One small step...

[tjspears]

Living out a little ways, we frequently have power outages do to winter storms, for the most part this is not a nuance, we heat with wood for the most part, and kerosene and candles take care of the lighting needs. The most frustrating part is not having water, I keep ~30 gallons or more in gallon jugs for this reason. My wife wanted to do something to have running water for these occasions.

I came up with the following solution:

• HarborFreight 45w panel (on sale + 15% coupon)
  
  
• 12v deep cycle RV battery
  
  
• 12v RV water pump
  
  
• Two 55g drums
  
  
• Misc. plumbing and wiring
  
  

This provides us with backup water during power outages, the flow is limited but you can wash hands, cook and flush the toilets that should make everyone a little happier.

This year is phase one as described above, there are some limitations as in the system does not start on it's own, (flip the switch and open the valve) and the tanks are manually refilled with a hose from the hose bib in the pump house (the same one that the 12v pump is attached to).

Next year I plan to add couple more 55g drums and automate the refill with a trickle fill through a Hudson valve or similar to keep the tanks from over filling. In addition, I plan to hard plumb the 12v pump into the system, and possibly add a relay to engage the system when the grid power is out.

Next weekend I hope to get a couple of photos of the system.

I have a question how sturdy are the HF racks for the solar panels? They are mounted to the roof of the pump house, so the panels have a steep slope my concern is wind and snow load, the panels are not supported above the mid point, and the attachment to the rack is not that secure in my view. Does anyone have any suggestions?

--James.

[Bruce S]

James;

    The HF , the very same you have does indeed seem very flimsy. I therefore only used it for initial setup the "test" the system.

The angle I watched while a hard rain hit during the first rian out of the world series, It didn't have a problem with the rain but they did wiggle in the 30mph winds. I fixed that prblem by using a 2ea on each panel the smallest wall close hooks, some havey duty picture wire and a turn-buckle on each. These I anchored and turned them just past the point of being tight. No seeable movement this past Monday OCT 30th when the 20-30mphs winds came through.

The angle to me is steep enough and the with the glass and Aluminimum will heat the snow up to not have a worry with snow.

I'm St. Louis,Mo so you're snow depths my be different than mine. I will keep an eye out them throughout this winter.

Hope this helps.

Bruce S.

PS, I used membrane selant for the anchors, don't need any leaks:--)

[scottsAI]

Hello James,

I have done a similar thing.

I use an APC 3000w sin wave UPS to back up the Fridge and keep a back up battery charged. Have 100 w solar to top off. Power for lighting. Turn UPS off at night, Fridge can handle it. Add additional insulation to Fridge.

For the well, I too use 12v RV pump for water, I have a large 4.7 GPM or 2.8 at 40psi, gives a nice flow, shower works fine. My well water is shallow draw it directly with RV pump.

Something I plan to do, should work for you. Use a check valve from the well pump, after the check valve add the RV pump. Most RV pumps have a check valve in them, if the pressure is higher, then the RV pump does nothing. When power fails, RV pump takes over without doing anything.

Two things you can do to improve your water flow. Use two pumps in parallel. Second is place the 55gal drums up as high as possible.

My battery can keep me going for two days, 4 if turn off fridge at night, 6 if sunny and really cut back on lighting and pump use. Plan was to use a generator every couple days to charge up the battery if long term. Do not have a generator yet.

Use solar to power my laptop and office lighting. About all it can do.

Have fun,

Scott.

[Norm]

  Use a good old-fashioned type hand pump

....about 4 strokes equal one gallon or about

15-20 gallons a minute.

  You can fill a 55 gallon drum in minutes.

....been there done that .....

          ( :>) Norm.

 

[ghurd]

More Solar than Water or Racks.  I would not trust the kits controller for long term use.

A good controller is cheaper than a new battery.  Much cheaper than a new battery, and then a new controller.

G-

[DANO]

Hi James,

You're right, the mounts are abit flimsy.  I have the same kit and use it to power my four season room addition and it's been fine, but mounted to 3/4" plywood sheet and then to a deck and of course facing south.  That begs the question, if you're going to mount it on the roof of an out building and (duh, facing south) I'm assuming that your prevailing winds are out of the north/northwest....I'd build a dormer type enclosure for it to keep it from acting like a sail and being blown/torn off the roof this winter...just a thought...

