KB Ranch

Update

Written by karen on March 9th, 2010

After two weeks of travel, I am very thankful to be home now.

The electrical is done. Yay! And we’ve moved on to plumbing. Brad dug this ditch yesterday and is off getting more supplies as I write this.

I got our new property assessment this week. The value of the land has gone up; the value of the improvements has gone down. Hmmm….doesn’t seem that way to me. They had previously valued the improvements (the house) as 100% complete — how I wish that were true. :) Thankfully, our property taxes are so low that it doesn’t really matter.

In other news, the cottonwood we moved seems to be thriving. It is actually getting new leaves, despite the fact that it was been quite cold this week. We’ve had a lot of rain this month though, which bodes well. Spring can’t be far away, and I am ready for it!

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Wires everywhere

Written by karen on February 21st, 2010

I’ve been doing a lot of electrical work the last few days…so much that even I’m wondering if I’m qualified to do this! :) Seriously, electrical is serious stuff.

Pulling the Romex (the big yellow cables with electrical wires inside) through the ceiling and walls required no particular skill.

After that, I started making pigtails, wiring electrical sockets and switches. Wiring these was not too difficult and was actually fun to do once I got the hang of it.

We will have something like 60 outlets. I think it will be the first house I’ve ever lived in that has enough outlets and network ports.

Then, today, I got to start hooking the outlets into the wiring coming out of the walls. This was not only difficult, but seemed like serious stuff. You have to strip all the Romex coming out of the wall and then connect the similar colors (e.g. the black wires from all three wires) into a push-in wire connector. These are new things that you use instead of wire nuts. They are much more reliable, because once a wire goes in, it can’t come out. However, it is very difficult to get all those wires into their little tiny holes. And God help us when we have to stuff all this into the socket boxes!

After I got a half dozen or so of these wired up, Brad said he wanted to test them. Prior to this, we didn’t have any electricity “live.” I was not eager to to this. Since we haven’t pulled the cable from the battery house to the house yet, Brad had to rig up a power cable into the main power box, where he turned on the breaker for the first circuit I wired. Then we went to plug the tester in. The moment of truth… Success! Yay!

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Tags: electrical

Electrifying

Written by karen on February 13th, 2010

We spent the day today doing electrical. I mounted the electrical boxes (the blue things in the pictures below) for the lights onto 2x4s, which I then mounted between the i-joists in the ceiling.

It was fun, and even Brad remarked that my mood was much better. :)

Brad is running wire all over the house, including many network cables. As you might guess, in addition to wireless, we will have many network connections all over the house. It is a great deal of fun to put stuff wherever we want it and to think about what it will all be like when it is done.

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Tags: construction

Same old stuff and something new

Written by karen on February 12th, 2010

I know we haven’t written much lately, but we are still here, moving ahead.

It is the time of year when I am doing a fair amount of travel for work (CA, TX, CA again, WA, etc.), which also means I have a lot of work to be doing in the office getting ready for various conferences, meetings, and workshops. (I am duping and printing CDs as I write this.) I have not been working much on the house the last couple weeks. As a result, I am a bit sullen and cranky, but it is good at least to be bringing in some money.

Brad has been working on electrical, pulling wires and putting in outlets and switches. He is finding it to be a bit tedious and not quite as gratifying as, say, stucco’ing, but it must be done. Next will be plumbing. Then some more really fun stuff…dry wall, paint, plaster, and tongue and groove plank ceilings.

We also have one other new project in our lives (because we have so much free time on our hands :). We are doing some work with a small local farm here.

My interest in this started when I read the book Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. It is a remarkable book about the dissonance between the world most of us want to live in and the lives we actually live. The truth is that most of the decisions we make in our lives don’t support a sustainable clean planet and a just society for all of its people. The book goes way beyond sustainable food choices to deal with social issues like land reform, world hunger, economics, labor markets, and much more. Lappe’s overarching theme is that the small choices we make in our everyday lives affect all these parts of our society. The book is also part travel journal with the storyline following Lappe’s journey around the world with her daughter to look at these issues by talking with a variety of interesting people.

Anyway, some of the discussions in the book about things like organic growing, small farms, sustainable food choices, and community involvement made me think more about the small local farm here that we bought produce from last year. At the end of the last growing season, we had heard the couple from this farm say that they were having some challenges. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to get involved somehow. And while I know nothing about farming, I am a good marketer and small business person, so after much deliberation, I asked them if we might lend a hand.

Their response was amazing: YES! “We are thrilled for community involvement at any level individuals are willing to contribute. Our hopes are that our community would consider this their own local farm and would invest in it and help it prosper.”

Since then we’ve met several times and are hard at work on moving ahead with things. It’s loads of fun and like other things here, it is making us look at the world in some new ways.

