It is raining so I’m spending the time prepping wood. Besides ripping it to the correct length, I’m drilling pocket holes on each end so it will be ready to go.
Cutting more wood
Thoughts on Solar
I took an introductory class about solar powering one’s home at TxRx Labs. It was very well done — I learned quite a bit about maximizing energy and the difference between a cheap controller and an expensive one (hint: the features included in the expensive version are necessary if one is serious).
One of the topics that kept coming up was ROI (return on investment). How long before you “pay off” your system by selling the electricity to the grid? There were all sorts of charts and the like provided on what kind of system, how big the panels, etc.
I realized that I don’t care. My goal in going solar isn’t to make money or pay off anything. It is simply to take that expense out of my life forever (or for several decades). I won’t have to worry about running my A/C during the summer and getting a massive bill. I won’t feel cheated because I have to pay $30 for the cost of the lines and poles on top of my usage (which often falls below the “minimum” amount, so I get a mandatory fee on top of that).
To a lesser extent, I’ll feel a bit more treehugger-ish because I’m not relying on dirty power generation. If I can add enough capacity to charge an electric car (or at least top it off), that’s even better.
Attaching the House to the Trailer
From my own research, this is a “controversial” topic: some folks say it is required and others say not to bother.
Does it make sense to attach the house to the trailer? The weight of the house should be enough to keep it on the trailer as in, will it blow off while you’re driving down the road? No. If I’m worried about tipping over, then the house is destroyed anyway.
Tumbleweed suggests welding threaded rods onto the trailer that are then passed up through the subfloor, sole plate of the wall and a HDU5 holdown. I decided to not go this route, because I would have had to strip the paint from the trailer and I didn’t like the position of where I’d have to place the rods (too close to the interior of the house).
So what to do?
It turns out that my trailer has stake pockets for adding a railing. So my idea is to create a bracket that will clip to the bottom of the bracket and hold a threaded rod.
Here’s a video of me welding the plate and then grinding and polishing it.