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Building a house ...
- Thread starter rabler
- Start date
You could always increase the gap on the other three so all the gaps look the same.
The challenge is that 400 lbs of panels is not easy to move. Doing that three times is more work. And to complicate matters, the other vertical posts don't really allow that as they would interfere. The other option is to close the last panel to the same gap, but move the last aluminum support rail a bit out of position. That would create a much less obvious asymmetry.
Either way, I lifted the panels in place with three ropes to a spreader bar on the excavator boom. Then cut the ropes out from underneath. Re-attaching ropes isn't going to be easy.
Yes, it bugs me. It goes on the punch list to be resolved. The thing that keeps me from messing with it is that the bottom right panel glass is cracked so it needs to be replaced. Although it is kicking out as much current as the other panels for now, I doubt that will last. The logical thing to do is get a new panel on hand and deal with it all at once. I have several other things that will probably take priority though. One being some help in a couple weeks to do some interior work on beams for the vaulted ceiling, my brother and a friend of his, both rock climbers and not fearful of heights. Just more than my wife and I can handle alone. But that will take some prep work. And it would be nice to get the gas boiler installed for the floor heat rather than relying on a couple of electric space heaters and a mini-split to heat the place. The mini-split is mounted in the loft so heat doesn't propagate to the basement well, and of course on the days where the temp is truly cold outdoors the mini-split doesn't do the greatest job of kicking out heat. Did I mention that building a house feels like being in fire-fighting mode before I retired?
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Mostly yes. But despite it's tenacity in sticking to boots, it is slippery as goose sh*t. So both my wife and I have more than once ended up face planting. Something about "the bigger they are the harder they fall"
Not a phenomenal amount of progress since the last update. Winter weather is just less conducive to getting a lot done. But the last week also entailed a stay in the hospital after a trip to the ER due to the Crohn's and related issues.
The solar system (I have trouble with calling it that, it is a photovoltaic system. The solar system is a collection of planets orbiting around our sun.) is working. Sunlight generates electricity, charges the batteries during the day. Things discharge in the evening and eventually run out of battery at which point it starts consuming more grid power.
The point at which it "runs out of battery" is actually a settable parameter based on the % of battery charge. You could run the batteries all the way down to nothing every night, but then a grid power outage would mean no power in the house. At the other extreme you could keep the batteries charged to 100% and use grid power whenever there isn't PV energy being pumped in from the solar panels. Obviously the first solution has the best rate of return on saving money paid to the electric utility, the second has the best CYA factor for keeping the lights on when the power goes out. My electric usage in the new house isn't "typical" enough to make sense of this for now. We're heating the new house with a mini-split and a space heater. Both are ridiculously hungry for electricity as a cold weather heating means.
The solution to that is to work on the next house construction project, getting the natural gas combi boiler working. A "combi" boiler provides both hot water for hydronic heating, and domestic hot water. We're install a condensing boiler, high efficiency tankless natural gas system. This is a true plumbing project of some complexity. Most of the copper piping in this picture is dry-fit, not yet soldered. There is more to be added. A pump needs to go in the lower left to pump water through the floor. It will also need an expansion tank. The filter-like thing on the right is to reduce minerals in the water that result in scale building up on the boiler heat exchanger. From this picture I've already changed out the domestic hot water lines so that there is a set of flush valves/fittings. The cropped manifold on the top left of the picture is the cold water distribution. Will need to replumb that to some extent, want to add a whole house water filter. Just filtration, don't feel the need for chemical removal, and the flow rate through the chemical removal filters is paltry for the same size filter unit.
It really wouldn't take much more work to make this unit multi-zoned. It'll take some fiddling to get the right water flow balance between the four zones in the basement, but we're only heating the basement floor with this. Convection should do a reasonable job of keeping the rest of the house warm given the open floor plan. And a later project is to install a force-air ground source heat pump (aka geothermal) to provide cooling, but which would serve as a backup heating if the gas system fails.
The down side to this combination system is of course you could loose both domestic hot water and hydronic heating if it fails. With other heat sources for keeping the house warm that isn't as big of a concern as it could be. The advantage is slight space savings, arguably not worthwhile as these things don't take up the space they did in older installs.
Of course we'll probably finish this up just in time for warmer weather. Plumbing is not my forte and I'm sure I've racked up at least a dozen trips to the box store just to get this far, plus special orders etc.
