I'm Home!

Made it back to the ranch without any trouble and had new sneakers on the front of the falcon so that helped a lot. Having them balanced sure helped the ride to. As you can see the falcon was packed as tight as I could get it and believe it or not I managed to bring everything I wanted to bring including the Coleman electric Ice chest and portable Swamp cooler. RN came up with the ice chest and my uncle and aunt donated the swamp cooler since they are moving and won't need it anymore.

I only had to stop every 50 miles to let Pepper catch up on the way home. I think she got a good workout. ;)

Actually there was just enough room left in the back seat for her to ride back.

I did have a BIG problem when I got back though and that was that the propane had run out some time after I left which means the fridge shut down. I'd put a new bag of ice in the freezer the night before I left and when I came in there was signs of a dried up puddle on the floor where it ran to when it melted. All of the meat in the freezer had gone bad as well as everything in the ice box so now I have to figure out what to do with all the bad stuff and get the fridge cleaned up. Considering the amount of propane used by the ice box and only the freezer working like its supposed to then I may scrap the idea of using it period. Its nice to have ice handy all the time, but might not be nice enough to warrant paying for the propane just to keep ice in the freezer and what little else will fit in it.

This is the fridge RN gave me and it only pulls 43 watts of electricity which would allow me to run it full time from the batteries and solar panels after I get all of the panels online. Of course it doesn't have a freezer though so it won't help there. More than likely it will become my refrigerator and I'll turn the icebox off after I get it cleaned out and cleaned up. It won't cost anything to use the electric ice chest.

This is the little swamp cooler and I tried it out last night. It does a very good job of cooling this place down (at least at night), but it uses a good bit of water so it looks like I'd better get the 275 gallon tank refilled soon.

I got the three largest solar panels temporarily wired in yesterday afternoon, but found that they didn't have diodes to keep the panels from draining the batteries at night when they weren't charging. I had the one panel that was no good so used the diode from it to put in one of the 30 watt panels and then robbed two more from the smaller panels so until I get replacement diodes for them I won't be able to use those two. No big deal though because there are plenty of other panels to put online when I get the time.

I plan to mount most of the panels I brought back on the rack in this picture. I made it a while back with the casters on it so it can be swiveled around as the sun rises to get the max out of them all day. If I start forgetting to do that then I'll probably just leave it facing south all the time.




UPDATE

My attempt at getting the fridge to work well enough to keep a small amount of perishables evidently failed. What I did is completely block off the lower part of the icebox with 1 inch of foam insulation which should have cut the space down that the refrigeration system has to cool. It still only maintains 60 degrees. As you can see I've now taken that another step by putting a block of ice in the small ice chest in it as an attempt to get the temp in there low enough to keep cold cuts and the like in there. I figure at the constant 60 degrees in there before the ice then the ice should cool it on down and probably last several days while doing it. I guess time will tell on that.



Pepper the Mountain Goat

Pepper now thinks she's a mountain goat. Note the paw prints on the trunk of the falcon. Yep they're on the top and hood to. I think I have a nice quiet place picked out for her in the west 5 critter field!