With all this new power, you’d think it would go to my head!  And I would step on the little people if there were any nearby…oooooh, the power!  But there aren’t any and worse, it is not that much more power.  Not really.  I now have 2100 watts instead of 640 so – relatively speaking – I HAVE MORE POWER!  But that is like going from a 3 speed bike to a 10 speed, really. Hardly a threat to world peace or even little people.

But I have been dreaming of where to spend it all…………….and Sal and I decided to expand our food storage capacity by getting another fridge.  That should mean being able to limit our trips to town to monthly, maybe even every five weeks.

So, I looked at fridges on the net and what a depressing scene that is.  Energy Star means something but not much.  As a continent-wide program it has made appliances more efficient but, of course, they just built them bigger (Jevon’s Paradox) – the more efficient we become, the more we consume).

And the craziest thing is that the companies themselves set their own rating!?  That means that LE or Samsung can state that their ECO-friendly EnergyStar 22 cu ft fridge only uses say, 600 Kwh a year which may even be true.  But they are ones claiming it.  And some of them have already been proven to lie by Consumer Reports.  So, if you can’t trust EnergyStar, who can you trust?

Well, SunFrost is still the acknowledged king of the ice cubes but some makers are claiming that they are close.  I dunno.  So, I looked up the views of the whacko’s on the net and YOU-Tube and, it seems, the most efficient refrigerator is really a converted chest freezer.  Install a more attuned-to-your-needs temperature control device and you can get your fridge-cum-freezer to operate on something like .1kw a day!  That is one tenth of what a normal 15 cu ft fridge uses.

My new power array allows me to ‘spend’  say .75 kw a day extra and so I could add a whacko free-ger-type box and still have enough juice left over for a half size full-on freezer if I wanted and I would still save on power.

So, this little exercise in expanding our power consumption may yield a horizontal fridge.  Who knew?

In the meantime, the batteries are up.  The batteries are up!  The batteries are happily UP!!!  And so am I.  All this new power is burning a hole in my pocket.

Ooooh…………all panels a-pumpin’!  All circuits a’ hummin’.  Power galore!  I can hardly wait for the corruption to set in.  Today we got ’em all wired and now we are ‘topped up’ – virtually all of the time.  Six hundred amp hours on tap!  OMG this feels good!

Last visitors are gone for the season.  Maybe get a few more now and then but basically, we are alone and have some down time until November.  Literally.  We slept 11 hours last night.  Down is good.  Horizontal.  Light blanket.  Pillow.  Blessed rest.

“Well, I lay in bed a bit longer this morning to do some thinking.  I think the next project is the deck extension and then the lower funicular cart construction.  We’ll put off the greenhouse and the guest bathroom for awhile.  Waddya think?”

“I think that I am gonna make breakfast and stop right there, ya big dumb doofus.  I have enough to do without all your stupid projects.  I have to reupholster the chesterfield and chairs and there is still the book to do.  We have to get in the seaweed soon.  Fill that last row of wood.  And what about getting the new freezer to use all that juice?  When you figure to do that?”

“Hmmmm….good point.  I may just have to sleep on it for awhile.  Feel like a nap?”

I suspect that we will ‘take ‘er easy’ for a bit.  But the problem with that is, once you stop it is so hard to get back up to speed again.  Oh well, we are getting there (the undefined-in-detail goal of having completed the homestead to a sufficient level that we can stop with the projects).  As I said to a friend yesterday, “Well, I am 66.  At 76 people don’t do a lot of building.  I have to get my big projects done before then. And, at the rate I have been going, that means I can’t stop for long.”

He laughed but he is about 50 and has lived up here for longer than we have and just finished his own house to the point that they can live in it.  I could see the plans in his head for other projects being reviewed as we spoke.

Building takes time.  Lots of time.  And building is never just the construction of whatever structure or system you have planned.  It is the planning, the learning, the buying of materials, the transportation, the organization, the fact that you have never done it before and that you have no help but your spouse who is just as much a student as you are.  It is the whole enchilada from bringing in power and tools and shopping and living on-the-go without the benefit of pizza delivery to make it a bit easier.  It is the constant interruptions for research, visitors, more supplies and wrinkles and dilemmas that plague every job.  And, of course, it is the inevitable ‘we have to do that over again. It isn’t good enough’.

Projects are Godzillas.

