Mongaup Pond RV weekend

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Ben

We spent Memorial Day weekend up at Mongaup Pond. It was our fifth time camping there. Saturday was bitterly cold and wet, so we mostly stayed inside. I caught a Pickerel for breakfast on Sunday, and we found a friendly frog:

We went for a nice ride down to a nearby covered bridge, and I towed B for part of the ride. M got to try out his new 700c road bike. On the way there M rode almost to the top of an 1100’ climb with grades approaching 20% in spots.

We also did a good bit of kayaking. I’ve recently made a number of modifications to the RV, so it was nice to test them all out and see how well they worked.

Point of No Return

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Ben

25 days to go!

The rental contract for our house is signed. Yesterday, I submitted my resignation with an exit date of July 5th. Looks like we are actually doing this!

Our evenings are spent wading through piles of stuff. It either gets boxed for storage, bagged for the trash, or put in the “sell it” pile. It’s hard for me to tell, but Trish tells me we should be more or less done by the time we have to move out on July 1st.

The “WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!” panic attacks come and go, but we soldier on.

Solar wiring continued

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Ben

On Sunday, I was able to bring the solar panel wires all the way in to where the solar controller is. In this photograph, they come in on the upper left, go through the upper switch, and then into the solar controller. I’ve also added a fuse for the solar controller which is in front of the larger fuse for the inverter.

Water heater thermostat modification (continued)

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Ben

Here’s the modified faceplate I showed in a previous post, now with the new thermostat mounted and wired up for testing:

Seems to work really well. I now need to add a second thermostat, as Trish likes her water a bit hotter than the rest of us. There will also be a switch that will be used to select which thermostat to use.

Wiring up the new solar panels

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Ben

I mounted the three new solar panels on the roof a couple months ago. Now that the controller is installed, I ran the wires from the back of the RV where the three new panels are installed, skirting the original panel at the front of the RV to get to where the controller is installed. I used various tools to hold down the wires while the caulk dried:

I ran the wires from the roof down into a cabinet, now I need to get them to the controller.