Gordon Longfoot

Magnesium puts me right to sleep. It's not perfect, I need to be active during the day and get sunlight but if I do my part it works.

I picked up some LifePo4 100A's for $100 last month on Amazon. There not as nice as my 48V rack mount units but they work good enough for small projects. There's rack mounts for under $1k now too. I'm tempted to add another one to my main system.

We're temporarily setup with two strings of panels where one gets sun in the morning then the other in the afternoon. To me it's a waste of panels and I'll get more out of my system once I have a proper rack that gets sun all day long.

Welp, I let the buck in with the does today and they must be in heat now. I know it's a 3 week cycle and it's been about 3 weeks.

We used turkey manure in our garden this year. It's about the same as chicken manure but maybe slightly higher in nitrogen.

My friend filled a 5 gallon bucket with 6 month old droppings. Every few weeks I'd add a scoop to a bucket half full with water and let it sit for a few days before adding it to my plants. Our tomatoe and pepper plants were lush!

We were given Nigerian Dwarfs in August, it's two does and a buck plus a couple bucklings. The males and females were kept separate but one day at the end of August we came home and they had gotten through the gate. The does still seemed to go through their heat cycle in September, but now we're trying to mate them and they won't let the buck near them. Is it possible they're already pregnant?

franc none wrote:Hi Em. i am local, about 45 minutes from Show Low. Looking to join a self-reliant community and am interested in learning more about what you have going. Are you still looking for other like minded people to team up with?

Thanks,
franc

Where are you at? We're about 5 minutes outside of Snowflake on Concho Hwy. This place seems to be poppin with homesteaders. I see at least one person hauling water every time I leave our property.

John Weiland wrote:Really enjoying the simplicity of your systems, Thomas, and am following all of this closely.  Our most concerning power draw is a deep well (220VAC) that would need a cognate inverter for juice.  I recall focussing some years ago on the Magnum brand for such an inverter.

We're running a Luxpower 6000 all in one Charge/Inverter that puts out split phase 220V. Our well pump is 3/4HP for a 300 foot well. I ran it yesterday and was drawing about 1,600 watts from the system. On sunny days that works out just fine with our 9 x 380 watt panels. There's enough juice left over to charge the batteries and keep the lights on in the house.

Water goes into a storage tank when the sun's up, then I have a small pump coming out of that. The battery on the smaller pump would last for about 5 hours of continuous pumping, so with normal water usage it can last for days. To top it off there's a 250 watt panel and a 30A charge controller. I was running 2x 250 watt panels and a 50A controller, but I noticed it wasn't all being used.

This system works pretty well, we can go days without good sun and the faucets stay running. The only thing I'd like to add is automation so I don't have to manually turn the big well pump on.

With an AGM you'll want a circuit to shutoff the load if voltage gets too low, this is something the charge controller probably does, but be aware of the amperage your load is drawing. My 30A charge controller can only handle 20A's from the load ports. The pump I'm powering with it is 17A, so it's been fine so far.

LifePo4's usually have their own shutoff.

I would go directly to the battery for variable loads likely to go over what your controller is rated for. But draining the battery bellow a safe voltage could cause permanently damage and you won't be able to charge it in the morning without intervention.

There's low voltage shutoff circuits available online, but like with the built in one make sure it's rated for the load you're putting through it. I accidentally let the smoke out of my last one.

John C Daley wrote:Gordon you are fortunate with the well and old septic.
That 2500 gal. tank is a good start

The 2,500 gal. tank is in use,  water gets pumped from our well when there's sun, but before solar was all hooked up I had to use a generator. To get water into our camper I hooked up a RV water pump with a car battery and solar panel. This keeps us from burning through the big batteries at night, the tank is effectively our battery.

Then we've got three 275 gal. tanks to use for livestock and gardens, but I'll hook those up in the Spring. I need to plumb a hydrant that will pull water directly from the well instead of from the big tank.

We're going through about 700 gallons/week

it's me, my wife, and our two boys

and the livestock:

5 goats
8 pigs
21 chickens
2 ducks
2 LGD's

My wife and I used to buy ND goat milk thinking about all the good things I could make with it, but we always drank it too fast.