But our last Godzilla is working for us now.  Bigtime.  2100 watts of pure sunshine-in-a-bottle.  Power.  And that is the reward.  Each project means something.  It really, really means something.  We feel like Gods having created another part of heaven.  “Let their be light! ”

Right!   But now let’s also have a day of rest.

We have some guests (common this time of the year) and they (like others) have asked the question: “Why did you do this?”  I answer differently each time but there is a common thread…”Well, I just got tired of the rat race….”

But ‘Tired of the rat race’ doesn’t really say it and so I add sentiments as my mood dictates and sometimes it is a rant against the ascending forces of greed and ugly that seems to dominate the news more and more these days.  And sometimes I describe the more subtle but still ugly ways the systems we have embraced surround us in our daily lives. These systems include the gouging, cheating, stealing and violation for profit as you might expect from a capitalist system but they also include the more accepted forms of moral crimes from escalating real estate prices to fraudulent investment schemes from police that kill civilians to teachers being ‘locked out’ of schools.

I just keep seeing the systems we support as failing us.  Especially government.

The BIG ugly seems to have succeeded at the trickle down effect where wealth distribution and common good have failed to. It all seemed so ugly to me that it came to be wrapped up in the phrase: ‘the rat race’.

Put another way: I don’t believe my government works on behalf of the people anymore.  I really don’t believe corporations have a moral compass and I don’t believe they work for the people or the good of the planet either.  I still have faith in individual people and the lower they are on the status chain, the more I find to sustain that faith.  Poor people can be petty criminals to be sure but, generally speaking, all the people I have met all around the world have been – on the whole – decent and considerate of others.  In the hoi polloi, I have faith. In the systems and the institutions, I have none.

And so we moved away.

“Surely you don’t think you are safe from the Big ugly, as you call it, simply by living remote?”

“No.  No, I don’t.  The Big ugly is quite capable of getting to me in ways I have yet to even imagine.  I have a smart phone after all. It may, in fact, have me!  I don’t trust it NOT to rat me out in some way some day.  But I do think it will take them longer.  People amassed in urban centres are so much easier to control, don’t you think?  So much easier to influence.  So much easier to intimidate.  Anyone striving to live healthy and happy out here has much more of a chance to do so when they are not immersed and entangled in other’s systems.

“Of course, we are enmeshed in some systems still.  I admit that freely.  But we have fewer and they have less influence.  We are freer.  Of that I have no doubt.”

“So the rat race is not simply about making a living and doing so in a city?”

“No.  Not at all.  That part of the rat race is just boring at the worst, satisfying for some and positively rewarding for others.  I do not hate that.  That is the mouse race. To me, the rat race is a term that describes the bigger systems, the ones that require debt, interest, legal enforcement, jails, wealth and health inequality, pollution, rape of the planet and wars. They are enslaving.  You know, that stuff of mankind that makes for fortunes, power, fear, loathing and many forms of perversions.  The ones that trash the golden rule.  The forces that generate and feed off of inequality.”

“Can you escape that out here?”

“Yes.  To a large extent, yes.  When you live remote and, by definition, rather minimally and simply, everyone you encounter is basically equal.  And they are more independent and harder to round up.  Less easily frightened.  We have a tiny, minuscule footprint on the planet, few if anyone are ever cheated, the golden rule still rules for the most part.  And, for the most part, it is the only rule.  And we have some time to stop and smell the roses.

“We may be living in a fool’s paradise but it still feels like paradise to me.”

No recent blog entry lately due to energy depletion.  Low on personal battery.  Three days in Vancouver will do that to me now.  I now find the city like an energy sponge and my home is like the charger. Been back a few days now and finally feeling like there is enough charge in the old smartphone to make a call.  So, ‘hi, there’…

C and R came home with Sal while I went to the city.  They are from Germany.  They have been here before but they are amongst the most appreciative of guests.  They love everything!  Dog.  Raven.  Dolphins.  Trees.  Sally, of course.  The meals.  The seals. Boats going by. Sea planes.  Garden.  Even me. But especially Ben.  C was Ben’s nanny when he was three.  They have been close ever since.  C & R came for the wedding and then stayed a few days up here.  It is wonderful to have them.  It seems like everything is new again.  It’s a bit like having little kids – you see your own world through their eyes all over again.

But they are gone now, replaced by F & L – also wedding guests (from London, England) and, of course, they are the same.  Boggled by the amount of space, the quiet, the work accomplished and the setting.  BIG difference from London.  Seriously, one of the best parts of having guests is seeing their eyes literally opened wide and watching them just stare at things.  It is fun.

