Completing My Solar Install and Creating a Wildlife Pond

The Components for My Solar Install

As you can see in the featured image I am finally nearing completion on my solar install up at Stony Oasis Farms. You might notice I just need a few more battery cables installed and I will be ready to fire it up...and have full power for everything else I need to do.

This is equipment I bought from SunGold Power...you can see their two batteries on the floor, these are 5 KWH batteries for a total of 10 KWH's of storage. I do plan to upgrade these batteries to have 32 KWH's of storage at some point, then these two batteries will be moved over to power my well pump 24/7. Right now I am pumping about 2500 gals of water every sunny day. Once I can run the pump a entire 24 hours if I want, I can then pump an incredible 10,000 gals a day.

I will quickly explain what you are looking at in this solar setup...the batteries are on the floor, they will then feed into the 10,000 watt inverter (the blue unit) via 2/0 battery cables...purposely oversized to accommodate those larger batteries in the future. You can see the battery cables go to two bus-bars, one positive (red) and one negative (black). There will be just one more wire on the negative side that will go into the inverter. On the positive side the cable comes out of the bus-bar, to a oh crap fuse, and then to a simple on off switch, and finally to the inverter.

On the left of the inverter is a 150 amp sub panel which will hold the breakers for all circuits, I am starting out with just the 30 amp 110 circuit for my RV, and just one 20 amp circuit for a normal plugin. I will be adding more breakers and circuits as time goes on. At some point I plan to have two 30 amp RV circuits for folks who want to come visit with their RV. This system can support a 220 circuit, but I do not see the need for that right now.

On the right side of the inverter you can see my solar input, My solar panels are about 50 feet away from this little electrical room, and travel there buried in conduit in the ground. The small electrical box the wires go into has a breaker/shut off, and a surge control device. This is for protection (hopefully) from a lightning strike. Each solar array and the electrical room all have an eight foot ground rod buried 4 feet in the ground basically on the bedrock.

My goal is to have a very trouble free system that can supply much more the I ever need.

My Water Well...It is a Godsend!

One thing I just HAD to have up there is water! I decided long ago there would be no hauling water for this ole man. Plus I simply had to much use for water to be hauling it. So I bit the bullet, and had a well drilled. The well is 360 feet deep, and the driller was drilling a dry hole all the way to around 300 feet. Needless to say, I was getting anxious. A dry hole costs you just as much as if they hit water....so when I saw that water coming up I let out a sigh of relief!

Where Should The Well be Drilled?

A little background as far as determining just where to drill the well, as many of you might be interested. About the only thing one can do to try to figure out where the best place is to drill a water well in that dry country is by water witching. Thing is the aquifer is way down at about 900 feet, and it cost...then, about $70,000 to drill that far. And the water in the aquifer is actually not great up there. What one wants to do is hit a stream, or even a small river that is flowing from the Simcoe Mountains about 20 miles away, and heading for the Columbia river...which is also about 20-30 miles from my property. These streams of water usually run between solid layers of basalt...the primary rock in the area. When drilling my well the bit went through maybe 5 layers of gravel between layers of solid basalt...and that last layer was the golden ticket!

Now back to the witching....

I hired a lady from Portland Oregon who was suppose to be good at witching for water. She witched primarily on top of my little hill, and I did not drill there so not sure if she found water or not. She was confident she did. She also told me to try it, and showed me how. She said some folks have the ability, and some folks simply do not. I used about 4 gauge copper wire for my witching rods. I must say it kinda freaked me out when they seemed to move on their own. As I would walk with them...they would turn and point at the ground. And in the same places they did for her.

So, I began witching myself, and finally worked my way down the hill, and decided that was the place the rods moved the fastest, and the most. I then found out about an old local guy who had been witching for years, I hired him to witch the places I had found...without telling him...low and behold he came to about the same conclusion. So that is where I had them drill. Funny too, I asked the driller where he thought we should drill it, and he was NOT taking that bait...he simply said...."You tell me."

So the well was in and it could keep up with about 6 gals a minute, with no head built up yet...not great, but 6 gals a minute is 360 gals an hour, and about 2500 gals on a sunny day...solar direct, as I set it up. And the pump has enough pressure to run sprinklers I have installed. I was set, and began planting my foodforest.

My Wildlife Pond Supplies All the Animals, and Birds with Water

My well has a grundfos pump in it that can run on veritable electricity...anywhere for 30 volts, to 300 volts...perfect for running solar direct off of the 5 430 watt solar panels I installed for that purpose. I run that water 300 feet up a small hill to a 500 gal tank, and supply 3 frost free spigots, and will soon add a couple more so I have water down where my RV will sit, and to supply a large garden/orchard I will be putting there this next summer.

The system sends some water up the hill all day long....even if it is also running a sprinkler...just the way that worked out. I generally just let the tank fill up, and when it does I have an over flow that just allows the water to soak into the ground on top of the hill. This water the effectively waters everything planted on that hillside...whose roots can get down to the bedrock which is about 4 feet in the ground.

I let this run for a few months that way, then noticed standing water down at the bottom of that hill. I got my little excavator and dug a hole...bedrock was only a few feet down there, and the hole quickly filled with water...so I dug it bigger. And the end result is a small pond that stays full all summer.

I was keeping a stock watering tank full for the animals and birds, and the pond took the chore of keeping it full away!

Ignore the dates on these vids...I have never set them up, and I should just delete them....

Here is Emma enjoying the pond...

One of many digger squirrels agrees with Emma...

And, many of the clutches of endangered western bluebirds that have been raised in one of my birdhouses enjoying the pond...

Turkeys come daily now...

Conclusion

Once I finally get moved up to Stony I will have more time for writing and will share more. I def have alot on my plate right now...but things are getting close for the big move! I can hardly wait to live out in the woods a mile behind a locked gate all by myself! It is going to be awesome!

Are any of you already living this lifestyle? I would love to hear about it in a comment...