I don't remember, did you work out an A/C unit for the cabin? I imagine Florida this time of year might be a bit uncomfortable without A/C, at least for sleeping......
I don't remember, did you work out an A/C unit for the cabin? I imagine Florida this time of year might be a bit uncomfortable without A/C, at least for sleeping......
Any updates on Stampieland?
How did Stampieland do with the hurricanes and rain? Hopefully everything made it through without issue.
tedroach said:How did Stampieland do with the hurricanes and rain? Hopefully everything made it through without issue.
Ted!!! Y'all back stateside? Glad to hear you're alive.
In reply to Dusterbd13 :
Yes, I am! Back in the same town (5 minutes from my old place). And I have a project car already. :)
tedroach said:How did Stampieland do with the hurricanes and rain? Hopefully everything made it through without issue.
It did well. I didn't go after Milton but I went after Helene to survey the damage.
A 20 foot tree that was half dead and was going to come down anyway broke in half and partly fell on the bushhog.
The solar panels got moved around a bit. Even in this state it was still producing the same power as before the storm. I need to research but I think the app is really only showing power able to be used/stored and not what the panels could actually make in a day.
We're planning on a camp out in a few weeks with my nephew and Lil Stampie. I'm going to talk to the neighbor and see if I can get to the back line of the property to explore some.
How long has that zip ply been out in the weather?
In reply to java230 :
I think about a year now. There were no leaks inside even though I haven't covered the screws not on the edges. I still need to build the bathroom area then I can do a roof.
In reply to Stampie :
Glad its holding up well! I have had bad luck wiht that stuff.
What's this? I'm actually back to Stampieland for a weekend? Say it isn't so.
I came for the weekend (maybe just overnight) because dyintorace promised a cool party tomorrow. Upon arriving I went over to the farmer neighbor to ask if I could walk down his fence line to get the the back of the property. It's on the list for next visit.
I knew there were some nagging things I needed to take care of. One of which was getting the poop rocket stove going. I redneck engineered a grill to hold the composted poop/saw dust in the chimney. That would let me load material from the top and build a small fire underneath it to get it started. Just as it began working well rain started. Oh well at least I got proof of concept going. Gratuitous picture of poop ash.
While unloading stuff into the cabin I noticed this spot on the floor.
Yep that's water intrusion. I knew I had a gap on the latching side of the door so I figured that was the issue. The gap was already on the list so I got to it. I had to remove the striker plate in the process and was really confused when I saw drops of water coming out of the screw hole. I started looking above and saw this.
Remember kids, details matter when it comes to keeping water out. I had some silicone handy so a little dab should take care of that. Might grab some bleach tomorrow to put on that spot.
Edit - Forgot that I put up the screen so that we can sit here mosquito free with the door open. It's just a temp install right now.
Well I'm back to Jax. Got some good stuff done but not everything I wanted to.
Highlight of the weekend was the fridge. Ever since I got it going over a year ago it's had problems with compressor stall on start up. I noticed it more at night which really sucked since it would rattle and wake me up. At first I thought it might be bad but then I started thinking maybe it was a voltage/current issue. The initial solar install had the panels, controller and the battery on the 8x8 platform. The power lead to the cabin was 12 gauge and about 50 feet long. When I moved the panels to the roof of the cabin it was a quick and dirty thing so I just reused that power lead. On Friday evening it stalled really bad so I said berk it let's shorten that line. I cut 35 feet out of it and no more stalling. That combined with me converting the cell booster to USB instead of a small inverter made everything quiet. I slept amazingly well that night.
That got me looking at my power usage so I started looking at things in the controller's app. First Renogy's app sucks. I'm using about 600 watts a day. I have a constant 14 amp draw. Eleven of those amps are the cell booster. That's 264 watts of the 600 I use. I might put a switch on it so I can save power when not in use. The other 300 plus watts are the fridge. All that said I'm still fine on power with the panels able to produce 700 watts plus a day. According to the app over the 380 days it's been in use the battery has never been fully discharged. It's a 100ah battery and since I'm using 50ah a day I shouldn't even be close to 50% discharged. If I add stuff in the future I'll need to at least up the panels if not another battery as long as it's not a constant load.
Last issue from this weekend is heat. I brought a temp/humidity sensor with me and monitored it. This weekend was highs around 80 and lows around 70. After sealing the door I think I did too good of a job. That evening it was 84 inside so I opened the door to cool it off. About 90 minutes later it was down to 78 when I closed the door. It when back up to 82.5 at midnight. I assume some of that was just the heat soak still going on from the outside walls during the day but it only dropped down to 79 by the morning. I expected much lower since it was 70 outside. Pretty sure Bob and I's (that seems incorrect but I can't think of how it should be) body heat was a lot of that. I was nice and didn't kick Bob out. On Saturday the inside when closed got up to 90. I guess that carried over to last night as I was uncomfortably warm with an overnight low inside of 81. Ok enough of geeking out what can I do? First I need a damn roof on it. Plan is a very well ventilated "attic" space to keep heat from getting to the insulated ceiling. To do that I need to build the bathroom area in the back of the trailer. Since I'm limited on power usage I pondered using one of the slots of experimentation to install a simple thermosiphon system. Copper pipe heat exchanger inside low and then another one in the back shade outside high. As I typed all that I thought that I do have enough stuff laying around that I could do a temp shade roof until I get the bathroom done.
