Surprise #1 dropped

Good day for a muhnday,,,   Work went well, only one goof up on my part: forgot to get measurements for a handrail on a walkway,,,    What can I say, mad scramble at the end, keeping an eye on 3 others with about as many braincells each,,,

Then I arrive home,,,   Ceiling fan is making some odd noises,,,   Figure ‘A’ight, its been up there for seven years now, stopped only to get cleaned off,,,,   Bearings gave up,,,”    And oddly enough, I have the replacement parts for it,,, (12vdc Ceiling fan for RV’s)

Shut her down, dig out the parts, pull the  unit off the ceiling,,,,   Nothing amiss that I  can see, replace the bearings anyways; I’m there now, may as well,,,

Then the light started failing and I went to turn on my desk lamp so I could see what the heck I was doing,,,   NO LOVE,,, NO LIGHT!!!  

WTELF?????

Jump up and hit the Info button on my charge controller,

NOTHING,,, No screen lit up, no info, nada,,,,

Turn on the inverter to see what it says: different circuit, same bank.

SSSQQUUUEEEELLLLL!!!!!!!!!

LOW VOLTAGE warning,,,, less than 9vdc,,,,  NOT GOOD!!!

Time to bust out the Meter and start digging; may be a blown fuse, or any number of other things.   

Nopes,,just a dead charge controller,,,  6 years oid: guess when the warranty expired?    Last month,,,   So right now, I am running on back up battery lamps to see, NO POWER in the house (a first for me!!!  I’ve always had power, even when the rest of the hollar was dark,,,) and I await a new charge controller via the ZON,,,, Friday is the earliest I can expect it.   With all the cloud cover we have been having, I went ahead and hardwired the panels to the battery bank to get them charged back up.  I won’t see anything until tomorrow; when I did that it was already failing light, but I did see the voltage start to trickle upwards a few points.   If this were high summer with clear skies, I would be very cautious of doing that.  Far too easy to overcharge them.

I guess you could say that my ‘new to me boat fund’ just got ATE,,,,  I’m hoping the batteries didn’t take a hit being depleted so low.   If so, thats REALLY gonna hurt,,,   Doable, but painful,,,

Me thinks it’s time for Dio to start researching (building) analog charge controllers,,, The option I took today may not be available next time,,,,   The only downside to that,,, RadioShack is no longer in business and the only source that I HAVE for parts like that, is online (Zon).  Grkkkk

(on a side note, I did repower the ceiling fan, just to see, and it was MUCH quieter, but still slow as heck, so I did fix something today,,,,   And I immediately powered it back off to eliminate the drain on the batterybank.)

Life off grid,,, Do not reccomend,,, (read my book, Outside looking in: its not so much a book for going off grid, more a dialogue asking “are you SURE???”,,,, )   I made the choice, and there are times where its pretty damned good, but there is a shit ton more work involved than just ‘flippin’ a switch’ like when I was grid tied,,,,

(((Oh, and surprise #2?   I ordered more Gelcoat for Lyssa,,, email came in today, saying it won’t be here until mid November.    Going to do some looking near the lakes and see if I can find someone local for such things.)