The solar system (I have trouble with calling it that, it is a photovoltaic system. The solar system is a collection of planets orbiting around our sun.) is working. Sunlight generates electricity, charges the batteries during the day. Things discharge in the evening and eventually run out of battery at which point it starts consuming more grid power.
The point at which it "runs out of battery" is actually a settable parameter based on the % of battery charge. You could run the batteries all the way down to nothing every night, but then a grid power outage would mean no power in the house. At the other extreme you could keep the batteries charged to 100% and use grid power whenever there isn't PV energy being pumped in from the solar panels. Obviously the first solution has the best rate of return on saving money paid to the electric utility, the second has the best CYA factor for keeping the lights on when the power goes out. My electric usage in the new house isn't "typical" enough to make sense of this for now. We're heating the new house with a mini-split and a space heater. Both are ridiculously hungry for electricity as a cold weather heating means.
The solution to that is to work on the next house construction project, getting the natural gas combi boiler working. A "combi" boiler provides both hot water for hydronic heating, and domestic hot water. We're install a condensing boiler, high efficiency tankless natural gas system. This is a true plumbing project of some complexity. Most of the copper piping in this picture is dry-fit, not yet soldered. There is more to be added. A pump needs to go in the lower left to pump water through the floor. It will also need an expansion tank. The filter-like thing on the right is to reduce minerals in the water that result in scale building up on the boiler heat exchanger. From this picture I've already changed out the domestic hot water lines so that there is a set of flush valves/fittings. The cropped manifold on the top left of the picture is the cold water distribution. Will need to replumb that to some extent, want to add a whole house water filter. Just filtration, don't feel the need for chemical removal, and the flow rate through the chemical removal filters is paltry for the same size filter unit.
It really wouldn't take much more work to make this unit multi-zoned. It'll take some fiddling to get the right water flow balance between the four zones in the basement, but we're only heating the basement floor with this. Convection should do a reasonable job of keeping the rest of the house warm given the open floor plan. And a later project is to install a force-air ground source heat pump (aka geothermal) to provide cooling, but which would serve as a backup heating if the gas system fails.
The down side to this combination system is of course you could loose both domestic hot water and hydronic heating if it fails. With other heat sources for keeping the house warm that isn't as big of a concern as it could be. The advantage is slight space savings, arguably not worthwhile as these things don't take up the space they did in older installs.
Of course we'll probably finish this up just in time for warmer weather. Plumbing is not my forte and I'm sure I've racked up at least a dozen trips to the box store just to get this far, plus special orders etc.
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Years ago I think I remember a valve that instantly closes if a pipe or hose fails. The valve can save a house from flooding, but also lost of hot water I would assume. I may not remember this correctly.
@Dhal22 might weigh in on this, and whether my memory is correct, and it would work on your hydronic heater to protect your tap water. Of course, if you are talking a slow leak, I don't think that valve works, it works probably on the pressure being released by a blowout.
Wishing you a speedy recovery after the Crohn's flare.
Good call on the propane backup heat source. We have a similar setup (which fortunately hasn't been used). Our geothermal primary heat source uses ~2 kW of power (generates 28K btu/h at a draw of 1800 W - https://wellconnectgeo.com/). Ours uses well water; when the pump runs, it draws another 600 W. If we get our batteries charged (18 kWh of storage), they would be drained by midnight. We have a 125K BTU propane furnace that gets switched on if we lose power (geo is not supported by the transfer box). Our gas furnace uses ~400 W when it's running.
In the winter, I set our batteries to a 35% (6 kWh in reserve with 5 kWh usable) minimum state of charge. That lets us run the propane furnace through the night with some reserve. The catch in my case is that if we lose power, I need to go into the inverter settings (on my phone or a walk to the barn) and change the minimum state of charge to 5% to access the 35% of battery storage.
We also watch the weather. If there's a likely power outage, I'll bump the minimum state of charge higher, or slip into backup mode, which leaves the batteries at full charge.
As usual, I'm sure you've got all of this figured out and will be fine. Having the belt and suspenders means restful sleep at night.
Good call on the propane backup heat source. We have a similar setup (which fortunately hasn't been used). Our geothermal primary heat source uses ~2 kW of power (generates 28K btu/h at a draw of 1800 W - https://wellconnectgeo.com/). Ours uses well water; when the pump runs, it draws another 600 W. If we get our batteries charged (18 kWh of storage), they would be drained by midnight. We have a 125K BTU propane furnace that gets switched on if we lose power (geo is not supported by the transfer box). Our gas furnace uses ~400 W when it's running.