[tjspears]

The only reason I don't want to make it automatically start on the pressure drop (which it will if I leave it on and the valve open) is that if we pull hard on the well (shower, washing machine, fill horse trough any 2 are ok all three is too much) it is easy to run it dry. So I don't want the backup system to kick in and mask this. There is a manual reset to put the well back on automatic. I know I need to move to a storage cistern, which is filled based on available water and fed to the house on demand, future project...

[tjspears]

That is defiantly true I was thinking of replacing the HF controller with a Morningstar SunSaver SS-6.

http://www.morningstarcorp.com/products/SunSaver/index.shtml

[tjspears]

The prevailing winds are mostly out of the West, the House shelters the pump house on that side to a small extent, but I like the idea of building a dormer type enclosure. That would solve the sail issue and could proved support to the upper end of the panels to help with the snow load if needed. We rarely get more 4-6" at once but is us fairly wet and heavy.

[scottsAI]

Hello tjspears,

"...easy to run it dry."

Run the well dry? I can understand why a cistern would be interesting to you.

For lighting I tried the $10 hurricane lamp, could not read a book by it.

Couple candles were brighter. I remember them brighter as a Kid?

Kept looking for an option to candles. Found an Aladdin lamp, claim is equal to 60w lamp, seems everybody but me knew about them! Expensive, so hunted on eBay got one for $31 shipped. Goes through fuel faster than the Hurricane lamp, I have seen one working, amazing how bright it was.

The Aladdin lamp is my deep backup lighting. Candles too.

Have not fired it up, the mantles are costly, fragile before used, very fragile once used. Can't seem to get one shipped by mail and show up intact, need to find a store...

Have fun,

Scott.

[ghurd]

'Hippo' (no info, but ~600W?) and Petromax (400W) lamps are brighter yet.

Lehman's should be able to handle shipping mantles.

http://www.lehmans.com/

The 'Amish Table Lamp' is a true work horse.

G-

[scottsAI]

Cool stuff, thanks.

Had not seen them before!

[ghurd]

Nice.  I believe there will be a noticable difference.

But may want to reconsider the model.  

The SG-4 is enough, and cheaper.  

The SS-10 is only a couple bucks more than the SS-6, and will allow adding a lot more PVs later, without changing the controller.

The -LVD models will not be useful for you purposes.

G-

[tjspears]

Pictures Finally

The pump house with the HF solar array on the roof, sorry cloudy day, it's the pacific northwest after all.

Here are the water tanks and the charge controller and battery in the pump house.

The pump is hooked up to a hose bib in the pump house temporarily.

--James.

[ghurd]

Hi James,

Why all the extra wire?

It can't be good to leave it, if it is connected.  I can't quite tell.

G-

[tjspears]

The coil of white wire is the 120 for the submersible pump. When the pump house was put in, I replaced existing doghouse over the wellhead, but left the pump control box by the wellhead. When I replaced the doghouse and installed the backup water system, I moved the control box in to the pump house recently but not cleaned up the wiring yet.

--James.

[tjspears]

Once again the system got put to good use, NW Oregon received 22" of snow in two days last week, power was out for 48 hours.

Backup lights, cell charging, netbook charging, and water all worked as it should.

My wife was even able to take a shower, that is worth every bit of work put into the system :-)

besides I did not have to listen to a generator running...

--James.

[DamonHD]

That's the business!

Great to have another everyday success story.

Rgds

Damon

[tecker]

You let her take a shower .Man did you cave . On another note the amorphous panels are subject to Cracking . I started with some from Northern and I lost Two from what appears to be warping  frames I was using . I went with uni strut and that has the expansion and contraction in check .From what I can see you can place those on the roof and be fine 2 10 foot sticks will do the trick . May not shed the snow on second though .  They do look like they need some different mounting hardware for the long run.

[ghurd]

My wife...., that is worth every bit of work put into the system :-)

 

G-

[tjspears]

The power was out again Monday morning, so I switched over to the backup water and we took a shower together to save time (you can call that caving if you want to, but I have other opinions about it ;-)

[Bruce S]

The power was out again Monday morning, so I switched over to the backup water and we took a shower together to save time (you can call that caving if you want to, but I have other opinions about it ;-)

I'd call that water conservation as its best 

[tecker]

Best way to cope with cabin fever