I feel spoiled....

Sitting here tonight off grid and I have SoBe Yumberry Pomegranate cooling in the fridge, a decent internet connection and a floor lamp with an LED bulb equivalent to a 65W incadescent version shining over my shoulder. It has been a productive day.

We started the day by mounting the directional antenna for our internet. Last night we took some time to determine the direction for the best signal, then this moning we mounted it to a pole which is attached to the roof and then fine tuned the direction before tightening it down. It's not perfect, but it gives us a stronger signal than we had on our previous trip. We are considering taking down a couple small trees to the north of the house which may help boost the signal as well, plus provide some firewood this winter.

Our 8-step stringers along with all the treads.
The box to the left holds our utility/laundry sink.

We then unloaded the lumber we got for stair treads from the truck. We were originally going to buy six foot length boards and cut them to three foot lengths for each tread. However, we discovered Home Depot did not carry what we wanted in 6 foot lengths, but I was very pleased when they offered to cut the 12 foot lengths they carried into the 3 foot sections at no charge. I had just been hoping to get them to cut them into 6 foot lengths to fit in the truck and then we would saw them in half again at home. I would like to think they offer this service to all their customers as the alternative is that they took pity on us because we are in wandering around the store so much.

By the way, while unloading the stringers yesterday Alan and I again had one of interesting 'he said - I thought' communication moments. The stringers are 10 inch by 2 inch lumber with notches cut where the stair treads will go. As these are treated lumber and we have 6 step and 8 step lengths, they can be a bit heavy. Alan started by sliding two stringers part way out of the truck while saying "Can you take two", to which I asked "Together?" His reply- "No, one at a time is fine if you can't carry two." He knew by my look that we were once again saying the same thing but not meaning the same by it. When I asked "Together?" I meant were we both carrying the two he slid out together - him carrying the front and me carrying the back, but he thought I was asking if I should carry the two boards together - me personally carrying two at one time.

Alan's "belt" from Best Buy
(the blue plastic to the right of his hand)

On to the next project of the day... refrigeration. We actually postponed completing the rest of the battery project in lieu of setting up the propane fridge. We get the fridge into the house, snake the hose through the floor down to where the propane tank goes under the deck and connected the hose to the fridge. By then it was about 11 AM and over 90 degrees. As Home Depot did not sell the larger 40# propane tanks, we still needed to find one. I also needed to do some 'work-work' for a client so we decided to drive into the city, Alan would drop me at Atlanta Bread so I could work for a couple hours without sweating while he went on several errands. When he came back to pick me up he told me he had to pick up a belt while he was in Best Buy because his shorts are now too big. I was surprised Best Buy sold belts, but he assured me it was a very geeky belt and it was even free.

We returned home, hooked the propane tank to the fridge and it is now cooling down. While running his errands, Alan also picked up a floor lamp. This might sound confusing at first, since we had previously said we were going to only use 12 volt DC off of our solar system (we have a solar system!). After much searching, Alan found some very bright, very efficient 12 volt DC LED bulbs that have standard light bulb socket bases. These low voltage DC bulbs can therefore be installed into standard lamps. Alan then connected  our 12 volt solar system into some of the remaining house wiring, allowing him to simply plug the lamp that contained the LED bulbs into a standard outlet in the house! An outlet that used to have 120 volt AC has been repurposed into a 12 volt DC outlet. This will be a good test to see how much the batteries are drained by the lamp as they are not yet connected to the solar panels for recharging.

Our refrigerator - next to our kitchen cabinets for size comparison

We'll keep you updated on how long the fridge runs on a 40# tank

One last bit of humor from today. While driving into town we had a five minute discussion trying to figure out what day of the week it was. My watch only shows it's the 26th which was no help. So I grabbed Alan's smart phone which was charging while we drove, the main screen said 'June 26'. Several screens later and still no day of the week, they all had month and date - we decided his is a 'not-so-smart' phone. I then dug my phone out of my pruse and wa-la it says 'Tuesday June 26'. I guess off grid is also off-calendar.