Resistance is Fertile
Finally we have our solar installed and just waiting for inspection!
Pretty soon our shed will be powered up. A trench will take the power line from there to the house when it’s built. In the meantime there will be a short power pole for the builders with a power point at the corner of the house site.
So if you are into a bit of permaculture then you might know the difference between bacterial and fungal soils. The method of growing we are pursuing relies heavily on mycellium in the soil to make nutrients more readily available to our plants. Soil fungus though is degraded by heat and light and also soil compaction. We really can’t do without a tractor but we were at a bit of a loss as to what we could use that would meet our needs, be very light on the soil and not break our very small bank. Continue reading “Meet Ken”
This bad person is a Red Earth Drop Bear system. We were originally going to use a German made B-Box unit for the battery storage but since then Australian made lithium iron batteries have come on the market in quantity. This system is a drop in with the batteries, charge controllers and inverters all housed in the cabinet pre-wired. More on this unit when it’s finally installed – another saga! Who’d have expected that hey? Continue reading “Off Grid Solar Part 2”
Wariin having a sniff around – look at that cute wombly bum!
This was what is was like the whole day today. 10 Km up the road it was brilliant sunshine!
So we have a 10,000L fire tank now next to the shed and we’ve begun lining out and insulating the kitchen side of the shed- with lots of help! The shed already has a composite EPS and foil insulation on the walls and roof that should provide about R1.2 on it’s own. However we are intending to be spending quite a bit of time in the commercial kitchen so we’ve added R2.5 Rockwool and lined the walls with Hardiboard which we will tile over.
Today we finished the rough install of our security cameras and alarm system at Langi Billin. We’ve got a bit of neatening up to do yet and fine tuning some camera angles, but the system is running. The cameras we opted for were a mix of Reolink Argus Eco and Reolink Argus 2.
We have a shed!
We’ve affectionately dubbed it the obelisk – yeah we know an obelisk is supposed to be pyramid shaped but hey! The unusual shape serves a very specific purpose. The roof angle is 22.5 degrees facing north, can you guess why?
So you if you’ve read the earlier post about our driveway dramas, you’ll know it wasn’t a happy experience. The minimum specification for the driveway to comply with bylaws is a 20 cm cover of gravel on top of the crossover pipes. After 5 trips across our crossover the pipes were laid bare!
Hi again! I’d like to preface this post by writing, as I sit on the bed, that Freddie is providing assistance and that his and my training in remote power systems are exactly the same. Anything written here is drawn from our experience and reading and nowhere else. In other words neither me nor the cat are qualified experts, rather our knowledge is applicable to us and may or may not be to your situation. Now we have the obligatory rider out of the way, let’s get on with the post.
This post is about driveways. Boring, expensive, but necessary. The driveway at Langi Billin is complete, just in time for a global shelter in. Given what’s happening in the world, writing about making things to drive on seems more than a bit trivial, nonetheless we are keeping our commitment to document as we go. Continue reading “The Driveway is Done – not without headaches”