Quick Roof Update
I'm still van & carless and the weather's been very mixed so there's not been a lot of progress on the roof consequently I haven't got round to taking photos recently. Here's the south roof on August 13th.
More...I'm still van & carless and the weather's been very mixed so there's not been a lot of progress on the roof consequently I haven't got round to taking photos recently. Here's the south roof on August 13th.
More...The replacement batch of roof sheets were delivered on Friday the 24th of June (I assume). I've put six of them up since. I've also done a bit inside the house but that's better in a separate post.
More...As previously noted while waiting for weather and roof sheets I've been doing the loft over the main bedroom.
More...Things have not gone too quickly with respect to the roof over the last month or so. A lot is described in my April and May post but a bit of wider context might help.
More...Since my previous house post at the end of March I've basically done another room's worth of roof sheeting on the south roof and put up most of the joists needed for the ceiling above the main bedroom at the east end of the house.
More...Surprisingly, it looks like there will be fibre-to-the-premises available at my house site pretty soon.
More...The weather up this end of the island this winter has mostly not been too bad. It's not been particularly cold or wet with only a few short groups of days with a cm or so of snow lying and the unusually strong wind storms have all passed us by to the south. It has, however, been persistently a bit windy so I've only really got going in the last week or so which has had some lovely weather (which has, sadly, come to an end for now).
More...Most off-grid houses (and small boats) use DC coupling for the electrical system where power sources (PV panels, wind or water turbines, alternators, generators, etc) feed DC electricity to the battery via a charge controller. The DC from the battery is then either used as such or converted via an inverter to AC at normal household voltages for use.
A few, though, use AC coupling where the power sources feed their output as AC into the “mains” wiring to form a sort of mini-grid with the power flowing in and out of the batteries via an appropriate inverter which also acts as a charger.
I'd assumed I'd just use DC coupling for my house but I'm gradually coming round to the idea of using mostly AC coupling. I'm not really clear about some of the details so here's a snapshot of my thinking to help make things a bit more concrete.
More...Finally, I've finished the north roof.
More...