Quads And A New Lifestyle

[xman]

Another couple of days and more progress.
Putting the sarking in and the roof sheet on the guest room / kitchen extension.



Back wall on and all the roof on.



End wall on and roof / wall capping.



Other end wall and sliding door in.



View from inside, all insulation removed from the now inside wall to be used in the outer walls.



Insulation now fitted in the new outer walls.



And finally, the drywall fitted inside to the kitchen end of the extension. I put in the filler so it will be ready to sand back for painting next visit. I really need that wall done and painted so I can get the kitchen bench back in that will lay along that wall along with the woodfire stove. It used to be along the now internal wall that I had to remove and is currently laying in pieces all around the farm house.



Next job is install the rest of the drywall, sand and paint it all. Then back to the workshop side of the house to get that front wall and door in it.

[xman]

I worked on the inside of the kitchen extension , guest room and the wife and my room this visit. Also put the woodfire heater in place ready to hook the chimney up.

Kitchen ready to be sanded flat, primer and paint.



Painted and filling up.



Woodfire stove in place.



Doorway though to the guestroom.



Inside the guestroom.





Filling the old doorway that used to go to the toilet.



Heating the filler to get it to dry so I could sand it flat to paint. This was the old doorway to the toilet till the wife decided she wanted a toilet for our bedroom only.


The new doorway to the toilet.



You saw the gas heater drying the walls. That's because it rained big while I was inside, so much so the house dam overflowed.



And the creek down the hill was flooding. This was eight hours after it stopped raining.



Two days after the rain stopped, on my way home I found the river flooded over the road crossing still and had to go home the coastal road.



Just as a side note, I use my 2TB Xbox at the farm powered off an inverter as I only have 12vDC battery power here and need the inverter to step the voltage up to 220vAC for the Xbox which it does quite well. After a couple of days of no sun, thus not much power to charge the batteries from the solar panels on the roof I was left with very little power however the 10.5 volts I did have was enough to run the inverter and therefore the Xbox. I find this quite amazing this is still enough power to run the inverter let alone the Xbox.

[professor_jonny]

I worked on the inside of the kitchen extension , guest room and the wife

inverters work harder at lower voltages as they have to supply the same power so have to draw more amps to work.

but one thing lead acid batterys sulphate at 12v you will bugger them if you let them sit at under 12 v for too long.

look up a device called a jewel theif it is able to step up low voltages to high voltages you can other wise use totally dead batterys as a power source and recover all available power from the battery's.

devices that only were designed for alacaline batterys 0f 1.5 volts if you put in rechargable batterys of 1.2 volts the device will think it is flat befor its time. and you can use this to step it up to 3v to makee it think the batterys are not flat and make the device last longer.

on a big scale you could do this with your primary batterys.

hearing aids have them in and a few other things

[xman]

PJ, I do have two "buck inverters" I bought for upping the solar panel voltage from 12vDc up to 18-24vDC for charging the quad and buggy batteries when I'm not there via a charger but they are low current and therefore not suitable. I could be using a 12vDC PC power supply I bought for the Xbox in the car some time ago for the Xbox but I haven't got around to this job yet. I could also be using an Rpi but wasn't real happy with it's performance for a couple of reasons on my test unit and therefore went back to the Xbox for the farm use. It must be my only "stock looking" black Xbox even having a DVD but it is a 2TB inside and reliable, just a shame it's a power hog where power matters when you have to make all the power yourself.


It's been two visits since I last updated the post so a bit has changed like the woodfire stove is now hooked up and works a treat.



Upstairs is now carpeted. Pain in the arse that job was but well worth it I think.



My workshop had a bit of work done on it. This is the framing for the front wall partially done...



Now sheeted in waiting on me to take my welder down and weld up the steel for the doors. The doors will be hanging sliders and I was going to bolt them together but decided on welding them instead..



The inside looking out. You can see the track for the sliding doors above the doorway.



The master bedroom now has a wooden "floating floor". It turned out real nice I thought but very time consuming to get it right. It looks like a dance floor and is perfect for keeping the cold out of the concrete floor. It also stops it the house looking like a factory and more like a home..



The floor finished, well nearly.



The room still needs some minor paint work that I redid because although it looked good at night when I did the painting, there were problems with it in the daylight...



The workshop roof just waiting on capping but all sealed up. Still no water tower. I've cut the steel but couldn't erect it by my self so I'm waiting a some one to be there while I stand it up and bolt it together raising the water tank to 6 meters above the ground to give nice water pressure though out the house..



