It was kind of nice going south and seeing all the stages of spring. By the far end of PA everything was in full bloom.
I also took speed test results at the rest areas on the way down. With one exception in WV, which had no cell signal, they were all adequate. Barely adequate in one case. Working remotely with 3.4MBit down and less than a half megabit up would not be pleasant, but it is theoretically adequate bandwidth for remote desktop.
At one of the stops in PA I got blazing speeds.
One thing I noticed while I was down there is that his carport has major dew issues, I only noticed because I was in and got dripped on. I don't think my carport does this, but I have a bit more pitch on my roof and the ribs go the correct direction. I had the expectation that everything under my carport is dry, and at least with his carport that is not true. It isn't much, but still violates expectations.
The main project work I wanted to do while I was down there was measure the power consumption of the generator. So the first thing I did was beef up my dad's exterior outlet. He had installed a basic cheap NEMA 5-15 outlet, even though the breaker and wiring were good for 20A. So I bought a 20A outlet and brought it up to code. The wiring is 10 gauge exterior grade, so in theory the wiring is in place to upgrade it to 30A in the future if he needs it. One thing I noticed when I pulled it apart though is that his exterior box didn't seal worth a damn and the wires were corroded and the outlet had begun to rust. When I put the new outlet in, I siliconed the crap out of it. It better not leak now.
I brought down two devices to measure the power. The first was something I built. I snagged some 12 gauge stranded (better conductor than solid core) wire from work so I could build a little extension cord that had the hot lead with a couple of loops in it and I borrowed a clamp on ammeter from work to measure the current.
The first set of plugs I had were inadequate and you couldn't put 12 gauge wire on them, so I went to Lowe's and grabbed a new set of beefy ends, but when I found the male NEMA 5-20, I assumed the female right next to it was its matching pair, and ended up with this. Doh! This is the 240V plug, not the 110V. Ugh. At that point I was running short on time, since I waited until the last day to do the testing since it was the nicest and the testing included AC so I ended up not using it.
The second was an in-line device similar to a Kill-a-watt (though this one went up to 2kW while my kill-a-watt maxes out at ~1600W. I ended up doing all my testing with this. The back rack was very useful as a table while I was doing the measuring.
I couldn't do a direct measurement of everything running all at once, since it was more than this could handle, but I have the numbers of the pieces and can add it up. I noticed that their power down there is technically running out of spec according to the meter I brought. Standard power in the US is nominally 120V (even though it is often called 110) with a 5% tolerance, which makes 126.0V the upper bound and it read 126.4V.
I started with the battery run down a little (and the furnace turned up so it could duel the AC), so I would capture power measurements with the battery in the absorption phase of the charging cycle. This should hopefully ensure that those readings max out the converter charger.
I also ran the tests without the battery connected, since they were surprisingly unstable when I was measuring with the battery connected. Here are all the results. In the duel between the furnace and the AC, the furnace won. Not surprisingly considering it is 17k BTU vs 13.5k BTU for the AC. The numbers for the battery disconnected are what I will use for my calculations. I still need to look up some other things, like what kind of duty cycle can I expect for the AC, and so on. The AC measured the same power on high and low, so I only put one of them in the table.
I also got a bunch of goodies while I was down there. The first is a generator. This isn't an inverter generator, so it is only for house backup. It is a 5000W, 5500W surge. It is a pretty barebones unit but should be fine for me. While I was down there, my dad showed me how to clean the carb on it, which is something that frequently happens on generators because they sit so much, and was something I have never done before. Turns out the process is actually quite simple and the hardest part is getting the stuff apart and lined back up. It is a good thing to know how to do. This one was actually pretty clean already, this generator almost looked like it had never been used; there wasn't even discoloration on the muffler.
Turns out the unit had a bad switch in it. So we pried out the old one and I hot-wired it to be on. Sprayed in a little starter fluid and it fired first pull.
It will need a new gas shut off valve and tank grommet (I don't remember the technical term for the part was that Dad used) since the old one was crumbling and the gas we poured in to test the generator poured right out on the ground.
The generator came with a wildly overbuilt carrying wagon/caddy. All the lumber in this picture is 2x4, and there are runners on the bottom as well as what you see here. The casters on this thing are seriously beefy.
The problem with casters though is they don't work off the concrete.
For now I put the generator in the carport, but I need to come up with a way to get it in and out. The carport is looking overstuffed at this point.
I also got some boards. These are shelf sized, and I will probably use at least some of them to put more shelving in the shed.
I brought back my dad's old saw so I bring it to Barry to get it looked at. Interestingly the saw didn't leak a drop pretty much the whole drive home, but when I hit the MA state line on the way back, it all of sudden started leaking all its fuel out. Very strange behavior. It spent the rest of the trip back in the bed of the truck.
So the storm that was rolling in when I left was supposed to dump a ton of snow. Despite the forecasted 14-16" of snow, the warm weather that followed and the fact that the ground wasn't frozen meant that it vanished very quickly. There was a decent sized pile where the carport slides off, which indicates that we did get a lot.
My yard is bare again though. It is even greener now than when I left.
No completions on the project list, though the camper electrical extension is now in progress. Since I have a house backup generator now, I don't need to worry about over-sizing the generator I select for it. In fact, a little 1kW tiny inverter generator is now in play since there is a 0% chance it will ever have to power the house (it would be plan D now: wait, regular generator, camper power wall, new guy; itty bitty generator that can only run lights and the fridge)
2021 Projects:
- Prepare summer equipment
- Carport repair
- Windows in shed
- Shed supports
- Table
- South wall siding
- Bridge over creek
- Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
- Trailer hub
- Rebuild smaller trailer
- Level back yard
- Level side yard
- Level front yard
- Clear trees to creek
- Remove dead/dying beech trees
- Retaining walls?
- Eliminate pile of crap in back
- Camper Electrical extension (portable AC power source and generator)
- Clean up/level area down by second parking spot
- Driveway round three
No mention of all the computer fixing you had to do! LOL
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