In the winter, I set our batteries to a 35% (6 kWh in reserve with 5 kWh usable) minimum state of charge. That lets us run the propane furnace through the night with some reserve. The catch in my case is that if we lose power, I need to go into the inverter settings (on my phone or a walk to the barn) and change the minimum state of charge to 5% to access the 35% of battery storage.
We also watch the weather. If there's a likely power outage, I'll bump the minimum state of charge higher, or slip into backup mode, which leaves the batteries at full charge.
As usual, I'm sure you've got all of this figured out and will be fine. Having the belt and suspenders means restful sleep at night.
I'm sure you could find/design a valve that sensed the back-pressure or flow rate and shut the supply off if that exceeded a certain threshold. Just not sure how that would differentiate a legitimate full-flow scenario (like filling up a pool) verses a leak. It would be possible to protect from a blowout in the water heater itself by using a valve that sensed loss of pressure after the water heater to cut off the water supply before the water heater, as you should never have enough flow through the water heater such that more than a small percentage of line pressure was lost.
Was thinking about some other failure of the boiler (eg a bad control board, ...) causing loss of both DHW and CH. The hydronic heat (CH) system is isolated from the domestic hot water (DHW) except when a "fill" valve is opened. I don't foresee leaving that open, just cycle it open briefly once a year to top up the CH water supply. The hydronic (CH) system is (other than that valve) a completely closed loop system. I'd rather leave it isolated and if I have to top it up more than once a year that would mean there is a slow leak somewhere. Possibly a ruptured line in the concrete? Then I could start cutting off zones to try to track it down.
The utility room which houses this heating system has a floor drain. I suppose eventually you could saturate the septic system but it should provide some threshold of protection against any leak induced flooding. It also provides a drain path for the pressure relief valves and condensate drain.
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That is a lot of my motivation, I'm trying to build a house that I can maintain as I get less able to deal with the physical challenges of upkeep. That gets a lot more feasible to deal with when it is a "oh, we'll just use the other heat source" on those cold nights. Even the cold nights when the grid goes down.
This weeks unplanned hospital stay, which spanned my 62 birthday, was all the justification I need for that logic and the non-trivial added cost of going this route.
Speaking of costs, the solar photovoltaic system cost about $35k total for all the materials including concrete, wiring, boxes, batteries, panels, conduit, etc. That cost doesn't include any labor, my wife and I did all of the work. Nor does it include any fuel, depreciation or other costs associated with using the equipment I own and used. It is an Enphase brand system, which is not the cheapest option per kW.
ROI? Certainly doubtful I'll live long enough to pay that cost off from an energy savings perspective. But with a 30% tax credit it starts to look a bit closer. Then if I figure the backup capability for grid outage I could guesstimate about $10k for an equivalent whole home backup generator, deduct that from the cost. The balance of the cost should take me a bit under 10 years to defray (ignoring the interest I could earn on investing that money).
ROI? Certainly doubtful I'll live long enough to pay that cost off from an energy savings perspective. But with a 30% tax credit it starts to look a bit closer. Then if I figure the backup capability for grid outage I could guesstimate about $10k for an equivalent whole home backup generator, deduct that from the cost. The balance of the cost should take me a bit under 10 years to defray (ignoring the interest I could earn on investing that money).
This last year I installed a 30kW Franklin backup power system tied to an already installed 8.6 kW solar system with microinverters, it was a much simpler installed system because it is AC coupled. I have it set to work mostly off grid in a self-consumption mode, so set to pull down to 50% and then use power from the grid which leaves me with a 15kW reserve if the power fails. The solar array on clear days provides 35kW/hr in Dec./Jan and 60 kW mid summer, my power consumption baseline is around 24 kW/hr. So providing there is sun I am grid independent most of the year, except for multiple overcast days. I previously was considering a generator backup, but the battery option along with the simple install and federal tax credit this year was a much better option in the long term given the improved battery longevity lithium iron phosphate technology. The Franklin WH system took about 6 hours for them to install and is far simpler and better integrated then many of the other systems I looked at. The main reason for adding power backup is during fire season there are power shutdowns, makes it hard to get out of the property is you have electric gates, as well as being grid independent for the most part. I figure the system will outlast me at my age.