A Tough Math Day
It's something we both avoided speaking about and dreaded starting- although, in the grand scheme- I have no idea why! Saturday, Dan was able to grab a few hours working for his Dad so he took it. He's still struggling to find something part time that will work with school. If anyone in the Rhode Island area has any suggestions, let us know! While he was off earning some keep, I tackled a list of errands. Neither of us returned home until about 3pm, at which point, we called it a day. Well sort of- we grabbed showers and free movie passes at his parents so we could head out and see How To Train Your Dragon 2. Yes. That was my requested movie. I loved it almost as much as the first!
Anyways, after a day doing other things, it meant Sunday was a work day, noooo compromises. We hope to move the tiny house next weekend, so we need to get crackin!
We researched a few different ways to mount solar panels, and finally decided to go with the ideas shown in this youtube video. We made a few of our own modifications, but the over all concept is similar.
It's still a very modest system. Here is what our load calculator chart looked like- and it gives you an idea of what we can run.
| Appliance Load/ Name | On At Same Time | Quantity | AC Watts | Hours on Per Day | Watt Hrs/ Day |
| Cooler | Y | 1 | 70 | 8 | 560 |
| Great Rm Lights | Y | 1 | 50 | 6 | 300 |
| Kitchen Light | Y | 1 | 10 | 4 | 40 |
| Blender/Juicer | - | 1 | 300 | 0.1 | 30 |
| Sewing Machine | - | 1 | 100 | 0.1 | 10 |
| Table Fan | Y | 1 | 25 | 7 | 175 |
| Computer (Laptop) | Y | 1 | 50 | 6 | 300 |
| Window Fan | Y | 1 | 40 | 6 | 240 |
| Clock Radio | Y | 1 | 1 | 24 | 24 |
| A/C (or heater in winter) | - | 1 | 600 | 4 | 2400 |
So our total system is 4079 Watt-Hours Per Day. Without the A/C option we would be down to just 1679 Watt-Hours per day. That would be nice on the wallet, but I've sat through more than one scorching day with no A/C and I'm not about to make us tough it out in that little box on wheels! This chart comes right from the AltE website. They have a lot of great calculators that make it much easier to understand what you are calculating, and provide a lot of the basic appliance power loads for you!
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| The board at the bottom of this pic is the where the panel goes. |
On our first run through, we made the cuts "upside-down" the first go round, meaning, if we had put the rack up, the solar panel would be at the exact opposite angle of what we needed. After doing the math for our latitude, we found that 35 degrees would be optimal. A triangle always adds up to 180, and we had our 35 and 90 degrees, so the last angle was 55. What we got mixed up on (among many other things that day) was which corner needed to be 35- the top corner or the bottom one?
I'll cut to the chase and tell you- it's the top. It may have taken us a few hours, but we finally got all of our cuts, angles, and measurements right. Our first racking post was complete. We spent another hour or so making cuts in an assembly line manner. By the end of Sunday, we had completed two of the eight posts we will need.
We didn't get it all done, but man does it feel good to have sailed over the hurdle of just-getting-it-started. We have about 40% of the wood cut. Throughout evenings this week we will complete all the posts and hopefully head over to the farm to mount them in the ground.
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| Yep! It fits! Woooh! |
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