It is also interesting to listen to their thoughts.  Almost always you can see the little wheels a-turning and them mentally placing themselves here and then thinking ‘no way’ and then thinking ‘maybe there is a way’ and so on.

“There is a way, guys.  It’s easy.  Just get rid of everything, quickly learn a few skills and close your eyes, grab your wallet and leap!”

“Yeah.  Right.  That is NOT gonna happen.  Hmmm….what kind of skills………?  Couldn’t we leap half way…say into a small town…kinda…?”

“Oh, I am only kidding.  Honestly.  It is hard to make the leap at the best of times and it gets harder every year after 50….give or take a year.  By the time you are 55 it is almost too late.  I know.  I was 55 and we simply could not have done what we did had we waited one more year.  There is a tide in the affairs of men, when taken at the flood………..”

“But, you know, we have been thinking recently that the rat race holds no more interest for us.  It might be time….. We have been thinking of making a change….”

“I think it is part of life.  Around 50 most people feel something is amiss or at least needs a bit of changing.  Something needs changing, anyway.  Some opt for red sportscars and secretaries.  Some for golf and golfing instructors.  They long for something they just can’t put their finger on and, even if they could, most often they are too busy running the race to really nail that feeling down.  I know that space.  I know that feeling.  And my friends of a similar age have all described it as well. But the forest may not be the answer for everyone.  Personally, I think it is but I am somewhat Dave-centric in my thinking.”

“We wouldn’t even know where to start….”

“Yeah.  That’s the fun part.”

It was a good wedding.  I might have even mustered a tear….or maybe a bird peed in my eye….hard to say…the wedding ceremony was held outdoors.  There were birds in the sky.

Perfect day.  Lovely garden setting. Bride was beautiful, groom handsome, best man funny, speeches all generally short and the food was great.  Everyone dancing including some octogenarians.  And the place was alive with hob-nobbing from the get-go.

Our family is now just that much larger.  And not just a few of them are as eccentric and weird as the ones they are joining.  Quite a bunch of whackos all told.  More than a few times I contemplated the wisdom of living off the grid last night.  It was truly an inspired decision.

Mind you, metaphorically speaking, there were not just a few ‘off-the-gridders’ in attendance as well at the wedding regardless of where they lived.

It has been a year of weddings for our children.  Emily and Brian last November and Ben and Katie yesterday.  Thank God we only had two kids!

But I won’t bore you with wedding stuff.  It’s the stuff of stuff.  But I will say that there was a lot of love in the room last night.  Chocolate love and strawberries was the least of it.  It was pretty neat.  Nice way of passing the torch…………..and that is what it felt like. Something changed during their ceremony……….and  I could feel the torch leaving my hand.

Yeah, you guessed it…the new solar array is starting to generate.  Oooooh….it’s so fine……..

One of my charge controllers is a-pumping.  The other awaits in eager anticipation of being juiced up, too.  Much like my son-in-law, Brian, who was the monkey-on-the-frame for the installation of most of the panels.  He wants to see the results of his labours as much as we do.

We are just reconnected to the old panels so far, actually – hence one controller pumping. In that sense we are just getting our old share of sunshine back workin’ for us. The new ones have yet to come online.  They are 90% wired but not connected yet because we are just finishing the actual physical assembly.  Two more panels to go up on the frame for a total of 14, old and new.

But the bulk of the job is over.  That’s the building of it all, the fabrication, the purchasing, the cobbling, foundation work, the lifting and the assembly.  NOT to mention the running back and forth to my shop for parts, tools and ‘making adjustments’ to fittings.  95% of our electrical work (out here) is really just plain physical, day-labour-type work.  Some of it is kinda mechanical, actually.  The bolting, welding, etc.  Those two components are what takes up all the time.

The fact that we take so much time to actually make electrical things work (switches, combiner boxes, panel connections, batteries, etc.) is more a function of our fear of all things electrical than it is the time required for ‘electrical engineering’.  If we knew what we were doing, the actual ‘electrician-required’ part is only minutes.

Mind you, if we knew what we were doing, the labour-mechanical components wouldn’t take so long either.  I blame Brian.  

So, we are slow.  So sue me!  (Brian might).

