Slow Progress On Solar Panel Bracket And Visiting Family.

Our Location today is Tecumseh, Ontario, Canada.

After many failed attempts at fixing the Bad Request 400 Error we are still unable to add pictures to tonight's blog post. Hopefully this can be fixed by tomorrow evening.

When we heard the weather forecast last night that our area was going to hit the freezing mark we thought that it might be a wise idea to close the windows before we went to bed. The forecast ended up being wrong because the temp actually went down to 30 F (-1 C) but with the cool west winds it felt much colder. Even though we didn’t have the heat turned on in the apartment having the windows closed didn’t give either of us any fresh air. What that meant was we both spent quite some time tossing and turning or sitting in the living room in hopes of not disturbing the other until we felt tired enough to go back to bed. Of course we both did that at different times so we didn’t know about the other’s night until we were having breakfast. While having breakfast we were treated to the sun shining in the apartment which helped to lift our spirits even though we were both in an anchor dragging state to start off the day. After completing our morning reading Kathy got back into researching things to see and do when we head towards the southwest next year in the fall.

I had to start cutting the piece of aluminum square tubing we purchased yesterday to make the braces for the solar panel tilt system. Since all the cutting is being done with a Hacksaw and cleaning done with a file making mistakes on the limited material is not an option. I’d completed all that cutting by the time Kathy called me to lunch.

When you are putting things together like this you try to see the flaws in the design before going too far and I did.  Since I needed to create a channel effect for the latches but only had a larger sized aluminum angle the solution would be to rip the material to the size that is needed. This will also help save investing in additional materials that would only be partially used. The drawback is the process of cutting the materials to the exact size needed takes time. Being retired gives us a little time between personal projects for ourselves and our kids. The fact that we are now in the middle of the fall season also puts us in a rush mode.

We left the apartment at 2:30 to go visit our daughter Karen at her home. She was in the middle of a multi-meal cooking day similar to what Kathy often does. Kylla was visiting with her boyfriend Noah while she tried to clean her room. Tyler was doing homework plus cleaning his room. Greg had to work the Afternoon shift today. As we were about to leave Karen showed me a problem that she was having with the front yard landscaping. She then asked if I could help fix it. Good thing I’m retired!

We stopped at Home Hardware where I returned a package of Stainless Steel stove bolts and picked up longer ones to be used on this solar panel project. Our next stop was at Value Village where we donated a number of things we won’t need when we go Fulltime next spring. It was past 5:00 and we hadn’t taken anything out of the freezer at the apartment so we used one of our last coupons at Arby’s and had a tasty supper that we didn’t have to cook nor clean up afterwards.

Even though we made some progress today there is a lot more to do and the time is slowly slipping away. Thanks for following along and feel free to leave a comment. Be Safe and Enjoy!

It’s about time.

Krackers

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