Monkeys with wrenches, Chickens with electricity, and other things that don’t make sense-A day in the life of an off-grid solar installer

[The Chicken]

Is it bad that my first thought was a K baffle?

Reminds me-years back, I had a customer bring me a couple AR lowers along with a few bags of parts and some instructions for drilling some extra holes in the lower that he’d purchased somewhere on the internet.
I didn’t know what it all was at first.
But after looking everything over, and realizing that the extra roll pin would be immediately obvious to anyone who knew anything about ARs at a glance, and then looking up what the ATF likes to hand out to people who “manufacture” fully automatic weapons, I politely gave the customer back his stuff and suggested he throw it all away and avoid an extended stay at Club Fed.

 

[The Chicken]

Anyone who has been following along here has likely noticed at least a couple of our dogs.
You’ve seen them in a couple of @monkeyswrench posts too when he visits our place.
Our dogs play a pretty important role around here. In addition to just being great dogs and our fur babies that we love, they keep the the property and any livestock we have safe. There’s 5 of them, and they all weigh around 100 pounds each. No predator, and no trespasser in their right mind wants any part of of that much dog. They also keep the deer, elk, range cows, wild pigs, and pretty much any other animal that would destroy our fruit trees and gardens away.
These dogs are great with people or other dogs that we introduce to them.
Anything that crosses our fence line uninvited-let’s just say it goes poorly for uninvited guests.
The dogs have another important job-they protect the cats.
And let me tell you-the cats are a vital part of this remote property. Without them we are literally overrun by rodents that destroy seemingly everything. Seriously.
Keeping the four legged property caretakers healthy is a very important part of our program, and as such, even ranch critters need to see the vet occasionally for shots and a check up.
Now, because we can’t get a vet to come out here, we have to take the critters to the vet-and that can be a really entertaining endeavor.
And so it was a few weeks ago we made an appointment for all 5 of the mutts to go see the vet at the same time. We don’t own a school bus or large van, so this takes two vehicles. Denise would take three of the dogs in her Outback-Stella( AKA the crazy polar bear bitch-she’s the mama dog and boss of the outfit), Bernie ( so named because he resembled a Saint Bernard as a pup), and Minnie (short for mini-me, because she looks a lot like her dad, Bosco). I would take two in her F-350-Bosco( papa dog), and Hulk( Hulk’s a girl dog, BTW, and is so named because she was born green). In case I didn’t explain it before, our dog family really is a dog family-Bosco and Stella are the parents and the other three are their kids. For any of you that have followed some of @wash11 adventures, Gus and Maggie are also Bosco and Stella’s kids.
Anyway, in order to get dogs loaded up in the truck, I first had to clean out the back seat to make room for them. I got some unsolicited help with that.

This is Slick, so named because she has short hair unlike her twin brother that has really long hair. She’s one of our chief rodent killers and a door ninja. Any time a door gets opened around this place, it’s likely she will appear as if by magic out of nowhere and dart inside. Doesn’t matter what the door is-car, truck, house, RV, storage container-she’s in. In typical cat fashion, she’d like you to look at her butthole here.
After shooing her out, it was time to load up dogs and hit the road for town.

Here’s Bosco and Hulk in the foreground loaded up in the dually.

Here’s Bernie trying to tell Denise how to drive. His version includes a lot of ear and head scratching. If the picture makes his head look a lot bigger than hers-it’s because it is. Bernie has a huge head!

Here’s Bernie and Minnie trying to share the same back window. This gets a lot of looks and laughs going through town.

Well, no trip of ours would be complete without some sort of misadventure, and this simple trip to the vet would unfortunately not disappoint.
About the time we hit town, the dually broke a heater hose fitting and puked all its coolant out.
I got it pulled over in a gas station parking lot to assess the issue and see if I could fix it.
But in the meantime, we had the additional problem of how the hell to get all these mutts to the vet minus one vehicle and one person.
Luckily, Amy just happened to be in town and was able to come to our rescue and take Bosco and Hulk to the vet with Denise while I patched the truck back together.

