And then the lights went out.... - Days 176 to 178

The 2.1kw solar array that tracks the sun

Literally....

A couple of very gentle days pottering, a trip into town for shopping, walking little Baby were a joy, settling down in front of the TV on our second night (we’d failed on the first night having to resort to a DVD. With my supreme BBC engineering skills I’d found the aerial coax pulled out the back of the connector, on our balcony, and knowing that a 1m air gap is not known for its transmission qualities, I’d shoved it back in). Halfway through the search for the Yorkshire Ripper, everything went off, and where we are dark is very dark, though fortunately we are coming up to full moon.... Instinctive reaction “is everyone off? Is it just us?” 

Oooh, whats that under there? It's tracking mechanism is done by a linear actuator. That's right up my street, it was a big part of my business when I was working. Lets look closer....

Mmm, not one I used to sell, that's a competitor. Never mind

There’s no one else to see, and of course it’s just us, we are off grid, self sufficient, generating our own solar and hydro power. No point in waiting to see if it comes back on then!

We finally got hold of Mike on the phone, who went very quiet, “it’s never happened before, it’s such a trouble free system...” Ring Ecki, the solar man, he’s a night owl. What a lovely man, he told us how to reset it, lights came back on, phoned Mike with the good news, breathe a huge sigh of relief, hurrah.



It all went dark again. Boo.

The off grid control set-up. Ecki told us the LH white unit is the water turbine control with a big green resistor above to absorb excess power and stop the turbine overspeeding. Right of that is the turbine intelligent controller, then there's various breakers, right again are two solar array intelligent controllers, above are electric meters to monitor usage. Right again are two inverters, one slightly above, the slave, and one lower. These convert the 24v battery voltage to mains 230v AC 

And here are the monster batteries. 6 twins of 2v each giving 24v

Back on the phone to Ecki, he talked me through interrogating various things, to no avail. I’ll come out tomorrow afternoon.

Lying in bed, everything running through your head, “we’ve got water running into the poly tunnel”, “yes but it’s the low pressure, so it’s gravity fed”, “didn’t we hear the pump for the high pressure water feed running as we were walking past with Baby?”

And a huge generator that should have started, but didn't

Clothes back on, stumbling up terraces, in Crocs, in the dark. Three water taps, high pressure to the house: always on. Low pressure for watering: on. Leave off, do not touch: looks off, but I can hear water through it, nudge it a touch, now it’s closed!

We didn’t want to ring Mike today, it was Mary’s hospital appointment which obviously takes priority, and he’s a long way away. He’s just rung. B had found a breaker down that shouldn’t be, “shall we reset it?” “Hmm, perhaps wait for Ecki as why did it trip?”

And outside right down by the stream are two water turbines generating power. There's two of them but only one is running as that's all that's been needed, and of the 4 water inlets to it only two are open. That generates 200w, so it has a capacity of generating 800w with both on all all input open

Little Baby pug dog looked unconcerned

“There is perhaps one thing you can check” said Mike, “as I changed the water over, in the dark on Tuesday morning, it’s possible I didn’t quite close the tap properly, this would have caused the pump to keep circulating water, it has been a problem once before...” “let me just stop you there Mike, in that case we have actually fixed the problem....” Hurrah, we will wait for Ecki before switching on the breaker, but things are really looking up. All we have to figure out now is why the generator didn’t start.....

Perhaps sitting in the sun might help

Ecki has been, what a lovely man, he didn’t actually do anything, but checked a few things, flipped up the breaker, even though it wasn’t on one of ‘his’ bits of kit. Confirmed the battery on the generator is ok, and cleared the fault codes. All we need to do now is test it early one morning, when we’ve dropped the voltage overnight before the solar array has done it’s thing.

I guess we can now say “experience of off grid properties” on our Housesitter profile!

The peacocks came down to see what was going on, or perhaps they were hoping we'd leave the front door open so the could wander inside, they apparently often do that

Here's a couple of them inspecting this strange chicken thing

Chickens, peacocks, dog and Jackie all together

It's peaceful down by the river. Mike and Mary's property ends at thewaters edge where Baby pug dog is

This photo shows the devastation from the forest fire of 2017. The building used to be Mike and Mary's rental property. There used to be a wooden building where the caravan is now and, beyond was/is a swimming pool. The fire swept through and destroyed the lot yet their house (you can just see the roof) escaped completely unharmed. How on earth did it survive when this building was destroyed? The tree is still alive but has a very burnt trunk

A view inside that building. You can only imagine how heartbroken Mike and Mary must have been but also, how lucky the housesitters were to have escaped with their lives

And after I managed to break one of the hinges on the freezer compartment in our fridge in Big Ted a while back, we've taken it out and, today I've glued the bits back together. The hinge furthest away had broken completely in half, the nearer one was cracked through and not far off breaking. The little white ribs are bits I've made and glued on in an effort to strengthen the hinge. The white clip was already broken (not by me), so I made a bit to replace the missing clip and glued it on. I also had to glue the freezer base as it broke with the hinge. I'm confident, but Jackie has found some spares on the internet to replace all the broken bits for about £50. I've told her we won't need those though, this repair is going to be perfect!