
By the time I found the cameras and got back to Denise, the sun was up and nearly an hour had passed.
So much for an early start, not driving into the sun, and avoiding morning traffic.
We ground our way through the hundred roundabouts that the 89 has going through Prescott ( ok-there’s only like six-but they feel like a fuckin hundred when you’re driving a big truck or towing) into the rising sun while battling it out with the morning commuters.
By the time we clear Prescott Valley, I’m starving and we’d scoped out a little local breakfast diner that looked like had a big empty dirt lot nearby for parking the trucks in the metropolis of Dewey-Humboldt.
When we made our way to the place, the dirt lot was sure enough there, but it was surrounded by “No Trespassing “ signs.
Great.
Not sure if merely parking there would net us some sort of ticket, we looked around for some other parking that we could fit in-not an easy thing with the size of the truck and trailer and the semi.
It looked to be the local post office or nothing, and I was too hungry to opt for nothing, so we went to work shoehorning the rigs into the parking lot in a spot they kinda sorta almost fit in.

It was tight.
Real tight.
And yes, the white car was there before we started parking and we just had to carefully work around it.
After a quick breakfast, we took a couple seconds to check out the town.

And those three pictures seem to pretty much encompass the entire town.

No longer hangry, we fired up the trucks and left the great city of Dewy-Humboldt behind and pointed our hoods up the mountain towards our next destination…

 

[monkeyswrench]

4:00am, Wednesday morning
Time to rise, shine, and rock n roll.
We need to get the trucks out of this job site and move about an hour and a half to the next job-which sits on top of a rocky mountain accessed by a steep rough road that’s just barely passable with our trucks.
We need to hustle because this job should take three days-but it’s been in the works so long and the job itself is such a mess we aren’t sure we can actually get it done in the time allotted.
To add to the pressure, a storm front is moving in, promising to bring high winds and snow to the area.
But come Hell or high water, we have to leave that job by the end of Friday because we HAVE to be in the office the following week to deal with some critically important stuff for a big job that we’re working on.

View attachment 1486717
We got the trucks started and warmed up in the pre-dawn morning, double checked everything, locked up the house rough-in from hell and rolled on out of there.
It’s about 4 miles of dirt road to pavement, and when we get to the end of the dirt road, we get out to do one last walk around inspection and load check before we hit pavement like we always do.
And it was right there where our day started to fall apart: we noticed that both of the security cameras for the trailer were missing!
Shit.
So I got back in the Freightshaker, got it turned around and started back tracking in the slowly dawning day to look for the cameras that had been knocked off by errant tree branches.
By the time I found the cameras and got back to Denise, the sun was up and nearly an hour had passed.
So much for an early start, not driving into the sun, and avoiding morning traffic.
We ground our way through the hundred roundabouts that the 89 has going through Prescott ( ok-there’s only like six-but they feel like a fuckin hundred when you’re driving a big truck or towing) into the rising sun while battling it out with the morning commuters.
By the time we clear Prescott Valley, I’m starving and we’d scoped out a little local breakfast diner that looked like had a big empty dirt lot nearby for parking the trucks in the metropolis of Dewey-Humboldt.
When we made our way to the place, the dirt lot was sure enough there, but it was surrounded by “No Trespassing “ signs.
Great.
Not sure if merely parking there would net us some sort of ticket, we looked around for some other parking that we could fit in-not an easy thing with the size of the truck and trailer and the semi.
It looked to be the local post office or nothing, and I was too hungry to opt for nothing, so we went to work shoehorning the rigs into the parking lot in a spot they kinda sorta almost fit in.

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It was tight.
Real tight.
And yes, the white car was there before we started parking and we just had to carefully work around it.
After a quick breakfast, we took a couple seconds to check out the town.
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And those three pictures seem to pretty much encompass the entire town.

No longer hangry, we fired up the trucks and left the great city of Dewy-Humboldt behind and pointed our hoods up the mountain towards our next destination…

The dilapidated old "downtown" area right around the corner from there, is a weird deal. I guess one old timer owned pretty much all of the "main street". Sometime in the early 90's he and the town/city council had a blowout. His response was "I'll show them!", and let leases end and had the buildings sit. Squatters caught one on fire, roofs caved in from wind and water damage...sad as most the buildings are a century old, from when the mines were going. Hell, one had to be a whore house at some point!

I just heard all this recently. One of my friends just bought 2 of the buildings, and a lot that was an 8 spot trailer park from the "Long, Long Trailer" days. I guess the old man passed away, and his kids are selling. In fact, one of the kids is actually working on restoring one of the buildings now.