Lucky for me there’s a Harbor Freight about a block away, so I jogged there and got some hose pincher-offers and 4 gallons of coolant. I put the clamps on the heater hoses, poured in the coolant, and made my way to the nearest auto parts store to buy a bunch of parts.

Just another fun filled day!
After procuring a new heater core, a gaggle of hoses, and any other part I could think of that we might need ( spoiler alert-I didn’t get enough parts!),
I headed to the vet’s office to catch up with Denise and Amy and help them wrangle mutts.
After an hour or so in an exam room whose air conditioning system was in no way able to deal with the heat, humidity and smell that 500 plus pounds of dog puts off, we were done and on our way back home.
Once we got home, I turned the truck and pile of parts over to @monkeyswrench -who just happened to be at our place working on our skid steer-for him to work his magic on.

It had been quite the long day, and by the time it was over, both Hulk and I needed some relaxing couch time!!

 

[monkeyswrench]

I have to admit, some days seeing the pups can be the highlight of a week. I think Dan put it best when he told me they don't need humans, but they like them.
Seeing the pics, it's hard to really judge their actual size. The other day I looked down, and saw my boot was next to a paw print. I wear a size 12 steel toe...not quite "clown" size, but not "dainty" by any means. The print was the size of the toe portion of my boot
They know me now. Usually come over and say hello, then go about their day guarding chickens and livelihood. They are amazing creatures, and I'm glad they're very "tame"...they'd scare the hell out of you in a charge or barking at you

 

[RichL]

I have to admit, some days seeing the pups can be the highlight of a week. I think Dan put it best when he told me they don't need humans, but they like them.
Seeing the pics, it's hard to really judge their actual size. The other day I looked down, and saw my boot was next to a paw print. I wear a size 12 steel toe...not quite "clown" size, but not "dainty" by any means. The print was the size of the toe portion of my boot
They know me now. Usually come over and say hello, then go about their day guarding chickens and livelihood. They are amazing creatures, and I'm glad they're very "tame"...they'd scare the hell out of you in a charge or barking at you

Do you bring the Milkbone treats when you go to visit?

 

[monkeyswrench]

Do you bring the Milkbone treats when you go to visit?

I think they may be the types that would look at a stranger with Milkbones like a guy in a van offering candy. I think they size up the human in heartbeat, and know what you're up to

 

[The Chicken]

A good friend of mine used to wrench on all our stuff for years before he went to work for a shop.
One day, he had to crawl under the dually to adjust a shift cable or something. Even though the dually is a 4x4, it sits pretty low to the ground and there is just barely room to sorta wiggle around under there. For sure, you aren’t getting under it or out from under it or moving around under it very fast at all.
I told you all that to tell you this:unbeknownst to my friend, right as he was getting ready to roll under the truck, I dumped a couple dog treats in his back pocket. Once he was securely trapped under the truck, I sent Bosco under there, who had no issues immediately smelling the dog treats and going after them-still stuck in my friends back pocket.
The noises that came out from under that truck as Bosco kept biting his ass trying to get the treats!!
And of course my friend couldn’t get out in a hurry, so it went on for awhile.
We still laugh about it to this day.
My buddy still doesn’t trust me around dog treats though.

So Kevin, if you bring treats, remember to not leave them in your pockets, or you’re likely to get a lot of attention at an inopportune time.

 

[t&y]

@The Chicken Awesome thread. Given your posting style, I'm going to have to ignore it for a bit and then Binge read it again like I do with of Taylor Sheridan's lates TV series.

The Bronco you are building is pretty insane. Are you basing it off an Ultra 4 class spec or just overdoing it for fun. Pretty crazy build. I'm finally driving my 74 Bronco after a way too long time sitting idle in the garage. Far more of the resto mod type build than anything you are doing. They are fun to deal with for sure.

Are you planning on extending the hood by sectioning and old one, or do you have different plans for the front end?

