Solar installation, part 2 and other news

The work continued on the solar panels last Monday with the cement delivery.  Before I left for work, I gave Terry my little camera, showed him the on/off button and the button to take pictures. I warned him about getting his fingers in front of the lens. “Take a lot of pictures,” I reminded him. “It’s all digital.” I didn’t even attempt to explain the wide/tight function as I figured that would be too much technology. In the end, he took many good pictures.

When I got home, Terry didn’t even wait until I took off my coat to give me an earful about how the day had gone, and he wasn’t using his inside voice, either. I will relate the story as best I was able to piece it together. If you know my husband, you probably also know how his train of thought skips around when he’s aggravated.

Because it was a cold day and the holes were below the water table, Paul ordered the cement as thick as they could make it and with extra added sodium, both of which would facilitate having it set up quickly.  The trouble was that they couldn’t get the cement to go down the chute of the delivery attachment of the skid steer loader. Paul had had so much confidence in the system that he hadn’t even brought a shovel. Terry got two shovels from the tractor shed, and he and Rocko filled the first 8 holes by unloading the bucket by hand because the cement truck was there and ready to deliver.

Paul goes after a load of cement. The cement truck was parked on the road for 4 hours.

Meanwhile, Paul called the skid steer rental company. They dispatched a young man to fix the cement hauler.

The skid steer loader with the cement attachment

Each hole had about a foot of water in the bottom. Rocko set up the pump to get the water out of the first hole. He took the pump out while Paul went to get the first load of cement. More water flowed into the hole from the surrounding saturated soil. Rocko put the pump back in the hole where he left it until Paul got back with the cement.

The pump in the hole

The end of the hose pumping the water out

Rocko and Paul had an ongoing disagreement about whether the posts should go into the hole before (Rocko) or after (Paul) the cement was in the hole. “Rocko was right, of course,” Terry said, “because the cement was so thick. I suppose Paul’s method would have worked with thinner cement. But I didn’t say nothin’.” Unfortunately, because Paul was the boss, he won. Rocko and Terry wrestled the posts into place through the cement.

The first four posts in

After the guy from the rental company showed up, they did get the chute to operate for the last four holes.

Fix-it guy looks at the cement attachment

Nothing yet

One more adjustment

Finally the cement comes out!

All the posts in

Terry was exhausted and covered with cement at the end of the day. His right hand was so painful he could hardly run the TV remote (a crisis indeed!). In spite of his complaining about having to help, I think secretly he was glad to have been useful. His summary statement was, "Paul would have been screwed if I hadn't been here!"

An exhausted, wet, and cement-covered Terry at the end of the day

He would have rested Tuesday except that we got snow, and he had to shovel. He promised me he would rest on Wednesday.

Just before I left for work Wednesday, Paul called Terry. He wanted to come out and install the inverters. Because we built the tractor shed before the house, that’s where the electricity comes onto the property, and that’s where the inverters had to go. Terry would not have a day of rest. He had to go to the tractor shed, empty and take down the shelves that were where the inverters had to go.

By the end of the day, the inverters were in, the utility guy had come out to mark the underground wires, half of the solar panels as well as several boxes of (I assume) hardware were in the garden shed, and the first crossbeam was attached to the posts.

The outside of the inverters to the right of the meter

The inverters inside the tractor shed where Terry used to have all his paint on shelves

The first cross beam, installed on Wednesday

The solar panels and boxes of stuff (right) in the garden shed

There was no more activity for the rest of the week, presumably because the cement has to cure for a full 7 days before much weight can be put on it. Paul says he needs 7 more 8-hour days to finish.

In other news, my father turned 90 on Wednesday. We met my brother and sister-in-law for lunch Friday to celebrate.

Dad's 90th birthday lunch ended with lemon layer cake

Christmas is officially over now.  We have eaten all the baked cookies out of the freezer. Last week, I frosted a chocolate cake with the chocolate frosting left over from the Christmas bison. Today I sliced and baked the log of peppermint pinwheel cookies that I froze on cookie day in December. The fact that we are eating Christmas cookies in March suggests that we make too many cookies, but we can’t seem to decide which kind to cut. Maybe we can be more restrained next year. Maybe not.

The very last Christmas cookies