Inside Work & Mobile Water Pump (12/12/2015)

We headed up to the ranch early Saturday morning, knowing that they had a dusting of snow the night before.  The ranch roads were a little wet (muddy), but nothing major.  When we arrived on the property we had a great dusting of snow, and it was already melting (into the water tank of course)

Was just so nice to see. That was pretty much it for the snow, by Sunday there wasn’t a trace of snow.  Although, yesterday the property probably got close to 3″ with a good system moving across N. Arizona.

The wood stove definitely is working well, and came in handy Saturday night and Sunday morning.  I think it was about 20 degrees Sunday morning.  The major let down of the weekend, my Renogy solar charge controller, which takes voltage from the solar panels and charges the batteries, has taken a dump.  The batteries were not charging, and also draining too quickly.  Turns out the unit is probably defective and a short in there somewhere, causing havoc.  This meant….hold on everyone, bad news coming….that our programmable coffee maker was out of order Sunday morning. uuuggghhhh!!!!!!   We had to do it the old caveman way…light a fire outside!  Keeping with this theme though, the Renogy company was AWESOME!  They are sending me out a replacement free of charge, based on my Amazon order.  I have already purchased an upgraded replacement model, but it will be great to have a spare around, and one we can use in the future somewhere else.  Thank you Renogy!

In case you don’t know, this is what our charge controller looks like:

My new one (arrives tomorrow)

My new one has an LCD display that shows a lot more information about what I have coming in and going out.  Can’t wait.

Ok…enough geek stuff.  On to the inside.  Last week we got the stove working, and chimney mounted!  All good there.  This week we first added some framing inside on the walls so we could insulate and try and keep it warmer.

 

We are adding R-30, 9″ thich” insulation on the West wall (opposite of Sheralee in this picture) to help with the summer West setting sun.

Sheralee then finished off the upper pieces with corrugated metal.

It looks really good!!!  I love cutting the little logs for ‘Frodo’.

My other goal this week was to make a mobile pump box, including a deep cycle battery and our other water pump.

As you might recall, our other little pump didn’t survive the freezing temps…something went wrong with that little guy, so I decided to make a box we can move around that will contain our other pump setup.  The box is insulated and has a hose spigot on each side for input and output.

Sheralee tested it Sunday afternoon for compost, and man it worked out well.  We have a couple little modifications on it, and it is pretty heavy with that battery in there, but we will be getting some sort of permanent cart for it and off we go.  We can move it anywhere.

That was about it, besides watching some Sunday football in by the wood stove.  On our way out we were treated to an incredible sunset.

Just beautiful!  Of course the top picture is mine, and Sheralee clearly topped my poorly taken picture! haha

Since Christmas is upon us, we are not sure when we are getting up to the ranch again, before or after the new year…not sure yet.  I know for us, we already miss it, but it is going to be down to 8 degrees tonight…soooooooo…who knows. ha.  If we don’t make it up there this weekend, and post again next week, this will be our final post for the year.  What a year it has been….the progress we have made is unreal, and our future is ahead of us.  Very exciting year so far, and next year will be even better!!