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Tags: farming

Karie, Karie, quite contrary

Written by karen on January 31st, 2010

Despite two snowfalls, weeks of below-freezing nighttime temperatures, and no irrigation for over a month, our garden has been thriving.

Today, I cut down all the greens and turned them over to get ready for spring.

We also tackled another project I’ve been wanting to do. You might remember that we built the beds with railroad ties as borders (railroad ties that Brad had gone to a fair bit of trouble to get). Later, I heard from a couple people that railroad ties are treated with nasty chemicals. I tried to think they were overreacting. Then I heard a show on “You Bet Your Garden” — not a particularly radical show — in which the host said he would never, ever use railroad ties for anything. He went on and on.

OK, so maybe we’d need to get rid of them.

I dreaded telling Brad, but predictably he said it was no big deal. So we got some redwood planks, and today put them in, along with a little sitting bench since we sometimes have lunch in the greenhouse.

I’m already starting to think about what we’ll plant for spring.

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Tags: garden, greenhouse

Design through production

Written by karen on January 26th, 2010

It’s been an interesting experience to have been immersed in our home building from design through actual construction (and, one day, living in it). For anyone in a business, I think that doing a variety of jobs throughout the enterprise is a great way to gain expertise, regardless of what job you want to do ultimately.

One example that has been interesting is our arched doorways. In the design phase, we really wanted to carry through some eclectic Moroccan-type design elements. The arched doorways were one easy and attractive way to do this. At the time, I didn’t really think of what would be involved in making them. (Brad may have; for me, everything was such an unknown that I didn’t single this out as different since I really didn’t know how to do anything.)

Of course, building them was another whole story. Just laying them out was challenging. Then stucco’ing them took a lot longer. And throughout, the risk loomed of messing them up and having them look horrible. (We have told ourselves on many occasions that there is nothing that can’t be ripped out and done again.)

Now that the one doorway is done though, it really looks great. I’m so glad we did it and am even looking forward to doing more. And I know that every one we do will be a little easier and a little better.

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Tags: construction, design

Archway Designs

Written by karen on January 23rd, 2010

Today, days and days of rain and wind culminated in snow in the mountains, and later in the day, a wild fit of snow flurries at our house.

We worked inside and built our first indoor arched doorway.

To start, Brad drew the arch shape onto 1/4″ plywood (he’s getting very good at this) and then cut it with a jigsaw.

Then we ripped a couple 2x4s to be 1/2″ less than normal. This was so we could use them as framing inside, and when the two pieces of plywood were attached, the whole thing would be the same width as a 2×4.

Then we screwed the plywood down to the framing…

and attached it to the doorway framing.

It looks fabulous.

We have at least one more arch to make for Tumbleweed (or maybe more??) and many in the main house. I’m looking forward to finishing these with drywall, paint or clay, some tile accents, and who knows what else!

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Tags: arches, construction, design

What makes you qualified to do this?

Written by karen on January 21st, 2010

As we’ve talked to and shown various people around here the work we’re doing, a frequently asked question is “What makes you qualified to do this?”

Hmmm. Interesting question. I sometimes explain that Brad used to do construction. And while that has been very helpful in some areas, the reality is that much of what we’re doing is new to both of us.

So the answer is that we are bold and think we can do it.

My general feeling is that traditional education in many professions is less valuable than good common sense and hard work. To me, this is no different. We do a lot of research and try to think things out well in advance, but at some point you just plunge ahead and try it. If it doesn’t work, you try something else. If you work hard and smart, things generally work out.

A couple people have agreed with this saying that really anyone could build a house; you just need to want to do it and then to do the work. Both people who shared this perspective with us were professional contractors.

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Tags: construction, people

Installing a Xantrex XW – part 4

Written by brad on January 18th, 2010

Well, I started up the inverter today — it was uneventful; everything worked. We have AC power. The solar array charged the battery bank. It was the good kind of uneventful.

I threw the breaker labeled “Inverter Disconnect,” which connected the battery bank to the inverter. The inverter flashed for a second and then lit up showing the battery full. The System Control Panel turned on and showed a warning/fault. I looked at the warning, and it just let me know that new devices were added to the system.

I set the date and time and nothing else really.

Then I turned on the breaker adding the Solar Charge Controller (SCC) into the system. I immediately got another warning – Yes, a new device was added into the system. I did need to configure a couple of of things: battery type and the amp hours of the battery bank. It already knew the voltage of the battery bank.

Then I threw the last breaker to allow power from the solar array to the SCC. Almost immediately I saw voltage from the solar array displayed on the SCC. Soon the batteries were charging. The battery bank was about 50 volts when I began and about 54 volts by the time I left for the day.

And that’s it.

I think Xantrex (now called Schneider Electric or so I hear…) built a great system. Their manuals were great. The wiring diagrams were the best. I read all the manuals and studied the wiring diagrams and as far as I can tell everything worked. I am very happy.

