Outbuildings and why they're great. (Vanport)

[Stinsy]

Sourced two of old skool poly Sharp 170W panels. The lady is looking for £50 for the pair. Will collect tomorrow in Aboyne in the last remaining van to give it a decent run before France.

15p/Wp seems a little steep!

Is what it is. I'm ok with paying a little more to access relifeing gear. Could have pushed for £40 for the pair as I'll be replacing the connectors but I'm happy enough. I am particularly taken with the hand built quality of these panels.

Are they MC3?

[Joeboy]

15p/Wp seems a little steep!

Is what it is. I'm ok with paying a little more to access relifeing gear. Could have pushed for £40 for the pair as I'll be replacing the connectors but I'm happy enough. I am particularly taken with the hand built quality of these panels.

Are they MC3?

Yep.

[Joeboy]

A total of 8 panels on the vanport, call it 3.3kWp. They are running across three different systems but in the end it all gets used or exported.



The way is now clear to break into the small courtyard area that the van will drive through but I'll stand by on that until I've seen No1 son for the little bit of garden I'm nicking and got his approval.

[Fueltheburn]

Come here bull! I am going to grab your horns.

There has been too much peer pressure and jealousy recently. Sod it.
Trees lopped. One was hanging over the farmers field anyway.
Machinery ordered, scraping has begun in prep for a slab.







When you realise 10 minutes in you are shifting more dirt than you anticipated. Time for another machine to be sent on site.

[Joeboy]

"There has been too much peer pressure and jealousy recently. Sod it."



Well done!

[Fueltheburn]

This was a last week thing.
Literally been wanting my steel portal for nearly 10 years.
Saw everybody else's progresses and decided enough was enough.
I am paying £150/month for car storage, £170/month for electric. £250/month for fuel.
Get up steel portal and plaster in solar panels and these figures drop dramatically. The shed pays for itself in 2 to 3 years if I swap to a second hand electric car.

I could even start making money with storage or selling energy back to the grid. The £10 to 15k expenditure on ground work plus frame and roofing starts making financial sense rapidly. This was the wake up call when I saw Joe's ASHP, solar panels and grid storage setup.

The other benefit is, it may in fact drop the EPC of my 200 year old house from a C to an A because of being off-grid with excess energy produced.

I am aiming for a 7m x 9m steel portal. I will update further in time. I was V.V close to going with a sealed carport based on the figures I was seeing.
I need a car lift though and the height with the slant was a bit prohibitive.

[Joeboy]

Good on ye. Well done for ceasing procrastination. We make ten to twelve quid a day here on export. £70 a week.

To me that is a lot of money. Passive, drip feeding into our Winter VB. I hope you get there soon too.

[Joeboy]

A mate came to visit yesterday. He very kindly brought us a 12V wash down gun for the van.

It certainly boosts pressure and increases throw. I also washed off front windows & facial.

[Stinsy]

If you’re washing windows (or even rinsing cars/vans) then RO water is a really good idea. I get it in 25L jugs from the aquarium store.

[Joeboy]

I'd been thinking about how to hold the two walkway used solar panels up in the air with no ground supports. I'm having a crack at putting together a set of diy glulam beams on a wall mounted rail.

Once again I'm doing it from spares. In this case from spare engineered board from flooring out the loft space. Good fun and excellent to do in the vanport. Lot of lateral space and easily swinging 2.4mtr boards around in there.

I know of RO water but not played about with it.