Sunday, April 5, 2020

Nice easy Sunday.

Today started off a little rough.  I thought I would try my grocery shopping early in the morning, so I got to Market Basket at quarter of 8, and it turns out they have done a rather obnoxious capacity limitation, so they are only allowing like 25 people in the store at once.  I promptly decided it was worth the extra few bucks to just do my shopping at Hannaford.  Hannaford was better, but they have it set up so that they only have every other register and stuff open, so it took me almost an hour to get through there.  Ironically the best part of the shopping was Wal-Mart.  Ugh.

After that though, everything went fairly smoothly.  It didn't warm up as quickly as I had hoped, so I did some chores.  But around lunchtime it was warm enough to paint, so I got to work to on the trailer.  Here is what I did yesterday (that I forgot to take a picture of).


It now looks like this.  I got two coats of primer down, and it says to wait 24 hours before applying the final coat of paint.  I only did the tops and sides, I will probably wait until it is a little dryer to do the underside. 


After that, I went to give Anx a hand moving a couch.  It dribbled a little on my way back, so I decided not to do any more painting, and instead went and put out my dunks.  The back yard was mostly firm enough to walk through. 


I got all the dunks that I had put out.  As long as I got the timing right, this should drastically reduce the black fly and mosquito populations (the dunks are a larvacide). 


I have been seeing spiders and moths starting to come out though, so I hope the timing is good.  I might buy another sleeve and put them out in a few weeks just in case.  I also saw this when I was walking around my yard, so I need to get the tractor working soon.  The dandelions (the yellow specks) are coming out in force.


My creek.  Walking around I also got a reminder that my shoes are very bald and slid a few times.


After that nice walk around my lot, I started doing some of my meal prep stuff for the week.  I also tried to make some cheese crisps.  The first batch came out kind of thin, and a touch extra crispy; you couldn't taste the peppers in them anymore (I used pepper jack cheese).


They still came out better than the second batch.  The second batch I doubled the cheese blocks.  That was an error.  The recipe still needs some work.  I have been buying them, but they are very expensive.


I also finished up my electrical calculations for the camper project.  I ended up with my anticipated consumption is closer to 5.12kWh assuming I meal prep while I have grid power.  That is half of what I used as a WAG.

If I plug in 5.5kWh (for a little buffer) consumption, with 10 panels I produce 4.8kWh on a cloudy day, meaning that even with just a 7kWh battery (5.6kWh taking into account 80% depth of discharge), I could last theoretically 8 cloudy days on solar alone with 10 panels.  That isn't nearly as bad as I expected, and I might even be able to go back to 8 panels.  I just need to run the tests to make sure the panels produce like I think they do.

For those curious, the complete detailed list of power changes from the 10kWh baseline are below. 

  • Likely to decrease
    • Fridge - .63kWh decrease
    • Water pump - .04kWh decrease
    • Lights - 0.108kWh decrease
    • Computer - 1.33kWh decrease
  • Things eliminated
    • Fans - 1.02kWh eliminated
      • Currently I tend to have at least one fan running 24/7 due to poor circulation from heat pump.
      • I also use a fan as my clothes dryer
    • Dishwasher -  0.17kWh eliminated
    • Washing Machine - 0.04kWh eliminated
    • Water filter - 0.55kWh eliminated
    • Air Filter - 0.37kWh eliminated
    • Teapot - 0.04kWh eliminated
      • Tea is a large drain on water and power, I will make it all beforehand and only at campsites.
    • Drobo - 1.15kWh eliminated
      • If I do bring media, it will be on flash drive or already on laptop.
    • There are several other things that likely were in that 10kWh estimate that won't be used in the camper, like power tools, but since I can't reliably determine the proper deduction I have ignored them and will assume them as spare buffer space.
  • Likely to increase
    • TV (might be a monitor not TV, but TV worst case) - 0.53kWh added
    • Toaster Oven - Expected 0 increase.
      • It has already largely replaced my oven - Didn't own when power was taken from.  
      • For reference: it is a 1300W oven, Cooking 25min roast@400 measured 0.19kWh
      • I should be able to reduce this to 0 by pre-cooking a week's worth of meals, which I already do today.
  • Stay the same
    • A/C - Camper units bigger, but will only run part time.
    • Microwave
    • Speakers

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