Tom & Shelly's build

[tony.latham]

Ground level?

Two pole-mounted arrays. No choice, our chicken-cooped roofs face west.

Tony

[twisted lines]

Seems like yesterday you were playing with a saw! Nice

[Tom&Shelly]

Seems like yesterday you were playing with a saw! Nice

Thank you! I will admit to one (catastrophic) mistake--by the time I was done cutting trees and fired up the chipper it was April. I chipped around the same area (50 feet or so down the hill from the garage) that I paid the neighbor boy to cut dead (more or less) limbs from some other pinion. Fast forward to the Summer and we lost 15-20 trees to bark beetles. My fault--I knew we should only do either of those operations in the Winter between the hard freezes. I was hoping for a wetter summer than we had.

Hopefully the damage is done, and the beetles will disperse by next year. There are several schools of thought on what to do with the dead trees, but none seem to work as well as leaving nature to take its course and hoping it doesn't get worse. At least we have a few years of fire wood down the line.

Tom

[Tom&Shelly]

With Solar systems these days, they make much more sense to us.

I agree.

We're about to embark on a near net-zero grid-tie system for our place. 'Gotta get the concrete poured for it soon...

Tony

That should probably work very well for you Tony. We should look into a grid tie-in system for our cabin.

I considered an off-grid solar system in 2007 when I built the cabin. Talked to a solar company in Albuquerque about it, but their numbers just didn't add up. They claimed the advantage came with cheaper power down the road, after the infrastructure was in place. Well, I didn't believe their claims to battery life, and found the power company is dirt cheap (relatively speaking) after their infrastructure is in place. Problem was it took 6 poles to get to the cabin. After a neighbor moved in and started building, and paid for 5 of the poles, the solar solution came in a poor second.

However, that would have been off grid, not a grid tie-in. Also, solar panels and batteries have both made big tech leaps in 13 years!

For our garage, I don't think we'll need much more than the systems used for teardrops.

Tom

[Tom&Shelly]

Hope I'm not garbaging up the forum too much with non-teardrop related things, but somewhere along the lines I remember mentioning we were in need of a log splitter larger than our Harbor Fright 7 ton electric. With the space provided by the new garage (with no power), we decided to buy a 34 ton Champion gasoline powered splitter



Works great! Went from the left picture to the right one in less than an hour, including re-loading (that's two rows in the Jeep)



Took care of the Ash and Cottonwood we'd been given several years ago, that the 7 ton wouldn't touch



Here at 7000 ft, the splitter starts in full choke on the 2nd pull.

(I took the pictures because Champion says they'll send me a T-shirt if they're included in a review.)

Incidentally, we bought this fully assembled from Home Depot. Shelly was concerned that the engine oil looked a little too clear, and wondered if the kids putting it together (one of whom may have once been one of her middle school students) used hydraulic fluid. We changed it just to be sure. It does take 5 gallons of hydraulic fluid, which came with it. We'll need to find a large tub (or a small piece of New Mexico where we don't want something to grow, ) when it comes time to drain! (Just kidding! Shelly wouldn't let me do that!)

Tom

[rjgimp]

Hope I'm not garbaging up the forum too much with non-teardrop related things...

It's your thread, I say garbage it up however you like! I rather enjoy a little side commentary from time to time.

I took the pictures because Champion says they'll send me a T-shirt if they're included in a review.

Free goodies you had to lay down a wad of cash to earn? When I was an owner-operator of a small (one unit) trucking company I used to joke about buying a coffee mug for $2000 in order to get an axle of tires put on the truck for free!

We'll need to find a large tub (or a small piece of New Mexico where we don't want something to grow, ) when it comes time to drain!

I didn't hear a thing...

[noseoil]

Fire wood before winter is like money in the bank, you can't have too much of it! That splitter looks like a good investment for the future & heating. Nothing like a wood fire when it's cold outside.

I think part of the "build journal" on any trailer is some of the other stuff you need to do to keep the build moving forward. Please keep us up to date on the "extra stuff" you're doing for living the good life (what rjgimp said!)...

[KCStudly]

I concur. The extra stuff is how we get to know each other better from afar. We're all friendly here, and if you can't share life stuff with your friends, then who?

[Tom&Shelly]

Thank you guys!