BTW, the little "old town" strip mall there by the cafe, also has the actual satellite Sheriff's station. It's not just a prop door

 

[The Chicken]

The dilapidated old "downtown" area right around the corner from there, is a weird deal. I guess one old timer owned pretty much all of the "main street". Sometime in the early 90's he and the town/city council had a blowout. His response was "I'll show them!", and let leases end and had the buildings sit. Squatters caught one on fire, roofs caved in from wind and water damage...sad as most the buildings are a century old, from when the mines were going. Hell, one had to be a whore house at some point!

I just heard all this recently. One of my friends just bought 2 of the buildings, and a lot that was an 8 spot trailer park from the "Long, Long Trailer" days. I guess the old man passed away, and his kids are selling. In fact, one of the kids is actually working on restoring one of the buildings now.

BTW, the little "old town" strip mall there by the cafe, also has the actual satellite Sheriff's station. It's not just a prop door

Sounds like town is lucky that old guy didn’t own a Komatsu dozer and a welder.

 

[The Chicken]

I wish pictures did justice to just how steep, rutted, and rocky this little road is-at least for bigger vehicles.
This is the final approach to the customers home-which is another “unusual “ building material-ICF block.

Space was tight here, way tighter than the pictures indicate, and level space is scarce-typical for sites built on top of a rock pile.
We managed to squeeze the F-350 and trailer in a spot it sorta fit in and used all the leveling blocks and flat rocks to get it level. We left the truck connected this time to try and save time.

Hey look!
A rare picture of me!
We wasted no time, knowing we didn’t have enough to begin with, and the instant I got the Freightshaker parked, I got the crane into action unloading job parts. Here is the 10’ long gutter coming off of the pipe rack, and in the background you can see the big blue tote I had just craned off of the trucks mid-deck that’s full of wire, panels, disconnects and all of the other electrical parts for the job.

As usual, Denise immediately made friends. This time with a pair of roaming husky-mix dogs that wandered onto the property from who knows where.
It’s like dogs know that she sneaks dog treats onto the jobs “just in case”.

Shortly after we got to the job, the wind started picking up, giving our pirate chicken flag a workout, and letting us know that the leading edge of a storm was upon us, and the weather would soon worsen.
Had we known how bad the weather was gonna get, we would have likely just rescheduled the job…

 

[Gramps]

why stock tanks along the road????

 

[monkeyswrench]

Redneck K-rails...some people out here do them as planters to help mark the edges, and "customize" the driveway.

That, or his cattle all have separate drinking fountains

 

[The Chicken]

why stock tanks along the road????

It's basically what Kevin said-some local put them there to delineate the edge of the road. There's a very steep drop off into a very deep gully on the other side.

 

[RichL]

It's basically what Kevin said-some local put them there to delineate the edge of the road. There's a very steep drop off into a very deep gully on the other side.

Wonder how difficult it was to get the "cement mixer" truck and pumper truck up there?

 

[The Chicken]

Wonder how difficult it was to get the "cement mixer" truck and pumper truck up there?

In dry weather the road is miserable but certainly passable.
I'd imagine that the cement trucks are not going fully loaded though. I know around here if the hills are steep and the roads are rough, the cement companies will often short the trucks a couple yards to take some of the weight and abuse off the mixer trucks.

 

[The Chicken]

Here’s the tote full of parts, the gutter, and one of Denise’s new friends.

Some random job site pictures and Denise’s new friends “helping” her.

Knowing that the weather was moving in, we were in overdrive and didn’t have much time to snap any pictures. By evening time we had the big gutter up and mounted and layed out, with the inverter, disconnect and one of the panels ready to mount to it as well. We had also gone out to the array area-which the customer had installed, and cleaned that up as best as we could and made the necessary connections out there. We worked on it until about 7:30 at night and then called it quits and drug our tired asses to the trailer for some dinner and sleep.

Late Wednesday night, the wind that had been a nuisance all day shifted into high gear to become a full blown problem, shrieking like a banshee as it crashed into the trailer and work truck. The trailer was rocking and shaking so hard I half expected it to blow over. Luckily, we were so tired, it didn’t really keep us up. At around 5 am Thursday, the sounds of angry winds diminished some, and then were joined with the sounds of a wind driven rain, which turned to wind driven snow flurries around 7 am.
We stepped out of the trailer into a cold world with a stiff breeze swirling light snow around, and an ominously lowering gray sky.

When we went into the garage to continue our work, we were greeted with an unpleasant surprise.

Turns out the concrete guys forgot to slope the roll up door area, so there was water all over our stuff. I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen this mistake, and it really causes issues. The only way I know to fix it is to grind it down to get some slope.
I know that doesn’t look like a lot of water, but electricians are like cats-we hate getting wet!!

