Eileen Kirkland

Mantis egg pod (likely brown mantis based on the mature fellows who dine on my rose bushes). If you find one of these and are intrigued please resist the urge to bring it into your house and forget all about it (they hatch hundreds at a time).

Future cabbage moths, I think. Very enthusiastic about nasturtiums.

This fencing ring was my balcony set up for many years, but it sure goes faster when there are organisms coming up from underground to help do the work. I'm currently just making a pile in a corner of the garden and turning it for bugs for my quail periodically without having built a structure. I'd like a chicken-based system as soon as I can get my 'chicken license' (Spain). Turners/bug eaters come in handy. Work with some slope or grade to your place if you can - input at the top, output at the bottom. Where I am lots of things are compostable but worth sorting out because of thorniness or risk of re-seeding. I'm still a biomass collecter around town but export a bit of what I don't want now, too. (Rough bind weed!) Our green point wont take palmera or yukka leaves because they're so slow to break down so those get dried and burned.

Just wrapping up this post with a thread to show we did it. In the end we bought a package from the electric company. That was the only way to sell back to the grid and future-proof our investment for the time when we might not be living here full time. My in-laws own this house so some of the decisions were out of my hands, but for summer at least we're exceeding our own daily consumption and getting about 2 euro back daily. In truth it was a pretty frustrating experience. The installation happened five weeks past the salesman's estimate of 'three or four weeks' and those were during peak summer months when it could have been paying for itself while we traveled. My husband paid somewhere between 8-9,000 euro with a partial rebate (not yet refunded as I understand it, said to be about half, but I'll believe it when I see it.) He paid in full upfront without a guarantee of installation date. (Yep, that sounds stupid to me too but that's Spanish monopoly for ya.) We didn't get the specs on the panels that I wanted (the company makes an argument for stability in high heat over the latest, higher numbered panels) nor did I get to choose the inverter, but it's done. We had a bit of tree work done at our expense too to avoid it being wiped out by a stray pine. (Fingers crossed about the remaining ones in the stand above our house; They're a protected species and you need to have a good argument for their removal.) The couple of euro is presumably against our winter bills but there might also be a scheme where you have to spend it on other utilities infrastructure like a new boiler or something. Our family is working to shift our habits from using electricity in off-peak, lower cost hours to best solar panel hours. Thanks for your advice and encouragement. Husband and outdoor laundry station for scale ;)

Hi Benjamin,

Looks like my last reply didn't post, maybe the attachments I made with your cool tools on your linked website were the problem. (?)

(The part of the plan labeled section AA is through the middle of the house showing where the interior doors to the bathroom and medium bedroom are. I don't know why it isn't the house front, which is the north side as shown in the photo from the street.)

It should be 6 of the larger panels I think, definitely not 8 as I said. (My husband and I started this plan considering a roof extension that would add 2m to the northeast corner of the house adding to the 5.3 dimension to cover an outdoor laundry area. It's probably too shady but I still had that extra area on the brain.) My measurements were on the ground so once we add in the pitch it adds almost a half meter of roof. 3.46m x 5.3m. You're right that my plan is for the right hand side in that photo where the trees rule out the east/left.

Six big panels gets me to 3510KwH and I think it's 3.29 KwP peak power with panel efficiency rating listed as 21.4.

My brother in law is a nuclear physicist, not an electrian. He did the electrical for the garage/workshop (all AC) at the site and it wasn't an issue with our insurer. He might consider DC too hot/dangerous and nobody wants to work on the roof so I'm enlisting my native speaker to get some estimates for professional work.

The power company estimate for a package including installation was around 7,000 euro which would clear the hurtle of permissions and open up a possibility for selling back. My husband didn't get specifics about hardware when he asked though, so I would want to know more before doing that. I watched a lot of YT videos today that showed a range of features on inverters that go beyond the basic. They're probably not all available in Spain, but it might be worth ordering from Germany or wherever to get something better than what Obramat has.

If you could tell me more about what redundancy or solution is needed to avoid post-blackout kind of problems you mentioned. I'm very interested. Is it just a matter of losing all of your programmed settings or of needing to install something that alerts or disconnects when the battery is low?

Thanks,
Eileen

Hi Benjamin,

I'm grateful for your insights! Here's the plan which shows the roof shape. As built it isn't exactly the same (fireplace not in this position on to the east, but the west is the same other than a pantry bumped out where the back porch was. Roofline there didn't change). West is the bottom of the page in the plan/roof photo.

Roof is labeled 30 percent pitch. Missed that the first time.

We are a family of four with two adults on computers for hours at home most days. Big fridge and freezer. 80 gallon aquarium. Multiple loads of laundry each week for twin boys. European style run for hours and call it efficiency. There's a second fridge and workshop of power tools in the garage on this site. Not built as a four-seasons house so hard to heat and cool. AC and space heaters. Only one of us is a Permie ;)

I don't have good info on usage since inlaws previously used it July and August only with occasional weekend caretaking the rest of the year. In our current four bedroom flat we used 150kWh in the last month and 225kWh was the highest month's usage in the last year. This flat has gas heat so next winter in the solar house it will be electric heat or the fireplace.

