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.

Cool Tool!

Every year we tear down the welded wire pens so the manure can be scraped out. Then we have to rebuild them. This usually means several days or weeks of pounding in t-posts by hand. Blisters and sore muscles are only some of the hazards of this task. This is getting very old so we went looking for some alternatives. Big hydraulic post pounders that mount on the tractor are one option but then you have to maneuver a tractor to each post location and with our rocks that could become as difficult as putting them in by hand. Then we found this tool. It's an air powered post pounder. We bought one and it appears to be working fairly well. It's still hard work to put up the fencing but we got the entire pen for the adult rams built in one morning and the ram lambs pen built in another morning.

Solar Controls

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