It’s still raining. This autumn is setting new records in sogginess. Luckily, there is something we can do inside Steve, under his beautifully leak-free roof. The LED lights have arrived and can be fitted today. We look up to see
Day 13: You can control charge but there’s nothing you can do about the weather
What a summer to be fitting solar panels. It. Rains. All. The. Time. It seems. Or in any case it rains whenever we have people available to do the work. Since we can’t fit our panel we think about how
Day 12: Rain out, sun in
We love Steve Shelter probably because he is so far from perfect. However, the bit of him we love the least is the roof, where endearing imperfection has crossed a threshold and become malfunction. The roof has been great for
Day 11: The only certainty in life… (Panel)
Taking our budget into account, Solar Stu has suggested one “410 Wp” panel for our purposes. It is so tempting just to say “Yes, you’re the expert, let’s go for that”, given that we are once again scratching our heads
Day 10
Day 10 The wattage (W) given for an appliance expresses how much power it consumes in an hour. Multiply that by hours of use in a given period and you get watt hours (Wh), which is the amount of power
Day 9
Our next question is: ‘How much power will our 12V system need to make available?’ The answer to this will determine the minimum size of the battery we need. To work this out, we need to figure out a typical
Day 8
More research is needed. We want to charge laptops and phones, see what we’re doing inside Steve Shelter and run festive string lighting to Napoleon the pizza oven. And possibly make our own pizza sauce and smoothies. So we need
Day 7: The Workshop
The workshop is fully subscribed and to make sure everyone feels supported we have a 1:4 adult to child ratio plus the Techie Teen who has come to teach soldering, this time to the kids. We start with an ice
Day 2…. 3…. 4….5……………………oh….6…: Why is this so complicated?!
While we wait for roofing materials we prepare for the bigger installation by creating lots of smaller ones. We invite kids from the wider home education community and local schools to a solar electrics workshop. The idea is that every
Day 1: Meet Steve Shelter
Solar Stu has come to run a health check on Steve. After three years of trying and failing, our teens have now produced a solid structure that anyone would be happy to let their baby sleep under. However, we need