Hello Everyone!
Exploring DC cordless tool battery chargers, Back to the solar rig, Challenges ahead & Musings on trees for building materials!
Alright, I am beginning my writing routine a whole four minutes early tonight... and feeling good about staying on track. I am still waiting on the water to finish boiling for my evening espresso... but once that finishes I will be able to truly dive in here.
Last night, I drifted off to sleep relatively early... regardless of having napped so much throughout the day. Somehow, I even managed to sleep all night... and get up at nearly the same early hour as I did the day before... so maybe my efforts to get my sleep schedule back on track are working.
After doing my usual Hive engagement routine first thing this morning... I did a bunch of research into those Dewalt 'vehicle chargers' for my twenty volt cordless tool batteries. Not to bore you with all the details... but I found a few off-brand options that were not super pricey... so I went ahead and ordered one.
If anyone is interested in the model of the charger it is a 'DCB119' or at least a cheap knockoff of one! It should work well enough with my solar rig to keep all my batteries charged while I do improvements at the new place... and also make it so that I never run out of light at night when using my 'DCB090' attachments for the batteries.
As far as the 'DCB090' units go... they have been super handy over the last few years and although I seldom use the two USB ports on them... or the single twelve volt outlet... I use the light itself every night. The only real downside to those units is that they can over-discharge the battery if they get ran for too long... and the battery level is not manually monitored.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned using that old 'DW9109' eighteen volt battery vehicle charger with an adapter to charge a twenty volt battery... but that was not the best idea given how the charger monitors the entire charge on the battery pack... instead of the charge of each individual cell in the pack. Since then I have been thinking that I might be able to modify that charger... by using some of the parts from a standard AC charger... but decided that getting the right charger (for the twenty volt batteries) would be a more reliable approach.
The other thing that I ordered was a new battery powered chainsaw... but was kind of bummed out that I could not find the same model as my broken one at a reasonable price. This one seems to be a slightly newer model a 'DCCS670B' but it came out even cheaper than the old 'DCCS670' broken one did... because I found one that was an 'open box' that had been used as a display model.
Honestly, both the new charger and the chainsaw is something that I have been debating on getting for quite some time now... and between those two items, my other cordless tools and my solar rig... I will be able to 'make progress' at the place... whether I wind up being able to get electric service turned on there or not. Basically, I am not going to take any chances with being able to get stuff done... nor put myself in a position where I have to buy fuel for a generator.
Of course my main battery for my solar rig is a seven year old marine grade deep cycle... which even though not a true deep cycle... nor even that great at holding a charge at this stage of its life... should work fine as long as I am dumping the bulk of the load each day directly into the twenty volt tool batteries. All the twelve volt battery really has to do (for my purposes) is provide just enough voltage for the PWM (pulse-width modulation) charge controller to recognize that a battery is present to allow the charge controller to function.
I will not dive into all the specifics of my solar rig... but having spent years using it before as my main source of energy... I gotta say that although it is not the most efficient of systems... it sure is hardy... and rather versatile when it comes to providing 'live power' while the sun is shining. Even when it is connected to a useless battery (as long as it does not have an internal dead short) it can really crank out the amps.
Obviously, the electricity stuff has been on my mind a lot lately... and although I have a small generator that uses two cycle fuel... I know from experience that those cheap generators (like the one that I have) are noisy, unreliable... and often produce dirty power that is hard on both tools and other devices. In other words, it is nice to have it in an emergency situation... but not something that I want to be in a position where I 'have to' rely upon it.
I did recently look into some inexpensive twelve volt (true deep cycle) batteries for my solar rig... but decided that I would wait on that investment until I know for sure whether I can get electric service or not. The prices are not super horrible for batteries in the thirty amp hour range... but whoa they are very pricey when it comes to the two hundred amp hour ones... which is a much better route for dealing with extended cloudiness.
Anyways, the day was not productive at all because I took yet another 'day off' to let my leg heal up even more... because it would be rather myopic of me to let it get partially healed... bugger it up again... and be in a worse position than I was to start with. Not to mention that doing so would mean that I would have to continue the ibuprofen regimen that I am on... which yup in turn would further deplete my precious food supply.