We did a good deal on more wood floating floor so I have a lot more to do next visit like half the house. It's a cheaper looking wood floor but worked out cheaper to use this floor than painting it, carpet or tiling so wood it is or at least will be.
than

[BuZz]

looking great

[professor_jonny]

PJ, I do have two "buck inverters" I bought for upping the solar panel voltage from 12vDc up to 18-24vDC for charging the quad and buggy batteries.

Why? paralell up those batterys and pannels to 24vdc get your self a solar regulator inverter charger with a low volt timed relay output.
then you can get your self an key start generator and connect it up to auto start when the batterys dip low.
then you have peace of mind if there is no sun to something goes wrong you wont dammage the batterys.

power is the current squared multiplied by resistance so doubling the voltage will reduce the power losses from resistance 24v is also a more common voltage from an industrial point that is.

if you have tha cash spare get your self a mmpt solar setup such as a midnight classic it adjust the load on the cells to get the maximum power from the setup:

http://www.ablesolar.co.nz/images/produ ... ochure.pdf

I picked up a pull start generator off the net for free with a burnt generator and that was my plan to whip off the dead generator and fit an truck alternator on it to run the house.

went back to the Xbox for the farm use. It must be my only "stock looking" black Xbox even having a DVD but it is a 2TB inside and reliable, just a shame it's a power hog where power matters when you have to make all the power yourself.

have you thaught of a water wheel in a river ? the local vet used a large cable drum and screwed nogs inbetween each side and dropped it in a river with a car alternator on the end of it with old vbelt and pulley.
you could stick a piston pump on the side to pump up to a hill with water and maybe use that to generate power?

[xman]

Why? paralell up those batterys and pannels to 24vdc get your self a solar regulator inverter charger with a low volt timed relay output.

Did you and I go to the same school or is it just the Aussies and Kiwis think very much alike.
Because I run twin solar panels to each solar regulator, I have thought of simply wiring the panels in series rather than the parallel there in now and that will give me 24vDC off the panels and the regulators I use are 12vDc or 24vDC auto switching so that would have the panels, regulators running at 24vDC and then wire the battery bank in series /parallel and although that would drop the amp hours of the battery bank for the 1150 down to 575, it would also have the power supply up to 24vDC. Problems...All the accessories I run in the house, fridge, LCD T.V, radio, inverters for the lights etc all run on 12vDC. Easy fix, run a regulator on each line to drop the now 24vDc down to 12vDC. Problem, this will waste a lot of power as the regulators "bleed off" the extra volts. Possible solution. Wire only one pair of panels in series and have it's regulator charge on two of the batteries in the bank and have it only circuit that is actually 24vDC. What do you think?.

then you can get your self an key start generator and connect it up to auto start when the batterys dip low.
then you have peace of mind if there is no sun to something goes wrong you wont dammage the batterys.

I did buy a self start petrol motor, ( 7.5HP), some time ago off EBay and plan on hooking up a car alternator to it like around 25amps because that is about as much as the 7.5 can spin without stalling the motor and have the motor auto start via a voltage detecting switch on the battery bank but I have to have the hub and key-way made up to suit the hub out of the motor to run the VEE belt to the car alternator. Haven't got around to that yet and it will live in the workshop area which I haven't quite finished yet. Not far off completion.

power is the current squared multiplied by resistance so doubling the voltage will reduce the power losses from resistance 24v is also a more common voltage from an industrial point that is.

yep well aware of that. I've been know to convert 12vDC up to 220vAC using an inverter and put a transformer on that line 100meters away to drop the 220vAC back down to 15vAC, regulate it and rectify it and end up with 12vDC again solely to prevent the 3-4 volt drop of the 12vDc going the100 meters.

if you have tha cash spare get your self a mmpt solar setup such as a midnight classic it adjust the load on the cells to get the maximum power from the setup:

I use MMPT regulators. They promise to increase the power output by about 15% for the panels converting excess voltage to current which sounded good to me but I beg to differ on there claims of 15%. Panels are strange how they work at producing power that is actually useful. 1st thing is wattage is king with panels and that is the max rating so on a bright, sunny day, this is not equaling more current which determines how quick the batteries recharge. On such a bright, sunny day the panels may have as much as 21-23 volts being produced even though they are 12vDC rated. This voltage goes to the regulator and it drops the voltage down to the 14v-15vDC required to charge the batteries as the 21-23 volts from the panels would blow the batteries up. MMPT regulators are supposed to convert this excess voltage to current instead of just wasting it. Now let's do the maths- at 20volts say coming off the panel you would only have 5 amps coming from that panel because the panel is "100 watts" rated. Now let's drop that voltage down to 15vDC by simply putting shade cloth over that same panel on the same day under the same conditions. That same panel's voltage has dropped to much closer to that required for the batteries charging voltage and therefore less waste and because the panel is rated at 100 watts, it's output current or amps is raised and now 100 divided by 15 which is nearly 6.5 amps. Take off the shade cloth and let the MPPT regulator do it's alleged job and it drops to below 5 amps. I have panel voltage monitoring off each panel and ammeters so this is real easy for me to see in real time. If the 15% was indeed being produced, the amps would be over 5 amps at 21 volts from the panel, correct.
Personally, I believe the extra cost of MMPT regulator over standard regulators, it's nearly double here, is a waste of money myself.

have you thaught of a water wheel in a river ? the local vet used a large cable drum and screwed nogs inbetween each side and dropped it in a river with a car alternator on the end of it with old vbelt and pulley.
you could stick a piston pump on the side to pump up to a hill with water and maybe use that to generate power?

Ow I wish I had a source of running water on my property. Two properties away does but not mine. I sold a wind generator I had so the guy could make a water wheel powered generator using it's AC generator rated at 200watts. He was a carpenter so a water wheel was real easy for him. We figured a floating wharf idea would be best to allow for the creek flooding. Actually, the floating wharf was merely a tree trunk with a bolt through it as the pivot to a post set in the bank and the other end had two drums and the generator hooked to the water wheel but it works quite nicely, for him.

[professor_jonny]

if you have all 12v rated stuff i guess just stick with that but you could do as you said i dont know how it would work, xman 2 phase dc power supply

your logic is not quite correct a pannel will not produce 100 watt all the time that is its peak rating at optimal loading

a mmpa regulator does not actually stop the extra voltage from being burnt off in the form of heat like an analogue regulator that is what a switching regulator does, an mmpa regulator also applys a load to the pannel to keep it in its peak power range.

say if a normal regulator attached to a solar pannel in full sunlight is producing 22v, but the same solar pannel connected to a mmpa regulator will apply a load to the pannel in the form of a pwm dc to dc converter it will try to reduce the terminal voltage of the pannel to around 76% of the open circuit voltage.



if the pannels are near charged the load you will be using is less than the load that the regulator needs to get the peak power from the pannel so some actually dump the load to a resistor to keep the pannels terminal voltage down to keep the pannel in its power range.

if the batterys are flat and you charge it from a traditional regulator the load will cause the voltage of the pannels to drop producing less power but in this case an mmpa regulator will keep the pannel voltage at its peak by reducing the load on the pannel this is where it works the best.

[xman]

Not a great deal of shit going on. Guest room now has a floating floor as does the back half of the house ow and the last concrete slab went down. 93 sq meters of lovely liquid rock, I love that stuff but so does a six foot brown snake my concreter tells me after seeing it while he was forming up for the slab pour. Been really looking for this snake because the browns are extremely aggressive and the most deadly at the farm. It sort of goes like this with the snakes found at the farm starting with the least toxic "Red Belly Black Snake", " The Taipan Snake", "The Tiger Snake" and finally "The Eastern Brown Snake". His a nasty piece of work that can chase you at over 10km/h so not exactly the one you want near your house. These things can kill a horse, I saw a dead horse laying in the paddock at my neighbour's house leaving the farm this week and I'd say that was from a brown bite. Here's a couple of pics of what I'm up to anyway..

The concrete slab....





The back of the house floating floor..









I've gotta get a bit more floating floor for the next visit and then work out what we're using in the rest of the place but it is really starting to look more "homely". We got given a heap of brand new vinyl flooring and some carpet so that will probably get used somewhere or else it will end up in the workshop keeping the tractor warm.
During last week I also received my 3 solar panels and two MPPT solar regulators so those, once installed will have the solar setup up to 800 watts of panels instead of the existing 400 watts I'm using at present. I also got my delivery from DealsXtreme that included another 6 car laptop chargers, well that's what there supposed to be till I rip them out of there cases and turn them into 12vDC to 220vAC inverters I use to run the lights in the farm house. I can't see any reason to change them because I'm still running the original ones I first used in the house and there now 2 years old and had no dramas with them plus there cheap at $14 each and that price for 75 watt inverters is good I think. I only load each one up to about 60 watts of CFL fluros per unit and the house is divided into sectors and I'm now up to 6 sectors but best of all if one sector does fail, I only use 1/6 of the lighting and not the lot as would be the case if I used one big inverter. Another plus is the 75 watt units, there's no cooling fan required on so no noise.

