Juan Roble

My apologies. I do make an effort to sound polite, even when my brain is clearly running in a different language.

Ha ha ha… really? New here today and already pushing email contact? That’s a bit too obvious. We may be single, but we’re not that simple.

Hi @ll!

I also keep my paid job. That is what pays all the bills, and even then there is never enough money for everything that needs investing. Doing things by hand, making use of everything, as permaculture teaches us, is a relief in itself and also brings real joy when you start seeing the results. At the same time, I have already made big changes in how I live. I left my rented home and this year I am living temporarily in a caravan. I am also converting a van so I can move that caravan to my land in the Pyrenees and use it there as a guest space. Meanwhile, near Madrid, I am working on the recovery of another property that was in very poor condition inside a regional park with lagoons.

My goals this year are ambitious. In Madrid, I want to recover soil cover, fence the land with all the permits in place (in a regional park means a thousand bureaucratic steps) and begin stabilizing a slope by planting trees and shrubs. I would love to restore the well with a solar panel and set a shipping container there for storage, but for now that is secondary. In the Pyrenees, I have already started clearing the land and requesting permits for everything. That is my real life project: home, garden, silviculture, bees, small livestock, and activities for visitors and the local community. Nothing much, as we say with a smile. I have calculated that the Pyrenees project will probably take me around eight years.

So when I say “doing it seriously,” I do not mean being fully off-grid tomorrow or making money from the land right away. I mean making decisions that truly change the way you live and the results you create. I am happy cleaning the Madrid land, and my whole face changes when I sleep on the Pyrenees one.

Permies.com is also allowing me now to interact with other people whom I consider just as normal as I am. Because there is really nothing extraordinary about following this path once you have truly discovered it. For me, nothing is more rewarding than this great change. I joined this site because I would love to find a woman who truly wants a new and simple life to share, but that will come when it comes. I am completely sure of that. What I do know, and part of why I wrote my post, is that many people say they want this life, others admire what you do, and surely some criticize it or dismiss it behind your back. But if you are doing it in an authentic way, then you are the one who really gives it value, and you are the one who truly gets to enjoy it.

All the best,

Hi!.

I’m planning to keep bees as part of my project. It seems to me one of the most rewarding activities and one of the best fits for the land: pollination, honey, wax, and all the life that comes with having bees around.

I’ve also been thinking about protecting the hive in winter from the outside, using insulating panels like an outer shell or box around the hive. I’m not sure whether this would actually make things more comfortable for the bees, but I suspect that reducing some of the cold exposure might lower their winter stress.

Where my land is, the cold is usually not too extreme, but temperatures can still drop to -12°C (around 10.4°F).

Hi Leland,

I have spent the last two days thinking about what to write to you, and I think the most important thing I can say is this: allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, recognizing where we are in life, and being sincere are all part of healing. Unwanted loneliness is poor medicine for anyone. I believe we should be grateful for every minute we shared with the people we loved, and also make the most of every minute we are given in our own lives.

I am far away, and I know my mind thinks in another language, but even so, I would be glad to be your friend, if that would be welcome.

Hi!

I’ve been trying to understand exactly that for the last two years, although I still don’t feel I have enough real experience yet to speak with certainty. What I’m slowly learning is that, in this kind of regenerative approach, the goal is not for every plant to be synchronized in timing, but in function. In other words, they do not all need to sprout, grow, or finish at the same moment, as long as each one is helping the system in its own way.

A good mix seems to work because the plants are doing different jobs at different times without leaving the soil empty or exhausted. Some cover the ground quickly, some send roots deeper, some help with nitrogen, and some may give grain or biomass. So the real “synchronization” is not about making everything uniform, but about keeping the soil active, covered, and biologically alive for as much of the year as possible.

Right now I’m trying something along those lines on a farm near Madrid, where I’m working on regenerating the soil. I’m sowing a mix of cereal, legumes, and clover now, knowing that much of it will probably die by July. Even so, part of it may reseed itself, and at least I hope to avoid having the soil left bare and compacted. Then in October I’ll try another mix, this time hoping that what establishes can either reseed itself more reliably or persist as a perennial. Madrid makes this challenging because winters are cold, while summers are dry and can reach about 111°F, so any system here has to be able to live with both ends of that range.

Whatever you do, make it fun.

Hi!

Your path is not my religion or my set of beliefs, but your words give me the sense that you are a very clear and coherent person. Clear with others in the way you express your intentions, and coherent because you seem to have given a full meaning to the direction of your life. Reading your post reminded me of one part of my own project. It is partly oriented toward others, but it also has another side: allowing others to accompany you on your own path. I think there is something very human and very honest in that.

