When we bought the property we knew that it would be expensive to get power out to our property... we just didn't know exactly how expensive. We had a PG&E guy come over and give us an estimate to put power poles up and lines to the beginning of our property on the road and to the middle, which is where we actually would need it to get to for our homestead site. Well, as it turns out the estimate from PG&E came back at between 40K to 60K+ just to run lines and put up poles. That doesn't even get us power to our actual house which is about another 1000ft away from the last pole, if we came all the way to the center of the road along the property. With this new information we really decided to look into staying off the grid. I always liked the idea and with living on the boat for the last 2 years we were used to minimal power usage and regulating the solar/generator for our battery banks. After a ton of research (Chris) we decided to go with Wholesale Solar out of Mt. Shasta. They are a small family owned company that have been living off the grid for over 25 years and are extremely knowledgable and helpful. They design the systems for the DIY crowd and are very detailed in the installation videos and instructions.
First thing we always do when we get to the property is fill the pool... this is the kids entertainment and cooling off while we are working... Kava started a new fun pool time activity by making the biggest whirlpool by going in circles... I think 1/4 of the water came out while they were doing this... Super fun, thanks Kav...
So this last weekend our main objective was to get the foundation poles set for the solar panels so that we could install them in the next few weekends. We are expecting the shipment on Friday so it was important for us to try and get this done prior to arrival. After staking out 3 different sites for maximum sun exposure, minimal tree removal, minimal slope and of course the least amount of boulders.... We now know that our property has about 2 - 3 feet of top soil and then we hit the decomposed granite and rocks. We found our site and after measuring and setting our stakes of where to drill we threw the auger on the tractor. With much optimism with breaking ground we thought we would be at least able to drill about 3 feet. Yep... nope we got about 18" and less. Even with Chris standing on the auger while it was drilling (i'm sure that was safe) we couldn't get any farther... Okay so time to call in the bigger equipment. We called an electrician, John Upchurch, that has been helping us with a lot of decisions for our electrical infrastructure and he was able to squeeze us in at 6:30am to help us drill the holes. They brought their bobcat and a 12" bit that applies 7000lbs of pressure, a little more weight than Chris standing on the auger bit, and even with this was able to get 7 out of the 8 holes dug for us...
He also gave us a tip about an Ace Hardware in Ione that will rent a cement trailer with a yard of cement so that we didn't have to manually mix and pour 80 60lb bags of cement... Ugh that would have been a nightmare.
Kava came to help us and thank goodness he had the mind set and the shear willingness to tackle one hole that the auger couldn't get through... and yes with a pick axe and shovel Kava was able to break up the rocks that were stopping the auger... weird how they kept stopping the turning rotation of the bit so that the auger couldn't get through it and Kava was able to remove them so we could use ours on the tractor to get a little deeper of a hole dug and then we used a cement form to poor around the pole out of the ground. I guess the solar bars have to be able to sustain hurricane force winds because of their angle they can act like a sail... so that is why they are set in the ground 4.5' deep with a 12" diameter...
although we learned that our strong winds from the property all come from the south so in theory they would rise right up over the panels. I definitely notice the strong breeze every afternoon from the south and then it is weird how it swirls around to come from the north at night...
It was also nice to have Kava because he was able to help Chris with placement and alignment of the poles to make sure they were straight up and down, straight in a line and exactly 90" and 7'4" apart from each other.... patience and a new determination to get the job done right helps a ton....
After the poles are set we will go in and measure height and cut them accordingly so they are all level...
All in all it was a very productive 2 days. Our goal was get the 2nd sheds rafters built before we went up to the property... Our awesome neighbors/best friends came up to help us get these built in record time Friday night... Since we have the walls up we couldn't build them on a flat surface up there so we decided to use the basketball court at home... Thanks Gwen, Jeff, Annika and Jasper!
We were able to get the siding up on the 2nd shed and the solar bars in place. Again it always seems that things take longer than expected but at least we learn something new every time we attempt a project... and thats what we love.
Next items on the to do list are to finish up the roofing on both sheds, install windows and doors and make them weather tight. Finish installing the solar panels, build power house shed for the batteries and electrical and then run electrical to the sheds, trailer and water storage container for the pressure pump. Then we can start thinking about getting the land ready for planting and irrigation for planting.
Again, the sunsets never cease to amaze me and I so appreciate that time... Have I said that before????
Hugs and Love,
Heather