We bought all our solar equipment from Northern Arizona Wind and Sun. I have to say that they were very helpful. They did several quotes for me as I tried to understand what it was I wanted. They did a wonderful job of making sure I bought all the things I needed and nothing I didn’t need. We got a big pile of stuff and it’s all somewhere doing something. While I was doing the installation, I frequently emailed them questions or requests for advice — again, they were very helpful and cheerful about helping. And, their prices were good… very good.

Here are some pictures:

SCC display of the power from the solar array

The inverter display

The inverter status on the SCP

Displaying the SCC info in the SCP

Running a 500 watt light to with test a load

-fin-

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Tags: solar, xantrex

Installing a Xantrex XW – part 3

Written by brad on January 17th, 2010

It’s been a little while since I worked on the Xantrex (solar) system. Two main things caused the delay. One was that a few items needed to be ordered before I could finish the installation. The other was that we got started with the first coat of stucco and wanted to finish that as quickly as possible.

What needed to be ordered? We needed two DC breakers and one AC breaker. The DC breakers are clearly called for in the wiring diagrams. I wondered why they didn’t just come with the inverter. I can only assume that it’s because there are so many possible ways to configure this system and that some don’t use those breakers. The AC breaker is because I want power in the battery house. Other things I needed were flexible conduit, 3/4 inch and 1/2 inch, adapters for the 1 inch knockouts to 3/4 and 1/2 inch.

The first thing I tackled was the wiring of the solar array to the SCC. I used one of the new DC breakers to do this. The negative wire coming from the solar array goes into the PDP and directly to the PV- spot in the SCC (the white wire at #3 below). The positive wire goes to the top of the new DC breaker (the top of #1 – not visible). A new wire is added from the bottom of this breaker to the PV+ in the SCC (See #1 goes to #3). Note that this was done with the breaker in the OFF position.

PDP DC wiring

I then ran the wires from the SCC to the battery. These wires allow the SCC to charge the battery bank. The negative wire from the SCC goes to the DC negative busbar in the PDP (See the white wire above #2 below). The positive wire goes to the top second new DC breaker (also in the off position). (See #1 below.) A new wire goes from the bottom of this breaker to the positive DC busbar (See #2 and #4 above) attached to the large DC breaker where the positive cable from the battery attaches.

The upper half of the PDP

Solar Charge Controller wiring

Next the networking cables needed to be attached and then moved. For whatever reason, I placed the network terminator to the right. When I went to install the cover for the SCC, it would not fit because the terminator blocked the place where the screw attaches. I reversed the cable and the terminator, and all was well.

Networking and battery sensor cables

Adjusted so the cover fits

The battery temperature sensor was attached in the SCC as well. Speaking of the battery sensor… I’ve read the manuals quite a bit and was not sure what to do with the two battery sensors I received. Somewhere I read that only one was required; the data is shared on the network. Elsewhere I read that if there is more than one, whichever one has the higher value is used. That made me think that there’s value in using both of them. So I installed both of them. One attaches to the inverter and the other to the SCC. I attached the sensor ends to two different batteries in the battery bank.

The battery sensor installed

The next thing I did was to hook up the positive cable from the battery bank. The only tricky thing about this is that it made sense to me to connect the cable inside the PDP first and then connect the other end to the battery bank. I was worried about touching the hot end of the cable somewhere inside the PDP it should not touch.

I believe the system is ready to be turned on. I decided to give it a day before doing this. I’ve read over the manuals and think I’m ready. I’ll turn on the system tomorrow.

Voltage from the battery bank at the PDP

Solar array voltage at the PDP

The order of operations as I see them is to first throw the breaker (#3 below) that connects the battery bank. This should bring up everything except the SCC. There may be a little bit of configuration required at this point. It seems that everything can be done from the System Control Panel. I believe the SCC can be configured at this point, but I’m not positive. At this point, the system should be inverting; it should be just like there is battery power, but nothing is coming from the solar array.

If all goes well, I will next throw the breaker (#1 below) that connects the SCC to the battery. If I need to do additional configuration, I’ll do it at this time. I think I need to enter the battery type (AGM), the amp hours of the battery bank (1530) and possibly the voltage of the battery bank (48). I read that it will determine the battery bank voltage itself, but I also read that I will need to enter it. I guess we will see.

Again, assuming all is well, I will throw the last breaker (#2) which will allow power from the solar array to reach the SCC.

PDP DC area closed up with labels

PDP closed up without its door

SCC wired and networked

SCC wired and closed

At this point, we’ll trying hooking up something AC-powered and see how it goes.

I plan to have a couple of outlets inside the battery house. I also have fluorescent lighting to be installed. I will also install a couple of outlets outside near the front door to replace our trusty but tiring generator.

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Tags: solar, xantrex

A journal of Karen and Brad's adventure to make a home in a remote corner of desert southwest