I also prefer to look for the good in other people and in the world. To me, that is part of thinking differently from the way society keeps pushing us to see everything.

I wish you peace.

Hi !

I would isolate the non-working string completely and test it panel by panel, starting with polarity and open-circuit voltage on each module in good sunlight. I would also test the cable run itself, because this really does sound more like a short circuit or a ground fault than a simple mismatch issue. If one string is healthy and the other collapses to 0 V, I would not assume the good string “burned” the bad one. I would first suspect a failed connector, damaged insulation, water ingress in a junction box, or a bypass diode failure causing a short.

At this point, the fastest path is to separate the faulty string, verify each panel’s voltage and polarity one by one, and then check continuity and insulation on the cables before reconnecting anything.

Hi !

One practical option would be to slope the roof clearly to one side, or even better, make it shed water forward in a controlled way, so it ends up away from the back wall. Then you could guide that runoff with a shallow stone-lined drain or rock-filled swale in front, so water does not linger around the structure. On this kind of site, keeping water moving is half the battle. Earthbags can be a good idea, but I would be careful about assuming all bags will age well. Some do not handle UV exposure or long-term weathering very well, so if any part will see sunlight for a while, I would protect it as soon as possible. In a project like this, drainage and durability matter more than optimism, gravity always works.

Hi!

I’d suggest looking into the documentation for modern inverter systems, because things have changed a lot in the last 15 years. I’m an electronics engineer, and even I have had to admit that the market and the technology have moved on quite a bit. These days, inverter systems can do much more than just convert DC into AC. Depending on how the system is built, they can work together with solar charging, use the available solar energy first, draw from the battery when needed, and even lean on the grid if the demand goes beyond what your solar and battery setup can provide. They can also top the battery up gently from the grid after several cloudy days if that is how you choose to configure it.

I use Victron myself, and one of the things I like is that they have built a whole ecosystem around the hardware. You can monitor the installation from your phone, have the information on a dedicated screen, and tune the system so it behaves in a way that makes sense for your real daily consumption instead of some theoretical perfect scenario. A lot of the early progress in this area came from boats and campers, because those systems spend most of their time fully or partly off grid, so they had to become smarter earlier than domestic systems. But now the same ideas are becoming much more common in houses too, especially where people want a bit more resilience or flexibility.

If you already have a breaker panel with circuits separated in a sensible way, it is not especially complicated in principle to move some predictable loads onto the inverter backed system while leaving the rest on the grid. Lighting is often a simple place to start, and other steady and easy to predict loads can also make sense. The more demanding loads need a bit more thought, especially anything with motors, pumps or high starting surges, because sometimes the challenge is not the normal running power but the moment they first kick in. That is where people can get caught out if they only look at the label and not at how the equipment really behaves.

I would still say it is important to be careful and to follow the local rules and standards wherever you are, because once you start mixing batteries, solar, inverters and existing household wiring, you want to be sure everything is properly protected and done in a safe way. Cable sizing, fuses, breakers, connections and isolation all matter, not just for performance but to avoid damage or fire. That is one reason I often prefer smaller or more self contained systems rather than trying to rework an entire house in one go. Starting with a more isolated setup lets you learn a lot without having to interfere too much with the main installation. And yes, there is still a very good reason why so many people move toward 48 volt systems. For the same amount of power, the current is lower, so the cables between batteries and inverter do not need to be so heavy, losses are reduced, and everything generally behaves better. Cable runs matter too, of course. The longer the distance, the more loss and heating you get, so keeping the panels, batteries and inverter laid out sensibly makes a real difference.

I’d also be careful about building lithium batteries yourself, especially if we are talking about LiPo. Personally, I do not think that is a very prudent place to start unless someone already has real experience and understands exactly what they are doing. With that kind of battery, a proper BMS is not optional, it is essential, because it has to manage charging, discharging, balancing and temperature, and those things are exactly what stop a battery pack from becoming dangerous. When lithium batteries go wrong, the fire is not just a small technical problem, it is serious, very hard to control, and nasty both in terms of toxic fumes and sheer fire intensity. That is why I would rather use something that comes with real guarantees and a proper safety design, even if you begin with a fairly small amount of storage. If you find that you are actually using it and it makes sense in daily life, you can always add more later and duplicate the capacity in a safer and more controlled way.

I do not know if that helps move the idea forward, but I think you are looking at it in the right way. It takes a bit of patience, but honestly that is part of the fun !