Off The Grid

Caltrops make with a laser cutter.

I got this email this morning from Congressman Kim Schrier regarding the extreme flooding that's taking place in our State of WA.  Dear Neighbor, My office is continuing to monitor the severe flooding and dangerous weather impacting our community. Please sign up and monitor your county's flood and evacuation alerts. Extremely dangerous flooding conditions are expected in the coming days. Please take note of all emergency instructions as flood waters are expected to reach record-breaking levels across the state. Emergency alert systems for each county: Snohomish County Emergency Alerts: https://snohomish-county-public-safety-hub-snoco-gis.hub.arcgis.com/pages/51965e89fcc8478aa5f87f2d3696efd7 Pierce County Alerts and Notifications: https://www.piercecountywa.gov/ready King County Flood Alerts: King County Flood Alerts Chelan County emergency alert signup: https://www.co.chelan.wa.us/emergency-management/pages/emergency-alerts Kittitas County Sheriff Facebook: Facebook Kittitas County Emergency Management: Kittitas County Sheriff | Emergency Management Below is a list of helpful resources, and our office will continue to update this page on our website, which has more county-specific resources. For emergencies, please call 911. FOR EMERGENCIES, CALL 911 OR TEXT SHELTER to 4FEMA (43362). Safety Resources Washington Emergency Management American Red Cross Flood Safety Tips National Weather Service - Hazards NWS Weather Prediction Center NWS Water Prediction Center My office is here to help. Please reach out if you have any questions. You can contact my office in Issaquah at (425) 657-1001, my office in Wenatchee at (509) 850-5340, or my Washington, DC office at (202) 225-7761.

Spoke to my sister tonight about walk in coolers. She's had a lot of them thru the years running restaurants. The wall panels are 4" thick and I'm thinking SIP panels can be had with ZIP siding on them that I could turn toward the inside. She mentioned that I should get the cheapest, low tech mini split unit I can find and leave the thermostat OUTSIDE the cooler so the inside is running "open loop". Then install an INK BIRD $20 thermostat to switch the mini split power on and off. Background info... our house is kinda unique... it has a 8' wide wrap around concrete porch. Under that porch is what we call the outer ring of the basement. It has 10' ceiling and we use it as a mech room and storage. We're thinking of building a couple of heavily insulated walls in this room to make a cooler. That way we can hang meat in there for processing.

Outdoor project today... while we have some warm (and dry) weather, I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and pour some concrete threshholds for the greenhouse doors. The rear door will be used to store hay in winter so I made that threshold a little thicker and I put rebar in each. That way the weight of the tractor won't crack them.

My system finally hit 100% battery after 11 days. The victron smart shunt recovered with an error of 1.6%. At various times several of my 7 JK BMS units varied from 1% to 24% when the Victon said the battery as a whole was 20%. The JK BMS is wonderful for managing a battery and it's cells. It is not nearly as accurate as Victon Smart Shunt.

Yes please! I will take a dozen!

More work on the green house today... no signifcant progress... put up a few girts on teh end walls. Slow going because each 2x2 tube I cut, I'm spraying with galvaizing paint.

After over a week of no sunshine, we got the batteries to 90% today....

So wie DDR tagen...