 

[The Chicken]

@The Chicken Awesome thread. Given your posting style, I'm going to have to ignore it for a bit and then Binge read it again like I do with of Taylor Sheridan's lates TV series.

The Bronco you are building is pretty insane. Are you basing it off an Ultra 4 class spec or just overdoing it for fun. Pretty crazy build. I'm finally driving my 74 Bronco after a way too long time sitting idle in the garage. Far more of the resto mod type build than anything you are doing. They are fun to deal with for sure.

Are you planning on extending the hood by sectioning and old one, or do you have different plans for the front end?

Glad you have enjoyed it!

So the inspiration for the Bronco actually predates the existence of Ultra 4. Unfortunately, it indicates just how long this project has been going on. And I often wish I could have finished it in a timely manner because there are a lot of things on that vehicle that were kinda groundbreaking at the time, and later on, other fabricators or manufacturers ended up building similar components that have done well, and had I been able to finish this project on time, I myself might have been able to capitalize on it. But life takes us on strange paths sometimes...

My inspiration for the Bronco came from the long-travel prerunners and class one and trophy trucks I was working on or owned at the time. I knew we had the shock and suspension technology to make a solid axle rear suspension not only perform, but also ride comfortably even at higher speeds. And I thought-why is nobody applying this to a solid axle front end with a differential? If you think about it, a solid axle front end isn't a whole lot different from a Ford Twin Traction beam-and despite those front ends having some pretty serious geometry drawbacks, we had been able to consistently and reliably make those front ends really perform. So why was nobody building a rugged 4x4 with all the soft ride, long travel suspension technology we had? What an amazing vehicle that would be? All the back country advantages a four wheel drive has, with the smooth comfortable ride of a prerunner-that would be the ultimate offroad expedition or family fun vehicle! And so I set out to build such a vehicle. A year or so later, a friend of ours would be among the first to compete in Ultra 4 (I seem to recall it was maybe called something else back then?) and seeing those in action totally validated my concept that a straight axle 4x4 could do it all.

Of course, nowadays, the concept of a solid axle, long travel 4x4 family or expedition vehicle is old news, along with a lot of the other ideas I had back then, as is evidenced by every Jeep 4 door owner with spare change to blow on a lifted long travel mall crawler, LOL. But back then, none of this stuff was really even heard of.

As for the hood and front fenders of this Bronco-I plan on grafting some sheet metal to the existing modified hood and fenders.

 

[The Chicken]

So, anyone who ends up talking to me for any length of time is likely to end up having to hear about our dogs. I can’t seem to help myself. They are just great dogs, with amazing personalities, and amazing character traits.
Yesterday I was planning on sharing with you all some stories of our mutts, but something pretty cool happened here locally that has made the news all over Arizona, and so I’m going to share it with you instead.
And it actually involves our dogs.
Buford is one of our pups and from the same litter as Gus and Maggie and our “kids”.
The Duntons are great people who have done a lot of great things around here. You may recall me writing about Scotty and how he has helped us with our elk hunts awhile back.
Anyway-this is a pretty neat story-enjoy.
( The link is to a news story on facebook)

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

www.facebook.com

Some other news links:

MSN

MSN

Missing toddler found safe in northern Arizona

A sheriff’s office spokesperson said the child was found on a ranch about seven miles from where he went missing in Seligman.

www.azfamily.com

MSN

 

[Sandlord]

So, anyone who ends up talking to me for any length of time is likely to end up having to hear about our dogs. I can’t seem to help myself. They are just great dogs, with amazing personalities, and amazing character traits.
Yesterday I was planning on sharing with you all some stories of our mutts, but something pretty cool happened here locally that has made the news all over Arizona, and so I’m going to share it with you instead.
And it actually involves our dogs.
Buford is one of our pups and from the same litter as Gus and Maggie and our “kids”.
The Duntons are great people who have done a lot of great things around here. You may recall me writing about Scotty and how he has helped us with our elk hunts awhile back.
Anyway-this is a pretty neat story-enjoy.
( The link is to a news story on facebook)

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

www.facebook.com

Some other news links:

MSN

MSN

Missing toddler found safe in northern Arizona

A sheriff’s office spokesperson said the child was found on a ranch about seven miles from where he went missing in Seligman.

www.azfamily.com

MSN

I saw that on the news and said, I know that guy, and I’m not surprised.
Scotty is a great man who will go out of his way to help.
I saw Buford got a ribeye for his heroic achievement. Congrats.

