A look back at our 2020 big project

 Each year here at the farm we try to tackle  one major project each year. It doesn't always happen as smoothly  and last year was no exception.

The following post as usual contains many photographs,( hopefully not too many) but that is what I do, I love to look back at all our photos that record our progress through the years.

The plan for early last year was to remove our old carport which had seen better days, and to replace it with a much bigger covered area which would be much more user friendly.

Brian dismantled it piece by piece with the help of the tractor and bucket.

All the pieces have been stored to rebuild later as a cover for the tractor in a different location .

The excavation work then began to create a 12mtr X 8mtr area for the new carport.

The metal rio was delivered and Brian marked out his area, all nice and level ready to be concreted.

And then Covid-19 happened, and we all went into lock down and nothing was able to be done for several months.

As soon as we heard that restrictions were being lifted and the number of people allowed to gather had increased our concrete friends contacted us and said "Let's get this done".

So the following weekend, over they came from Dubbo, our friend and his step son who is also a concreter.

Our son  and my brother also arrived ready to muck in and help get the job done.

The first of our two concrete trucks arrived,

Between really worrying showers of rain, we finally got it all laid.

I supplied a cuppa for all the workers.

Our friend's stepson,  then worked on the surface finish for hours, battling more showers of rain, eventually he and his helicopter finishing machine won and it came up beautifully.

The next morning Brian and my brother cut  lines into the concrete to help reduce any cracking  in the concrete in the future.

We let the concrete cure for a few weeks, and organized delivery of the steel for the carport structure.

Brian started to attach the steel brackets to the house which in turn would have the  new carport beams attached to them also.

My ever wonderful, hardworking and helpful big brother returned to help Brian erect the framework.

Followed shortly after by my other brother from Sydney, although not 100% well was determined to get away from Sydney for a while and lend a hand where he could.

Once again they worked between small scuds of rain , but made good progress.

Finally the last of the big cross beams was lifted up.

After two days of hard work by the boys, it was really taking shape.

The next morning the boys did all the smaller joining bars in ,

And then, stretched the chicken wire right across the top of the structure ready for the foil insulation and roofing.

It had been a huge job and was really starting to look great,  many thanks to all our wonderful helpers.

We had a few weeks break for the boys to recover a bit after all their hard work and my brother and sister in law arrived for the weekend to help get the insulation and roof on.

Another short break followed and some decisions on what to do in regards to a retaining wall.

Our concreter friend had a great solution of using  metal posts with concrete panels slotted between the posts into special grooves.

So we picked up  the posts from the steel manufacturer.

Then, once the concrete panels had been made to order we picked them up.

They were loaded onto the truck with a forklift and were  unloaded easily using the tractor and special lugs lent to us by our friend.

My brother returned on queue ready for another heavy weekend's work, he really is a treasure.

The boys worked really hard, digging holes, and  cementing the posts in after knocking them down to the correct depth.

The got the first level of panels completed the first day.

The next morning, they started  early on the second level, some of the panels needed to be ground down a bit to fit into the grooves on the steel posts.

After a few hours work the boys had the second row complete.

We then took another good break, and only recently we have started filling in behind the retaining wall, We are doing this slowly and leaving it until it rains and then adding more soil so that it begins to settle well. My brother from Sydney returned for a visit and I took a photo of him pretending to work to send to a friend of his.

There is still a bit more work to finish off the ends and neaten it up but we are very pleased with our final product. It houses the caravan, car and utility with still plenty of room to spare. we feel it is a real asset to our house.

This project was a huge undertaking that was thankfully made easier with help from some great family and friends for which we will be forever grateful.

So until we meet up again next time,

Take Care,

Stay Safe

Cheers

Jane and Brian.

Rumble, Flash, Bang and our solar system was gone !

 It was Thursday the 3rd December 2020, we had just enjoyed a lovely lunch with Brian's brother Bill and his wife Yvette who were visiting from Brisbane,ready to get together with the brother next door for a working bee and there were a few storm clouds and thunder rolling around  so we decided to sit out on the back verandah , have a cuppa and wait it out as the plan was to build some new metal stockyards at next door's farm.

All of a sudden there was  a big rumble, a really bright lightning flash that lit up the whole sky and an almighty bang, the effects of which radiated up through the concrete and we felt through our bodies.

Within minutes a pungent burning smell wafted on the air and we knew we had a problem, all our power was dead. 

On investigation we found that the lightning had struck a large gum tree about 100 metres from our house.

It had ripped the bark off the tree and had uprooted the ground around the base of the tree.

The boys immedietly checked out our solar system as we are completely off grid to see what damage had occurred.

Everything was dead !, It seemed that everything had died, the panels, the regulators, the inverters and on further inspection our solar bore as well.The top of the bore pump was still red hot to the touch about an hour later. The next door neighbours also lost their bore and told us that flames had shot out of their landline phone when the lightning hit.

