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21
Soil and Growing / 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...
22
Soil and Growing / 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
23
Soil and Growing / 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!
24
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 :-)
25
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.
26
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.
28
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by bigrockcandymountain -
Would it make sense to run new lines and run high voltage DC to the house and put the inverter there?  Then you get to watch it.  A bit of digging, but cheap wire at least.  Then you could charge an EV right at the house with a string inverter / EV charger.  I know of at least one of those, and they look pretty slick. 
29
Solar / Re: Free Panels !
Last post by SparWeb -
Quote from: bigrockcandymountain – on
Well that's a huge win.  Will you do a ground mount?  That should cover the Ev charging and then some.

After the time it took to load up the truck, I'd recovered from the surprise a little, and I told Pierre that "when I get an EV, you've just fueled it up for ever."

I'm having so much fun figuring out how I want to set them up.  Right now I'm concentrating on the barn roof.

That would put these panels 200 feet away from the house, and over 400 feet from the utility pole.  That could cause a voltage RISE which is the opposite of voltage drop which we're more used to hearing about.  The panels will raise the voltage on the circuits in the barn, possibly too high and trigger the high voltage threshold shut-down.