So in my less-than-infinite wisdom... I did the only thing that I know to do... which was to sleep more. I really have no idea how to compare the two... but a few hours of napping seems to relieve the inflammation much more than the ibuprofen does... and the only way for injuries like that to begin healing is by removing the inflammation.
If all goes well I will be getting back to the incessant 'cleaning and packing' over the next few days... but if the leg is not doing much better by then I may have to take even more time away from it all... or at least the heavy lifting, walking, pulling the wagon... and other strenuous parts of the process! There is assuredly some 'light duty' stuff that I need to take care of... but I have a really bad tendency to deviate from my initial goals... and then overdoing it once I am 'in motion' for the day.
For now all the rest has been doing wonders for me... and that combined with plenty of deep dreaming... has helped me get on a much more even keel mentally. All of which is good... because going into the scenario that I am going into... is going to take an incredible amount of physical work not to mention having my 'wits' soundly intact to cope with the hardships.
Well, I have rambled on a good bit in this entry... and instead of calling it 'good enough' I think that I am going to continue spelling things out. As a side note, I have never been all that happy with writing the shorter entries that I have been making the last many months... so a longer one is probably past due at this juncture.
I know that it is difficult for most folks to understand what it is like getting dropped off in the woods with all your worldly possessions... and animal companions... with no vehicle... and no nearby stores and/or conveniences... but let me tell you just 'existing' each day requires a tremendous amount of work, energy and focus. To 'improve' the scenario... takes even more of those things... and while I am always happy with incremental progress I will not have the luxury of that this time around.
Considering that getting the place 'up to par' to have a real dog yard, a real dwelling, electricity, septic and whatnot will require tens of thousands of dollars that I do not have... I have to look at the alternatives. The reason that I say that is because I will have a roughly six month window before the cold weather arrives... and yeah the more I think about spending the winter in a tent (even a canvas one) the less I frigging like the idea!
In other words, I am not going to count on anything besides my two hands... and the resources available on the land (or that I can get delivered) to get me into something that I can winter in. Whether that takes the shape of a root cellar style (underground tiny house) or a slapped together log cabin... or a shack made of pallets... or some other structure... I know I can do it... and seriously doubt that I can come up with the money to do things differently.
A lot of what I can (and cannot do) as far as an aboveground shelter goes... is dependent upon what kinds of trees are available on the property itself. If I am super lucky there will be a few good (preferably standing dead) midsize black locust trees... and a bunch of small poplar trees... because with those two alone I can build almost anything that I will need.
If the conditions are right and there is somewhere that I can easily dig a root cellar at (preferably on a steep embankment) I want to be able to do all the framing with black locust. I have no idea just how much of it that I would need for that kind of project... but it would be a heck of a lot more material than the aboveground dwelling.
What I am dreading seeing when I get to the new place is a bunch of useless slash pines... mixed with sourwood or other mostly useless trees. Sure the pines make for easy lumber making material... but I would much rather work with round wood... and spare my self the headache (and the sap) of having to mill the pines into lumber with the chainsaw.
A few alternatives that would not be bad to see (sans the black locust and poplar) would be eastern cedars and hemlocks... because much like the black locust the cedar is rot resistant... and the hemlock makes for some nice material either as lumber or used as round wood rafters and such. Neither are really quite as easy to work with given how many knots they tend to have... but they would work in a pinch.
There are of course plenty of hardwoods (like oak and hickory) that make for some fine building materials... but overall they require a good bit of dry time, tend to be rather heavy to haul around by hand... and usually have a lot of canopy to deal with after felling the tree. Sure if I was all setup with a real sawmill... and a way to move trees around... I would make use of all the tree types... but based on past experiences I know to work with what I know... and what I can feasibly do by hand when it comes to the trees.
Okay, now I have definitely rambled on long enough for this entry. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ta ta for now.
That's what first came to my mind when you had mentioned the steepness on parts of the property. It should make for a cozy winter digs (no pun intended).
Yep that and the benefits the slope provides for a gravity fed water system are pretty neat.
It really depends on the size of the (buried) rocks that I will be dealing with and if it is solid bedrock at one meter down like the soil test says that it is.
I copied and pasted some of this and reposted it to your donation page, I hope it was ok to do it.
Yeah, that is fine.
Have you heard about the new Hive site called Genie? I just read a post about it.
No. Do you have a link to the post or the site itself?
https://genie.peakd.com/
Ah looks neat.