It has been quite a while since I
last updated the blog. There has been a lot done on the house.
The first thing we did was to finish installing the
sliding glass door.After I got the vertical beams installed, I needed to get the horizontal ones. In order to do this, I had to make sure the height was going to be precise with the sub floor, backer board, and tile.
This was after I used the plasma cutter to cut the bottom line across.
Here is after I got the top cut out.
The next thing was welding the two horizontal beams in place to finish out the door frame.
At that point, the door was ready to be installed.
After that, I finished up the last of the roof, at least almost the last. I still need to do the very last tiles. I am waiting because they will need to be ground down as well as the back side before applying the coal tar epoxy. One more gallon should finish it up.
The next thing we did was to apply Por 15 to all of the vertical support i-beams. Por 15 is one of the best sealants to use. We did just the vertical beams right now so that we could go ahead and install the subflooring.
We got all of the subflooring installed.
The next thing we did was to begin framing out the interior walls. So far, we have gotten the bathroom, part of the bedroom, and part of the kitchen framed.
This picture was taken of the bedroom framing.
This was framing of the bathroom.
I went back last weekend to begin installing the solar panels and there was a serious problem. Mold had formed on the framing because I had used regular wood. Thankfully there is a special coating you can apply to prevent mold in the future. I first sprayed down the mold with bleach and killed all of it off. Next weekend, I will be applying the coating which can be applied directly to the mold if anymore has formed.
The next thing I did was to begin installing the electrical system. Currently, there will be 400 watts of solar panels. I am going to upgrade that to 800 watts in the near future. I needed to make the 4 gauge wires to connect the batteries together. That is not an easy task. You have to use a crimping device that requires a sledge hammer since the connectors are so thick.
I have installed four 105 amp hour batteries. Yeah, I did not get all of them hooked up because I did not have the nuts for two of the batteries. I chose this plastic shelf because it is not vulnerable to acid if a leak occurred.
After I got the batteries setup and the cables made, I installed the fuse panel and regulator. I am using the 40 amp Renogy Commander regulator. I used 8 awg wiring to connect it all up. I also used a regular fuse box on the right for wiring my fuses. There are twelve negative terminals and 12 positive terminals.
I also got some of the wiring run throughout the house last weekend. I found these 12v outlets that will work great for us.
Finally, the last thing I got done was to get our street number and put up a street number post. The post office told me that since this is a secondary home, a mailbox is not required. I wanted to get the post up ASAP because if something happened and we needed an ambulance for example, there needed to be a street number there for them to find us. I installed this with solar lighting on top of it.