 

[Sandlord]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/missing-2-year-old-travels-7-miles-through-mountain-lion-territory-before-dog-guides-him-to-help/ar-AA1D273V

 

[The Chicken]

Things you only have happen at a ranch.

 

[wzuber]

Things you only have happen at a ranch.
View attachment 1502382

View attachment 1502383

That's a very thoughtful and caring chicken. She wanted you to have fresh eggs for your daily meal while working.....

 

[Waterjunky]

So, what's the problem?

 

[t&y]

Glad you have enjoyed it!

So the inspiration for the Bronco actually predates the existence of Ultra 4. Unfortunately, it indicates just how long this project has been going on. And I often wish I could have finished it in a timely manner because there are a lot of things on that vehicle that were kinda groundbreaking at the time, and later on, other fabricators or manufacturers ended up building similar components that have done well, and had I been able to finish this project on time, I myself might have been able to capitalize on it. But life takes us on strange paths sometimes...

My inspiration for the Bronco came from the long-travel prerunners and class one and trophy trucks I was working on or owned at the time. I knew we had the shock and suspension technology to make a solid axle rear suspension not only perform, but also ride comfortably even at higher speeds. And I thought-why is nobody applying this to a solid axle front end with a differential? If you think about it, a solid axle front end isn't a whole lot different from a Ford Twin Traction beam-and despite those front ends having some pretty serious geometry drawbacks, we had been able to consistently and reliably make those front ends really perform. So why was nobody building a rugged 4x4 with all the soft ride, long travel suspension technology we had? What an amazing vehicle that would be? All the back country advantages a four wheel drive has, with the smooth comfortable ride of a prerunner-that would be the ultimate offroad expedition or family fun vehicle! And so I set out to build such a vehicle. A year or so later, a friend of ours would be among the first to compete in Ultra 4 (I seem to recall it was maybe called something else back then?) and seeing those in action totally validated my concept that a straight axle 4x4 could do it all.

Of course, nowadays, the concept of a solid axle, long travel 4x4 family or expedition vehicle is old news, along with a lot of the other ideas I had back then, as is evidenced by every Jeep 4 door owner with spare change to blow on a lifted long travel mall crawler, LOL. But back then, none of this stuff was really even heard of.

As for the hood and front fenders of this Bronco-I plan on grafting some sheet metal to the existing modified hood and fenders.

Cool deal. Build it how you want it regardless of what is out there. My first dive into this stuff involved a old CJ-5. At the time, swapping wide axles and going leaf over was cutting edge I remember buying tires (HUGGGEEEEEEEE 35") and the guys at Dick Cepek were all in shock that anyone would run 35"s on a jeep. Boy how times have changed.

The really cool thing about the older Bronco's are all the aftermarket parts available that actually work and are built Bronco specific, by Bronco guys. My plan on the Bronco was only to use common vendor parts that didn't need too much modification (welding or cutting frame parts off needed at times of course) from the tried and true vendors out there for these old trucks. It was a huge difference just being able to buy things that went on without issue.

I think the Older Bronco world still needs a good 3 or 4 link front end kit. There are a few out there, but not nearly as common as rear kits. You might be onto something if you could hammer out your design and make it a bit more commercial in application.