Overall a fun weekend enjoying getting away from everything.
In reply to Stampie :
Glad to see you back at your camp. Will it get any cooler this winter or is that it?
In reply to NermalSnert (Forum Supporter) :
I'm not totally used to Gainesville yet but I know Jan/Feb we'll get highs in the 50s and lows right at if not below freezing. My thoughts are it'll be easier to heat with a solar heater using little to no power than it will be to cool it.
Oh. For sure. Even if you had to use a small pump and fan, it wouldn't draw much. I'm about to start a small 8x10 cabin about 400 ft. from the main cabin to satisfy my urge to camp out every now and then. It's heavily wooded so solar is out at that spot. I have a 200 watt set up for the horse shed not far away and I plan to get another deep cycle battery and keep it with the others to use when I camp. So I'll wire it for 12v.
For heat I'm going to experiment. I'm going to build a fire place sort of around a steel tank beside the cabin. Run pex in to a heater core like from a Ford Ranger (cheap) and circulate the water with a small pump and the air with a pc fan. I'm going to try it as an open system-as in no top on the tank.
In reply to NermalSnert (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah your winters are way colder than down here. It is amazing how well a sealed and insulated space works. Might just need a fire by itself but the fun is in building stuff and experimenting.
Going to drop this here so that I don't have to look it up later. The sharp raises and falls in temp are me opening and closing the door to try and control the temps.
Stampie said:First I need a damn roof on it. Plan is a very well ventilated "attic" space to keep heat from getting to the insulated ceiling. To do that I need to build the bathroom area in the back of the trailer. Since I'm limited on power usage I pondered using one of the slots of experimentation to install a simple thermosiphon system. Copper pipe heat exchanger inside low and then another one in the back shade outside high. As I typed all that I thought that I do have enough stuff laying around that I could do a temp shade roof until I get the bathroom done.
You might also look at overhangs on the roof for the south and west facing side of house necessary to balance getting some sun on the walls Jan/Feb to head off the 50's; but then long enough to block the sun from directly heating the walls the rest of the year? There's also some other options about maybe dipping part of the overhang just in Jan/Feb and/or having a stone that gets uncovered and gets heated by the sun in Jan/Feb that then provides radiated heat during the night.
In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :
That's a good idea. My thought is making removable shade screens that slide inside a pipe so that they can be adjusted.
I've also thought about how solar panels "want" to be flatter in the summer (sun is higher in the sky), and more vertical in the winter (sun in lower in the sky)... which means their angling/movement might be able to sync up with an overhang benefit on a row of south-facing windows we have. although, the variation in angle is probably much less "down" there in Florida.
Dunno about the current orientation... and with how small it is, it might not matter... but orientation is frequently a consideration of importance for the efficiency of structures w.r.t. heating/cooling in the literature/vidoes I've come across.
In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :
My year around angle is 26.5 degrees. Right now I'm closer to the summer angle because temp that works is good enough. When I mount them I'll put them at the 26.5 degrees. At that point it'll be 4x the current wattage.
We have a guest house now. Sleeps three unless wvumtnbkr is one then it sleeps four. He likes to cuddle real close.
Stampie said:We have a guest house now. Sleeps three unless wvumtnbkr is one then it sleeps four. He likes to cuddle real close.
I was actually about to text you and see if you were gonna be around the weekend after Thanksgiving. Me and a buddy or 2 are doing a track day at the firm either Friday after Thanksgiving or Saturday and thought camping might be fun!
In reply to wvumtnbkr :
I mean hopefully I'll still be around. I'm old and all but not that old. Let me see but worse case is y'all could camp without me.
Busy morning. First we walked the back property line. Lucky for us there was a road/ditch to follow.
There were multiple trees painted I guess showing the property line.
Saw this cool limb that fell and then the tree grew around it.
Also along the east property line there was a bee hive about 20 feet inside my property. Looks like it has been there a very long time.
After that we took a little break then started on the bathroom. First Lil Stampie cut off the spare tire bracket.
Then it wasn't too hard to put up the first wall.
Notice the crappy door to the right. It was going to be the bathroom door but obviously it's not an exterior door and fell apart. We took it to the dump and currently are at Goldie's Burgers located at Depot Park. Not sure if I've reviewed it before but nice slightly upscale fast food for a very reasonable price. It's on my recommended list.
Bonus picture of Bob and Nephew Stampie watching Lil Stampie back up a trailer for the first time.
Nephew Stampie is the one that we did the solar system at the farm a few years back.
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