To be fair, we had four surprise guests yesterday and that could have proven irritating to me (given my focus at the time) until one of them expressed an interest in all things off-the-grid and was a machinist to boot!  He was in his element jumping up on the array with Brian to help us put a couple of panels up.  And the other three guys were really pleasant and fun to meet as well.  So, it was good, all good and especially good to have another set of willing and skilled hands.

After I dropped the visitors back at the other island, I returned to continue on the job.  Sal was just finishing up wiring the first set of panels.  She stood about twenty feet off the ground on the top of a swaying scaffold and reconnected the old panels and ran the power to the combiner box.  Before she came down from aloft she checked to see that they were producing.  They weren’t.

“I dunno.  Did it all to the diagram.  Maybe they are broken?”

So we checked them together and came up with all sorts of weird readings.  That is such a disappointing feeling when you are way up in the air and think you are 90% done.  But a few misplaced wires set right and we were ‘on’.  Usually a little happy ‘jig’ is in order with small work victories but, given the swayin’ location, we waited til we were back down on terra firma and then the smiles and Riverdancing began.  WOOhoooo!

And that was just 20% of the array producing!  Eat your heart out, George Lucas.  When we get it all together, THERE WILL BE AMATEUR LIGHT AND MAGIC!!

Post script: we went all out this afternoon and the final two panels are up and Sal decided to take a shot at getting another part of the array working (goal: 40% of everything we have.  60% more at a later date – we have other things to do starting tomorrow – my son is getting married!).  She took off the back of the electrical boxes on each panel and one of the boxes looked like it had been inhabited by rats and slugs.  Eeeeuw.  Not a single piece of it was shiny and bright and ready to accept a wire.  A quick check of the gunk with the meter showed the panel was producing nothing. NOT good.  A panel ‘out’ of a string renders the string virtually useless.  So, the panel went into ‘refurbish’ mode (meaning: a lot of scraping, cleaning and shining) and then VOILA!  The panel was producing according to the meter and it is being ushered back into the fold as I write.  

OOOoooooooooooohhhhh….I love it when a plan comes together. 

7:30 am.  Got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head….

Breakfast first and then we got to work.  Started by packing up the hill the new solar panels and all the bedding and mattresses used to ‘comfort them’ while they were in storage. Then took the bedding stuff over to a neighbour who needs extra comforting due to a giant family visit.

The nature of giant family visits means that any and all such comforting will be in short supply.

Jumped in my newly ‘lame’ boat to go pick up other neighbours needing a ride to their property with their supplies.  Mine was lame due to the need for a haul-out to get my bottom scrubbed (yeah, I know how that sounds).  And so, after dropping them off, I took the boat into the shallows and put it over two embedded horizontal struts on which it could settle when the tide went out.  While the tide slowly receded, I stood waist deep, cleaning what I could and keeping it positioned.  Half an hour, maybe forty minutes.  Boat settled nicely.  I was shivering a bit.

Went back home to get dry and then re-position big ol’ heavy electrical cables from one side of the property to the other – that required dismantling some under-the-house connections – for the new solar array. Doesn’t sound like a lot of work but it was and it required Sal and Brian, too.

Later…back to the boat with Sal and the ‘kids’ to clean the bottom and paint it.  Lying in the mud, scraping and painting, everyone was a mess.  But the boat looked good.  Three or so hours later we went back home to get clean, make dinner and start back on reviewing the book…..which, by the way, is NOT going well.

And then, a few hours later after dinner, Sal went to get the now-floating boat and took it back to the dock.

It was 9:30 pm. “Geez, Dave, what do you DO all day?”

“I dunno……stuff….you know…..chores……”

The real answer is that our chores are NOT like city-oriented chores.  Ours require climbing steep slopes dragging heavy equipment, carrying and using tools and standing in the water cleaning the boat (instead of getting it hauled out by a machine and then using a pressure washer) and on and on it goes.  Chores out here are ‘jobs’, really.  Not just chores.  Usually a bit bigger than tasks.  They are jobs.

‘Cept for the book.  That is just a pastime, really.  No heavy lifting.  No slopes.  But – here’s the message – the book is killing me.  Seems reading aloud is an extremely effective editing technique.  Doing that exercise makes me hate what I have written so far.  There is some interesting stuff there but it is covered in word-mud.  I have written a heavy stew and half of the ingredients are off. The whole thing stinks.  No wonder writers are reputed to drink heavily.