 

[The Chicken]

Man, there has been a lot going on around here and we have been incredibly busy. Unfortunately, too busy for me to really share much of what has been going on. I have a few minutes today and I will try and give a little bit of an update.
Exactly one month ago, we landed back at a place you all may recognize by this picture alone:

That’s right – we were back up at our favorite camp up on Mingus Mountain for one more round of upgrades that they had been trying to get approved for several months and that all finally went through. We squeaked it in between a bunch of other stuff.
The first thing we had to do, was install some Wi-Fi dongle on the Pyres batteries in order to have remote diagnostics. It was decided due to the remote location in nature of the camp the little bit of money that needed to be spent to put the batteries themselves online would prove to be valuable for both the camp and ourselves down the road. We also spent most of the day with Pytes very helpful Tech Support updating the firmware in all of the batteries and chasing a little glitch that had occurred over the winter during cold temperatures that traced back to an older version of the batteries BMS firmware.
Here’s Denise running the laptop and helping the remote firmware updates.

It took all day to get all 30 batteries updated with new firmware, their new Wi-Fi dongles installed and talking to the cloud, and to resolve a little issue that we had with the big 200 amp bypass switch. After that day, we met up with Dan number two, who is the head maintenance guy at the camp, for a couple of cocktails and a tour of a potential new project we may be doing up there. More on that potential project a little later.

The next day, after sleeping in some seriously uncomfortable bunkbeds at camp meant for little kids( we were traveling light and left our work trailer behind)-I woke up with a screaming headache ( I swear not related to the previous evenings beers! I often suffer from serious headaches-especially with altitude changes. ), a terrible hairdo, and the need for a lot of coffee!

Our mission for day two – once I got my headache down to a mild roar after pumping about a gallon of coffee into Me-was to go down to lower Camp where we needed to resolve some electrical issues with existing wiring, upgrade some panel and grounding, upgrade some kitchen lighting, and resolve a few little minor electrical repairs.

You know you’re about to have a crappy day when this is your job site.

I’m not really going to explain what the electrical issues were in this particular building for reasons of privacy, but if you look at this picture and understand what is going on, then it will be a case of if you know, you know.

During our investigation into this building‘s electrical system, we found this really cool old switch! It is all porcelain with top and bottom connectors like you don’t see anymore. For a reason too.

We spent most of the day resolving some kitchen lighting issues and installing a whole bunch of new LED wrap fixtures in the kitchen and prep areas but for some reason, I have zero pictures of any of this.
By the end of day two, the kitchen lighting upgrades were complete and we believe we knew what was going on with the other buildings wiring issues, but had not yet located the cause of the fault.
It was then time to turn in for another night of questionable sleep in little tiny bunkbeds that were definitely not made for adults.

 

[The Chicken]

Day three at camp broke with me not really feeling so good, and neither one of us having slept all that great for the last couple of days. Additionally, the cabin that we were staying in, had no Wi-Fi and no cell phone service so there was literally nothing to do before or after work and we were out of communication with our friends and family and pretty much unable to do anything so we were kind of over it. Our mission this morning was to see if we could wrap up whatever work we needed to do and get out of camp by day three. Which would be a monumental feat because literally there was five days of work to be done.
However, we had already worked too very, very long days and had actually gotten a lot done and we’re ahead of schedule, so it seemed like it was at least a possibility. With that goal in mind, we rolled out of our little bunkbeds early and jumped into action to see if we could wrap things up here.

We went through a bunch of junction boxes in the afflicted building that looked like this. And while there are some things in this picture that could be an obvious problem, it could also not be a problem. In the end, what you see here is the type of problem that we did eventually find along with a whole bunch of improperly installed wire nuts, which unfortunately is a pretty common thing.

There was also a wiring issue that was very hard to find in this panel until I tore it apart to replace it. The panel was slated to be replaced anyway, because it was missing a separate ground bar and the system also needed its own ground rod as it was a subpanel in a separate building. It was also missing a main breaker, and we were deleting the old rickety overhead feed for a new underground feed.

Now that we had identified the wiring issues and rectified them, Denise went back to work putting together all of the open junction boxes and dismantled lighting fixtures throughout the building while I proceeded with the panel change out.
Once Denise had the buildings lighting system put back together, she went up onto the roof to dismantle the old overhead wiring.

Meanwhile, I found a crappy place to bend up a new piece of 1 inch conduit to serve for the new underground feed to this little subpanel. Yes, it needed that many bends. And yes, it fit when I was finished.

