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181
Growing Food & Cooking / Re: 2026 garden season, what are you growing?
Last post by Bruce S -
We use OKRA in a variety of things, good in a gumbo, great as a soup thickener and if ALL HELL breaks loose it's a half decent substitute for coffee. Takes a boat load of seeds to make even a 10 cup pot, BUT when 1 plant will make pods until the freeze kills the plant  ;) .

Cheers
Bruce S
186
Storage, Batteries & Management / Re: Clear LiFePo battery
Last post by Bruce S -
It is a neat battery to say the least.
Yes , there is a BMS mounted onto the top of the battery .
The plastic makes getting decent pics and challenge.
I have an opaque light that I'm going to try and backlight it for better pics this coming week.
I put a little 17W 12Vdc panel on it yesterday, just to see how it's going to workout.
 It ran right up to 13.75 and just seemed to stay there.
I know the smallish panel will take a month to even get close to charging it up and believe once the battery got up to 13.75 I was at the panels best output.
I had veggies to get out in the raised beds and covered before the overnight chill came whistling in.
More to follow.

Cheers
Bruce S
188
Storage, Batteries & Management / Clear LiFePo battery
Last post by Bruce S -
I'm turning to the learned community people here for some informed decision making.
I was given this cool looking CLEAR (see-thru) 12Vdc 100Ah LiFePo Battery and I'm trying to decide which way to go with it.
 
I've certainly tested the charging with a proper LiPo solar charger from my current controller and 1/2dozen panels & I've tested it
with a 900W 12Vdc inverter, It did just fine.
Here's a nice view of the bolt holes for mounting proper connections to the top.
My current solar set up is nice and balanced.
I do have one of Glen's diversion controllers that'd I'd like to get back to using.

My quandary: Do I redesign my other little setup that has a cute little 12V 30W portable panel and use the diversion controller OR go with a new  proper charger and use the diversion to charge down stream batteries?
My Veggie grow light don't have any problems with running off a MSW inverter and this would free up the ProSine inverter.

 Whatcha think?

Kind Regards
Bruce S
Clear_LiFePo 100Ah Battery.jpg
189
General Discussion / Re: Weather!
Last post by Bruce S -
Walked out with the dog at 03:40 with 25mph winds and 18F.
By Friday it'll be near 80s ,,, go figure

However on a good note: this has been a very good test of a diesel heater I picked up a year back!!
I also was wise enough to purchase diesel at <3.50/gal. That along with waste oil is working out very well.

Only issue is the noisy pump, but since I have it running outside (not the best idea, but,,,) and hooked up to a 3gal pale. It's doing nicely.
FYI: I only run the waste oil at 1/3 instead of 1/2 like most others do.
Happy St. Patty's DAY!!
Cheers
Bruce
190
General Discussion / Re: Weather!
Last post by MaryB -
-1f this morning! luckily not much wind... shoveled out to my mailbox yesterday, snow was like concrete, I could have walked on top of it!
191
Growing Food & Cooking / Re: 2026 garden season, what are you growing?
Last post by Bruce S -
We do leaf lettuce in containers now , can't keep up with the rabbits! freezers currently full.

We found out the hard way , our resident marsupial (Marsha) likes young spinach leaves.
 Don' t mind too much as she hates squirrels and runs them off, right up a tree and out of the area if she sees them, but those leave looked so good,,, right up till she ate them.

We've done spinach in our cool basement in different years, always does really well, but the local Farmers were all but giving it away so we stopped. We're now back doing it since prices are going nuts for this stuff.
192
General Discussion / Re: Weather!
Last post by Bruce S -
First came the wind, then came the high winds that knocked all the tree buds off the limbs onto my car.
Rain followed by sleet followed by 30+mph winds.
Was a perfect day to work on getting lazy inside  :)) .

St. louis, MO went from a great Saturday in the mid 60s to 25 went our coffee pot started up this Monday morning.
Winds cranking up to 40+ on the drive in this AM was a whole lot of fun!!
Cheers
Bruce S
193
General Discussion / Weather!
Last post by MaryB -
MN just got smacked by a huge winter storm. I only got ~2 inches of snow but 45mph winds have it a total whiteout/all the roads in my part of the state are closed until they can clear cars/semi trucks that are stuck/in the ditch.

SE MN got 19 inches of snow in less than 24 hours! I am SW/West Central area(~60ish miles form South Dakota) so opposite side of the state.
194
Growing Food & Cooking / Re: 2026 garden season, what are you growing?
Last post by MaryB -
I have grown spinach in winter is my south facing bay window, lettuce too! Gets a LOT of sun and lettuce does okay with shorter days. Slower to bolt. It just bolted 2 weeks ago and got bitter! Small 24 inch by 12 inch flats but I am just feeding myself and lettuce regenerates after being picked. Beginning of March I think it starts to get to much sun heat during the day...
195
Growing Food & Cooking / Re: 2026 garden season, what are you growing?
Last post by Bruce S -
Mary B;
We grow our veggies from saved seeds.
Got 12 Beefsteaks 12 heirloom 12 sweet 100s. All in 6" pots just waiting for this weekend's snow before they go outside to harden off.
Butternut Squash 3 plants for us, 2 plants for Marsha the Marsupial :_)
two types of cucumbers 1 for making fridge pickles :-)
Trying out 3 different types of Okra this year.
Couple mild peppers
Tons of flowers
3 1/2 meter flats of leaf lettuce.
trying out indoor planting of spinach , held up well over the winter in our basement.

Cheers
Bruce S
196
Growing Food & Cooking / 2026 garden season, what are you growing?
Last post by MaryB -
So far my seed order has 2 types of lettuce, spinach, carrots, broccoli raab, cabbage, beans, peas, taters(seed taters), onions(sets)... I will pick up tomato plants in May, and pepper plants. Maybe some strawberries to start in a raised bed. Cukes and squash/pumpkins too have been ordered. Cutting back more this year, my back is not happy with me lately!
197
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by Bruce S -
Wow! Those are nice. You're going to need to update your sig at the bottom soon :-)
198
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by MaryB -
should be fine, most breakers are rated for surge currents that are quite a bit higher.

I would run it and feel the breaker body, see if it is getting hot. If an older breaker replacing it wouldn't be a bad idea, they do wear out over time.
199
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by SparWeb -
At first glance it would seem like the string voltage would run up to about 350V if I put 10 panels in series.  Here's the label to see where that comes from.
20260215_213507_Label - Copy.jpg

Based on that, I might think that with higher voltage, there's less current, allowing for a cheaper wire run.  But that's the STC rating, and it doesn't seem to happen in real life.  The panels already on my garage roof have about the same specs, though different construction.  They usually don't go past 300V and in fact spend a lot of time between 240VDC and 290 VDC. Lower in the summer.

The upshot is that the current will be almost the same in AC or DC.  I won't save much money on wire, but to run DC I must dig up the old trench, probably damaging the existing wire, and lay down two new conduits of wire.  To run a separate trench causes me to circumnavigate a number of trees, making the dig much longer.  I'm not seeing the advantage.

The feed from the house to the barn is already 240VAC, 30A.  It's enough that these panels won't overload anything.  I'm not sure about back-feeding the 30A breaker with (up to) 25A, though.