Solar Panels, Ready for Hay & DNA Sweater

Time to get the solar panels up onto the shop roof for the PV system. It's quite a long way and everyone is using safety harnesses and ropes.









Hay barn is cleaned out ready for the new hay. SHould be arriving today or tomorrow.


My DNA cable sweater is also coming along, It's the brewery knitting so it has been going rather slowly during lambing because we don't go to the brewery much.

Lambing & Solar System

Desert Weyr Alice is a first time ewe and seemed to be having a few problems so Ken was holding her head while I checked to see what we needed to do. She is quite calm which was fortunate.


She ended up having a 9 pound 5 ounce ram lamb with horns about half an inch long that got stuck on her pelvis. Fortunately she was actually pretty roomy or it would have been worse.


More work on the solar system.

Lamb Box & Second Solar System

We've had a lot of cold and rain and we had some lambs born in the irrigation ditch that were cold. So we made a small lamb box to put the one colder lamb in for a few hours. It worked well and by the time the lamb got warm and climbed out everything was fine. The hay in the box ensured mom stayed with her nose right in there to talk to the lamb.


Brad Burritt is back to start the second large sola PV system. It's going on the shop roof and will be a grid intertied system that supplies power to the Little House, Shop and Red Barn.

Black Sheep Power & Light

Black Sheep Power & Light, a photo by Oogie McGuire on Flickr.

One of the solar arrays providing sheep shade.

Unintended Consequences

One of the issues with the solar panels being up high to keep them out of ram reach is that they are also too high to easily brush the snow off. Now if they were on the roof we'd just have to wait until the snow melted. With them sort of close to the ground we decided to try to clear them so we get more electricity. Seems a shame to waste such nice sunny days.





Unfortunately the broom was not the best tool. It did eventually work.

Ready for Racks

End of July and both poles are installed and the first of the brackets and racks to hold the solar panels are in place.

Poles & Brackets Started

Second big pole being moved into position.


Getting it installed.


Mixing the mortar that holds it into place.


Bracket structure started.


First piece of the brackets that will hold the solar panels.

Erecting the First Pole

Things dried out enough to continue work. After some initial filling in of the holes the wires and conduit were run from the poles to the hay barn.


Looking down where the metal pole will fit into the plastic pipe sleeve.


Getting the first pole in place.





Once the pole was in position that was enough for the day. Tomorrow will be getting the first pole plumb and putting the mortar around it to hold it up. If there is time the second pole will be installed too.

Concrete and Rain

The concrete came for the piers for the solar system. Got it all poured with no problems.



That evening it started to rain and the trenches filled up. Ken took the backhoe and dug an emergency ditch through the hay barn to keep the water away from the precious hay.




We also got out a pump to pump the trenches a bit.

Rocks & Holes

Spoke too soon about the rocks. The second hole and the trench ended up uncovering a nest of rocks. Some were too big for our tractor to pick up but Ken was able to push them around a bit.

It's amazing how far down 9 feet is. The forms are in place to pour the concrete for the solar panel trees.

2 Cats in the Yard, Buck & summer Flowers

Bart brought his big backhoe up to dig the holes for the new solar panels. Orange decided to supervise so we have 2 cats in teh yard now.


This buck showed up today too. Don't know if we got deer tags or not yet but he might be a tasty buck if we do.



I really liked these flowers growing over the old hay rake.

Big Snow Storm

We woke up to a lot of snow today.


The ram lambs are covered with snow.


A couple were just resting comfortably in their sheep nests.




Cwningwn AKA Bunny was staying in her private house. She is getting alfalfa pellets because she doesn't have many teeth left so she is by herself so the other sheep don't steal her food.


Ken shoveled a path to the chicken barn.


No heat from the solar system today. No sun and the panels have snow on them.

Solar Update

Well it's been almost a year since we installed the solar hot water system to provide both domestic hot water and supplemental heat for our radiant floor system.

Several things we learned early on that have not changed over time.

We need to plan on doing most laundry and major hot water use in the afternoon on a sunny day to avoid using the propane heater.

The high angle of the panels means that we did not need to make any covers for them during the summer. We may still need to make a cover for one panel for the times around the fall equinox when we are not using much heat in the house yet but the sun is lower so the panels are getting more energy.

We had a couple of instances where we got some sort of bubble in the system and the panel temperatures soared and the pumps would not turn on to circulate the fluid. We've purged the system again and hope we have solved that problem.

Overall we reduced our propane usage by about half over the whole year. We may do a bit better now that we know more about how to handle the system.

The payback period for the system is still very long. Total installed cost was approximately $17,500.00. We saved approximately $1,600.00 in propane this first year making the payback almost 11 years. That could change if the price of propane goes up but also has changed a bit as the price went down from last year to this.

I still think in the long run it is a good idea.

Living with Solar

We've finished installing the solar hot water system and after a month or so I thought I'd post the first lessons we've learned.

Installing a solar system will not in an of itself make a huge difference. You will also have to change your behavior to take advantage of the system strengths and weaknesses.

For us this has meant a few issues with how we handle water usage.

The solar system includes the panels and a storage tank. During the day the tank is filled with heat collected by the solar panels. This heat is used over the course of the night to heat water and the house. At this time of year a full day of sun will not only fill the tank to its maximum temperature but we start dumping heat out the overflow loop. So the key to making best use of the solar energy we can collect is to adjust our use of hot water.

What we've found is that we can't really start using hot water until after a couple of hours of full heat collection. We also need to stop using hot water near the end of the day so the tank goes into night fully charged so to speak.

The biggest issue has been laundry. My normal mode was to start a load of laundry as required early in the morning. What works better from a solar standpoint is to start laundry after lunch to mid afternoon. That way we use the hot water from the solar panels but we still have enough time to finish collecting heat for the evening.

We've already made a difference in how much propane we use. We'll see how well it does after we've had a full winter.

Solar Startup Issues

The solar system got finished but on one of the first days something went wrong and in spite of the various sensors and pumps the circulator pump stopped working. Temperatures at the top of the collector reached nearly 350 degrees. So Ken put tarps up to shade it until the plumber could come and fix it. It's mostly working now, we still have some sort of air bubble or other problem if it gets too hot too fast and we are not using the heat because the storage tanks are full. Seems to go right through the emergency shutoff settings before the pumps have a chance to turn on and circulate it to the heat dump outside so we're still working on it.

Solar Controls

With the panels up work moves back inside. Sensors, controller, expansion tanks, pumps and valves all had to be hooked up.