Most reacted posts

I was speaking with a guy I sorta/kinda know at a local watering hole this evening, and he was crying into his beer that he had just spent $1700 on a 50 gallon hot water heater. I said, "Well, at least you'll get a good-sized rebate and tax credit for it being a heat pump type." IT WASN'T! This...

While some yell that Victron equipment was overpriced before (mostly those who were always too cheap to buy it, I notice) I think they deserve a big round of applause for passing on savings to the customer when they are able to do it. And some here need to stop inventing alleged problems and...

May I respectfully suggest you go up to your original post, hit the "edit" link, and post an UPDATE sentence there, noting that this is clearly not Current Connected's fault? Many people come to this site looking for quick answers, and don't read all the way through a thread. Dexter (Current...

One of the pics I snapped outside our house a few minutes ago. Every UPS in the grid-connected buildings was beeping like mad (Had to shut two down) so the grid here in Maine going crazy. But my Victron equipment (off grid "shed" buildings on the property) and everything attached to it...

A couple more shots for you folks...

Another vote for DIY systems that power an entire home, including garage. Preferably off grid but maybe a mix of off grid and grid tie. @HighTechLab did a video or two with the Ambition Strikes couple out in Idaho that was interesting, but a bit too high level and entertainment-focused (not...

1) I commented on page 1 of this thread (summary: Loves me some Victron!), then came back today and it's 10 pages long. I haven't bothered to read pages 3-10, but will say: 2) The world, and this forum, is divided into two camps: One camp pays more for quality. They invest it in things that...

Re: the cardboard box and fire hazard discussion ... As an old fart in a tiny rural community who still volunteers to get pulled out of bed to drive a fire truck to someone's house in the middle of the night, hoping we can save it (and praying everyone got out before we get there), I can...

Had our well for the new place drilled a few weeks back, before we start construction. Driller has been at it for 30+ years, great reputation in the area, and I trust him. Came in significantly under the price quoted (and we got 48 gallons/minute at 280 feet!). When I told him we were likely to...

My father was incredibly smart but grew up poor, and lacked higher education. So, he pushed college like mad (while giving me great DIY practical skills, as the thread title and my original post note). I ended up getting an MBA and worked in the corporate world before starting my own company...

Being an admin/ moderator on a forum is a tough job. Almost all of us post answers that others could reasonably debate and anyone can get a little bit testy in a disagreement. But at a certain point, after a mountain of just plain wrong information is posted with massive amounts of attitude, I...

This. Amen! I have friends who say, "But it won't cost you anything because you'll make so much extra power in the summer, blah blah, blah." Well, yeah, except it's going to cost me a ton of aggravation, a zillion pages of forms, justifying things to an endless stream of bureaucrats and...

Best solar gadget I bought in 2023: Victron SmartShunt. Super accurate, and dramatically better than the "guesstimate at best" the inverter-charger was attempting before that. Well worth the money.

With respect, I question this for a heat pump rated to -13F, at 20F. Unless your baseboard heat is cheaper because you use it to heat a smaller area, or you have something at play such as duct leaks in a ducted heat pump situation, I'd suggest you take a closer look at the actual energy being...

About two years after we bought our place here in rural Maine, and after we installed mini-splits, the power company sent a person out to see why our usage was so much higher than in past years. They hadn't read our meters (we have two, one on each main building) for about six months as we live...

Years ago, I drove a diesel Mercedes sedan (300SD) that somewhere along the line we named Bessie. We finally pulled it off the road at over 443K miles due to frame rust caused by over two decades of PA road salt (for safety). But in all that time and miles, we had done nothing more to it than...

I's guess that any of those heaters you show are "ventless", which means the combustion is generally somewhat "complete" but you are using room air for that combustion, and then releasing anything left over back into the room, which is the downside. "Complete" is therefore a misleading term from...

It ain't cable or fiber, so if that's your expectation, you may as well send it back now. But if you don't have other good options, give it a few days to settle in, gather data, and adjust itself (which it will likely do several times in the first few days). We got ours fairly early into the...

I wish Pioneer or other companies that demand equipment be installed by a "professional" would offer a list of contractors by zip code who would perform those installations. The fact that they don't exist in many places is probably the reason they don't do that. I just installed a propane Rinnai...

My Starlink seems OK, but the UPS powering the router (I don't use the SL router) is going nuts along with others. Everything touching the grid here is going nuts, but the off grid buildings on our property are undisturbed. Pretty wild...

Possibly, although I think my Victron system is just about as easy to understand, and with a Cerbo GX, as easy to engage with, as an AIO (with more reliability than many, I'd argue - but that's a debate we'll never resolve! ?). There's probably not a great solution, but I think having outside...

Everything is perspective, I guess. Here in Maine, two nights ago it was 1F and we have about 6-8 inches of snow on the ground. My entire 1.7 miles of road to the house is covered in packed snow and ice (sanded it twice last week). But in the past 24 hours I've heard my wife, my well driller...

Warning - bit of a rant here. So... We (our country) wants to encourage more energy from sources other than fossil fuels. To do that, we need things that produce that energy (solar cells) and a way to store that energy (larger storage batteries). So what do we do? Make them more expensive! What...

While this might be a good debate over beers, this is a DIY solar forum. That's not to criticize you asking the question, but it's just a bit out of place, I'd respectfully argue, if you keep saying this is not about residential solar. That's primarily what this forum is about... Many of us...

And 'round and 'round one goes, whether on this forum, with a mfr in a warranty claim, or in the courts. Having ESS excluded from any right to repair law is definitely a slap in the face to people like each of us on this forum. but the NEC's vague definition isn't much better. Who determines...

Yes, but... It's easy to forget or overlook things. Example: I do most of my own tractor maintenance. There's a John Deere dealer 20 minutes from me that just throws the parts you ask for on the counter, takes your money, and sends you on your way. There's another dealer an hour and 20 minutes...

Ground source heat pumps are more efficient than air-air heat pumps, but require a very significant upfront capital cost in terms of drilling a well and burying tubing, or installing that tubing in some other way (such as in a large pond or in trenches below the frost line). For many...

Not getting into an argument with the OP, but for benefit of others that come across this thread, I've had three Emporia Vue monitors in three different buildings (two properties) for more than two years. While not perfect, they've each been overall aligned with the utility in terms of usage...

Well, there's a good chance I was just in idiot mode. For whatever reason, I completely missed this. Yeah, the shunt was set to 26.88 as 100%. Corrected it to 28.4 but not early enough to fully recharge with solar today. Will charge with AC tomorrow and then let the sun top it all off, and...

If available, here's something that might help. I live on an island in a lake, in rural Maine. My wife and I are 2/3 of the total population. Pretty darn remote. But we own several small businesses, including a mgmt consultancy, and are on volunteer boards as well. So, we're on Zoom and Teams...