This has been a fun summer in Seattle. We have seen some warm days (90 degrees) but for the most part, it’s been around 75-80. Right now, it’s really smoky because of the fires. This post is going to be picture heavy. We’ve been really busy over the last couple of months. We’ve done a…
Seattle Summer: Learning to fish from kayaks on the Puget Sound
Fishing on Puget Sound has been an entirely new experience for us. We’re used to being out on lakes in small watercraft, but the Sound is huge! We wanted to catch some Lingcod before the season was out (June 15th) on our kayaks. (wouldn’t THAT be a hoot!) We spent a few days gathering up…
Seattle Summer: A stop in Post Falls on the way, and fishing Lake Washington
After Montana, we headed back to Seattle to summer over where it was cooler, and help my folks out with some more projects. On the way, we spent a couple nights in a Cabela’s parking lot in Post Falls, ID. There are a few Cabela’s in the PNW with large lots and separate Truck/RV parking….
Holter Lake, Montana
Together with Nathan’s folks we headed to Holter Lake, MT, for a few days that would cover Memorial Day weekend. We left on a Tuesday afternoon with plans to stay somewhere along the way. During our search for our overnighter, we came across a place called Honey’s Park, a place for free dry camping in…
Boondocking at Fiberpipe, and some drone play.
It’s now been about five weeks since our solar system was completed. We’re currently plugged into shore power in Seattle, staying here for a couple of months to avoid the heat and help my dad on a couple of projects. We’re also doing some fishing. On Kayaks! But, backing up a bit… After we finished…
It works!
Phase Three: PROFIT! But before that… We ran into an issue as we were nearing the end of the installation of our components. It just wasn’t working as expected. The Quattros would come on and pass through shore power, but when shore power was disconnected, they wouldn’t start inverting. Also, they were misbehaving when the…
Solar – The Other Components
Phase Two: Install Inverters, Charge Controllers, Wiring, Breakers, Switches, Batteries and Etcetera. We made a project board the same dimensions as the wall in our front pass-through, so we could play around with positioning components trying to come up with the best fit and flow. Here’s some of our early ideas: After this, we found…
Solar Panel Installation
Phase One: Collect Underpants Install Solar Panels Here’s the roof diagram again: They are Grape Solar 180 watt panels. They were the best bang for the buck for us, the form factor was correct, and they are assembled in Eugene, OR.
An introduction to our Solar project
So let’s set up the conditions for this project. We’re both technical folks, currently Nathan works remote and Heather is working on other projects (like this blog) that require computer needs. We wanted a system to support a “mostly” normal lifestyle for us off the grid. In correlation with designing our system, we did some…
A spontaneous stay on the Columbia River
The plan was… after leaving Albany, we had reservations to stay at another Thousand Trails resort in the Sun River/Bend area. We were looking forward to this, we love Bend. We saw that there was a winter storm coming for the mountains between us and our destination, so we chose a southern route, that would…