[xman]

just pics this time because I had a lovely story for all the pics but I timed out and lost the lot...
Ok, I have a bit of time so I can come back and add a bit of a story to each of these pics, sorry 'bout this but time is something I really miss at the moment.
This pic is of my new water tower I'm building, when I get down there between work, It is 4.6 meters high and sits bolted on top of the one of the shipping containers so that will give me 6.6 meters of water head pressure which should be more than necessary for the showers and taps which I didn't have with the 1000 liter tank just mounted on the container itself. It needs a lot more braces on it so it doesn't collapse when the 1000 liter tank sits on top of it that will weigh in at a ton when full of water. Problem is I need the two 6 meter lengths to use as a ramp to slide the water tank up on top empty but I also need that steel to make the bracing. Still working on that little problem.

This pic is the staircase that has always been there but I painted the stairwell white and carpeted the treads. I still need to cut of the tatty pieces of carpet to tidy it up and I need to get the LED strip lights in the upper floor so they shine down and light the staircase at night. I'm expecting the white to glow nicely under the white LED light with the carpet areas remaining dark so you can see the stair treads easierly at night with the glow from the white paint highlighting them, well that's the idea anyway.


I found this end of the little capture pond has been used as a pig or hog lay 30 meters away from the house.

[asbo]

That's a dinosaur footprint in your pond right?

and those stairs look as terrifying as the ones at my brothers house!

Nice water tower if that's what it is

Sometimes when posting times out if you hit back all the text reappears in the entry box

[xman]

Sorry Asbo, I will finish off the text by weeks out I hope.

[asbo]

oh no need for apologies xman, the pictures are very interesting by themselves, I love seeing what you're up to

we're currently waiting for the building regulations people to sign some paper work in exchange for large sums of money, and then we'll finally be able to start our build

[xman]

Well it's been a while since I last updated you guys on the proceedings but there is always something going on either on the farm or in Sydney preparing something for the farm. Both buggys, the single setter and the wife's double seater have both been "through the mancave" for mods and even an new motor for the wife's machine after it suddenly seized.



The wife's two seater also got a ute tray made and bolted to the back to make it more farm friendly as well as a couple of "snake guards" so you are less likely to get snake bite in the arse while riding.
The snake guards......


The old motor before it was removed. That motor got a teardown and is now a spare motor for all the machines after a rebuild. I was able to get a new motor for her machine for $400 and that motor went in before I rebuilt the old one that came out.


The new motor installed and partially hooked up...


The ute tray....


At the farm ready for work. The lights also got and upgrade, the rear tyres "grew" a bit and a dash went in. I think it now looks the part and is a lot more useful but I would, it took heaps of work.



Now, the farm itself..

The water tower had the wood sleepers raised up on it's deck.


Not an easy job but basically my eldest son was on one ladder and I on another. He lifted them up to me, I would hold the sleeper until he got on his ladder and the pair of us would go one rung at a time until the sleeper was up and then I would slide one end of the sleeper over the edge of the upper rail and while balancing it with one arm , climb up through the top and slide it back over till it was sitting where it had to be bolted. Do this procedure 6 times and all the sleepers where in place and then bolted down.



Now the hard job. Get the 1000 liter water tank up on the platform. This was an extremely dangerous job believe me. Just to give you some perspective, that platform is 4.5 meters high and is bolted to the top of a shipping container so about 7 meters up and a long way to fall. We got two 60 meter pieces of "C" channel to make rails and slide the tank up using a rope and pieces of wood to push it up until it got to the top where it got stuck...


This pic shows the "C" channel, the wood pushers and the tank after I climbed up the tower and man handled it into place...




