Category Archives: House Stuff

Our First Solar Year

Solar ArraysAlthough this is probably the first time I’ve blogged about it (mostly due to procrastination), it was exactly one year ago today that our solar panel array went live. It took some doing to get to that point, but looking back over the collected data (note: I don’t have all the numbers right now – I’m working on compiling them, and I’ll update this post when they’re available on the website), it was definitly worth the hassle. The system has performed very well (beyond our expectations, but to size the system we had to rely on electric bills from the previous owners, who had a different lifestyle from ours, so we suspected it might perform better than projected), and there were no problems with the system at all in the first year. Not that it would have been a major issue: the company that installs it supports the system for the first five years: something that tells you right off that not too many problem tend to occur. The best part of the year was discovering that the spring months are so optimal for power generation, that we built up a credit with the power company large enough that we should have at least one free summer month.

That’s a Lot of Water!

Over the summer, our pool developed a tear in the liner (fortunately, above the waterline), and that meant it was time to replace it. Not a cheap endevour, but necessary, and besides, there was a hard-metal stain in the shallow end that we inherited when we bought the house that I won’t be sorry to see gone. Anyway, the company we hired to do the work set up the pump yesterday to pump all 19,000 gallons of water out into the sewer system, and now that the work’s done, we’re busy dumping another 19,000 gallons back into the pool. I wish there had been a better way…