After splitting the logs, we have enough wood for this winter. Tim, I agree--it's money in the bank! We heat pretty much exclusively with wood, which is free along with a membership to the biggest gym in the world. The predictions are we won't have a lot of moisture this winter, but we're hoping for a really cold one to kill the bark beatles.

I'll get back to the teardrop soon, but decided to take advantage of our wonderful October weather



to cobble together a driveway out of stones



Reminds me of my days "stationed" in Angola (the one in Louisiana, not Africa), building roads, mouthing off to the warden, enjoying days in the "box"... Nah, just kidding. I built a stone porch for the cabin years ago, and decided we still have enough rocks laying around to releave the 4 inch step to the pad. It's all sandstone, so it'll probably break up under the weight of traffic, but it'll still do the job. We have plenty of long thin flat rocks, so I may someday build a retaining wall for the back of the garage.

But in the meantime, we decided to go ahead with the "trash bag counter". Shelly did that and put six coats of oil based polyurethane varnish on it. I did the same for our dining room table years ago, and it seems to hold up okay, though not as well as Formica would. If it gets really crappy, we can change it out in a few years



Once the weather cools down, I'll build the electrical box to sit on the left side (holding the PD 4045 as well as outlets for the galley, and the battery meter, so it'll be large). We're thinking of building a shelf across, at about the height of the bottom of the oak pieces holding the struts, and will have counter lighting mounted under it.

Tom

[eLink]

But in the meantime, we decided to go ahead with the "trash bag counter".

The counter looks great! It compliments the other wood nicely.

[tony.latham]

we decided to go ahead with the "trash bag counter"..

Looks great and really compliments the galley. You're gonna have to do something with those wires...



T

[noseoil]

Hope you have labels on those wires, looks like a barrel of snakes back there.

Yes, the counter is nicely done & with the limited use back there (camping, not living 24-7) it should hold up very well for years. The nice thing about a urethane finish is the ability to just scuff sand it & then re-coat when it's showing a few scratches & wear. A small, thin cutting board will help with the wear, if you can work one in place somewhere to store it out of the way. Looking really nice now!

[Tom&Shelly]

You're gonna have to do something with those wires...

Hope you have labels on those wires, looks like a barrel of snakes back there.

I could've cut some shorter already, but I learned through hard experience to be paranoid about cutting any wire before I have to! (After the Air Force decided I shouldn't be a pilot, they gave me a two year vacation in England, as the "site engineer" at a comm station. But that's a different story...)

I have the wires well labeled, and, with Shelly telling me we may have snow early next week--making the indoors more attractive, I'm beginning to get motivated to finish the electrical work!

Tom

[Tom&Shelly]

After a three month or so hiatus, we're back to working on Cabin Fever, hopefully to finish it in the next month or three!

The major work left is to finish the Galley, particularly the electrical connections and over-counter lights.



The plan is to build a box where that wire bundle is right now, that will include the PD 4045, battery meter, a few outlets for the galley, and the battery cut off switch. I was going to use a keyed switch but don't really like that idea, so went looking among our junk to see what might work better.

We'd given ourselves and some family the new Audew emergency battery packs for Christmas (and my step-son says they've used theirs successfully already), and so had a few older battery packs sitting around, unable to take a charge. They are a gold mine of parts:



Here's what I was looking for:



Now, we just have to figure out how to get rid of these:



Tom

[Tom&Shelly]

Worked on an electrical detail today: The shore power plug



Bought a plastic box from Amazon and attached it to the floor of the teardrop via a scrap of 1/4 inch plywood (you can barely see it to the right of the box). There is a cord going from the box into the floor of the galley, then up the back bulkhead to the (still hypothetical) electrical box (with PD 4045).



A lot down there, so it was a little tricky. The bar to the left holds the fender on, the receiver mount on the right is there in case we decide to make a table for it to hold someday. The wire in the picture is actually for the brakes (not yet connected). The aluminum box in the back is for the battery. All are behind the axle, so they should be fairly well protected on rough roads.

I wanted the plug under the camper so that it will be somewhat protected from rain.



Never-the-less, seems relatively easy to plug a cord in.

The next step is to take it all apart and coat that 1/4" scrap with epoxy.

Tom