Re: My "off-grid" playground experiment!
Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 6:17 pm
Since my last post, not too much big work has gone on, but a lot of little work has. A lot of my big work is complete now. I only have a little bit of wall left to cover and all the insulation is done besides in one spot I'll tackle later.
Most of the stuff listed is done in chronological order from the 8th onto today:
Since the 8th, I have ran the A/C a few times now and the heater once or twice, but most of the days are nice between 65 and 75 with humidity pretty low. Pollen, while invisible yet, is in the air and is making my allergies very bad. The trees are greening and everything has some form of budding on it. There are a lot of flying insects out now, such as bees, carpenter bees, wasps, yellow jackets, etc. I haven't seen any mosquitoes yet but it's not too humid yet since the trees aren't fully green. The humidity is beginning to rise.
Temperatures are really nice now, with the playground being in the low-mid 60s when I get home from school, eliminating my need to use the A/C most of the time. I brought a portable LCD flat screen out and put picture frame velcro things to "mount" it to the wall, and it's holding up fine now. I can watch 5 channels with it along with the car radio for music. I plan on having water storage out here again soon so I don't keep bringing out drinks I may forget out.
I put some Thompson's water sealer on the playground's bridge and a second coat of it on the floor above me. It darkened the bridge a lot but it's very well sealed, I believe. No more moss is on it, which will hopefully prolong its life. I plan on cutting a little area of the bridge off right before it would reach the playground to greatly reduce the amount of water flowing over to my area. For now, I use trash bags to cover the area that the leaks are entering. Even without them, the amount of water entering is not even 20% of what it was at the start of the year.
I then got new lighting for the playground's interior. A while ago, my LED light strip I had got a tear in one of the wires because of the way I hung it, and about half of the lights just died. So for a while, I just had a lamp illuminating the place. It's now back to LED bar lights which are more solid and light the place up about as well. They're also DC powered, so that I won't need to run the inverter to have lighting. The total wattage of it is around 15 watts total.
My new DIY window now has a little sun shade over it to block the peak sunlight from coming in and allowing the late day sun once its rays aren't strong enough to heat much, if any. I did this to stop any potential heating in summer from occurring while still letting me be able to have some natural light come through instead of last year where the place became very dark during summer. The wood I put on it to keep the sun out had some of the water seal on it and it was slightly warped, so it'll help run the rain off well.
I then got some new supplies from Home Depot:
-40 feet of 2 gauge wire (20 for positive, 20 for negative) to replace 10 feet of 6 gauge wire for less loss,
-A new corded Ryobi drill from Home Depot. It works great!
They are already helping me immensely. With the longer wire, I can move the solar panels to areas that the sun will reach early in the morning or right before sunset instead of losing all sun at 7:30 when it goes behind the house in summer. The drill has now let me work on some things that I never did simply because I didn't want to wait for the cordless one to charge or I forgot about it.
I made a new "extension cord" and a new outlet/extension cord to plug into the playground. I've already used the cords to use the drill outside. I made a video on how I made it to be linked below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWqTkODVUqQ
Finally, I just today rewired my electric heater to have the cord on the right side instead of the left, simply because with the wire/ground on the right side, I don't use as much wire and the grounding wire doesn't go across the middle of the floor anymore.
Things here in general are going well, and I'm glad there's still stuff to do out here. I wouldn't know what to do with not any work since it keeps me occupied and I have something worthy of uploading to YouTube.
As a side note, I found a dehumidifier at Home Depot, but I don't think it is for big spaces: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Perfect-Home ... /202261882
I may buy this for summer, but who knows. I'll just wait and see how bad it is.
Most of the stuff listed is done in chronological order from the 8th onto today:
Since the 8th, I have ran the A/C a few times now and the heater once or twice, but most of the days are nice between 65 and 75 with humidity pretty low. Pollen, while invisible yet, is in the air and is making my allergies very bad. The trees are greening and everything has some form of budding on it. There are a lot of flying insects out now, such as bees, carpenter bees, wasps, yellow jackets, etc. I haven't seen any mosquitoes yet but it's not too humid yet since the trees aren't fully green. The humidity is beginning to rise.
Temperatures are really nice now, with the playground being in the low-mid 60s when I get home from school, eliminating my need to use the A/C most of the time. I brought a portable LCD flat screen out and put picture frame velcro things to "mount" it to the wall, and it's holding up fine now. I can watch 5 channels with it along with the car radio for music. I plan on having water storage out here again soon so I don't keep bringing out drinks I may forget out.
I put some Thompson's water sealer on the playground's bridge and a second coat of it on the floor above me. It darkened the bridge a lot but it's very well sealed, I believe. No more moss is on it, which will hopefully prolong its life. I plan on cutting a little area of the bridge off right before it would reach the playground to greatly reduce the amount of water flowing over to my area. For now, I use trash bags to cover the area that the leaks are entering. Even without them, the amount of water entering is not even 20% of what it was at the start of the year.
I then got new lighting for the playground's interior. A while ago, my LED light strip I had got a tear in one of the wires because of the way I hung it, and about half of the lights just died. So for a while, I just had a lamp illuminating the place. It's now back to LED bar lights which are more solid and light the place up about as well. They're also DC powered, so that I won't need to run the inverter to have lighting. The total wattage of it is around 15 watts total.
My new DIY window now has a little sun shade over it to block the peak sunlight from coming in and allowing the late day sun once its rays aren't strong enough to heat much, if any. I did this to stop any potential heating in summer from occurring while still letting me be able to have some natural light come through instead of last year where the place became very dark during summer. The wood I put on it to keep the sun out had some of the water seal on it and it was slightly warped, so it'll help run the rain off well.
I then got some new supplies from Home Depot:
-40 feet of 2 gauge wire (20 for positive, 20 for negative) to replace 10 feet of 6 gauge wire for less loss,
-A new corded Ryobi drill from Home Depot. It works great!
They are already helping me immensely. With the longer wire, I can move the solar panels to areas that the sun will reach early in the morning or right before sunset instead of losing all sun at 7:30 when it goes behind the house in summer. The drill has now let me work on some things that I never did simply because I didn't want to wait for the cordless one to charge or I forgot about it.
I made a new "extension cord" and a new outlet/extension cord to plug into the playground. I've already used the cords to use the drill outside. I made a video on how I made it to be linked below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWqTkODVUqQ
Finally, I just today rewired my electric heater to have the cord on the right side instead of the left, simply because with the wire/ground on the right side, I don't use as much wire and the grounding wire doesn't go across the middle of the floor anymore.
Things here in general are going well, and I'm glad there's still stuff to do out here. I wouldn't know what to do with not any work since it keeps me occupied and I have something worthy of uploading to YouTube.
As a side note, I found a dehumidifier at Home Depot, but I don't think it is for big spaces: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Perfect-Home ... /202261882
I may buy this for summer, but who knows. I'll just wait and see how bad it is.