Anyway, it's there now thank God. No one got hurt. I just need to add a shitload of triangulation to the tower so it won't come crashing down when I pump water up to it after all, when it is full of water it will weigh a tonne litrally. I started on the plumbing already. I still need to run the electrics up to the top of the tank and the filling hose and she should give up water pressure to the whole house without using a pressure pump, only a bore pump in the ground based tank to pump the water up when the floats switches inside the tank say it needs water and will continue pumping till the "full" float switches say it's full and turn the system off and then gravity does the rest. Well that's the theory anyway.

The farm is real dry this year through lack of rain so much so it is "browning" the pine trees pretty bad...



I got a bit more "floating floor" done. Still need a couple more paks to get it finished but that can wait.


The big job was the water tower this week but I also got my workshop to lockup stage and started mounting shelves in it so I started moving building materials and tools off the house's floor and into the workshop which was nice to see happening. Should be a visit or two away and I'll have the workshop setup the way I want it and the house will be clean. Well that's about it for the time being.

[professor_jonny]

use a pressure switch and put a ballcock in the tower it saves running wires from the bore to the tank i did that at my mums farm works really well.

the check valve on the inlet of the pump will keep the pressure up to the tank constant and when the ball cock opens the pump will start. saves you running wires up there.

how come you did not use the forks on your tractor and a pallet on the top with the rails from there to slide it up on higher off the ground to start with.

i sure i did see forks on your tractor.

they make a good cherry picker for painting buildings

[xman]

I didn't use a ballcock because then I'd need to use the pressure switch equipped water pump I have in the system now and I want to get away from that pump because it pulls 18Amps @ 12vDC to run it. I want to use a bore pump that although it is 240vAC, it actually draws far less power even after getting the AC from an inverter. Also if the pressure switch fails, which they do, my neighbor filled his house with 28000 liters of water when his pressure switch failed , it will completely empty the main water tank, unless of coarse you install a timer circuit so the pump can only power for a set time duration like say 5 minutes and then the timer will shut off power to the pump until it is re-triggered again the next cycle where it resets the time interval. Another person in the area had a pipe clack, copper pipe, after the water froze and swoll up big enough to split the copper pipe and this fooled the pressure pump to again pump out all the tank's water. I was asked about a solution for this issue and I come up with the timer idea although nothing is as safe as actually turning off the house's water when you leave the place for long periods I think as with the non essential power as I do. Now my water tower is ready for seeing if it collapses when I pump up a ton of water. I have added a lot of triangulation so I'm not expecting any issues really. All the piping is run, one 1/2" feed pipe and one 3/4" outlet pipe and wires up to the internal float switches. It has two "FILLED" float switches wired in series so if one fails, the other takes over, It only has one "EMPTY" switch because if it fails, well I run outta water and will quickly find out why and an empty tank is not an issue compared to an overfilling tank....



We have decided to do the whole remaining floor in the polished wood floating floor and this is what I'm up to now...




Ow and P.J., I do have forks for the tractor, you are correct but on the tractor, the height is no way high enough. That tower is 7-8 meters high and the tractor tines would be 5 meters at most

I"m now following my Kiwi mate's idea and making the dams I really need finished out of old car tires. I figure to drag tree trunks and then lift then in place requires far more effort than simply star picketing car tires and filling them with dirt as I build up the wall. Very smart ideas out of those Kiwis. Thank you.

[professor_jonny]

two tone dance floor for those partys

if you wind the pressure switch right down you would not have such a big current draw.

[NOTTHESAME]

nice!

[professor_jonny]

I"m now following my Kiwi mate's idea and making the dams I really need finished out of old car tires. I figure to drag tree trunks and then lift then in place requires far more effort than simply star picketing car tires and filling them with dirt as I build up the wall. Very smart ideas out of those Kiwis. Thank you.

I missed that sneaky comment

The strength really comes when you plant grass or trees in the tires afterwards it looks nice if you put different coloured plants in different rows of the tires in a pattern sort of like tiles on a floor mum did it with different coloured flax on what i guess you could say is a retaining wall on the side of a hill.

your mrs will like it if you planted it in a spiffy pattern with some small hedge type bushes.
you could put a pipe at the bottom and slap a generator in there somehow i guess ?.

They make great stock and vehicle crossings as the side dont fall in if you get to close to the edge, mum has got them made all over her farms.

ill see if i can go over the runoff and take a picture of one so yu can see the finished product

[asbo]

Good stuff as always xman, pleased to see it coming along

We've now started on phase one of our extension, I'll post a thread with pics if anyone's interested? Might be nice to see the contrast between building methods here and down under