Author: doug

Our solar power system was finally switched on this afternoon. By the time I got home we had produced 11 kWh of power today.

My work’s summer party was today. We had an outing to Thompson Island in Boston Harbor.  It was… hot.

For the past 14 years we have kept a freshwater aquarium. But in our current house, there is no good spot for it: everywhere we’ve tried, sunlight levels cause excessive algae growth. This puts it solidly on the wrong side of the work vs. enjoyment balance. So we made a decision last fall to not replace fish as they died. This week we lost the last 2 fish, and today I am cleaning everything up in preparation for finding it a new home.

Definitely mojito weather this evening. This one is made with Rhum Agricola, agave nectar, and home-grown mint.

The elm tree we had to have taken down was, by my count, 59 years old. About 10 years worth of rings on the outside are much narrower, telling me that’s when it started to become less healthy.

We had a dead tree taken down today. I asked them to leave me a couple of wood cookies, 6″ thick slices of trunk. I’ll make a couple of rustic outdoor tables from them. Currently they’re wet and the larger one weighs more than I do, and they’re bound to split as they dry. But I think they’ll make nice outdoor tables.

 

Bonus picture: the trunk these came from.

 

Solar installation proceeds! Yesterday they installed the racking system and the receiver units for each panel. If you count you’ll see there are 24 spots. All that’s left is to install & connect the panels themselves (scheduled for Monday) — and then wait out the bureaucratic processes to allow us to turn the system on. When done it should produce 7200 kWh annually, enough to supply our entire house.

The solar company’s electricians were at the house for the past 2 days installing the non-roof parts of the system. It’s unclear when they’ll schedule the actual panels, but this is definite progress.

My bank has a coin-counting machine in our branch. It’s like a Coinstar but they don’t take a cut if you deposit the proceeds. I guess I had collected quite a bit of change.  That’s 1300 coins, 8.6 lbs total weight.