My goal is to capture what I can on the usable roof and build in some resilience against outages. I don't think we'll be independent or try to sell back to the grid. Spain sometimes has solar tax incentives but has also pulled the rug out from under some big solar investors in the past so my husband isn't factoring any government incentives in.

Thanks in advance!

Oops, read the post below where I attached both photos instead of duplicates

Thanks in advance!

I'm suffering from impostor syndrome and have forgotten my high school math.

Location: near Cubelles in Catalunya, Spain
Slope: wish I knew, picture attached.
Roofing: Individual red tiles (So...brackets? hooks? How do I best mount panels?)
Best roof orientation: western half of roof (mountain is to south, east has a fireplace chimney)
Area of available roof: about 16 square meters (3m north/south side of rectangle, 5.3m east/west side)
Energy goal: 5KWH (? based on current usage in a different house, solar plan is for what has been a summer house but we'll be there fulltime soon)
Mechanical room: pantry located at the southeast corner below panels
Gear options: Local big box Obramat has...

Battery: PYLONTECH US5000 4.8KWH lithium battery 48V. (Larger are available but for the price jump a second battery later if needed seems sensible to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong. This is an on-grid house built in the 1980s.)

Inverter choices:
AXPERT KING II or HUAWEI (about 100 euro more for the latter). Both 5KWH, 48V  Opinions of brands?

Panels:
JA SOLAR either 505W or 565W. Sized 2.1m x 1.1m or 2.3 x 1.1m, 26kg or 28kg, about 10 euro more for the larger panels. (So 8 or 10 fit depending on how they're secured?)

My husband thinks his brother can help with hooking up the electrical end of things if someone else does the part up on the roof. I think he or the hardware store employees can point us in the right direction for cables, fusebox, etc.

Am I crazy to think we could semi-DIY this rather than go to a specialist designer/installer? Is the latest tech that much better than what' s easily available? When sold as kits or packages 5kwH is priced at least 10,000 euro for what looks to me like about 3,500 worth of gear. Of course the labor cost isn't nothing but it seems like there's a few thousand worth of padding for those afraid to put it together themselves. That's me, terrified but a cheapskate.

Open to advice and rudimentary education about electrical systems!

Thanks,
Eileen

The place: Catalunya, Spain about 5km inland from the Mediterranean near the town of Cubelles

The context: some time in the 1980s  a drunken excavator operator carved out the wrong part of the mountain so that the house had to be re-sited farther up the slope. When my mother-in-law complained he walked off the job and kept all of the money. Eventually the good sunny site was backfilled with construction rubble and English ivy was planted to hide the mess. The local birds and squirrels have helped plant a large briar through the mature ivy. A few fir trees volunteered recently, but it's mostly ivy and bramble. The home is in the greenbelt area of the development and is beside one of the never-built vacant lots offering alternative habitat for what's currently in this spot.

Present day: I would like to reclaim this steep area to grow better more useful things. It has been building up a soil layer from leaf litter for many years, but itsn't especially stable and I really don't know what all was dumped under there 40 years ago. I can picture a small apricot-guild orchard if I add some some terracing for stability and/or putting some solar panels there to help power the garage/workshop/house if what's underneath turns out to be a terror.

I wish I could rent a ruminant but absent a helpful goat I've been removing ivy and brambles by hand weekend after weekend. I don't want to fight ivy for the rest of my life. What are the permiest ways to get rid of ivy/brambles permanently? I'm also assuming that biochar when it has dried out would be better than trying to compost something so invasive, but I'm open to suggestions. This is a hard place to work since it's about ten feet above the ground story at its lowest point. The area will be frequently seen but infrequently walked upon once I've cleared and replanted it.

PS. I'm looking for recommendations for delicious apricot cultivars suitable to this area, too. Thanks, E

I really appreciate this thread! I'm considering buying land again. Forgive a foolish question please: do you ever consider starting your food forest in the scrubby/wooded area rather than on the cleared land? (As in consider the cleared part phase 2 when thinning of the scrub can happen to shift some biomass?).

I currently live in Sant Cugat del Vallès, near the Collserola preserve. I've had a few years to take my walks in the frequently-cleared firebreak zone near the edge of town. The dry season is DRY (but still wetter than Málaga I'm sure). Lots of interesting plants to observe when there's any precipitation, but everything but the broom looks desperate for months.

What I imagine trying to do is a kind of succession of edibles and support where anything makes shade already. The land I'm considering is actually in Tarragona, any details would be speculative, but I'm picturing trying to use mulberry and fig as the main shade pioneers and winter seeding 'pasture' areas with sorghum, clover, white pepper, mustard, plantain, etc.

I'd be an absentee in the harshest seasons and a camper in the moderate ones (My husband's family summers in Cubelles), visiting with poultry but not expecting them to manage year-round.

I'm from the deliciously damp American Pacífic Northwest so I'm very much a fish out of water (but I have lived in/near Barcelona the last eleven years).

The mostly-flat, cleared plots always appeal to me more when looking at land. (I'm very pro-sheep but probably not rich enough for a flock), but I'm getting the impression that uncleared land from scratch might be less miserable.

Apricot, almonds, pomegranate, garlic, onions and beans would seem a great victory to me. Herbs and flowers, too. Do the pines, etc. prevent a succession plan? I appreciate your insights before I make my (admittedly hobby) purchase. I'm outgrowing my balcony! Thanks.