Here is the new and improved subpanel installed with its new separate ground and neutral bus bars, a dedicated ground rod and some other upgrades.

Once this panel installation was complete, a whole battery of tests were run on the building’s electrical system and wiring system to make sure that everything was functioning as it should. Additionally, a few other smaller devices were changed out that were defective or broken such as GFI outlets and switches. Finally at just after 5 PM, after a frenzied session of throwing everything back into the work trucks, we were packed up and ready to leave a full two days ahead of schedule! This is a rare, rare event for us to get done ahead of schedule! Typically, we are behind schedule due to multiple unforeseen things slowing us down.
We were this excited-wooo!!

We rolled out of camp and pointed the trucks west into the sunset for the long trip home, another successful trip completed.

 

[monkeyswrench]

When you mentioned the kids' beds, I pictured "Elf"...

 

[Yarder]

When you mentioned the kids' beds, I pictured "Elf"...
View attachment 1504187

Denise would fit just fine, Dan not so much...

 

[The Chicken]

As usual, things are crazy around here, and I’ve had no time to add stuff here.
I’ve got just a couple minutes this morning, so here’s some random updates really quick.
First is this beat up old shop cart I’ve had for a long time.
It’s nothing great, but holds a huge sentimental value to me because I’ve had it for so long, and mainly because my sister gave it to me all those years ago. She had found it at a garage sale, repainted it, and the painted on a hand-masked Ford logo on the top. It’s a bit crude, but it was the thought behind it that I’ve always treasured, and it’s from a lifetime ago when things were much simpler-and arguably better-for all of us.
For all these years, I had a cheap plastic sheet on the top of the cart to protect it. That plastic got destroyed in our move some years back, and I’ve not used the cart since for fear of destroying the rather fragile old spray paint on its top.
About a year ago, I came across a sale on some counter top epoxy and thought that would be a great way to preserve the old cart.
A month or so ago, I finally got a chance to put that epoxy on.
Here is the cart after I carefully scuffed the top with a scotch bright pad , cleaned it, and then built a blue tape dam to hold the epoxy in, and the shiny new epoxy has just been poured in.

I wish I had gotten some before pictures-but I failed.
The only thing I got was this picture on the side where my sister signed and dated it. Pretty cool!

The top with the epoxy turned out awesome!

Now I just have to grind/sand all the rough edges down.
Maybe by next year I’ll get to that part!

 

[The Chicken]

You may recall the sump system that I built for our plasma table a while back?
Yeah, the submersible pump for the filter system didn’t last long at all. A seal let go and filled the pump with water. It should be under warranty, but of course the Amazon vendor that I bought it from has vanished without a trace.
Crazy thing is-this pump would still run for a few seconds even full of water in the motor!

Some of you may have seen where @monkeyswrench was working on our Freightshaker crane awhile back-here’s some random pictures of some of the work I was doing on it at the same time.
Mag base drill to punch out a seized pin. It’s crazy how many chips this made!

Here’s the pin once we got it out.
It was in beyond poor shape!

Replacement pin I built with an upgraded retaining tab.

Some shiny new hoses I made for the crane before showing Kevin how to make them and turning that operation over to him.

A destroyed piston retaining nut from the main boom hydraulic ram that gave us no end of trouble. Plus a major delay, because neither myself nor anyone around stocks a grade 8 inch and a half -12 pitch thin nut.

Needed some hi-viz shirts for an upcoming job and found some that I think look pretty nice, considering.

Delivered about 6 thousand pounds of steel pipe, conduit and strut to said job for inspection to verify it’s made in USA prior to commencing construction.

Some equipment layout design work I’ve been doing for that job.

And that brings us almost up to date!

 

[monkeyswrench]

Fancy, uniform type, high-viz shirts! Much nicer than the "community service" mesh vests we'd get on the roofs. Looked like the damn Village People with our hard hats.

