Thanks of sharing your information. I was a bit frustrated but I would expect you also were last month. The spool that I bought new, could have been in a place where it could be moist. I’m not sure what the plastic is but if it’s nylon it can absorb quite some moisture and then the yielding strength will drop? After I had changed the original spool with the spool with previous breaking cheap wire, it went better but could not get my finger on why. Perhaps the hole has been worn out.

Your suggestion of another trimmer head I will look into. The trimmer start to vibrate more so I’ll check the bearing and see if the trimmer is disassembable (if that’s a word)

Wauw, that’s quite a setup. Nevermind the state of things, there is always room for improvements. First is that it works. Your intake of solar is quite low compared to your battery size. Are you also aiming for more solar and bigger inverter then? Otherwise it will take days to fill 18kwh.

I am also aiming for a ton of water to be heated, both firewood and solar but have to rebuild the sauna stove for that. To have both stone and water as thermal storage. The stone I aim to also feed with cold in the summer. But I have to think more on that as condens forming is something risky.

Hi, I am very curious on your inverter / battery setting as you said the heatpump is powered by solar. Do you have a hybrid setting or do you have batteries that buffer for the heatpump. As a heatpump is quite some power and needs to have a stable power supply

Ps, living not far from you (Lithuania) and I am interested to built these fence panels for the winter as well.

I have studied the drying of fruits for my work. To get optimal drying the temperature should be 45-60degC with an airflow in it. Of course this design would work but the fruits will take 3 days before the moisture content is around 10%> The design would need a bit more solar surface and a small fan to make the evaporation go faster and exchange the humid air. But it will be a bit more complex though. Small chimney would also work

Nice to see another project of you. I’ll post my chicken coop project in near future as well

Good question on the low power of motors. Most of the low cost pumps have often DC brushed motors which do not need a controller to steer but uses a brush. Once there is not enough power (in the morning and evening) I think there will be a point where the power will be too low to overcome the torque and the motor stops. The centrifugal pump can still rotate easily compared to other types so I would expect the startup current will be low as well. Panels will deliver a constant voltage while the current will drop when light conditions are dropping. I think the simplest is to search for these aQuarium pumps (24/7 performance) on 12v but I doubt many cars/trucks have built in fishtanks ^^)

Glad to be of help. I think you can get away with a 12v pump as most panels of this power range are made for 12/24v. I suggest very simple centrifugal submergable pump with a bit of filtering around it and direct connection to panel. No inverter or battery, that would be way overkill in my opinion.

As an example case, if you need to pump from the pond nearby, 2m height difference and pump 0,25liter per second. ((0,25 *2 *9,81)/0,35)*1,33 = 18,6W ->20wp panel. I did not take into account the hose size butn0,25liter per second is not a lot. And every meter height difference added will add an extra 10W to the panel

I perhaps can help you with this. I’m working in a company that is helping smallholder farmers over the world to increase their crop yield. We used to start with a small hydropowered waterwheel but moved to solar due to the reach of the sun. I am the technical person that is sourcing pumps, solar panels, inverters etc for irrigation.

So far as I can read your question you don’t need a lot of water and also not a lot of pressure. It is quite easy to calculate.

• Hydraulic power need (W) / efficiencies = electric power requirement (W)-> *1.3 = solar panel (Wp)

• Hydraulic power = 9,81 * height differencence of water (m) * liter per second you want to pump

• Efficiencies = centrifugal pumps are approx 35% eff so (hydraulicp/0,35) *1,33= panelsize

• halve a liter per second is sufficient for halve an acre (2020m2) of crops.

Please if you have more questions I would glad to be of help

Good job @hamtron5000, you need to place the cats somewhere 😁. We also built a cat collector last month. The trick with us was the stovepipe that did not allow combustables nearby so the pathway is very small for the cats