Around 9 am, much to our surprise, the cloud cover lifted, and the sun came out. For a little bit there, it looked like it was going to be a nice day.
But Mother Nature was just toying with us, because a short while later, the wind came back with a vengeance, with gusts easily into the 50-60 mph range.

While the wind howled, Denise finished up the battery part of the installation while I messed with the generator wiring.

We ground it out in the cold and wind till about 8 pm. Pretty much all the gear was installed, and most of the wiring was in place.

It looked like Friday would be a day that should allow us to complete this job on time and get home without too much trouble.

Looks can be deceiving…

 

[The Chicken]

Friday morning broke cold and gray, with 2” of snow on the ground and more coming down fast.
Visibility was often only a hundred feet or so.
We were immediately concerned that we might be stuck on this job site for days.
Driving a small SUV, or even a big 4 wheel drive truck down that steep, rutted hill that was now slippery with snow is one thing-20-30 thousand pounds of truck and trailer is a whole different story.
If the tires pack with snow-especially the fronts-you have almost zero steering, braking, or traction. On a hill that steep, your options and chances are poor at best if that happens. And there is no just testing the road out to see how the trucks will handle-it’s all or nothing.
We both knew all of that when we stepped out of the trailer that morning, and we knew that our already poor chances of getting off this mountain were going to get worse with every passing minute of snow. And the weather looked like it was going to snow all day And we had at least half a days work remaining before we could leave.
We were both on edge and irritable as the specter of being stranded in a frozen trailer on top of a mountain with nothing to do for days loomed large over us.

All we could do was try and wrap up this job, load the trucks, and then see what conditions looked like at that time and try and use our best judgment as to wether we should attempt to get off the mountain or no.
So we jumped into work try to get the last details wrapped up as fast as we could in a race against time and weather.

I wrapped up the last few parts of the AC wiring while Denise tidied up the DC wiring.
It was cold, but luckily the garage offered some shelter, and we had brought an infrared propane heater to help out, so working on the inverter and batteries wasn’t too bad.

By 10am, there was already almost 6” of snow and it showed no signs of letting up.

By noon we had worked through and solved some battery communication issues and the system was up and running.
We had lucked out and the inspector had actually made it through the snow to the job and we were able to meet with him for a pre-inspection preview and answer all his questions-paving the way for the system to pass inspection the following week.
There were some issues with the customer-installed solar array that we had to work through as well, but we managed all that and began loading up the rigs in the swirling snow, still unsure if we were going to be able to go home or not.
It took a solid two hours to get everything back on the Freightshaker and secured for travel.
Total snow accumulation at this point had exceeded 9”. The forecast had called for 1”.
So much snow presented a problem in two ways.
One-the snow on the ground now presented a real risk, as I mentioned before, once the tires pack your amount of control over the trucks is very limited. Additionally, with the current storm that was covering half the state with a record snowfall, the possibility of getting stuck in a road closure somewhere even less favorable than our current location was very real.
Two-warm weather was expected the following day, which is great and should melt the snow quickly-but with the amount of snow now in question, that ment tomorrow this steep hill would be covered in mud-with all the same loss of control issues that the snow has. Ugg.
So the possibility of being stranded for days was very real at this point.
Did we dare risk it all to get out of here now while the trucks were running and warmed up and everything was packed, or should we play it safe and wait for better road conditions?
It’s a big gamble to leave.
What to do?
We deliberated for several minutes, weighing the risks.
One thing we kept eyeing- a couple locals in full size 4x4’s had just gone through and broke trail in the snow, and that looked promising.

The two trucks had cleared a pretty good path, and the dirt underneath seemed ok to at least walk on.
Finally, tired of trying to come to a decision, Denise-who is the less patient of the two of us-simply says,” Fuck it. We’re leaving, I’m tired of this place. “
And that was that.
We dropped the trucks into low gear and because of how the trucks were parked and the terrain, it was up to her to go first.
She inched her way out onto the snow and mud covered dirt road and I followed a short distance behind in the snow and fog.

You can just see her about 100 yards ahead of me over the snow covered hood of the Freightshaker.

This section of road had melted off pretty good and was pretty solid ground. However, just ahead of Denise on the left was the start of the steep downhill section that still had mixed snow, mud and, as it would turn out-running water. She was about to nose off into the point of no return, and it was all or nothing….

 

[monkeyswrench]

My blood pressure just spiked looking at the hill and the snow. I don't know which vehicle I'd be more sketched about driving. The "normal" 4x4 has a large trailer, and the Freightliner is a damn shop on wheels...

 

[rivermobster]

Praying you guys got hazardous duty pay...