John Weiland

Sympathies to you Eric.  Yes, they become such a part of the family and are so hard to let go of.  Some solace:  You gave a shelter pet a great life and at 13 years, a long one for her size at that. Very understanding of the grief at their passing and support sent to you and your wife.

larry kidd wrote:It got down to about 20f last night and I never insulated or heated the batteries. Lost power about 2:30am took till about noon to get the cells warmed up to about 35f or 2c and got power back online. Spent the better part of the day after that wrapping the cells with heat tape for pipes and put insulation under and over , still need to go back and insulate the sides. Used 30 feet of heat tape with a 90w draw. It has it's own thermostat on at 35 off at 50 if I remember correctly.

Living where we do in the central US just below the Canadian border, an experience like this is what causes me to hesitate on diving into LiFePO4.  I probably will anyway and just keep the investment small to modest.  Wife is still tooling around the farmyard with recent ~10 degree F using lead-acid batteries in a Polaris Ranger EV and we are grateful for the robustness of the time-tested tech, even with the known power deficits of these batteries in cold weather.

There was mention recently of Canada leaning more towards solid-state/sodium ion technology, partially because it may be a less expensive battery to produce, but also in large part due to its greater resiliency to cold temperatures.  Still that battery too will use a battery management system (BMS) and one hopes these don't turn out to be a weak link in the technology.  Larry K, I always wondered if a seedling heating mat would be enough to prevent severe temperature drop in such situations.  CLearly if the location is too cold and the batteries unprotected, the BMS will do best to shut down the battery.  But in situations where the batteries are housed in an insulated container of sorts, a seedling mat seems to be designed to produce low temperature, low wattage heat to the item(s) sitting on the mat.  Perhaps this would be a safe solution for many out there?   Also a question for those having installed LiFePO4 batteries going back a decade or two:  Have you experienced or heard of situations where either the cells or the BMS itself failed causing need for battery or cell replacement? If the BMS goes bad and the cells are otherwise good, can the BMS be replaced (assuming a battery case whose contents can be accessed) fairly easily?  Thanks!

I've been away to a family funeral, but just to update as the OP that my situation has been resolved by Permies staff and I seem to be getting notices again.  Thanks!

John F Dean wrote:Without crossing too far into another post, I had a pig missing yesterday. I found it after dark in the woods. It had given birth under an old lean to.  I was in no position to deal with it energy wise.  I made sure it had lots of straw and hoped for the best. As dawn was breaking I headed out to it with a flashlight in one hand and coffee in the other.  When I got to the shelter, I had trouble figuring out what I was looking at. Momma was there and out shelter pup was laying beside her. Then the pup stood up ….there were all the babies …alive.  The pup had used her body to keep them warm.

It took me a couple of hours, but I did the family moved to to a warm stall with a heat lamp in the barn.

Well, our dogs have never exhibited that particular act of kindness around our pigs, but boy have we ever 'been there' with 'inconvenient' litters!  Ha!    Gestation is 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days.... so it must be the sultry hot summer nights that get them (and us!) into this predicament of farrowing in late fall in our region.  Same deal here on at least two occasions...."Where is the pregnant sow!??"  One time we found her a few hundred yards from the barn, in the middle of a large swatch of native prairie grass.  Talk about crop circles!....She had pulled up a large amount of tall-grass big bluestem in a circle and had deposited the pile in the middle.  Then she had burrowed under it to have her litter.  Nights were already freezing, so then you have to work fast to get piglets and sow back into shelter.  Not easy when sow doesn't know why you are picking up her babies and placing them into a cardboard box...and all of her instincts are saying "protect and attack!".  Since we had learned our lesson that time, the next occasion had us keeping a newly acquired, late-term sow in the back of a quonset.  There hadn't been time to create a proper stall yet, so we provided a pile of hay and the usual food/water availability.  Next day, it looked like a hurricane had gone through that back half of the quonset!  The sow had pulled old feed bags, garden hoses, bits of old musty blankets,.....basically anything not nailed down....and piled them all along with the hay in that nest.  Piglets soon followed.  Gives a new definition to the word "provider".  "Yup...that one there is Junior; he was born wrapped up in the garden hose...."  :-)    Kudos to the instincts of your shelter pup. Hope piglets and mama are all doing well.

Eric Hanson wrote:....... My neighbor gently teased me when he mentions that I spent $1500 all-in.  In return my response is that it was worth every penny, and If I had known how useful it is, I would have tackled this long ago.

I'm already realizing how much the hospital bill might be if I accidentally place an implement on my foot or knee at this age while struggling with the 3-point hook-up.  And I'm thinking it would be more than $1500!..... So you are ahead of the game with those expenses to make your tractoring easier -AND- safer.

Ali Green wrote:

Caesar Smith wrote:I got a message like OP yesterday. Apparently I’m gonna lose access to my Permies account just because of Hotmail? Having to set up a new email account is rather inconvenient. Isn’t there anything else that can be done about the situation?

I got the same message and added the permies email address to my contact list in the hope that it goes through again. I don't know how I'll know if it has worked or not though...

I did the same....indicated that permies.com is a 'safe domain' and that permies@permies.com should be allowed through to Email.  At this point, I'm not seeing any notices coming through from Permies.com that I previously received:  Notices of people responding to, or liking a thread, and similar content.  I'm concerned that r ranson is correct about an action by Microsoft Hotmail/Outlook that is culling the incoming message even before it reaches a personalized filter.  The frustration is that it's been working fine since joining in 2014, so if Microsoft is doing this now, why?  Will continue to work on getting a new Email account but will check here for other's experiences as well.  Thanks for responses.

