I just watched a video on Sodium batteries. There's a lot of hype about them right now. They are good for low temperatures down to -20F but look at their discharge curve. The company making them even said the voltage range is so wide that they have to sell them with special inverters that can operate over a wide range of voltages.

Worked on the neighbor's solar arrays today. A week or two ago, we build one array out of three just to make sure I didn't miss anything on the CAD drawing. Yesterday we augered and installed 8 posts so the ends of the two additional arrays would ser firm today. Today we augered 28 holes and set 7 posts. Now the perimeter posts are done and we can eaily "grid off" the interior posts with a couple of string lines. 21 posts let to set and we are done with concrete.

For those playing along on the home game, each 60' long array holds 16 panels. These panels end up being just under 45" wide and once we add the gap between for panel clamps they are almost exactly 45". We put down 9 pairs of posts on 7'6" centers. The two rows are 4' apart. These panels are quite heavy and we're using 2-3/8" sched 40 fence posts which are also quite heavy. we are using 240lbs of concrete per leg as ballast. So thats 72 forty pound bags of concrete per array.

For what it's worth, there is no requirement to run your water supply lines level although many people will do that. Something to think about... if you slope the water supply lines it makes it easier to drain them if you should need to winterize your tiny house. So when drilling holes thru wall studs to run pex tubing, consider a valve at the high end to allow air in, a drain valve outside and slope all the pipes inside the walls

Also keep in mind that you want pipes to be biased toward the inside of a wall not against the outside wall. And be sure to stuff insulation between the pipes and the outer wall....

And... be sure to drink your ovaltine.

W.....K....R....P turkey drop

Here's the power draw for a heat pump water heater. It pulls about 400-500w most of the time. However if the tank gets really cold it'll use the heat pump AND electric heating elements. In this case, I swapped the 4500w elements for 1500w elements so when they are on they don't pull too hard on my inverters. It ran the electric heat for about 10 minutes this morning and went right back to heat pumping.

2 baths on the table and 4 baths on the floor. Only way to propagate is to keep water about 25-50mm deep in the bath to stop the soil drying out. No other way here. Feed LAN every other watering to keep cuttings nourished

4 baths on the floor and 2 on the table. Trying to propagate cuttings.

Each cutting in an individual grow bag in the bath. Warered from bottom. I try to keep about 25mm of water in the bath because in this 40° heat the soil dries out in an hour or 2 and all your effort for nothing

Planted 3x custard apple trees about 1 year old, horse radish, Jerusalem Artichokes, wormwood, 2x Rosemary

Have 1 x canna edulus up, 2x turmeric up, 1x ginger up and 3 more horseradish up - these all in containers.

Bought 150 onion sets last week for R100 and planted them. I cut their leaves down to just above the junction and freeze them. This gives you the green onion tops. As the onions grow we cut the tops for our kitchen. Raw in salads or cook in food. Good flavour. The onion bulbs themselves are a bonus when matured for harvesting.

Same with sweet potatoes. Cut the greens to cook like cabbage/spinach. One 🍠 sweet potato can give you months of greens instead of just 1 tuber.

I planted about 15 potatoes and 2 sprouted bulbs of garlic this morning. Want to see how they do in this new bed in afternoon shade. Have been unsuccessful everywhere else in the garden.

Goat down. He was laying on his side cold. Brough him in the barn and got a heating pad on him. Think he got bloat. I hugged him until wife got back with the heating pad and some bloat med. He was really eager to eat. He burped a little and now i think hes just enjoying the warm pad.

Since this pic was taken, he's now standing but very unsteady. He's pooping a lot.... he's burping.... we're gunna leave him alone for a few hours.

Also, several years ago we bought a commercial double fridge for hte kitchen. Arctic Air brand. Made in china, sold from a company in Minnesota. It's 2-3/4 years old and has a freon leak. R290.... and it happens on thanksgiving weekend.... so we took a chest freezer we just got on FB marketplace and I fond an "inkbird" thermostat in my junk box... we now have a Freezerator to get us thru to next week when we can get an HVAC guy out.

I decided last night while we've got it all torn apart, I'll add a Shelly module to it with 5 temperature sensors and power measurement. From now on I'll trend it's run time and Hi and low side temperatures.

Randy weaver explains what happened at Ruby ridge.

Up and moving tgis morning.

While it looks like he is doing a good job, I think he may be forgetting the whole dampness and water thing. That CDX around the "foundation"? just will not hold up to what it will be exposed to.

This is an interesting peek into banking. Nothing new under the sun. If you want to see where the US (and EU) is heading, watch this. And realize that history may not repeat exactly but it rhymes.