Our battery banks were checked but they seem to have escaped unscathed.

The boys started up our generator as we needed to keep everything going in the house and we contacted our insurance company.

Although our generator was powerful enough to run our house, it had to be refueled every 3 hours which became a problem. On hearing of our plight, two wonderful friends in town told us to come and borrow their generator as it  only needed  to be fueled up every 12 hours. We took them up on their kind offer.

The insurance company organised a solar company to come and assess and quote for replacement of our entire system, his quote  ended up being too high and a second quote had to be obtained  and they (LJW Solar) became the successful  installer.We had a 3.5 Klw  24 volt  stand alone system but it was to be replaced with a 4 klw  48 volt stand alone system.

As the  installer said he couldn't do the installation until after the 17th January and diesel  for the generator was a large expense we approached the insurance company to see if they could help out. On explaining to them that we needed to run the generator through the night for my sleep apnea machine they immediately agreed to not only pay for the fuel but to hire us a very large generator to run   everything and it had to be refueled every 24 hours.

After about a week the big new generator arrived from a hire company about an hour or so away.

Unfortunately, the big new generator for some reason refused to run our house and 2 electricians had to be called to come the next morning and change a few things in our meter box in the shed and on our back verandah to get it to work properly( something about too many earths working against each other)

Everything worked fine, we got into a routine of having to stay put here on the farm, keeping an eye on that generator, popping into town every 5 days to fill up the 200 litre drum with diesel and refueling every afternoon.

As we expected everything seemed to drag on, and finally about the 20th Janauary the installer came up from Sydney to do a site inspection.

He arranged for the installation to happen late January/ early February

By this time the tree that the lightning struck had died ,

Brian decided to remove the old equipment off the wall in the shed and the panels off the roof.

A friend helped Brian remove the last of the panels and support frames.

The big generator had to be serviced at allocated running hours and the servicemen traveled over  to do this.

It was about at this time, due to dirty water passing through our washing machine , caused it to breakdown and we had to have a repairman  come to repair and it was covered thankfully under warranty. Brian also decided to install an inline cartridge filter to catch any sediment to prevent this happening again in the future.

 I think it was about this time that the  reality of being here so constantly and that ever constant hum of that generator up the back really started to get to me. I found I was tired and not sleeping well and had become very irritable. The installation of the solar system was pushed back until the 8th February and then to the 16th February. The  solar installer then contacted us to let us know that he had subcontracted the solar bore installation to the person who had originally installed our bore in the first place.

The bore installer Justin arrived and got busy, Brian helped him where he could.

After the wiring  was  all connected up, we had running bore water pumping  again.

It was shortly after this the   service men came back to service the generator,

Only to find that when they went to restart it, the fuel pump had died and they had to return the generator   and bring a replacement one to us  later that day.

After the bore pump had been replaced, unbeknown to us the pump down the bottom of the 300 ft hole had not switched off, this then caused our pressure pump to burn out and Brian had to replace it.

The solar installation had been pushed to the 22nd February and they arrived on schedule  around 3pm  after traveling from Sydney.

They unloaded their gear and began work immediately getting some of the work done inside the shed.

They also installed the support framework on the roof to house the 11 new  370 watt solar panels.

The installers stayed locally in town at the pub and returned nice and early the next morning to get back to work.

The intsallation of the inverters and wiring  seemed to come together very quickly, but they told us much of the equipment was pre -wired and pre- set in Sydney

.

The team of installers from LJW Solar were friendly  fellows, who worked expertly,  quickly, quietly and  were super efficient  at cleaning up after themselves, taking every bit of rubbish away with them.

While they were working we asked them if it was alright for Brian to put up the drone and take a couple of  photos from up above, and they were happy to  say yes. They also gave permission for me to use photos of them in the blog and on Facebook.

We can't speak highly enough of our insurers, they have been super efficient, courteous  and friendly and understanding of our plight, always returning calls when they said they would and being ever helpful to us. The delays and issues we had were mainly  from other sources and although frustrating at times it all has worked out great in the end.

The new system has been up and running  about 2 weeks now and we are especially pleased with it, there have been no hiccups  or problems and the changeover to 48 volt at their suggestion seems to have been a wise choice.

We have had a few changes of power here over the years , going from the original 2 car batteries and 6 small 30 watt panels, to second hand Telstra batteries and cheap ebay panels on a 12 volt system, to then purchasing 2 new big  battery banks and big inverters about 6 years ago and changing to a  24 volt system to this new and efficient 48 volt system we now have today.

Sometimes  things do happen for a reason and we have been looked after.

Take care, stay safe,

Cheers,

Jane and Brian.