 

[The Chicken]

An ongoing project that we’ve been desperately trying to complete is some much-needed upgrades to our work trailer.
One of those upgrades is to a bigger mini split unit.
Our current mini split is a 12k BTU single head unit. And while it works awesome nearly all the time, it does struggle to cool the whole trailer during the hottest months, and sometimes during those hot times, we switch over to working a night shift to avoid the burning sun( ironic, isn’t it. A couple people who make their living from the sun trying to avoid it. ) and sleep during the hottest parts of the day.
Which is great, except the best the mini split can do leaves the bedroom part of the trailer at 90 degrees or so, and after a long work day, that’s just kinda miserable.
It’s not entirely the mini splits fault-the issue is really one of air flow and where the current single head unit is, the airflow is just sorta excluded from the bedroom area due to the layout of the trailer.
So we decided to up size the mini split to a multi head unit and install a second head in the bedroom and leave the existing one in the main kitchen area.
Which should be simple, but of course isn’t.
First, the outside compressor unit is significantly larger than the previous unit.
I had taken a lot of careful measurements and concluded that the new compressor would be able to just barely fit in the mounting space that I had built for the old one, making the compressor swap tricky, but not terribly hard.
Well, that turned out to not be the case in the real world, and fitting the new compressor unit would eventually require a massive amount of work.
Oops.
Second, the multi zone mini split is a 240vac unit, and our old one was 120vac.
Which isn’t convenient because our trailer’s entire electrical system is only 120vac, so some creativity and special hardware is needed to overcome that issue.
Also, that means the existing head unit needs swapped out for a higher voltage unit, so more work there.
Anyway, what was supposed to be a not-too-terrible job has morphed into a full blown project.
Here’s the trailer pulled into the shop and about to go under the knife.
Again.

Here’s the front end of the trailer dissected and the new, larger compressor unit in the foreground.
It was supposed to be able to just barely fit in the cage where the old one was, which you can see still attached to the trailer with just the top cut off.

After the agony of an entire day of trying to figure out how this much larger compressor unit was going to fit on the tongue of the trailer, I finally came to the conclusion that the entire tongue area needed to be completely torn down and this compressor would require a complete new mounting system engineered, along with a new propane tank mounting system.
This meant that not only the old air conditioner brackets, but the load equalizer and anti sway mounts that I had all so carefully and THOROUGHLY welded to the tongue had to be very carefully cut off now.
That was a loud, dirty and tedious task in itself that took half a day to accomplish without damaging the trailer tongue.

Next, I had to figure out how to mount just the compressor, which was tricky because there really isn’t enough space for it, it needs to be mounted somewhat off center to accommodate the line sets, and it hangs way too far off the tongue.

After drawing up the new mounting system and having the plasma table cut it out of 10ga steel, I put it together and tacked it to the trailer tongue and test fit the compressor. It barely fits.
Then it was time to figure out the propane tank mounting platform-which I wanted to integrate with the AC compressor mounting system-but all the geometry and clearance issues were just too much for me to figure out as one unit so they were built as two separate systems that share some common parts. Here’s the propane mounting “shelf” with a bunch of holes for ventilation that the propane system needs.

Here’s the propane shelf installed.

Then I needed to add some necessary items like access steps, flagpole mount for our Starlink, etc.

Then it had to all get taken apart and painted with some Krylon rattle can.

While that paint was drying, it was time to move to the inside portion of the install, which would prove to have its own unique challenges…

 

[The Chicken]