I am trying to wire in a new solar array with all sorts of complications…but I’ll get there.  I am needing to build more outbuildings and just don’t have the time….but I’ll get there.  I have some huge jobs, a gazillion tasks and too-many-to-count chores to do before winter ….but, I’ll get there.  But I may not get that book done.  It seems to get worse instead of better…I just may not get there.

Writing is easy.  Good writing is hard.  Great writing is impossible.

The basic 30 year rule in the blog title assumes that I live 30 more years after building and in a similar manner until the fateful day.  Give or take a week.  And, so far, being ten years into it, it is working. Kinda.  My trusty solar array which has the slightly too-short 25 year warranty (and starting 10 years ago) is fine but, suffering from panel envy, I got some more solar panels this past winter.  And then I built an array or frame structure to hold the old panels and the new ones in a better spot.

It is now up.  It is awaiting the panels.

Today I took down the old panels from the old frame.  They had been built to the 30 year rule, meaning: they were very hard to take apart.  I eventually had to grind three bolts off while dangling from atop the old array-frame.  Tip-toe-ing on a 2 inch pipe leaning at a ridiculous angle mini-grinding off two bolts that, presumably, had high titanium content.

Thought I was gonna die.

“So, how did you assemble all that in the beginning?  There are so many cables and struts that I can see it clearly isn’t gonna fall down, but I can’t see a logical way to put it up or take it down. What did you do first?”

“Well, Brian, I am old.  And I can’t remember.  I remember adding all the cables later so at least they weren’t in the way at that time.  But they are now.  And I seem to recall doing the first four panels one way and the lower four a different way.  To be honest, the only thing I remember clearly is the 30 year rule which means I shouldn’t have to remember anything.”

“Well, at this rate you are going to live to somewhere around the ten year rule – which is just about now.  I think you are going to die.”

“Yeah.  I feel the same way.  Did you see that flash?”

“Yeah.  What was that?”

“The power of eight solar panels jumping the tracks and trying to get aboard my misplaced crescent wrench.”

“Geez, man.  Maybe you should get someone in.”

“First Aid?”

“No, doofus.  How about an electrician?”

“You mean Sal?  She’s at yoga.  Anyway, I can’t afford her anymore.  Her rates went way, way up.”

“How high?”

“She’s priceless.”

“Well, you might get fried.”

“Strange you should say that.  I can feel low current juicing through the frame to the ladder as we speak.  Glad I have on rubber soles. Should have on rubber gloves,too, I guess.”

“You serious!?”

“Yeah.  But it was only because I still have the panels wired together and let the wires touch the ladder.  I am gonna stop that right now and disconnect everything and wrap the ends in tape and all.  No worries.”

“Is this how people put on solar panels?”

“Yep.  Zactly.  They get up on ladders, dangle over the edge, get a little juiced now and again and then act like an expert at the next gathering.”

“Yeah.  I remember now.  At that last dinner party, you and Mike were talking solar panels for an hour.”

“Yep.  And, as you can see, I haven’t a clue.  YEOUCH!  That one smarts!  Did you see that flash?”

“I’m leaving. I can’t watch. This is crazy.”

“Hey!  Come back.  How else you going to learn about stuff like this..?  YEOUUUCH!  Hey, did you see that flash?”

…Wordpress won’t allow any comments on that last blog (I Wish to Thank…).  I am sure that is driving many of you crazy.  Well, Sid is, anyway.  But he was already crazy…

Anyway, I am posting again today simply to see if the post gets ‘commentability’.

What to say….?

Well, it is a lovely August day.  Visitors are arriving in surprising numbers.  “Surprise! Thought we’d drop in and say hello!”  We have had guests up that wazzoo for days.  Yesterday we had 9 where 2 were expected.  But that’s not news.  Every summer my attraction to mankind is resurrected only to waiver and die by the last few weeks of October.  I am like a social butterfly.  Literally.  A social fruit fly, more like it.

I have had enough tea and biscuits to last me the rest of my life.  I want to work on my projects.  And I don’t think anyone would care, actually, if I did.  But I need Sal to help me and she is – most of the time – being Ms Chatelaine to the guests and so, without my helpmeet (who uses that word?), I am worse than a blind, one-armed, paper-hanging, ESL student with head trauma (just to mix a few metaphors) doing my work.  In other words: nothing is getting done.  OK, maybe a little head trauma.

200 words does not a blog make but, like I said, this is really just a test to see if the comments will work on this page.  Over to you…

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