This summer I added four solar panels to the existing four and it has made a big difference.  We have not had to run the genset for at least two months.  We have, of course, run it a few times to power the washing machine but everyday lights and computers are now all solar powered.  I think, in retrospect, if the washing was just ours instead of that of all the guests as well, we may have been able to run ‘pure Green’ for the first time.  This is a good thing.

But we can’t count on record setting stretches of sunshine every year.  This is BC, after all.  And this year has been exceptional.  About 45 straight days of clear blue skies.  Regardless, we have to supplement solar with wind and we have the technology to do it.  I have a 400 watt Air-X wind turbine which, according to the instructions, is raised on a schedule #40 pipe forty feet in the air and wired into my inverter/battery charger system.  Yeah, right.

Turns out schedule #40 doesn’t work.  Too flimsy.  I know this because I tried it.  The tower was raised to  the 45 degree angle when it folded in the middle smashing the expensive turbine to the ground and putting a dent in my pride and wallet at the same time.  I was not happy.  So NOT happy, in fact, I procrastinated for a year before trying again and buying another turbine.  This time, we are using an old HAM radio tower.  It is a triangular 9″x9″x9″ that comes in 10 foot lengths.  I connected two lengths together and, after mounting them on a giant hinged plate, pulled up twenty feet of tower and fastened it as you’d expect to the surrounding rock by wire cable.  But twenty feet is not enough.  I have to go the whole 50.

It turns out HAMs raise their towers in sections and I had three more sections to pull up and attach.  Each section weighs about 70 pounds and is awkward as hell.  The ‘rigger’ has to be atop the standing tower and the rigger’s assistant hoists the next section up using a gin pole which is a temporary extension of the tower used to get the proper section into place.  The gin pole moves up with each section.

Even tho I am large enough to be accused of being in two places at once, it is not true.  I can only be in one place albeit spread out generously.  Sal had to be the one on top of the tower.  I was grounded and obliged to pull the next section up into the air and in to place.  She had to wrestle that section so that the connecting bolts lined up and then she had to insert the bolts and tighten them up.

This ain’t easy.

There are already cables strewn around holding up the first twenty feet and they get in the way.  The foot hold on a 9″ tower is a foot-breaking steel bar of about 6″ wide and 1/2″ thick.  To assist her in this task, I had fashioned a hook-on mini platform that attached to the standing tower so that she could distribute her weight on both feet and be more comfortable.  But wrestling 70 pound tower sections while standing atop a twenty foot tower is not comfortable in any sense.  “My knees are shaking!”, she said somewhat weakly.

“It is good to get that fear out of the way now.  At twenty feet.  By the time you are at the top of the fifty foot tower, you’ll be relaxed enough to pose on one foot like you do in yoga!  Anyway, after 30 feet the fall will kill you so from then on, it doesn’t matter. The 40 and 50 foot sections should be a piece of cake.”  Her response is unprintable.  Seems she is somewhat reluctant to explore her inner Sherpa.

We’ll do it.  It will get done.  I can do much of the up-the-tower preparation for each stage but the actual ‘hoist and connect’ step has to be done with me on the ground and Sal tempting fate.  Seems fair, don’t you think?  It takes two to get it up, after all.