So moving on to the inside portion of our work trailer air conditioning upgrades-insert record scratch noise here-nope!
Progress on that was halted by things out of our control.
Our favorite camp up on Mingus Mountain had a dig in event where they hit the underground conduit that feeds half of camp with a backhoe, and it was a mad scramble to get them back operational with freezers full of food and some 120 guests due any minute for a week long stay.
When they called us, we immediately started figuring out first what it would take to get them back up and running immediately, and second, what their permanent repair needed to look like.
At our request they got us some pictures of the damage so we could asses what needed to be done. Fortunately, only two conductors suffered any real dam out of the seven that are in that conduit, and they were significantly different so getting them crossed up wasn’t an issue.
We had park staff open up all the panels and junction boxes involved and send us pictures so that we could verify that the damage was limited to the dig in spot. This is important as often times a wire snagged by an excavation machine will get pulled pretty far and can destroy breakers, conduits, boxes , bussing, and even the entire panel. Again, they were fortunate in that none of that extensive damage occurred. So we were able to walk them through the process of temporarily repairing the damaged wires with what they had on had to get the camp back in full operation-and just in time as the first guests were showing up as the temporary repair was completed.
While all that was going on, and for several hours afterwards, we hunted down and ordered the parts and pieces they would need for us to implement a more permanent repair.
Last last week we had everything in finally and we were loading up the Freightshaker into the evening.

Once everything was loaded and secured, we hit bed because the next day was going to be a long one.
We rolled out of bed around 4 am and immediately started preparing the last minute things that needed attended to-like packing food for the day, pre-tripping the truck, double checking parts and load securement, etc.
we hit the I 40 heading east into the rising sun and let the truck eat up the miles towards camp.
About 3 hours later we were back up on the mountain in the cool pines again.

Next, we had to lay eyes on the damage and make sure all was as it had seemed in the pictures and communications that we had received.
It mostly was, and we saw no reason why our plans and the parts we had brought wouldn’t work, so we got right to it.

They got lucky and didn’t hit their gas line that’s just a couple inches from the conduit, so they had that going for them.
First, we shut down all the circuits associated with the damaged conduit, and then removed and carefully labeled each conductor from the electrical panel. Then we cut out the several feet of damaged conduit being careful to not further damage the existing wires.
With that accomplished, we cut out the damaged section of wires, and installed a sweep and riser.

Then we installed a new section of conduit with another sweep and riser on the section of conduit coming from the panel, which was fortunately only about 30’ away.

We taped the whole mess up and together to keep dirt out. We would be re-using the wires in the sweep on the far side of the panel, as it was a several hundred foot run from the point of damage to the next j-box. We would pull new wire from the panel to the new, second sweep.

One thing that they didn’t luck out on was the fact that where the damage was, and consequently where the hand hole or ground junction box would have to be was right in the middle of their main access road. And while that made it easy to accesses the repair site, it also meant that we would have to use a heavy duty traffic rated hand hole, which is pretty expensive and very heavy, but is rated to withstand up to 40,000 pound axle weights.
The box itself weighs 120 pounds, and the lid is another 70 pounds. So we broke out one of our secret weapons to move and position the heavy box that made it super easy.

Having the crane hold the box in place while we back filled around it made this part of the job easy.
Then we had to pull in all the new home run copper conductors.
Once that was done, we began the somewhat tedious task of splicing all the wires back together. Because this is a ground box and a below-grade splice scenario, the appropriate splice blocks are needed. We used direct burial rated, utility grade splices.

Even though these splices are considerably faster and easier than using split bolts, it’s still time consuming, and getting everything to fit in the hand hole just right takes a bit of doing, but we got it done in fairly short order.

Once we were satisfied that all the connections were properly made, it was time to install the steel plate lid.

With the repair completed, the job was almost done-but not quite.
We re-energized the circuits, then went throughout the camp and verified that all the affected areas had proper power and all the appliances were working as they should be.
Once that was verified, we cleaned everything up, loaded up the truck and secured everything, then hit the road west towards home-now driving into the setting sun. Sometimes you just can’t win driving into the sun.
We would finally get back to the shop around 9 pm, where we scrounged a late dinner, some much needed showers, and headed for bed.
A long, but successful day!

 

[HNL2LHC]

I always enjoy your stories. Thank you for sharing. Impressive work as always.

 

[rivermobster]

I always enjoy your stories. Thank you for sharing. Impressive work as always.

X1000

 

[Willie B]

……

 

[callbob]

I am beyond impressed, not only with your workmanship but your work ethic. I needed a nap after following this, it wore me out.