But Eric, "pain management" can range from ameliorating that pain to inflicting a greater degree of pain.  Sounds like that particular entity may have leaned more towards the latter?....  

If there can be a 'Hotel California', why not a 'Hospital California'?.... ;-?

Excellent information, David and Michael, and I'm always so grateful for your feedback here.  

First, .... Magnum inverter.  Yes, I had assumed they were still around and keeping up with the battery developments as they occur.  Much thanks for the updated information on inverter/controller/chargers from you both and I will be researching these soon.  Perhaps like many, I like my drill to be a hammer or my car to be a tractor....in other words, I so often expect my infrastructure to do too many things.  Thus, I was hoping for an inverter/charger/controller that would handle my well pump surges *AND* be lightweight enough to be readily bracket-mounted onto my golf cart or wife's Polaris Ranger, both 48V (or soon-to-be).  Truthfully, there is a decreasing need for the inverter on the vehicles as so many of our tools now are cordless, battery-powered units.  So I should focus more on a good, high quality wall-mounted option for the basement,....which not only would provide well-pump and furnace back up power, but also power for the 2 sump pumps that save our butts during spring flooding around here.

Second and as noted, however, I'm still somewhat leaning towards a set of batteries that could be shuttled around for different uses. Since I'm not using the golf cart in winter, I would much like them to be light enough for my aging bones to move them into the basement to power the inverter and loads.  Clearly, the idea of running all loads noted at once is just not practical with the small- to moderate-sized system I am proposing, but the 48V/30Ah/100A-BMS batteries that I'm looking at, and sporting GC2-dimensions to neatly replace the old lead acid 6V heavyweights, are advertised as 8p, so I could parallel up to 8 of these for 240 Ah of capacity if need be.  Not a huge array, but not tiny either.  And from information here and other web sources, it appears best to avoid series connecting LiFePO4 batteries at present in favor of parallel connection if possible.  Thanks for any additional insights, comments, and corrections you can offer on these points.

David, is there some clear indication when shopping the inverter varieties out there as to which are using transformers and which aren't?  I generally look as the specs for confirmation of LiFePO4 compatibility, but admit to just assuming Magnum would have automatically done this to keep pace with the industry.  Also, Michael, I really am hoping to get the muti-meter you noted as my current 2, purchased many years apart, just really aren't up to snuff.  I've seen use of the clamp-type current meters being used to estimate amps pulled by a golf cart under different loads....can the AC side of your meter be used to read the current on my 240V well-pump wire?  This would be a handy tool indeed.....and Christmas is soon upon us! ;-)

On a newbie side-note, just so charged up (pun intended) to see wife's Ranger at 100% SOC in November just south of the Canadian border after only a few hours plugged into a single 380W panel/solar controller combo.  Thanks again and let me know if I failed to address and issue or question raised your respective posts.

Totally understanding the pain and associated discussion here and have dealt with more bouts than I care to.  My herbalist (amateur) sister put me onto this remedy some years ago and it appears to work for me.  It can actually be taken at the time of onset for relief and may be something you wish to try.   Just adding for information's sake as I'm in no position to be prescribing medical advice.  Good luck, Eric, as I have past experience with that degree and quality of pain!  Photo below clipped from an online add at Walmart.

I'm hoping to piece-meal together a small system that would be expandable in the future for more off-grid power.  Initially, I was hoping to school myself by focusing on two essential items of the homestead-- the furnace (propane) for winter and the well pump for water.  As you might expect, non-winter months are not so crucial.  Even if the well becomes inoperative for a period, livestock watering can be done from the river near the house.  

I've already dabbled a bit with 12V-powered inverters for producing low-wattage 120V AC power.  What I'm envisioning for the current project is a 48V inverter/charger (Magnum Energy being one brand of interest) that would keep batteries topped up while grid-power is active, but be able to switch over to powering the furnace motor (120V) and well-pump (220V) if grid-power goes down.  A side angle here is the fact that I'm preparing to convert a 36V golf cart to 48V soon and this likely will involve several (3-4?....more?) 48V/30Ah LiFePO4 batteries.  Clearly one can get larger individual batteries, but I'm interested in keeping individual battery weight as low as possible so that they can be used in the golf cart (solar PV panel roof) in summer and shuttled easily to the basement for winter.

Questions arise around sizing the inverter/charger and battery bank for powering the furnace fan and the well-pump.  The furnace is less of an issue as it should be readily powered by an inverter of 4000-6000W (pure sine wave, peak surge watts nearly double the running watts). If memory serves me, the house well pump was ~2/3 - 3/4 hp submersible running at 220V and while the running amps/watts aren't terrible, the starting amps may be up in the 20s to low 30s.  So I'm more concerned about making sure the well pump won't trigger a system shut-down due to either batteries or inverter (or both) being under-sized.  A parallel string of 4 batteries each at 48V would yield 120Ah with internal BMS's sized for golf-cart amp surges (80 - 100A per battery...typically double that for short spike surges).  As finances allow, I would be integrating solar energy into the system as well as part of the expansion.  Input on this vision and design is most welcomed...  Thanks!